Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
First African American to become US Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
On the island
Eight records
The Köln Concert: Part IFavourite
This first uh piece is one that I play. almost always to get myself into the mood for writing, for sealing myself off momentarily from the world in order to write about it.
This reminds me of. growing up in the um African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Akron, Ohio, where I would see these older women get up moved by the music. They came into the church kind of bent over and tired, and suddenly they were light as feathers because they were lifted up not only by the music but the entire community in this incredible um fervor.
Cello Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009: IV. Sarabande
I played the cello from the time I was ten, and the Bach unaccompanied suites for cello are really the the pinnacle. the end-all and be all for a cellist because it's simply a cello and no other instrument and yet harmony, rhythm, and the melody are all contained in the music.
Deuxième Livre de pièces de viole: Tombeau pour M. de Sainte-Colombe
I chose it because after years of playing the cello I switched to the viola da gamba, which is an early instrument, and The sound of all these early instruments, which you'll hear, it's a slightly reedier sound than you're used to hearing in classical music. And it it's full of longing to me. It's full of longing and at the same time an an incredible precision.
Billie Holliday was someone who often played on the record player at home. She has always been an icon for me and uh everything, the way she presented her songs and that the grace with which she did it, the dignity in which she talked about the indignities, or sang about the indignities of um of segregation and discrimination.
Carmen: "C'est toi! L'on m'avait avertie... C'est moi!"
Tatiana Troyanos & Plácido Domingo
This recording of Tatiana Trojanos and Placito Domingo singing a duet from Carmen is one of my favorites. It's for several reasons. One of them is that I have started to sing amateur opera myself, and I have sung this role of Carmen in a production in Virginia back home. This duet is so marvellous because musically they are absolutely together and it's gorgeous. But emotionally what they're saying, they're miles apart and yet they end On a note in unison, and you know that it's going to end a disaster at that point.
This record is um A recent uh love, but it I've become so fanatical about it that it must go with me on the desert isle.
God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)
Randy Newman has a remarkable way of being satirical and at the same time very sad in his s s satire, as if he mourns the fact that this is so. And I think that that it it's a bit of the blues, and you know, he's a white man who has the blues, certainly. But It allows for compassion. even when he's criticising something.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Do you seal yourself off from the world to write, or do you just specifically to do the business of writing?
For the business of writing I will seal myself off momentarily, but I can't imagine cutting myself off from the world and writing about it at the same time.
Presenter asks
5:45What does the title [of US Poet Laureate] mean in the States? What was required of you?
One thing that wasn't required of me was to write poems for affairs of state. … But what is required of the U. S. Poet Laureate is basically to plan a reading series, but also to consult with the Librarian of Congress on The contemporary literature holdings and on the live recordings of contemporary poets. … And then comes that vague requirement, which is to promote literature as he or she sees fit. … I took that as a kind of a a a mission to energize the position.
Presenter asks
8:07Why are we so frightened of poetry?
I do believe that something that moves us very deeply renders us speechless. And the curious uh the paradox about poetry is that it uses words to take words away from you. It takes your breath away, if it's wonderful. So if that happens with music, when we hear music, we can be speechless and no one will ask you what that music meant or how you felt. They will let you be silent. With poetry, with literature, the temptation is to then talk about it.
The keepsakes
The book
Gabriel García Márquez
Oh, I've I've struggled over this, but I think it would be [Gabriel García Márquez's] Hundred Years of Solitude.
The luxury
A ballroom with a holographic dance instructor
I've been [um] doing ballroom dancing for a while now and I would love to be able to dance when I feel really, really down on that desert isle.
Presenter asks
12:26Tell me about your father. He was a pioneer, wasn't he?
Yes, he was. My father is a chemist. … he graduated as valedictorian of his high school class, though he was not allowed to give the valedictorian address because he was black. … He was hired as an elevator operator, and his classmates, some of whom he had tutored in chemistry … were hired as chemists. So he I ferried them up and down the elevator for a couple of years. … I didn't know about it until I was in college. He didn't tell me. … I think if I had known that my father had done his absolute best in operated an elevator for two years, then I would have become bitter too early, and that's why he didn't tell us.
Presenter asks
21:21What happened when you told [your parents] you were going to be a writer?
Perhaps worse, I'm going to be A poet, the worst thing you can possibly say to scientifically minded parents. It was remarkable. I told my mother first who said, Well, you should tell your father yourself, and he simply put down his newspaper, swallowed, and said, Well, I've never been good at understanding poems, so I hope you won't be upset if I don't read them. And I said, That's fine. It was in a certain way he gave me the freedom to g the license, let's say, to to go off and do it.
Presenter asks
31:27Do you have a religious faith? Would God deliver you in the end?
No, God wouldn't deliver me in the end. I don't have a religious faith. I think that that though the In a certain way I do think that music and the memories of loved ones and of family and And that kind of supporting human spirit would sustain me. It's what sustains me now, I think. So I think that would work. But it would not be a God.
“I can't imagine cutting myself off from the world and writing about it at the same time.”
“I always believed that poetry was an intensely personal and intimate experience. that uh has in a certain way been spoiled by teaching it, you know, and requiring students to come up with an interpretation and then saying, no, that's wrong.”
“The paradox about poetry is that it uses words to take words away from you. It takes your breath away, if it's wonderful.”
“Poetry is home. Poetry is the skeleton upon which all all the literature, all the art for me is based. It's music, it's words, it's silence, it's all of that.”