Michial Farmer
Michial Farmer is a poet, essayist, and history teacher. He is the author of Imagination and Idealism in John Updike’s Fiction (Camden House, 2017) and the translator of Gabriel Marcel’s Thirst (Cluny, 2021). He lives in Atlanta.
Articles by Michial Farmer
Some Needles Find a Groove: Songs About Music
We’re listening to music about music on this week’s Symposium of Popular Songs. I’ve got fewer literary readings for you than usual, but more personal stories, including my all-time favorite…
A Little Time in Quiet: Songs About the Morning
We’re listening to songs about my favorite time of day, morning, this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs. Accordingly, it’s a pretty mellow episode. Send recommendations my way at…
Every Tear on Every Face Tastes the Same: Songs About Solidarity
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about solidarity, one-half of the foundation of Catholic social teaching. Send me your song recommendations at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com!
Burning Warm and Bright: Songs About Fire
We’re talking about fire in all its forms this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I managed to get all the way through the episode without referencing Beavis…
Can We Dance on the Tables Again?: Songs About Parties
It’s party time at A Symposium of Popular Songs, though we’re going to oscillate wildly between the kind of party you go home from in an ambulance and the kind…
No Kings and No Landlords: Songs About Freedom
We’re talking about freedom this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I demonstrate my freedom by going all the way from “guy with guitar” folk to overcranked contemporary…
You Don’t Have to Go Blind: Songs About Fame
Inspired by some recent criminal activity in the Christian rock world, this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about fame—mostly its negative aspects.
Time for Leaving: Songs About Restlessness
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about restlessness—or, as the scholar Frederick R. Karl calls it, spatiality. I managed to do this whole episode…
Terrestrial Otherness: Songs About Insects
In conjunction with my recent FPR article “Terrestrial Otherness,” this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’ll be listening to music honoring the noble six-legged creatures whose world we…
Soft in the Middle: Songs About Middle Age
In this first episode of A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’ll be listening to music about middle age and talking about its various indignities.
Terrestrial Otherness
Why didn’t Fabre gaze out into the heavens, like Copernicus and Galileo, instead of down at these grotesque little monsters?
The Race to the Bottom: A Review of Ross Benes’s ‘1999’
It never fails—whenever Benes defends low culture, he does so in the exact terms that he ought to be using to criticize it