Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 06/06/2024: Tonight, I share two stories from the Shoah, or Holocaust. The first is about the Sonderkommando , those prisoners forced to do the most devastating work in the concentration camps. During a 2015 Fresh Air interview with László Nemes and Géza Röhrig about their 2015 film, Son of Saul , a brief story about an actual Sonderkommando member is told. It remains one of the mo...

An episode from 5/8/24: Tonight, I read fourteen poems from Ted Hughes's 1970 collection, Crow . His books Crow , Moortown Diary , Remains of Elmet , and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that read are: A Childish Prank (the audio of Hughes reading the poem comes from here ) Crow...

An episode from 4/30/21: Here is a collection of all of the recordings I've made of the poetry of Robinson Jeffers from November of 2020 until this month. Jeffers' collected poetry spans three huge volumes, and nearly every individual collection included a narrative poem alongside the shorter lyrics. While Jeffers seemed to have believed that his reputation would rest on these longer poems, none o...

An episode from 4/17/24: Tonight, I read a handful of poems on modern life—whatever “modern” might mean in words spanning the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. In many of the poems we hear the complaint of every age, that “the world has never been so bad.” In others, descriptions of the suburbs are enough, or of car culture, or of how we get our news or even begin to live with stories of atr...

An episode from 4/3/24: Tonight, I interview the poet, novelist, and translator, Amit Majmudar. You can find a full list of his books ⁠ here ⁠ , but we spend most of our time talking about his 2018 translation of the Bhagavad Gita, ⁠ Godsong ⁠ . Along the way, we also get his take on many of the preoccupations of this podcast: how a life devoted to creativity, religion, family, and an awareness of...

An episode from 3/15/24: Tonight, I read eleven poems from Ted Hughes's 1979 collection, Remains of Elmet . His books Crow , Moortown Diary , Remains of Elmet , and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that I read from Remains of Elmet are: Light Falls through Itself Crown Point Pen...

An episode from 2/19/24: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). All of them can be found in his Collected Poems . I also read from his letters , and the essay about Stevens at The Poetry Foundation . The poems are: Anecdote of the Jar The Snow Man Six Significant Landscapes Anecdote of Men by the Thousand How to Live. What to Do Gallant Château Bou...

An episode from 2/7/24: Tonight, I read six poems from Ted Hughes's 1983 collection, River . His books Crow , Moortown Diary , Remains of Elmet , and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that I read from River are: October Salmon (the audio of Hughes reading the poem comes from here...

An episode from 1/31/24: Tonight, as a companion to last episode of poems on being a child, I read a handful of poems about being a parent: “Morning Song,” by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) “Child Crying Out,” by Louise Glück (1943-2023) “First Snow” read by Louise Glück ( audio from here ) “This Be the Verse,” by Philip Larkin (1922-1985) “Lucinda Matlock,” by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) “On My First...

An episode from 1/19/24: Tonight, I read a handful of poems about childhood. How does poetry capture our earliest memories, and how can it express the act of remembering itself, of nostalgia? The poems are: The Pennycandystore Beyond the El, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) "Other echoes/Inhabit the garden," from Burnt Norton , by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Squarings #40 , by Seamus Hea...

An episode from 1/10/24: Tonight, I read seven poems from Ted Hughes's collection of farming poems, Moortown Diary , first published in 1978. His books Crow , Moortown Diary , Remains of Elmet , and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that I read from Moortown Diary are: Rain Bring...

An episode from 12/21/23: What is it like for your country to declare war, and then wait for it, and then live through it? Tonight, I read only a small sampling from Norman Longmate's How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War . The book focuses on the home front in Britain and the experiences, mostly, of everyday civilians, the elderly, women, and children: How...

An episode from 12/13/23: There’s a certain lesson I’ve learned from sports figures, poets, and critics, and I was reminded of it while watching Bradley Cooper’s new movie about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro . What does it mean that the attention and opportunities that so many aspiring musicians and conductors dream of, only ever lands on a few people, like Bernstein? And what does it mean that the e...

