Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet: Recent Episodes
Parlando featuring Frank Hudson and Dave Moore, poets and musicians
Poetry has been defined as “words that want to break into song.” Musicians who make music seek to “say something”. Parlando will put spoken words (often, but not always, poetry) and music (different kinds, limited only by the abilities of the performing participants) together. The resulting performances will be short, 2 to 10 minutes in length. The podcast will present them un-adorned.
How much variety can we find in this combination? Listen to a few episodes and see.
At least at first, the two readers will be a pair of Minnesota poets and musicians: Frank Hudson and Dave Moore who have performed as The LYL Band since the late 70s.
Influences include: Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), William Blake, Alan Moore, Beat Poets (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, and others), The Fugs (Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg), Leo Kottke, Ken Nordine (Word Jazz), Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, and most of the Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico).
I've turned this late William Butler Yeats poem about worldly and spiritual battles into a song, because, at least to this one reader, this poem from another era of ravenous authoritarianism seems to speak to today's world and heart.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's William Blake's other poem about children, poverty, and Ascension Day performed as a song.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear them all and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
We may think of English poet Willam Blake as the writer of majestic mystical visions, but here he is simply observing the civic use of children of poverty on a religious holiday in this first of a pair of poems with this title. I've turned this poem from his Songs of Innocence into what it says on the tin: a song.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done of 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read our accounts of our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
This is Edna St. Vincent Millay's bald statement of mortality and grief performed with music. Her title says it's without music, because she wished to express that beauty does not mitigate loss, and perhaps my far-from-bel canto voice here follows her intent.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at the Project's blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's a knotty poem about virtue, life, and star-dust by Langston Hughes that I've turned into a song.
The Parlando Project takes words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
The great Afro-American poet Langston Hughes was a pioneer in Jazz Poetry, so it is appropriate that managed to finish this piece for International Jazz Day and the last day of National Poetry Month: a performance of a short poem of his about Jazz, "Cabaret."
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Celebrating National Poetry Month and International Jazz Day with this new sonnet about poets and poetry performed along with original music I composed for a Jazz quartet.
This is what the Parlando Project does regularly: we combine various words (usually literary poetry) with music we create in various styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson wrote these words in The Sixties, the 1860s. I just got done with this song performance of her poem as if it was the 1960s and this was a West Coast Folk-Rock band. I think Dickinson here is writing about those things left behind, missing, even in the delights of Spring.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I set Emily Dickinson's "I dreaded that first Robin, so" to this music for National Poetry Month. Dickinson's poem casts a skeptical eye on Spring, at once alienated from it and yet closely, wittily, observing.
My music mutates throughout to carry forward the coming of Springtime. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in varying styles. We've done over 800 of then combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at the Project's blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
An odd notion I had while planning for this year's National Poetry Month: could I perform an Amy Lowell poem with a rock band in the spirit of the Patti Smith Group?
Well, the result still sounds like me, but sections of this Amy Lowell poem do presage methods of later poetic expression.
The Parlando Project performs various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear all of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
A. E. Housman's poem of fleeting wildflowers set to music as part of our celebration of this month's U. S. National Poetry Month.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear all of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
William Butler Yeats wrote this oft-quoted poem of the rise of evil in the world. I found it more challenging that many other Yeats poems to put to music and to sing, but tonight I've judged this full-rock-band version complete.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's another Edna St. Vincent Millay poem turned into a short spell-song for Spring and Poem in Your Pocket Day.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
This is a song made from a section of Carl Sandburg's 1928 poem "Good Morning America" which I sang this month in order that it shed some light on the nation's current state.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I started doing an English translation of a poem from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's youthful series of love poems, and in that process I thought of something else on my mind, and so began to connect the poem with two husbands taken from the US and their families based on dubious charges this Spring.
This poem from Neruda's series speaks of lovers separated. It was not so wild a leap to finish the translation and set it to music as a song regarding this fresh injustice. I note too that Neruda notes that his poem was after a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, so the poem is already an adaptation.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry, and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them and read more about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Our National Poetry Month celebration continues with a musical presentation of this sensuous Edna St Vincent Millay poem. Since I awoke this April morning to tree branches covered with wet April snow in my northern clime, I felt part of "the shared world" with this poet as I completed this song setting today.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations. and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I might think of this as the first piece of my National Poetry Month observance this year, or as a piece the follows on from my Alice Dunbar Nelson "I Sit and Sew" performance earlier in March. "She Dreams of Sewing Machines" is part of my set of Memory Car sonnets dealing with a daughter's experience of her mother's dementia.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these, and we will be adding several more as part of our April #NPM2025 participation. You can hear any of our previous audio pieces and read about experience performing them at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
John "Paddy" Hemingway died this St. Patrick's day. Dublin born, and in Dublin he died, but he was in the news because he was the last surviving RAF pilot from the Battle of Britain during WWII.
I immediately thought of this Yeats poem, about a fatalistic Irish pilot during WWI who flew into battle having no love for the British Empire. His Wikipedia summary mentions nothing about his weighing of the enormous risks he took in RAF battles, but a recounting of the number of times he was shot down and got back to flying again makes me think he'd accepted his death as a probable result of his service. Fate had sport with him, he lived to be 105.
In his honor then, I performed Yeats poem with music I wrote this week. The Parlando Project has done over 800 of these combinations over the years, using various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in different styles. You can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
Poet e. e. cummings hopscotched across a page with this classic Spring poem. I've now made it into a little song for the first day of this year's Spring.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of those combinations over the years, and you can hear any of them or read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
Instead of literary poetry, here's a little SciFi. This is a Dave Moore song about R. A. Lafferty, the electrician turned daft Speculative Fiction writer, whose stories often sounded like they were spoken by an intoxicated man at a bar who needs just one more drink to wrap up his tale.
This is older piece, recorded as the Parlando Project was starting, that I remastered today in order to finish our St. Patrick's Day series honoring Irish-American writers.
The Parlando Project normally takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read what we write about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Two Irish-American poets, now dead, used to lead a poetry reading every St. Patrick's Day in St. Paul. Earlier this week I presented a performance of a poem by one of them, Kevin FitzPatrick. Tonight, I release this song I adapted from a poem by the second poet, Ethna McKiernan.
I saw "Barn Burning" as a beautiful, wild, mystical poem. I hope my version presented as song with guitar, bass, piano and harmonium brings out those qualities.
The Parlando Project combines various words, mostly literary poetry, with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at the Project's blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's a performance of a poem from FitzPatrick's final collection done in remembrance of the St. Patrick's Day poetry readings he used to lead every year. That poetry collection, Still Living in Town, told of his life working on his life-partner's farm in Wisconsin. One of the characters in that book's series of poems about rural life was the farm's dog, an incongruous poodle named Katie.
"I Sit and Sew" is likely Alice Dunbar-Nelson's best-known poem, a strongly worded statement of a woman wishing to assuage the suffering of war. I've now made it into a short song, as that's what the Parlando Project does. I'll write a bit more about the particulars of the poem at the Project's blog and archives later today, but I thought her poem could speak well for itself on this International Woman's Day.
That blog and archives is located at frankhudson.org by the way.
Long work this week to find a set of words I could use and sing, ones that would meet our world and times with some measure of hope and purpose.
These are the ones I chose, written over a hundred years ago by early American Modernist poet and publisher Alfred Kreymborg.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, which are located at frankhudson.org
This February during Black History Month I've been writing about the discovery, history, and my subsequent impressions of a scrapbook featuring the life and career of a mid-20th Century Afro-American musician and singer Lawrence "Hank" Hazlett who played with a swing Jazz quartet The Cats and the Fiddle from Chicago and then with his own Hank Hazlett Trio out of Minneapolis.
In the scrapbook this creased and folded sheet of 6 numbered inspirational quotes was pasted on a page. They must have been meaningful to him, so I composed some music and read the quotes as a spoken word with music piece this month. The quotes are from (in order) M. B. Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Lloyd C. Douglas, Helen Keller, Herbert Kaufman, and Ambrose Bierce.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our experiences with the pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's Alice Dunbar Nelson's passionate love poem from the last decade to be called The Twenties performed as a song. I just saw this poem this morning, but I was so taken with it that I spent my afternoon composing some music to perform it with.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear them all and read about our encounters with them at hour blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Our Black History Month celebration this month is more focused on new articles on the Parlando Project blog, but I thought it'd be good to provide some new musical pieces too. Here's Langston Hughes' poem "Dreams" which I've cast as a blues for acoustic guitar, bass, and piano for this performance.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and performs them with original music (in differing styles). We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years and you can hear them all and read what I wrote about our this Project at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
Here's the somewhat forgotten Modernist poet Carl Sandburg in a weird mode. I still don't know what this elusive poem of his, titled "Couples," is describing, but I felt compelled to make it into this short song anyway.
That's what the Parlando Project does. We take various words (mostly literary poetry) and combine them with original music. We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I start this piece singing the refrain of a song attributed to Robert Burns, and then the music continues as I read a sonnet from my memory care series.
The Parland Project combines words (usually literary poetry) with music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words and making the recordings at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
What is poet Emily Dickinson describing in this poem I've turned into a song? Is it soldiers marching off to the American Civil War? Or is it just maybe a partisan political campaign march in time that her country's political failure was leading it to that war?
There's more on this, and over 800 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing style at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
This William Carlos Williams short poem of disappointment and survival seemed apropos for this American January, so now I've made it into a song, just me with my rough-hewn voice with a lonely acoustic guitar. "Dreams are not a bad thing" he says. Perhaps it will speak to you too.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can read more about this and hear all of the previous audio pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
What if one of the Three Wise Men left a Yelp review after their Epiphany visit to the manger? Presented that way it sounds like a sketch-comedy bit, doesn't it? But T. S. Eliot had an ear for poetic dialog, and he wrote a poem that approaches the sacred on the back of a sore camel.
