Van Gogh’s Early Years (from the archive)

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 … and suddenly realized he was an artist.

In the first half of the episode, I read from Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s biography, ⁠Van Gogh: The Life⁠. The second half is devoted to a handful of letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1879 and 1880, where he admits the humiliation of his failures, and then revels in his newfound passion for drawing and painting. The letters can be ⁠found online here⁠.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.

Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

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#215: 8 Favorite Poems from "Time and the River" – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 2/2/2026: For the next few episodes I’ll be reading poems from my book Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, which comes out on February 23. As the title says, it begins with the Columbine high school shooting in 1999 and travels back to the invention of fire almost two million years ago. Along the way, there’s creativity from prehistoric Europe to Edward Hopper, religion from Israelite prophets to pagan Europe, and glimpses into Egyptian tombs, Iron Age burials, and cold war spies. The poems I read tonight are:Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”Dylan Klebold’s Crushfrom “Shakespeare”Trajan’s BridgeCauldron and DrinkSong to the SmithEzekielMerlinThe best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

Van Gogh’s Early Years (from the archive)