Francisco Aragón: A Speaking Voice

Francisco Aragón shares poems alive with the vibrancy of a particular voice addressed to a particular audience. He introduces Francisco X. Alarcón’s bittersweet homage to a poetic ancestor (“Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón”), Thom Gunn’s farewell address to a beloved fellow writer (“To Isherwood Dying”), and Denise Levertov’s mythic, ecstatic monologue on transformation (“A Tree Telling of Orpheus”). Aragón concludes the episode with a direct address of his own that challenges Arizona’s SB 1070 (“Poem with a Phrase of Isherwood”). Listen to the full recordings of Alarcón, Gunn, and Levertov reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:Francisco X. Alarcón (2008)Thom Gunn (1986)Denise Levertov (1973)