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| A Motorola radio from 1940 in the collection of the Western Historic Radio Museum. |
New Yorker columnist Sasha Frere-Jones recently described listening to the radio as "grappling with a d.j." and I am happy to be one of those. I will miss radio if it ever disappears.
I will miss, most of all, the voice, because that is - in fact, the very thing we are losing by switching to Pandora or iTunes or whatever else comes along. The personality, the humanness.
For a blog about poetry and good writing, radio would seem to be "off topic," unless the radio show in question incorporates poetry, which "Audio Saucepan" does. Every week I select more poems than I can possibly fit into the show, then winnow down to two or three that suggest a theme or meet my mood, or that I want to hear from a recording. Some poems I want to speak into the microphone, to hear them reverberate in my ears.
Tune in tomorrow for a poem by Arab-American Hayan Charara from The Alchemist’s Diary, and an excerpt from William Corbett’s “The Whalen Poem” (both books published by Hanging Loose Press). Corbett is a fixture on the Boston literary scene, a man who believes that “poetry is a social act.”
This brings us full circle back to the idea of radio. I'm excited to have the chance to read both and mix them with music. Tune in - you'll be surprised, and hopefully delighted by the combination of beats and rhythm, harmony and voice.
Audio Saucepan: The Cow and the Couch Episode
Sunday, March 20, 5-6 PM Mountain Time
on KSFR 101.1FM in northern New Mexico or streaming live at www.ksfr.org
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