"Education," by Richard Brautigan

Here is a reading/video of Richard Brautigan's very short poem, "Education," from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968):

"Education"

Tom O'Bedlam Reads Poetry

For about two years, a person with the alias Tom O'Bedlam has been reading poetry, animating the readings with images--often of the text itself--and uploading the audio/video to Youtube. His channel has now attracted over 1,600,000 views, which Youtube calls uploads. I should add that these are not "Tom's" poems but poems more or less from the canon, loosely defined. I immediately found two old favorites, "The Groundhog" and "The Fly"--for example.

I'm no expert on the overlapping micro-demographics of Blogger and Youtube, but if you found your way to this blog, you are already probably aware of Tom O'Bedlam. If by chance you're not, however, simply visit the Youtube Channel called Spoken Verse [with a space] and enjoy accessible, well produced readings of the poems, with great attention to the words themselves, but nothing overly dramatic or stagy.

You'll find old favorites and lots of surprises. And you'll find a link to a farcical story about Youtube's attempting to kick Tom off the premises, simply because he used a photo of a woman with one breast exposed in connection with a poem he read by Michael Ondaatje. Film critic Roger Ebert was drawn into the silliness, and Tom's channel was returned to good standing. I'll provide a link here to the tale as told by Ebert:

Ebert and O'Bedlam

Ebert intimates that we should be able to detect to whom the British voice belongs (an actor), so there's a bit of added "intrigue."

But Tom O'Bedlam's project is just one of those simple but splendid things made possible by mass media, which Tom is using artfully to transmit, celebrate, and, arguably, revive a non-mass-medium, poetry.

Here is Tom's own self-effacing description (from his Channel) of how he does what he does:

"I record everything sitting at my desk in my small office. The microphone I use (these days) is a Rode Podcaster plugged into a USB port. The software is either WavePad or Audacity - both free downloads. Anybody could do it."

So please do pay Tom's channel a visit, start by finding a favorite poem, and take it from there. You won't be sorry, as the advertisements like to say.

New Readings of Flash-Fiction

Readings (plus short videos) of two pieces of short-short fiction, a.k.a flash-fiction: the first by


Kathleen Wakefield, "Old Man"

and the second by

Kristin Fouquet, "For Eliza"

Margaret Walker's poem, "Childhood"

A reading of Margaret Walker's poem,

"Childhood"

Jubilee

This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems

"Falling Leaves," by Nazim Hikmet

A video/reading (about one minute)of "Falling Leaves," a poem (in translation) by Nazim Hikmet, Turkish writer.

falling leaves

"No Uncertain Term" [the apricot poem]

A reading (with mini-movie) of "No Uncertain Term":

apricot poem

"The laws of God, the laws of man," by A.E. Housman

A Youtube reading of the poem:

Housman/laws

"Faith and Works," by Muriel Spark

A reading of "Faith and Works," a poem by Muriel Spark:

sparkpoem

"Mist, Earthquake, Grace"

Youtube reading of . . .

"Mist, Earthquake, Grace"

"Winter Nocturne"

A Youtube reading of the poem, "Winter Nocturne":

winter nocturne

Reading by Arthur Vogelsang

Here is a link to Arthur Vogelsang's reading of several poems:

Arthur Vogelsang

A Reading of "Lullaby," by W.H. Auden

After I read "Lullaby," by W.H. Auden, many years ago, I suspected that it would become one of my favorite poems over the long haul, not just a well liked poem of the moment.

Here is a link to a reading (with images of the text) of it on Youtube:

Lullaby/Auden

SMOKE AND THUNDER by Jim Chandler

I recently had the pleasure of reading Smoke and Thunder: Collected Poems by Jim Chandler. It's one of the best collections of contemporary poetry I've read in a long time, partly because it presents such a unified (but nonetheless complex) voice, vision, and perspective on experience.

Chandler is a son, so to speak, of both the South and the West, having spent some time in his youth in Pomona, California, and now making Tennessee his home. The book will remind many readers of Bukowski's work insofar as the world of the poems is populated by liquor, tobacco, coffee, hard luck, hard work, self-destruction, resilience, and defiance.

The poems themselves, however, speak from their own regional, personal, and existential space; this is not an imitation of Bukowski, by any means. Chandler's style is characterized by short-lined, explosive, pugnacious narrative poems that have great forward momentum but that can stop at any moment for a surprising reflection or a satisfying detour.

And several poems are expressly meditative, like "the anger of man," a poem about the poet's own relationship with rage but also about that emotion as something connected deeply to the male American's working-class experience. Such moments of self-reflection are not rare in the book, but they are often startling, as in "crazy dave," a poem concerning the almost automatic ways in which racism is passed along but also concerning how it can be defused by maturity and good old-fashioned intelligence; of course, Chandler doesn't say this in so many words. A poet, he lets the poem do the talking.

Many poems feature Chandler wrestling--sometimes violently, often genially--with a variety of demons most of us will recognize. In this way, the book functions as a whole, a narrative about persons and people whose first instinct, being an instinct, is to live impulsively, to keep moving and living hard--but whose complexity of character intrudes to suggest, "You know, you might want to slow down occasionally." This is never a self-indulgent book, however. The poems are too quick, firmly focused, rooted in imagery, and outward looking for that.

Chandler's "Western-ness" may come out most vividly when he expresses suspicions about the State, as in the poem about Elian Gonzalez. The poems asks us to focus on the almost Kafka-esque detail of federal agents swooping in to remove the child--and then giving him play-dough. Like many a good political poem, this one shifts the debate away from the debate, so to speak (should the the boy have been returned to his father or not?) and toward behavior: how the boy is removed, how he's treated. Details.

Chandler's "Southern-ness" comes through the poems in a variety of ways. --In places and situations many are set; in the poet's intimate knowledge of good-old-boy culture; in is dealing with God, religion, family, and history, for example.

By his own admission, Chandler has sometimes been a two-fisted drinker; he's also a two-fisted poet, full of surprises, including the ones he's experienced. Chandler has found a style that works well, suits his material, and wears extremely well over the course of a book. The book is published by 1st Books Library, and it includes an introduction by Carter Monroe.

Smoke and Thunder