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…
Tag: History
First Person: Funeral Home Director & Telemarketer
An episode from 3/8/2022: Here are two readings from Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. I have particular affection for the second one, since I spent some time as a telemarketer back in the summer and fall of 2004. Gig is a really great book of its kind, a good follow up to Studs Terkel’s Working….
Loneliness
An episode from 9/27/21: In what may be my favorite episode, 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. For the next eight years…
William Wordsworth: The Immortality Ode & Three other Poems
An episode from 11/4/2021: A reading of four poems by William Wordsworth: I read these here tonight to celebrate the release of a Selected Poems of William Wordsworth that I put together, and was just published. Other small books of poems (Whitman, Tennyson, and Frost) in the same series can be found here. If you’d…
Emily Dickinson
Tonight I read from and comment on Brenda Wineapple’s wonderful book, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. If listeners can recommend other books about Dickinson they have enjoyed, email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
Cecil Day Lewis: “My Mother’s Sister” (podcast)
You can support this podcast here, or by buying any of my books. Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other Readings of Poetry:
First Person: Funeral Home Director & Telemarketer (podcast)
You can help support this podcast here, or by buying any of my books. Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other First Person & History episodes:
Stubbornness (podcast)
You can help support this podcast here, or by buying any of my books. Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Listen to other autobiographical podcast episodes Listen to Aaron Berkowitz, editor of the Jewish Literary Journal, interview me about my poem, “Mr. Cassian’s Good Friend, Albert Einstein,” and…
Images: Edward Hopper
I had heard of Edward Hopper before, but it wasn’t until a summer or two after high school, when I was working the overnight shift at a gas station, that I was hooked. I saw his painting “Gas” and was shown how even my lonely hours at BP could become the subject of art. He…
Images: Gustave Courbet
Take a look through some of the best paintings of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Is the general claim true, that in his landscapes, portraits and self-portraits, that what we call modern art, began here? Click on each image to enlarge, or watch the video below.