{"id":798,"date":"2021-04-18T13:39:16","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T18:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/?p=798"},"modified":"2022-05-26T06:46:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T11:46:36","slug":"the-academic-read-by-alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/the-academic-read-by-alexander\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Academic&#8221; read by Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:&nbsp;<br>You&#8217;re likely to go on living for years,&nbsp;<br>With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop-girl simper,&nbsp;<br>And the style of your prose growing limper and limper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Theodore Roethke<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/Academicreaadbyalexander.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption>&#8220;The Academic&#8221; by Theodore Roethke, read by Alexander, circa 1978.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>About the Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"190\" data-attachment-id=\"795\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/academicreadybyalexander\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/academicreadybyAlexander-e1618772246965.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1190,755\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"academicreadybyAlexander\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/academicreadybyAlexander-1024x650.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/academicreadybyAlexander-300x190.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-795\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some time in the mid seventies, while I was a doctoral student in the English Department at Michigan State University, I heard about a mini computer on campus that ran an experimental text-to-speech program called &#8220;Alexander.&#8221; Perhaps I heard about it in my &#8220;Computers in the Humanities&#8221; class. Perhaps I knew someone who offered to do a demo. Who knows. All I can remember is spending a pleasant Friday afternoon programming the software to recite Theodore Roethke&#8217;s brief, sardonic poem &#8220;The Academic&#8221; from his first book <em>Open House<\/em> (1941). It is a humorous send up of academic life, startlingly unlike the elegant free verse of his later work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Using Alexander, I built the poem phoneme by phoneme, tweaking intonation and duration as best I could. I have searched the Internet for information about Alexander and found nothing, which makes me think it may have been an experimental Bell Labs&#8217; project. Again: who knows. The cassette and the poem sat in a box in my attic for 40 plus years until I decided to digitize it before the last cassette tape player in the country died.  Much thanks to my son-in-law, Justin Clark for cleaning up the sound with some digital magic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:&nbsp;You&#8217;re likely to go on living for years,&nbsp;With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop-girl simper,&nbsp;And the style of your prose growing limper and limper. by Theodore Roethke About the Reading Some time in the mid seventies, while I was a doctoral student in the English Department at Michigan State University, &#8230; <a title=\"&#8220;The Academic&#8221; read by Alexander\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/the-academic-read-by-alexander\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about &#8220;The Academic&#8221; read by Alexander\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pafo44-cS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}