James Lee Burke

Mystery writer James Lee Burke talks about his latest novel in the Dave Robicheaux series, THE GLASS RAINBOW. And poet Doug Anderson reads two poems.

Burke sees his fictional alter ego as the better man of the two — a hero who puts his life on the line defending the powerless and the abused. But Robicheaux is also haunted by his own psychic demons — his alcoholism, intimations of mortality, and moral ambivalence around the use of force against the forces of darkness.

Burke, who has written more than 20 books, won an Edgar Award for two of them, BLACK CHERRY BLUES and CIMARRON ROSE. His character Dave Robicheaux has been played by Tommy Lee Jones in the film The Electric Mist and by Alec Baldwin in Heaven’s Prisoners.

The setting for the latest novel in the Robicheaux series, The Glass Rainbow is the sugarcane and bayou country of Louisiana, where crime, corruption and the twisted strands of class and race are the ground for epic battles between good and evil. Robicheaux teams up with his best friend Clete Purcel to solve the mystery of the young woman’s murder. The trail heads at first into the seamier side of town, but then veers into a thorny thicket leading to the plantations of the most powerful people in the parish.

Tune into this wonderful conversation with James Lee Burke as he talks about his latest book, what’s happening to the Gulf Coast in the wake of the BP catastrophe, the history of the region, and his writing.

Read an article James Lee Burke wrote about writing

Also, Doug Anderson reads two poems, Petitionary Prayer on Nguyen Duy’s Roof, and a birthday poem, Sixty Seventh.
Read other poems by Anderson

Sneak Preview: Next week, Writers Voice talks with Harvey Sachs about his book, THE NINTH: Beethoven and the World in 1824

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Philip Schultz

Host Francesca Rheannon spends the hour with poet Philip Schultz talking about his poetry, his method of teaching writing — and his dyslexia. His latest book is THE GOD OF LONELINESS.

Philip Schultz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his book about his father, Failure. Ironically, that book, published when Schultz was 63, brought him a measure of success and fame that had eluded him throughout decades of writing verse, including five previous volumes of poetry. His new collection of poems, The God of Loneliness, brings together poems written across the span of those decades, from 1978 through 2009.

Schultz’s themes center around family, especially the immigrant Jewish family he grew up in in Rochester, New York. His larger than life father — who held the record in New York for the most failed businesses, Schultz claims — is a major inspiration. But so are his grandmother with her acerbic pronouncements on life, his Uncle Jake, who dreamed big while running the projector at a local movie theater, and, perhaps his best-loved character, his guardian angel Stein.

But Schultz has a new inspiration for his writing these days, and he’s expressing it for the first time not in poetry, but in memoir. It’s his dyslexia, which he discovered when one of his own children was diagnosed with the learning disability. He’s much engaged in writing the memoir now, entitled My Dyslexia — it will be published by Norton Press.

Philip Schultz is the founder of The Writers Studio, which teaches fiction and poetry. In addition to The God of Loneliness, he’s also the author of Like Wings (Viking Penguin, 1978), Deep Within the Ravine (Viking Penguin, 1984), My Guardian Angel Stein (State Street Press, 1986), The Holy Worm of Praise (Harcourt, 2002), Living in the Past (Harcourt, 2004), and Failure (Harcourt, 2007).

Poems by Philip Schultz
The God of Loneliness
Attention

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Fernanda Eberstadt

Sadie Jones

Sadie Jones talks about her new novel, SMALL WARS. Set in war torn Cyprus in 1956, it tells the story of a young British solider, and the effects of that war on him, his wife and their family. And we hear from Fernanda Eberstadt about her acclaimed new novel RAT. It’s about a girl of extraordinary courage who travels from a hardscrabble region of France to London in search of her father.

When Hal Traherne, a main character in Sadie Jones’ novel SMALL WARS, is promoted to the rank of major in the British Army, the young soldier thinks he’s dedicating himself to a life in service of honor and courage. But then he’s sent to put down a rebellion by Cypriots who are seeking to overthrow the British and unite with Greece. Traumatized by the atrocities he sees his own troops committing — and unable to stop them — Hal finds his moral courage waning even as his courage in battle is proven. What happens to him takes a toll on his marriage, as trust and intimacy fall victim to his rage and self-loathing. The novel’s exploration of the impact of war on families is as relevant today as it is to the period in which the book takes place.

