Issue 21. February 2012
LOUNGE LIT: Zip-Code Stories
downloadMissed the first Lounge Lit event in our series with the Boston Book Festival and WBUR's Radio Boston? Catch some excerpts from the night here, from stories by Holly LeCraw, Dawn Tripp, Lisa Rogers, and our Open Mic participants. And whet your appetite for the other two Lounge Lit events on March 8th and April 19th. For more info, visit bostonbookfest.org. (7:25)
Welcome, Lost Dogs
downloadThe narrator of Vanessa Blakeslee's "Welcome, Lost Dogs" offers a combination of mercy and practicality, sentiment and realism, as she tries to recover her dogs, stolen from her Costa Rican ranch. An expat American, riding the borders between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, she encounters--and is part of--a world in which everything and everyone has a value to be assessed and calculated. She tries to find her way among old relationships and new communities, thinking about what she hast lost and what she might restore. (38:19)
A Hoor of a Day
downloadJames Claffey returns to The Drum with the second of three short pieces. This one, "A Hoor of a Day," finds the narrator confronting his Da in his coffin. Even from his box, the man has the power to intrude on his son's thoughts and his memories, the father's phrases and aphorisms serving as an unsettling coda to his life. (3:19)
STORIES ON THE STREET Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
downloadTo celebrate Valentine's Day, The Drum's Stories on the Street project presents Andrew Marvell's 17th-century poem "To His Coy Mistress," read aloud by the denizens of two East Village singles bars on the weekend before the notorious holiday. The first reader fights off tears in his eyes; the second is the bartender, who brings drama and emotion to the text; all the readers offer a contemporary take on Marvell's poem about love, lust, and desperation. This audio of "To His Coy Mistress" was recorded and produced by Stories on the Street intern Sara Fetherolf. follow the recording with the text of "To His Coy Mistress" on Poets.org (3:27)
Zip-Code Stories
downloadLisa Roger's "Off the Map" is our selection for the January round of our Zip-Code Stories project with WBUR's Radio Boston. Rogers' "Off the Map"--about Wellesley's 02482--plays with the very idea of zip codes, describing the ways in which Morse's Pond transcends categorization, connecting two towns, and multiple communities, especially in winter when the ice forms a beautiful link. (3:37)
excerpt from Holy Day
downloadThis excerpt from Anne Colwell's novel Holy Day finds Maxine waking hungover in 1969 to confront her three young children and the challenges that arise from the issues surrounding their birth. Religion, marriage, the ability to be a good mother--these obligations press against Maxine as she remembers the post-McCarthy-era days before her marriage, when even conformity could offer a sense of new beginning. Her decision to convert to Catholicism sets up the complicated balance of independence and loss that both she and her husband now face. (26:33)
