Lux Interior. Historian. Freak. Legend. Paradigm Shifter. Spanker. High heeler. Foe to microphone stands of all nationalities. Cramp. Rock and Roller. Being of indeterminate origin and/or age.

The live autopsy on the Replacement Party was Thursday, 8 – 11 p.m.

Findings can be found in the archives.

First hour
(starts about 8 minutes into the archive)
Second and Third Hours

True, this week’s show does start off with about 15 minutes of the show with Bly; I’d cued it up when none of my guests had appeared by airtime, and a few minutes later headed the half-block to Malaprops for a cup of coffee. Half way there, though, I saw Glenis Redmond heading in my direction, so I met her and we headed back to the station. A few steps on, Laura Hope-Gill shouted from her car that she’d be there as soon as she parked, and that Sebastian Matthews was on the way. By a quarter after we had gathered in the studio (and Sebastian came along a couple minutes later – and brought with him Ryan Walsh, who’s now helping him edit Rivendell), and at the first break in the Bly show we went live, reading poems and talking over poetry, poets, the upcoming Wordfest, and the new plan for Rivendell for the rest of the hour. Turns out they’d all been to the same Kwanzaa party the night before, and had had a bit too much fun …

Give it a listen.

And if you wanted to catch the Bly show, it’s still available on the archive too, and it’s worth catching.

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Cross-posted at Natures
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I’ve included part of a 2007 reading at George Mason University, as well, one in which Strand gave a more chronological overview of his work.

It’s fascinating work, of course. I’d read most of his poems through the years quietly, to myself, and hearing him in person made me aware that I’d missed much of the music. Note to self: poetry needs to be sounded out. Always, no matter how ratiocinative and logopoetic (in Pound’s sense) it might appear.

Robert and Arlene were on hand for the show, and gave listeners out in radioland a primer on RiverSculpture and its mission, and some background on Strand and the readings.

Give it a listen.

Jeff

Peter’s done several residencies in the Smokies, now, and they’re beginning to find their way into his work.

We sometimes do archival shows on Wordplay, and have featured readings by Whitman, Tennyson, Yeats, and others whose voices recording technologies have happily saved from time during our three years of broadcasting. Today we featured the great Ezra Pound in readings from 1938 to 1967; he was 82 in the latter year, but still had a strong, complex voice. His reading of Canto LXXXI is exquisite, and poetry doesn’t get much better than that. “What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross…”

A huge thanks to PennSound for making its Pound archive available through the ‘net.

By the way, you might notice a few pops and distortions during the first minute of Peter’s reading. I’d set up that night to record the stage, but everyone decided to perform on the floor instead. What you hear is me moving the mics to get a more balanced recording. Sorry about that.

Music for today’s show included tunes from the remarkable Anni Rossi, who performed at the Institute as part of the program which included Peter, and California flutist Suzanne Teng.

Do lend it an ear.

Adam will be featuring new tracks from Crazy P, Max Essa, Pnuma Trio, Beat Pharmacy and Raz Ohara as well as a retro track from Tough Alliance that will have you nostalgic for the ’93 warehouse days.

Tune in and turn up the sub…

Loads of new music has been flooding our mailbox! Tonight we’ll be featuring tracks from Nightmares on Wax, Bomb the Bass, Martin Rev, a new Hot Chip remix from Mock n Toof, the new Ram Dass collaboration and Philly based artist Carl Franke. And of course, as always, a few surprises from our record bags.

Tune in Wednesday night @ 11pm!
www.nighttimeswerve.org

Not actually, mind you; he didn’t drive all the way over from Scaly Mountain to sit down in the studio this past Sunday. But he didn’t have to, since I’d recorded several of his readings in recent years, and had sat down with him in another studio back in 2006 to talk about (among other things) his translation of the classic Chinese text daode jing.

Tom’s a terrific poet, of course, so it was great fun to revisit the occasions I’d recorded. Those readings included one from September 30, 2005 at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, in which he gave, I thought, a really good overview of his work, from the poems collected in At Dusk Iridescent, to the long poem Coromandel (on line at the link), to his translation of the dao, which was then unpublished. He came back to the Center in March, 2006, though, after the dao‘s publication by Flood Editions, to present the text in full, so I used that recording for the show, as well as a snip from that interview we’d done the same day, rather than the excerpts from the previous fall.

When Hillsborough poet Jeffery Beam visited Asheville in July, he brought along several tapes featuring readings by, or interviews with, Jonathan Williams. One of those tapes, from a midsummer, 1994, reading at The Literary Institute, Muker, Swansdale, Yorkshire, also included a brief reading by Tom; I opened the show with it, since Tom hadn’t featured its material in the 2005 foray back into his earlier work.

Since we were beginning the show in Yorkshire, I used Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Greensleeves” for the show’s opening theme, and honored the multivoiced Coromadel from 2005 with “Taboehgan” by the Balinese Gamelan Semar Pegulingan (recorded in 1941, and available on Music for the Gods from the Library of Congress). Tom had said he loved Bollywood soundtracks, but I didn’t have any handy, so I closed with Ali Akbar Khan‘s “Blessings of the Heart, Part 2″, from 1993′s Garden of Dreams. Khan has composed for film scores throughout his long career, after all.

Oh, you might notice that the show that’s now available from the WPVM archive is several minutes longer than Worplay’s hour, so I should confess that it’s not the show that aired. If you happened to be listening live, you had an experience that the station’s rickety archiving system failed to record. When I came back to the station Sunday evening to re-produce the show, I included a little more of the music than I could squeeze into our live slot.

Give it a listen.

(The show will be up through Sunday the 14th, and then migrate over to the new Wordplay Archive, where you’ll find it here.)

Jeff

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Photo of Tom by Reuben Cox.

Cross-posted at Natures.

Now up on the Wordplay archive, August shows with Laura Hope-Gill and Glenis Redmond, both former members of the Wordplay crew. Laura read from her upcoming title, The Soul Tree, and Glenis celebrated her new book, Under the Sun, just out from Main Street Rag:

August 24, 2008, featuring Laura Hope-Gill

August 31, 2008, featuring Glenis Redmond

Enjoy.

Jeff

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Photo: Laura and Glenis just before a reading at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, May, 2006.

Cross-posted at Natures.