British author Sadie Jones’ acclaimed first novel, The Outcast, was a finalist for the Orange Prize. John Madden is directing a film version. SMALL WARS is her second novel.

Poet Jon Anderson reads his poem “Chimeras”. Writers Voice recorded the reading at a poetry event in South Hadley, Massachusetts in March.

And Jon Anderson reads a “Hand Dance”, an unpublished poem by Richard Wilbur (listen to the Web Extra).

Fernanda Eberstadt’s new novel RAT features one of the most appealing characters you’ll ever encounter in fiction. Fifteen-year-old Celia, whose nickname is Rat, lives in a hardscrabble region in the south of France where things are ready to explode at any moment, Eberstadt says. It’s a place where poverty abounds and racial tensions between poor whites, North African immigrants and gypsies are high. Rat is being raised by a single mother, who she loves and is more of a mother to, than the other way around. But it’s the father she’s never known that she’s thinking about mostly – and she intends to find him. In doing so, she tests the limits of her prodigious courage.

Eberstadt lived in southwestern France for several years and wrote a nonfiction book about the Gypsies there called LITTLE MONEY STREET. Born into a literary tradition, she’s the daughter of a writer and the granddaughter of poet Ogden Nash. Eberstadt has written essays for the New Yorker among other magazines, nonfiction books and novels. RAT is her sixth book.

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Richard Wilbur

Writers Voice host Francesca Rheannon recorded Jon Anderson reading Richard Wilbur‘s “Hand Dance” at a poetry event to support the children of Gaza in March, 2010. The poem is unpublished and, until this reading, had never been read publicly.

Listen to the full show when Jon Anderson reads his poem “Chimeras”.

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SJ Parris

Mark Lamster

Mark Lamster talks with host Francesca Rheannon about the great Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens’ career as an unofficial diplomat for the Spanish Crown. And mystery writer S.J. Parris tells us about Renaissance scientist Giordano Bruno’s visit to Oxford in 1583. She spins a murder mystery around the visit and around Bruno’s mission as a spy for the English Crown.

Mark Lamster

In his time, Peter Paul Rubens was the most sought after painter for the major and minor royalty of Europe. He was a shrewd businessman who levered his career as an artist into fabulous wealth. But he also had a hidden career as a secret diplomat for the Spanish Crown. His home town was Antwerp in Flanders. Along with Holland, it was part of the Low Countries, which at that time were colonies of Spain. And while Flanders was a docile colony, Holland was in the throes of a revolt against colonial rule. When the Dutch blockaded Antwerp, they choked off the vital artery of commerce that fed Flanders’ prosperity.

Rubens wanted peace and spent years trying to broker a peace deal for Spain with the European powers. He didn’t live to see it come to fruition, but the story of his efforts affords a fascinating window into the history of his time and the character of Rubens: a charismatic, pragmatic, artistic genius. Mark Lamster has written that story in a new book, MASTER OF SHADOWS: The Secret Diplomatic Career of Peter Paul Rubens.

Lamster writes on arts and culture for Design Observer and the Los Angeles Times, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He’s also the author of SPALDING’S WORLD TOUR.

Web Extra: Mark Lamster reads an excerpt from MASTER OF SHADOWS.

S.J. Parris

In the previous segment, we traveled to the 17th century to talk about Peter Paul Rubens. Now we go a little further back in time with another story about an historical figure who also had a hidden career: Giordano Bruno. Sixteenth century Europe was a battleground between old ways of thought and new, between the narrow dogmas of the medieval period and the birth of science in the Renaissance. The great Renaissance thinker Giordano Bruno was an emblematic figure of that conflict, as well as one of its victims.

After being excommunicated by the Church for reading banned books, he wandered Europe teaching philosophy, mathematics, dabbling in magic, developing a philosophy of universal love, and writing a best seller how-to book on memory tricks. He also was a pioneer in astronomy, perhaps the first European to understand that the universe was infinite. He was ultimately burned at the stake for his heretical, free thinking views.

[sniplet amazon bookstore widget]

In 1583 Bruno landed in England, where Queen Elizabeth ruled over a Protestant land roiled by Catholic plots to bring England back into the Papal fold. There’s some indication that he worked as a spy for the Queen, reporting back on Catholic subversion. But he also went to Oxford in the hopes of getting a teaching job at the university. S.J. Parris has written a murder mystery built around Bruno’s visit to Oxford, HERESY.

