Human Voices Wake Us
By Human Voices Wake Us
Human Voices Wake UsNov 05, 2020
Ted Hughes: 14 Poems from "Crow" (new episode)
An episode from 5/8/24: Tonight, I read fourteen poems from Ted Hughes's 1970 collection, Crow. His books Crow, Moortown Diary, Remains of Elmet, and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that read are:
- A Childish Prank (the audio of Hughes reading the poem comes from here)
- Crow's First Lesson
- Crow Tyrannosaurus
- Crow & the Birds
- Crowego
- Crow Blacker than Ever
- Crow's Last Stand
- Crow & the Sea
- Fragments of an Ancient Tablet
- Notes for a Little Play
- Lovesong
- Littleblood
- Crow's Courtship
- Crow's Song about God
This is a revision and complete re-recording of an episode first posted in August of 2021, which included fewer poems. I've used the opportunity to also read from Jonathan Bates's biography of Hughes, Hughes's later notes to the book, as well as handful of letters he wrote about the collection.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poems on Modern Life (new episode)
An episode from 4/17/24: Tonight, I read a handful of poems on modern life—whatever “modern” might mean in words spanning the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. In many of the poems we hear the complaint of every age, that “the world has never been so bad.” In others, descriptions of the suburbs are enough, or of car culture, or of how we get our news or even begin to live with stories of atrocity and war. Some poems ask us to pay attention to the work and details of everyday life, others wonder if we shouldn’t look to past poets for wisdom and guidance. If a “modern” mindset means anything, it seems to mean proliferation and flux, a sense of not being settled. The poems I read are:
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021), “In Goya’s greatest scenes”
- Kathleen Jamie (1962- ), “The Way We Live”
- Laurie Sheck (1953- ), “Headlights”
- Derek Mahon (1941-2020), “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford”
- Ted Kooser (1939- ), “Late February”
- Philip Larkin (1922-1985), “Here”
- Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), “New Mexican Mountain”
- T. E. Hulme (1883-1917), “Image”
- Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), “Editor Whedon”
- Walt Whitman (1819-1892), “The blab of the pave”
- William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “London 1802”
- Mary Robinson (1758-1800), “A London Summer Morning”
- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), “A Description of the Morning”
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), “The queen, my lord, is dead”
- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), “Suddenly”
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
An Interview with Amit Majmudar (new episode)
An episode from 4/3/24: Tonight, I interview the poet, novelist, and translator, Amit Majmudar. You can find a full list of his books here, but we spend most of our time talking about his 2018 translation of the Bhagavad Gita, Godsong. Along the way, we also get his take on many of the preoccupations of this podcast: how a life devoted to creativity, religion, family, and an awareness of history and tradition can still be maintained in this strange time of ours.
His book recommendations at the end are:
- John D. Smith’s abridged translation of the Mahabharata
- S. Radhakrishnan's translation of the principal Upanishads
- The Princeton edition of the Ramayana
- Roberto Calasso’s Ardor
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Ted Hughes: 11 Poems from "Remains of Elmet" (new episode)
An episode from 3/15/24: Tonight, I read eleven poems from Ted Hughes's 1979 collection, Remains of Elmet. His books Crow, Moortown Diary, Remains of Elmet, and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that I read from Remains of Elmet are:
- Light Falls through Itself
- Crown Point Pensioners
- "Six years into her posthumous life"
- These Grasses of Light
- Walls
- Heather
- Remains of Elmet
- Where the Millstone of Sky
- The Ancient Briton Lay under His Rock
- Heptonstall
- Cock Crows (the audio of Hughes reading the poem comes from here)
This is a revision and complete re-recording of an episode first posted in April of 2021, which included only seven poems. I've used the opportunity to also read from Jonathan Bates's biography of Hughes, Hughes's later notes to the book, as well as handful of letters he wrote about the collection.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Visionary Poems from Yeats, Whitman, Blake & Myth (new episode)
An episode from 3/3/24: Tonight, I read from a handful of what I call “visionary” poems. After an introductory section of familiar nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets, I go back to the sources of those, which are found in religious scripture and myth:
- W. B. Yeats: “The Second Coming”
- T. S. Eliot: sections from The Waste Land and “East Coker”
- Walt Whitman: the first section of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
- William Wordsworth: from the thirteenth book of The Prelude
- William Blake: from his long poem Milton
- The first chapter of Ezekiel (from the JPS audio Tanakh)
- A speech from Euripides’s Bacchae, tr. William Arrowsmith
- Part of the eleventh book of the Bhagavad-Gita, tr. by Amit Majmudar in his Godsong
- I close the episode with a reading that will not surprise long-time listeners.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Wallace Stevens: 11 Essential Poems
An episode from 2/19/24: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). All of them can be found in his Collected Poems. I also read from his letters, and the essay about Stevens at The Poetry Foundation. The poems are:
