An episode from 2/13/21: George Orwell's 1933 memoir of voluntary poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London, can still rip your heart out. Tonight, I read a few passages from it. Few people have ever written about the reality of poverty as viscerally and sympathetically as him.

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 2/7/21: In this second episode on Egyptian mythology, I offer an overview of the story of the god Osiris, with readings from the most complete Egyptian and Greek sources. As with so much of the surviving corpus of Egyptian religious writings, hardly any attention is paid to our idea of a coherent narrative. The focus is almost entirely on an incantatory summary of what Osiris can do, what his attributes are, and what he can offer the deceased. It is only in the Greek account that a fleshed-out story appears.

The books read from in this episode are:

Other episodes on Egyptian mythology ⁠are 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 [email protected].

A reading of H. D.’s poem "Adonis" from her early collection, “The God.” Buy her Collected Poems 1912-1944. 

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 1/31/21: The American writer Laurie Sheck (born 1953) was the first poet that I read extensively from on Human Voices Wake Us. Her 1996 book, The Willow Grove, remains one of the best single collections of poetry I’ve ever read, especially where Sheck remembers her childhood, learning to read, first going to museums, and so much else. And for someone like me, for whom the mystique and power of driving and listening to the radio (or podcasts, now) is so intense, a poem like “Headlights” sums up years of my life.

The entire book feels like one long poem, and even the thirteen poems here, when heard together, have the wholeness of a continuous story:

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].