Anthologies of Poetry

An episode from 10/30/23: Tonight, I read a handful of poems about autumn: Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), from “The Burning of the Leaves” Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), “The leaves are falling; so am I” Louise Glück (1943-2023), “All Hallows” John Keats (1795-1821), from “To Autumn” W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), “The Wild Swans at Coole” Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), from “For a Wine Festival” and from “The Tributary Seasons” Frances Cornford (1886-1960), “All Souls” Edward Thomas (1878-1917), “Digging” Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), “A Sheep Fair” 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, and ⁠Bone Antler Stone⁠. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to ⁠humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com⁠. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 9/15/23: 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 here: 3 Poems from my long work-in-progress, The Great Year: “The Autumn Village,” “I was in Iceland centuries ago, ” “Smith Looks Up the Long Road” Two readings from Shakespeare: “Of comfort no man speak” (Richard II, act II scene 2), “All the world’s a stage” (As You Like It, act II scene 7) 3 Poems on Work: Philip Levine (1928-2015): “Among Children,” Elma Mitchell (1919-2000), “Thoughts After Ruskin," Mary Robinson (1758-1800), “A London Summer Morning” Favorites from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets Three Poets & Mythology: Eavan Boland (1944-2020), “The Making of an Irish Goddess," Michael Longley (b. 1939) “The Butchers," Robert Pinsky (b. 1940), “The Figured Wheel” Blake & His Animals: Three passages from William Blake (1757-1827): one from Visions of the Daughters of Albion and the last two from Milton. I hope that plucking these three passages from his longer work can suggest how varied—not just how prophetic and opaque, but simply beautiful—so much of his poetry can be. 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 3/12/23: Tonight, I return to new episodes with a handful of poems about the spring. As I mention, living as I do in a city usually inundated with snow, it has been bizarre to have not shoveled the driveway even once. And since the next few weeks of episodes are already planned out, it seemed appropriate to get to spring early, since the earth is doing that already. The poems are: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), “There is another sky” e. e. cummings (1894-1962), “O sweet spontaneous” Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), “This Fevers Me” Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), from “Toward an Organic Philosophy” Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), from “The Tributary Seasons” Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), “Spring” (“To what purpose, April, do you return again?” Abbie Huston Evans (1881-1983), “The Old Yellow Shop” Elinor Wylie (1885-1928), from “Wild Peaches” Henry King (1592-1669), “A Contemplation upon Flowers” William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Act 3 of King Lear Ted Hughes (1930-1998), “Four March Watercolours” 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 1/26/23: Tonight I read a handful of poems on the theme of How to live, what to do? How to get by in the world as a devotee of culture, solitude, ritual, beauty, tradition and individuality? There is of course no one answer, and anyway, poetry should stay as far away from direct “advice,” or proscription of any kind. Still, when I sit back and think about the kind of poems that help me through the day – and the months, and the years – these are some of them: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), How to Live What to Do Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), Tillamook Journal Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), Things That Matter Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), #2 from Lightenings Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), Joy Louise Glück (1943-), Summer Night W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), A Prayer on Going into My House Emily Brontë (1818-1848), “Often rebuked, yet always back returning” Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Man 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 1/18/23: Tonight I ask the question: what is love, and what is love poetry? Are poems about family and friendship love poems, just as much as those about romantic feeling, and longing, and heartbreak? And even more: what is romantic love? What, for instance, did T. S. Eliot mean when he said, “Love is most nearly itself/When here and now cease to matter,” or when Emily Dickinson wrote of “Wild nights”? The poems I read are: Ted Hughes (1930-1998), Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), Bouquet of Belle Scavoir Katherine, Lady Dyer (c.1585-1654), Epitaph on Sir William Dyer Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861), #43& #44in Sonnets from the Portuguese Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), #7from In Memoriam Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Dover Beach Ruth Pitter (1897-1992), But for Lust Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001), One Flesh Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), #3 in Clearances Louise Glück (1943-), Brown Circle Eavan Boland (1944-2020), The Necessity for Irony Walt Whitman (1819-1892), To a Stranger Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Wild Nights 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 3/29/22: Another two-part episode. The first is a reading of five poems, and my favorites from this batch are Robert Lowell’s “Bobby Delano,” an unforgettable poem about adolescence, and Anne Finch’s “A Nocturnal Reverie,” whose blank verse meditation looks ahead to Wordsworth like few other poems. John Clare’s “An Invite to Eternity,” Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s “A Summer Evening’s Meditation,” and Edmund Spenser’s famous Garden of Adonis, from The Faerie Queene, round out the rest. In the second part (starting at about 42:00), I read from Eudora Welty’s ⁠One Writer’s Beginnings⁠, and Helen Keller’s ⁠The Story of My Life⁠. Both, in their own way, are about each writer’s earliest discovery of words. 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 2/4/22: Here are five more poems going back to 1600 or so. Louise Bogan realizes mysticism isn’t it, anymore than hedonism; Elizabeth Barret Browning continues to “to shoot/My soul's full meaning into future years”; William Blake is his visionary self; and Anne Bradstreet and Henry Vaughan, both born in the early seventeenth century, sound positively modern, writing a poem about gazing at one’s own book, or a poem about the tree that the book once was: Louise Bogan (1897-1970), “The Alchemist”⁠ ⁠Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Sonnets from the Portuguese #41 (“I thank all who have loved me in their hearts”)⁠ William Blake (1757-1827), from Milton ⁠(“I come in self-annihilation”)⁠, from Jerusalem(⁠“Trembling I sit day and night”⁠) Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), “The Author to Her Book” ⁠Henry Vaughan, (1621-1695) “The Book” Don’t forget to join Human Voices Wake Us on Patreon, or sign up for our newsletter here. 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, and Bone Antler Stone. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 2/4/22: Here are five more poems going back to 1600 or so. Eavan Boland talks parenting and childhood; Wordsworth calls on Milton, and Milton retells our oldest story; Gerard Manley Hopkins writes out of a solitude few ever listened to, in his own life; and Philip Sidney reminds us why our own lives are worthy of poetry. Eavan Boland, “The Making of An Irish Goddess”⁠ ⁠Gerard Manley Hopkins, “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection”⁠ ⁠William Wordsworth, “London, 1802”⁠ ⁠John Milton, ending to Paradise Lost⁠ ⁠Philip Sidney, “Loving in truth” 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, and ⁠Bone Antler Stone⁠. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to ⁠humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com⁠. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 1/18/22: Our anthology series presents a handful of poems from the past five centuries. How much or how little has our language changed since Roy Fisher remembered the London Blitz, Coleridge drew the greatest lesson he ever did from nature, and Emily Brontë experienced a haunting evening? A reading of five poems: The Entertainment of War, by Roy Fisher (1930-2017) Danse Russe, by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) “The night is darkening round me,” by Emily Brontë (1818-1848) Work Without Hope, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Ode on Solitude, by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) 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, and ⁠Bone Antler Stone⁠. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to ⁠humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com⁠. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