I took Eliot's poem and performed it with some original music yesterday. Today, I mixed the recording so you can hear it. That's what the Parlando Project does: we made over 800 combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) and combined them with differing styles of music I can record. You can hear all of those pieces and read what I wrote about the experience of making them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Kenneth Patchen wrote this poem sometime before the middle of the 20th century, but it seemed so apt today that I felt that I had to sing it as a statement for the end of our year.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear all of them and read about our experiences with the words at the Project's archives and blog located at frankhudson.org
Once more we put an Emily Dickinson poem into a song setting. Today's piece weighs fears: haunted houses, ghosts, graveyards, assassins, but says the greatest fear is, or should be, ourselves.
A full rock ensemble for this one: bass, drums, piano, two electric guitars and a 12-string acoustic.
The Parlando Project takes various words, mostly literary poetry, and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years, and you can hear them all at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
As a young woman, Mina Loy adventured through many avant-garde artistic scenes in early 20th century, and her series of poems of desire, its attractions and disaffections, "Songs to Joannes," still stands out for its exciting use of language. Here are two small excerpts from that series turned into a song.
The Parlando Project has combined over 800 sets of works (mostly literary poetry not intended to be sung) with original music in differing styles. You can hear all of the released pieces and read short reports on our experiences with the word and the music we combine with them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson wrote a short poem about looking at the face of someone that disgusted her. It's now a song here, because that's what the Parlando Project does: we take words (mostly literary poetry not intended to be sung) and combine it with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear them all at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
For our 800th official release I've chosen this, with words and music by the Parlando Projects alternative voice, Dave Moore. Dave sings this and plays keys, just as he did in the earliest days of this project, and its predecessor the LYL Band.
"The Fade" is an unusual rock song, even if you file it under "Indie" or "Alt Rock," because it talks about something a genre associated with younger people doesn't: aging, its infirmities, particularly memory loss. I think of Dave's lyric here as being in the tradition of the Velvet Underground: like the songs on their famous 1st LP, Dave's song describes something not often sung about while making no judgement or framing it in any sentimentality.
The Parlando Project takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done this for over 8 years, and you can hear all the released pieces and read what I wrote about our experience with the words at our blog and archives, which is located at frankhudson.org
A sonnet about the small number of records I can recall from my childhood household. performed with an acoustic duo. Yes, thinking back, this odd combination of disks might have given me part of the inspiration for the Parlando Project.
That Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry not intended by its writers to be sung) and combines them with music in differing styles. We've presented nearly 800 of them over the years. and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a poem about her fears and blessings on the American holiday of Thanksgiving nearly 75 years ago. I think it might speak to some Americans this year, so I've put together these excerpts from her longer poem for you to hear.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done nearly 800 of these combinations over the years, and you can hear them and some words we write about our experiences with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Edna St. Vincent Millay's early poem of a late Autumn tinged with ambiguous longing, now sung with original music.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. As of this date we've released almost 800 of these combinations and you can hear them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
A sonnet about reaching a time of separation now made into a song.
The Parlando Project combines various words, usually literary poetry, with original music in differing styles, We've done nearly 800 of these combinations over the years. You can hear them all and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's Edwin Ford Piper's unflinching yet sensuous description of an early 20th century Midwestern farmer's November harvest performed with original music by the Parlando Project.
This is but one example of what the Parlando Project does. We combine words (mostly other people's words, mostly literary poetry) with music we create and record in differing styles. We've done almost 800 of these combinations and you can hear all of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Elinor Wylie was an American poet who reached an audience during the last decade called The Twenties. Some of her poems might still be appreciated if we were to come upon them today, and in that regard, the Parlando Project has turned this poem of hers into a short Indie-Folk song.
The Parlando Project has done over 750 of these combinations taking words (mostly literary poetry) and combining them with original music in differing styles. You can hear all of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
One of this Project's mottos is "Other People's Stories," which means that I'm usually setting and performing other poets' work. Today's piece is one of the exceptions, using a sonnet I wrote.
At least I think I wrote it. I found a draft of today's piece among some old papers this Fall and recognized it as being in my own handwriting -- but I have no memory of writing it. I found its mysteriousness compelling, and so went about setting it to music for the performance you can hear today.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of those combinations and you can hear all of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
The LYL Band takes a poem by William Carlos Williams about aging and an oncoming winter and turns it into a song.
This is what the Parlando Project does: we take various words (mostly literary poetry) and combine it with music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations and you can hear them all and read what I wrote about our encounter with the words at our blog and archivers located at frankhudson.org
A change of pace for this Project: I adapted a short story by the British master of the subtle supernatural into a 10-minute audio play. So, sit back and enjoy as The Parlando Project Theatre of the Air presents Walter de la Mare's story of a man with a problem: he can see something past the Samhain veil. How will his two friends react to what he tells them?
The Parlando Project usually combines other people's literary poetry with original music in differing styles. We've done nearly 800 of these combinations over the years, and you can hear them all and read about our experiences with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
When it comes to the poetic-spooky presented though inference and understatement, Walter de la Mare is a master; so I wanted to get this poem of his turned into a song in time for our Halloween series.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Edgar Allan Poe's poem has been turned into a song as part of our Halloween series featuring fantasy and supernatural poems this year.
The Parlando Project takes words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear them and read about our encounters with the poets and their words at our blog and archives locate at frankhudson.org
Our Halloween series continues. Irish poet Joseph Campbell has a twist on the idea of a goblin spirit casting a spell on a human. In this encounter, a downhearted man comes upon a puca, and the human's dissatisfaction and weariness changes the goblin.
I came upon this poem, and now I've changed it into a song.
The Parlando Project takes words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music is differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can find all of them as well as accounts of our experiences with the words at our blog and archivers, which can be found at frankhudson.org
Is this a Halloween piece? I'm not sure, but the poem, one of Wilfred Owen's strangest, says it's being sung by a ghost. My musical setting here is one of my orchestral ones.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and sets them to original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear all of them and read short accounts of our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's a fresh translation into English of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke performed with original music as our Halloween series continues this October.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with music we create and record. We've released over 750 of these pieces over the years, and you can hear any and all of them, as well as read our short accounts of the experience of working with the poems, at our blog and archives which are located at frankhudson.org
Here's the next song in our Halloween series, this time with words I adapted from a poem by Margaret Widdemer. Just like last time, someone's at the door, but this time they let themselves in and the song is the story of what they find inside.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can read more about our encounter with the words and the making of the music, as well as hearing all the completed pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Starting a Halloween series for this year with this supernatural poem by Mary Coleridge that I've now turned into a song.
That's what the Parlando Project does: we take various words (usually literary poetry) and combine them with original music in differing styles. We also write short pieces about our experiences with the poems. and you can read those and hear all of more than 750 other combinations of those words and our music at out blog and archivers located at frankhudson.org
Here's a poetic narrative that you could call : started early, took my shaggy dog. A storm builds to a deluge and then ends with an escape, all the while, a rock band with three guitars pelts the music. Emily Dickinson rocks!
This is an example of what the Parlando Project does: we take words (mostly literary poetry) and combine them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear them all and read short pieces about our experiences with the poetry at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here I take inspiration from a late, short poem by Emily Dickinson and redo it as a bottleneck-slide guitar Blues. My sense of her original gnomic poem was that Dickinson was writing of Autumn's end of the growing season with the knowledge that this close of a yearly cycle is a phase that will be followed by another Summer.
The Parlando Project presents various words (usually literary poetry) combined with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations. You can read more about our experience with the poems and hear all the musical pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Once more in this late September series, I turn a mysterious Emily Dickinson poem into a song. This one accompanied with a sparce trio of 12-string guitar, tambura, and viola.
The Parlando Project has done over 750 of these new musical combinations of various words (usually literary poetry) with music we compose and record. You can find more of them and more about the experience of creating them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I'm celebrating Emily Dickinson this month, and this is a poem, extraordinary even for her, the tragic story of a faithful gun. Since this is the Parlando Project I took Dickinson's poem and turned into a strange little song.
That's what the Project does and has done over 750 times. We take various words (usually literary poetry) and combine them with original music in differing styles. You can read about the experience or hear all the audio pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Another Emily Dickinson setting where my music seeks to bring out the strangeness that sits in-between some of her poems' lines. This lesser-known Dickinson poem might be paired with her "Because I could not stop for Death." She's singing here before the carriage arrives.
For more than 750 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
I'm planning a short series of Emily Dickinson poems combined with a variety of original music as I look forward to spending next week attending (online) a number of events in the Emily Dickinson Museum's Tell It Slant festival.
Today's example is a musical setting for acoustic steel-string guitar of a poem portraying a day's sunset viewed in an intimate female world.
The Parlando Project has over 750 such combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) combined with different music in different ways. You can read more about the experience of doing this and hear all the musical pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Each year on September 18th I do something to commemorate composer and guitarist Jimi Hendrix. This year I set this famous short poem by classical Chinese poet Li Bai.
Later this morning I'll post more about thoughts on how this poet and that musician might fit together. This just one example of what the Parlando Project does: we combine various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in different styles and then write about the experience of that at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
The Parlando Project is less often able to present the live rock band performances that it started out with, but here's a little piece from one of those performances, one telling about the aftermath of a large hail and high-wind storm that struck in August of 2023.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations and you can hear them all and read more about our experience with the poems at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Late 19th century American poet Richard Hovey translated many French Symbolist poems; but this sonnet, published in a posthumous collection, is apparently Hovey's own work in French under the title "Au Seuil." Hovey's poem considers dying and the possibility of a judgement and afterlife.
I translated Hovey's French into English for this musical performance. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in different styles. This is the 775th one we've published, and you can hear them all and read about our encounters with the poems at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's a short love poem by written for the 1894 Songs From Vagabondia by Richard Hovey. This book found favor with young men in its day for eschewing moral uplift and earnest toil to write instead of wine, women, and joyful travels,
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear them and read more about this at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Labor Day weekend in America is often the occasion for end of Summer activities. In this poem from the 1894 Songs from Vagabondia, poet Richard Hovey rows down a river in Maine connecting a lake and ponds. What does he find? The sense that Summer feels like a dream.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've released over 750 of these combinations. You can hear any of them and read more about our experience with the poems at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Pioneering Canadian poet Bliss Carman included this fantastic prose poem in his breakthrough 1894 collection "Songs from Vagabondia." Is it the slightly intoxicated wonder-talk of two tipsy young men, or the account of two angels playing with the universe?
