If you go over to Go Lil Sparrow, you can listen to a poem about Hart Crane (read by Clint Eastwood, in Guelic), and the sound of rain.

Island Road moves slowly, zigzaggedly, from autumn to spring, from despair to hope, from cynicism to love. When I listened to the recording of my awkward Reaganesque/Clint-Eastwoodian whisper through the whole 99 "sonnets", I re-experienced, recognized again the EFFORT that is part of giving birth to a new poem. It's an "incarnational" poetics - & perhaps hearing these mutterings, while reading along, is one consequence. "Entering" the form of the sonnet (I almost wrote sinnet), answering Shakespeare & Berrigan & Berryman - it was a physical, embodied encounter, represented by the "muse" figure - the figure of Spring or Persephone or Dark Lady - right from the beginning, in sonnet # 1. It felt like an encounter, a MEETING - and indeed it was.

Whether the awkwardness is finally a sign of artistic defeat - well, I hope not. Listening to the whole thing felt like listening to some big untidy Cantos getting underway. I wish someone else, some smooth actor, could read it FOR me : but it's better this way.

audblog audio post Island Road # 9 and 10.

Bear with me, dear listener-reader: it was a painful labor. "In flawed words and stubborn sounds." [Stevens]

audblog audio post Island Road # 8.

audblog audio post Island Road # 7.

audblog audio post Island Road # 5 and 6.

audblog audio post Island Road # 3 and 4.

Island Road begins gloomy & melancholy. But the poem is seasonal: it lurches toward spring.

audblog audio post : Island Road, # 1 and 2.

I am going to try to post audio blogs of Island Road in serial fashion, a few each week. If you'd like to listen & read along, just follow the links. (Actually I'm not sure if this can be done simultaneously, but if so, it would be kind of a neat new way to read poetry.)

Island Road is my attempt at a contemporary sonnet sequence. There's a little more of an intro to it, in the Author's Note at Mudlark (Island Road is issue #6).

audblog audio post

My father turns 76 tomorrow. Born 4/12/27, in Minneapolis, near the Mississippi River. He lives a couple blocks from there today.

I wrote this poem with him in mind, several years ago. (published in Way Stations.)