Stories. "Asking Questions in Church" by michelle (TP member)

Welcome to the TP Podcast!

This month, we have a story by a member of the TP Project. It's a childhood memory. Enjoy!

Listen to the story! Read the story at the TP Website!

Would you like to practice writing a childhood memory? Post it at the TP Blog "Our World in Spanish into English" and see if it also gets selected for publication on the TP section called "Your Stuff!". If you are not a Spanish-speaker, you can send your stories directly to the TP website. Be sure to proofread your texts before sending them in!

Have a nice day!

Poems. "Song" by Adrienne Rich

Welcome to the TP Podcast!

Adrienne Rich wrote "On Secrets, Lies & Silence", a collection of essays of great interest from a feminist point of view. It's been translated into Spanish, too. But today we are going to learn about one of her poems, "Song", about a different kind of loneliness people can feel. Enjoy!

Listen to this poem!
Read it here!

Stories. "Ada" by Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an experimental writer who explored language without any kind of fear, and joyfully. Have fun!

Listen to Ada.
Read the story and check out the TP webpage on Gertrude Stein, where you can also listen to her reading bits of her work.

Poems. "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams

Welcome to the TP podcast!
I love this poem. It’s so mysterious, and so honest. I don’t know what it means. I just know it means something mysterious and daily and beautiful, plus totally human.
Picture it as a post-it note on a fridge.
Hope you enjoy it!

Listen to the poem.

This Is Just To Say (1934)
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Copyright © 1962 by William Carlos Williams. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher. (Thanks, New Directions!)

More on this autor at Poets.org

Stories. "Gertrude Talks Back" by Margaret Atwood

Welcome to the TP Podcast!

This story is told by Gertrude, Hamlet's mum! Enjoy it!

Listen to "Gertrude Talks Back"
Read the piece at the TP website, plus find out more about Margaret Atwood and her work.

Poems. "The Housing Poem" by Dian Million

Listen to the poem.
Comment the poem at the Dakota in Spain blog.
Read about its author on the TP webpage for Dian Million.

Read here the poem:

The Housing Poem
by Dian Million

Minnie had a house
which had trees in the yard
and lots of flowers

she especially liked the kitchen

because it had a large old cast iron stove
and that
the landlord said was the reason
the house was so cheap.

Pretty soon Minnie's brother Rupert came along
and his wife Onna
and they set up housekeeping in the living room
on the fold-out couch,
so the house warmed and rocked
and sang because Minnie and Rupert laughed a lot.

Pretty soon their mom Elsie came to live with them too
because she liked being with the laughing young people
and she knew how the stove worked the best.
Minnie gave up her bed and slept on a cot.

Well pretty soon
Dar and Shar their cousins came to town looking for work.
They were twins
the pride of Elsie's sister Jo
and boy could those girls sing. They pitched a tent under
the cedar patch in the yard
and could be heard singing around the house
mixtures of old Indian tunes and country western.

When it was winter
Elsie worried
about her mother Sarah
who was still living by herself in Moose Glen back home.
Elsie went in the car with Dar and Shar and Minnie and Rupert and got her.
They all missed her anyway and her funny stories.
She didn't have any teeth
so she dipped all chewable items in grease
which is how they're tasty she said.
She sat in a chair in front of the stove usually
or would cook up a big pot of something for the others.

By and by Rupert and Onna had a baby who they named Lester,
or nicknamed Bumper, and they were glad that Elsie and Sarah
were there to help.

One night the landlord came by
to fix the leak in the bathroom pipe
and was surprised to find Minnie, Rupert and Onna, Sarah and Elsie, Shar and Dar all singing around the drum next
to the big stove in the kitchen
and even a baby named Lester who smiled waving a big greasy piece of dried fish.

He was disturbed
he went to court to evict them
he said the house was designed for single-family occupancy
which surprised the family
because that's what they thought they were.

Stories. "House of Light & Shadow" by Nicholas Gage

Welcome to the TP Podcast! A few weeks ago, CPG, a fifth year (Y5) student at the state-run language school where we meet up, gave me a little present – The New York Times Magazine, the 15th of jan issue, 2006, which is where I found the story I’d like to read today to you all. It’s called “House of Light and Shadow” and it was written by Nicholas Gage, an author I don’t know and who I had never read before. So it’s been a discovery, and a pleasure! I like the story because it includes childhood memories, dreams, a house in an open landscape, which I imagine very beautiful because it’s in Greece, and it also includes thoughts and feelings you get throughout your life, as you grow older. I really like that.
I hope this inspires you to write about your own childhood memories, so you can practice using the past tenses, including the modals! You could just write short 150-word pieces, and send them to the Talking People Website for publication! (Check out the TP section Your Stuff to read some!) If you do, remember to type in the subject line “TP contribution”.
So, here it goes. Enjoy!

Listen to the story. Read the article.

Poems. "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton

Her Kind
By Anne Sexton

Listen to this poem

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

The TP webpage on Anne Sexton

Stories. "A Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker

Hi everybody!

