Today’s report on the most listened to and liked pieces featured here over the past quarter will show three experiences of the mystery of winter. So, let’s return to our countdown: 4 Twilight Fallen White and Cold by Joseph Campbell. I seem to have become something of a promotor of this little-known in the United … Continue reading Winter ‘20-‘21 Parlando Project Top Ten, numbers 4-2
Here’s a piece celebrating our Spring springing forward that’s also appropriate for America’s celebration of Irish heritage on St. Patrick’s Day. It consists of three short poems by the Irish poet Joseph Campbell.* I put them together as I think they somehow increase their individual power presented that way. I call the combination “Sail-Moon-Sheep.” Campbell … Continue reading Sail-Moon-Sheep
Returning now to the poets presented in Alain Locke’s 1925 The New Negro anthology, we’ve come to the poet I most associate with the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes. Though he was born in the Midwest and traveled some, Hughes actually lived for much of his life in New York City, unlike some others associated with … Continue reading Langston Hughes’ Dream Variation
Once more let us look at winter-come darkness and see what we see there, this time through Gerard Manley Hopkins and one of his “Terrible Sonnets.” The name “Terrible Sonnets” is not a review, though I’ll confess that on first hearing of them, that between Hopkins oh-so-British sounding triple name with an extra schoolboy snicker … Continue reading I wake and feel the fell of dark
What do we see, what do we learn, what possibly do we gain here in the upper parts of the northern hemisphere from so much nighttime at the beginning of a cold and snowy winter? Some might say we learn endurance, a sense of obligation besides the dark and ice to carry on. Or a … Continue reading Twilight Fallen White and Cold
When I started this project a few years ago I didn’t realize that I’d have to largely work with poetry which is in the public domain. This can still disappoint me, but there’s been a welcome side-effect. This limitation caused me to look deeply into the first couple decades of the 20th century for texts … Continue reading Night, and I Traveling
