📕 Soundmark Records - Authors & Poets, The Complete Series

James Baldwin Reads - An Other Country - Rufus' Suicide

To try and speed up my music making process and getting more things to completion, I made this track on a one hour timer. Hope you enjoy!

Pond on the Hilltop

A reading of Robert Frost's poem "Provide, Provide"

Robert Frost: Provide, Provide

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect 
The total sky almost without defect, 
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, 
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, 
And yet not out by any brook or river, 
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.  

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds 
To darken nature and be summer woods -
 Let them think twice before they use their powers 
To blot out and drink up and sweep away 
These flowery waters and these watery flowers 
From snow that melted only yesterday.

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My melody to words by Robert Frost
Just noticed I've left out a line in repeat of the first verse. Many apologies and hope to correct as soon as I can!
Written and recorded in the park yesterday
x2ed
Picture from vinhanley.com
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A poem that certainly makes one think, almost annoying in its obscurity - and unkindness to 'trees'! 

It seems, though, its obscurity is part of its message - asking us, warning us, not to lose sight of the stars, the heavens, the spirit as we tend to the business of growing, surviving, thriving here in the world.

Frost uses the contrast of dark and light for earth and heaven. We have come from the white snow and are threatened by the ‘dark foliage’. 

And yet there is this genuine problem: how can we grow like the trees without drinking dry the Spring Pools? And how can we grow and multiply without destroying our environment, as it seems increasingly we are?

Frost has no answer, but his poem is a reminder and a warning for us to ‘think twice’.

To beware that in the process of growing up and growing tall like the trees, we do not lose our connection with the heavens, with nature, with our spirit and soul.

Spring Pools -- Robert Frost (in song)

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening- Robert Frost

A cover of this great song, played by Cavendish - Peter Rechsteiner and Rob Noordeloos.

James Taylor - You've Got A Friend

We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child’s signature, a raspberry, a page of sky. 

My grandmother threw tomatoes
from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket            
over my head. I painted
my mother’s face. She understood
loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.
 
The night undressed us (I counted
its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past
with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed,
    his granddaughter
touched my eyelid – I kissed  
                                                            
the back of her knee. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.
He was an angel, he had no name,
we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought

the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full
of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail. 
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived. 
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream. 

At the local factory, my father
took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.
The sun began a routine narration,
whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving
as the darkness spoke behind them.
It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April. 

I retell the story the light etches
into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.
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My melody to Kaminsky's words: 2-3
https://www.ilyakaminsky.com
Pic by Henn Kim
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This sung-poem had an unusual start, perhaps synchronistic, wu wei, ‘in tune’. 

I wandered into the book shop with no clear aim, except to stop by the poetry corner. Felt tired. One book, longer than the others, its black spine standing out, insisted on being read. I objected to wasting time and energy; it wasn't for me, but it insisted: ‘Starry Night, Blurry Dreams’ by HENN KIM (in capitals). As I opened it, a new song started over the shop speakers: ‘Starry Starry Night’. I was…gobsmacked. What could it mean? A line of poetry on one page accompanied a drawing on the other. Good - but still, not for me. I looked either side of the book. One had Milk and Honey by poet Rupi Kaur I'd been recommended just a few days before. The other had a slim book I didn't know: Dancing in Odessa. It might work with song. I had to do something with this synch. 

On the way to the cashier, another song began over the shop speakers: Do you want to know a secret? Of course I do. An early Beatles song, but with an ethereal quality moving it to another zone. The cashier shazammed and said it was Fairground Attraction. Following her brought me to the music section, where three books called and were answered.

With all this magic in the air, I looked forward to the poems. Oh but where was there anything to put into song? The critics all raved about its musicality, but I saw only musical phrases, not verses. So I just spoke a poem in the train. Then as certain rhythms of words and phrases arose so did the idea of song without verses. It was evening; the platform was empty, and I recorded.

Dancing In Odessa - Ilya Kaminsky (in song)

Bring me all of your dreams,  
You dreamers. 
 Bring me all of your 
 Heart melodies 
That I may wrap them 
 In a blue cloud-cloth 
Away from the too rough fingers 
Of the world. 

