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From the Archives:

  • Poetry Friday: The Great Year, Shakespeare, Eliot, Blake, Poems on Work & Poems on Mythology (new episode)

    Poetry Friday: The Great Year, Shakespeare, Eliot, Blake, Poems on Work & Poems on Mythology (new episode)

    Earlier this year, I thought it was possible to supplement this podcast with one weekly (and shorter) additional reading ⁠over at Substack⁠; for many reasons, that ambition proved impossible to maintain. Since an illness has kept me from recording a new episode this week, I thought it worthwhile collecting those six weeks of shorter readings……

  • Caravaggio’s Severed Heads / Herodotus Among the Scythians / Ian McKellen on Macbeth (new episode)

    Caravaggio’s Severed Heads / Herodotus Among the Scythians / Ian McKellen on Macbeth (new episode)

    In the first part of tonight’s episode, I read from ⁠Peter Robb’s M⁠, a biography of the painter ⁠Caravaggio⁠ (1571-1610). Through a discussion of two of his paintings which depict decapitation, we can understand how, in Caravaggio’s early career, he was able to paint directly from life; but when he went on the run to……

  • The Great Myths #22: The Story of Ragnarok in the Norse Eddas

    The Great Myths #22: The Story of Ragnarok in the Norse Eddas

    An episode from 12/23/22: How did the Viking Norse tell a story as important as Ragnarok (the end of the world) in poetry, and then in prose? What does prose require that poetry does not, and vice-versa, especially when the accounts we have are separated by centuries of historical change, and religious conversion?  In this……

  • Walt Whitman in 1849

    Walt Whitman in 1849

    An episode from 3/23/21: This is the fourth in a series of readings from biographies of Walt Whitman. Tonight, I continue with ⁠⁠Paul Zweig’s Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet⁠⁠, which focuses on the years preceding the 1855 publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Here, Zweig talks about Whitman in the……

  • Raising a Musical Prodigy / God’s Response to Job (new episode)

    Raising a Musical Prodigy / God’s Response to Job (new episode)

    In the first part of tonight’s episode, I read from Andrew Solomon’s ⁠Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, & the Search for Identity⁠, where Solomon talks about musical prodigies and the difficulties they face as children and adults. In the second part, I read one of the most powerful pieces of poetry to come out……

  • William Carlos Williams: 11 Essential Poems

    William Carlos Williams: 11 Essential Poems

    An episode from 12/15/22: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems from the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). In the same generation as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Williams is perhaps best known for never becoming an expatriate, and instead living most of his life as a family doctor in Rutherford, New Jersey. His……

  • So Long, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

    So Long, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

    An episode from 2/23/21: Tonight, I read a few poems from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s ⁠A Coney Island of the Mind⁠. He died yesterday at the age of 101, and ⁠you can read his obituary here⁠. A friend introduced me to Ferlinghetti’s book in high school, and I’ve always associated him with my earliest reading, and my……

  • Van Gogh’s Early Years

    Van Gogh’s Early Years

    An episode from 12/7/22: Tonight, we enter into the early years of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), from his birth in the village of Zundert in the Netherlands, to his time in the Borinage mining region of Belgium. It was there, at the age of twenty-seven—and after years of personal and professional failures—that he hit bottom……

  • Give Me Another Tarantula

    Give Me Another Tarantula

    An episode from 11/29/22: “Give Me a Tarantula” is shorthand for a scattering of thoughts on a handful of things that can’t fill their own episode. ⁠The first Tarantula collection is here⁠, but tonight I talk about: Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and……

  • Seamus Heaney: 10 Essential Poems (new episode)

    Seamus Heaney: 10 Essential Poems (new episode)

    Tonight, I read ten essential poems from one of the great and most public poets of the last seventy years, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). It isn’t hard to come by details of Heaney’s life, but ⁠Stepping Stones⁠ (where Heaney is interviewed at length in what amounts to an autobiography), is a good place to start. His……

