An episode from 12/9/24: Tonight's episode gathers together all of the readings I've done on this podcast from the poet William Blake (1757-1827). All of these poems can be found online at The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake:

1. Blake & His Animals: One passage from Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and two from Milton. I hope that plucking these three excerpts from his longer work can suggest how varied—not just how prophetic and opaque, but simply beautiful—so much of his poetry can be. (From the episode Poetry Friday)
2. An excerpt from his long poem Milton. (From the episode Visionary Poems)
3. Another excerpt from Milton, where Blake's personal mythology is given free reign over the city of London. (From the episode Cities Under Siege)

Listeners will forgive me for providing an episode that isn't quite brand new. But in the two months since I tentatively ended this podcast, I've seen that a way forward could be to bring out new episodes every few months. My thanks to those listeners who have responded positively to this idea.

Please continue to keep your subscription to the podcast, to share it with others, and leave reviews wherever you listen.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

An episode from 5/5/21: Tonight, I read part of John Keats's ⁠famous⁠ ⁠letter⁠ of October 27, 1818, where he talks about the poet and the poetic character. He asks the questions: how much of a poet's life is given up by their focus on poetry, by their people-watching and -listening, by their lack of social skills? How much of their lives are left over when they become so consumed (whether attracted or repelled) with the lives and words of others?

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

An episode from 12/30/20: In this second episode on Mesopotamian myth, we return to the story of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Enkidu's destructive adventures lead directly to the latter's death, and here I read Enkidu’s deathbed speech, and the dream he has of the Underworld. The translations I read from are by ⁠Andrew George⁠ and N. K. Sandars.

Other episodes on Mesopotamian myth can be found here.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

An episode from 7/28/23: Tonight's episode looks in on history, creativity, and mourning from three different angles:

In the first part, we hear scattered remarks from Bruce Springsteen over the years, about his low-fi and haunting 1982 album, ⁠Nebraska⁠. It is remarkable how the album was made by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, with a cheap recorder. For someone who bridges and so seamlessly combines music of the fifties, sixties and seventies, Nebraska sounds nearly timeless.

In the second part, I read a small section from Simon Schama's 1995 book, ⁠Landscape and Memory⁠. Here, he talks about not just his own Jewish ancestry, who hailed from the woods and forests of Ruthenia (on the border between today's Poland and Lithuania), but also about the fate of one Polish village's Jewish population, during and following World War Two.

In the third part, I read from book 24 of ⁠Homer's Iliad⁠, translated by Richmond Lattimore. In one of the most moving scenes anywhere in Homer's epics, Priam, the king of Troy, pays a visit to Achilles, the greatest warrior on the Greek side. Achilles has only recently killed Priam's son, Hector, in battle, and the old man comes to Achilles for beg for his son's body back, so that he can be given a proper funeral and burial.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

An episode from 5/9/22: Tonight, I continue my five-part series called Notes from the Grid. (A print version of NFTG has since been published.) I suggest that we don’t need to be missionaries for the culture and politics and even religion we love, and nor should we assume that anybody else needs the very things that we depend upon—“All things can console.” Alongside this, I talk about the virtue of uncertainty, and the difficulties of living with ambiguity of all kinds.

Other episodes from Notes from the Grid are here.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

An episode from 10/20/21: Tonight, we hear anecdotes from the lives of two very different poets, Walt Whitman and W. B. Yeats. The remarks from Whitman come from the journals he kept while working out the poems that went into the first edition of Leaves of Grass, while the comments from Yeats span the first half of his life. Should we be surprised that both poets experienced extreme doubts not just at the beginning of their writing lives, but all through them?

The passage from Whitman can be found in the appendices of Gary Schmidgall's edition of Whitman's poems; the quotations from Yeats can be found in the first volume of R. F. Foster's biography of Yeats.

Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

An episode from 12/19/20: Tonight, I begin perhaps the most important series of episodes on this podcast, a deep-dive into my favorite stories from mythology and religion. All episodes of The Great Myths are here.

I begin with the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. Reading from the translation by Andrew George (and an earlier one, by N. K. Sandars), I enter the story of Gilgamesh through his friendship with the typical "man of nature," Enkidu, and the "civilizing" process he undergoes.

Other episodes on Mesopotamian myth can be found here.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.