Tag: #poetry

SAGA OF A LOVE AFFAIR WITH RADIO

The radio was on in my childhood home, always. A radio keeps songs alive – long after they’re hits – if you find the right station. I was two years old when Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song climbed the charts, but my hometown station played it for years where it lodged in my mind.…

April 18, 2024
See you tomorrow (March 17) 4:00 pm @ Starbucks, Apache Junction (@Delaware & the Trail).

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and hear some Irish music tomorrow. Bring canned food for Starbuck’s monthly donations to a local shelter. Write a limerick, the winning verse gets a Starbucks gift card. https://soundcloud.com/greg-ormson/molly-malone

March 16, 2021
Irish IRISH music on St. Patrick’s Day at the Apache Junction Starbucks (including a limerick contest to win a Starbucks gift card)

Six days to St. Paddy’s IRISH MUSIC — is there really such a thing? Yes, and Irish music takes you into its culture hook, line, and sinker. It’s known for telling powerful stories of resistance and sacrifice, land and liberty, love and loss; it cants of a thirst for the grog and flare for…

March 10, 2021
Ode for Humanity

In describing Welsh poet and prose writer Dylan Thomas’ 1947 poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” Denise Levertov wrote, “it is a rapturous ode to the unassailable tenacity of the human spirit.” Here, Randy Anagnostis and I create an interpretation for today with a few lines from Thomas’ poem. http://https://www.dropbox.com/s/m249adgr4kwv5xx/%27Shape%20Of%20Hope%27%20part%20one%20~%20by%20Gregory%20Ormson%20and%20Randy%20Anagnostis.mp4?dl=0

February 21, 2021
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: a poetry/song series for the last 8 days of April. Number 7, “Lightning and Scars”

It all began on a rainy afternoon at a window inside Peter Gummerson’s house. Looking out the window, my fingers wrapped around chords on his Nord keyboard. I was recording a song entitled “8 Track.“ The original lyrics were taken from two poems and two different parts to my life—one was a runaway nineteen year…

April 29, 2020
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: a poetry/song series for the last 8 days of April. Number 5, “When I Get Back to Marquette”

For 12 years I lived close to Lake Superior in Marquette, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two of my children were born there and all three spent their early years there. But my will to survive its brutal winters faded as the economic pinch turned mean and took a bite from my hide. I had to move.…

April 27, 2020
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: a poetry/song series for the last 8 days of April. Number 3, “Radio On” Anchors of Constancy

“I embrace the certain hurt of this path. At a cabin in the Midwest, I do not feel assaulted by noise; I seek justice for myself and creation. I enter the stillness, listen, and index the anchors of constancy.” Gregory Ormson Russell Thorburn, piano; Gregory Ormson, words and voice. “Radio On,” composed by Thorburn, and…

April 25, 2020
BENDING: a reflection on sitar

“There was something about the way he played his Stratocaster that made it seem otherwordly.” –Eric Clapton on Jimi Hendrix My sitar flows in 19 bands of light: their names are baaj, chikari, and tarab. Its journey to my hand is a mystery, but its music-medicine came to my doorstep from an old land, gripped…

January 12, 2020