Human Voices Wake Us

The poem says, "Human voices wake us, and we drown." But I’ve made this podcast with the belief that human voices are what we need. And so, whether from a year or three thousand years ago, whether poetry or prose, whether fiction or diary or biography, here are the best things we have ever thought, written, or said.

Human Voices Wake Us is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 235 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Human Voices Wake Us, a arts show with 235 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  Episode #242

  #242 - Anthology: poems on being a parent

  Sep 28, 202642 min

  An episode from 1/31/24: Tonight, as a companion to last episode of poems on being a child, I read a handful of poems about being a parent: ⁠“Morning Song,”⁠ by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) ⁠“Child Crying Out,”⁠ by Louise Glück (1943-2023) ⁠“First Snow”⁠ read by Louise Glück ( ⁠audio from here⁠ ) ⁠“This Be the Verse,”⁠ by Philip Larkin (1922-1985) ⁠“Lucinda Matlock,”⁠ by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) ⁠“On My First Sonne”⁠ (Epigrammes XLV), by Ben Jonson (1572-1637) ⁠“The Pomegranate,”⁠ by Eavan Boland (1944-2020) ⁠“Surprized by joy – impatient as the wind,”⁠ by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ⁠“Eden Rock,”⁠ by Charles Causley (1924-2007) ⁠“My Young Mother,”⁠ by Jane Cooper (1924-2007) ⁠“Waiting,”⁠ by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) ⁠from King Lear ,⁠ by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ⁠“Life after Death,”⁠ by Ted Hughes (1930-1998) The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , Notes from the Grid , To the House of the Sun , The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old , and Bone Antler Stone . I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #241

  #241 - London, Cleveland, Poland: Some new poems

  Sep 22, 202619 min

  An episode from 9/22/26: Tonight, I read three new poems that were just published over at The Brazen Head: “London, 1943,” “Shtetl, 1803,” and “Cleveland, 1988.” You can read the poems here . Since I’ve spent so much time writing longer narrative poems, earlier this year I suddenly wanted to see what it would be like writing smaller narratives—anything from fifty to a few hundred lines. These three poems are each attempts, in their own way—stories about love, war, childhood, religion and loneliness—to discover how that might be done. I end the episode reading the first part of a much longer poem (unpublished and unfinished) on the seventeenth-century English witch, Liz Mollard. Mollard lived in London during the plague and fire of 1665-1666. I hope through all four pieces listeners can hear a through-line to something new. Many thanks to Liam Guilar, the poetry editor at The Brazen Head, for taking the three poems he did; he has written a trilogy of narrative poems himself, which you can find here . The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , Notes from the Grid , To the House of the Sun , The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old , and Bone Antler Stone . I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #240

  #240 - Reading Kafka's Diaries

  Sep 13, 202638 min

  An episode from 9/14/26: Tonight, I read my favorite passages from the Diaries of Franz Kafka . (The edition of his diaries that I read has since been replaced by this one ). When you approach these passages, as I do here, with almost no comment or connecting links to his life or his work, let alone to the library of Kafka scholarship that has developed in the last century, he suddenly appears very familiar. He sounds like you, or somebody you know, struggling by themselves with whatever it is. We all know somebody who, Ahab-like, has made remarks like these: “What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background; my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. Nothing else will ever satisfy me.” You can find the text for all the excerpts I read from here . The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , Notes from the Grid , To the House of the Sun , The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old , and Bone Antler Stone . I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #239

  #239 - What I found in Amsterdam

  Sep 6, 202633 min

  An episode from 9/7/26: Tonight, I talk about a recent trip to Amsterdam. At the great art museums there I suddenly found myself wondering if the overcrowding in them didn’t suggest what I’ve been saying for a long time on this podcast: that great meaning and intensity is usually found in private experiences. In this case, in the memory of having seen so many great works in person, or actually just in reproduction, even on postcards or t-shirts. The paintings I mention are: Vermeer’s Milkmaid and Little Street , Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride and Old Woman Reading , Henrik Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters , Van Gogh’s Yellow House and Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds , and Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman . Finally, I mention visiting the Esnoga, or Portuguese Synagogue . I close the episode reading part of a letter that the American poet, Hart Crane, wrote when he was twenty four years old. It was written in response to his father’s offer of a job in the family business, and you can read more of it here , or in O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane . The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , Notes from the Grid , To the House of the Sun , The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old , and Bone Antler Stone . I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #238

  #238 - Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico

  Aug 16, 202631 min

  An episode from 8/17/26: Tonight, we look at the years of intense simplicity that the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) spent in New Mexico. Attached to the area from her first visit to Taos in 1929, over the next fifteen years she continued to travel and paint there. In 1949 she moved to New Mexico permanently and achieved the kind of bare-bones life, seclusion from the wider world, and level of intimacy with the natural world she had long sought. The books I read from are Laurie Lisle's biography, Portrait of an Artist , and Georgia O'Keeffe , a large book of reproductions and commentary by O'Keeffe herself. The paintings of hers that O'Keeffe mentions in the episode are: The Grey Hills (1942) (the painting called Grey Hills 2 , which she describes as looking like miles of elephants, is not online); Black Place III (1944), Patio with Black Door (1955), Road Past the View I (1964), and Black Rock with Blue III (1970). The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , Notes from the Grid , To the House of the Sun , The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old , and Bone Antler Stone . I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com .

  ListenShow Notes

Recent guests on Human Voices Wake Us. Study who booked and why before you pitch.

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.