The Voiceless Future of Radio

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

Audio Saucepan: The Gathering Episode

Thornton Dial's artwork - There's nothing like seing it in person. The sloppiness, the color, the rough edges... 

“Audio Saucepan: The Gathering Episode” airs tomorrow night on KSFR. Every week I give my shows episode titles. Some day we should talk about titles, but I’ll leave that topic for now. I’ve written a lot of titles over the years, and I’ve rewritten a number of them.

Tomorrow’s show includes the poem “Boston Year” by Elizabeth Alexander (from The 100 Best African-American Poems; published by Sourcebooks); an excerpt from the short story “Loot” by Nadine Gordimer (from her book Life Times; published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and an a quote from the artist Thornton Dial (from Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial; Prestel). 

Public Radio - Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s story "Loot" rolls around so smoothly in my mouth. I heard her read it some years ago at Santa Fe’s premier performance space, The Lensic, as part of a Lannan Foundation Reading & Conversation. It will be fun, and tongue-twisting, to read into the station’s half-falling apart microphone “feet slipped and slithered on seaweed and sank in soggy sand, gasping sea-plants gaped at them, no one remarked there were no fish…”

Try reading that aloud. It’s different from seeing the words on the page; these words especially are demanding to be spoken. The whole story is like that. It keeps rushing along, with its litany of lists and commas. And, even though I’m not reading this part on the air, I love the image and the wording of “disintegrated human ribs and metatarsals.” There’s a glorious rhythm to that, even in its appalling imagery. Say it aloud. Watch what your mouth does.

Poetry and Public Radio

Every week I host and produce a radio show on KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio. For six years, I put together a three-hour jazz show and, each week, I’d toss a poem into the mix, even though it didn't exactly belong.

Last summer, I switched to a 1-hour show and an entirely new format. Instead of playing one jazz track after another – classic, contemporary and everything in between, I began wanting to take my listeners on a journey into more poems, philosophical fragments and literary excerpts. I broadened the musical selections, too. You’ll still get a dose of jazz, but now you’ll hear  it intermixed with music from across the globe.

The show is called “Audio Saucepan” and it streams live at ksfr.org (5-6 PM Mountain Time). Tune in sometime. You might not like it all, but you won’t be bored, I promise.