Looking for the awesomeness that is Going Public…in Shorts, the serialized audio story project? Check the posts page starting on June 1st for the story rollouts! Stories will be released 1-2 per day throughout June.
May 24, 2013
Let’s see…this week we’ve got resilience, dark comedic social commentary, the final installment of a lovely poem, and of course, Tom Jones to round us out.
Report Card Comments from the Far North (from Miss Royston, Grade Five/Six Class)
by Jennifer Manuel, from Listerature Vol. 2 - Little Fiction
Read by Xe Sands
WARNING: PROFANITY
Xe writes…
From the creative powerhouse of Little Fiction, comes a second piece from Listerature Vol. 1, this time featuring the commentary of an elementary school teacher in the “far north.”
This week’s selection is a one-two punch. Sure, there is a hint of dark comedy here, but in the context of several societal tragedies. The state of public education in many parts of our country. Parenting skills that seem too close to Trainspotting.
And maybe you won’t hear the comedy at all – maybe it isn’t even there, really. Maybe it is just our discomfort at the realities presented that creates the urge to distance ourselves with embarrassed laughter.
I Am Not Dust, by Diane Havens
Read by Diane Havens
Diane writes…
This has been a year of too many reminders of my own mortality. And I began considering the old song “Dust in the Wind” and the Ash Wednesday humbler “Remember, man, that thou art dust and into dust thou shalt return.”
I, however, don’t look at it that way. So I wrote this poem.
I am not dust
one day I will look
on the ocean
my birth bed
and sleeping
let the tide consume me
I am not dust
and to it
I shall not return
I am water
salty warm
fluid
healing life giving
water
ever moving
covering the earth
with massive lapping hands
in concert with the moon
its rhythmic constant roaring song
you are wrong
I am not dust
not dry and dirty
nor ashen grey
scattered by wind
and trodden under feet
I will not rot
instead evaporate
only to rain on another plane
A short poem triptych from Lunar Eclipse, by Peter Davey
Read by Sonia Vilim
Sonia writes…
Peter´s reflections on a birding walk in the natural reserve Pannel Valley, a gloomy meeting of the river and the sea, finally returnig to the breadbasket of the Hampshire Downs. Recorded with permission from the author.
Pannel Valley
oceans of fragmites
white
waves of stalks surging
into plumes
ducks
rocketing in brief bright formations
and the sky
blue
blue and gulls
flurrying like sudden
snowstorms, and the marsh-harrier among them, veering, lumbering
on huge
sombre wings
Estuary
dead
land
a shattered window rattles in the wind
where gulls rise
above the dead water and the dead sand
dead land
the city murmuring
across the sea, exhales its columns curling
to the clouds
the earth burns
one ship
specked upon the blue
emptiness
Returning to the Hampshire Downs
All smells of rain
the wire grass, clouds
rearing in the west
one sweep of skyline rough with stalks
with thisleheads
rooks
rise upward
spiral, soaring, calling
glide away
slight curves across the hills
the rim of land
outshines the sky
Image: Courtesy of Peter Davey
Mammon and the Archer, by O. Henry
Read by Wyntner Woody
Wyntner writes…
A short story from O. Henry’s collection of stories, The Four Million, published by Doubleday, Page & Co. New York in 1906.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Anthony Rockwall, retired proprietor of the Eureka Soaps manufactory, crochety, loving,
pragmatic and thoroughly in his son’s camp
Richard Rockwall, his son, recently graduated from college, and still wet behind the ears, but honest and decent
Aunt Ellen, Anthony’s sister, a bit worn at the edges, but still girlish when it comes to Love
Miss Lantry, the apple of Richard’s eye
Kelly, an Irish”fixer” with street smarts
THE SETTING
Manhattan
Anthony Rockwall’s residence on 5th Avenue
Tom Jones – Book 4, Chapter 12, by Henry Fielding
Read by Mark Turetsky
Mark writes…
Book 4 Chapter 12 of Tom Jones.
This is part of an ongoing project in which I will record and post one chapter per week of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones over the course of four years.
In this chapter, we learn just how profoundly Tom’s indiscretion with Molly has hurt Sophia. The answer is: profoundly. Fielding compares Sophia’s love for Tom to a physical disease (in agreement with Stoical philosophy), and suggests that she falls into a relapse every time she sees Tom. She finally resolves to leave her father’s house and live with her aunt, but something happens which stops her. The chapter ends on a cliffhanger, which will be resolved in next week’s chapter.
