Report on Hiatus

Hi everyone,

Report from the Mountains will be taking an extended break at least through the fall and winter. I'm jumping back into directing theatre for the next several months and will be on the road for much of this time. In the meantime, please enjoy the many past shows that are available here and check out more from the band that provides our theme music, Faruq Z. Bey & the Northwoods Improvisers.

To keep up do date on readings, plays and other projects of mine, please visit me at reverbnation.com/marcbeaudin and join my mailing list.

Thanks for listening and commenting. And thanks for keeping poetry and jazz alive.

~Marc

Report #71

 After a  short break, the Report is back, this week with a poem by Rita Dove from her collection Mother Love. The poem is called "Heroes."

Music this week is "Bemsha Swing" from The Avant-Garde (Atlantic 1960) by John Coltrane & Don Cherry. The album features Coltrane on soprano & tenor saxes, Cherry on trumpet, Charlie Haden and Percy Heath on bass (Heath on this track) and Ed Blackwell on drums.

Click below to listen to the full episode:
Report #71

Report #70

This week's episode discusses a grizzly sighting I had in Yellowstone Park. What happened next, and what doesn't get mentioned in the show, was dozens of brainless tourons running from their cars directly at a mother grizzly and her two cubs to get close-up pictures. The grizzly showed great restraint and grace, endured the apparent attack by the ugly two-legged beasts, and moved her cubs safely across the road and into the next valley.
She could have killed someone -- she had every right to. It would have been a terrible tragedy. Not the loss of human life (the stupidity displayed by these people reveals that losing a few would only strengthen the gene pool), but the inevitable murder of the bear. When people go into bear country and think, just because they're in a "park," that the animals aren't really wild, they're more of an exhibit, like a zoo or a museum, these people act foolishly. That's when the bears defend their cubs or react according to their survival instincts and people get hurt. When people get hurt, bears get killed. The Park Service and other agencies will kill a bear that has "attacked" people because if that bear repeats the behavior, the lawsuits will come raining down upon them. Like most decisions in bear country, it's economics and politics rather than science that holds sway.
So to the tourons who endangered the lives of these creatures out of ignorance, next time stay home and watch a nature show on your tv. That's all the wilderness you deserve.

Okay, that being said, on with the episode. This week's poem, "The Earth" ("La Tierra"), is by my favorite poet, Pablo Neruda, from The Captain's Verses (Los versos del capitan), translated by Donald D. Walsh. Not only are the poems in this collection brilliantly crafted and expressed, but this may be the sexiest book ever written. Read it out loud to someone you love. It's more effective than dozens of love potion number 9s. Guaranteed.

Music for this week is "Nutty" from the Thelonious Monk Quartet album Misterioso (Riverside 1958). The album features Monk on piano, Johnny Griffin on tenor sax, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. Here's a nice Monk essay by Robert Christgau.

Click below to listen to the full episode:
Report #70

Report #69

 This week's poem is another resuscitated from an old journal. The title "Sasha" comes from a song that was never written, "If Sasha Wears Her Summer Dress," by a band that nearly never was. I have a feeling this Sasha woman (whoever she is) will show up in some more of my writing as time goes by.

The music for this week is "Yesterday's Blues Tomorrow" from the album Rites of Passage by Jackie McLean. It features McLean on alto sax; Rene McLean on tenor, alto & soprano saxes; Hotep Idris Galeta on percussion; Nat Reeves on bass and Cal Allen on drums.
 Click below to listen to the episode:
Report #69