# 112. Sailing Without Ahab w/ Dr. Steve Mentz Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/writing-remix-podcast-272871/112-sailing-without-ahab-w-dr-steve-mentz Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/writing-remix-podcast-272871/112-sailing-without-ahab-w-dr-steve-mentz.md Podcast: [Writing Remix Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/writing-remix-podcast-272871) Published: 2025-03-31T22:14:08+00:00 Episode link: https://writingremixpodcast.com/2025/03/31/112-sailing-without-ahab-w-dr-steve-mentz/ Audio file: https://writingremixpodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/mentz-moby-dick-ep-audio-final.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/writing-remix-podcast-272871/episodes/112-sailing-without-ahab-w-dr-steve-mentz ## Resource Dan Dissinger welcomes back his former professor Dr. Steve Mentz, chair of the Saint John’s University English Department, to discuss his latest book of poems Sailing Without Ahab and the Blue Humanities. They dive into (no pun intended) Dr. Mentz’s writing journey in and out of the poems in Sailing Without Ahab, the interconnected writing process and relationship between the creative space of poetry and academic scholarship when it came to creating Sailing Without Ahab, his personal and scholastic history with water, teaching Moby-Dick, and the challenges of writing in the voice of Ishmael. Steve also reads several poems from Sailing Without Ahab and discusses some of the more intricate details about these pieces. This is such a rich episode both for writers and scholars alike, and being on the precipice of National Poetry Month, this is a great way to start it off. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/writing-remix-podcast-272871/episodes/112-sailing-without-ahab-w-dr-steve-mentz/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/writing-remix-podcast-272871/112-sailing-without-ahab-w-dr-steve-mentz.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.