Category Archives: Podcasts

Audio Poem: Ode to a Nightingale

by Editor

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For the last day of National Poetry Month 2009, here’s a reading of Ode to a Nightingale, by English poet John Keats.  It was written in 1819 after the poet had been listening to a nightingale in the yard of a friend one morning.

Here is the text of the poem:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, –
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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Podcast of Henry David Thoreau on Poetry and Writing

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In 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother made a river voyage in a boat that they built themselves. This voyage became the subject of Thoreau’s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849 at his own expense. In this thirty-three minute excerpt, Thoreau finds himself describing the incredible beauty and serenity of the natural scene around him. But his mind wanders into a profound examination of poetry and the requirements of good writing. His call to man for a life of poetry and his demand that writers create simply from an impulse to action are powerful and true. I don’t think there is a better piece of advice that exists for writers and readers alike.

Thoreau frequently quotes from Homer’s Iliad and other sources in this piece. I have tried to separate his quotes with pauses and a change in reading tone. You might want to glance at the actual words as you listen for clarification.

Here is the text of the reading:

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which
would be in harmony with the scenery,–for if men read aright,
methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor
philosophy can supply their place.

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Horror Podcast: Fear on Demand

by Editor | 2 Comments

Fear on Demand is an excellent horror story podcast.  Their latest offering is Room 412 by Michael Laimo.  The narrator is Gord Mackenzie.  When a man checks into a hotel during a business trip he is irritated by a constant thumping from the room next door.  What’s making that noise?  His terror mounts as the circumstances around room 412 become increasingly bizarre.

The story really had me sitting perfectly still with complete dread.

This story is not for very young listeners.

Listen to the Room 412 podcast.

Podcast Discussion of Thoreau’s Walden

by Editor

486px-henry_david_thoreauI was very interested in a post about Henry David Thoreau at BoingBoing this weekend.  I got into one of those wonderfully dignified arguments in the comments with other Thoreau lovers and haters.  But one of the commenters posted a link to this fascinating podcast episode in which a Thomas Jefferson fan and expert named Clay Jenkinson discusses Thoreau’s masterwork and its connection to the thinking of Jefferson.  It’s a great listen and has me all excited about Walden again.  In fact, I think I’m going to do a full reading the book right here.  Perhaps I’ll start it this week.  We’ll see.  But I certainly think it needs to be read with all the punkish attitude and brilliant observation that I see in the book.  If you want to read Walden, you sort of have to become Henry David Thoreau for a while.  Not an easy task.

Meanwhile, you really should listen to this marvelous show about Walden.

Audio Poem by Walt Whitman: I Sing the Body Electric

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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.

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Remember to enter a poem in our Little Poetry Contest.

Sci-Fi Podcast of Nebula-Nominated Short Stories

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Amazing science fiction podcast site, StarShipSofa, is offering all the 2008 Nebula Award short story nominees for free download.

The world of sci-fi periodical publishing seems to be moving in the direction of excellent online podcasts.  This is a prime example of the movement.  I’ve enjoyed many short science-fiction podcasts over the past several years.  This one is a real standout.