An episode from 11/15/2023: Only a short episode tonight, where I wonder about the future of this podcast. Using an essay by a fairly prominent author, who writes movingly about the sense of community she had found online since around 1990, I come to realize that I've never had an equivalent experience online. I wonder what this has to do with how this podcast is made and received. The best wa...

An episode from 10/30/23: Tonight, I read a handful of poems about autumn: Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), from “The Burning of the Leaves” Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), “The leaves are falling; so am I” Louise Glück (1943-2023), “All Hallows” John Keats (1795-1821), from “To Autumn” W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), “The Wild Swans at Coole” Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), from “For a Wine Festival” and from...

An episode from 8/20/21: A collection of all the poems by Seamus Heaney I have read here over the past few months, spanning his entire career. Each of his collections of poetry can of course be purchased on their own, but nearly everything I read here can be found either in his career-spanning 100 Poems , or in the two volumes of his selected poetry: Selected Poems 1966-1987 and Selected Poems 198...

An episode from 9/15/23: Earlier this year, I thought it was possible to supplement this podcast with one weekly (and shorter) additional reading over at Substack ; for many reasons, that ambition proved impossible to maintain. Since an illness has kept me from recording a new episode this week, I thought it worthwhile collecting those six weeks of shorter readings here: 3 Poems from my long work-...

An episode from 9/8/23: In the first part of tonight's episode, I read from Peter Robb's M , a biography of the painter Caravaggio (1571-1610). Through a discussion of two of his paintings which depict decapitation, we can understand how, in Caravaggio's early career, he was able to paint directly from life; but when he went on the run to escape a charge of murder, he depended instead...

An episode from 9/1/23: In the first part of tonight’s episode, I read from Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, & the Search for Identity , where Solomon talks about musical prodigies and the difficulties they face as children and adults. In the second part, I read one of the most powerful pieces of poetry to come out of the ancient world, God’s response to Job, from the Heb...

An episode from 8/25/23: Tonight, I read ten essential poems from one of the great and most public poets of the last seventy years, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). It isn’t hard to come by details of Heaney’s life, but Stepping Stones (where Heaney is interviewed at length in what amounts to an autobiography), is a good place to start. His poems are collected in 100 Poems , and in the individual collec...

An episode from 8/18/23: What makes a story or prayer or poem last? What circumstances can lead one monarch to order the execution of another? And why, over the past twenty years, was Mary Oliver the best-selling poet in America? Tonight's episode is another three-parter: In the first part, I read from one of the great scholars of the Hebrew Bible in our time, James Kugel. I focus on a passage...

An episode from 8/11/23: Tonight, we look into libraries and learning: In the first part, I read from Jonathan Bate’s biography of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age . Based on Shakespeare’s education and the evidence of the plays, Bate gives a thorough guess as to the essential twenty or thirty books that the Bard might have had on his shelf. In the second part, I read from Serge Sauneron’s Priests of...

An episode from 5/16/22: Tonight, I continue my five-part series called Notes from the Grid . (A print version of NFTG has since been published.) In this part, I ask perhaps the core questions that inform the entire book: why do we assume that "civilization" is itself a civilizing force, when it oftentimes just presents articulate excuses for tribalism and arrogance? And why does our culture seem...

An episode from 8/4/23: Tonight, we hear from cities under siege: In the first part, I read from the Roman historian Livy’s account of the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 387 BCE. The translation is by T. J. Luce . In the second part, I read from the diary of the French art historian Agnès Humbert , who lived in Paris during the first months of the German occupation in World War Two, and who was invo...

An episode from 7/14/23: Tonight, I read from two great writers on the history of the sea. The first is an excerpt from Rachel Carson's (1907-1964) ⁠ The Sea Around Us ⁠ , on the deep history of the sea, and the beginnings of all life within it. Next is an excerpt from archaeologist Barry Cunliffe's ⁠ Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples ⁠ , where he illustrates all the strategie...