Lucky Words

Just a quick one today to remind you that National Poetry Month is coming back in April, and Lucky Words will be there, too, with another season of poems in the ourdoors. 

If the weather holds (it won't), this will be a perfect year for being outdoors in the mountain west. Today it is a perfect temperature and humidity: this is what heaven feels like to me. 55 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze and some moisture on the ground. Hot dang it's a good time to be alive.

## Text of poem

"There is no Frigate like a Book" by Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book    
To take us Lands away,    
Nor any Coursers like a Page    
Of prancing Poetry –     
This Traverse may the poorest take           
Without oppress of Toll –     
How frugal is the Chariot    
That bears a Human soul.  

Side note: in addition to this podcast, you might check out my website and newsletter for some essays and quotes and other fun stuff that overlaps nicely with Lucky Words. Check it out at jeffreywindsor.net" class="linkified" target="_blank">http://www.jeffreywindsor.net">jeffreywindsor.net;. (I know: it's a very creative name. What can I say? It's a gift.) Thanks.

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Happy Fourth of July! It's Independence Day, and I'm finally putting up a new post. Today's recording was actually over an hour long, most of which was my listening to a fellow hiker tell me all his stories about encounters with Sasquach. I have no idea what to do with that.

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Happy Bloomsday! For this holiday, I've released the first non-poetry Lucky Words! I am sure you are as excited as I am.

Actually, as this hits the internets, I am camping with a bunch of Boy Scouts: getting sunburnt, making fires, sleeping in the dirt. It would be great if I weren't in charge of keeping a bunch of fifteen-year old boys from buring down a national forest. If you haven't heard of any major fires in national forests, I'm doing ok.

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I recorded this midway on a hike last week, watching the spring run-off block my path. What I do not explain in the recording is that the angle where the run-off crossed the trail was steep enough and the flow was strong enough that I wasn't brave enough to ford it. After recording this, I turned around and walked back to the trailhead. It was shorter than I had planned, but it wasn't a bad hike. I stretched my legs and I thought some thoughts -- so: mission accomplished.

Also, if you're reading this, you might want to note that you can read the whole text of this poem -- and all the poems I read -- on the website.

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The long quiet section before the poem is me standing still, trying to keep a very large moose feeling calm and unthreatened. It must have worked, because he did not trample me, but wandered off in the opposite direction. Whoa, nelly: that was awesome in all senses of the word.

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I was on a dusty, dry trail somewhere in the American Fork canyon, all by myself (except for the bee that interrupted me while I was recording. You can hear it at the end). Being all by myself made me think of this poem by Whitman who had a thing or two to say about the way people interact with each other.

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Enough with the heavy Wordsworth! (OK, not forever, but for a little while, at least.) You have probably read this poem before; it's often read in schools. But don't let that turn you off: look at how
Dickinson uses her awesome, creative diction here; note how she describes the snake without using any conventional descriptors of a snake. Its clever-quotient is high, but it doesn't feel twee or too-clever-by-half.

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Huzzah! We've made it! I'm sorry this took a while to post, but here is a reading of the complete text of William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood."

I recorded this at various stops on a hike up along the Deer Creek - Dry Creek trail in the Lone Peak Wilderness. It's a spectacular area and a great hike -- until I reached the water flowing under a snow field and didn't want to risk a crossing. It was visibly hollow underneath and I didn't want to fall into the icy running water. Good thing I wasn't peak bagging, so it was easy to just turn and head back to the car.

I'll be returning to some shorter, stand-alone poems for a while before embarking on a long poem like this again. I do hope it was worth it, however. I'd be delighted if you let me know what you think.

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This is the final episode that discusses individual sections of Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." If you're just joining us, start at episode 131, where the poem actually begins. Next time: the whole poem, uninterrupted! How exciting!

I got a fancy new digital recorder (thanks, generous listener!), but now I have to learn the appropriate technique for field recording. Lesson for today: turn off your dang cell phone. This was in glorious stereo, but I had to reduce it to mono to cut out a bunch of obnoxious digital interference. Well, now I know. Anyone have any good tips/resources to help me out?

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Wordsworth is getting kinda depressing here. All by itself, this section doesn't have the punch that it gets in context. We'll be at a full read soon, and then, I hope, the whole thing will make good sense. It's such a great poem, but it does require some effort to get the whole thing.

Recorded while camping, and I almost made the life-altering decision to grab a rattlesnake as it slithered by. I didn't know it was a rattlesnake at the time, not until it started shaking its tail at me. It was pretty obvious then. I ran away, quickly. I'm grateful it was closer to 60F than to 90. That would have been an ugly end to, well, everything. NOTE TO LISTENERS: do not pick up snakes unless you look at the tail section first.

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