That Carman seems to have designed that blurring makes for an interesting 19th century SciFi vignette which I perform today.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can find them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Pioneering Canadian poet Bliss Carman's break-through collection was called Songs of Vagabondia, a popular 1894 book which extoled the adventurous and sensuous life. In this selection he jauntingly compares Robert Burns and Robert Browning.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can find more at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Ancient Greek poet Sappho's poetry survives in fragments and spaces, but in 1904 a Canadian poet imagined Sappho's poems as if they were complete. The audacity of that project undertaken by Bliss Carman must be conceded, but the results can be judged on their own merits.
The Greeks said that Sappho's poems were sung with lyre music, and the Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music we create. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can find all of them and what we write about our encounters with the work at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
August 6th is the 8th anniversary of the launch of the Parlando Project — but it is also the 23rd anniversary of my late wife's death and Hiroshima Day. The Parlando Project is largely about performing other people's words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles, but for this August observance I used a poem I myself wrote about grief and have now turned into a song.
The Parlando Project blog and archives is where I write about my encounters with the words combined with music. There are more than 750 examples there. You can find them at frankhudson.org
Not sure it's advice only useful for young women, but a savvy poem of love's boundaries none the less.
The Parlando Project takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music. We've done over 750 such combinations and you can find more at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Sara Teasdale with a short heartbreak poem I've set to music and sung.
That's what the Parlando Project does: we take various words (usually literary poetry) and combine them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and they're available at our blog and archives located at franhudson.org
An Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet of youth and aging is turned into a song, which is the thing the Parlando Project does. We take various words (usually literary poetry) and combine them with original music.
We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can find them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
It's a poem, but in it Robison Jeffers wants to deliver a speech about political speech. I may not agree with Jeffers aims at the moment he wrote his poem, but I can feel the frustration he speaks of. You might too.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in various styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, so if you'd like to read or hear more, go to our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's in a goth mood again, but she makes such things sound lovely, so we sing her poem of everlasting nature and non-everlasting life today.
Not just Dickinson, but that's what the Parlando Project does: takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music. We've got over 750 such combinations in our archives available at frankhudson.org
I made my own English translation of from Lorca's Spanish poem "La Guitarra" and performed this with my own simple guitar accompaniment.
That's what the Parlando Project does: combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music. We've done over 750 of these combinations over the past 8 years. You can find more at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Today's musical setting is Carl Sandburg's short ambiguous poem about a strong-dreaming woman. The reader is left to decide, why the poem's Chick Lorimer is gone. Has she left with her flags flying high? Or is the poem's seeming praise of many lovers and her uninhibited nature hiding a more complex relationship with the town? As a singing performer of this poem I had to decide, and went with the more complex interpretation.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 such combinations and you can find more at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
For Juneteenth, a song from the 1860s written by George W. Root, a white songwriter, depicting an enslaved mother sending her child to the Union lines alone for freedom. I revised Root's melody a bit and performed it for today's holiday.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and usually combines them with original music. You can find more than 750 of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Goth Emily Dickinson again, with a poem about what stirs the sharpness of our attention now turned into a song.
The Parlando Project combines words (usually literary poetry) with original music in various styles. You can find more than 750 of these combinations at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Williams melds birdsong, rain, and dawn into one instantaneous thing. I turned his poem into a short musical performance.
American poet Emily Dickinson's enigmatic short Spring poem performed with new music as a Spring song.
For more than 750 other combinations of various words (usually literary poetry) with original music visit our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Your presenter with an acoustic guitar galloping through Emily Dickinson's exhortation of Spring today.
Robert Frost tells a little tale of nature and gardening for May. Being that it's Frost, there's a sharp observation woven into the story about man and nature.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear them and read more about this Project at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
John Sinclair (who died during this National Poetry Month) did a lot of things in his life, generating so many stances and actions that I suspect no one can agree with all of it. But one thing he did throughout his life was write Jazz Poetry, and so for International Jazz Day this year I thought I'd seek out and perform a couple of his poems.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 of them, and you can hear them and read more about our experiences with this at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Rose Fyleman wrote charming and popular children's poems in the early 20th century, like this one. I set her poem for performance in a jaunty rock'n'roll trio as I approach the end of my National Poetry Month look-back at poems aimed at children in the first half of the 20th century.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can read them and find out more about our encounters with them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I continue to examine poems from a pair of books of verse meant for the children who grew up to become "The Greatest Generation." This one's not a sunny day holiday for the kids: Matthew Arnold's at the beach, he puts a seashell to his ear, and hears....the future, or perhaps time itself, and it's harrowing.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these over the years, and you can hear them and read about our encounters while doing this at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
A short Spring poem with a famous ending couplet that seems to be about contentment -- and after all, I found it inside a 1922 book of verse for children I'm looking at for National Poetry Month. In the context of the longer work Browning placed it in, it may not be that simple, but I perform it today as if it was.
The Parlando Project combines various words, usually literary poetry, with music in different styles. We've done over 750 of these combinations, and you can hear all of them and read more about the experience of doing this at our blog and archivers located at frankhudson.org
For National Poetry Month this year I've been looking at poems from a pair of 1920s books of verse for children. Today's selection is a charming poem by Robert Louis Stevenson performed with an electric folk-rock band.
The Parlando Project does this, takes words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music. We've done over 750 of these combinations and you can hear them and read more about our experiences of the process at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
To observe this National Poetry Month I've been diving into a pair of poetry anthologies for children published in the 1922/1923. One poet included in them was an unusual case: Hilda Conkling, a child herself. That this grade-schooler was composing poems that often seemed to share Imagism's approaches intrigued some Modernists. Here's one of her poems set original music.
The Parlando Project takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done 750 of these combinations and you can hear them and read about this at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Sarojini Naidu's poem of stalwart Bengali fishermen asked to be sung, so I sang it. The author may have had a melody in mind, as she published this in a section of her poetry she called "Folk Songs." Naidu began as a promising poet ("The Nightengale of India") but left verse to for work for women's suffrage and Indian independence.
The Parlando Project takes words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music. We've done nearly 750 of these over the years, and you can find them and remarks about our encounters with the poetry at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org
William Wordsworth's well-known sonnet performed, as the word sonnet means, as a little song. Within the next 24 hour or so, I hope to have more to say about what you may have overlooked in this short poem on the Parlando Project's blog (see below). We've got a lot at the blog celebrating poetry and National Poetry Month.
The Parlando Project combines words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done nearly 750 of these combinations, all of which are available (along with short essays on our encounters with the words) at our blog: frankhudson.org
For National Poetry Month this year I'm looking at and performing poems found in a pair of 1920s anthologies of verse for children. The Girls of Verse and The Boys Book of Verse. Though "The Minstrel Boy" was included within books of poetry, this poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore was quicky adapted as a song and is best known as such today.
Which saves me from writing the music for today's audio piece. The Parlando Project takes various words (usually literary poetry) and normally combines them with original music, We've done over 700 of these combinations, and you can read more about this and hear them all at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Today I read a summary of poet Mary Oliver's approach by poet and critic A. M. Juster. He concluded: "I also think her spirit wanted to write religious poetry, but her mind wouldn't let her."
Lo & behold I was working this week on a singable version of this 1906 poem that I found in a collection of verse for children published in the 1920s that I'm examining as part of my National Poetry Month observance. Obviously. its author William Carruth was decades too early, but it seemed to be part of that conversation.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 700 of these, and you hear them and read more at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
We're celebrating National Poetry Month with musical presentations of poems taken from a gendered pair of 100-year-old anthologies published as The Girls and The Boys Book of Verse. Today's is John Masefield's famous poem of seafaring.
The Parlando Project takes words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music we write and perform. We've done over 700 of these over the years and you can read about this and listen to them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
We continue our National Poetry Month feature examination of a pair of century-old children's poetry anthologies with this famous invocation of book-fed imagination.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 700 of these things, and you can listen to them and find out more at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
My feature this National Poetry Month is going to be examination of two 1920's poetry anthologies, one for girls and one for boys. This William Blake poem invoking childhood visions bringing joy was in the opening section of the girl's volume and it seems like an apt poem to set to music and lead off our celebration this month.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 700 of these. If you want to read more about this or hear more of these combinations, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Emmy Hemmings is a forgotten Dada artist, launching the famous Cabaret Voltaire during WWI as am organizer, performer and poet -- yet no one translated her poetry from German until this century.
I just got done doing a somewhat free translation of one of her poems, and since Hennings was a performer, it seems fitting to present her work here in the Parlando Project tradition.
The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them in music in different styles. We've done over 700 of these audio pieces, and you can read more about and hear those pieces at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org
Here's a poem for March, for Spring, and for Easter now turned into a song, The words were written about a hundred years ago by a largely forgotten Midwestern American poet Edwin Ford Piper. This month I wrote music for Piper's words, and today's piece is taken from a demo session where I recorded the freshly made song.
The Parlando Project does stuff like this: we take words (usually literary poetry) and combine them with original music we write and record. We've done over 700 of these over the years, and you can find them along with more information about this Project at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Poet Carl Sandburg goes gothic-graveyard for this poem about Love & Death. I decided to accompany my performance of it with some new music in my "punk orchestral" style, which means it's short, not-to-fancy, and uses whatever virtual orchestral instruments I can figure out something for them play.
The Parlando Project takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines the with original music in different styles. We've been at this awhile, so there are over 700 other combinations like (and unlike) this one you can hear at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Here's a playful and mysterious Emily Dickinson poem for World Poetry Day. The Parlando Project enlists The LYL Band in this one to create a full-band folk-rock song out of Dickinson's poem.