- Anecdote of the Jar
- The Snow Man
- Six Significant Landscapes
- Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
- How to Live. What to Do
- Gallant Château
- Bouquet of Belle Scavoir
- The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain
- The Planet on the Table
- Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
- The Idea of Order at Key West (read by Stevens)
The biographies of Stevens that I mention are the two-volumes by Joan Richardson, and The Whole of Harmonium, by Paul Mariani. The 1988 documentary on Stevens, part of the Voices and Visions series, is also a great introduction.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Ted Hughes: 6 Poems from "River"
An episode from 2/7/24: Tonight, I read six poems from Ted Hughes's 1983 collection, River. His books Crow, Moortown Diary, Remains of Elmet, and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that I read from River are:
- October Salmon (the audio of Hughes reading the poem comes from here)
- Four March Watercolours
- Salmon Eggs
- An August Salmon
- The River
- In the Dark Violin of the Valley
This is a revision and complete re-recording of an episode first posted in September of 2021, which included only three poems. I've used the opportunity to also read from Jonathan Bates's biography of Hughes, Hughes's later notes to the book, as well as handful of letters he wrote about the collection.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poems on Being a Parent
An episode from 1/31/24: Tonight, as a companion to last episode of poems on being a child, I read a handful of poems about being a parent:
- “Morning Song,” by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
- “Child Crying Out,” by Louise Glück (1943-2023)
- “First Snow” read by Louise Glück (audio from here)
- “This Be the Verse,” by Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
- “Lucinda Matlock,” by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
- “On My First Sonne” (Epigrammes XLV), by Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
- “The Pomegranate,” by Eavan Boland (1944-2020)
- “Surprized by joy – impatient as the wind,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
- “Eden Rock,” by Charles Causley (1924-2007)
- “My Young Mother,” by Jane Cooper (1924-2007)
- “Waiting,” by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
- from King Lear, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
- “Life after Death,” by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poems About Childhood & Youth
An episode from 1/19/24: Tonight, I read a handful of poems about childhood. How does poetry capture our earliest memories, and how can it express the act of remembering itself, of nostalgia? The poems are:
- The Pennycandystore Beyond the El, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
- "Other echoes/Inhabit the garden," from Burnt Norton, by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
- Squarings #40, by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
- A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England, by Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
- Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
- Learning to Read, by Laurie Sheck (1953-)
- My Papa's Waltz, by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
- The Latin Lesson, by Eavan Boland (1944-2020)
- Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
- The Leaving, by Brigit Pegeen Kelly (1951-2016)
- The Month of June: 13 1/2, by Sharon Olds (1942-)
- Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio, by James Wright (1927-1980)
- "I'm ceded" (#508), by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
- Soap Suds, by Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Ted Hughes: 7 Poems from "Moortown Diary"
An episode from 1/10/24: Tonight, I read seven poems from Ted Hughes's collection of farming poems, Moortown Diary, first published in 1978. His books Crow, Moortown Diary, Remains of Elmet, and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that I read from Moortown Diary are:
- Rain
- Bringing in new couples
- Surprise
- Ravens
- February 17th
- Birth of Rainbow
- A monument
This is a revision and complete re-recording of an episode first posted in January of 2021, which included only five poems. I've used the opportunity to read from Hughes's preface and notes to the book, as well as a letter written to his friend, Keith Sagar about the collection. I also include audio of Hughes from the BBC/British Library recordings collected as The Spoken Word: Ted Hughes, Poems and Short Stories.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
The Sound of Beethoven
An episode from 1/1/24: Tonight, a cold has forced me to hand over the episode almost entirely to some of the greatest music ever written. Here are excerpts of my favorite pieces from Ludwig van Beethoven (1750-1827). It’s hard to think of music that is more passionate, introspective, uplifting, brooding, mournful, and joyous. The sources for the music I use are:
- Excerpts from the Ninth Symphony/Op. 125 is conducted by Eugen Duvier.
- Excerpts from the Piano Sonatas (#1 and #2/Op. 2, #8/Op. 13, #13 and #14/Op. 27 #15/Op. 28, #17/Op. 31, #21/Op. 53, #22/Op. 54, #27/Op. 90), and the Fifth Piano Concerto/Op. 73 come from the complete recordings by Claudio Arrau.
- The excerpt from the Op. 70 “Ghost” Trio, from the Trio Bell’Arte.
- Excerpts from String Quartet 13/Op. 130 and String Quartet 15/Op. 132 come from the recordings by the Quartteto Italiano.
- Excerpts from Missa Solemnis, Op. 123, is conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.
