Human Voices Wake Us

A reading of Seamus Heaney's poem for his wife Marie, "Poem," from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966).

The first five of Heaney's collections can be purchased here, and a good selection from the first half of his career can be found in Selected Poems 1966-1987.

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 reading of Seamus Heaney's poem about his father, "Follower," from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966).

The first five of Heaney's collections can be purchased here, and a good selection from the first half of his career can be found in Selected Poems 1966-1987.

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 reading of part of John Keats's letter of October 27, 1818, where he talks about the poet and the poetic character.

The full text of the letter is here, and the actual letter can be viewed here. 

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 reading of a letter Hart Crane sent to his father in January of 1924. I don't know of a better attempt by a poet to explain his vocation to someone who will never understand it, than this. 

The letter is found on O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane, edited by Langdon Hammer & Brom Weber.

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.

Here is a collection of all of the recordings I've made of the poetry of Robinson Jeffers from November of 2020 until this month. It's merely my list of favorite thirty seven of his poems, which was culled from a larger selection of more than a hundred poems I've loved over the years. 

His collected poetry spans three huge volumes, and nearly every individual collection included a narrative poem alongside the shorter lyrics. While Jeffers seemed to have believed that his reputation would rest on the longer poems, none of them (at least for me) come near matching the power that he is able to achieve in his shorter poems. At his best, I can't think of an American poet since Whitman to match his voice, and can think of no other American poet to write who has written so beautifully and so sadly about nature, and humanity's place in it.

Because Jeffers's "inhumanist" philosophy is so dour and cynical, it's easy to dismiss his poetry and relegate him to the status of a crank, or as merely a regional, "Californian," or "ecological" poet. But to pigeon-hole a poet like him does a disservice to us all.   

Buy The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

The texts used in the readings, and the titles and dates gives for each collection, follow The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

Tamar (1920-1923)

Roan Stallion (1924-1925)

The Women at Point Sur (1925-1926)

Cawdor (1926-1928)

Dear Judas (1928-1929)

Thurso's Landing (1930-1931)

Give Your Heart to the Hawks (1931-1933)

Such Counsels You Gave to Me (1935-1938)

The Double Axe (1942-1947)

Hungerfield (1948-1953)

Last Poems (1953-1962)

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 reading of three poems from Robinson Jeffers’s book Dear Judas. The poems are:

Buy The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

The entirety of Dear Judas can be found in volume two of The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

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.

The Poet Speaks will be a series of episodes where I share my favorite comments on creativity from other artists, poets, and writers. The quotations from this episode come from Serge Bramly's Leonardo: The Artist & the Man, and the Paris Review interviews with Conrad Aiken and William Meredith.

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 reading of three poems from Robinson Jeffers’s book "The Women at Point Sur.” The poems are:

Buy The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

The entirety of “The Women at Point Sur” can be found in The Collected Poems of Robinson Jeffers

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.

Here are four poems I wrote about Columbine. There are many others, but these are the only ones I can bear to read aloud. 

The two books I mention in the introduction are Dave Cullen's Columbine, and Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning. Also, any writing or interviews you can find online with Andrew Solomon are worth getting into as well, especially his book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children & the Search for Identity.

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.