An episode from 12/5/21: Tonight, I read from chapter six of Peter Ackroyd’s history of early seventeenth-century England, ⁠Civil War (or Rebellion⁠, as the book has been retitled in its America). As usual, few writers are as ablet as Ackroyd to bring the past to life, and he uses two texts to paint a brief picture of London at the time: Thomas Dekker’s ⁠The Seven Deadly Sins of London⁠ (1607), and Ben Jonson’s play ⁠Bartholomew Fair⁠ (1614).

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 [email protected].

A reading of six poems from Ted Hughes's 1967 book, Wodwo, and one uncollected poem from the same time period. They can be found in his Collected Poems. 

Wodwo (1967)

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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 [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.

A repeat of a collection of episodes from last year, of five poems by the Irish poet, Eavan Boland. All of them can be found in her New Collected Poems (https://www.amazon.com/New-Collected-Poems-Eavan-Boland/dp/0393337308/)

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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 [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.

Long a mainstay on my blog, this is the first time I've recorded my usual Black Friday message, on what our relationship to work, consumerism, culture, technology, and so much else is doing to us now... and what it has seemingly always meant to the majority of human populations.

For those interested in the other episode mentioned here, called Working, you can listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/working/id1535050082?i=1000538208562 (in the end, it seemed too long to add onto the end of this episode).

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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 [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.

A repeat of an episode from 11/21/20, a reading of my poem about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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 [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.

An episode from 11/19/21, where I read about two disasters separated by nearly two thousand years: the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in the year 79, and the earthquake that destroyed so much of San Francisco in 1906. My sources are a letter from Pliny the younger (⁠read it here⁠), where he describes Vesuvius and Pompeii, while an article by Jack London (⁠read it here⁠) takes us to San Francisco. I end with a reading of Laurie Sheck's poem "Pompeii," from her 2003 book, ⁠Black Series⁠.

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 [email protected].

An episode from 11/16/21: Tonight, I read from a few books on Pablo Picasso, where he talks about how the power behind his own paintings, and his huge output, remained a mystery for him as much as anyone else. The lasting nature of his work seems to be less about how consciously he went about it, than how intuitively he was able to deal with an impulse he barely understood himself. The books I read from are:

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 [email protected].

An episode from 11/13/21: Tonight, I read eight poems from Louise Glück's 1992 collection, The Wild Iris. Following these are an episode from March, 2021, of six poems from her 1990 book, Ararat. A good barometer for determining any poet's best work is "the poems nobody else could have written," and indeed there is nothing else like these two books that I know of in English. Among other things, there are great lessons in them for any poet attempting to use autobiography, parenting, nature, religion (or skepticism), in their own work.

Buy Ararat or The Wild Iris individually, or in Glück's Collected Poems 1962-2012. 

from The Wild Iris

from Ararat

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 [email protected].

A reading, with comments thrown in throughout, of an essay of mine written between 2015-2016 (I get the dates wrong in the podcast). The entirety of it can be read here as There is Only the Trying: Some Thoughts on Fame & Failure.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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 [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.

A repeat of an episode first posted on 11/9/2020: A reading from George Orwell’s 1937 book, The Road to Wigan Pier. This long passage comes from the handful of trips he took down into the coal mines of northern England, and the horrible conditions there.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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 [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.