- The excerpt from Robert Greenberg lecture comes from his Great Courses set on the Piano Sonatas.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Britain: September 3, 1939
An episode from 12/21/23: What is it like for your country to declare war, and then wait for it, and then live through it? Tonight, I read only a small sampling from Norman Longmate's How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War.
The book focuses on the home front in Britain and the experiences, mostly, of everyday civilians, the elderly, women, and children: How do you live through the Blitz? How do parents say goodbye to their children, millions of whom were relocated from urbans areas to the countryside, to protect them from attack? How do you eat when food is rationed, what kind of social life is possible, and was the BBC allowed to be funny (spoiler alert: yes)?
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
The new movie "Maestro," & what happens to our earliest dreams
An episode from 12/13/23: There’s a certain lesson I’ve learned from sports figures, poets, and critics, and I was reminded of it while watching Bradley Cooper’s new movie about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro. What does it mean that the attention and opportunities that so many aspiring musicians and conductors dream of, only ever lands on a few people, like Bernstein?
And what does it mean that the earliest dreams of actors—which include being able to portray figures like Bernstein, and to recreate and embody defining moments in their lives—also only ever lands on a few people, like Bradley Cooper? While talking about this, I play an excerpt from a New Yorker interview with Bradley Cooper from last month.
I end the episode with a small question for all of us: considering how easy it is nowadays to find a new book, movie, podcast, or album, has anyone out there developed a disciplined way of saying no, of stopping, of creating time when absolutely nothing of culture can intrude?
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Little Biographies
An episode from 12/6/23: Tonight, I read the small biographies of nearly two dozen poets, the kind of colorful summaries usually found in poetry anthologies. In many cases, reading a paragraph or two about twenty people is enough to get the sense of a life, and of just how varied the lives of poets (or anybody) can really be. The biographies come from Volume One and Volume Two of the Poem a Day series.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
The Most Brutal Scenes
An episode from 11/29/23: Tonight, I share two stories from the Shoah, or Holocaust.
The first is about the Sonderkommando, those prisoners forced to do the most devastating work in the concentration camps. During a 2015 Fresh Air interview with László Nemes and Géza Röhrig about their 2015 film, Son of Saul, a brief story about an actual Sonderkommando member is told. It remains one of the most overwhelming minutes that I have ever heard.
In the second part, I read from Daniel Mendelsohn’s 2006 book, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. The book is Mendelsohn’s attempt to discover what happened to six members of his family who were murdered in the Holocaust, and the section I read from is about the difficulty of truly entering the mind and situation of a sixteen year-old girl, who is rounded up with a thousand other Jews, and murdered.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. You can also leave a review at iTunes.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Patti Smith / Mazzy Star & Living Colour / Philip Glass
An episode from 11/13/23: Tonight, I talk about our attachment to music as teenagers and adults, and the lessons that loving music—and finding meaning in musicians’ life stories—can teach us.
First, I read two passages from Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids. Those parts on her early life with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, before either of them were well-known, are incredibly moving. Next, I talk about my attachment to the band Mazzy Star, and then read from a listener’s email about seeing the band Living Colour perform live for the first time, after years of listening to their music. Finally, I read a few passages from Words Without Music, a memoir by the composer Philip Glass.
If you have a story of your own to share about art, creativity, religion or myth, email me about it and it could appear in an upcoming episode.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poems for Autumn
An episode from 10/30/23: Tonight, I read a handful of poems about autumn:
- Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), from “The Burning of the Leaves”
- Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), “The leaves are falling; so am I”
- Louise Glück (1943-2023), “All Hallows”
- John Keats (1795-1821), from “To Autumn”
- W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), “The Wild Swans at Coole”
- Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), from “For a Wine Festival” and from “The Tributary Seasons”
- Frances Cornford (1886-1960), “All Souls”
- Edward Thomas (1878-1917), “Digging”
- Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), “A Sheep Fair”
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Shakespeare: The Life & Times
An episode from 10/16/23: Tonight, I read my long poem about William Shakespeare, and offer a commentary along the way. It is being published simultaneously at Bryan Helton’s The Basilisk Tree, and once again I give Bryan my infinite thanks.
This will be the third long poem of mine that he has published this year to coincide with an episode of Human Voices Wake Us – the other two are on Leonardo da Vinci and Pythagoras. Please take the time to check out the rest of The Basilisk Tree, or to even submit your own poetry.
