Human Voices Wake Us

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 like to support this podcast, buying a handful of these books would be the easiest way to do it--they are all around 120 pages, and all priced at $3.99.

If you can recommend a similar story about how anyone discovered their passion, and would like me to read from, email me at [email protected].

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 written by the poet Ted Hughes, to friend and critic Al Alvarez, in November of 1971. At this time, Alvarez was publishing an intimate (and to Hughes's mind, exploitative) account of the 1963 suicide of the poet Sylvia Plath. The letter can be found in The Letters of Ted Hughes, pages 321-326. 

I use this letter as a starting point to wonder why we treat celebrities, the famous, or just the infamous, the way we do; as Hughes puts it, knowledge of his and Sylvia Plath's marriage and private life can only be entertainment and anecdote, in this case for college teachers and their students; it can offer little insight into either writers' poetry. This intrusion into private lives and their grief, and the ease with which we, fifty years later, continue to lap up the gossip surrounding well-known people, should be an obvious parallel.

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.

In this seventh episode on Celtic mythology, I review one of the greatest surviving stories in the tradition, Togail Bruidne Dá Derga, or The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel. Since it is also a fairly long story, I only share two small sections from the story itself: a piece from the beginning, and from the story's conclusion. You can read more about it here, or in the sources listed below.

The translation I use here is by Jeffrey Gantz, in his indispensable book, Early Irish Myths & Sagas. As usual, I also make of from James MacKillop's Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, and his Myths & Legends of the Celts.

For W. B. Yeats's 1888 narrative poem, The Wanderings of Oisin, check out Wikipedia.

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 an essay of mine on cultural life and everyday life in Nazi-Occupied Paris. What did it mean to "collaborate," and what acts of collaboration were worthy of punishment or ostracism after the war? As one writer put it, “Should a woman reject a seat offered by a German in the Metro?  Should one have refused to receive civilized, non-Nazi Germans whom one had known before the war? Should one have turned one’s back on a German friend in a public place?”

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 from the letters of one twentieth century poet, on how he came to discover a love for poetry, the natural world, as well as folklore and mythology, and how all three became intertwined and essential to his life.

The poet in question, whose name I don't reveal until the end, is Ted Hughes. The letters I read from here can be found in Letters of Ted Hughes.

If you can recommend a similar story about how anyone discovered their passion, and would like me to read from, email me at [email protected].

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 excerpts from the correspondence, notebooks, and interviews, with Walt Whitman; and a handful of excerpts from letters and memoirs of W. B. Yeats. For being such different poets, there's an awful lot of overlap, and it seems significant to include them in the same episode.

The passage from Whitman can be found in the appendices of Gary Schmidgall's edition of Whitman's poems; the quotations from Yeats can be found in the first volume of R. F. Foster's biography of Yeats. 

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 replay of an episode from 10/28/2020

A reading of Stephen Ambrose's book Undaunted Courage, on the last night of Meriwether Lewis's life, in October of 1809. Unlike his more famous companion, William Clark, Lewis suffered from what we today would call depression, and this passage is one of the saddest I know. Ambrose has remarked that he wept while writing it, and it was hard to keep myself from doing the same while reading it. I should note the mistake I made when introducing the passage: this scene takes place not three days, but three years, after Lewis and Clark's return, but I haven't the heart to read this aloud again. 

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 from Jan Swafford's Beethoven: Anguish & Triumph, narrating the last months of Beethoven's life.

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 two chapters from Peter Ackroyd's book, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination. 

Chapter 5, "A Rare & Singular Bede," covers the life of the Venerable Bede, as well as education and culture in England in the eighth century. Chapter 14, "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes," is a brief look into Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English) poetry, and its continued life and reverberations in English poetry, through the present day.

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 small episode talking about working, and empathy and sympathy for those who live doing work they do not love, and which they derive little meaning from.  

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.