The Parlando Project has done that sort of thing for several years, taking words (usually literary poetry) and combining them with music in different styles. We have over 700 of those combinations available at our archives with some additional writing about our experiences with the poems, both available at frankhudson.,org
I remind myself today that I sometimes write lyrics, so here's a piece that features my own words and music.
What the Parlando Project usually does is combine other people's words (usually literary poetry) with the variety of original music we compose and make. You can hear over 700 examples of that at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
William Carlos Williams' Spring poem reminds us that it's never too late to sing. I had to cancel a more pristine time in a recording space this week but produced this quick & dirty version of this song using Williams' words instead.
Spring itself, has a way of being quick & dirty -- and I'll remind you of the musicians' and composers' prayer: "May music find a way."
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Edwin Ford Piper is an early 20th century Midwestern American poet who's largely been forgotten. I've only started to read him this week, but this poem captured me immediately and I had to perform it with music, Parlando style.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 700 of these things, and you can find out more about them and hear them in our archives at frankhudson.org
Poet Dave Moore's song about when "Follow your dream" or "Do what you love..." meets up with reality.
Here's the cool thing about this piece: it's not a put-down. I play on it with The LYL Band, and I think the song applies to me. One of the Parlando Project's mottos is "All Artists Fail." You have to accept that and do what you choose to do anyway.
The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in various styles. We've done over 700 audio pieces over the past 8 years, and you can find out more about them and listen to our archives at frankhudson.org
Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson published these two free-verse poetic portraits in Others magazine in 1919, gaining him some notice as an Afro-American who was working in the avant-garde forms of Modernism.
I performed his two poems with a rock band accompaniment for today's example of what the Parlando Project does: combining various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've been featuring work of this lesser-known, but pioneering, poet Fenton Johnson this month; and you find out more about him and check out our over 700 other audio pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Pioneering Black Chicago Poet Fenton Johnson termed this poem a literary spiritual in his 1915 collection Visions of the Dark. I read it as predecessor to later Gospel songwriting, and so set it to music for this spare solo performance with just acoustic guitar and voice.
This is one example of what the Parlando Project does. We explore various words (mostly literary poetry) and combine them with original music for these performances. You can find over 700 examples of this at our archives and blog frankhudson.org
BONUS TRACK
Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson was using Blues Language as early as his 1913 poetry collection "A Little Dreaming." That could make this poem an early example of a literary page poet using Blues Language.
Just for fun I decided to create one of our rare Parlando Bonus Tracks. This version has been made to sound like an old, somewhat worn 78 RPM record as a tribute to the early Blues musicians.
The Parlando Project takes various words, mostly literary poetry, and combines them with original music we compose and perform in different styles. Ther are over 700 other examples at our blog an archives located at frankhudson.org
Even in 1913, Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson was already using Blues-language in his literary poetry. In this poem he printed in dialect from his first book-length poetry collection "A Little Dreaming" Johnson may be encoding a message not every listener will understand.
There will be a discussion of that and more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Early 20th Century Afro-American poet Fenton Johnson again shows his range with this Celtic dark fantasy poem that I've turned into a song.
That "turned into a song" is something the Parlando Project does. We've created over 700 combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles. You can find them at our blog and archives locate at https://frankhudson.org/
Early 20th Century Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson's dream poem references Virgil's "The Aeneid." I've turned it into a song as part of my month-long celebration of this lesser-known Midwestern poet who preceded the Harlem Renaissance.
That's what the Parlando Project does: it takes other peoples words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in various styles. You can find over 700 such combinations at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org
In 1906, Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first Afro-American poet to receive substantial notice, died, only 33 years old. Only a few years later in 1913, a 24 year old Black poet from Chicago, Fenton Johnson, publishes his first poetry collection which in which he pays tribute to Dunbar as he tries to pick up the standard from the fallen Dunbar.
I've made Johnson's poem into a song, and as this Black History Month continues I plan to perform more of Johnson's work and tell something of his career as part of the Parlando Project where we combine words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles. You can find more than 700 examples of that at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org
American poet Robert Frost assiduously read the book of nature even when the pages were blank. Here's a beautiful short poem that looks out on a wintery night and sees a blank whiteness. I've made the poem into a song accompanied by acoustic guitar.
The Parlando Project takes words, usually other people's words, usually literary page poetry, and combines them original music in various styles. You can find over 700 examples of this at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org
At least on the face of it, this short Emily Dickinson poem asks for a lifetime of experience all at once, all its grief and joy. As I understood it while creating this performance with original music, she weighs grief and joy as Taoist components.
My music today for this has a touch of a slowcore approach. but I was also thinking of John Lee Hooker, and mic'ed up my foot-stomps for percussion in the electric guitar and voice recording that mimics that combination on Hooker's earliest Blues sides.
The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. You can hear over 700 other examples at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Goethe's short lyric poem in German wanders into this short folksong arrangement via an English translation by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that I slightly modified for this song performance with my music for 12-string guitar, bass, and piano.
Here's song version of a Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem. Dunbar is often reckoned the first successful Afro-American poet, and this poem, now song, shows how Dunbar wrote both of the Afro-American experience and universal themes within his poetry.
This is a winter sonnet I wrote portraying my thoughts of the mortal illness of another poet Robert Okaji while I, an old man, am bike riding though some winter crows. For the first Parlando piece of this year, I declaimed this with a rock band behind my reading.
For more than 700 other examples of various words (usually someone else's', usually literary poetry) combined in various ways with original music in several styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org.
Robert Frost included this rural winter poem in his first collection A Boy's Will. Concise it may be, and it works by tiny increments, but I think it's as harrowing as Dylan's "Hollis Brown" or Springsteen's Nebraska. So, I set it to original music and performed it.
That's an example of what the Parlando Project does: we take other people's words, usually literary poetry, and set them to various kinds of original music. You can find over 700 examples of that at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
Sara Teasdale praises life while facing death in her poem I've now performed with music.
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Here's a musical performance of my setting of Thomas Hardy's deft poem about Christmas miracles.
For more about this and more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Russian poet Akhmatova's poem portrays a skeptical and experienced view of falling in love. I made a new English translation of this last summer, but its cold winter view of love convinced me to put off arranging a song-version of it until December.
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Margaret Widdemer was an early 20th century American poet and novelist, once somewhat popular, now mostly forgotten. "The Dark Cavalier" may be her most remembered work, and it's a dark gothic ballad sung by Death. Death is disturbing in their seductiveness in this piece You've been warned.
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with various kinds of original music we create for this Project, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
A performance of a somber, gothic, ghost poem written by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor and performed with a haunting musical setting in our Parlando style.
For more about Slessor, and for more than 700 other examples of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music we compose and perform, visit our blog and archive at frankhudson.org
Two pieces in one today: a spoken-word performance with music of Kevin FitzPatrick's poem "Lambing," and then a short instrumental response to the story of the poem "Night-Born Lambs."
For more of what we do, combining other people's words (mostly literary poetry) with original music
I combined two short Emily Dickinson poems to create this song or the strangeness, richness, and temporariness of life.
To find out more about this, or to peruse the more than 700 other combinations of words (mostly literary poetry) with original music that are part of the Parlando Project, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
A short bit of Gertrude Stein presented without prejudice as word-music you might enjoy in this musical performance by The LYL Band. For more about this, and the Van this is an abstract portrait of, see our blog and archivers at frankhudson.org
I took a strange poem by Robert Louis Stevenson and made it a stranger song as part of our observance of Armistice Day this year. Read about how my version slightly modified the original work and check out the more than 700 other combinations of various words with original music at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
For Armistice Day, I sing this poem by A. E. Housman about returning WWI soldiers.
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) and original music we perform, visit our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
An original song I made from a poem of mine about Autumn. Don't worry, the Parlando Project is still dedicated to using other people's words, and we'll return to that soon.
For more than 700 examples of that sort of thing, various words (mostly literary poetry) combined with music we compose and perform, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
A special Halloween extra episode: 10 songs in 33 minutes featuring ghosts, graveyards, curses, and creatures.
The Parlando Project combines words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles. Here's a list of the songs in this mix along with their lyrics' authors: A Poison Tree (Blake), The Listeners (De La Mare), All Souls Night (Flexner), Reynardine (Campbell), Unreal City (Eliot), Ghost Blues (Ball), The Little Ghost (Millay), The Shadow on the Stone (Hardy), Ghost House (Frost), Stones (McKiernan)
For more about this Project see frankhudson.org
I extracted this sweet yet regretful poem for music performance by the LYL Band from a longer and more archaic one that Longfellow wrote.
For more about this and for more than 700 other combinations of various words (usually literary poetry) with original music visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
The LYL Band's musical performance of a short poem comparing small-town Midwestern wooden churches to an acoustic guitar.
For more that 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music, visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's little poem mention my "home" instrument, so I just had to perform it. Besides the obligatory guitar I let a string trio enter into the middle of the piece, scored in my simple way.
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
I poetically expand on this commonly expressed feeling of writers during this live LYL Band performance.
We usually use other people's words at the Parlando Project, and to see more than 700 other examples of that (mostly using literary poetry) combined with original music in various styles, visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson featured bees in many of her poems, but this short playful poem is possibly the most imaginative. I set it to music with acoustic guitar for today's audio piece.
For more than 700 other combinations of various words (usually literary poetry) with original music visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
I adapted the final poem in Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses as a song for today's audio piece. Stevenson may have intended this poem to extend the lifetime of his children's book, by explaining to future children that his 19th century poems were nevertheless about children like them however different in details from his time.
My encounter with this poem led me to see it as something many adults, and I particularly, feel about the children in our lives who grow and change and leave us with "Children of the Air."
This is what the Parlando Project does, we combine words (mostly literary poetry) with original music. We've done over 700 of them over the years, and you can hear them and read about our encounters with all those words at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Here's a section of a longer Carl Sandburg poem for American Labor Day. Physicists tell us that what we see as a solid object is just atoms and particles moving around rapidly. Sandburg and Labor Day tell us that what we see as city is just the vibration of our constant labor.
