WordPlay

Maybe so! At least for the CD player in Studio A. It freaked out Sunday and cut short the first three tracks I tried to play from Olson's Maximus Poems. Fortunately, most of the material I'd intended to use for the show was available from the great PennSound website, so I was able to go online and stream the poems I'd programmed. Of course, I'd also planned to use three poems that weren't on PennSound, my own edits from Fred Wah's recording of the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, and, sure enough, the CD player worked fine for them. Go figure. 

The glitches did mean that I couldn't include the "Maximus From Dogtown IV" I had on the playlist, but I'll edit it in when I post the show to the WordPlay archive on ibiblio, as well as the tracks the player truncated.

For a catalog of that Archive, check out Natures (http://naturespoetry.blogspot.com).

Cathy Smith Bowers turned the tables on me (or the mixing console, at least) this past Sunday, and interviewed me about my own work. She even talked me into reading some new poems from a not-yet-published collection I expect will be titled "Carnelian Ghosts". It was great fun, and, as usual, she had real insight into the poems she asked that I read. It would have been scary, except for her encouragement. I'll have to listen one of these days to find out if I said anything interesting - or even made any sense! In the meantime, you can beat me to it by streaming this latest episode of the Laureate's Radio Hour from the Wordplay page.

Charleston poets Richard Garcia and Katherine Williams were in Asheville visiting the guests I'd scheduled this week, Gary Hawkins and Landon Godfrey. What the heck, I said, bring them in too. You'll have to share the two guest mics, but ...

And we all did an impromptu Easter show. Gary provided a couple of poems featuring dogwoods, and Richard had a poem in which Jesus played a significant part, so ...

Landon, sadly, was overcome by the vapors (or maybe it was the near-90 degree heat of the studio)*, so couldn't take part in the festivities; I'll try to get her back soon.

Music was provided for the occasion by the Malagasy artist Rossy ("I''m a Lonesome Fugitive", from A World Out of Time, Volume 2), Janet Robbins ("Nibiru's Crossing", from Carrying the Bag of Hearts Interpreting the Birth of Stars, Volume III)**, and Pierre Bensusan ("Kadourimdou", from Intuite) (Note: there's auto-playing audio at the link, just so you don't get surprised).

The show's playing all this week over on AshevilleFM's Wordplay page, so click over and give it a listen.

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* We haven't done on-air fundraisers at the station, but now would be an ideal time to help out with a donation if you enjoy hearing poetry over the Internet's airwaves - and would like to keep our poets cool so they don't keel over in the studio.

** It's "Nibiru's Crossing" that I'm talking over unintelligibly at about the halfway mark. Note to self: must wear headphones when mixing ...

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Cross-posted over at Natures (http://naturespoetry.blogspot.com) with links, which the editor here makes a little difficult.