E-Verse Radio

“Descansos Negras” by Rick Mullin

Rick Mullin is the author of Soutine (2012), Huncke (2010) and Aquinas Flinched (2008). He works as an editor for the American Chemical Society.

Bethany’s Top Five Reasons Why We Know Jeff Goldblum Must Be Kept Away from Science!

What is it with this guy? Put Jeff Goldblum in a lab coat, position him near some beakers, add “Dr.” to his name, and all hell breaks loose. Seriously, keep this guy away from the science stuff.

“The Mutes” by Denise Levertov

Those groans men use passing a woman on the street or on the steps of the subway to tell her she is a female and their flesh knows it, are they a sort of tune, an ugly enough song, sung by a bird with a slit tongue but meant for music? Or are they the [...]

E-Verse Heavy Metal Air Dancer!

You know those air dancers, the big plastic tube men that flap around and dance in front of car dealerships and discount furniture warehouses?

Well, Lynn and I found ourselves passing one on Baltimore Pike, and, since it was a leisurely afternoon, a rare thing, I decided to turn the car around and pull in to get some quick footage of this all-American air dancer (it was a furniture store).

We agreed this one looked like he was at a heavy metal concert. So, here he is! Unveiling the E-Verse Heavy Metal Air Dancer. He’s a moshing, head-banging, “wacky waving arm-flailing tube man!” Check him out. And please share.

“Dead Boy” by John Crowe Ransom

“Ransom’s poetic world is mostly the South, not the South as it actually was when cotton and slavery were crowned heads, not the empirical South that the sociologists study today, but a might-have-been South, a vision of gentleness in all senses of that Chaucerian word.” – Chad Walsh

“KV Crimes” by Kurt Vile

Kurt’s a shoegazer. He hides behind his hair. He’s painfully modest and self-effacing. He’s not so much disaffected as simply shy, I think. Plus, he’s a Philly guy. You don’t walk around this city beaming at people. It’s not what’s done. So, he never cracks a smile in this video and looks like he’d rather be a million miles away. That’s his thing! He’s a musician, damnit. Not an entertainer. Besides, it’s fitting, as he’s performing the role of a decadent and bored king, surrounded by obsequious supplicants. It’s a funny commentary on the current state of rock stardom, such as it is, or at least as it is Philly style. Here’s the second video from his latest album. Lynn and I replied by text to be in the video but the KV parade had reached capacity. Have a look.

“The March Wind” by Ben Mazer

Ben Mazer’s new collection of poems is New Poems (Pen & Anvil Press, 2013). He is also the author of Poems (Pen & Anvil Press, 2010) and other collections. He is the editor of editions of the poetry of John Crowe Ransom, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, and Landis Everson. A graduate of Harvard University, and of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the Editor of The Battersea Review.

Top Five Evil Movie Gynecologists

Only Bethany could have come up with this list, and that’s why we love her.

“Strip Mine” by Rebecca Foust

“Foust brings to life an immense range of experience and feeling. This poet’s emotional intelligence correlates, too, with her formal skill, that unique talent for phrase and rhythm with which she makes a whole world palpable.” – Peter Campion

“This Is Sally Hatchet” by Father John Misty

Lynn and I caught the Father John Misty show at Union Transfer last Saturday night. It was an excellent show, and I was a bit surprised. Like most people, I’ve been listening to the Fear Fun album since it came out last year. I expected some bearded shoe-gazing at UT, but Josh (drummer for Fleet Foxes, leader of Father John Misty) was charming, funny, animated, spontaneous, and, literally speaking, spectacular. Here’s a video for one of the songs on the 2012 album Fear Fun on Sub Pop Records.

“For Prehistoric Man, Life Itself was the Biggest Gamble”: Exceedingly Rare and Wonderfully Dated In-Room Instructional Video Guide to Casino Games, Hosted by Orson Welles

In this in-room how-to guide to table games for Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, circa 1978, Welles decides that, rather than be reduced by his circumstances, he will elevate the circumstances. Perhaps in order to shore up his own sense of self esteem, and perhaps also partly out of boredom, Welles supplies elegant and erudite commentary on the casino games, citing the games’ origins in antiquity and adding colorful, literary quips along the way. It’s classic Welles, and enormously fun to watch for the flamboyant 1970s color and film style. Poor Orson, in a black tuxedo, well attired, well spoken, well read, seems sadly out of place in the shallow, glitzy world of late 1970s Las Vegas. But don’t feel too sorry for him. He’s got his expensive cigar and surely had his share of scotch along the way. Note the corny staged reaction shots of the models hired to flank him at the tables. This is a fun video. Enjoy!

“The Curfew Tolls” by Miles Burrows

Miles Burrows is the author of A Vulture’s Egg (1966). His poems have appeared in British Poetry Since 1945 and Poetry Review.

Ernest Hilbert Reads from All of You on the Good Earth at the New Jersey Poetry Festival

Ernest Hilbert Reads “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” and “Cover to Cover” from All of You on the Good Earth at the Tenth Annual New Jersey Poetry Festival, May 19, 2013.