The Parlando Project has over 700 audio pieces combining various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music. You can find our previous pieces and read about our experiences of them at our blog and archives found at frankhudson.org
Claude McKay's aching summer love poem performed as a love song. That's the kind of thing the Parlando Project does, takes literary poetry and combines it with original music in various styles.
You can hear over 700 examples of this archived at our blog where I discuss my reflections on each poem and performance at frankhudson.org
A song about a spring teenage romance interrupted by the summer vacation break in the schoolyear.
For more about this and more than 700 other examples of various words (usually literary poetry) combined with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Here's a poet writing the poetry of a long sleepless night, yet he spends as much time on the others in the summer night as himself. Today I perform this story of one now long past summer night.
To hear more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Mark Twain carved out this heartrending lullaby as an epitaph for his dead daughter. I performed it simply and unadorned with my original music.
This is the 700th audio piece officially released by the Parlando Project in the 7 years since it launched. While I vary the words we use in style and outlook, most of them are taken from literary poetry. I also try to vary the original music we combine with the words, using different instruments and types of expression. You can find the other 699 pieces, along with more information about the words and my experience with them, at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
This passage from Huxley's last novel, Island, was shared in a social media post this summer, and it seemed to be to have a compelling message. So, here's my performance of that excerpt.
Usually this Project uses literary poetry for its words, but I make exceptions. There are almost 700 other combinations of various words sung, spoken, or chanted with original music available at our blog and archive which can be visted at frankhudson.org
I took William Carlos Williams poem from his early collection Al Que Quiere! and made into a song performed with a rock quartet. That's kind of what the Parlando Project does (though the music isn't always one kind of thing). We combine words (usually literary poetry) with original music.
We've done this just about 700 times in the past few years. To hear more of what we do, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's classmate Jackson also wrote poetry, and today we perform this summer poem of hers. Hunt-Jackson's July poem is filled with flowers trying to survive under heat.
We've done almost 700 of these kinds of these short audio pieces, using various words, mostly literary poetry, with original music. To read more about this, or to fine those hundreds of other pieces, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this as a children's poem, but I'm not so sure that there aren't many adults who feel this way on a long summer's day too.
This sort of thing is what the Parlando Project does: set words, usually literary poetry, to original music. We perform them in various ways, with various music, and we're nearing our 700th published example of how we do this. To hear other combinations, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Every nature poet writes from their own location for the nature they write about, and so here's a musical performance of one of mine comparing our poems to urban geese.
The Parlando Project has done nearly 700 of these combinations of various words (mostly other people's literary poetry) with original music. You can read more about this and hear other combinations at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
In 1852 the great American reformer Frederick Douglass gave a speech "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?" -- but today I cast part of it, not has history, but as questions we can ask today, and in the future, in our country, or in yours.
To read more about this, or to hear nearly 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music, visit our blog an archives at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson is a great poet partly because her poetry has several different modes. Here she is playfully looking at flies in this poem I set to music and performed.
For more about this and almost 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
June 24th is the anniversary of British poet Edward Thomas' train trip that resulted in "Adlestrop," a poem much loved in Great Britain.
During the 7 years of the Parlando Project, I've sought to bring Thomas to greater attention outside of the UK, and here's an example of why you might want to consider Thomas: a complicated but beautiful love poem sung with a piano trio.
The Project has done nearly 700 other examples combining various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music. You can find out more about this and hear those other audio pieces, at our blog and archives: frankhudson.org
What happens after death? English poet Thomas Hardy had one idea and created this poem of atomic immortality he called "Transformations." I performed it as a song with original music.
For nearly 700 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Emily the Botany Nerd wrote this of mushrooms and I figured out how to sing it, That's what this Project does, it takes words, mostly page poetry and combines them with original music in various ways.
For nearly 700 other examples of this, or to read more about the process and my experience of the poems, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
I'm in Asheville NC this weekend and yet the Black Mountain College center is closed. None-the-less, let me tip my hat to one of the leaders of the circle that became known as the Black Mountain Poets with this short acapella rendition of one of his poems.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) and original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Poet Kevin FitzPatrick helped his WWII veteran father write his memoir of the father's experiences in the Bataan Death March. Later, this poem was written about his aged father's final stay in a care home and adds an unusual twist.
I performed this with original music, remembering Kevin who's gone now too. There's almost 700 other combinations of various words, mostly poetry, with original music at our archives at frankhudson.org
With her very first line, Emily Dickinson gets right to the "minuter intuitions" that too often rule us. I performed this as a song of shared humanity from Dickinson alternative hymnal with a simple acoustic guitar tune.
The opening portion of the final section, "Rooms," of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons performed with original music. I believe she thought of the poems in Tender Buttons as Cubist poems, and this passage seems to me to be a surprisingly sweet Cubist manifesto.
As part of my occasional series this spring looking back at the roots of the Parlando Project I've been writing about things I did back in the 20th century that led up to this.
The recording is about 25 years old, but I did what I could with the audio recorded onto cassette tape. You can read about the Parlando Project and listen to our nearly 700 more recent audio pieces combining various words (mostly literary poetry) with different styles of original music at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org
I still hear poet Kevin FitzPatrick's voice in my ear. That deep sustaining sound leads me to perform his poetry. This ode of his to midlife thoughts starts out with just acoustic guitar which is eventually joined by a string sextet.
Kenneth Patchen's touching poem performed as a song with acoustic guitar. For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music in different styles, go to our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Kenneth Patchen's love poem in the dark performed in front of a three-guitar eccentric rock band. Eccentric/eclectic is essential to what this Project does, so be aware that I don't expect any listener to like everything we do.
What else do we do then? Visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org where there are over 650 examples of a variety of words (mostly literary poetry) performed with original music in different styles.
Here's my musical performance of a poem from a video game. If that's not remarkable enough, it's a piece for May Day, The international labor day. Have in intrigued you?
The poem appears, spoken by a character in the game Night in the Woods and the presumed authors are Bethany Hockenberry and Scott Benson. The music is my own composition.
For more about this or to hear the more than 650 other combinations of various words and original music we've done, go to frankhudson.org
Langston Hughes ode to Jazz from his first collection of poetry The Weary Blues performed with a Jazz combo -- well, not exactly -- it's me doing my best to give this composition a bit of a Jazz feel.
April 30th is International Jazz Day and the last day of U. S. National Poetry Month, so it's appropriate that today's performance tips our hat to Jazz Poetry.
If you want to find out more about this, or sample the more than 650 combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music (in different styles) we've done, go to our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's wistful speculation on the paths not taken performed with a folk-Jazz musical setting.
For more about this, and for more than 650 other examples of what we do: combining various words (mostly other people's literary poetry) with original music in different styles, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Ralph Waldo Emerson was key in bringing elements of South Asian thought to the still forming U. S. culture. For an example, here's a poem of his from 1856 that's an American Transcendentalist appreciation of a Hindu godhead performed as a hymn with acoustic guitar.
For more about this, and for more than 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) with original music in different styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
William Carlos Williams ambiguous poem about first-time parenthood performed. I had to choose as a performer: is he happy or seeking to be happy in this poem? I choose the later in this sorta-kinda shoegaze musical piece that's part of our National Poetry Month celebration this year.
Sandburg tell us about a Midwestern summer night in his time. Can paint the picture well enough that we can see it in ours? Let's see as I perform his poem in front of a rock quintet.
Want to read more about this, or hear more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music? Visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Peruvian author César Vallejo wrote this Easter pastoral poem and I translated it from his Spanish to create this song. Some may wonder why this is an autumn-set poem speaking of Easter. Peru is south of the equator, Easter comes in the fall.
This should be considered the first Parlando Project song, words by Keith Hill, music written by myself as teenager in The Sixties. As part of National Poetry Month, I've been going over how the Parlando Project came to be in blog posts, where you can find more about that, this song, and the archives of over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music.
A Carl Sandburg courting poem for his life partner Lillian Steichen, full of love, yearning, and admiration. Performed with original music in a way that wouldn't be too foreign to Carl the musician and singer: acoustic guitar and vocal.
For more about this an over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Robert Frost's version of a weird tale he borrowed from William Butler Yeats is performed today with a folk-rock arrangement.
For more this, and more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Edward Thomas, the honest and observant nature poet, finds signs of Spring in, well, bird poop. It's things like this that make him a cut above for me. Here's a rock band setting performance of his poem.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music in several styles, and comments on our experience of the poems, visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Others have set Anna Akhmatova's poetry to music effectively, but I decided to create and perform my own setting for this poem about lost connections.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music in various styles visit our archives at frankhudson.org
This is Frank O'Hara's love poem of separation -- separation from the beloved, separation of the lovers from the world. In this performance of it I supply a rich and strange musical piece to accompany it.
For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words, mostly poetry, with original music that also varies, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Sara Teasdale's meditation on change and not-change in wartime performed.
For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Here's an outwardly simple yet mysterious poem by Langston Hughes, published among other young Afro-American poets in the 1926 issue of Fire!! For more about this and more than 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry, combined with original music, see our archives at frankhudson.org
Another Waring Cuney lyric used on the Josh White record of the state of the Black American nation in 1941. I recently performed it with my own music as part of our February observance of US Black History Month.
For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words with original music check out our archives at frankhudson.org
Waring Cuney was one of the lesser-known young contributors to the 1926 Fire!! magazine. Later he contributed lyrics to an anti-Jim Crow Josh White recording. I used one of them again with my own musical setting today.
For more than 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Resuming our encounter with the 1926 Harlem Renaissance publication Fire!! I present my performance of Waring Cuney's poem "The Dying Bed." This musical setting uses a sample from the poem's contemporary, Blues/Gospel guitarist Willie Johnson.
Here's another performance of my poem about old love. For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org
A rambunctious country-blues ditty celebrating geezer-age love and desire. If you can't laugh on Valentine's Day, you aren't in love.
For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music try our archives at frankhudson.org
Harlem Renaissance figure Helene Johnson wrote this cold pastoral more than a decade before the more famous song lyric "Strange Fruit." I've set it to music and performed Johnson's poem for today's piece.
