For those who prefer video, here's the "lyric video" of my performance of the song made from Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "The Sparrow" about the gifts we overlook www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_g-...

I'll add a second to Paul's suggestion: these In the Reign the Mad King pieces of yours would make a fine collection.

I doesn’t need translation from English for this reader. 😀

For those sailing through their feeds, I’ll should offer the text of Dunbar’s poem of the refused gift. Here it is:

Your concluding stanza, however sad, is lovely.

Makes its point sharply! Word-music-wise I hear your fine ending line in paused iambs & then the final “you” nailing the emphasis: never…any…pleasing…you.

Well, somebody set us up the bomb, so we have that.

Well my wife didn’t ride either bike this morning—she got out her skis.

Yes, it’s the car tire ruts & snow banks that make things tough for bikes. Fresh snow isn’t a big problem. Riding on an unplowed protected bikeway is often pleasant compared to streets.

& churn on. I did get off & walk the bike through a couple of intersections—particularly where I had to turn.

& a studded Dillinger 5 fat tire bike. I ride most days most winters. In my youth 2” tires were all I needed, but I’m old now & I ride the fat bike more & more in the winter.

Today’s side streets were a mess, but was able to drop to a lower gear, sort of follow the deep morning ruts from car tires

I’ve ridden everything from 1.75” winter compound to Dillinger 5 full fat tires over the decades. Heavy, rutted, plow-banked, sticky snow over an icy pavement base like today is the worst. Like your idea, my household has 2 winter bikes: a 2.2” studded/knobby gravel bike w/fenders 🧵

Bravo! I only learned the details of claims of copyright from the ms derived editions from another poet a year or so ago—& it’s a mess.

I don’t like the low x-height of lovely Garamond on smaller or lower resolution screens. My writing choice is Century Schoolbook with its robust x-height. I flatter myself it fits with my writing often about early 20th c. poets—but it could be memory of Dick & Jane first readers.

I think of the Leonard Cohen quote: "If I knew where the good songs come from I'd go there more often,” and that’s from a famously nose to the grindstone WIP journal/excise/revise songwriter. So, true whether you write’em quick or slow.

I’m only 30 or so episodes in* but I’d think Morris Levy would earn the mobster with music connections square.

*not from lack of interest or appreciation, but my ears are too busy on my Project to spend appropriate amounts of time on listening to my betters.

Yeah. That Chatmon family was an incredible musical organization, and I hadn’t seen that clip before.

When I ran into that song’s title phrase in a Carl Sandburg poem this spring, I went looking for how the phrase was used in context c. 1930, & the origins of the Mississippi Sheiks song. frankhudson.org/2025/04/07/s...

Pretention is a crucial problem for all artists—but particularly insurgent arts—it can’t be avoided, can’t be denied. The things we use to overcome it: utilitarian helpfulness, comedy, spirituality, eroticism,* all may bring their own problems & limitations.

*the podcast is sharp on this element.