I spontaneously started using the term ancestors recently when I posted some modern presentations of old poems by dead poets to a #PoemsAbout thread. Now I see someone else may have expressed my intent before I could fully grasp it well enough to explain it.

A hot rainy day in June. Art gets interrupted by life. Is inaction caring for freedom? I find this short devotional song by Rabindranath Tagore he stored away in a prose translation & try to reconstitute some music beside it. frankhudson.org/2026/06/29/g...

OK Twin Cities, it’s a week forecast with Extreme Heat Warnings. I found this deep in my closet clean-out this past weekend.

I’m carrying burdens this week—cleaning out the back of a walk-in closet where I stored some of late wife’s stuff after she died 25 years ago. Among the things: her purse that she’d carried up until her last week, a “vows pillow” from our wedding, a box of letters she’d saved. 1/2

This guy has been posting a lot recently. Much of it seems quite good to me—none better than this one. #poetry

Edward Thomas’ poetry is too little known in the US. What if I told you he was the best friend Robert Frost ever found & that Thomas’ short poetic career can be seen as a twinned meditation on war & nature? Except for the steam train this could be Du Fu. Everything the birds know & don’t know haunts

Here’s an extra point I’ll say about this single: it’s a live, living & breathing wonderful performance of this song full of wondering.

Live from Downing St!

Summer Solstice is a strange time for this old man: a day so long while I note the rest of this life given to me to use is so short—but here’s Robert Louis Stevenson set to my simple music at the link on how he muses it is to a child in Summer. #PoemsAloud frankhudson.org/2023/07/24/b...

Some general observations on #PoemsAbout #OutAfterMidnight so far today: wow, high batting average on effective poems on this topic! Good stuff! But will the Sandburg poem I presented be the only hopeful one of the bunch?

Here’s the 2nd ancestor poem for #PoemsAbout #OutAfterMidnight @thebrokenspine.co.uk Carl Sandburg, in contrast, is more hopeful as he sits awake in his city, in his immigrant summer night, knowing his hopes mingle with their hopes. I added “inline epigraphs” during my musical performance.

#PoemsAbout #OutAfterMidnight @thebrokenspine.co.uk For those who would like to pair our contemporary poems on this topic with one by our ancestors, here’s the first of two—this the one of walking through depression: frankhudson.org/2020/05/14/a...

Think of all the weapons of war: the slicing blades, the poisons, great bombs, rapid bullets—and then there’s this one: freedom.

A poem that stops you in your tracks while your brain case jerks & swivels in a double-take.

#PoemsAloud Here’s a poem about loss and dark times by English poet Frances Cornford. Despite its title I set it to brisk music—because no matter the Devil, the poem is still singing. frankhudson.org/2026/06/16/f...

Late to this, but has anyone seen this?

What a fine remembrance of a person & a time before “major labels had realised that folk was not, for them, an investable genre.”

#PoemsAbout #WrongBody I’ve sometimes wondered when considering Emily Dickinson poems about her feelings about her body—she even wrote a poem that starts with ”I’m afraid to own a body.” Then there’s this one to which I added an inline epigram to in performance: frankhudson.org/2022/12/10/i...

I think I’m supposed to dislike this as pretentious Modernist over-reach—and maybe the people involved have things to invoke dislike—but I enjoyed it. I’ve translated & performed Dada verse, and these poems seem Lewis Carroll-like—more lighthearted—so maybe I’ve been inoculated. #PoemsAloud

I’m hoping to write later today a short piece presenting this Elinor Wylie poem, now a song—life permitting. I thought this poem a trifle—albeit a lovely sounding one—when I realized last night that imaginative escape can be from dark and intractable life—a glittering bubble in heavy toxic air.

I’ve not had new #PoemsAloud Parlando Project piece for awhile. Here’s why—and a contrasting short Claude McKay poem, performed with original music, about the strains of the world of work enmeshed with others. frankhudson.org/2026/06/09/c...

The kernel of Robyn Hitchcock’s interview here: “find your channel and keep it open…” which may involve welcoming birds (and Byrds?)

I can’t figure out a way to hear this in the US, but I’ve spent the early morning listening other work by these two artists. Here’s the closest I ever got to combining “Robert Johnson (both of them)” with a setting of Thomas Campion: parlando.libsyn.com/let-us-live-...

I just read Lesley Wheeler most recent poetry collection Mycocosmic (which includes this poem). As a poet I admire the craft in these poems—but even more so their observational/emotional/empathic powers. Here’s a link to her work: lesleywheeler.org

For Walt Whitman’s birthday, here’s a musical presentation of this summer celebration from Specimen Days: frankhudson.org/2021/07/29/a...

