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PODCAST

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

Parlando featuring Frank Hudson and Dave Moore, poets and musicians

Poetry has been defined as "words that want to break into song." Musicians who make music seek to "say something". Parlando will put spoken words (often, but not always, poetry) and music (different kinds, limited only by the abilities of the performing participants) together. The resulting performances will be short, 2 to 10 minutes in length. The podcast will present them un-adorned. How much variety can we find in this combination? Listen to a few episodes and see. At least at first, the two

arts books

All Episodes

02:08

Cassandra

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/21

The celebration of National Poetry Month continues with another song made from a poem found in Louis Untermeyer's between-the-wars Modern American Poetry anthology. Today's poem is by Louise Bogan, something of a poet's poet who mastered the short impactful lyric poem form in the 1920s, but didn't gather the same general readership as her fellow Maine native Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her "Cassandra" is written in the voice or shared experience of the figure from classical mythology, who had the

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02:36

Reflection in Blue

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/19

Just a few days ago, during this year's National Poetry Month series, I was posting my rough and untrained voice singing with orchestral instruments. Today I've got an acoustic guitar and I'm going to whop on it to deliver a performance of a poem by David McCord, a poet that specialized in light verse and poetry for children – even so, between-the-world-wars anthologist Louis Untermeyer included this poem in his 1937 Modern American Poetry. I'm not sure if McCord intended "Reflection in Blue" for

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01:57

A Decade

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/15

Here's a song I made from a sweet poem of enduring love by Amy Lowell. This in another in this year's April National Poetry Month series were I'm performing poems found in Louis Undermeyer's between-the-world-wars anthology, Modern American Poetry. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog

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02:24

from "A Letter to Robert Frost"

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/11

Here are some words from another poet, Robert Hillyer, who's now lesser-known, though he was a Pulitzer Prize for poetry winner and was included in Louis Untermeyer's Modern American Poetry survey published in between-the-world-wars era. His "A Letter to Robert Frost" is a long poem in rhyming couplets about the comic mutability of poetic fashion, which he tells us is applied even retroactively to dead poets. To introduce that theme (as reflected briefly in the parts I excerpt today) Hillyer tells

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06:40

Adventures of Isabel

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/09

Three things mark Louis Untermeyer's taste in his between-the-world-wars Modern American Poetry: comfort with the Modernist avant garde, appreciation of the fantasy/gothic (Poe) strain in American poetry, and the inclusion of humorous verse in a "serious" anthology. This selection from his collection has elements of the last two, and was written by a poet as many mid-century readers would have been familiar with as Frost, Eliot, or Millay: Ogden Nash. A few years back Dave Moore and the LYL Band

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03:06

Maxwell Bodenheim's "Old Age"

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/07

Here's the next poet plucked from the pages of a Lewis Untermeyer's between-the-wars anthology Modern American Poetry as part of my series for this year's National Poetry Month. The poet today is Maxwell Bodenheim, once the self-styled "King of the Greenwich Village Bohemians." As I've found is common over the years with my Project, this is poem that deals in old age written by someone far from old – the author was 26 when it was published. I'll write more about Bodenheim, his poem, and my

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03:12

A Lady Comes to an Inn

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/04

Here's another lesser-known poet and poem found in Louis Untermeyer's between the world-war anthology "Modern American Poetry:" Elizabeth J. Coatsworth and this poem about mystery and strangers. I'm using poems I found in this 85-year-old anthology to celebrate National Poetry Month this April, and this is another one that strongly asks on the silent page to be set to music. I'll write more about Coatsworth and her poem later this weekend, which you'll be able to read in the Project's companion blog

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03:11

Lethe

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/02

Continuing on our National Poetry Month series of performances of poems contained in a between-the-world-wars anthology "Modern American Poetry," here's a poem by the pioneering Imagist H.D. "Lethe" H.D. often left interpretive space in her poems, and so it is with this one. One could read it as a curse or a elegy. I've chosen the latter. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these