This sonnet by Countee Cullen begins our observance of Black History Month this year. Within my folk music setting I tried to sing this poem air of mournful hope.
Emily Dickinson's questioning meditation on living in a body performed in a new musical setting.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
A beguiling song from Yeats' verse play The Land of Heart's Desire performed with acoustic guitar and voice.
For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
This mythological folk song for Martin Luther King Day weaves a tale of a monumental iron statue of Vulcan (the Greek god Hephaestus) erected in Birmingham Alabama, some elements from King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and the infamous terror bombing of a church in that city.
Think of elegies as slow, somber tunes? Here's poet Dave Moore's rollicking but heart-felt elegy for poet-colleague Kevin FitzPatrick to bring down the end of our 2022.
Thomas Hardy's poem of wistful Christmas memories performed in this new song setting. For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Thomas Campion's Winter Solstice song performed. For more this and over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org
For Emily Dickinson's Birthday, I'll sing a poem of hers that seems resonate to me now. That's kind of what the Parlando Project does. You can find over 650 other examples of us combining various words (mostly poetry) with original music in different styles in our archives at frankhudson.org
This Emily Dickinson poem is a hymn to farm work. I've set it to music and performed it.
For more about this and over 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Jean Toomer's nocturne, one with bees in it, is oddly beautiful. Thinking about it, it seems to be about alienation from the worth of one's labor, but one doesn't have to think all the time while hearing it either.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words, mostly poetry, with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Here's a story about looking at a photo taken in St. Paul Minnesota on Thanksgiving Eve 1949. I'll post the picture it talks about at our website frankhudson.org later tonight. The same location has 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music.
A musical performance of a poem telling my theory of what ghosts are. For more about this and over 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org
American Poet Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1916 about what we'd likely call Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.)
In his poem Frost engaged in a conversation with his SAD-ness and interestingly gives it credit for knowledge and appreciation for a spare beauty. I've turned Frost's poem into a song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. This is what the Parlando Project does: combines various words (mostly poetry) with original music (various kinds). We have almost 650 of such things available at our archive at frankhudson.org
Here's a grisly folk-rock ballad with words by Robert E Howard and music freshly created this week for our Halloween series.
For more about this and over 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Our Halloween series continues with a song performed by the LYL Band about dreams as ghosts set amid neolithic English standing stones
Our Halloween series continues with this song of ghosts lured by music using the words of English poet Walter de la Mare.
For more than 600 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, go to our archives at frankhudson.org
This Dave Moore written and sung piece performed by the LYL Band continues our Halloween series. A fall gardener confronts some ghosts in this one.
For more about this and over 600 other Parlando Project pieces check out blog and audio archives at frankhudson.org
As our Halloween series continues, a contrast from our last piece. Ghosts outside the window this time, and while the questions on either side of the glass in it are difficult to answer, the eerie mood of "All Souls' Night, 1917" has helped it outlast any other by its author Hortrense King Flexner.
For more about this, and over 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) and original music, go to frankhudson.org
Sara Teasdale wrote a lot of complex love poems, but her Halloween adjacent fall poem that I sing today has a child's playfulness.
For more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) and original music, visit frankhudson.org
We start our Halloween Series this year with Emily Dickinson's sly and charming ghostly encounter performed with 12-string guitar.
For more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org
William Butler Yeats short parable "A Coat" about challenge and change performed with acoustic guitar.
For more about this poem and over 600 other performances combining various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org
A poem, now a song, about the challenges, duties, connections, and consolations of life. As it speaks of those things, it also says something about why poetry, why song.
The LYL Band performs a short passage from Leonard Cohen's The Favorite Game. For more about this and over 600 other performances of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.,org
English Tudor-era poet Thomas Wyatt wrote this timeless poem of love lost in the early 16th century, yet it can still seem immediate when read or performed today. Or so I hope, having set it to original music and performed it now.
There are over 600 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music available in our archives at frankhudson.org. Or subscribe to the Parlando Project and get the new ones as they are released.
American poet Emily Dickinson wrote this charmer, and I set it to music. Is she observing birds or little gnomes? Maybe they're hanging out together?
My project has combined over 600 sets of words (mostly other people's poetry) with various forms of original music, and you can find more about this and the others at our archives kept at frankhudson.org
We normally present short musical pieces, but today, in our annual observation of the day Jimi Hendrix died, I decided to present instead a story, audiobook-style, of how guitarist Richard Lloyd met Jimi Hendrix while Lloyd was still a teenager.
Long time listeners will note this isn't what we usually do. which is combine other people's words (mostly poetry) with original music we compose and record ourselves. You can find over 600 examples of that in our archives at frankhudson.org
I wrote a sonnet based on a couple of things writer Vlautin said in an interview many years ago. Yes, it contains a certain bleakness, but its final question is a question. Now over a decade later I've performed this as a song for this Project.
In a break from our usual practice of setting other people's poems, here's a sonnet of summer desire performed with original music. For more than 600 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Few poets wrote as often about working people and their lives as Carl Sandburg. Here then are three poems from his 1916 collection "Chicago Poems" performed for this year's celebration of American Labor Day.
A performance of American poet Emily Dickinson's tightly compressed meditation on time accompanied with my original "Punk Orchestral" music.
Today's National Radio Day, and radio hosts who spin records are part of that legacy. Here's a piece I wrote and performed a few years ago to memorialize a kind of radio DJ you've probably never heard sung about: an all-night classical musical host.
For more about this and over 600 other pieces combining various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
I wrote this little ode to Leo Fender's swoopy electric guitar design on the occasion of it being added to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art collection. This is an older performance of this by The LYL Band.
For more on this and over 600 other combinations of various words with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
This is the 2nd in my series observing Atom Bomb Day, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. It's a performance of a poem by a survivor of that bombing, Japanese poet Sadako Kurihara trans. by Richard Minear. My performance and original music today is simple and direct, the most I could do in my present life, but Kurihara's poetry can carry itself without elaboration I think.
This Longfellow poem I'll perform here with my original musical setting has a title that's beyond most vocabularies. It roughly means rebirth, but in the section I perform it is more about loss and grief. I'm performing this old American poem as part of two anniversaries: the anniversary of my late wife's death and Hiroshima or Atomic Bomb Day.
For more about this and over 600 other performances from the Parlando Project that combine various words (mostly poetry) with original music, go to frankhudson.org
American poet Dickinson considered work on a summer's afternoon and I managed to make this song to sing her regarding. For more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music (varied styles) visit our archives at frankhudson.org
I adapted and transformed a poem by John Gould Fletcher to make this original song about summer, heat, and atmosphere. For more than 600 other examples of various ways to combine various words with various original music, visit frankhudson.org
John Gould Fletcher is not much read today, but this 1916 prose poem seeks to meld modes of Blake, Rimbaud, and Whitman into a prophecy of a potential America. I may be late for American Independence Day, but I performed the ending of this multi-part poem with lots of drums and a prominent horn section part.
A very short piece that hides a little Möbius strip paradox in the middle. For more about this or over 600 other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Here's our last episode's original composition in a music-only mix that perhaps more clearly shows my "Orchestral Punk" approach to orchestral music. We'll return with a words and music combination soon, and there's are over 600 of those combinations available in our archives at frankhudson.org
Li Bai is one of most esteemed classical Chinese poets, and this is my adaptation./interpretation into English of what he might have been expressing in the 8th century. I performed it along with a short original musical piece I also composed.
Dave Moore's 7-minute compression of hard-boiled detective fiction tropes. He says he was inspired by Robert Coover, but he turns the pages his own poetic way in this one, with vocals by the author and backing from The LYL Band.
WARNING: in this crescendo of inuendo, bad words and flawed people show up.
My elegy for poet Kevin FitzPatrick performed live by The LYL Band. For more about this, or for more than 600 other Parlando Project pieces combining various words (mostly poetry) with original music go to frankhudson.org
This is our musical performance of a poem by Kevin FitzPatrick. Kevin wrote many fine poems about the world of work. This one, from his last collection Still Living in Town, is but one example. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Another of my adaptations of master classical Chinese poet Du Fu's work for performance in English. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Avant gardener Dickinson wants us to appreciate the effort it takes to flower, and so I perform her poem today with acoustic guitar. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
I adapted this poem by Tang Dynasty Chinese poet Du Fu and performed it with my original music. For more about this and more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org
English poet William Blake's mystical tiger is a highlight of his book Songs of Experience. Here's a solo acoustic guitar and vocal performance using my own musical setting from the last Year of the Tiger (2010) for the current one.
I gave this lesser-known Edward Thomas short poem a folk setting so that I, and now you, could hear it. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A primitive LYL Band cassette tape recording from the middle 80's celebrates the great baseball player. For more about this and other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit frankhudson.org
A performance of Walt Whitman's de profundis poem. Published in 1867, Whitman's expression of the questions of despair and the answer he finds still resonate today.
For more about this and other Parlando combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Carl Sandburg didn't just do Chicago poems. An example: this lovely farmland poem performed with my best approximations of Jazz in the mode of Bill Frisell for today's International Jazz Day.
This piece concludes our daily re-releases this April of some of my favorite early Parlando Project performances. The Project combines various words (mostly poetry) with original music. We've done over 600 of them, and if you'd like to hear more you can find all of them in our archives at frankhudson.org
Charlotte Mew's poetry has some unusual qualities, like in this poem which starts out like she's a more reserved Frank O'Hara and then ends more like Rilke. It's also the only Arbor Day poem you'll hear today that has a dead rat in it.
Mew is not the only one who's unusual--our listeners are too. The Parlando Project has done over 600 combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music. You can find those performances and more at frankhudson.org
I sometimes see a psychedelic aspect to Dickinson's poetry, and this performance manifests that as her spring poem is re-woven into something that you'd hear on a Sixties vinyl LP. Surely something different for Poem in your Pocket Day today.
For more about this, or more Parlando, visit frankhudson.org. There are over 600 other examples of how we combine words (mostly poetry) with original music we compose and perform in our archives there.
