Frank Hudson
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frankhudson.bsky.social
Frank Hudson
@frankhudson.bsky.social
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Founder of the Parlando Project — “Where Music and Words Meet.” Composes, records, researches, writes, & those things feedback into each other.
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For those sailing through their feeds, I’ll should offer the text of Dunbar’s poem of the refused gift. Here it is:
The Sparrow Paul Laurence Dunbar A little bird, with plumage brown, Beside my window flutters down, A moment chirps its little strain, Ten taps upon my window-pane, And chirps again, and hops along, To call my notice to its song; But I work on, nor heed its lay, Till, in neglect, it flies away. So birds of peace and hope and love Come fluttering earthward from above, To settle on life's window-sills, And ease our load of earthly ills; But we, in traffic's rush and din Too deep engaged to let them in, With deadened heart and sense plod on, Nor know our loss till they are gone.
December 12, 2025 at 1:39 PM
frankhudson.bsky.social
#music #poetry Just listened to the 1st episode of this new podcast “Really, The Doors.” The commonly used format here: “a couple of folks talking informally” cloys some for me—but likely better here that it’s majority female. Worthwhile insights in it, like this conversation at the end:
Guys, can I ask you a stupid question? Are the doors cool? Yes. Okay. Okay, okay, good. I mean, I agree. And they're cool for all the reasons that we just talked about for the last hour, right? There's a thin line between reaching for something and pretension. Maybe there's no line. The Doors, I felt like they were interested in finding what is mystical and what is eternal about poetry, about music, about the way that they put their stuff together. So they were striving to find something that was timeless in that way. And so maybe they got a little full of themselves, but that's how you get to a higher place. If you know who William Blake is and you know who Lightning Hopkins is, then, well, I want to be like them. Well, maybe that's your being just a white kid pretending. But maybe you also find something that's really unique and really original. The thing that you said about New York, the way you picked Los Angeles over New York, when that was up in the air for you. Basically, there was no space in New York and that people were too wised up, right? Like they were just, that's already been tried. But I feel like if you're going to be an artist or you're going to actually try, you have to be corny at some level. You have to believe, you know, you have to be able, right?
December 8, 2025 at 4:51 PM
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#PoemsAbout #Imps @alanparrywriter.co.uk #music #poetry
When I saw this week's subject I thought of this poem by Leigh Hunt (something of the Zelig/Forrest Gump of the English Romantic movement). I wrote music for the poem & recorded a performance of it here: frankhudson.org/2025/10/26/r...
We, the Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards frisk and peep us. Stolen sweets are always sweeter, Stolen kisses much completer, Stolen looks are nice in chapels, Stolen, stolen, be your apples. When to bed the world are bobbing, Then's the time for orchard-robbing; Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling, Were it not for stealing, stealing.
December 5, 2025 at 1:32 PM
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Or as Mallarmé has it in my translation “a musician of silence.” frankhudson.org/2019/09/11/s...
Saint (Cecilia) The window frames The worn fretboard Of the splendid viola- Once played music with flute or mandolin. There's the pale saint, opening, Spreading the old book. Mary's Magnificat falls out - Once for vesper or compline. This window is a monstrance. She holds her harp, an angel's Customary evening wing, Played by the delicate phalanx Of fingers. Without a fretboard, Without the old book, she strums On the instrumental plumage, A musician of silence.
November 23, 2025 at 2:07 PM
frankhudson.bsky.social
I performed the short Langston Hughes poem “Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret” with original music this month & I wanted listeners to understand some things about the context of this early piece of Jazz Poetry.
There'd be a temptation in this for a long poem of internal monolog, or some mighty external manifesto. A great poem might be written thusly, stuffed with much of what I've taken your time to discuss today. Instead, Hughes wrote this sly, shorter poem, one that assumes you know this history, assumes you know it in the same way that some other poet assumes you know Ovid or the Trojan War - and goddammit, if you are an American you should know it! Hughes little poem is made up of contrasting voices, a floating democracy of understandings and misunderstandings, breathing together as Jazz plays. The diverse audience calls out, wants this music.
November 19, 2025 at 11:33 AM
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It’s maybe narrowcasting, but as a former cassette multitrack user I’ve always been very fond of “Me and My 424.” Extra points for punning on “Nude Descending a Staircase” in the lyrics. youtu.be/v3NkklEtKyw?...
You know it's the time, oh goodbye for now I crudely descend the stairway to defend And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 I piss you off in slanted rhyme Walk away in three-four time And the new descend the stairway once again Basement living always mends I'll come to you then Shell shocked pale grey and a box of TDKs And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 You can ask the 424 for guidance and for help As it pulled me through, number five and number twelve Say goodbye to model two 'cause they discontinued you I've got parts and I've got spares, unlimited repairs For my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 It's not really four tracks 'Cause you can add and you can subtract Unlimited the sky above you and me And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424 me And my 424
November 17, 2025 at 12:41 PM
frankhudson.bsky.social
#poetry #music I liked this sensuous metaphor for the difference between a song & a poem, written in appreciation of Patti Smith’s Horses album.
MATT BERNINGER: Poetry is like ice skating, whereas songwriting to me feels like swimming. With songwriting, you're down in the water and you're really reacting to the music, whereas with poetry, you're on the top. All through "Horses" you hear someone who is probably more comfortable in poetry starting to become a singer and a songwriter, starting to break that boundary. It's like you literally hear her break through the ice and start swimming.
November 16, 2025 at 1:13 PM
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The LYL Band did use this idea awhile back: frankhudson.org/2018/07/30/i...
Original dust jacket of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here with the Can’t crossed out. Cover image for the LYL Band’s song.