  • Whitman & Sex

    Whitman & Sex

    An episode from 3/17/21: This is the third in a series of readings from biographies of Walt Whitman. Tonight, I continue with ⁠Paul Zweig’s Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet⁠, which focuses on the years preceding the publication of Leaves of Grass. Here, Zweig talks about the questions surrounding Whitman’s sexuality, and the apparent……

  • Advice from Leonardo da Vinci, Conrad Aiken, & Others

    Advice from Leonardo da Vinci, Conrad Aiken, & Others

    An episode from 4/17/21: These “Advice” episodes (originally called The Poet Speaks) will each feature a small collection of quotations on creativity from various artists, poets, and writers.  Tonight, the main quotations come from Serge Bramly’s ⁠Leonardo: The Artist & the Man⁠, where he writes that da Vinci “was always less concerned with the finishing……

  • Walt Whitman’s Long Foreground

    Walt Whitman’s Long Foreground

    An episode from 3/4/21: This is the first in a series of readings from biographies of Walt Whitman. Tonight, I start with ⁠Paul Zweig’s Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet⁠, which focuses on the years preceding the publication of Leaves of Grass. Here, Zweig talks about Whitman’s earliest years in Long Island, Brooklyn, and……

  • Seamus Heaney: 3 Poems from “Death of a Naturalist,” & Interviews with Heaney

    Seamus Heaney: 3 Poems from “Death of a Naturalist,” & Interviews with Heaney

    An episode from 5/16/21: Tonight, I read three poems from one of the great literary debuts of the twentieth century, Seamus Heaney’s ⁠Death of a Naturalist⁠ (1966). Following the poems is a reading from interviews Heaney gave on the writing of Death of a Naturalist, taken from Dennis O’Driscoll’s ⁠⁠Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney⁠⁠….…

  • Psalm 23 / Mary, Queen of Scots is Executed / 3 Poems by Mary Oliver (new episode)

    Psalm 23 / Mary, Queen of Scots is Executed / 3 Poems by Mary Oliver (new episode)

    What makes a story or prayer or poem last? What circumstances can lead one monarch to order the execution of another? And why, over the past twenty years, was Mary Oliver the best-selling poet in America? Tonight’s episode is another three-parter: Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also……

  • Episode #100: A Belated Manifesto

    Episode #100: A Belated Manifesto

    An episode from 4/8/21: Only six months after starting Human Voices Wake Us, I came to record episode #100. While some housecleaning and rearranging no longer makes this episode #100, and while you can still hear me getting used the format and using my voice, it’s still fun to hear the story of how this……

  • Walt Whitman: The Books He Loved & the Scraps He Saved

    Walt Whitman: The Books He Loved & the Scraps He Saved

    An episode from 4/1/21`: This is the sixth in a series of readings from biographies of Walt Whitman. Tonight, I continue with ⁠Paul Zweig’s Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet⁠, which focuses on the years preceding the publication of Leaves of Grass. Here, Zweig talks about the books Whitman learned from the most, even……

  • Four Columbine Poems

    Four Columbine Poems

    An episode from 4/19/21: While I was already out of high school for two years when Columbine happened on April 20, 1999, it still feels bound up with everything I went through from 1993-1997. I spend the first part of this episode talking about high school, and how much my writing from this time is……

  • The Great Myths #9: The Many Metamorphoses of the Pig Keepers (Celtic)

    The Great Myths #9: The Many Metamorphoses of the Pig Keepers (Celtic)

    An episode from 4/5/21: In this second episode on ⁠⁠Celtic mythology⁠, I read the story “The Quarrel of the Two Pig-keepers and how the Bulls were Begotten.” One of the great joys of Celtic myth are stories of relay-race metamorphoses, where two humans chase each other while changing into many different animal forms. The story……

  • Shakespeare’s Library / Ancient Egypt’s Temple Libraries / Seamus Heaney Goes to School (new episode)

    Shakespeare’s Library / Ancient Egypt’s Temple Libraries / Seamus Heaney Goes to School (new episode)

    Tonight, we look into libraries and learning: Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us ⁠on Substack⁠, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: ⁠Notes from the Grid⁠,⁠To the House of the Sun⁠, ⁠The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old⁠,……