Productivity on this Project has been lowered this week for what seems to be a good reason. I’ve been attending online some of the Tell It Slant Emily Dickinson Festival put on by the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst. My focus from their offerings? So far I’ve heard every session of their multi-day, 15-hour, reading … Continue reading The Emily Dickinson Tell It Slant Festival
Today’s piece for National Poetry Month is another Emily Dickinson: her gothic aubade “Ample make this Bed.” Word-music is subjective, but I find this one of the most poignant and lovely of her poems. As with many Dickinson poems the meaning tantalizes, at once clear on the surface and tangled beneath. The trope it’s using, … Continue reading Emily Dickinson’s “Ample make this Bed”
I shared with my wife, who has many concerns bearing down on her this summer, recent video clips of Freya, a celebrity lady walrus who’s lately been hanging out in Oslo Norway’s harbor. Freya is a young 1300-pound mermaid who spends around 20 hours a day sleeping while carelessly lounging on marina boats, sinking a … Continue reading From Cocoon forth a Butterfly – Emily Dickinson’s summer consideration
Since I’ve spent hours this week soaking up all the Emily Dickinson spirit I can absorb, it’s time to see if I can let some of that experience overflow here today. Maybe someday I’ll count which poets’ words I’ve used the most in the Parlando Project, but since this is an ongoing thing we’d only … Continue reading A sampling of some of the Emily Dickinson performances the Parlando Project has done over the years
Yesterday I said poetry isn’t just beauty and wonder. Well, sometimes it is. Like this recasting of an Emily Dickinson poem into outright 1960’s wonderment. I carried around a copy of the original text of “May-Flower” today for Poem in Your Pocket Day, but alas I wasn’t assertive about it. Should I have been? The … Continue reading See Emily (Dickinson) Play — I recast her poem “May-Flower” for National Poetry Month
I’ve just spent much of a day with Emily Dickinson. I’ll tell you it was enjoyable, not the least because there is a factor in many of her poems: they grow when you spend time with them. It started late last night. I noted that I had been looking at early examples of “jazz poetry,” … Continue reading Musicians Wrestle Everywhere — Emily Dickinson hears songs as they are created
Last episode here we had Jean Toomer’s poem of alienation from labor. In Toomer’s “Beehive” the poem’s voice is portrayed as just another drone bee, only able to fantasize of escaping work or receiving any benefit from it. Today’s piece is by Emily Dickinson, and while there can often be a touch of irony in … Continue reading I’m Sorry for the Dead Today
Today Emily Dickinson is going to show us how not to write a poem—and how to make it work anyway. This piece combines two different poems she wrote: “Forever—is composed of Nows” and “Crumbling is not an instant’s Act” in a way that I hope lets each poem reflect on each other. Both speak about … Continue reading Emily Dickinson: Forever and Crumbling
Here, as promised, is the start of a series of Halloween-themed posts. Today’s audio piece uses words from 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson, and as usual for her it’s titled using the poem’s first line: “The only Ghost I ever saw.” Dickinson is no stranger to the gothic, but she often approaches it playfully … Continue reading The only Ghost I ever saw
How has it been this far into National Poetry Month before featuring Emily Dickinson here? Well, no matter, time to get onto that today, as a number of our most popular pieces over the years have been related to Dickinson. Today’s piece is one of my personal favorites, our orchestral setting for her “We Grow … Continue reading We Grow Accustomed to the Dark for National Poetry Month
Frank Hudson 