November 15, 2025 at 10:55 PM
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I've completed my piece for Veteran's Day/Armistice Day, a poem, now song by Padraic Colum, "Old Soldier." I was thinking this was the 1st time my long-running Parlando Project had encountered Colum, but it turns out I mentioned him in passing in this account by Carl Sandburg of a poet's guitar pull
Once when the night was wild without and the wintry winds piled snowdrifts around the traffic signals on Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago, we sat with Robert Frost and Padraic Colum. The Gael had favored with Irish ballads of murder, robbery, passion. And Frost offered a sailorman song he learned as a boy on the wharves of San Francisco.
November 11, 2025 at 3:44 PM
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I think this is a US-only release, but the group was so poorly served album wise it’s clearly their greatest. My copy had marks I made next to each of the cuts: Clapton, Beck,Page.
Cover of the US Epic records LP Yardbirds Greatest Hits.
November 10, 2025 at 11:56 PM
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November 9, 2025 at 4:13 PM
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November 8, 2025 at 7:49 PM
frankhudson.bsky.social
Donald Byrd covers especially come to mind
November 8, 2025 at 7:48 PM
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November 8, 2025 at 7:40 PM
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A small blue DeArmond fretless electric bass with white nylon strings that have replaced the original translucent silicon rubber set. As a size gauge, a CD copy of the just released Patti Smith Group “Horses” 50th anniversary re-release sits next to it.
October 29, 2025 at 2:38 PM
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Enjoy the name-rhyme
Picture by Joni Mitchell, the similarly named artist best-known for her singer-songwriting works. While not fully abstract-expressionist as the Joan Mitchell work, I picked this one for similar effect.
October 23, 2025 at 3:55 PM
frankhudson.bsky.social
Thanks John for mentioning the music. Somebody once said poetry is words that want to become music—that was something that inspired me & my Parlando Project. Or there’s this quote about film editing from the post about this poem that indicates that aspiration might be more general:
It's all music-my brother, Ric, said that all art forms, when they die and go to heaven, want to be music." -Ken Burns
October 17, 2025 at 4:05 PM
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#PoemsAbout #BreakTheMould I know most folks post new work of their own, but here's a 50-year-old poem written by my late wife Renée Robbins in her youth that I just rediscovered this Fall. Link to my fresh performance of it here: frankhudson.org/2025/10/14/i...
In Another Language By Renée Robbins, circa 1975-77 Crab in snowbank – plastic waves tattered claws – residue of an earlier life I call my own now left by the road. Where could I free you in this land of demarcated fluid and ice? A bathtub lacks salt, but I drift there as if a wind blew another flood to wipe out contracts and families nations and genders a Finno-Ugaric world with one word for both sexes one mind for the self and those I love and ten claws to speed into buoyant lift.
October 17, 2025 at 1:07 PM
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Mid20th century paperback green-tinted cover of a James Joyce classic Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. To lure the reader we see a large sailing ship, a many-spired church, and a young woman just slightly hiking her skirt up as she wades in water—and all these things are observed by a tall chiseled young man looking sideways from the smithy of his soul.
October 13, 2025 at 8:46 PM
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Here's an English translation of the whole poem. It says "words by" as I'm working on music to sing Éluard's words (in English) to. One translator's note: I chose to change the gendered language ("hommes" as "men" etc) in my version partially for inclusion & partly for more echoing sounds.
Beautiful Justice (Bonne Justice) by Paul Éluard – English translation: Frank Hudson This is the warmest law of mankind: from grapes we make wine, from coal we make fire, from kisses we make mankind. This is the harshest law of mankind: to remain intact – despite wars and misery, despite the dangers of death. This is the sweetest law of mankind: to change water into light, the dream into reality, and enemies into family. It’s an old and new law – one always perfecting itself from the depths of a child’s heart to the highest reason.
October 12, 2025 at 10:15 PM
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Knowing how thorough Hickey is, I’m sure he covers everything I could say. I’m currently going through a “death cleaning” of stuff I accumulated while in my 20s & learning what little I know about music, & so Mickey Baker means this to me & to many in my generation:
Cover of one edition of a series of Mickey Baker instructional books on how to play guitar, first published in the late 1950s. Given that they were Jazz oriented, they likely puzzled many young Rock-oriented kids with their just bought catalog store guitars.
October 6, 2025 at 2:50 PM
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I didn’t bring this up in the linked essay with musical performance, but I wonder if Emily Dickinson was punning “apotheosis” with “hypnosis” in this poem. frankhudson.org/2025/09/24/t...
'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe by Emily Dickinson 'T is whiter than an Indian pipe, 'Tis dimmer than a lace; No stature has it, like a fog, When you approach the place. Not any voice denotes it here, Or intimates it there; A spirit, how doth it accost? What customs hath the air? This limitless hyperbole Each one of us shall be; 'T is drama, if (hypothesis) It be not tragedy!
October 5, 2025 at 11:01 AM
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Here's a quick 1 1/2 minute "lyric video" I made for this #MichaelmasDay piece combining #music and #poetry
September 29, 2025 at 3:42 PM
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My Parlando Project likes to tie a couple of “Sixties”sometimes.
Psychedelic style concert poster from the 1960’s that originally advertised the Jimi Hendrix Experience but is altered to show 1860’s Emily Dickinson for the Parlando Project
September 13, 2025 at 2:04 PM
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The opening quote in the interview sums up the task of #poetry quite well I think.
The finest lyricist of her generation is explaining why words are, ultimately, inadequate. "Everything you say is only a fraction of everything you feel," says Adrianne Lenker, the dizzying creative force behind alt-folk act Big Thief, and a solo artist of renown. "Trying to think about things as deep as love, trying to get to the bottom of anything with words - it's the tool we've been given, but it's not the best one."
September 5, 2025 at 1:21 PM