This is a rare recorded interview of Leonard Woolf speaking about his wife, Virginia, and their friends and fellow artists in that loose, non-movement called the Bloomsbury Group. It is nearly ten minutes long but is well worth your time. It was recorded in May 1964, when Leonard was 83.
This week’s Voices from the Grave is a bit different: Hemingway isn’t reading anything. In fact, we don’t hear his voice at all. It’s :53 of stock footage of the American writer, with a voice-over by a nameless narrator. It is interesting in its own time-capsule-esque way.
The sportsman we have seen standing by the giant fish, the fallen lion.
‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ by Ezra Pound.
For three years, out of key with his time
‘April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa’ by Diane di Prima.
For honestly weeping in time to innumerable heartbreaking Italian operas
(And, yes, Diane is still alive.)
‘The Dream Keeper’ and ‘Dreams’ by Langston Hughes.
Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamers
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T. S. Eliot. The animation on this video is extremely odd and disturbing, much like the poet himself.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Big Country‘s Stuart Adamson would have been 54 today. In his honour, I’m straying a bit from the normal Voices from the Grave subject matter. I hope that you enjoy this special musical interlude. Here’s an acoustic version of ‘Harvest Home’.
Who saw the fences falling Who broke the ploughman’s bread
‘In My Kitchen in New York’ by Allen Ginsberg.
Thank God Arthur Rimbaud’s watching me from over the sink.
Jack Kerouac reading from ‘On the Road’.
“I think of Dean Moriarty.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald reading an abbreviated version of Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
This week’s ‘VFTG’ is a bit different, as it features a writer reading another writer’s work. I think this makes it doubly interesting!
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