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Lux Interior. Historian. Freak. Legend. Paradigm Shifter. Spanker. High heeler. Foe to microphone stands of all nationalities. Cramp. Rock and Roller. Being of indeterminate origin and/or age.
The live autopsy on the Replacement Party was Thursday, 8 – 11 p.m.
Findings can be found in the archives.
First hour
(starts about 8 minutes into the archive)
Second and Third Hours
Jazz fans will like this show. Thomas Rain Crowe and Nan Watkins dropped in to talk about their new book of interviews with great composers and players, Rare Birds, published late last year by the University Press of Mississippi. And if you’re going to talk about music, you really should play some, right? So the show features full tracks by Charles Lloyd, Philip Glass, Eugene Friesen, Sathima Bea Benjamin, and the Abdullah Ibrahim Trio. Enjoy.
Ah, poets … not the promptest people on the earth’s face, are we? If you’d tuned into this week’s Wordplay, you might have thought I’d just repeated last week’s fine show with Robert Bly, and moved on.
True, this week’s show does start off with about 15 minutes of the show with Bly; I’d cued it up when none of my guests had appeared by airtime, and a few minutes later headed the half-block to Malaprops for a cup of coffee. Half way there, though, I saw Glenis Redmond heading in my direction, so I met her and we headed back to the station. A few steps on, Laura Hope-Gill shouted from her car that she’d be there as soon as she parked, and that Sebastian Matthews was on the way. By a quarter after we had gathered in the studio (and Sebastian came along a couple minutes later – and brought with him Ryan Walsh, who’s now helping him edit Rivendell), and at the first break in the Bly show we went live, reading poems and talking over poetry, poets, the upcoming Wordfest, and the new plan for Rivendell for the rest of the hour. Turns out they’d all been to the same Kwanzaa party the night before, and had had a bit too much fun …
Give it a listen.
And if you wanted to catch the Bly show, it’s still available on the archive too, and it’s worth catching.
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Cross-posted at Natures
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Way back in late September, Mark Strand (that Mark Strand – former Poet Laureate, MacArthur Fellowship winner, and on and on, arguably one of the most celebrated poets of the last fifty years) visited Asheville to read for the benefit for RiverSculpture, a cause near and dear to the hearts of his old friends Robert and Arlene Winkler. He actually read twice, once at the home of Ron and Nancy Edgerton, and then again at the local Barnes & Noble. Your intrepid reporter had to head to Hickory for the Spirit of Black Mountain College festival on the 25th, so couldn’t record the B&N event, but did catch the private reading the night before. This week’s Wordplay features that reading.
I’ve included part of a 2007 reading at George Mason University, as well, one in which Strand gave a more chronological overview of his work.
It’s fascinating work, of course. I’d read most of his poems through the years quietly, to myself, and hearing him in person made me aware that I’d missed much of the music. Note to self: poetry needs to be sounded out. Always, no matter how ratiocinative and logopoetic (in Pound’s sense) it might appear.
Robert and Arlene were on hand for the show, and gave listeners out in radioland a primer on RiverSculpture and its mission, and some background on Strand and the readings.
Jeff
Listen to the
Ooze Out Program
Tuesdays at 10 pm
on WPVM
For this week’s fall fundraiser we featured the British Columbia author of The Age of Briggs and Stratton, who read just over a week ago at The French Broad Institute of Time and the River. A project of Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn, the Institute is definitely putting new life in the nightlife of Marshall, NC.
Peter’s done several residencies in the Smokies, now, and they’re beginning to find their way into his work.
We sometimes do archival shows on Wordplay, and have featured readings by Whitman, Tennyson, Yeats, and others whose voices recording technologies have happily saved from time during our three years of broadcasting. Today we featured the great Ezra Pound in readings from 1938 to 1967; he was 82 in the latter year, but still had a strong, complex voice. His reading of Canto LXXXI is exquisite, and poetry doesn’t get much better than that. “What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross…”
A huge thanks to PennSound for making its Pound archive available through the ‘net.
By the way, you might notice a few pops and distortions during the first minute of Peter’s reading. I’d set up that night to record the stage, but everyone decided to perform on the floor instead. What you hear is me moving the mics to get a more balanced recording. Sorry about that.
Music for today’s show included tunes from the remarkable Anni Rossi, who performed at the Institute as part of the program which included Peter, and California flutist Suzanne Teng.
Do lend it an ear.
