Victor D. López, Author

Esta es una lectura de la fabula original de Esopo y de mi nueva versión actualizada para el siglo XXI. Publiqué mi versión hace más de una década en uno de mis blogs y también la volví a publicar hace cuatro años. Esta es la primera lectura de mi traducción al español de mi original en inglés. espero les guste. :)

This is my reading of Aesop's original "The Grasshopper and the Ants" fable and my update for the 21st Century. I wrote my version more than a decade ago and have posted it on several of my blogs over the years. It seems somehow more relevant than ever today, alas.

From my Echoes of Dawn at Dusk: Collected Poems (Volume 2) (C) December 2020

This is an excerpt from one of the 13 short stories in my Echoes of the Mind's Eye short story collection (C) 2021.

This podcast featured my reading one of my early poems from my Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems first poetry collection. It is perhaps my darkest poem, which one which one reviewer accurately termed urban fear and loathing. Alas, the subway station in the late 1970s was as described, and descending into it after hours was not unlike a descent into hell without the warning to "abandon all hope ye who enter here"  or the benefit of Dante's Vergil as a guide. Gangs of marauding thugs ran through the old GG trains even during rush hour mugging Technites for their expensive calculators and slide rulers (yes, we had to use those back in the mid-1970s), watches, wallets and whatever else they could carry and move on to the next subway car in the days when moving between cars was still possible. It soon became a metaphor for me for life in a city that had lost its way and perhaps its soul, if ever it possessed one, and allowed crime, grime and political ineptitude to flourish unchecked. 

This is one of my earliest poems written in the late 1970's while I was a freshman in college. It (and its companion poem The Subway which I'll record and post next) is one of my darkest poems to date. My antipathy to the subject at the time comes from two sources: first, New York City was a much more dangerous place at the time than it is today, though, alas, it seems to be slipping back into the dark days of yesteryear of late. Central Park for all of its outward beauty was a very dangerous place at night even in Midtown Manhattan, and not necessaril;y safe during the day in many locations. Second, Central Park is not natural but a carefully planned, artificial construct no more natural than the skyscrapers that surround it. Ponds, hills, trees, rocks, pathways are all carefully planned, planted, created to provide a facade of natural beauty that replaced real natural beauty with a pretty mirage amid a concrete jungle. I did not and do not hate Central Park; I resented the artificiality of it and see it not as it is intended to be seen, but for what it is: an unnatural, manufactured lovely space that only further emphasizes the price we pay to live in large cities far removed from the state of nature our souls crave.

This is a brief preview of Chapter 8 of my novel, Hire Lernin': An Idealist's Quest though the Realm of for-Profit Education

This podcast concerns an issue I've written about in the past but is more vitally important today than at any time in my lifetime. I have never before feared for the country I love above all others as I now do. If we do not find a way to put aside our differences, tone down the corrosive rhetoric and ignore the voices from the extremes of the political spectrum that are gleefully stoking the fires of dissention for purely political gain, we will reach a tipping point after which all hope of rational political compromise will vanish. We are better than that, even if our elected representatives are not. It is time to look for common ground, respect opposing points of view--other than those calling for violence--and begin to live up to the motto that despite the failing of the past can and should become the source of our greatest strength: e pluribus unum. 

This podcast includes a complete reading of Chapter 7 of my new novel.

This is a reading of a portion of Chapter 10 from my novel Hire Lernin': An Idealist's Quest through the Realm of for-Profit Higher Education and includes brief commentary to place the clip in context. I hope you enjoy it.