Author Archives: Editor

Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 3)

by Editor

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A Princess of Mars

This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.

Chapter 3: John Carter finds himself on the red planet.  He finds that he can leap with superhuman ability.  His first encounter with deadly and peculiar martians gives him a surprise.

You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.

Duration: 00:15:15
Read by Alessandro Cima

All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

A Wolf Loves Pork: Stop Motion Photo Animation

by Editor | 1 Comment

Takeuchi Jaijin made this film by photographing the action in stop motion then photographing the photos again in his room.  He makes the action seem to take place all along his walls, countertops and floors.  I love the way the boy dives into the filled sink and swims across!  The photo animation technique reminds me of the photo collages of artist David Hockney.

Thanks to David Pescovitz at BoingBoing for posting this.

Audio Poem by Walt Whitman: I Sing the Body Electric

by Editor | 2 Comments

471px-whitmaneakinsI Sing the Body Electric is a poem that celebrates the life of the body and its equal status with the soul.  Walt Whitman is probably the greatest poet in the English language since William Shakespeare.  Some might argue with this but there is no other poet who so muscularly tore the page to shreds with his wild, raging, soaring, lunatic language.  I think Shakespeare would have liked and admired this man because it is only he who is a match for Shakespeare’s fearless destruction and rebuilding of language.  I think that great poets always destroy before they create.  To read Whitman’s massive lifelong work, Leaves of Grass, is to wake up and realize that poetry is like blood exploding through your body and spraying its meanings and music out all over the city.  You cannot read Whitman and be the same as you were before reading him.  He is a shock to the system.

He lived from 1819 to 1892 and is often called the father of free verse.  His discovery of the loose free form of poetry is an astounding development that is still being worked out.  The problem for today is that Whitman still has the hardest punch and could do terrible damage to most poets alive and writing today.  It would not be a fair fight.

Here is the great I Sing the Body Electric, from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass book.

Download the MP3

Remember to enter a poem in our Little Poetry Contest.

Book Lovers in Paris with Piles of Books

by Editor

Here’s an excellent CBS Sunday Morning report about French book collectors in Paris. I love the piles of books in the apartments. The skinny book finder guy is a very amusing character. He reminds me of the character Johnny Depp played in the Roman Polanski movie, The Ninth Gate. That character is a shady and extremely skilled book finder who goes after rare books for wealthy collectors. The movie is fascinating for all its investigation of ancient texts and satanic illustrations.  One of the collectors in the video mentions how when a collector finds a book they like, then they must also acquire every other edition that they can find.  I totally understand this, having gone through something similar with various editions of Don Quixote.  That’s a really good book to collect because there are so many beautiful editions of it that include the work of great illustrators.  Not to mention the fact that Don Quixote himself is a maniacal book lover.

A Little Poetry Contest

by Editor | 8 Comments

Write a poem for National Poetry Month!  Just let your mind wander and write a poem of any kind in the comments area for this post.

Get your poem done by 12:00 am PST Friday April 24, 2009.

Your poem can be any length.  It can rhyme or not.  Just make a poem and let me read it.

I’ll pick my 3 favorites and do audio versions of them to post right here in the blog.

This painting is of a poor old poet trying to come up with his next poem.  Be exactly like him.