#unpopularopinion #RSD Robert Johnson should have made his new remixes a Record Store Day exclusive

Amy Lowell wrote of the transit from desire to devotion. I made her poem into a short song as part of the Parlando Project’s #NationalPoetryMonth series. parlando.libsyn.com/a-decade

Does seem to have more treble-range information from this disk than previously released versions of this recording. No disrespect to Johnson’s genius—but on the ‘61 King of the Delta Blues Singers LP, his playing was able to make more impact because Columbia had access to the best source records

I may have just recorded the basic tracks for what will be the 900th Parlando Project released musical performance. I started planning the Parlando Project in 2015 thinking I might do an impressively large number of combinations of literary poetry with original music—maybe as many as 100!

Here’s an attempt, written after her death and posthumous Pulitzer Prize, to sum up the poetry of Amy Lowell. Is that so? I’ve found within her poems some examples of passionate poems of love and longing. 🧵

@pwallinga.bsky.social While working on setting a series of short poems from a between-the-wars anthology this month I ran into a long dishy 1937 poem where the Robert Hillyer reports talking about Dickinson, Sappho, & Amy Lowell with Robert Frost. I quickly thought of your opera The Sisters.

Spent a full working day on a sweet love song I made from a poem by Amy Lowell. Kept the music very simple, but it has what I think is a neat 5/4 beat. I’m singing it—and so a case of “a voice of subjective quality” there.

To have carved on the days of our vanity A sun A ship A star A cornstalk Also a few marks From an ancient forgotten time A child may read… —“A Work for Poets”: the final #poem of George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) who died #OTD, 13 April in CARVE THE RUNES (Polygon 2021) birlinn.co.uk/product/carv...

#NPM2026 #PoemsAloud I encroach into the realm of art song with this musical performance of two 20th century male poets reactions to Emily Dickinson—but it’s also an exploration of the mutability of The Poetry Canon. frankhudson.org/2026/04/12/f...

Back from a breakfast bike ride after awakening. Someone in my timeline had reminded me that it’s the anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut’s death. I remember the week he died the LYL Band & I did a memorial performing pieces of his work: here’s his last rites if the Bokonist faith from that:

Of course literally the day after that, in a world-class attempt at boredom-prevention, "Rock Around the Clock" was recorded.

Burning the midnight lamp tonight on a new orchestral instrument Parlando Project piece. This one’s text I’ve set to music is sort of about Robert Frost, sort of about Emily Dickinson, though written by neither—but more about the mutability of the literary canon.

Let Jeff Tweedy covering Farewell Transmission heal you this Friday youtu.be/oG6DopQgvEE?...

What’s humors’ proper weight in poetry? How well does light verse age? Can comedy gain new meaning in context? I’m just smart enough to ask I guess, answers pending. The April Parlando Project #NPM2026 #PoemsAloud series continues with an LYL Band performance. frankhudson.org/2026/04/09/a...

with stanza breaks :) thank you for sharing ♥️

#PoemsAloud I’m performing poems from a between-the-wars anthology Modern American Poetry for NPM2026. Today it was a poem by Maxwell Bodenheim, once styled “The King of Greenwich Village Bohemians.” But I was also thinking of young Bob Dylan. frankhudson.org/2026/04/07/m...

Thinking of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” this week. My modest hope is that I won’t be embarrassed to say it started not only from inexcusable geopolitical terror, but from a smaller tragedy of a poet who died in the gutter.

William Steig Moonbeams New Yorker September 22, 1986 www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgU5...

Three gigs this week! April 10 - Turf Club, St Paul MN April 11 - Athenaeum, Chicago IL April 12 - Horseshoe, Toronto ON Opening for Robyn Hitchcock & his fab band 💜 I’ll be in duo mode, backed by the fab @ricklollar ☀️ All songs streaming here, for reference 🖤 ffm.to/1dmvmy6

Painter and writer Leonora Carrington was born #OTD in 1917. Her work drew on dreams, alchemical symbolism, and Celtic mythology. 🎨 ‘Self-Portrait’ (1937-8)

#PoemsAloud Here’s my 3rd National Poetry Month musical presentation, this one made from a 1920s poem about 4 strangers who arrive at a rural inn. How strange are they? Are they Roma travelers, or—well you listen to the song or read the poem and decide: frankhudson.org/2026/04/04/a...

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me. It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

Having a wonderful time reading about a poet/writer (Elizabeth Coatsworth) I hadn’t heard of until I encountered a 1920’s poem of hers in work for this month’s special National Poetry Month Parlando Project—mostly learning about her from accounts told by her daughter, also a poet, Kate Barnes.