S.J. Parris is also the author (under her real name, Stephanie Merritt), of the memoir, THE DEVIL WITHIN and the novels REAL and GAVESTON.

Richard Wilbur

In a subplot of HERESY, Giordano Bruno searches for the “lost volume” of the works of the mythical ancient Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. He was said to have written 50,000 books, and to have been both a god and a mortal. We hear poet Richard Wilbur reading his poem about Trismegistus, recorded when we visited him at his home in Cummington, MA.

Read Wilbur’s poem, Hermes Trismegistus.

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Chimamanda Adichie

Honor Moore

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about her stunning collection of stories . And poet Honor Moore reads from and tells us about . Our guests use fiction (Adichie) and poetry (Moore) to evoke the lives of women with power, honesty and grace.

Chimamanda Adichie

Award winning author Chimamanda Adichie was born in Nigeria and lives in the United States. She’s written about the hardships and political turbulence of her own country in her novels,   and . She’s also written about the dislocations and difficulties of Nigerian immigrants to England and the United States.

Her new short story collection, The Thing around Your Neck, traverses both these territories. The stories are powerful, both in their unflinching look at the some of the darkest recesses of the human heart, as well as the capacity for redemption. The Seattle Times said about the book, “Adichie shows a rare talent for finding the images and gestures that etch a narrative moment unforgettably in the reader’s memory.” And the Times Online called Adichie “one of Africa’s brightest new literary stars.”

Adichie’s favorite author is the great Chinua Achebe, also of Nigeria, who has inspired her own writing.

You can also buy the unabridged The Thing Around Your Neck as a great audio book.

Honor Moore

In her poem about the climber Elvira Shatayev, Adrienne Rich uses the image of a cable of blue fire as a metaphor for the solidarity of women facing the challenges of their lives. Before the women’s movement was born in the 1970’s, the idea of women’s solidarity was foreign to our culture. Women were supposed to compete for a man, not join together to explore and enrich their own lives.

Poet and writer Honor Moore was there at the beginning of that movement. She points out in her wonderful introduction to the new collection she edited, POEMS FROM THE WOMENS MOVEMENT, poetry was vital to the movement, giving eloquent voice to lives that had been until them unspoken. The collection is part of the American Poets Project from the library of America and spans works from 1965 to 1982.

Honor Moore has authored three collections of her own poetry, Red Shoes, Darling, and Memoir. She’s also written plays and a celebrated memoir The Bishop’s Daughter which was a National Book Award finalist.

Along with other poets and readers, Moore will be talking about POEMS FROM THE WOMENS MOVEMENT at a reading at Amherst College on September 16.

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev

Now we are ready
and each of us knows it I have never loved
like this I have never seen
my own forces so taken up and shared
and given back
After the long training the early sieges
we are moving almost effortlessly in our love

We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together but till now
we had not touched our strength

What does love mean
what does it mean “to survive”
A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow We will not live
to settle for less We have dreamed of this
all of our lives

Adrienne Rich

LINKS

Online archival collection of documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement

Honor Moore’s poem, Polemic-1

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Nikki Giovanni

Amy Seidl

We talk with Amy Seidl about EARLY SPRING: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World. And poet Nikki Giovanni introduces us to HIP HOP SPEAKS TO CHILDREN: A Celebration of Poetry With A Beat.

Earth Day is celebrated this week. We wish it were celebrated every day. But in honor of this annual event, we talk with ecologist Amy Seidl. She’s the author of a new book, , that transcends the despair many of us feel when we think about the environmental catastrophes threatening the planet. She kindles a new sense of hope, not for avoiding climate change, but for adapting to it with grace and ingenuity–and by relearning some of older, wiser ways of adapting to the environment.

Seidl has taught in the Environmental Programs at University of Vermont and Middlebury College and is currently a Research Scholar at Middlebury. She also is associate director of Living Future.

April is Poetry Month. With the month almost over, it’s about time we honor it! I suppose I could have  taken a serious, highbrow approach and scheduled an interview about very serious, highbrow poetry-  something that you might find in the pages of the New Yorker or an obscure poetry magazine.  But  when I found the book, HIP HOP SPEAKS TO CHILDREN in my mailbox here at 91.1 FM WMUA,  my heart lifted right up. The fact that it’s edited by poet Nikki Giovanni just made it even better.

will delight grown-ups and kids,  with tracks by Kanye West, Queen Latifah, and the inimitable Nikki Giovanni herself. Early in her  career Giovanni was dubbed the “Princess of Black Poetry,” and over the course of more than three decades of publishing and lecturing she has come to be called both a “National Treasure” and, most recently, one of Oprah Winfrey’s twenty-five “Living Legends.”  HIP HOP SPEAKS TO CHILDREN is now a New York Times Bestseller and is in Booklist’s Top Ten art books for youth.