#PoemsAbout #EarnTheRight @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poemsaloud Once more I’ll give the living poets the words of one of our ancestors, the largely forgotten Edmund Vance Cooke. A poem about truth earning its rights.

This is a presentation & musical performance by an old man of a poem by the younger Yeats while briefly weighing the insubstantial but perhaps necessary aether of magic, dreams, and strange ancient tales. frankhudson.org/2026/05/27/a...

And here’s the man, Sonny Rollins, direct—twice in this clip around 40 years apart. These performances bring tears, awe, gratitude to this listener tonight. youtu.be/_mee-bUs9NE?...

It is with deep sorrow and profound love that we announce the passing of Sonny Rollins. The Saxophone Colossus died this afternoon at his home in Woodstock, NY at the age of 95. 1/2

Getting ready for bed, see someone posted a Sonny Rollins video. Oh, that’s nice. Oh. There’s another. Worried, I scroll up—Sonny Rollins has died. He was a lifelong dedicated artist, a master. A few years back I composed & played this tribute to remind myself & others of that:

Drums: Vachel Lindsay Bass: Charles Mingus Guitar: Mark Twain Keyboards: Emily Dickinson Vocals: Patti Smith

Today is the American holiday of graves & hot dogs, of unencumbered summer & sacrifice. Carl Sandburg wrote the poem that sits in the moment between this. Some years back the LYL band performed it live—here’s “Grass:” #PoemsAloud frankhudson.org/2017/05/24/g...

After a May of generally cool to cold mornings, this old man awakened early this morning cheered by the thought that I can bike to breakfast in just the clothes I wear around the house.

“Boomer canons” are the loudest certainly. Let Gen X=a list. Millennials lists go to 1,000. Gen Z’s axis adds a third dimension.

Was Marianne Moore in 1920 commenting on AI in this poem of hers? A question. An answer. A little 2-minute musical presentation of the poem inspired in part by one of the failed albums of 1968. frankhudson.org/2026/05/22/t...

What’s burning my midnight lamp tonight? I’ve been working all month on expanding my orchestration skills & colors—but today I returned to an unfinished piece where I’d recorded misc. tuned percussion instruments. So instead of violins & cellos, I was arranging tongue drums, thumb piano, etc.

Good morning

Expanding my reply: AI can show us the tactics we think, or act as if, make art effective & valid are subject to question. This prize winning story is so full of the tricks & tropes of some current literature that it accidentally works as a satire of them.

Yes, a strange & deadly literary ballad made for children by Walter de la Mare. I sang it with my rough-hewn voice & asked what lesson this highly condensed little story might convey: frankhudson.org/2026/05/15/t...

In the spirit of #PoemsAbout #WhatRemains here’s the grandmother of all post apocalypse poems written over a century ago, and performed at the link with original music some fewer years back. I await what current poets will write later today. frankhudson.org/2019/03/18/t...

Yes, a long read, but insightful. As an American I didn’t have the British midcentury art-college musical incubator written about here—but back then, singularly second-hand, Eno was inspirational to my small-tick efforts as a naive composer.

This raw masterpiece of a break-up poem by Alfonsina Storni in the original. Y tú... ? Sí, yo me muevo, vivo, me equivoco

This notice is in today’s Strib. I missed the earlier obituary for poet Michael Dennis Browne.

An unpresupposing poem by Conrad Aiken, a short rough-hewn musical performance of it, & a brief essay about early Modernist poems that aren’t showey about grabbing our attention. #PoemsAloud frankhudson.org/2026/05/12/v...

First time back in my studio space today since taking a break from the hectic (but rewarding) Parlando Project April Poetry Month schedule. Recorded basic tracks for two possible new pieces—one’s a strange literary ballad by Walter de la Mare, of course now set to music.

And if you want to contact MPR and politely ask them to run more Wits episodes on the radio, well, I would not object to your doing so. I think we even have recordings of live shows never aired.

This is a key tactical mistake in AI art. Trying to use it to realize specific artistic (or even commercial) imagination is most impractically frustrating. Common mistake when non-artists design artistic tools.

On the morning of May 4th 2016, I found myself wandering around Brookwood Cemetery – otherwise known as the London Necropolis. It inspired what remains one of my favourites among my many poems. Here it is with me reading it for @coastalpoet.bsky.social's #poemsaloud initiative.

Amen.