Early 20th c. Modernist poet H.D. wrote poems that were striking then & remain so now. Her images are certain, passionate, evocative—but she leaves space for the reader to supply context. Continuing my National Poetry Month series, a #PoemsAloud musical performance of her “Lethe:”

#NPM2026 #PoemsAloud I’m hoping for a busy April National Poetry Month presenting some other poets’ poems combined with a variety of music I record. This lakeside Spring nature poem by George Dillon is the first in the series: parlando.libsyn.com/memory-of-la...

Bob Dylan is copying me! Last year I asked AI to wholly create a protest song. The yes artificial ingredients! Lyrics made me laugh so hard I had to gin up a fake podcast to breathlessly present the results. Happy AprIl Fools Day. frankhudson.org/2025/08/21/i...

Music that’s itself, but shows it’s heard Judee Sill & Thelonious Monk. Melodies that seek to sound pretty without following conventional contours.

A song made from a little-known Dylan poem about Lake Superior. Wait, %#@ Apple screen keyboard—a Dillon poem—George Dillon. Won a Pulitzer, long-time Poetry editor, slept with Edna St. Vincent Millay, a thimbleberry connoisseur, but forgotten. There’s a law, Donald Hall’s Law. Read/hear here:

For Trans Day of Visibility, here’s a poem of Emily Dickinson’s I combined with original music & added an inline epigraph to: frankhudson.org/2022/12/10/i...

“Briefly, we shine” Spent Sunday going through 500 pages of poems collected in a between-World-Wars anthology of American verse. From this I have culled 50 poems, some of which I’ll sing & share with you this April for National Poetry Month. #PoemsAloud

Calling all troubadours! An idea. Post your audio poems. Tag them #PoemsAloud so they're easy to find & share. That's the idea. 🥳 Why? #PoemsAloud syncs perfectly w/ #PoemsAbout or can stand on its own. Some poems live beyond the page. I recorded a bunch & don't know what else to do w/ them 🤷‍♀️

For various reasons my long-running Parlando Project (where I combine literary poetry in the public domain with music in differing styles) production schedule is uncertain—one example: I haven’t yet decided what to do for April National Poetry Month. I have 4 ideas so far (see thread)

It’s a springtime No Kings morning, & time to post a musical piece made from an Emily Dickinson poem about a foolish maiden & a king. Today a whole lot of not to be fooled women & men are going to be marching & there will be some singing. frankhudson.org/2026/03/27/t...

Last night in Cleveland, the great Lenny Kaye, best known as Patti Smith’s sideman, staged his Nuggets garage rock revival. Most fun I’ve had at a show in some time. The show ended with Gloria and Sonic Reducer (for us Clevelanders). The Crowd went nuts!

Someone has to know who the woman sharing the stage here is.

Celebrate the Frank O'Hara Centennial 🎂💯 📷 Walter Silver, 1950s "The very rhythms of New York enact themselves in his lines - the horns honking, the heels clicking." - David Lehman

Likely more than any timeline junkie will ever read—but for the 100th anniversary of his birth this link collects my Parlando Project’s musical pieces connected to Frank O’Hara. Includes selections from the small minority of Parlando pieces where I wrote the words. frankhudson.org/tag/frank-oh...

I guess I’m essentially a guitarist, & here’s a band with two guitarists I greatly admire—but what made the such a unique pleasure was that rhythm section.

Earlier this month I presented Edna St. Vincent Millay’s angry apostrophe to mankind. With the promise of occasional spring I now have made a song from this, her sensuous apostrophe to Spring & youth: frankhudson.org/2026/03/22/s...

It’s 79 degrees—I’m going to hop on my bike and make vitamin D using human skin…

New song made from a literary poem. I wrote this about it: “I too can see what old men do with the weapons of political power so discordant from the Spring that still exists and says we are not here to be the last ones living, but to be as the first ones.” frankhudson.org/2026/03/21/w...

Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #Melt. Not collapse. Release. Don’t post before Friday. That softening? That loss of resistance? That’s the poem. Tag it. Use Alt Text.

For those (like me) who find details delicious, the Andrew Hickey of his day.

Reed is speaking here of the discontinuation of high school arts/drama programs.

Private credit nose devours half an index finger.

A Joyce, not an echo.

A poem about mother-daughter tensions I turned into a song this month to remember a poet who led a local St Patrick’s Day reading for many years. Poetry fanciers have good imaginations, & they may have to use them here to imagine a woman & a better singer performing this song.

I begin my remembrance of two Minnesota Irish-American poets who before their deaths led an annual St. Patrick’s Day reading. The first poet, Kevin FitzPatrick, mastered a poetry that seems like a highly compressed short-story, as in this tale of the Twin Cities.

Here’s the final musical performance of 10 literary snow storm poems from the Parlando Project’s decade long run. A good one as we enter a Sunday under drifts and callous leadership, Kenneth Patchen’s “The Snow Is Deep on the Ground.” Wishing #Blizzsky #poetry & #music, and thanks for listening!