Human Voices Wake Us
Human Voices Wake UsEpisodes
Episodes of Human Voices Wake Us
Mark All
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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 n
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. Alon
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 nat
An episode from 3/3/24: Tonight, I read from a handful of what I call “visionary” poems. After an introductory section of familiar nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets, I go back to the sources of those, which are found in religious scriptur
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 Foundatio
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 lif
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
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,
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 model
An episode from 1/1/24: Tonight, a cold has forced me to hand over the episode almost entirely to some of the greatest music ever written. Here are excerpts of my favorite pieces from Ludwig van Beethoven (1750-1827). It’s hard to think of musi
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 Sec
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 a
An episode from 12/6/23: Tonight, I read the small biographies of nearly two dozen poets, the kind of colorful summaries usually found in poetry anthologies. In many cases, reading a paragraph or two about twenty people is enough to get the sen
An episode from 11/29/23: 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 wit
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 nev
An episode from 11/13/23: Tonight, I talk about our attachment to music as teenagers and adults, and the lessons that loving music—and finding meaning in musicians’ life stories—can teach us.First, I read two passages from Patti Smith’s memoir
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 Hall
An episode from 10/16/23: Tonight, I read my long poem about William Shakespeare, and offer a commentary along the way. It is being published simultaneously at Bryan Helton’s The Basilisk Tree, and once again I give Bryan my infinite thanks.Th
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
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 Car
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
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
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 epis
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 thor
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 fr
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