What can we say when we're told that poetry no longer matters, especially when it's another poet who says it? The first eleven minutes of this episode are my best defense for what poetry is and can be, while the rest offers and handful of poems which suggest that poetry is as powerful as it ever was. My answer at least would be: live with and become enthralled with the poetry that has lasted the longest, and celebrate those contemporary poems that have the same spirit. The rest is not our business. The poems are: “Affinity,” by R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) #1142, by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Sonnet #27, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) from The Aeneid, Book 6, by Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC) (translated by Allen Mandelbaum) 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, and ⁠Bone Antler Stone⁠. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to ⁠humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com⁠. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 12/25/21: Tonight, we hear five poems from four centuries: Amy Lowell on unrequited love, Thomas Hardy bringing in the twentieth century, William Cower's winter evening, John Donne trying to defuse the power of death, and Christopher Marlowe trying to get the attention of that shepherdess: ⁠“New Heavens for Old,”⁠ by Amy Lowell (1874-1925) ⁠“The Darkling Thrush,”⁠ by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)⁠ “The Winter Evening,”⁠ by William Cowper (1731-1800)⁠ “Death be not proud,”⁠ by John Donne (1572-1631)⁠ “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,”⁠ by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 12/25/21: Tonight, we hear five poems from four centuries: Amy Lowell on unrequited love, Thomas Hardy bringing in the twentieth century, William Cower's winter evening, John Donne trying to defuse the power of death, and Christopher Marlowe trying to get the attention of that shepherdess: ⁠“New Heavens for Old,”⁠ by Amy Lowell (1874-1925) ⁠“The Darkling Thrush,”⁠ by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)⁠ “The Winter Evening,”⁠ by William Cowper (1731-1800)⁠ “Death be not proud,”⁠ by John Donne (1572-1631)⁠ “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,”⁠ by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support

An episode from 12/18/21: Tonight, I read five poems going back four hundred years. Edgar Lee Masters channels the unsung poet and victim of horrendous violence, Tennyson takes a crack at Odysseus, Mary Robinson describes the morning, Henry Wotton gets religious, and Walter Raleigh wonders aloud about truth and lies. As a bonus, I read a poem of mine about Raleigh as well, "The Historian." “Minerva Jones,” by Edgar Lee Masters (from his Spoonriver Anthology) “Ulysses,” by Alfred Tennyson “A London Summer Morning,” by Mary Robinson “A Hymn to My God in a Night of my Late Sickness,” by Henry Wotton “The Lie,” by Walter Raleigh 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, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support