The Be-Loving Imaginer

Episode #39: Book of the Heaven Eleven (1)      Roman poet Catullus and Greek poet Sappho both use eleven-syllable lines in their poetic stanzas. In this first part of my Intro I’ll read my translation of a Catullus poem (with my commentary verse employing his rhythm) and a half-dozen examples of what I call “catullics.” I’ll remark on certain references (Goethe’s use of Greek...

Episode 38: The Heart of Giordano Bruno   Bruno, burned at the stake in 1600 by the Inquisition in Rome for alleged heretical teachings (e.g. the multiplicity of worlds), wrote a book of love sonnets as did his contemporary Shakespeare. In modern sonnets and “replies” in the same verse form to the highlights of Bruno’s The Heroic Enthusiasms, I hope to suggest the delight and inspiration he c...

Episode 37: Modern Psalms in Ancient Rhythm (2)      As the Biblical psalms often elaborate scripture stories, I want to do that, too. Tonight’s reading will feature Abraham, with a couple of short episodes about Jacob, as well – again I’ll read a total of 7 psalms. Distinctive about the scripture narratives in my interpretations will be the use of the Judaeo-Christo-Islamic le...

Synopsis Episode 36: Modern Psalms in Ancient Rhythm (1)   I introduce the reader, first, to ancient psalmodic rhythm by reading (and “conducting”) the opening passages of Psalm 92 (“A Psalm, A Song for the Sabbath Day”) in Hebrew, dramatizing their melodic wordsong achievement. Then, picking up the theme of sabbath, I recite 7 of my modern psalms, all written in the rhythm of my biblical men...

Synopsis Episode 35: Interviewing Sufi Poets We’ll read sample interviews with 15 Sufi poets 1050- 1650. Each “interview” includes a lyric, a focused verse “reply” by me, and a contextual “blogatelle.” I Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Love the things of this world: wine Pages 41-43 wine II Anvari (1126-1189) Satire and moral teaching Pages 79-80 satiric-moral teaching III Nizami (1141-1209) Master of th...

Podcast 34: Pushkin’s Hero, Tatyana Larina In this program, my aim is to introduce the hearer to the hero (now rapidly becoming a gender-neutral term) of Alexander Pushkin’s world-famed novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. In many ways, she earns the laudatory title I’m giving her, and my presentation will help you get acquainted with her background, her cultural context, her family life, her mother’s p...

PODCAST # 33 Speaking with the Chinese Theme: interior conversation. Friedrich Rückert completes in 1833 his 325 “adaptations” of the poems in the earliest collection of Chinese verse that we have, an anonymous work composed by pre-Confucian poets from the 11 th to the 7 th centuries BCE. Rückert, though he learned 44 languages, didn’t know any more Chinese than I do. But he did have the recently...

Podcast Synopsis: The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 32: Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, A. Tolstoy This video podcast presentation for Binghamton University Lyceum, via Zoom, focuses on my new genre of poetry writing, the “Verse Interview Book.” From the section called “Russian Loves” in my book Six Dialogic Poetry Chapbooks, available from Amazon, I’ve selected verse interviews with four classic Russian po...

PODCAST #31: THREE PARABLES ABOUT JESUS             My latest book, Persian Poetic Renaissance: 15 Sufi Poets in “Verse Interviews” contains 3 parables about Jesus that are delightful, highly original poetic masterworks. The poets are Nizami (on Jesus and the Dead Dog), Goethe (on Jesus, Peter, and the Horseshoe), and Attar (on Jesus and the S...

For years I’ve loved to recite Omar Khayyam (1048-113 as translated by the master Victorian wordsong writer Edward FitzGerald. “Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent / Doctor and sage…” I owe the Persian poet two things: (1) a gently melancholy but likeable skepticism which at the same time says ‘Enjoy the moment!” and (2) a beautiful verse form with rhyme patter AABA.  Pp. 14-15 show how...

The three bisexually oriented books I’ll recite from today are landmark achievements in world culture, and I’ve written books in “interview” style to con-verse with them.    Virgil (70-19 BCE) wrote Eclogues, ten one-act verse plays about Roman country life. All his shepherd-farmers are startlingly cultured people, poets and musicians who speak often about music and whose main form of en...

Shi-Jing, or Book of Songs – China’s earliest verse anthology, 11th to 7th centuries BCE, with all poets anonymous, was translated into Latin by an 18th century French Jesuit priest, a prose text lost, then rediscovered, reprinted in Germany in 1830. It became the source text for an 1833 version by German’s greatest translator-poet, Friedrich Rückert, who learned 44 languages.  Chinese wasn’t...