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My melody to Hughes' words
p64 8-14sc
From The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) by Langston Hughes.
Dreams - https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/dreams-langston-hughes-in-song?si=761e8412f6864530aa6f67783c5242e8&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 
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Langston often takes the part of another in his poems, and I am wondering who The Dream Keeper is here. In his poem ‘Dreams’, he says ‘Hold fast to your dreams’, while here he says give them to the dream keeper to stay safe from the too rough fingers of the world. The first says stay true to your dreams despite all the knocks you suffer, while this seems to say give me your dreams to avoid the hard knocks. 

Did he change his mind? Is he testing two viewpoints? Or is there some place where the opposites meet? If the Dream Keeper is God or the Poet, the message might be - put your dreams into their safekeeping, so they remain untarnished, unbroken and potent while you fight for them, like, perhaps, the flag that flies high while the battle rages all around it. 

What would this mean in practice? I suppose do not let setbacks destroy your dream. 'Dream' links to 'Heart melodies' - so perhaps connected with love.  If the dream is valid, its day may yet come. In this respect, it relates to Whittier’s Don’t Quit.

The Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes (in song)

Angelia D. Angel - Millions Of Years Still Love You

Novo Começo

Be Free

Birches (ft. Robert Frost)

John Milton - On His Blindness - Poem

1 Treaty 
2 Going Home 
3 Famous Blue Raincoat 
4 Dance Me to the End of Love (Live) 
5 If I Didn't Have Your Love 
6 Never Any Good 
7 You Want It Darker 
8 It Seemed the Better Way 
9 On That Day 
10 Everybody Knows 
11 Suzanne 
12 Darkness 
13 Tower of Song 
14 Closing Time 
15 Anthem 
16 So Long, Marianne 
17 If It Be Your Will 
18 Steer Your Way 
19 Hallelujah 
20 In My Secret Life 
21 Lullaby 
22 Leaving the Table 
23 The Future 
24 I'm Your Man 
25 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye 
26 Take This Waltz

Leonard Cohen

Produced by Bertrand Belin and Fiodor Dream Dog 
Music : Fiodor Dream Dog / Lyrics : Poem by Henry James Leigh Hunt 
Record by Nicolas Delbart (except personal music recorded by Ludovic Palabaud) at Le Snark
Mixed by Eric Spring at Le Snark 
Master by Chab at Translab

Art direction by Fiodor Dream Dog
Publishing by Fabrice Absil 

© La Gosse Productions / Fiodor Dream Dog 

Fiodor Dream Dog — Jenny Kissed Me

To: "Announcements" (announce@radio.com)
From: "Internet Multicasting Service" (carl@radio.com)
Subject: HarperAudio!
Content: Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
Org: Internet Multicasting Service
Channel: Internet Town Hall

On this segment of HarperAudio!,

American poet Robert Frost reads "West-Running Brook" and "The Death of the Hired Man." These poems, really miniature plays, use a rural New England milieu to express deeper emotional themes of human relationships and the imminence of death. Frost, who was born in 1874 and died in 1963, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943. He once described a poem as "a momentary stay against confusion." These readings were recorded in 1956 at Frost’s home.

HarperCollins is the copyright owner of the recordings on HarperAudio! and has consented to a limited distribution of HarperAudio! as an 8 khz computer sound file on Internet Town Hall. It is a violation of United States and international copyright laws to copy these recordings in any other way. Harper Audio is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. To order a copy of this tape, or to request a catalog of all Harper Audio spoken-word cassettes, please call 1-800-C-HARPER or 717-941-1214, write to Harper Audio, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, Keystone Industrial Plaza, Scranton, PA 18512, or send e-mail to harper@town.hall.org.

HarperAudio! is a production of the Internet Multicasting Service. Support for HarperAudio! is provided by Harper Collins and by O’Reilly & Associates, Interop Company, and Sun Microsystems. Network connectivity for the Internet Multicasting Service is provided by UUNET Technologies and MFS Datanet.

HarperAudio

Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"

For the best experience, 
-  Click on the song's picture for words and notes.
-  in Album/Playlist/Spotlight, first click on the big picture to the left, then on the new page click the track title. Really, it's worth the effort :) 

With Blake you will see his painting too. Each picture is in dialogue with the words (not just illustrating them).

Bards have combined music & poetry from earliest times. Many poets continue the connection, not least William Blake. But often their melodies are lost or neglected.

Spring Pools -- Robert Frost (in song)

Ian

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