Categories: Going Public
Leave a comment
May 17, 2013
Well…we’ve got tragedy, longing and Tom Jones this week…
Love Song, by William Carlos Williams
Read by Xe Sands
Xe writes…
Poets slip under my defenses by different means. Some pack a powerful punch, especially at the end…they can turn a phrase in such a way that I find myself somewhat destroyed before my brain has caught up with the meaning of the words. And some just sum up what I’m experiencing so perfectly, I have no choice but to allow them in.
But there are those, like William Carlos Williams, Lawrence, e.e. cummings Neruda…those who slip in on a visceral level. They create work that seems to soak into your skin, make you feel something on a physical level.
So this poem. Hmm. I don’t even know exactly what Williams is really trying to say – and I don’t need to. I just feel something slide over me, around me, slip under my defenses and float along in my bloodstream. That’s a whole lot of power for a poet to have.
From Hamlet Act IV Sc 1, by William Shakespeare
Read by Diane Havens and Robert Jadah
Diane writes…
A pivotal moment in the plot from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” where a distraught Gertrude tells Claudius that Hamlet has mistakenly murdered Polonius.
From the free literature podcasts “Acting It Out.”
Tom Jones – Book 4, Chapter 11, by Henry Fielding
Read by Mark Turetsky
Mark writes…
Book 4 Chapter 11 of Tom Jones.
This is part of an ongoing project in which I will record and post one chapter per week of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones over the course of four years.
Yet another instance of Tom Jones doing precisely the right thing, but losing everyone else’s respect for it. Tom gallops home to Allworthy’s estate and takes full responsibility for corrupting Molly (while it’s pretty firmly established that things happened vice versa). Allworthy rescinds his sentence sending Molly to a correctional home, and Blifil, with Square and Thwackum in tow, finish out the chapter trashing Tom.
A few quick thoughts:
- I love Fielding’s references to the events of books 1 and 2, telling the reader to go back and read them in case they’ve forgotten.
- Square’s railing against Tom,”I am resolved, from this instance, never to [...] think anything virtue which doth not exactly quadrate with the unerring rule of right.” Moral absolutism AND geometry!
- Fielding’s nod to the previous chapter, where Squire Western claims that he often went out “whoring” with Allworthy, where he says it was a complete fabrication, as Allworthy didn’t even go to college.
- And, while on the subject, Fielding refers to this as an unnamed monosyllable. The critical edition I have of the novel is stumped, and suggests the, rather timid, “rant.”
Categories: Going Public
Leave a comment
May 10, 2013
Total buffet over at Going Public this week!
From a letter to Scott from Zelda Fitzgerald 1919, by Diane Havens
Read by Diane Havens
Diane writes…
Zelda Fitzgerald was a complex, introspective woman, and I can understand how she would fascinate a writer like F. Scott Fitzgerald. These lines from one of her many letters are beautiful musings on death and philosophy.
Words and If We Move Towards Eternity, by Peter Davey
Read by Sonia Vilim
Sonia writes…
“Words” and “If We Move Towards Eternity” by Peter Davey from his collection of “Poems from Long Ago” drawing us into his inner space of contemplation…recorded with permission of the author.
W o r d s
We fasten words to things that fill our world
then cease to see them -
goat, stone, snow
cow, bean – we barely notice
how eternity has brought to bear
upon each molecule its energy of purpose
forming patinas of bone, of grizzled skin,
of horn, of hair; we seldom sense
the transience of ancient weathered things
nor apprehend
the folding forms of birth and growth and death
until the word no longer fits
If We Move Towards Eternity
If we move towards eternity
eternity is not
here – the blaze of finches’ wings,
of thistledown
If we move towards eternity,
eternity is not within
each stone, each drifting seed
nor turn of tide and time, the seasons
turning ever on themselves
If we move towards eternity
eternity does not endow
the planet’s poise, the slow majestic round
of sun and moon
If we move towards eternity
eternity is not within
each moment we are here
and now
alone
Image: “Trapped Leaf” by Peter Davey
The Walrus & the Carpenter, by Lewis Carroll
Read by Xe Sands
Xe writes…
…for Diana…
So a while back, in a fit of (now forgotten) pique, I ran a li’l contest on Twitter re: favorite poems. You might recall that author Kevin Hearne was one of the winners, and that The Transcendental Churro poem was born and recorded.
But the fab Diana/@Saschakeet also won, and it has taken me a verrry long time to record one of her requests. Because…because they all contained rhyming! The horror! But dear Diana deserved her recording so…here we go!
Be gentle, dear listeners…you know the trepidation with which i approach all things rhyming…
The Story of the Bad Little Boy, by Mark Twain
Read by Mike Vendetti
Mike writes…
Contrary to what Sunday school books would have you believe, bad boys don’t always come to grief, according to Mark Twain.