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03:48

Memory of Lake Superior

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/04/01

I kick off our annual celebration of U. S. National Poetry Month with the first of a series of poems (some well-known, some, like this one, less-known) found in the 20th century anthology Modern American Poetry. George Dillon's "Memory of Lake Superior" is a well-observed Spring nature poem, and sitting lesser-known on a page in this old book made me want to bring it, now sung, to you. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in

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02:13

The Sun – just touched the Morning

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/27

I've been telling folks I've been working on my Emily Dickinson "No Kings" piece this week, and here it is. Though not really a statement on current political regimes, but it is something of a statement about having too great an expectation of rewards from potentates. The poem I made into a song is Dickenson at her most snarky: the king is springtime sun, and the foolish morning thinks that this "sun king" will marry her and crown her his queen. Dickinson knows how this turns out. The Parlando

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03:09

Sonnet III: Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/23

Edna St. Vincent Millay presented a complex self that wrote complex love poems and complex Spring poems. This sonnet of hers I made into a song may be any one or more of these. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

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02:39

William Butler Yeats' "Politics"

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/21

Are we through with Irish poets? Nope. How about less politics? Well, maybe. Here's a poem by Wiliam Butler Yeats weary of politics which I performed on a cheap, battered, plastic guitar. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

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04:27

Ethna McKiernan's "My Mother Gave Me Away to the...

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/16

Today, a poem that I've turned into a song for second post honoring two Irish-American poets who led an annual St. Patrick's Day poetry reading in Minnesota for several years before their death. Of the two, Ethna McKiernan had more direct ties to Ireland, having spent some time living in Dublin, and eventually in Minnesota running an Irish arts store in the Twin Cities for many years. When she would read her poem "The Day My Mother Gave Me Away to the Tinkers" she would instruct the listeners that,

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03:22

Kevin FitzPatrick's tale of Two Cities

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/15

Two Irish-American poets who Dave Moore and I knew and worked with (Kevin FitzPatrick and Ethna McKiernan) used to give an annual St. Patrick's Day poetry reading in the Twin Cities, a tradition that was ended by their final illnesses and death a few years back. It's occured to me that I can carry on that tradition here, and so, here's a poem of Kevin's, and like a lot of his best poetry, it seems kind of off-hand (though with a dry sense of humor) -- until you stop and think about the parable point

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04:00

Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/11

Here's an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem of complicated love, or something somewhat like that. Millay's original text deals with the moment where two people, two consiousnesses, meet and sepearate. She wrote a weave of images, and as I made her poem into a song I decided to refrain one line from her text to emphasize the two consiousnesses present. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these

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02:16

Apostrophe to Man

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/03/07

Do you think of Edna St. Vincent Millay as a poet of wistful love poems? Well, yes, she wrote those. She also wrote poetry like this example that stands up pretty well as a punk-rocky declaration of public disgust over war and its civic decorations and deodorizers shouted over electric guitars. Who's going to supply the noise for this? That our job today. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850

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05:08

To a Poet

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/02/26

Around 100 years ago, Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay wrote this poem about a poet's hope for posterity. I was taken by a pair of lines in his poem where he prophesies that "Modern kings will throttle you to greet/the piping voice of artificial birds." I composed a rich and strange musical setting for the poem: a piano trio playing simply augmented with an oboe, viola da gamba, and a hurdy-gurdy. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original

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03:22

Claude McKay's "After the Winter"

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/02/22

A second poem (now song) by Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay on winter, following up from our last example. The last time McKay embraced winter as reflecting his own moods, but in this one emmigrant McKay imagines a warm island respite. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and

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03:03

Claude McKay's "To Winter"

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/02/20

Continuing in our celebration of the poetry of Claude McKay, here's a short, bittersweet song made from his poem "To Winter." As a Jamaican emmigrant who lived much of his American time in the northern U.S., McKay here outlines a complex set of feelings about this time of the year. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our

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02:15

The Tired Worker

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet ·

2026/02/16

Continuing in our series this Black History Month focusing on the work of Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay. Here's a sonnet of his published The Liberator magazine in 1921, now performed with a new musical accompaniment. Long-time followers of this Project may remember that I've proposed something I call "The Sandburg Test:" does any substantial collection of the a poet's work include at least one poem dealing with the world of work? McKay tests positive with poems like this one. The Parlando

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