Autobiography & Poetry

An episode from 10/16/23: Tonight, I read my long poem about William Shakespeare, and offer a commentary along the way. It is being published simultaneously at Bryan Helton’s The Basilisk Tree, and once again I give Bryan my infinite thanks. This will be the third long poem of mine that he has published this year to coincide with an episode of Human Voices Wake Us – the other two are on Leonardo da Vinci and Pythagoras. Please take the time to check out the rest of The Basilisk Tree, or to even submit your own poetry. While introducing my Shakespeare poem, I mention that it was in part inspired by an episode I did here on the (real or fictional) love life of Walt Whitman. You can listen to that episode here. 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

Tonight, I'm thrilled to read a poem that I began working on three years ago on the life, teachings, and mysticism of the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras (c. 570- c.495 BCE). I am also thrilled that the poem is being simultaneously published at The Basilisk Tree. Many thanks to its editor, Bryan Helton, for coordinating all of this with me. For anyone who wants to look closer at the earliest Classical accounts of Pythagoras, his life, and his teachings, check out: The History of Greek Philosophy Volume 1: The Earlier Presocractics and the Pythagoreans, by W. K. C. Guthrie, and The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, ed. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. 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 3/19/23: Around the year 1509, Leonardo da Vinci began his great anatomical work, dissecting upwards of thirty human bodies and making drawings of what he saw. Tonight’s episode is a poem about that experience – all that was isolating, exhilarating, gruesome, beautiful. How did Leonardo go past art, and past science, in search of something stranger, human, divine? The poem is also being published simultaneously in the first issue of The Basilisk Tree. Many thanks to its editor, Bryan Helton (who is also a great poet himself), for taking the poem. Make sure to take a look at the other poems, and perhaps submit some of your own. 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 7/7/23: Tonight, I talk about writing my long poem, To the House of the Sun, published in 2015. The poem follows an Irish immigrant making his way through the American South, North and West, during the Civil War. The book is part travelogue, battle epic, and spiritual biography, and after describing how the book was written, I read one of my favorite sections from late in the poem, where the protagonist finds himself as a kind of shaman and religious figure, wandering the West. 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 9/12/21: Tonight, I gather together all of the poems I've recorded from my 2018 book of poems from prehistory, Bone Antler Stone. You can buy the book here, and read reviews and essays about the book here. The poems are: The Sun Sets into the Sea Poems from traveling through Orkney Pytheas in the Shetlands The Wanderer (Flight to Orkney) Walking Birsay to Swannay The Brough of Birsay (parts 1 & 2) Grain Earth House Bone Antler Stone (Orkney Museum) The Burn of Boardhouse & the Barony Mill Skara Brae The Wanderer II (Flight from Orkney) Poems of artefacts, burials, and sites: Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira Cauldron & Drink Song of the Smith Song to Stone Star Carr Newgrange 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 9/19/21: Are some topics not fit for poetry and art? Does the intentional crafting of atrocity and genocide into stanzas, scenes, rhymes, drama, or just DVD covers or posters, exploit and cheapen history? Or is this simply the way stories are told and passed down? Tonight, I talk about this in relation to two poems of mine about the Holocaust, "A Ploughed Field" and "Train." These poems were published earlier this year at Jewish Journal. 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 9/28/21: Tonight, I read a poem of mine called "Unfinished Michelangelo." The entire poem takes up Michelangelo's many unfinished works, but it begins, specifically, talking about his unfinished slave sculptures. You can read the poem here. I introduce the poem by mentioning how, very often poets and writers (and sculptors and painters) don't choose their subjects. Holding the two big Italian Renaissance artists in my mind, Michelangelo is far more interesting to me, as human being and an artist, than Leonardo da Vinci. But it's da Vinci's life, not Michelangelo's, that got a ten page poem out of me. I should mention here that this poem has a special meaning for me. After starting to write poetry again in 2013, for a long time I was set on writing poems in some form of my own making – whether in merely counting the syllables in each line, or in using my approximation of iambic pentameter. And I can still remember sitting on the porch one summer, trying to fit this poem about Michelangelo into any of those formal structures, but in the end, it became the first truly “free verse” poem I had written after my 2013 restart. Allowing the line “its maker showing our true form, unfinished and flowing and perpetually Protean” to go on for so long was quite a revelation. 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 10/22/20: Tonight, I read five poems from a (as yet unpublished) book, School of Night. Each circle around the strange feeling of being awake and alone at night, in an empty house or an apartment shared with family or friends, and the creativity and paranoia that can result. You can find links to more poems from the book here. 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 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 involved with violence and self-harm. I then read four poems about Columbine. The two books I mention in the introduction are Dave Cullen's ⁠Columbine⁠, and Sue Klebold's ⁠A Mother's Reckoning⁠. 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 5/3/23: Tonight’s episode is a response to those wonderful lines from William Carlos Williams: “It is ridiculous what airs we put on to seem profound, while our hearts gasp dying for want of love.” If these lines have the ring of truth, what aspects of our lives have we built up so meticulously, when all we really want is love? In my own life, I ask if perhaps poetry, writing—and even this podcast—fall into that category, and wonder if it’s all worth it.   