Here I sing for you a new national anthem I’ve written for the French people, and to help everyone celebrate Bastille Day in a tranquil and loving mood. A member of the French parliament, some decades back, called for an anthem that would be less bloody and vengeful than the “Marseillaise” by Rouget de Lisle, and I promptly wrote such a hymn of peace. In this presentation I sing the older version,...

Interfaith Wordsongs: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Poems [$12.50] Wednesday, June16: 12-1 (Rain Date: Thursday, June 17), Lyceum. Location: Cutler Gardens, 840 Upper Front St, Binghamton, NY. Presenter: Poet Martin Bidney, Professor Emeritus, English, BU. “Jews, Christians, and Muslims all consider Abraham the founder of their One God religions. The poets I love most from all three intertwining...

PODCAST #25 SUPPLEMENT POEMS FOR “ONEGIN” In Podcast #24 I recited the first few dialogic exchanges of sonnets between Pushkin’s verse novel “Eugene Onegin,” and me, the translator and collocutor. Here I’d like to supplement our book-long con-verse-ation or interview with additional lyrics, mainly by Pushkin, which I added to clarify crucial moments in the Russian poet’s text. I’ll begin my sampli...

Synopsis for Podcast 22 Pushkin's Onegin with Replies  Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia’s most beloved poet. Eugene Onegin, called by Pushkin a “novel in verse,” is Russia’s favorite narrative poem and her most influential novel. The narrative – about what was widely called a “superfluous man” – sets a context for the works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov that were to fol...

The Joys of Poetic Meter, Part 2:  Martin Bidney, a poet, translator, scholar, and critic who has published 33 volumes of verse, here offers on a zoom YouTube the first presentation in a two-part mini-course, "The Joys of Poetic Meter." The course, as a whole, explores the rhythmic forms of lines and stanzas from poems of the last 3000 years, including ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, British Re...

The Joys of Poetic Meter, Part I:   Martin Bidney, a poet, translator, scholar, and critic who has published 33 volumes of verse, here offers on a zoom YouTube the first presentation in a two-part mini-course, "The Joys of Poetic Meter." The course, as a whole, explores the rhythmic forms of lines and stanzas from poems of the last 3000 years, including ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, British R...

PODCAST #21: VALENTINE’S SPECIAL Originally planned as video collage 9.4, this presentation became Episode #21 of “Martin Bidney, The Be-loving Imaginer” for two compelling reasons. (1) The Valentine’s Day presentation is the most joyous love song I have written. (2) “Love” is pre-eminently the mood of my “Be-loving Imaginer” offerings. Here is a poem that my Valentine’s Day song performance stimu...

PODCAST #20: WORDSONGS OF JEWISH TRADITION  In this interview book I converse with the commentator (and at times with the original author) who together produced a new, 3-volume version of the Tanya, an 18th century spiritual handbook, so that the modern reader can place the mystical thinking in a wide context of Hasidic anecdotes and legends. Schneur Zalman, the original author, provided what...

PODCAST #19: VIRGIL’S ECLOGUES WITH VERSE REPLIES On the back cover I write, summing up the global importance of this ancient Roman work: “One of the major bisexual imaginings in world literature, the Eclogues of Virgil are ancient Roman musical masterworks, rivaling the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Every wordsong in the group of ten is a one-act play, and every character is a music lover. Love and Dea...

PODCAST #17: INDIAN, PERSIAN, ARABIAN POEMS I have an astonishing opportunity to acquaint you with Indian, Persian, and Arabian poems in perfectly crafted versions, thanks to the mid-19th-century German translator, scholar, and poet Friedrich Rückert, who learned 44 languages, including Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabian.  In talk-show interview style, I offer English versions of Rückert’s poetic...

PODCAST #16, A MUSIC LOVER’S ART This book is filled with poems about classical and folk music I love. Let’s begin with Mozart, a composer everyone loves because his music is so packed with great tunes, and his personality is youthfully impulsive. Try “The ‘trumpet concerto’” (312). Beethoven equals him in popularity, and I join in, translating Nikolai Zabolotsky’s “Beethoven” (314) and offering a...

Today’s freestyle chat has 4 parts, all stemming from Roger Brooks’ book The Power of Being Rich: 10 Essential Principles to Manifest What You Already Have. As dialogic interpreter, my bold beginning is to suggest that Roger’s admirable volume might equally well be titled The Power of Rich Being. Roger wants to show people how to conceive and advance a practical enterprise by starting with a feeli...

PODCAST #15: ANGELUS, GUIDE TO GOD WITHIN by Martin Bidney Angelus Silesius, the Silesian Angel, was the name Johannes Scheffler took when he converted from the Lutheran to the Catholic Church. But as witty mystic poet, he aims to bring his imagining Heart to oneness with ULTIMATE BEING, THE GOD BEHIND THE NAMES and formulations. His poetry book, “Cherubinischer Wandersmann,” could be translated C...