While introducing my Shakespeare poem, I mention that it was in part inspired by an episode I did here on the (real or fictional) love life of Walt Whitman. You can listen to that episode here.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poetry Friday with The Great Year, Shakespeare, Eliot, Blake, Poems on Work & Poems on Mythology
An episode from 9/15/23: Earlier this year, I thought it was possible to supplement this podcast with one weekly (and shorter) additional reading over at Substack; for many reasons, that ambition proved impossible to maintain. Since an illness has kept me from recording a new episode this week, I thought it worthwhile collecting those six weeks of shorter readings here:
- 3 Poems from my long work-in-progress, The Great Year: “The Autumn Village,” “I was in Iceland centuries ago, ” “Smith Looks Up the Long Road”
- Two readings from Shakespeare: “Of comfort no man speak” (Richard II, act II scene 2), “All the world’s a stage” (As You Like It, act II scene 7)
- 3 Poems on Work: Philip Levine (1928-2015): “Among Children,” Elma Mitchell (1919-2000), “Thoughts After Ruskin," Mary Robinson (1758-1800), “A London Summer Morning”
- Favorites from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
- Three Poets & Mythology: Eavan Boland (1944-2020), “The Making of an Irish Goddess," Michael Longley (b. 1939) “The Butchers," Robert Pinsky (b. 1940), “The Figured Wheel”
- Blake & His Animals: Three passages from William Blake (1757-1827): one from Visions of the Daughters of Albion and the last two from Milton. I hope that plucking these three passages from his longer work can suggest how varied—not just how prophetic and opaque, but simply beautiful—so much of his poetry can be.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Caravaggio's Severed Heads / Herodotus Among the Scythians / Ian McKellen on Macbeth
An episode from 9/8/23: In the first part of tonight's episode, I read from Peter Robb's M, a biography of the painter Caravaggio (1571-1610). Through a discussion of two of his paintings which depict decapitation, we can understand how, in Caravaggio's early career, he was able to paint directly from life; but when he went on the run to escape a charge of murder, he depended instead upon his memory.
In the second part, I read from the father of history, Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425 BCE), and his description of royal the burial rites of the "barbarian" Scythians, who lived in the area of the Black Sea. The translation and essays I read are from the Landmark Herodotus, edited by Robert B. Strassler.
In the last part, I play a section of a talk given by Ian McKellen on the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth. You can find the clip on YouTube here.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Raising a Musical Prodigy / God's Response to Job
An episode from 9/1/23: In the first part of tonight’s episode, I read from Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, & the Search for Identity, where Solomon talks about musical prodigies and the difficulties they face as children and adults.
In the second part, I read one of the most powerful pieces of poetry to come out of the ancient world, God’s response to Job, from the Hebrew Bible. Nowhere else is the terror and mystery of human suffering more deeply expressed, and God’s response to it remains a confounding and sublime performance. The translation is by Raymond Scheindlin.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Seamus Heaney: 10 Essential Poems
An episode from 8/25/23: Tonight, I read ten essential poems from one of the great and most public poets of the last seventy years, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). It isn’t hard to come by details of Heaney’s life, but Stepping Stones (where Heaney is interviewed at length in what amounts to an autobiography), is a good place to start. His poems are collected in 100 Poems, and in the individual collections.
There are many ways to look at Heaney’s work, and the ten poems I choose only present one picture: a poet as at home on the farm as he was at Harvard; as interested in literary history as in archaeology and the deep interior of the Irish imagination; as concerned with childhood, memory, and family as with the darkest aspects of human life. In introducing these poems, I reflect on Heaney’s importance in my own life, and the huge impact his death had on me, ten years ago this month.
The poems I read are:
- Personal Helicon (Death of a Naturalist, 1966)
- The Forge and Bogland (Door into the Dark, 1969)
- The Tollund Man (Wintering Out, 1972)
- The Strand at Lough Beg (Field Work, 1979)
- Squarings #2, #8, #40 (Seeing Things, 1991)
- from his translations of Beowulf (1999)
- Uncoupled (Human Chain, 2010)
The episode ends with Heaney's reading of "The Tollund Man."
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Psalm 23 / Mary, Queen of Scots is Executed / 3 Poems by Mary Oliver
An episode from 8/18/23: What makes a story or prayer or poem last? What circumstances can lead one monarch to order the execution of another? And why, over the past twenty years, was Mary Oliver the best-selling poet in America? Tonight's episode is another three-parter:
- In the first part, I read from one of the great scholars of the Hebrew Bible in our time, James Kugel. I focus on a passage from his How to Read the Bible, and his summary of the variety of meanings that the twenty-third Psalm have inspired since it was first written. He asks how we judge the validity of any interpretation.
- In the second part, I read from Peter Ackroyd's Tudors, on the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587).
- In the third part, I read three poems from the American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019). They can all be found in her career-spanning selection, Devotions: "White Owl Flies into and Out of the Field," "Wild Geese," and "Snow Moon - Black Bear Gives Birth."
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Shakespeare's Library / Ancient Egypt's Temple Libraries / Seamus Heaney Goes to School
An episode from 8/11/23: Tonight, we look into libraries and learning:
- In the first part, I read from Jonathan Bate’s biography of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age. Based on Shakespeare’s education and the evidence of the plays, Bate gives a thorough guess as to the essential twenty or thirty books that the Bard might have had on his shelf.