Tom Jones – Book 4, Chapter 10, by Henry Fielding
Read by Mark Turetsky
Mark writes…
Book 4 Chapter 10 of Tom Jones.
This is part of an ongoing project in which I will record and post one chapter per week of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones over the course of four years.
So, word finally comes back to Sophia that Moll Seagrim is pregnant, and Squire Western is certain that Tom is the father. I like the hungry parson in this chapter, as he seems overly concerned with roast beef, which is a fine pastime. Also, Western’s language in front of the Parson is simply ridiculous! Within a few sentences, he uses “‘zooks” (which, is a contraction of the archaism “gadzooks” ie “God’s hooks,” ie the nails used in the Crucifiction), “damn,” and “bitch” within the span of a few sentences. I was surprised that “zooks” was not censored in the text, as it was a pretty big deal to use that term, along with “znails” and “zounds” (which certainly gets censored in other places, among them Tristram Shandy). Anyway, the tone I use to censor words is 440 Hz, or A above middle C.
There’s one more thing I want to touch on in this chapter, and it’s the final sentence, which provides a key for understanding Squire Western. He may be the most boisterous person in the book, but he’s not completely hollow. When Sophia won’t play harpsichord for him at night, he’s so afraid of being lonely that he invites a local farmer to drink with him, so that he won’t be alone with himself. It’s kinda sad.
Categories: Going Public
Leave a comment
May 3, 2013
We’re turning from the horrors of the world to that which reminds us that there is more here…
A short poem triptych from Lunar Eclipse, Part 3, by Peter Davey
Read by Sonia Vilim
Sonia writes…
Immerse into this wonderful night walk with Peter and his dream being sharply observed by the eyes of an enigmatic bird of prey 
- recorded with permission of the author peterdavey2.wordpress.com for www.goingpublicproject.wordpress.com
1 Dog-walking at Midnight
2 Kestrel
3 A Dream from the collection of poems LUNAR ECLIPSE” written by Peter Davey
Dog-walking at Midnight
night
warm
wet
with pasted leaves
the full moon
spinning free
beyond the tumbled-upward
tatteredm gleaming
cliffs and cornices of cloud
our shadows
clean
along the white
lane
Kestrel
steep
behind me soars the green
hill
and foaming trees
and further still, beyond them, poised
a speck
each feather delicately spread
aflame
A Dream
such a small
thing to ask
such a large
thing to gain
simplicity
the surf breaking on the sand
the cry
of gulls
Image: Peter Davey
Gone Away, by Diane Havens
Read by Diane Havens
Diane writes…
I wrote this poem some years ago when it became a possibility we’d have to move from a home shortly after I had begun planting gardens there.
Next to having children, planting a garden is the best affirmation of life, and the ultimate act of optimism, faith and hope for the future.
Vernal Equinox, by Amy Lowell
Read by Xe Sands
Xe writes…
Although I do feel pretty exuberant about this time of year, what with my yard exploding into foliage song and the birds demanding that I rejoice, I also often still feel a pull of something else, something…I don’t know what – melancholy, perhaps?
So Lowell is the perfect choice this week. Well, she’s also very succinct, which was a must this week…
The Premature Burial, by Edgar Allan Poe
Read by Mike Vendetti
Mike writes…
From the troubled and tormented mind of Edgar Allen Poe, who always had a fear of premature burial.
Tom Jones – Book 4, Chapter 9, by Henry Fielding
Read by Mark Turetsky
Mark writes…
Book 4 Chapter 9 of Tom Jones.
This is part of an ongoing project in which I will record and post one chapter per week of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones over the course of four years.
Here we have a scene of domestic strife. Molly, still injured from the boneshattering brawl from the previous chapter, returns home to find things less-than-hospitable. Not only are her sisters jealous of her new hand-me-down dress, but her mother accuses her of being a whore! And only because she’s having a child out of wedlock (it should be pointed out that her mother only narrowly escaped this fate due to a timely wedding).
We get a brief mention of an 18th Century superstar, in the form of John Freke. Check out his Wikipedia page! Not only was he a famed surgeon, but also did experiments on electricity in the 1740s, and he wrote about electricity’s “Influence in the Blasts on Human Bodies.” I’ll let you make of that what you will. He was also a close friend of novelist Samuel Richardson, who was a rival of Henry Fielding’s (Fielding’s first novella, Shamela, is a parody of Richardson’s Pamela). He was even the model for the President of Surgeons in Hogarth’s engraving “The Reward of Cruelty,” which is a pretty unsettling engraving even by today’s standards. This guy was everywhere, and you’ve probably never heard of him.
Categories: Going Public
Leave a comment
