Rhapsodize Podcast #1

Rhapsodize Podcast #1

Now Live on the Internet Archive

Reverberance: A Poetic Rhapsody and Call for Rhapsodes

Duration 44:36

Created, hosted and performed by 

Bob Gonzalez

Featuring an excerpt from Plato's Ion and poetry by Walt Whitman, Homer, Hesiod, William Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Robert Frost, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Announcing ECLECTIC RHAPSODY I

ECLECTIC RHAPSODY I

Maiden Project of RHAPSODIZE!

Now Live on the Internet Archive

Eclectic Rhapsody I

Featuring the poetry of Wilfred Owen, John Gillespie Magee, John Keats, Dante, Alfred Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Homer, Hesiod, and Horace.

Performed by rhapsodes:

Gerard Sutcliffe, Martin Geeson, Carol Box, Caprisha Page, & Bob Gonzalez

This maiden project will continue to expand throughout 2012.

RHAPSODIZE! Home Page

RHAPSODIZE! Catalog Page

RHAPSODIZE! is a classic poetry performance initiative that seeks to popularize rhapsodies (performances of classic poetry) and cultivate rhapsodes (performers of classic poetry).

Leda and the Swan by W. B. Yeats

Performed by Bob González, rhapsode

Leda and the Swan by W. B. Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                    Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Poet Bio at Poets.org

Shakespearean Sonnet Celebration

A collection of 21 sonnets by William Shakespeare.

Visit the Internet Archive page to listen in streaming audio or to download all or selected files

Or click on any single sonnet to download now:

146 Poor Soul! The Centre
138 When My Love Swears
129 The Expense of Spirit
154 The Little Love God
73 That Time of Year
91 Some Glory In Their Birth
21 So Is It Not With Me
65 Since Brass Nor Stone
148 O Me, What Eyes Hath Love
123 No, Time, Thou Shalt Not Boast
71 No Longer Mourn For Me
33 Full Many a Glorious Morning
153 Cupid Laid By His Brand
103 Alack! What Poverty
63 Against My Love Shall Be
27 Weary With Toil
02 When Forty Winters
12 When I Do Count the Clock
15 When I Consider Everything
75 So Are You To My Thoughts
76 Why Is My Verse

These were recorded in April 2011 as part of a personal project in observance of U.S. Poetry Month. I memorized one poem per day, including all of these sonnets. I have been recording texts for LibriVox since May 2011 and when going back to these recordings I made as I studied and memorized these sonnets, I find that these have more vigor and polish than most of the poetry recordings (and other recordings) I made for LibriVox. I believe this is because I studied each of these sonnet intensively across an entire waking in order to perform them from memory in the evening. Consequently, I believe they are more "mine" than all of the LibriVox recordings I have made because, since the end goal is simply to record from a script, I do not "internalize" the texts to the degree I did when the end goal was performing from memory. This brings out an important consideration. Should I prepare all pieces as if I was going to perform them live from memory? Of course, many pieces would never come to be if they had to be performed this way - entire novels and anything of any significant length. Even shorter texts require exponentially more time to memorize than to read from a script. Is it possible to have the same vigor and passion in readings as from live performances from memory? I think the danger inherent in the live memorized piece can bring out the energy and vitality mostly absent from a piece read from a script. How could that danger be - or some equally effective equivalent - be introduced into readings?

In any case, I hope you enjoy listening to these as much as I enjoyed and benefited from them.

Prologue Act IV Henry V by William Shakespeare

Audio Performance by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Text

To The Immortal Memory of the Halibut, On Which I Dined This Day, Monday, April 26, 1784

by William Cowper 

Audio Recording by Bob Gonzalez

E-text

Biography of William Cowper on Poets.org

First Player's Speech from Hamlet

Audio Performance by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A troupe of traveling players have come to Hamlet's castle at Elsinore. Prince Hamlet greets them with gusto, even beginning to recite a speech of Aeneas' tale to Dido he once heard the head of the troupe perform. After delivering a handful of lines with vigor, Hamlet then asks the First Player to continue from where he left off.

Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2, lines1542-1592

First Player

    'Anon he finds him

    Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,

    Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,

    Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,

    Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;

    But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

    The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,

    Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top

    Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash

    Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,

    Which was declining on the milky head

    Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:

    So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,

    And like a neutral to his will and matter,

    Did nothing.

    But, as we often see, against some storm,

    A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,

    The bold winds speechless and the orb below

    As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder

    Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,

    Arouséd vengeance sets him new a-work;

    And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall

    On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne

    With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword

    Now falls on Priam.

    Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,

    In general synod  - take away her power;  [council]

    Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,

    And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,

    As low as to the fiends!'

...

    'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--'

...

First Player

    'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames

    With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head [“blinding tears”][bandage]

    Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

    About her lank and all o'er-teeméd loins, [slender]

    A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;//

    Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,

    'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have

    pronounced:

    But if the gods themselves did see her then

    When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport

    In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,

    The instant burst of clamour that she made,

    Unless things mortal move them not at all,

    Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, [yielding milk]

    And passion in the gods.'

This performance was created for an unabridged audio production of Hamlet now in progress on LibriVox.org.

On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America

George Berkeley (1685-1753)

Audio Performance by Bob Gonzalez

Text

Rhapsode Repertory I page on the Internet Archive

Four Sonnets - Shakespeare & Milton

I added four sonnets to my Rhapsode Rhapsody I  audio file on the Internet Archive. Just click on the title to hear the audio and click on the poet to read a biography.

Sonnet 19 by John Milton
 
-->

When I consider how my light is spent,

   Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

   And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

   My true account, lest He returning chide;

   "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

   Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best

   Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,

   And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

   They also serve who only stand and wait."

Sonnet 123 by William Shakespeare
 
-->

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old;

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wondering at the present nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be;

I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

Sonnet 154 by William Shakespeare
 
-->

The little Love-god lying once asleep,

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;

And so the General of hot desire

Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.

This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,

Growing a bath and healthful remedy,

For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,

Came there for cure and this by that I prove,

Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
 
-->

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

"Little Trotty Wagtail" By John Clare

For the final day of National Poetry Month, a recording of a children's poem.


Audio Recording by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Little Trotty Wagtail

by John Clare

Little trotty wagtail he went in the rain,

And tittering, tottering sideways he ne'er got straight again,

He stooped to get a worm, and looked up to get a fly,

And then he flew away ere his feathers they were dry.

Little trotty wagtail, he waddled in the mud,

And left his little footmarks, trample where he would.

He waddled in the water-pudge, and waggle went his tail,

And chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail.

Little trotty wagtail, you nimble all about,

And in the dimpling water-pudge you waddle in and out;

Your home is nigh at hand, and in the warm pig-stye,

So, little Master Wagtail, I'll bid you a good-bye.

 Poem-a-Day for National Poetry Month, April 2012 page on the Internet Archive. All 30 poems for the month are here for anyone to listen to in streaming audio and also to download.