A bottle of heretical French wine, a five-year taste arc, and a 1,000-page German novel put down out of sheer pettiness. In this episode, Josh and Dasha trace the evolution of a writing sensibility: from angular Hemingway sentences to something velvety and unnecessary, like a Californian Pinot Noir. Then: an anonymous listener asks how you know when a poem is done, and whether every word has to hit.

Links: 

Les Hérétiques wine 

Spencer Wine, Ann Arbor 

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy 

Shout out to Gabe Habash 

Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz, trans. Max Lawton 

All Fours by Miranda July 

Zona Motel gossip column 

How long did it take to write Infinite Jest? 

Sylvia Plath’s revised Ariel manuscript pages 

Virgil’s unfinished lines in the Aeneid

Theme music: “1982” by See Jazz