- In the second part, I read from Serge Sauneron’s Priests of Ancient Egypt. Here, Sauneron talks about the libraries—called “Houses of Life”—attached to Egyptian temples, as well as the scribal and priestly culture that produced Egypt’s various religious texts.
- Finally, I read the poem “Alphabets,” by Seamus Heaney, from his 1987 book, The Haw Lantern. I also read my favorite poem of Heaney’s, Squarings #2, from 1991’s Seeing Things. Both poems combined Heaney’s earliest memories of education with those of manual labor, measuring, and building.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Cities Under Siege: The Gauls Sack Rome / Occupied Paris / William Blake's London
An episode from 8/4/23: Tonight, we hear from cities under siege:
- In the first part, I read from the Roman historian Livy’s account of the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 387 BCE. The translation is by T. J. Luce.
- In the second part, I read from the diary of the French art historian Agnès Humbert, who lived in Paris during the first months of the German occupation in World War Two, and who was involved in some of the earliest resistance activities in France.
- Finally, I read a small section of William Blake’s long poem, Milton, where his personal mythology is given free reign over the city of London.
The music I play in the introduction, from Ludwig Goranson’s score to the movie Oppenheimer, can be found here.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Bruce Springsteen / Simon Schama / The Iliad
An episode from 7/28/23: Tonight's episode looks in on history, creativity, and mourning from three different angles:
In the first part, we hear scattered remarks from Bruce Springsteen over the years, about his low-fi and haunting 1982 album, Nebraska. It is remarkable how the album was made by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, with a cheap recorder. For someone who bridges and so seamlessly combines music of the fifties, sixties and seventies, Nebraska sounds nearly timeless.
In the second part, I read a small section from Simon Schama's 1995 book, Landscape and Memory. Here, he talks about not just his own Jewish ancestry, who hailed from the woods and forests of Ruthenia (on the border between today's Poland and Lithuania), but also about the fate of one Polish village's Jewish population, during and following World War Two.
In the third part, I read from book 24 of Homer's Iliad, translated by Richmond Lattimore. In one of the most moving scenes anywhere in Homer's epics, Priam, the king of Troy, pays a visit to Achilles, the greatest warrior on the Greek side. Achilles has only recently killed Priam's son, Hector, in battle, and the old man comes to Achilles for beg for his son's body back, so that he can be given a proper funeral and burial.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
First Person: Oppenheimer & the Bomb
An episode from 7/21/23: Tonight, I read a few dozen quotations from the scientists, politicians, and military figures who were instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb, and in the final decision to drop it on Japan in August of 1945. The most prominent voices here are those of Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow physicists, whose dedication and excitement to develop the bomb was matched only by their misgivings (though rarely their outright regret) in the years after World War Two.
While I previously dedicated four long episodes to the subject, I tried here to isolate the most vivid quotations, and the most difficult ideas, into one episode. The sources I drew on for this episode are:
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes
- Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes
- American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds, by Peter Goodchild.
- John Else’s documentary, The Day After Trinity, can be watched here.
- John Bradley’s anthology of poets writing about the bomb is Atomic Ghosts: Poets Respond to the Atomic Age.
- My poem about Robert Oppenheimer can be read here.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Rachel Carson on the Deep History of the Sea
An episode from 7/14/23: Tonight, I read from two great writers on the history of the sea. The first is an excerpt from Rachel Carson's (1907-1964) The Sea Around Us, on the deep history of the sea, and the beginnings of all life within it. Next is an excerpt from archaeologist Barry Cunliffe's Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples, where he illustrates all the strategies and passed-down knowledge—of winds, tides, currents, landmarks, marine life, etc.—that sailors in prehistoric Europe would have utilized to travel on the ocean.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com
American Shaman
An episode from 7/7/23: Tonight, I talk about writing my long poem, To the House of the Sun, published in 2015. The poem follows an Irish immigrant making his way through the American South, North and West, during the Civil War. The book is part travelogue, battle epic, and spiritual biography, and after describing how the book was written, I read one of my favorite sections from late in the poem, where the protagonist finds himself as a kind of shaman and religious figure, wandering the West.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
The Spiritual Significance of Everyday Work
An episode from 6/30/23: Tonight, I read from three books that have been important lately in the writing of my long poem, The Great Year. First is the entry on Weaving from Taschen’s Book of Symbols; next, from Michael Pye’s The Edge of the World, is the story of the city of Domburg, in the Netherlands, and the tremendous archaeological finds that storms and the shifting North Sea have revealed there, over the centuries; and last, from Mircea Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion, are a few remarks on the religious significance which farming once held, in premodern agricultural societies.
