I risked taking the charm and playfulness out of Emily Dickinson’s ghost poem last time by trying to puzzle out exactly what she saw. I won’t risk that today. This next poem in our Halloween series was written by a poet, Sara Teasdale, who wrote some complex adult love poems — but with this one … Continue reading Dusk in Autumn
Yesterday was some kind of day to celebrate Wales, and I asked the teenager in the house what they did to celebrate since they have an interest in languages and had recently been studying Welsh language online. “You mean for St. David’s Day?” They replied. I was surprised they knew — but then they’re often … Continue reading Winter Stars
Each quarter I like to look at the pieces here that have received the most listens and likes. It’s time to look back at this year’s spring, and so I’ll be doing that this week. However, I once more need to report that it’s become increasingly hard for me to desire to create new pieces … Continue reading Spring 2020 Parlando Top Ten, numbers 10-8
I don’t plan ahead with this project much, which has it’s benefits and costs. Often one piece sort of kicks off the idea for the next one and so on. That was the case with doing my roll up of last year’s section of “The Waste Land” for National Poetry Month, and then following it … Continue reading I Have Loved Hours at Sea
It’s easy to figure T. S. Eliot as an English poet—after all, while his “Waste Land” spans history and cultures, its landscape is distinctly English and European—but he grew up in St. Louis Missouri, a middle-of-America river town. I promised you a different poem by a St. Louis poet last time, and so now we … Continue reading Teasdale’s Morning
The cosmos says we need to get a leap year, and extra day, and yet we put it in February. It was a dozen degrees Fahrenheit this morning, and my bike ride back from breakfast was into an insistent north wind that explains to me that we’re in Minnesota and we’ll probably have a snowstorm … Continue reading February Twilight
Long time readers here will know that one of this Project’s ideas is “Other People’s Stories.” I’ve chosen to make that one of its principles for a couple of reasons. First, the Internet is full of folks telling their own stories, and this is fine (after all, to me those would all be “Other People’s … Continue reading Ethna’s Dream
I’ll promise you a love song at the end of this, but let’s look briefly at some other stuff that surrounds that song. As I look in the Langston Hughes poetry collection I’m featuring this Black History Month for a Valentine’s Day piece, there is less to pick from than one might imagine. Even though … Continue reading Song to the Dark Virgin
Sara Teasdale wrote some of the saddest love poems I’ve ever read. Less-well remembered than she should be, for a time about 100 years ago Teasdale was the most popular and esteemed love poet in America. In 1918 she won the Pulitzer prize for a new collection of her poetry, labeled right there on the … Continue reading Sara Teasdale’s I Am Not Yours or the Love Song of Ernst Filsinger
Today’s words are from a poet who’s been forgotten, but this one poem seems to have outlived all her other work largely because it’s a fine short ghost poem with a definite shiver from an ambiguous ending. The poem was called “All Souls’ Night, 1917,” and it was first published in 1920 in the author … Continue reading All Souls’ Night
Frank Hudson 