The world is overflowing with good music. Here's a miraculous rendition of "Hallelujah." As much as I like the scruffy original, Lucy Thomas's lovely voice elevates the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hjg...tart_radio =1

Nice job, Quincy. Claude McKay was the real deal.

The Schubert fans can add me to their mix. Consider his last three sonatas, which deserve a place on the same shelf as LVB's last sonatas and the late quartets.

Someone mentioned Muddy Waters, the king of Chicago blues, which to this day features drums, guitar, piano and harp. Music to dance to.

EDM is good dancing music too. And good running music. And believe it or not, it is good music to study by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0XseXsa2Q

I’ve looked for “jazz poetry,” and more often than not what I find—whether it’s Langston or the Beats—is poetry and jazz, each doing their own thing rather than dancing in a clinch. Ruby Dee, though, is the real deal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVRzeTWP9Fk. Anything else like this you could put me on to? And where are those mesmerizing “With Ossie and Ruby” shows? Forty years later, the vibes of those readings are still in me.

Dig Ted Joans and “Jazz Is My Religion”: https://youtu.be/uc9yodZ29UE. I knew Ted a little in the eighties, but this is the first I’ve seen of the hipster in his heyday.

So I had nothing, Sarah-Jane, when you first posted this -- but today I was reading Jim's "Big Ag..." poem over on Metrical, and one of my favorite songs came on. They are perfect together. The step-grandfather who raised me was an actual, bona fide cowboy, by the way. He rode for the King Ranch in Texas back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgRQEO8iKA

Don Edwards, Coyotes

Coyotes Lyrics

Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas
His face was burnt deep by the sun
Part history, part sage, part Mexican
He was there when Pancho Villa was young

And he'd tell you a tale of the old days
When the country was wild all around
Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way
And listen while the coyotes howl

They go, boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo
Boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo

Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Geronimo's gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone

Well he cursed all the roads and the oilmen
And he cursed the automobile
Said, "This is no place for an hombre like I am
In this new world of asphalt and steel."

Then he'd look off someplace in the distance
At something only he could see
He'd say, "All that's left now of the old days:
Those damned, old coyotes and me."

And they go, boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo
Boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo

Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Now Quantrill is gone
Stand Watie is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone

One morning, they searched his adobe
He disappeared without even a word
But that night, as the moon crossed the mountain
One more coyote was heard

Hi friends,

Here’s my contribution to this subject, although it may not be what was intended.

The paper I wrote for Diana Senechal’s seminar on Setting Poetry to Music, which was a part of last October’s ALSCW conference at Yale, has now been published, both on Diana’s website and in Expansive Poetry Online. I’m posting the former, which has links to the latter (including some sound files of my music) and also includes some of the other papers from the same seminar. Enjoy!

https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html

OR, if that doesn’t work:

https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html