“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” written and read by poet Richard Brautigan. A video by Devon O’Hare, with clips from Adam Curtis and Koyaanisqatsi. Music by Phillip Glass. Read the poem here.
Related:
“Can Robots Evolve Into Machines of Loving Grace?” Meghan O’Gieblyn, Wired
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“I Am Waiting” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1958. Read by Abu B. Rafique.
“Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an acclaimed poet and longtime proprietor of City Lights, the San Francisco bookstore and avant-garde publishing house that catapulted the Beat Generation to fame and helped establish the city as a center of literary and cultural revolution, died Feb. 22 at his home in San Francisco. He was 101.”
— “Lawrence Ferlinghetti, literary citadel of San Francisco, dies at 101,” Emma Brown, Washington Post
More:
“Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Beat Poet And Small Press Publisher, Dies At 101,” Tom Virtale, NPR
“Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101,” Jesse McKinley, New York Times
City Lights Booksellers and Publishers website
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“A Coronavirus Prayer,” by James Parker. Read it here.
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“America’s Most Widely Misread Literary Work.” Written and animated by Jackie Lay for The Atlantic.
“The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism. It’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.”
More:
“The Most Misread Poem in America,” David Orr, The Paris Review
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A holiday poem from Williams S. Burroughs: “Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons …”
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A holiday poem from Williams S. Burroughs: “Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons …”
Christopher Walken recites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Boo.
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Songwriter Bob Dylan (né Robert Zimmerman) has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Dylan was first nominated for the prize in 1997.
Bob Dylan website
Video from D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 film Dont Look Back.
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“The Eyes of a New York Woman,” music written by Jeff Ogden, with lyrics from Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V, recorded by The Insect Trust in 1969. Robert Palmer played the recorder solo. Not to be confused with the Mark James song of the same name recorded by B.J. Thomas.
The Insect Trust: Nancy Jeffries (vocals), Bill Barth (guitar), Luke Faust (guitar, banjo, fiddle, harmonica), Trevor Koehler (saxophone), and Robert Palmer (clarinet, alto saxophone). Drummers Elvin Jones and Bernard Purdie joined the group on occasion.
More:
“The Insect Trust: An American Band Deconstructed,” Ed Ward, NPR
“The Insect Trust: Hoboken Saturday Night,” Robert Christgau, Collectors’ Choice Music CCM-502-2, 2005
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Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967)
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
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