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
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
It’s been sometime since I’ve posted here. Having fewer blocks of uninterrupted time to compose and record the audio pieces for this Project, I’ve spent time instead with that proudly designed to be a time-waster Twitter in the past week or so. Twitter* has its own news stories this week — but that’s not my … Continue reading The Absent Poetry of World War II
It’s Easter and time to close my short Edward Thomas series for National Poetry Month with a short elegy written by a poet both less and more known than Thomas in the United States. But before I get to that, let me fill in a few spaces in the Edward Thomas story. I ran into … Continue reading Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.) for National Poetry Month
Sometime before The Police made it an album title, this project’s alternate voice and keyboard player Dave Moore took to using the term synchronicity to explain some things that going forward cause significant effects where there was no pre-existing reason or even connection. Maybe me seeing Dave read a poem in a church while we … Continue reading Synchronicity: Spring 2022 Parlando Top Ten numbers 4-2
World War I entered the worlds of both of our last two poems, and that war’s poetry was one theme we visited over the early years of this Project that coincided with the centennial of that conflict. The interaction between that war and the arts was complex, but here’s a simple question: did WWI cause … Continue reading The Death of Guillaume Apollinaire for National Poetry Month
We continue today our National Poetry Month series where we re-release some of our favorite performances from the early days of this Project in the hopes that more ears will be able to hear them. Today’s piece steps forward a couple of years from yesterday’s, where in “Adlestrop” British poet Edward Thomas had written with … Continue reading Gone, Gone Again for National Poetry Month
Today we’re going to commemorate something we did to celebrate National Poetry Month during the earlier years of this Project. In a series of posts and performances each April over five years we serially presented the entire “The Waste Land” here. Eliot’s Modernist masterpiece famously begins “April is the cruelest month…” — a line that … Continue reading “Sweet Thames” from Eliot’s “The Waste Land” 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
Here’s another piece from the early days of the Parlando Project that we’re re-releasing for this year’s National Poetry Month. This is the place where I’d often encourage you to listen to the musical performance made from this poem, but I also could see why you might want to skip it and wait for tomorrow’s. … Continue reading Zeppelins for National Poetry Month
Frank Hudson 