Isn’t it odd how you know, and yet don’t know things, even in this world of instant communications and webs world-wide. Yesterday I started work on a new Parlando Project piece, and this morning I returned from a brisk ride to breakfast on a cool sunny April day to write about this piece whose words … Continue reading Tom Rapp has died
I’ve mentioned in passing that I was reading Genevieve Taggard’s 1930 The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson this spring. The busy schedule of this project, and life in general, slowed my reading-rate, but I thought I’d share a few brief thoughts about it after I finished it. Once I read about this book, I … Continue reading The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson by Genevieve Taggard
A single work of art can inspire and be reformed by others as it lives—or rather, if it lives, as there is no choice in the matter. No work of art once it has escaped its creator lives for one moment more except by this process. There’s a fair chance that someone coming upon this … Continue reading There Will Come Soft Rains
Here’s a poem by Sara Teasdale, an American poet of the first part of the 20th Century. I was actually planning to drop another piece using words by Teasdale today as part of my April National Poetry Month celebration, but I changed my plans and quickly worked up this one when I found out belatedly … Continue reading I Shall Not Care
Did you find yourself agreeing more with H.D. or William Carlos Williams in Thursday’s audio piece taken from Williams’ Kora in Hell? If I was to survey listeners, I’d be surprised if Williams wouldn’t win far more applause. Being that it’s his book, and he controls what H.D. presents before he responds, it wasn’t really … Continue reading More on that exchange published in the prologue to Kora in Hell
Now we’re nearing the topper-most of the top in our tip-top count-down of the most liked and listened to pieces this spring. Wait—did I just turn into a mid-20th century radio host? Out! Out! Commercial spirit! Timeless poetry knows no acne creams, Yardley scents, Thom McAn Beatle boots or white Levis. Well, maybe some of … Continue reading The Parlando Spring 2019 Top Ten Part 3
The ‘70s outburst of new bands that were called punk, then new wave, and finally indie can be traced to a beginning (or beginnings), and here’s what’s too-little recognized about that: it started with poets and writers. Some who know that punk didn’t start with Johnny Rotten, say that it all can be traced back … Continue reading The Story of Dave Moore and the LYL Band
Last month when I dropped Sara Teasdale’s “I Shall Not Care” hurriedly, I promised I’d return to Teasdale and say a bit more about her. I’m not sure where Teasdale is in “The Canon” of modern verse now, but back when I was in college, she was even more left-out than Edna St. Vincent Millay, … Continue reading Union Square
Our last episode featured words by Phillis Wheatley, whose story I first heard about in a graveyard. I was taking a walking tour in Boston, and there was a lot for the guide to talk about as we strolled through the Granary Burying Ground near one end of Boston Common, the cemetery where many of … Continue reading Potential Graveyard
I’m going to tell you a very sad and very wondrous story. A little over 250 years ago, when America was still a colony of England, a young girl about 7 years old was abducted in West Africa by men who took and sold human beings for profit. This enterprise then shipped her across the … Continue reading Hymn to Evening