The question I ask, about the spiritual significance once given to what now appear to be straightforward, practical—and even machine-dominated—tasks, is to wonder what aspects of our everyday lives can be made sacred in the same way? Is this possible any more?
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
The Midsummer Fire Festivals of Old Europe
An episode from 6/12/23: Tonight, I read from James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, and the accounts he collected on the midsummer fire festivals in premodern Europe. I also discuss the relevance of these stories to a long poem-in-progress of mine, The Great Year, as well as my own adventures in acquiring all thirteen volumes of Frazer’s great work.
The sections I read from all appear in the first volume of Balder the Beautiful, and searching through this .pdf, it should be easy to find any of the stories I chose. The entirety of The Golden Bough can be downloaded here.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Pythagoras: The Life & Times
Tonight, I'm thrilled to read a poem that I began working on three years ago on the life, teachings, and mysticism of the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras (c. 570- c.495 BCE). I am also thrilled that the poem is being simultaneously published at The Basilisk Tree. Many thanks to its editor, Bryan Helton, for coordinating all of this with me.
For anyone who wants to look closer at the earliest Classical accounts of Pythagoras, his life, and his teachings, check out: The History of Greek Philosophy Volume 1: The Earlier Presocractics and the Pythagoreans, by W. K. C. Guthrie, and The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, ed. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com
The Great Myths #23: Odin
An episode from 5/15/23: What can the Poetic and Prose Eddas, the Icelandic sagas, and skaldic poetry tell us about the most important god in the Norse pantheon, Odin? Tonight, I devote an entire episode to Odin’s many masks: as poet and shaman, as god of death and war, and as the perfect embodiment of the world as the Norse knew it, filled with brutality and betrayal. The episode is divided into three sections:
- (about 5:37) On Odin and poetry; a reading of the most famous stanzas from the Havamal, and the story of Odin’s theft of the Mead of Poetry
- (about 58:07) On Odin and warfare, death
- (about 1:22:06) What archeology, and classical and medieval historians, can tell us about Odin
The nonfiction books I rely on for most of this episode are E. O. G. Turville-Petre’s Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia, Rudolf Simek’s Dictionary of Northern Mythology, and John Lindow’s Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals & Beliefs.
The translations I read from are: Andy Orchard’s translation of the Poetic Edda, Anthony Faulkes’s and Jesse Byock’s translations of the Prose Edda, and Lee M. Hollander’s translation of the Heimskringla.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Is There Anybody Out There?
An episode from 5/3/23: Tonight’s episode is a response to those wonderful lines from William Carlos Williams: “It is ridiculous what airs we put on to seem profound, while our hearts gasp dying for want of love.” If these lines have the ring of truth, what aspects of our lives have we built up so meticulously, when all we really want is love? In my own life, I ask if perhaps poetry, writing—and even this podcast—fall into that category, and wonder if it’s all worth it.
The music used for the intro is Pink Floyd's "Is There Anybody Out There?"
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Advice from the Beatles
An episode from 4/26/23: What can the stories of the early lives of famous people teach us about our own upbringing, all the details nobody would know if they aren’t told to someone? Tonight, I read from the scattered remarks of John, Paul, George, and Ringo that are found at the beginning of the huge hardcover book The Beatles Anthology, and which cover their childhoods and the years before The Beatles became famous. As you listen, ask yourself how your own childhood might be summarized and collected from anecdotes like these.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
On Seamus Heaney
An episode from 4/19/23: In 2020, the Irish historian and biographer R. F. Foster published a wonderful and brief book, On Seamus Heaney. It is a great introduction to Heaney, and tonight I read my favorite passages from it. The book spans his entire career, and his lifelong preoccupations with history, violence, family, and mythology.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Advice from William Wordsworth
An episode from 3/29/23: Why should we continue to read the poetry of William Wordsworth? Tonight’s episode is devoted to Jonathan Bate’s biography, Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World, where he more than answers the question. For me, anyone who cares about poetry devoted to nature, introspection, and autobiography, can still learn the most from Wordsworth. And his concerns—the necessity of emotion and plain language in poetry, the belief that we have no greater story to tell than our own, and his love for the natural world—are as contemporary as anything on the news.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Da Vinci & His Bodies
An episode from 3/19/23: Around the year 1509, Leonardo da Vinci began his great anatomical work, dissecting upwards of thirty human bodies and making drawings of what he saw. Tonight’s episode is a poem about that experience – all that was isolating, exhilarating, gruesome, beautiful. How did Leonardo go past art, and past science, in search of something stranger, human, divine?
