HOME ON THE RANGE Dr. Brewster Higley, a 19th c. poet and otolaryngologist from Kansas, wrote it. His brother in law, a fiddler, put it to music. Elmo has sung it. So has Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Even Andrea Bocelli’s sung it. But in recent years, with a revised understanding of the American expansion west,…
EPISODE 46: Not Your Average High School John Donne
John Donne, as anyone who took more than one or two English Lit courses in their lifetime can tell you, is considered the preeminent representative of the 17th c. metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires. A number of his…
EPISODE 45: TO SEE A WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND, AND A SONG IN A BLAKE POEM
EPISODE 45: TO SEE A WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND, AND A SONG IN A BLAKE POEM Visionary, mystic, and a pretty fair magician with words, William Blake (b 1757, a 19th-century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age), has been lionized over the centuries, including Allen Ginsberg and…
EPISODE 44: Edgar Allan Music: From Stringband Music to Lou Reed & the Five Blind Boys
WHAT’S ON YOUR TURNTABLE? In this episode, Spindleverse explores some of the best renderings and tributes to Edgar Allan Poe in popular music. Putting aside the efforts which focus on scary and ominous composition — and the over-exposed Stevie Nicks Annabelle Lee song — we have uncovered several gems that illustrate modern musical performers’ ability…
EPISODE 43: The Idea of Music in Wallace Stevens Poems
What to do musically with the poems of Wallace Stevens, the ultimate abstruse American symbolist? Find out on these tracks, one of which is some high-popping electronica, and the other two choral works by decidedly modern composers. Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) was an American modernist poet born in Reading Pennsylvania, Educated at Harvard and NY Law…
EPISODE 42: A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A GERTRUDE STEIN
Spindleverse Episode 42: A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A GERTRUDE STEIN Among the most accessible works in popular music that reference the great Gertrude Stein, modernist poet and soiree-meister of 1920s Paris, are two songs ABOUT Stein and one using the words from one of her abstruse language poems.Stein was an American author and…
EPISODE 41: Meet Literate, Jazzy, Sultry, Hip Verse-maker Patricia Barber
SPINDLEVERSE: WHAT’S ON YOUR TURNTABLE? These three tracks from Chicago jazz vocalist/pianist Patricia Barber, pulled from her 2002 album Verse, are two decades young, but are fresh as the day they were laid down, and illustrative of her literate, sultry charm as a composer and arranger. Verse, Barber’s seventh album and a definitive one in…
EPISODE 40: ‘RECORD, HE SD’ (The Jazz-loving Robert Creeley)
Five tracks from the album REALLY!, featuring Robert Creeley reading his angular and unique poetry accompanied by original music from Tom Waits collaborate Ralph Carney Robert Creeley first received fame in 1962 from his poetry collection For Love. He rose to prominence as a Black Mountain poet, as a principle figure in the Language Poetry movement…
EPISODE 39: Rioghnach Connolly – of Westlin Winds and Slaughterin’ Guns
Today we dive deep into the Celtic, with more than a touch of Robert Burns — presenting four songs by BBC2 2019 Folk singer of the year Ríoghnach Connolly (pronounced Rihanna). Connolly is the real deal, having grown up surrounded by a rich musical familial heritage. Now based in Manchester England, she is a professional vocalist,…
Spindleverse 38: Robert Pinsky – Getting down with a 3-time US Poet Laureate
Long Branch NJ’s ‘most musical boy’ pairs with some NYC jazz stars when i had no eyes i listened when i had no ears i thought when i had no thought i waited Think it unlikely that an erudite scholarly poet and three-time US poet laureate, at the highest echelons of poetry and translating status…
RADIO POET!QUE: A Spoken Word Radio Review 