In America this is the Labor Day weekend, and here's a performance of a thought-provoking Kenneth Patchen poem that I'll say is about work and workers.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's another poem by French Surrealist Paul Éluard that I've translated to English, set to music, and performed.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's another new English translation of an early poem by the French poet Paul Éluard. The music for today's poem is quite different that the last one. This poem, though written without a trace of extravagant Surrealist imagery, retains an elusive quality that I found attractive.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a short, early poem by the French Surrealist Paul Éluard, that I translated and adapted into English this month. I plan to write more about my translation and my impressions of reading some other early Éluard poems at the Parlando Project blog linked below.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a performance of another in a series of sonnets I've been writing over the past few years about a daughter's relationship with her mother with progressing Alzheimer's disease.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

This episode marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Parlando Project, but it's also the anniversary date of my late wife, Renée Robbins, death. I've chosen to tie those two things together with a musical setting and performance of a poem she wrote. Though written by a young woman, it's about a complicated attraction.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

And now for something different. Last time the music was a love-lost remembrance nocturne made with two cellos accompanied by piano. Today's piece: a pair of howling electric guitars fronting a rock sextet. And the words for this? From Philip Freneau, the New Jersey resident known for a while as "the Poet of the American Revolution." But this poem of his was written long after the Revolution, 1815, and in it Freneau is warning against "embryo monarchs" who would sacrifice America's strength and renown to "prop a tottering throne." So obviously, and antique poem of no current relevance.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

The years of this Project have led me to continued exploration of the poetry of the first part of the 20th Century. Recently I've come around to reading the poetry of the writer/critic Conrad Aiken, who was one of the expatriate Americans living in England and Europe, often acting as instigators of Modernism in this era. Today's musical piece with its musical title is the concluding section of a longer poem that served as the titular piece in a 1917 collection of his. Today's simple musical setting is for two cellos and a piano.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

A wonderful thing about Emily Dickinson's large body of poetry is that there are always "new" poems to discover. Take this lesser-celebrated one for example: an ecstatic hymn to our present season, lengthy by Dickinson's standards, filled with her characteristic unusual word choices. As is the nature of this Project, I was drawn to sing it.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Willa Cather could fit in small group: writers known as novelists who also wrote some worthwhile poetry. This poem of thwarted love charmed me when I read it in an anthology this summer, and I had sense immediately that it wanted to be sung. This month I wrote some music for it and found the time to record it. At the end of that performance I adlibbed a little variation expanding on the mysterious details of the meeting under the hawthorn tree.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org