Here's an interesting writer, probably one of the very first who used the stream-of-consciousness technique (modernist writing). The story, however, is not one of my favorites. I chose it because it's got good language material for English learners! So, I had a hard time recording it because I'm no actress and although I had a similar experience when I was young-younger that seems to be so far away from my emotional life today, that I think I didn't manage to read well. Anyhow, I did my best! :)

Listen to Dorothy Parker's "A Telephone Call"
Read the story and also my language notes, which are an example of how to use literature to review some language points and become more fluent and correct while using your English! This story is very useful to review hypothetical language, the language functions "will" has, the modals in general, indirect speech and various verbal phrases. Feel free to comment here and pose your questions on the TP forums.
More about Using Literature to learn English at the TP section How to Learn, especially here.

Poems. "Brief bus stop" by Ani Difranco

Listen to the poem or lyrics of this song (which I've never heard!), from her album “not so soft” (1991).

brief bus stop
by ani difranco

Read the lyrics here

Language notes: “to wane” is something the moon does, because the moon waxes and wanes! “To toe the line” is ‘to conform to a rule or standard’.

More on Ani Difranco at the Talking People Website (Music)

Stories. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by Salinger

If you don't know J.D. Salinger, listen to this story. It's a good way to start - it records a key moment in his life and to understand his work. If you already know him, and enjoy his literature, you'll love this story. It's lifelike - daily, undaily, warm and softly funny, very sweet, endlessly sad and tragic.

Check out the Talking People webpage dedicated to Salinger.

Poems. "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

Welcome to the Talking People Podcast, an experimental project of talkingpeople.net. We're reaching the 50 subscriptions so thanks for that! We're happy to be of use!

Listen to the second poem we wanted to read, "Wild Geese", by Mary Oliver, from her book "Dreawork". Hope you enjoy it!

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

If you love literature, you are welcome to visit the Literature section at Talking People.If you have comments on the audio quality of the TP episodes, please post under each episode. Thanks so much!

Stories. "The Debutante" by Leonora Carrington (Surrealism)

Half of this audio is me talking about the writer Leonora Carrington first, and then comes her story "The Debutante," so you can listen to it in two 5-minute sessions!

Listen here.

Today I’m going to read one of Leonora Carrington’s short stories, “The Debutante”. Please, listen as if it were a dream. Don’t get in the rational mood to listen, because Surrealist literature needs the kind of approach we have with poems – we just let go, let words take us wherever! Visualize the story – Leonora Carrington was actually a painter!
Leonora Carrington was born in England, in the UK, in 1917. Her parents were English textile tycoons and very strict Catholics. Leonora Carrington would lead a very different life and personal development – she became a Surrealist artist and a Mexican citizen.
When she was 18 and just before leaving England for good, she had to be a debutante -- she had to go to Buckingham Palace for her public presentation to society. She didn’t like it one bit!, so she wrote this short story I’m about to read. Apart from helping us learn about the world and develop our passions, Art helps us to digest those things which hurt us.
Carrington met the Surrealist artist Max Ernst at that time. He was in London exhibiting his paintings and she was there studying Art. They fell in love and eloped -- he portrayed her in Bride of the Wind. They lived together in Paris, with other artists, and talked lots about art and life, and Hitler’s threat on freedom. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Max Ernst was put in a concentration camp. Leonora Carrington tried to get his freedom, but she had to escape south herself! Just imagine… In that time she had several mental breakdowns. She was put in an institution (a mental hospital) and given those hard drugs women patients got then when doctors diagnosed them with “hysteria”. After one breakdown, in a hospital in Santader (read her story “Down Below”), Carrington escaped, rushed to the Mexican Embassy and married a friend of hers who was a diplomat there. They moved to Mexico and eventually separated – later, she married a Hungarian photographer.
One of her best friends was the Surrealist painter Remedios Varo (1908–1963). Their paintings are sometimes mixed up in books! Varo and Carrington got a kick out of the occult. This is not what I love from Leonora Carrington, though. I love her freedom as an artist. I can feel it in every word she writes! I love her use of animals in the stories. The hyena, for instance, an animal that appears in The Debutante, stands for her sexual self. The horse, another of her favorites, represents her spiritual self. I love her approach to life and art. She says that she paints/writes because she enjoys it (doing it well or badly is irrelevant, really!). Something else she says is this – “If young people tell me I'm young at heart, I take offence -- I'm OLD at heart.” I know what she means, I think. Growing older is good for people who love freedom, because you need many years to learn to be free…
Leonora Carrington has written tons of articles, novels, essays, and poems, in Spanish, English and French! She has also produced thousands of paintings, sculptures, collages, and a number of tapestries.

Here’s the link to a Self-Portrait she’s got in the Met (NYC, the USA). As you can see it’s got a hyena and two horses!

More on Leonora Carrington at Talking People.

And now, for the story. Enjoy it!

Poems. "A Litany for Survival" by Audre Lorde

A Litany for Survival
by Audre Lorde (from The Black Unicorn)

Listen here.

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak
we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

More on Audre Lorde at our Talking People website, in the Literature section.