272: Unabridged Interview: Malcolm Guite

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This is our unabridged interview with Malcolm Guite. A frightened knight, cornered in a castle he doesn't understand, grabs a spear he was warned not to touch and drives it into the king. And because the king and the land are one, the whole country goes barren. The rivers empty, the crops fail, nothing can be born. It's called the Dolorous Stroke, and poet Malcolm Guite first heard it at eight years old from his mother. When he protested that the knight didn't know what he was doing, that no world could work this way, his mother answered him: “I'm telling you this story because you need to know that you live in just such a world.” But there's a second half. The same spear that wounded the…