Listen to more tracks from HIP HOP SPEAKS TO CHILDREN

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Woody Tasch

Katy Lederer

We talk with investor, venture capitalist and philanthropist Woody Tasch about . Then poet and former hedge fund executive Katy Lederer tells us about her collection, THE HEAVEN-SENT LEAF. And journalist Jeff Sharlet (THE FAMILY) gives us the context to President Obama’s appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5.

We’re all reeling from the roller coaster-ride of fast money, where trillions of dollars transact daily across silicon microchips, and trillions evaporate in the shifting sands unfettered capitalism.  The solution?  Slow money, according to Woody Tasch, recent founder of the nonprofit by that name.  In SLOW MONEY Tasch consciously riffs on the notion of Slow Food, the Italian-gone-global movement of reconnecting our eating with the land that produces our food.  As he hints in the subtitle of his book — Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered — Tasch plays on the agrarian metaphor of slow money as compost in which to nurture a new kind of economy.

In the 1990s, Tasch worked with the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, which has poured a fair amount of grant money into sustainable agriculture. There, he was involved in developing strategies for integrating the philanthropic with the investments foundations make. He’s the founder of the Slow Money Alliance.

A shorter version of this interview aired first on Sea Change Radio, which I produce with Bill Baue. Baue joined me on the interview.

In her poetry volume, , Katy Lederer reflects on her work for a Wall Street hedge fund.  While there, she wrote poems that meditate on the spiritual costs that enter into the emotional balance sheet. She told Writer’s Voice what it was like to be a poet while toiling on Wall Street during the biggest  speculative bubble in its history.

Katy Lederer’s poem, Me A Brainworker

We first talked with journalist and author Jeff Sharlet in August 2008 when he came on Writers Voice to talk about his book, THE FAMILY: The Elite Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. In it, he mentions that the national prayer breakfast is organized by The Family, a shadowy right-wing Christian group that wields great influence in the halls of American power and around the globe. So when I read in the news about President Obama’s appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast last week to announce his new initiative on faith-based charities, I asked Jeff Sharlet to come on the show and explain to us what this meant.

Jeff Sharlet writes about religion, including at The Revealer, a blog about religion and the press. He also has his own blog, Call Me Ishmael.

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“Frannie Lindsay’s poems about abuse, trauma, and healing transcend their subjects. They are, instead, hymns of praise for the love we are able to wrest from our flawed lives. The delicacy of Lamb is like that of a ballet dancer — underlaid with great strength.”

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Lindsey about her work and how poetry can bring a measure of grace to knit up the wounds of the past.

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Nicholson Baker

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Nicholson Baker about his acclaimed new book, .

In a departure from his usual genre, fiction, Baker turns his eye for telling detail to an examination of the cavalier disregard for the human consequences of war by leaders on all sides of the conflict. We hear about how Churchill’s warmongering and Roosevelt’s anti-Semitism exacerbated the war’s civilian toll. We also hear of the courage of a few who dared to speak against the headlong rush to battle.

Also, we air an excerpt from our 2006 interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin.

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Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks tells us about , a novel based on the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This remarkable novel takes us through time and across Europe to uncover the story of a fourteenth century Jewish book that survived the exile, wanderings and persecution of its owners. One of the most valuable manuscripts in existence today, the Sarajevo Haggadah was rescued twice by its Bosnian Muslim curators — from the Nazis in 1944 and from Serbian shelling of Sarajevo in the early 1990’s. It now rests in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

Al Young

Also, we talk with California Poet Laureate Al Young about his new book-and-cd set, . Young is a celebrated African-American poet, novelist, essayist and musician who connects his poetry with the vibrant music of the Blues. He writes: “Music – with which poetry remains eternally intimate – seems a dead ringer, as it were for life. And while each also seems invisible, I always catch myself asking: What is life but spirit; spirit-thought made hearable, seeable, smellable, touchable, and delectable?”.

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