The music used for the intro is Pink Floyd's "Is There Anybody Out There?" 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 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: What happens when two comedians lose all their confidence when they meet in an elevator? What is the happiest story you can think of (hint: it almost always comes from childhood)? How lucky was Shakespeare to have been born just at the time when the translation of Latin literature became all the rage in England? What do Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the French photographer Eugene Atget have in common… and are you, dear listener out there, an autodidact? And are you someone like William H. Macy in the movie Magnolia, who has “a lot of love to give?” And are you like van Gogh, who knows he has a purpose, but can’t find it yet? 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 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: What happens when two comedians lose all their confidence when they meet in an elevator? What is the happiest story you can think of (hint: it almost always comes from childhood)? How lucky was Shakespeare to have been born just at the time when the translation of Latin literature became all the rage in England? What do Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the French photographer Eugene Atget have in common… and are you, dear listener out there, an autodidact? And are you someone like William H. Macy in the movie Magnolia, who has “a lot of love to give?” And are you like van Gogh, who knows he has a purpose, but can’t find it yet? 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 10/11/22:  Tonight I talk about a dear friend from my youth, who made a great impact on my late teens and early twenties. Somehow he was the person who introduced me to Huston Smith’s World Religions, the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Francis Thompson, the novels of Hermann Hesse, and so much more. Far from a merely “intellectual” acquaintance, he was one of the first adults I knew who lived deeply with religion and poetry every day, and it meant a lot that he thought I could do the same. The music that begins the episode is Simon and Garfunkel’s “⁠Bookends Theme⁠.” 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 9/27/21: In what may be my favorite episode of this podcast, I talk about loneliness: is it really so bad, and is easy sociability really so much better? I also look at where my own experience of loneliness began, as a four year-old who suddenly found himself with hearing problems, and how it has led to my own adult love for interviews, anecdotes on nearly any subject, autobiographies, talk radio, or any experience of a human voice. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakus1@gmail.com. I assume that the small amount of work presented in each episode constitutes fair use. Publishers, authors, or other copyright holders who would prefer to not have their work presented here can also email me at humanvoiceswakus1@gmail.com, and I will remove the episode immediately. — 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 3/2/22: At a listener’s request, the first part of this episode is devoted to the earliest bookstores I remember, from childhood through adolescence. The Friday night in high school that I spent, buying a copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, remains an especially formative experience. The second part of this episode takes up the creation and immediate fame of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. The books I read from are Simon Schama's ⁠The Power of Art⁠ and John Richardson's ⁠Life of Picasso, Volume 4: The Minotaur Years⁠. 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 3/25/22: Why have I always assumed that lovers of poetry want to talk to other people about it? In the first part of this episode, I continue a discussion on Loneliness that began last year, and remind myself that there are a million ways to live with poetry and art. In the second part, I read from Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Shakespeare, where the Bard’s sonnets and love life are discussed. 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 2/21/22: Most people will tell you that jealousy is a destructive mindset to get lost in, but tonight I wonder under what circumstances it’s justified. Starting from a simple observation—that Joan Didion’s memoir about the death of her husband would have probably gone unpublished or unnoticed without her name on the cover—I ask how many stories we aren’t hearing and will never hear, because their authors aren’t famous already? You can also go back to the beginning of this podcast and listen to Jealousy Part 1. 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 4/14/21: Along the lines of a previous long episode, "Stubbornness," I wonder aloud about the jealousy that creative people feel towards each other (this includes my own), and I wonder where it comes from, and what use it 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 4/8/21: Only six months after starting Human Voices Wake Us, I came to record episode #100. While some housecleaning and rearranging now makes this episode #39, 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 podcast began, and how Ted Bundy and a Vice Presidential Debate solidified me in my ambition. I'm immensely grateful to everyone out there who is listening. 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 3/21/21: Tonight is a bit of an experiment in what might become a podcast diary/autobiography. I begin with a poem I wrote when I was 18, and use that as a jumping-off place to wonder where my stubbornness, confidence, and early thoughts on art and creativity came from. It may not work at all. 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 2/23/21: 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 earliest attempts at poetry. 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 10/23/20: Tonight, I read from Michael Ondaatje’s 1993 novel, The English Patient. The book beautifully captures the experiences of time and nostalgia, especially when they are connected with romantic love. I also talk about how certain books become reference points in our lives. 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