On August 9, 2019 I turned 79. Today’s show is an examination of that fact.
Cover to Cover with Jack Foley
3:00 PST Wednesdays
A celebration of the art of poetry. A well-known poet himself, Jack Foley’s considerable historical knowledge and his awareness of the current “scene” are incorporated into his radio shows and have made them a kaleidoscopic, always stimulating attraction for anyone interested in poetry.
Fearlessly facing nouns and participles, recklessly splitting infinitives, in come Nina Serrano and Jack Foley, KPFA’s interwoven pair. Today’s show will feature the usual mixture of wit, brouhaha, political awareness, music and daring do. A special aspect with be the recitation of Jack’s piece, “Noir” by the author and Sangye Land.
Previous shows have dealt with Ha Jin’s excellent biography of Li Bai (Li Po), The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai. Today’s show is a consideration of Ha Jin’s own poetry. The focus will be on his most recent book, A Distant Center, though Jack will read from other works as well.
Today’s show is the third, concluding program in the series about the event KPFA presented on January 23 at The Hillside Club in Berkeley. That event was a talk by the Chinese-American novelist, poet, and National Book Award winner, Ha Jin, who had recently published The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po). The event was hosted by Jack Foley. Today we will present excerpts from the freewheeling, illuminating discussion between Jack and the author; the recording was done by Jane Heaven. In this excerpt Jack and Ha Jin were discussing “emotional parallels” between Ha Jin’s life and Li Bai’s (Li Po’s). Both men experienced the pain of exile.
Cover to Cover with Jack Foley – July 3, 2019
A celebration of the art of poetry, hosted by jack Foley.
On January 23, KPFA presented an event at The Hillside Club in Berkeley. That event was a talk by the Chinese-American novelist, poet, and National Book Award winner, Ha Jin, who had recently published The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po). The event was hosted by Jack Foley. Today’s show is the second half of a presentation of excerpts from that event; the recording was done by Jane Heaven.
Cover to Cover with Jack Foley – June 19, 2019
A celebration of the art of poetry, hosted by jack Foley.
Today’s show speculates in various ways about William Shakespeare. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Germany, there lived a philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel had something to say about William Shakespeare, who lived about two hundred years earlier, from 1564 to 1616, and whose birthday is celebrated as April 26. Hegel said that, in the portrayal of individual characters, Shakespeare stands “at an almost unapproachable height”; he made his creations “free artists of their own selves.” As such, Shakespeare’s characters are “real, directly living, extremely varied.” Hegel believed that Shakespeare was creating people—“real, directly living, extremely varied”—and that these people possessed the self-consciousness that is the hallmark of Hegel’s understanding: they were “free artists of their own selves.” Is this true of Shakespeare? Was Hegel correct in his analysis of Shakespeare’s characters? I don’t think so.
Cover to Cover with Jack Foley – June 5, 2019
A celebration of the art of poetry, hosted by jack Foley.
Jack’s guest is polyglot poet, translator, and editor Patricio Ferrari.