In this final chapter of our Romanticism series, we bring the velvet curtain down with a sharp, necessary reality check. After indulging in the beauty, the yearning, and the drama of Romanticism, it’s time to ask the uncomfortable questions: What happens when feelings become fact? When perception overrides truth? When self-expression becomes a substitute for self-governance?

In this episode, Allen Mowery unpacks the paradox at the heart of Romanticism and explores the cultural consequences of turning emotion into moral authority. From Oscar Wilde’s unexpected transformation to T.S. Eliot’s quiet call to humility, we examine the poets who pushed back — and what their work still demands of us today.

We don’t just critique Romanticism’s legacy; we wrestle with it. And in the process, we offer an alternative: a life rooted not in the whims of feeling, but in the enduring clarity of truth.

Topics Covered:

• Why feelings are not facts (even if they feel really, really factual)

• The paradox of Romanticism’s emotional revolution

• The dangers of moral relativism and cultural narcissism

• Poets who resisted the emotional freefall: Eliot, Auden, Herbert, and more

• The difference between being expressive and being whole

• A call to choose truth — especially when it’s uncomfortable

Featured Poets & Texts:

• T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets, Ash Wednesday

• W.H. Auden – September 1, 1939

• George Herbert – The Elixir

• Oscar Wilde – De Profundis

• Selections from Romantic-era and post-Romantic poets

Connect with Perfectly Poetic:
Website: https://perfectlypoetic.com
Instagram: @perfectlypoeticpodcast
Facebook: Perfectly Poetic Podcast
YouTube: Perfectly Poetic on YouTube
Email: poetic@perfectlypoetic.com

In this darkly delightful episode, we stop swooning over daffodils and start whispering to ghosts. Welcome to the stormy underworld of Romanticism—the side that’s drenched in moonlight, mourning, madness, and metaphysical despair. We explore what happens when emotion becomes obsession, beauty turns to terror, and the soul starts writing poetry with a quill dipped in melancholy.

From Charlotte Dacre’s guilt-laced internal ruin to Novalis’s cosmic marriage proposal to death itself, we examine poetry that doesn’t just feel—it devours. Along the way, we meet snowbound nihilists, disillusioned philosophers, and poets who would have had thriving TikTok trauma-core accounts.

And yes, we talk about the real monsters—like Matthew Lewis, who made Gothic horror loud, excessive, and weirdly seductive long before horror movies knew how to scream.

In the end, we discover that the Romantics weren’t just dramatic—they were timeless. Their hunger still echoes through our curated sadness, moody playlists, and spiritual search engines.

Featured Poets and Works:

• Charlotte Dacre – “The Confession”

• James Thomson – from Winter

• Friedrich Schiller – from The Gods of Greece

• Novalis – from Hymns to the Night

• Matthew Lewis – “The Fragment”

Themes Explored:

• The Gothic as emotional architecture

• Nature as beautiful annihilation

• Spiritual grief and divine silence

• Death as intimacy, not destruction

• Emotional excess as both truth and performance

• Modern culture's Romantic inheritance: from curated sadness to hashtag despair

Connect With Us:perfectlypoetic.comInstagram: @perfectlypoeticpodcast
Facebook: facebook.com/perfectlypoetic
Email: poetic@perfectlypoetic.com
YouTube: @perfectlypoeticpodcast

Tags:
#Romanticism #PoetryPodcast #GothicPoetry #Novalis #CharlotteDacre #DarkRomanticism #ModernMelancholy #TheSublime #PoeticDespair #PerfectlyPoetic

Romanticism. The age of passion, poetry... and maybe just a little too much fainting onto chaise lounges. In this episode of Perfectly Poetic, Allen takes a long, emotionally complicated walk through the overly perfumed garden of 19th-century love poems. Featuring full readings of Byron, Hemans, Moore, Landon, and Shelley, this episode explores the syrupy, swoon-heavy side of Romanticism — the poems that confuse longing with love and fantasy with fact.

But it doesn’t stop in the 1800s. We draw the not-so-subtle lines between these melodramatic verses and our modern dating culture — complete with swiping, soft launches, emotional martyrdom, and “u up?” texts disguised as destiny. It’s deeply philosophical, hilariously brutal, and surprisingly poignant.

If you’ve ever projected a full love story onto someone who matched your energy for three days, this one’s for you.

In This Episode

• Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” and the art of poetic projection

• Felicia Hemans’ flaming ode to obedience in “Casabianca”

• Thomas Moore and the emotional limbo of unlabeled relationships

• L.E.L.’s glamorized grief in “The Grave of a Suicide”

• Percy Shelley’s overly sensual nature metaphors in “Love’s Philosophy”

• • A full cultural and philosophical breakdown of modern love, dating apps, emotional detachment, and the fantasy trap we still fall for
  • One fainting couch, emotionally speaking

• 
  

  Poems Featured (in full):

• • “She Walks in Beauty” – Lord Byron

  • “Casabianca” – Felicia Hemans

  • “Oh! Call It by Some Better Name” – Thomas Moore

  • “The Grave of a Suicide” – Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  • “Love’s Philosophy” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

  
  

  Connect with Us:

  Website: perfectlypoetic.comInstagram: @perfectlypoeticpodcastFacebook: facebook.com/perfectlypoeticEmail: poetic@perfectlypoetic.com

  
  

  Tags

  #Romanticism #LordByron #PoetryPodcast #DatingCulture #SappyPoems #LiterarySatire #PhilosophyOfLove #FeliciaHemans #DatingApps #PoeticMeltdown #ThomasMoore #RomanticPoets #PerfectlyPoetic #Shelley #EmotionalProjection

Before poetry became a Pinterest quote or a cringey greeting card, it was wild. Soulful. Dramatic. Welcome to the world of Romanticism — the literary movement where emotion was a weapon, nature was sacred, and your existential crisis could become a 42-line poem.