The poem is also being published simultaneously in the first issue of The Basilisk Tree. Many thanks to its editor, Bryan Helton (who is also a great poet himself), for taking the poem. Make sure to take a look at the other poems, and perhaps submit some of your own.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poems for Spring
An episode from 3/12/23: Tonight, I return to new episodes with a handful of poems about the spring. As I mention, living as I do in a city usually inundated with snow, it has been bizarre to have not shoveled the driveway even once. And since the next few weeks of episodes are already planned out, it seemed appropriate to get to spring early, since the earth is doing that already. The poems are:
- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), “There is another sky”
- e. e. cummings (1894-1962), “O sweet spontaneous”
- Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), “This Fevers Me”
- Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), from “Toward an Organic Philosophy”
- Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), from “The Tributary Seasons”
- Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), “Spring” (“To what purpose, April, do you return again?”
- Abbie Huston Evans (1881-1983), “The Old Yellow Shop”
- Elinor Wylie (1885-1928), from “Wild Peaches”
- Henry King (1592-1669), “A Contemplation upon Flowers”
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Act 3 of King Lear
- Ted Hughes (1930-1998), “Four March Watercolours”
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Poems on How to Live
An episode from 1/26/23: Tonight I read a handful of poems on the theme of How to live, what to do? How to get by in the world as a devotee of culture, solitude, ritual, beauty, tradition and individuality?
There is of course no one answer, and anyway, poetry should stay as far away from direct “advice,” or proscription of any kind. Still, when I sit back and think about the kind of poems that help me through the day – and the months, and the years – these are some of them:
- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), How to Live What to Do
- Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), Tillamook Journal
- Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), Things That Matter
- Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), #2 from Lightenings
- Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), Joy
- Louise Glück (1943-), Summer Night
- W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), A Prayer on Going into My House
- Emily Brontë (1818-1848), “Often rebuked, yet always back returning”
- Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Man
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Anthology: Love Poems from the Last Four Centuries
An episode from 1/18/23: Tonight I ask the question: what is love, and what is love poetry? Are poems about family and friendship love poems, just as much as those about romantic feeling, and longing, and heartbreak?
And even more: what is romantic love? What, for instance, did T. S. Eliot mean when he said, “Love is most nearly itself/When here and now cease to matter,” or when Emily Dickinson wrote of “Wild nights”?
The poems I read are:
- Ted Hughes (1930-1998), Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), Bouquet of Belle Scavoir
- Katherine, Lady Dyer (c.1585-1654), Epitaph on Sir William Dyer
- Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861), #43& #44in Sonnets from the Portuguese
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), #7from In Memoriam
- Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Dover Beach
- Ruth Pitter (1897-1992), But for Lust
- Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001), One Flesh
- Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), #3 in Clearances
- Louise Glück (1943-), Brown Circle
- Eavan Boland (1944-2020), The Necessity for Irony
- Walt Whitman (1819-1892), To a Stranger
- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Wild Nights
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Advice from Charles Dickens & Alice Munro
An episode from 1/10/23: Tonight we hear from two great writers of fiction, Charles Dickens and Alice Munro.
Through a handful of readings from Claire Tomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life, we see how Dickens (1812-1870) was able to juggle, for almost a year, the writing of two novels simultaneously, both for serial publication. Thanks to a letter written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who visited Dickens in London in 1862, we also hear Dickens speaking privately in a way that he rarely did publicly, admitting that his villains were better reflections of himself than his more lovable and generous characters. We also answer the question: what do David Copperfield and Jane Eyre have in common?
From the introduction to her Selected Stories, Alice Munro (born in 1931, and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize) describes how, as a homemaker, she came to writing short stories very nearly by necessity. She also discusses how she set her first attempts at fiction in faraway, historical, or Brontë-inspired surroundings, and only later came to see the artistic potential of her own backyard, in the Lake Huron region of Canada.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
First Person: Voices from 1900-1914
An episode from 1/2/23: Tonight, I read a handful of voices from those living in Europe and the United States between 1900 and 1914. Rephrased only slightly, nearly all of their concerns (over technology, gender, nationalism, war, eugenics) feel like they could appear in the news or on the street today. Then and now, what is actually going on alongside all the dread? What can we learn from these voices that sound so much like our own, and what will people look back on 2023 learn for themselves?
Each of these quotations can be found in Philipp Blom’s wonderful book, The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com
The Great Myths #22: The Story of Ragnarok in the Norse Eddas
An episode from 12/23/22: How did the Viking Norse tell a story as important as Ragnarok (the end of the world) in poetry, and then in prose? What does prose require that poetry does not, and vice-versa, especially when the accounts we have are separated by centuries of historical change, and religious conversion?
In this third episode on Norse Mythology, I read the story of Ragnarok from the Prose Edda (dating to c. 1220), and then its corresponding section in the poem Voluspa (c. 1000) in the Poetic Edda. Each section is preceded by the story of the death of Odin's son, Balder, which in many ways precipitated Ragnarok. I also read from a later poem, Balder's Dreams (c. 1300).