“Ladies of the Roman Empire” by Devon Bixler

Devon Bixler was raised in Blacksburg, Virginia and educated at NYU. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles, where he’s pursuing a career as a high school History teacher.

Top Five Fun Facts about Muammar Gaddafi

Part pop-star, part “father of his country,” part third-world hero, part oil-soaked despot, the seemingly ageless (Grecian Formula!) Muammar Gaddafi was a fixture of the world stage for many decades. An inveterate attention-seeker, he competed with Michael Jackson for sheer pop sparkle, but he also lived the life of a ruthless tyrant, funded by his nation’s plentiful oil reserves. Now that he’s gone, here are some fun facts to help you remember who he was.

Quincy R. Lehr Reads “Who Killed Bambi?”

Filmed at Carmine Street Metrics, May 12th, 2013

“The Blown” by Mark Waldron

“Mark Waldron is the most striking and unusual new voice to have emerged in British poetry for some time.” – John Stammers

Composer Gabriel Kahane Sets Matthew Zapruder’s Poems from Come On All You Ghosts, Performed by La Jolla Music Society

“Composer Gabriel Kahane blurs the boundaries between popular and classical idioms with ‘Come On All You Ghosts,’ his setting of three poems by San Francisco-based Matthew Zapruder, for voice and string quartet.”

“Graffiti” by Eric Norris

Eric Norris is the co-author (with Gavin Geoffrey Dillard) of Nocturnal Omissions, available from Sibling Rivalry Press. He is also the author of Cock Sucking (On Mars) and the chapbooks Takaaki and Terence (available on Lulu.com). He is a founding editor of the poetry journal KIN (wearekin.org) and a co-host of the Carmine Street Metrics reading series in New York City.

“The State of Poetry Wants to Know. I Want to Know!” Geoffrey Hill’s Highly Amusing Oxford Professor of Poetry Lectures

The English department at Oxford University has generously posted Hill’s recent lectures online as free podcasts. The hour-long lectures are far more lively, amusing, and, at times, riotously funny than one has any reason to expect. I highly recommend these recordings for anyone interested in poetry. Hill proves equally humble and magisterial, amenable and quarrelsome (sparring at considerable length with the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy on the subject of texting and “democratic” notions of verse), as ready with an endearing anecdote as a devastating rapier thrust.

Ernest Hilbert’s Poem “Between Sides Seven and Eight of Die Walkure” in the Summer Issue of Listen! Magazine

Listen: Life with Classical Music is North America’s classical music magazine covering people, places and events; recommendations of recordings, books, and film; and all the many ways our lives are touched by classical music.

Listen: Life with Classical Music is published by ArkivMusic, the Source for Classical Music. Since 2002 the online retailer has established itself as America’s leading source for classical music CDs and DVDs, offering the widest selection of classical recordings available anywhere. Dedicated to serving classical music aficionados and professionals, ArkivMusic now offers this highly stylish, beautifully designed magazine about musicians, recordings, musical travel destinations, and much more.

“Easter Parade” by Sophie Mayer

“Full of zest, variety and intellectual ambition. There is no such thing as a typical Mayer poem, diversity being her great strength. Dazzling.” – Jane Holland

Bethany’s Top Five Sexiest Pirates

Bloodthirsty brigands of the sea, buccaneers of the Spanish Main, arrrrrgh, it’s pirate’s we’re thinking of. How did they get to be so sexy? Let’s check it out.

“Melhill Feast” by William Barnes

Thanks to David Yezzi, for acquiring and sharing the rare first Thomas Hardy-edited edition of Barnes.

“In the Trance” by Brenda Hillman

“It is impossible to put boundaries on your words, even if you make a poem. Each word is a maze. So you are full of desire to make a memorable thing and have the form be very dictated by some way that it has to be. But the poem itself is going to undo that intention. It’s almost like you’re knitting a sweater and something is unraveling it on the other end.”

“EACH CLIMBER BRAND NEW IN HIS SKIN”: ANNOUNCING THE SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF THE THIRD COOPERATIVE FINE-ART BOOK BY DAVID YEZZI AND ERNEST HILBERT

This delightful handmade concertina book extends vertically to reveal two poems about mountains, one each by David Yezzi and Ernest Hilbert. Only twelve copies available for sale at $30.

“Leather-Bound Road” by Luke Kennard

“His language is exciting and it feels to me that he’s a truly 21st-century writer, taking inspiration from all over the place, unafraid of barriers and conventions.” – Ian Mcmillan

“Reborn, An Elegy for Jeff Hanneman” by Jeff Holt (with Audio)

Jeff Hanneman, guitarist and founding member of extreme heavy metal band Slayer, died recently of liver failure at the age of 49. He was known for his aggressive and dynamic guitar work and for helping to bring the raucous energy of California punk into the more sprawling, progressive world of heavy metal. He was not a particularly likable man, and he may seem an unlikely subject for a tribute poem, but poet Jeff Holt, who was reared on his music, persuasively captures the raw energy of Hanneman’s guitar playing as well as his provocative appearance in his new poem “Reborn,” whose title derives from a Slayer song from their seminal 1980s Def Jam release Reign in Blood.

“An English Peasant” by George Crabbe

“Nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.” – Lord Byron