I might think of this as the first piece of my National Poetry Month observance this year, or as a piece the follows on from my Alice Dunbar Nelson "I Sit and Sew"  performance earlier in March.  "She Dreams of Sewing Machines"  is part of my set of Memory Car sonnets dealing with a daughter's experience of her mother's dementia. 

The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these, and we will be adding several more as part of our April  #NPM2025 participation.  You can hear any of our previous audio pieces and read about experience performing them at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org

John "Paddy" Hemingway died this St. Patrick's day. Dublin born, and in Dublin he died, but he was in the news because he was the last surviving RAF pilot from the Battle of Britain during WWII. 

I immediately thought of this Yeats poem, about a fatalistic Irish pilot during WWI who flew into battle having no love for the British Empire. His Wikipedia summary mentions nothing about his weighing of the enormous risks he took in RAF battles, but a recounting of the number of times he was shot down and got back to flying again makes me think he'd accepted his death as a probable result of his service. Fate had sport with him, he lived to be 105.

In his honor then, I performed Yeats poem with music I wrote this week. The Parlando Project has done over 800 of these combinations over the years, using various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in different styles. You can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org

Poet e. e. cummings hopscotched across a page with this classic Spring poem. I've now made it into a little song for the first day of this year's Spring.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of those combinations over the years, and you can hear any of them or read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org

Instead of literary poetry, here's a little SciFi. This is a Dave Moore song about R. A. Lafferty, the electrician turned daft Speculative Fiction writer, whose stories often sounded like they were spoken by an intoxicated man at a bar who needs just one more drink to wrap up his tale. 

This is older piece, recorded as the Parlando Project was starting, that I remastered today in order to finish our St. Patrick's Day series honoring Irish-American writers. 

The Parlando Project normally takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles.  We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read what we write about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Two Irish-American poets, now dead, used to lead a poetry reading every St. Patrick's Day in St. Paul. Earlier this week I presented a performance of a poem by one of them, Kevin FitzPatrick. Tonight, I release this song I adapted from a poem by the second poet, Ethna McKiernan. 

I saw "Barn Burning" as a beautiful, wild, mystical poem. I hope my version presented as song with guitar, bass, piano and harmonium brings out those qualities. 

The Parlando Project combines various words, mostly literary poetry, with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at the Project's blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a performance of a poem from FitzPatrick's final collection done in remembrance of the St. Patrick's Day poetry readings he used to lead every year. That poetry collection, Still Living in Town, told of his life working on his life-partner's farm in Wisconsin. One of the characters in that book's series of poems about rural life was the farm's dog, an incongruous poodle named Katie. 

"I Sit and Sew"  is likely Alice Dunbar-Nelson's best-known poem, a strongly worded statement of a woman wishing to assuage the suffering of war. I've now made it into a short song, as that's what the Parlando Project does. I'll write a bit more about the particulars of the poem at the Project's blog and archives later today, but I thought her poem could speak well for itself on this International Woman's Day. 

That blog and archives is located at frankhudson.org by the way.

Long work this week to find a set of words I could use and sing, ones that would meet our world and times with some measure of hope and purpose.

These are the ones I chose, written over a hundred years ago by early American Modernist poet and publisher Alfred Kreymborg. 

The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, which are located at frankhudson.org