In this first episode of the Romanticism series, we dig into what made the Romantics tick (spoiler: feelings), how they turned heartbreak and thunderstorms into high art, and why their unapologetic emotional chaos still hits home today. Featuring poetic heavyweights like Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, we explore how Romanticism wasn’t just about writing pretty things — it was about feeling hard, living fully, and refusing to be numb.

This isn’t your high school English class. This is poetry with teeth, rain-soaked revelation, and a little bit of dirt under the fingernails.

Highlights include:

• What Romanticism actually was — and what it was pushing back against

• Nature as temple, therapist, and truth-teller

• Byron’s smoldering ego, Shelley’s political rage, Keats’s gorgeous grief

• Why this 200-year-old movement still describes your most vulnerable self better than your therapist

Links & Resources:
perfectlypoetic.com

Instagram: @perfectlypoeticpodcast

Facebook: facebook.com/perfectlypoetic

Email: poetic@perfectlypoetic.com

Tags: Romanticism, poetry, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley, nature, emotion, literary rebellion

Some kids are born to play tag. Others sit on the swing set and contemplate mortality. Edgar Allan Poe? Definitely the swing set type.

In this episode, we take a dive (not a dramatic, Gothic plunge—just a tasteful dip) into one of Poe’s lesser-known but deeply revealing poems: Alone. With his signature melancholy flair and all the emotional baggage of a moody Victorian vampire, Poe explores what it means to feel cut off from the rest of humanity, even from childhood.

We break down the lines, the metaphors, and the angsty undercurrents, while also wrestling with bigger questions: Is Poe being honest? Is this performative sadness? Or is it just good branding?

Expect literary analysis, a splash of sarcasm, and a reminder that feeling different has a long poetic pedigree.

• The full reading of Alone (moody candlelight optional)

• How childhood alienation shaped Poe’s poetic voice

• The art of the tortured persona (and whether it’s legit or literary theater)

• Line-by-line breakdown of key images: demons, storms, and that pesky, joyless dawn

• Why this poem still hits home for misfits, introverts, and brooding creatives everywhere

“Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe

You don’t have to wear all black or write with a quill by moonlight to appreciate Poe. Sometimes poetry just knows how to say what you’re too tired or too weirded out to say yourself. And that’s kind of the whole point.

Follow, rate, and leave a review if you enjoy the show—especially if you're the kind of person who also secretly thinks the world is out to get you (poetically, of course).

Podcast: Perfectly Poetic
Episode Length: 15:21
Host: Allen Mowery

Connect with us:

Website: perfectlypoetic.com
Instagram: @perfectlypoeticpodcast
Email: poetic@perfectlypoetic.com

Poetry is often associated with romance, and rightfully so, as some of the most beautiful verses in literature have spawned from the heart in love. But poetry has also been born of love gone awry.

Discover the comically-lurid story behind one of England's most-recognized poems along with the mournful and little-known poetic verses written by an imprisoned queen awaiting her execution. Love is strong, but it doesn't always conquer.

FEATURED POETRY:

"My Darling Wife" — Nathan Roberts
"O, Death, Rock Me Asleep" — Anne Boleyn
"Greensleeves" — Unknown

Subscribe to Perfectly Poetic wherever you get your podcasts. Discover more at perfectlypoetic.com.

This episode is sponsored by Melton Trading Co. – Improving lives in developing communities

FEATURED MUSIC:

Music: "What a Friend" by Allen Mowery (www.allenmowery.com)
Used with permission

Music: "Medieval Chateau" by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Music: "Bonfire" by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Music: "Village Ambiance" by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Music: "Planning" by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Music: "War Shout" by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

A man of means, with his wife and four daughters by his side, the life of Horatio Gates Spafford was set to be the idyllic dream for which so many in the Victorian era longed. But tragedy was beckoning on his doorstep. Death, heartache, and financial ruin were the reality for this grieving soul who, alongside his wife, faced the deepest of sorrows in what was once a happy life. Yet, in the midst of his visceral pain, Spafford wrote of hope, of peace, and the humanitarian efforts of he and his children still reverberates today.

Poetry included in this episode:
– "It Is Well With My Soul"
– "A Song in the Night"

Subscribe to Perfectly Poetic wherever you get your podcasts. Discover more at perfectlypoetic.com.

This episode is sponsored by Melton Trading Co. – Improving lives in developing communities

His life was fraught with heartache.  Tormented by grief and mental illness, he turned to substance abuse, which likely contributed to his death at the age of 40.  Yet, somehow in the midst of the dysfunctional haze, he penned some of the most iconic verses in American literature.  Join us as we begin to explore the life and poetic works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Poetry included in this episode:
– "Alone"
– "Spirits of the Dead"
– "The Sleeper"

Subscribe to Perfectly Poetic wherever you get your podcasts.  To learn more, visit perfectlypoetic.com.

This episode is sponsored by Melton Trading Co. – Improving lives in developing communities