Within the limited time I can find for it, I’ve been informally surveying what others online are doing for National Poetry Month. I’ll make one casual observation, unbacked by rigor or focused study: a great deal I’ve seen this April is aimed solely at the supply side for poetry. I’ve got nothing against urging more … Continue reading Letters to Dead Imagists and A Pact for National Poetry Month
Though an often-puzzling poem, Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is tightly written. I’m not talking about some raw stat like its number of lines, but that the language itself works in its sentences and small phrases directly and without much waste. That’s not a Modernist-only tactic, but early Modernism did make it a goal. And a … Continue reading On the Troop Ship to Gallipoli for National Poetry Month
What if you were to find out that a famous, much-loved poem was not a singleton, but that it was instead part of a pair? “The River Merchant’s Wife, A Letter” is perhaps the most famous Chinese poem in English, and it’s been widely anthologized since Ezra Pound published it in his 1915 collection of … Continue reading The River Merchant’s Wife, Another Letter
It’s National Poetry Month, and we’re celebrating here by re-releasing some of my favorite pieces from early in this project’s six-year history. Today’s poem’s poet is American Robert Frost speaking about spring, spring winds, and the poets’ transcendental task of continuing and shaping nature. I’ve often reminded readers here that I didn’t care for Robert … Continue reading The Aim Was Song for National Poetry Month
Ever wanted to visit an old school flame? Maybe not even for romance, just to catch up on what they’re doing, or to let them know what you’ve been up to? Well, in 1911 24-year-old Hilda Doolittle visited London to meet up with Ezra Pound who she knew from the University of Pennsylvania. Pound was … Continue reading H. D.’s “The Pool” for National Poetry Month
While looking for material to combine with music and perform for the Project this week I came upon a specific but little-known connection between two great early 20th century poets. I’ll go into the details of that in a bit, but before I write about that, let me set the scene by mentioning something about … Continue reading Love and a Question
Celebrating Kurt Vonnegut during this week that will mark the 99th anniversary of his birth allows two things to cross and connect, for he was born in 1922 on what would have been called Armistice Day then and will be called Veteran’s Day tomorrow in the US. Two decades later as a 20-year-old, he enlisted … Continue reading The Great Machine (I Saw a Huge Steamroller)
One unusual thing I did this spring to celebrate National Poetry Month was to re-release 31 pieces from the early years of this project. This was a way, despite reduced time and opportunities to create new pieces, to still celebrate and demonstrate the various poems and music combinations of the Parlando Project. That April batch … Continue reading The most popular Parlando Project piece for spring 2022
Just suppose that back in the 1920s someone wanted to record a Blues song based on Emily Dickinson’s “A Soul selects her own Society,” and so they waxed a 78 rpm platter at Paramount records “New York Recording Laboratories,” located back then in, well, Wisconsin.* If they did, it might sound a little like this. … Continue reading Soul Selector Blues for National Poetry Month
Let me briefly slip, Wordsworth-like, into reverie, and note that “Oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood…” I turn to the vast daffodilian array of scanned material available from a brief Internet search. I’d been thinking about Irish poets after reading this exchange between poets Ann Grá and Sean … Continue reading Yeats’ Coat
Frank Hudson 