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

This February during Black History Month I've been writing about the discovery, history, and my subsequent impressions of a scrapbook featuring the life and career of a mid-20th Century Afro-American musician and singer Lawrence "Hank" Hazlett who played with a swing Jazz quartet The Cats and the Fiddle from Chicago and then with his own Hank Hazlett Trio out of Minneapolis. 

In the scrapbook this creased and folded sheet of 6 numbered inspirational quotes was pasted on a page. They must have been meaningful to him, so I composed some music and read the quotes as a spoken word with music piece this month. The quotes are from (in order) M. B. Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Lloyd C. Douglas, Helen Keller, Herbert Kaufman, and Ambrose Bierce.

The Parlando Project combines various words (usually 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 experiences with the pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's Alice Dunbar Nelson's passionate love poem from the last decade to be called The Twenties performed as a song. I just saw this poem this morning, but I was so taken with it that I spent my afternoon composing some music to perform it with. 

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 them all and read about our encounters with them at hour blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Our Black History Month celebration this month is more focused on new articles on the Parlando Project blog, but I thought it'd be good to provide some new musical pieces too. Here's Langston Hughes' poem "Dreams"  which I've cast as a blues for acoustic guitar, bass, and piano for this performance.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and performs them with original music (in differing styles). We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years and you can hear them all and read what I wrote about our this Project at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org

Here's the somewhat forgotten Modernist poet Carl Sandburg in a weird mode. I still don't know what this elusive poem of his, titled "Couples," is describing, but I felt compelled to make it into this short song anyway.

That's what the Parlando Project does. We take various words (mostly literary poetry) and combine them with original music. We've done over 800 of these combinations over the years, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

I start this piece singing the refrain of a song attributed to Robert Burns, and then the music continues as I read a sonnet from my memory care series. 

The Parland Project combines words (usually literary poetry) with 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 and making the recordings at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

What is poet Emily Dickinson describing in this poem I've turned into a song? Is it soldiers marching off to the American Civil War? Or is it just maybe a partisan political campaign march in time that her country's political failure was leading it to that war?

There's more on this, and over 800 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing style at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

This William Carlos Williams short poem of disappointment and survival seemed apropos for this American January, so now I've made it into a song, just me with my rough-hewn voice with a lonely acoustic guitar. "Dreams are not a bad thing" he says. Perhaps it will speak to you too.

The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can read more about this and hear all of the previous audio pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

What if one of the Three Wise Men left a Yelp review after their Epiphany visit to the manger? Presented that way it sounds like a sketch-comedy bit, doesn't it? But T. S. Eliot had an ear for poetic dialog, and he wrote a poem that approaches the sacred on the back of a sore camel.

I took Eliot's poem and performed it with some original music yesterday. Today, I mixed the recording so you can hear it. That's what the Parlando Project does: we made over 800 combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) and combined them with differing styles of music I can record. You can hear all of those pieces and read what I wrote about the experience of making them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org