Human Voices Wake Us

A reading from Shakespeare's Hamlet and book 1 of Wordsworth's The Prelude. I also share two small sections from my poem-in-progress, 1606, about the life of Shakespeare.

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 one of my favorite books, Studs Terkel's Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Here, Terkel interviews a waitress named Dolores Dante.

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 ten poems from Ted Hughes's first two books, The Hawk in the Rain (1957) and Lupercal (1960). They can be found in his Collected Poems. Another collection of Hughes's poetry that is mentioned in this episode is A Ted Hughes Bestiary, edited by Alice Oswald.

The poems read here are:

The Hawk in the Rain (1957)

Lupercal (1960)

Uncollected Poems 1960-1967

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 reading my poem "Unfinished Michelangelo." You can read the poem here. It was originally published at the Basil O'Flaherty.

Learn about--and see--Michelangelo's unfinished slave sculptures here.

The two books I mentioned in this episode are Howard Hibbard's biography of Michelangelo, and William Wallace's wonderfully illustrated Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting & Architecture.

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.

Another of my autobiographical posts. Here I wonder about the deeper source of my personal mantra, that art is primarily about engendering empathy, and alleviating the loneliness of the artist and the audience experiencing it. 

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 Mircea Eliade's book The Myth of the Eternal Return, where a folklorist discovers the source of a local myth and song, and tries to convince them of the "real" story.

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 beginning of Virgil great poem of farming and nature, Georgics, in the translation by David Ferry. There will be more readings from this book to come.

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 Walt Whitman's poem, "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun." This comes from the earliest published version, in the 1865 collection Drum Taps. 

The best place to find Whitman's poetry online (or anything about him at all) remains the Whitman Archive, and you can find every edition of Leaves of Grass here (as plain text downloads) and here (facsimiles of the original editions).

While there are hundreds of editions of Whitman's poetry in print, the best editions for me are Gary Schmidgall's Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892, which present his best poems in their earliest published form (this is the book I am reading from here); the second includes the first and last editions of Leaves of Grass, along with a huge selection of Whitman's prose.

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 of my poems about the Holocaust, "A Ploughed Field" and "Train." These poems were published earlier this year at Jewish Journal.

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 my story, "Isis in Old Age." It was originally published in Bold+Italic. The story can also be read 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.