Warning: this 1919 poem by too-little-known Chicago Afro-American poet is disturbing. "Tired" was controversial from the start for it's bleak view, but there's internal evidence that Johnson was intending to present a "persona poem" portraying only one outlook on America's situation.
From his landmark 1916 Chicago Poems, here's Sandburg writing about summer nights and the immigrant experience then. I perform it in a way that I hope comes unstuck and drifts in time.
The Parlando Project has done over 600 of these things: combinations of various words and original music. You can find this, and others like and unlike it, in our archives at frankhudson.org
Here's a performance of Dickinson's gothic aubade re-released as part of our National Poetry Moth celebration this April.
The Parlando Project has been combining words (mostly poetry) with original music (as varied as we can make it) for six years now. and has over 600 of the results available in our archives at our blog https://frankhudson.org
In 1911 Hilda Doolittle visited her old school flame Ezra Pound in London and came out “HD, imagiste.” Branding!
H.D. never liked her last name for literary reasons anyway. And her short mysterious early poems were pioneering works of what became known as Imagism. Here's my performance and original music setting of one of her revolutionary early works as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month.
More about this, and over 600 other pieces in various styles are available in our blog archives at frankhudson.org
Here's a performance of an overlooked masterpiece of early Imagist poetry written by Irish poet Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) in 1909. In just a few well-written words he portrays a situation from rural Irish life.
For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Celebrating Shakespeare's birthday and National Poetry Month with this performance with original music.
The Parlando Project has lot like (and unlike this) in our archives, more than 600 pieces combining words (mostly poetry) with original music. To find those, or read more about this and the other pieces go to frankhudson.org
Black Ohioan Raymond G. Dandridge was a little-known link between Paul Dunbar and Langston Hughes, and this short poem about an alienated dancer who has taken on an exotic persona might be seen as a "danced near-nude" pair with Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask."
We have over 600 other performances of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music in our archives at frankhudosn.org
Our performance of Jean Toomer's incandescent Afro-American love poem is re-released today as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month.
Wand more Parlando? Our archives have over 600 other combinations of various words with original music available at our blog: frankhudson.org
e. e. cummings rapturous poem is performed with original acoustic music in this re-released version as part of celebration of National Poetry Month.
My own extended English translation of Du Fu's poem performed by The LYL Band. Du Fu (also spelled Tu Fu) is one the masters of classical Chinese poetry, and this is one my favorites of his works re-released now as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month. More about this or more Parlando? Go to frankhudson.org
Eleanor Farjeon and Robert Frost both wrote elegies for their mutual friend and poet Edward Thomas killed on Easter Monday during WWI. Which one is the more effective poem? The one I perform today by Farjeon.
Since it's National Poetry Month you may be interested in more about Thomas and this poem, or in the more than 600 other performances with we have in our archive at frankhudson.org
British poet Edward Thomas' meditation on war's absences performed with an original setting using acoustic guitar and orchestra instruments. This poem sometimes goes by the title "The Blenheim Oranges"
We're re-releasing performances like this from this Project first couple of years to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you like this, there are more than 600 other combinations of words (mostly poetry) with original music at frankhudson.org
You'll sometimes find Edward Thomas' filed under "War Poets," but his best-known poem "Adlestrop" is an unique peace poem written a few days before war broke out in Europe. In it, "nothing" happens -- the sweetest nothing. This re-release of our performance of the poem with a rock band is part of our celebration of National Poetry Month 2022.
We continue our celebration of National Poetry Month with the re-release of this beautiful short love poem by William Butler Yeats, performed with our original music.
The Parlando Project has over 600 other examples of this, available in our archives at frankhudson.org
Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem of love and respect lost performed to original music by an acoustic band. For more about this and other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music go to frankhudson.org
Just suppose that back in the 1920s someone wanted to record a Blues song based on Emily Dickinson's "A Soul selects her own Society," and so they waxed a 78 rpm platter. Well, it might sound a little like this. And if you're unusual enough to listen to that, you might enjoy some of the more than 600 other performances we have in our archives at frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's poem is performed with our original orchestral setting as we continue or celebration of National Poetry Month by re-releasing some of our favorite performances from the early years of the Parlando Project. Want to hear more combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music? Visit our archives at frankhudson.org
I translated Dada founder Tristan Tzara's surprisingly moving elegy to the important early French Modernist poet and artist Apollinaire. I then created/performed this musical setting.
To hear more than 600 other combinations of various words with original music, go to frankhudson.org
My Modernist revision of one of the last poems of noted WWI War Poet Rupert Brooke performed with my musical setting. For more about this and more than 600 other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Commemorating our previous NPM series that serially performed the entire Modernist landmark in a variety of musical contexts, here's a re-release for NPM 2022 of the opening part of "The Fire Sermon."
The entire "The Waste Land" series is available in our archives at frankhudson.org, along with over 600 other audio performances.
The LYL Band tweaks Frost with their performance of this parody. More about this and more than 600 other examples of various words mixed with original music at frankhudson.org
Here's American poetry's National Anthem and its reader's Bill of Rights performed by the Lake Street Writer's Group. Re-released to celebrate National Poetry Month and the opening day of the baseball season.
Poets Carl Sandburg and Ezra Pound wrote these two poems about their poet influences. Hey, that's what the Parlando Project is doing this National Poetry Month, and has been doing all year for 6 years: sharing via performance our musical impressions of poets! You can find more than 600 of those in our archives at frankhudson.org
When John Keats died a yet unheralded, English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley linked him with another died-to-soon poet Thomas Chatterton. A century later Black poet Anne Spencer extended that tradition by adding the name of a fellow Afro-American, Paul Laurence Dunbar, to the chain of hallowed poets.
This is the latest in our re-release of some of our favorite early Parlando Project musical pieces for for National Poetry Month. More Parlando pieces are at frankhudson.org, including other pieces by Dunbar and Spencer.
Advisory: this poem is a disturbing account of one of the first aerial bombardments of a city and resulting civilian deaths. It's also disturbing because while it was written in 1915 by a pioneering Modernist English poet F. S. Flint, it remains timely.
Robert Frost's 101-year-old poem get treated to some ripping electric guitar impersonating spring winds in this performance. We're celebrating National Poetry Month this April with selected performances from our archives. There's 600 more like (and different from) this at frankhudson.org
A performance of William Carlos Williams short poem set to original music as we continue or observance of National Poetry Month with classic performances from the Parlando Project archives. More than 600 pieces combining various words with original music are at frankhudson.org
The Parlando Project kicks off it's celebration of #NationalPoetryMonth with a re-release of its first public piece: our performance of a Carl Sandburg poem recorded the day after David Bowie died in 2016. More about the Parlando Project at frankhudson.org
Dave Moore's magnificent poetic satire performed by the author. For more about this and other combinations of various words combined with original music go to frankhudson.org
Our memorial celebration of poet Kevin FitzPatrick continues with this farm-funk story performance, about spring, sheep, coyotes, and an electric fence. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Welcoming spring with another LYL Band performance in our series celebrating poet Kevin FitzPatrick. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Kevin FitzPatrick's poem about how he came to reassess Seamus Heaney's poem performed. For more about this, and other combinations of various words and original music, go to frankhudson.org
For International Women's Day, I perform a poem by an international woman: Lola Ridge. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Rock music combines with spoken word as I present sections of two poems, one by a Russian and the other by a Ukrainian. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music go to frankhudson.org
I perform my own sonnet about winter giving way to spring. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, go to frankhudson.org
I perform short memorial poem from Langston Hughes' first book The Weary Blues. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Celebrating Valentine's Day and Black History Month with this lovely performance of Langston Hughes' love poem. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, go to frankhudson.org
As I considered performing this Langston Hughes poem for Black History Month, I was moved to add my own couplet at the end. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
I can't do this piece from a poem by Langston Hughes justice tonight, but I feel right now that's of little matter in this time and place. So, just a bare demo: a beat and guitar. After I finished laying the song I made of Hughes' poem down, I carried on riffing on a changed up version of another song for some time.
This subtle blues poem by Afro-American poet Langston Hughes performed for Black History Month. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Kicking off Black History Month early: an encomium to a great American artist's Jazz recording. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
A beautiful and harrowing poem by Ethna McKiernan performed with my music, completing our series of musical presentations of her work this winter. The previous 3 episodes here will show other aspects of why I encourage you to read more of McKiernan, perhaps in her final collection, which can be found at this link: https://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=543&a=74 For more about this and other various combinations of words, mostly poetry with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Poet McKiernan spent her last years helping the homeless, dedicating her final collection to them. Here's my performance of one poem of hers about that experience that was included in that collection, "Light Rolling Slowly Backwards," which is available from Salmon Poetry press https://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=543&a=74
Here's a moving song adapted from a poem in Irish-American poet Ethna McKiernan's "Light Moving Backwards" collection. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Ethna McKiernan's arch poem may make you smile. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music go to frankhudson.org.
More Ethna McKiernan? https://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=543&a=74
American poet Elinor Wylie's gorgeous lyric about walking with someone in winter snow performed in this new song setting. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
I perform my fresh translation of the first part of one of Arthur Rimbaud's earliest poems, one which marks the cold and dim arrival of a new year. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
This rude Edwardian ditty critiques holiday charity. For more about this, more polite and impolite songs, and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A poetry performance written for this solstice and in memoriam to two poets/friends whose voices I miss. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
This short and gothic Emily Dickinson poem is full of surprising details. For more about that and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Instead of our usual Poetry's Greatest Hits selection, a short poem of mine performed with chiming electric guitars, drums and cello. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
We turn American poet Robert Frost's early short poem inside out to make it a rocking Blues number. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Here's Robert Frost's tale in harvest time performed, a piece appropriate for American Thanksgiving. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
I adapted this classical Chinese poem about grief and mourning into an English language song. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cats Cradle this moving summation of life is described as "The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith." The LYL Band performs it to complete our Vonnegut series honoring him on the 99th anniversary of his birth. For more about this, other pieces in our Vonnegut series, and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Another short song using words from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle set to music and performed by The LYL Band. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
A dark poem from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night performed as part of our series noting the 99th anniversary of the author's birth. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
In Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut created a fictional religion whose psalms were calypso songs. This one's been often sung by fans of the book, but however imperfect, I prefer this live LYL Band version that actually sings it as a calypso. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Kurt Vonnegut wrote this short baptismal litany for a character in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. As we start a Vonnegut series on the 99th anniversary of his birth, this short LYL Band tribute performance from the week of his death in 2007 is good place to start. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
English poet Thomas Hardy's complicated ghost and grief poem performed with a funky band. For more about this and other combinations of various word and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Finishing our Halloween series, Robert Frost's poem makes a wry comment suitable for All Saints and All Souls Days this November. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
In this parody, American poet Louis Untermeyer takes a nursery rhyme and uses it to parody De La Mare's famous horror poem
"The Listeners." For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Dave Moore's chilling ballad about something more frightening than witches performed. Well worth your 8 minutes to hear this!
