Leo Strauss re-invigorated the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns within the history of political philosophy. Nobody reveals the fruits of his investigation into the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns in the history of poetry. He traces key developments from epic, to Chaucer, to the Romantics, to today, and much in between. You will want to read poetry more than ever before after this!
Links to Nobody’s materials:
Twitter: @hyperpoeisis
Substack:
Founder of Classics Downtown in NYC which seeks to reinvigorate American poetry
Core questions that we discussed:
1. I first met Nobody in one of Meta Prime’s Sunday spaces and in addition to his sense of humor it became clear that he is a serious and thoughtful reader of the Western great books, so it is a delight to have him here. To start with, can you tell us about your name?
- Do you take special inspiration from Odysseus in your work or do you have any passages from the Odyssey that are of particular interest?
- I love that Cyclops scene…Odysseus can’t bear to be a Nobody, he has to be Somebody and he never questions whether or not it is good to be a Somebody. Achilles longed to be a somebody, but he ultimately questions the goodness of that life.
2. Can you tell us about your project HyperPoesis? How did it start and what do you mean when on your “about” page when you write, “At the frontier of the American and therefore at the frontier of the cosmic imagination?
3. What is the role of the poet in our contemporary moment? What can hope to or dare to accomplish?
4. Okay, so let’s move into the meat. Can you introduce your basic literary thesis and then walk through a few specific examples that help illustrate it?
Previous Classical Conversations:
Lance Legion on contemporary military officer education, Romans vs. Greeks, Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, and the relation between Christianity / Vitalism.
Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.
Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.
William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.
Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)
David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.
Nobody Interview