This Saturday is Shakespeare’s day: the day he died, and by counting roughly from his christening, the best estimate of his birthday — and so as I revisit the early years of the Parlando Project, it’s a good time to re-release my first performance of a work by Shakespeare. It’s one of his most famous … Continue reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 for National Poetry Month
Let’s pickup the countdown of the pieces that drew the most listens and likes over this past winter. Each bold-faced listing is a link to the original post on the piece in case you’d like to read what I wrote back then, and those original posts will also contain links to the full text of … Continue reading Winter ‘20-‘21 Parlando Project Top Ten, numbers 7-5
What with Longfellow last time and Shakespeare this time, I’m thinking I’ll return soon to some of the more surreal and avant garde 20th century authors whose work has entered the public domain. That would be the New Year’s thing to do — but then once one penetrates the archaic language of this old sonnet, … Continue reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97 “How like a Winter hath my absence been”
I’ve already talked here about doing translations from other languages into English and how it can be a strikingly intimate way to get next to another poet’s creative choices. Performance, or even attentive reading, can also bring on this effect. Let’s take Shakespeare as a mere lyricist today. Of course, he’s a big deal for … Continue reading Fear No More
Besides being National Poetry Month in America, April is also the birth month of William Shakespeare. The 23rd of April is sometimes celebrated as his birthday, though we don’t actually know that, only that his family baptized him and entered him into their church’s records on April 26th. The 23rd is also a handy date … Continue reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 152
When I select which texts to present here it’s most often an informal, beneath the consciousness, process. This week I thought I’d follow on from my last post and continue on the theme of a poet’s experience of age, but instead the events and times we live in overcame me. Earlier I was beginning to … Continue reading Song from Love’s Labour’s Lost
We’ve reached the top of our seasonal top 10 covering the pieces you most liked and listened to over the past three months, but before I reveal the top piece, let me cover one other area. I know from growth in the audience that some of you are new to the Parlando Project. Because of … Continue reading The most popular Parlando piece for Fall 2019 is…
Here’s one of the best-known of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which means it’s clearly one of “Poetry’s Greatest Hits.” Since I’m not a real scholar or expert in such things, let’s take a look at it as if it was another of our presentations of lesser-known poems by little-known poets. You may want to follow along with … Continue reading Sonnet 73 “Bare Ruined Choirs”
Today is the summer solstice, and what better way to celebrate than a song from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The song “Over Hill, Over Dale” comes early in the play, as the audience is introduced to the fairies’ world. I’d like to point out, the un-named fairy who sings it might be particularly relatable … Continue reading Over Hill, Over Dale (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Here’s a song about springtime and wonderous music. The author of the words is William Shakespeare, and it was written to be sung* as part of a play, an art that invites instant appreciation of itself simultaneously by a crowd and a group of people who present it. To merely read a play is like … Continue reading Orpheus with his lute made trees, or springtime ambiguous
Frank Hudson 