Continuing our National Poetry Month celebration, here’s another poet’s love poem, loved by other poets, William Butler Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.” If Millay’s “Rosemary” portrays a relationship turned cold, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” is more at the wooing stage. The speaker in Yeats poem begins by saying that … Continue reading Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” for National Poetry Month
I’ve got reasons for kicking off Black History Month a few days early: my February is going to be appointment-filled, something that’s likely to reduce new work for this project, and I want to participate in this observance of American history. Why was I so determined to do this? Well, note this project’s subtitle: “Where … Continue reading Sonny Rollins, The Bridge, 1959
I’m going to write here a bit, but if you’re in a hurry, I urge you to do two things. The first is to simply listen to today’s audio piece. I think that will reward you. You’ll find a way to play that near the bottom of this post along with my second suggestion. To … Continue reading Stones
I fear this is going to be one of those bad elegies, one where the writer goes on too much about themselves and not about the person who has died. I’ve already mentioned that I find myself unacceptable and self-absorbed when I talk about myself, and saying that again only digs the self-dug hole I’m … Continue reading Irish poets, we complete our Fall 2021 countdown, and Ethna McKiernan
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
The poet and writer Robert Bly was unavoidable here in Minnesota, and to some degree that may be true elsewhere. Today would be the day this week I would have to record something new, but I’m going to write this instead on the week of his death. I moved to Minnesota from New York in … Continue reading Last Thoughts on Robert Bly
In the past month I’ve presented poetry by Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, two of the most famous and best-loved American poets, and William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet — but I also like to go beyond Poetry’s Greatest Hits and hunt for overlooked writers to combine with our original music. That’s how I … Continue reading our Halloween Series starts with: The Good People
Readers often hear different poems when reading the same text. It’s unavoidable, even though it causes some authors to despair at how they are misread. So, it should be no surprise that it is possible in performance to recast poetry considerably without changing a word. Around 1902 Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote a poem … Continue reading The Folly of Being Comforted
Rabindranath Tagore is surely one of the most remarkable writers ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. If you’re a veteran of this project you might recall that a few years back when Bob Dylan won the same Nobel there were objections from poets and novelists that song-writing wasn’t literature, and that giving such … Continue reading Silent Steps
A longish one this time. I’ll try to make it worth your while. In the places I go it has been hard to escape Joni Mitchell and the 50-year anniversary of her breakthrough record album Blue this month. Mitchell is one of those artists like Emily Dickinson* or Thelonious Monk who people contemporaneously recognized as … Continue reading Recuerdo, or we celebrate Joni Mitchell’s Blue with some Edna St. Vincent Millay
Frank Hudson 