Human Voices Wake Us

A reading of seven poems from Ted Hughes's 1976 book, Season Songs. It can be found in his Collected Poems.

The poems read here are:

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 a small section of "Song of Myself." This comes from the earliest published version, in the 1855 Leaves of Grass, when "Song of Myself" was free of section numbers and good deal of editing. For those looking for this section in later editions, it ends up as part of section #33.

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 nine poems from the last section of my book Bone Antler Stone, on traveling through mainland Orkney. You can buy the book here, and read reviews and essays about the book here.

The poems are:

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 sixth episode on Celtic mythology, I read the famous story of the wanderings of Oisin/Oisín in the Irish Otherworld, the Tir na nÓg.

As usual, I make use of from James MacKillop's Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. The two versions of the story I read from can be found in James MacKillop's Myths & Legends of the Celts and Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

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 three poems from Ted Hughes's 1983 book, River. It can be found in his Collected Poems.

The poems read here are:

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 an interview conducted by the Federal Writer's Project during the 1930s and 1940s. The excerpt comes from the Winter 2019 issue of Lapham's Quarterly, but a larger collection of the interviews can be found in the 2004 book, Men Against Granite. 

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 poem on the prehistoric painted caves of France and Spain, "Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira," from the book Bone Antler Stone. You can buy the book here, and read reviews and essays about the book here.

My favorite books on these caves are listed below. For some reason, many of them are hard to find or by now are inordinately expensive. The best general introductions to prehistoric art that are affordable include Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind, by Randall White, and Paul Bahn's Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art. If you can find the following at your library, they are well worth a look:

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 fifth episode on Celtic mythology, I read the famous "pillow talk" between Queen Medb and King Ailill of Connacht. Their dispute over who owns more riches, land, and animals leads to the start of the famous Táin Bó Cúailnge/Cattle Raid of Cooley.

The text of the story is taken from Thomas Kinsella's translation of The Táin. I also read a passage about Medb from James MacKillop's Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology.

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 Harry Kessler's diary from July 10, 1895, visiting the French poet Paul Veraline. From the English translation by Laird Easton, published as Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918.

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 nine Crow poems by Ted Hughes. The contents of Hughes's Crow collections, first published in 1970, vary widely; these poems are taken from his Collected Poems:

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.