Think of elegies as slow, somber tunes? Here's poet Dave Moore's rollicking but heart-felt elegy for poet-colleague Kevin FitzPatrick to bring down the end of our 2022. 

Thomas Hardy's poem of wistful Christmas memories performed in this new song setting. For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org

Thomas Campion's Winter Solstice song performed. For more this and over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org

For Emily Dickinson's Birthday, I'll sing a poem of hers that seems resonate to me now. That's kind of what the Parlando Project does. You can find over 650 other examples of us combining various words (mostly poetry) with original music in different styles in our archives at frankhudson.org

This Emily Dickinson poem is a hymn to farm work. I've set it to music and performed it. 

For more about this and over 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Jean Toomer's nocturne, one with bees in it, is oddly beautiful. Thinking about it, it seems to be about alienation from the worth of one's labor, but one doesn't have to think all the time while hearing it either. 

For more than 650 other combinations of various words, mostly poetry, with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Here's a story about looking at a photo taken in St. Paul Minnesota on Thanksgiving Eve 1949. I'll post the picture it talks about at our website frankhudson.org later tonight. The same location has 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music.

A musical performance of a poem telling my theory of what ghosts are. For more about this and over 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org

American Poet Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1916 about what we'd likely call Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.)

In his poem Frost engaged in a conversation with his SAD-ness and interestingly gives it credit for knowledge and appreciation for a spare beauty. I've turned Frost's poem into a song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. This is what the Parlando Project does: combines various words (mostly poetry) with original music (various kinds). We have almost 650 of such things available at our archive at frankhudson.org

Here's a grisly folk-rock ballad with words by Robert E Howard and music freshly created this week for our Halloween series. 

For more about this and over 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org

Our Halloween series continues with a song performed by the LYL Band about dreams as ghosts set amid neolithic English standing stones 

Our Halloween series continues with this song of ghosts lured by music using the words of English poet Walter de la Mare. 

For more than 600 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, go to our archives at frankhudson.org

This Dave Moore written and sung piece performed by the LYL Band continues our Halloween series. A fall gardener confronts some ghosts in this one.

For more about this and over 600 other Parlando Project pieces check out blog and audio archives at frankhudson.org

As our Halloween series continues, a contrast from our last piece. Ghosts outside the window this time, and while the questions on either side of the glass in it are difficult to answer, the eerie mood of "All Souls' Night, 1917" has helped it outlast any other by its author Hortrense King Flexner. 

For more about this, and over 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) and original music, go to frankhudson.org

Sara Teasdale wrote a lot of complex love poems, but her Halloween adjacent fall poem that I sing today has a child's playfulness. 

For more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) and original music, visit frankhudson.org

We start our Halloween Series this year with Emily Dickinson's sly and charming ghostly encounter performed with 12-string guitar.

For more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org

William Butler Yeats short parable "A Coat"  about challenge and change performed with acoustic guitar. 

For more about this poem and over 600 other performances combining various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org

A poem, now a song, about the challenges, duties, connections, and consolations of life. As it speaks of those things, it also says something about why poetry, why song.

The LYL Band performs a short passage from Leonard Cohen's The Favorite Game. For more about this and over 600 other performances of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.,org

English Tudor-era poet Thomas Wyatt wrote this timeless poem of love lost in the early 16th century, yet it can still seem immediate when read or performed today. Or so I hope, having set it to original music and performed it now. 

There are over 600 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music available in our archives at frankhudson.org. Or subscribe to the Parlando Project and get the new ones as they are released.

American poet Emily Dickinson wrote this charmer, and I set it to music. Is she observing birds or little gnomes? Maybe they're hanging out together?

My project has combined over 600 sets of words (mostly other people's poetry) with various forms of original music, and you can find more about this and the others at our archives kept at frankhudson.org

We normally present short musical pieces, but today, in our annual observation of the day Jimi Hendrix died, I decided to present instead a story, audiobook-style, of how guitarist Richard Lloyd met Jimi Hendrix while Lloyd was still a teenager. 

Long time listeners will note this isn't what we usually do. which is combine other people's words (mostly poetry) with original music we compose and record ourselves.  You can find over 600 examples of that in our archives at frankhudson.org

I wrote a sonnet based on a couple of things writer Vlautin said in an interview many years ago. Yes, it contains a certain bleakness, but its final question is a question. Now over a decade later I've performed this as a song for this Project.

In a break from our usual practice of setting other people's poems,  here's a sonnet of summer desire performed with original music. For more than 600 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit frankhudson.org

Few poets wrote as often about working people and their lives as Carl Sandburg. Here then are three poems from his 1916 collection "Chicago Poems" performed for this year's celebration of American Labor Day.