Sing me to sleep

'Funeral Blues' (De W.H.Auden )- Tom Hiddleston

Happy National Poetry Day

Cover from the Two Rivers Press edition; artwork by Sally Castle and Peter Hay
http://tworiverspress.com/

From The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde, read by sidekick

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

MIna Loy's awesome 1914 statement of poetic possibility

Aphorisms on Futurism by Mina Loy

GOING PUBLIC #JIAM AUDIOPALOOZA - JUNE 25TH
"New Year's Night" and 'Mystery," by D. H. Lawrence - a poetry mash-up
Collaboration with Robin Sachs

Several weeks back, I decided I wanted to offer a fresh Going Public piece every day of Audiobook Week, in celebration of JIAM. But what to do? How could I present something a little "beyond" as part of the effort?

I threw this question to a reviewer extraordinaire (and dear friend) Kelli at The Oddiophile (http://www.theoddiophile.com), who immediately came back with the most wonderful idea: more dual narration - which she followed up with the idea of poetry pairing, with alternating narration.

And like THAT! the flame was lit, the call went out to the ever gracious and phenomenal Robin Sachs, and a plan was hatched.

Robin and I worked together previously on The Answers, by Stephen Dunn (http://snd.sc/LUB1YC). Since then, I've been looking for just the right project for a second collaboration and was thrilled that he was willing to join me for this very special week of Going Public. But what to choose - what to CHOOSE? Well, that's simple really, isn't it? Sachs's voice offers such depth, sensuality and power, and together...well...how could we not do Lawrence?

Oh David Herbert...such a love/hate/love relationship I have with you, just like, well, a lover I suppose - there is no middle, no even path with Lawrence. He inspires such heights and depths - rage, passion, disgust, longing. There is nothing that escapes his mark of sensuality and morbidity, usually tied inextricably together. But really, isn't that life itself - the sensual and the morbid, sex and death and sacrifice and grief pressed against each other until all the lines blur?

This first mash-up, featuring the poems "New Year's Night" and "Mystery," merging sensual with sacrificial imagery, meshed so perfectly together that the result was almost startling.

And I guarantee that you will never hear "falcon" quite the same way again...

"New Year's Night" / "Mystery" - Poetry Mash-Up, by D. H. Lawrence (read by Robin Sachs & Xe Sands)

This is a poem from Wright's 1976 collection, DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY.

"What Is Beautiful" by Jay Wright, read by Dante Micheaux

GOING PUBLIC 5.3.13 - "Vernal Equinox," by Amy Lowell

Although I do feel pretty exuberant about this time of year, what with my yard exploding into foliage song and the birds demanding that I rejoice, I also often still feel a pull of something else, something...I don't know what - melancholy, perhaps?

So Lowell is the perfect choice this week. Well, she's also very succinct, which was a must this week...

"Vernal Equinox," by Amy Lowell (read by Xe Sands)

Section XVI from Dark Harbor by Mark Strand read by Mark Johnson

The Colonel by Carolyn Forché read by Gary Zmolek

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently by Thomas Lux read by Gary Zmolek

A poem by me, Neil William Holland a.k.a. Soloneili.
Does anything ring a bell?

Section XVI from Dark Harbor by Mark Strand read by Mark Johnson

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