Visits to this blog tend to go down on weekends, on holidays, and in the summer — so, congratulations if you’re reading this, you’ve managed to beat the crowds! America is a young country, but after a bit of a slow start, we’ve been meeting our quota for poets, and by now the record shows … Continue reading An Independence Day Double-Header: I Hear America Singing and I, Too
A couple of posts back I suggested we do more than poetry prompts or poem a day writing challenges for National Poetry Month. Here’s a demonstration of an idea that’s half-way there. While still a poetry writing prompt, it also acknowledges the tradition we’re working in. Write a parody of a poem you like, you … Continue reading Stopping by a Woods with Bad Cellphone Service for National Poetry Month
Continuing on with lyric poetry, that short form of compressed immediacy, here’s a poem that seems to be better known in Britain that it is here: Frances Cornford’s “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train” first published in 1910. I think it illustrates one of the things about good lyric poetry of the Imagist* … Continue reading To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train
While continuing my observance of National Poetry Month, I must apologize for resorting to regular blogging form and writing about myself today. That sort of thing works for many, but I tend to run on a bit when I do it. It must take a long time to bore myself. Why, when, did I decide … Continue reading Meeting Music and Words, a personal history
Since I’ve spent hours this week soaking up all the Emily Dickinson spirit I can absorb, it’s time to see if I can let some of that experience overflow here today. Maybe someday I’ll count which poets’ words I’ve used the most in the Parlando Project, but since this is an ongoing thing we’d only … Continue reading A sampling of some of the Emily Dickinson performances the Parlando Project has done over the years
Even with its most popular and well-known poems, poetry works, works its impact, one reader, one listener, at a time. Doing this project leads me to read a lot of poems. I’ll go through whole collections, entire anthologies, looking for things that I suspect I can create music for. That sense, “This could work with … Continue reading Her Lips are Copper Wire for National Poetry Month
I’m usually not very articulate about my own work, and part of the benefit of this Project’s aim to largely present other people’s poetry is that I can better express my experiences with others’ work than my own. This may be why I am envious of those who can speak effectively about their own art. … Continue reading Sonnet Suggested by Willy Vlautin
Given the everything I’d rate between losses, troubles, and mere distractions I’ve gone through since late last autumn, I’m not in a mood this week to do the traditional Parlando Top Ten list for the past season. These are the same issues in repertory that have reduced the number of new pieces I was able … Continue reading Winter 2020-21 Parlando Top Ten (abbreviated edition)
Last time we made some fun of Shakespeare’s honest love poem, his Sonnet 130, “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun.” Well today, let’s give it it’s due. The fun was that if was a poem meant to attract or hold a lover, it’s, well, not complementary—but there’s no evidence internal to the poem … Continue reading My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun
Continuing on from my post late last night, and the feelings of insufficiency we as artists may feel in the face of horrible things: cruelty, injustice, the taking of lives, the crippling of souls. As one of America’s sublimated poets put it, I think it all together fitting and proper that when we do this, … Continue reading from “John Coltrane Live at Birdland”
Frank Hudson 