Name: 151010 Ice Singing Sevettijarvi.WAV by Emily Gertz
Duration: 7 min 27 s
Description: Ambient sound of ice forming on the surface of Lake Sevettijarvi, in Arctic Finland. The lake is part of Skolt Sámi territory; I recorded this sound while reporting on the tribe's fight to preserve their traditional livelihoods and culture as global warming thaws the Arctic. See: http://www.takepart.com/feature/2015/11/30/arctic-people-fight-back-against-climate-change

Ambient sound of ice forming on the surface of Lake Sevettijarvi, in Arctic Finland. The lake is part of Skolt Sámi territory; I recorded this sound while reporting on the tribe's fight to preserve their traditional livelihoods and culture as global warming thaws the Arctic. See: http://www.takepart.com/feature/2015/11/30/arctic-people-fight-back-against-climate-change

151010 Ice Singing Sevettijarvi.WAV

The second of three long-form features I've made to date exploring the lives and worlds of three titans of American poetry, in collaboration with the wonderful Irish writer Colm Toibin.

(from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b094scdh)

Four decades ago, the American poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977) died quietly in the back of a New York taxi. In his arms, he clutched a priceless portrait of his third wife, the Guinness heiress Lady Caroline Blackwood. Yet Lowell was on his way to see - and hopefully reconcile with - another woman: his beloved second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. At the time of his passing, he had - almost unwittingly - embroiled both former wives in a scandal that had polarised the American literary community.

It was a strange, tragic end to what was one of the most brilliant careers in the history of 20th century letters. In his lifetime, Robert Lowell was arguably the most celebrated poet in America - not just a writer, but a major public figure: a "Boston Brahmin" whose ancestors had arrived on the Mayflower and helped found the American nation. Lowell's groundbreaking 1959 volume "Life Studies" had introduced a generation of readers to the idea of "confessional" poetry - stanzas that drew candidly from the poet's experience - and he was a teacher to Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and several other poetic giants. Erudite, charming and hugely personable, Lowell not only attracted a large and loyal circle of friends, but poured his vast intellectual powers into verses that were dense with historical allusion, dazzling linguistic turns and deep emotional insight. Everything - all of history, all of humanity - seems at Lowell's fingertips, and in his finest poems - among them "For The Union Dead", "Skunk Hour", "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" and "Man and Wife" - he seems uniquely to be placing his own experience and history on a vast, almost unimaginable canvas of human history. In his pomp, his poems seemed to carry on the great, sweeping modernist tradition of TS Eliot, WH Auden and Ezra Pound.

Yet Lowell's vast literary and intellectual imagination carried with it deep personal cost. Lowell suffered for most of his life with what would now be thought of as bipolar disorder. Not only did his "manias" cause him to be repeatedly institutionalised, they irreparably fractured many of his relationships, hurt those closest to him, and scarred his ability to create. Only in recent times can we understand his behaviour as a hereditary mental illness - as part of the same great, difficult inheritance that brought him wealth, fame and privilege as a member of the American aristocracy.

Forty years on, Lowell's star has waned. His reputation seems no longer to be in the highest reaches of the poetic firmament: he's a writer who is more read-about than actually read. In 2017, is his poetry simply too difficult, too wilfully intellectual, too privileged, too white and male? Or does the secret of his decline lie in that murky scandal - a still-raw controversy about the limits of a poet's private and public worlds - one that still inflames passions today?

Written and presented by the writer Colm Toibin, in this documentary Robert Lowell's remarkable life and career is remembered and appraised by those closest to him, shedding new light on one of the giants of 20th century poetry.

Robert Lowell: A Life In Study (BBC Radio 3, 2017)

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world&mdash;a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea. Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues&mdash;a bee, a key, and a sword&mdash;that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians&mdash;it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose&mdash;in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

151010 Ice Singing Sevettijarvi.WAV

Emily Gertz

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