The translation of the Poetic Edda (and Balder's Dreams) that I read from is by Andy Orchard, and the Prose Edda by Anthony Faulkes. The commentary I read from throughout the episode comes from the translation and commentary by Ursula Dronke.
The essential reference books on Norse myth that I will be using for this series are John Lindow’s Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals & Beliefs, Rudolf Simek’s Dictionary of Northern Mythology, and Andy Orchard’s Cassell Dictionary of Norse Myth & Legend.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
William Carlos Williams: 11 Essential Poems
An episode from 12/15/22: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems from the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). In the same generation as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Williams is perhaps best known for never becoming an expatriate, and instead living most of his life as a family doctor in Rutherford, New Jersey.
His poems can be found in The Collected Poems Volume I: 1909-1939, The Collected Poems Volume II: 1939-1962, and Paterson. The biographies I read from are Paul Mariani’s William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked, and the essay on Williams’ life at The Poetry Foundation.
The poems I read are:
- Pastoral (1917)
- Danse Russe (1917)
- Waiting (1921)
- The Great Figure (1921)
- The Red Wheelbarrow (1923)
- Flowers by the Sea (first version) (1931)
- War, the Destroyer! (1942)
- Approach to a City (1946)
- To a Dog Injured in the Street (1954)
- Deep Religious Faith (1954)
- from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower (1955)
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Van Gogh's Early Years
An episode from 12/7/22: Tonight, we enter into the early years of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), from his birth in the village of Zundert in the Netherlands, to his time in the Borinage mining region of Belgium. It was there, at the age of twenty-seven—and after years of personal and professional failures—that he hit bottom … and suddenly realized he was an artist.
In the first half of the episode, I read from Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s biography, Van Gogh: The Life. The second half is devoted to a handful of letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1879 and 1880, where he admits the humiliation of his failures, and then revels in his newfound passion for drawing and painting. The letters can be found online here.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Give Me Another Tarantula
An episode from 11/29/22: "Give Me a Tarantula" is shorthand for a scattering of thoughts on a handful of things that can't fill their own episode. The first Tarantula collection is here, but tonight I talk about:
- What happens when two comedians lose all their confidence when they meet in an elevator?
- What is the happiest story you can think of (hint: it almost always comes from childhood)?
- How lucky was Shakespeare to have been born just at the time when the translation of Latin literature became all the rage in England?
- What do Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the French photographer Eugene Atget have in common… and are you, dear listener out there, an autodidact?
- And are you someone like William H. Macy in the movie Magnolia, who has “a lot of love to give?” And are you like van Gogh, who knows he has a purpose, but can’t find it yet?
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Robert Lowell: 10 Essential Poems
An episode from 11/4/22: Tonight, I read ten essential poems from the American poet, Robert Lowell (1917-1977). Lowell was perhaps the last American poet we could possibly call “famous” during his lifetime. The combination of his early success and subsequent struggles with mental illness meant that the public witnessed all of it, from his slow break with formalism, his stint with “Confessional” poetry, and the wildly uneven nature of his huge output. Ten other people would come up ten other poems to include here. These are mine:
- Memories of West Street & Lepke (from Life Studies, 1959)
- The Public Garden (from For the Union Dead, 1964)
- For the Union Dead (from For the Union Dead, 1964)
- History (from History, 1973)
- Bobby Delano (from History, 1973)
- Anne Dick I. 1936 (from History, 1973)
- For Robert Kennedy 1925-68 (from History, 1973)
- Marriage? (Hospital II., part 4) (from The Dolphin, 1973)
- Dolphin (from The Dolphin, 1973)
- Epilogue (from Day by Day, 1977)
They can all be found in his Collected Poems. His letters are collected in The Letters of Robert Lowell, Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell, and The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle. It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember enjoying Paul Mariani’s Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
What Do Writers & Actors Have in Common?
An episode from 11/4/22: Tonight, I talk about creativity and wonder what actors and writers have in common. In the most general sense of finding solace in the anecdotes from the working lives of other creative people, I also mention the revelation that Inside the Actor's Studio was, for me, in my early twenties.
The springboard for much of what I say is Simon Callow’s article in the New York Review of Books, which itself is a review of Isaac Butler’s “history” of Method acting, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act.
Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.
Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
True Horror
An episode from 10/27/22: Tonight, I talk about our love horror and true crime, and ask: what makes a story truly frightening, instead of just entertaining? What kinds of movies or books, or ways of storytelling, take us beyond entertainment to true horror, to actual fear? For instance, how does the disturbing story of Ed Gein end up, filtered through convention and expectation, as “standard” (even if classic) movies like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs?
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Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.