For more about Dave's song and almost 600 other pieces, visit frankhudson.org
Continuing our Halloween series: early 20th century Irish poet Seosamh MacCathmhaoil's revision of a trad folk song added, well, a werefox. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Starting our Halloween Series with this spooky fairy song from Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil). For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music go to frankhudson.org
An odd short Robert Frost poem in which love and connection and then freedom and free thought are presented in opposition and contrast. I perform it in weird-folk Parlando Project style. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A song I made out of British poet Edward Thomas' tale of an overnight stop during a bicycle tour ride. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Another elegy, this time from modern American poet Kevin FitzPatrick. Kevin himself recently died, and we here at the Parlando Project want to note his work. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson wrote this ecstatic poem about her experience of another poet (thought to be Elizabeth Barrett Browning.) For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
An angular rock performance of a Kevin FitzPatrick poem about trying to return a pair of workboots. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Irish poet W. B. Yeats once took exception to too-easy comforting, and I have recast his poem with this performance dedicated to poet Ethna McKiernan. For more about this and other combinations of various words combined with original music visit frankhudson.org
Two modern guitarists said some interesting things about the electric guitar in a recent interview, so I decided to perform quotes from each of them yesterday. To read the full interview https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/guitarists/squid-band
Want more Parlando? Visit frankhudson.org
A short meditation on what stands outside of silent poetry performed with acoustic guitar. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
For our second American Labor Day piece, two labor marching songs performed by a rock band, one using words by Lola Ridge, and the other words by Dave Moore. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
For American Labor Day I adapted the end of Carl Sandburg's hymn to workers "Smoke and Steel" and turned it into this song. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
The LYL Band loudly romp through a Dave Moore song about a resonant note at the core of the world. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Songs and poems often sing about poets who died young. This isn't one of those. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Performance of another sonnet in my sequence telling the story of a daughter caring for her mother with Alzheimer's. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
A performance of another sonnet in our series about dealing with a family member with Alzheimer's. For more about his and other combinations of various words with original music go to frankhudson.org
Victorian poetry's secret? Algernon Charles Swinburne was considered pretty hot stuff back then. Let's do our best to reheat the leftovers. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Here's a song whose lyrics I adapted from Rabindranath Tagore. What do you think are the silent steps of the title? For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A poem about grief performed with a rock band. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
A poem about August written by Emily Dickinson's childhood classmate is performed with acoustic guitar and bass. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
I perform, from Walt Whitman's Specimen Days, this roving meditation on summer. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson performed with sitar and electric guitars. I'm sure that's what she'd want for this song-debate between nature's seasons and her soul. For more about this and other combinations of various word and original music visit frankhudson.org
Alfred Tennyson's tiny poem about a small insect's transformation performed with original music by The LYL Band. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A somewhat imperfect performance, but I have to share this song that begins near the end of a basketball game and moves on to statements about life, dying, and death like this one:
“You can make this up. It makes up itself. You can’t make it be more than anything else.”
This musical piece uses as its text Heidi Randen's short response to Louise Glück's poem "The Wild Iris" which speaks of suffering and its aftermath with possible rebirth. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.com
A break from our sometimes intense presentations of poetry with music, here's a bluesy little ditty about the worship of dead rock stars. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
A short piece about an aging farm woman with Alzheimer's performed by The LYL Band. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Langston Hughes answered Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" with his addition. I have in turn performed it with a folk acoustic guitar setting you can sing along to, adding my own short coda to Hughes' thoughts. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Walt Whitman's hymn to American work and workers performed. It's a good choice for Independence Day - July 4th, or any other day. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A strange, yet evocative summer song written and sung by Dave Moore. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem of love, night, a ferry ride, and the world remembered performed. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
William Blake's mystic lullaby sung with acoustic guitar. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
Performing Canadian poet Bliss Carman's reimagined ancient Greek poet Sappho. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
I translated and adapted this poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho to create a song that now also references Rimbaud and his poem "Dawn" from the French poet's Illuminations. For more about this and other combination of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
A musical performance of a poem from a poet you wouldn't associate with urban grit: Joyce Kilmer. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Another short, sharp observation about love and life from the last "Twenties," this one written by Dorothy Parker. For more about this and other combination of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Written by Mary Carolyn Davies, a little-known woman from the early Modernist era of 1915, I perform this short piece with bass and acoustic guitar. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's tiny poem about art and artists performed. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
English poet Christina Rossetti's mysterious song of May, and May not. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
I perform my own fresh translation of Rimbaud's prose poem from his Illuminations today. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music go to frankhudson.org
“Oh, to be in England now that April’s there…” a wistful poem of remembering spring while being separated from one’s homeland. As we grow older, are we all separated in some way from some Spring? For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
For #InternationalJazzDay at the end of #NationalPoetryMonth, here's some early (circa 1920) Jazz Poetry by Carl Sandburg. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Langston Hughes wrote this charming spring poem for children, but even obsolete children might like it. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
For 5 years the Parlando Project has been serially performing The Waste Land for each #NationalPoetry Month. In today's concluding part, The LYL Band tears open the poem's fragments and masks that came before in a nakedly emotional expiation. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
For #NationalPoetryMonth, we celebrate Emily Dickinson and her poem about hearing a song before it's sung by performing her work with original music. For more about this and other combinations of various words with our music, visit frankhudson.org
For #NationalPoetryMonth, Carl Sandburg's wistful April tree in a spring rainstorm poem performed with acoustic guitar. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.,org
Jean Toomer's short, symbolic poem about work and responsibility performed in a modest folk song setting. As we continue our #NationalPoetryMonth celebration, you can find other combinations of various words and original music at frankhudson.org
Continuing our April #NationalPoetryMonth celebrating performance of the last section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
A wonderful and wonder-filled poem I used to hear its author Phil Dacey read and now I perform it myself as part of my #NationalPoetryMonth celebration. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Kenneth Patchen created this American myth and I perform it on this day of the season's home opener for #NationalPoetryMonth. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
For #NationalPoetryMonth here's a performance of Longfellow's deserves-to-be-better-known sonnet about the loss of American Indigenous culture. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, go to frankhudson.org
Continuing our #NationalPoetryMonth celebration and serialized performance of "The Waste Land," in this section we fully enter the titular dry Waste Land. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
For 5 years this has been our National Poetry Month tradition: performing the whole of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" piece by piece. Today we start the final section! For more about this and other pieces combining various words with original music and to follow the rest of our #NationalPoetryMonth celebration, visit frankhudson.org
My candle burns at both ends! For World Poetry Day, a performance of two contrasting poems about poetry, art, and passion from a pair of American poets.
Edna St. Vincent Millay's wry Irish fairytale of the child of a leprechaun and a friar is today's song. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Three poems from deserves-to-be-better-known Irish poet Joseph Campbell's Earth of Cualann performed for this spring and St. Patricks Day. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org
Shakespeare's spring lyric in praise of music performed with acoustic guitar, bass, and Mellotron. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music go to frankhudson.org
Here's a 2016 LYL Band performance of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem from his A Coney Island of the Mind presented here in memoriam. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Langston Hughes' poem about the sweep of Black History performed. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music that varies too, visit frankhudson.org
As part of our observation of Black History Month, I perform this early Langston Hughes poem, seeking to bring out its subtle mystery. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Claude McKay's wistful winter love poem (a double sonnet!) performed for Valentines Day during our observation of Black History Month. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Another piece for Black History Month: a 1925 Harlem Renaissance poem about Black heritage and its music performed. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
I found this lesser known poem in 1925's The New Negro anthology. Written by Georgia Douglas Johnson, its compressed emotional power comes through today! For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen wrote this short elegy for one of the first Afro-Americans to attend West Point, and today I perform it for the start of Black History Month. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Emily Dickinson's pared-back winter observation performed with acoustic guitar and bass. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
How many poems celebrate a poet's dreams? This one doesn't. Here I perform Williams' poem with piano and orchestra. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
This is Kenneth Patchen's winter poem for troubled lovers, which I perform here with with drums, bass, and piano. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
I think poet William Carlos Williams' little taunt to a January 100 years ago might still speak to us. Here's my performance of it. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music visit frankhudson.org
Shakespeare plays with gender roles and seasons of the year in this poem of illegitimate creativity. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music, go to frankhudson.org
A new Christmas carol (or Epiphany song) I've just composed using words by the American poet Longfellow. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, go to frankhudson.org
More winter solstice darkness performed, this time one of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Terrible Sonnets." For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music go to frankhudson.org
A mysterious song about winter nightfall from a poem by Irish writer Joseph Campbell, perfect for Winter Solstice. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org
A parable from the Chinese classic Zhuangzi is told with acoustic guitar and bass. Zhuang Zhou's story has been considered by philosophers ever since it was first told in the 4th century BCE. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org
Introducing a Doomscrolling Sonnet adopted from a poem by classical Chinese poet Du Fu "Thinking of Li Po at the End of the Sky." Want to know more about this piece or find other combinations of various words with original music? Visit frankhudson.org