The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Bliss in Triple Rhythm–A Toolbox for Poets: Nine Ways to Shape A Word Song: Shown in 300 Original Poems by Martin Bidney

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Bliss in Triple Rhythm–A Toolbox for Poets: Nine Ways to Shape A Word Song: Shown in 300 Original Poems by Martin Bidney https://www.amazon.com/Bliss-Triple-Rhythm-Toolbox-Poets/dp/1987402561... Mmartinbidney.org This book of word songs in unexpected melodic patterns will surprise you by its equally unusual liveliness. I’m so eager to begin singing for you that, as you noticed, I’ve already written a prefatory poem in one of the varied kinds of triple rhythm units I’ll be illustrating (la LA la; weak STRONG weak; one TWO three; x/x). The strangest thing I’ll be doing in my collection is to bring about a resurrection of ancient stanza patterns embodying the musical structures I love. The uncustomary triple-rhythm stanza forms richly displayed will acquire a real if unlikely novelty by presenting tools so extremely old. About the author Martin Bidney, Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University (NY), writes poetry books that are dialogues. In “Shakespair” he converses in Shakespearean sonnets with the 154 that the bisexual Bard himself wrote in the 1590s about his boyfriend and girlfriend. In “A Unifying Light” Martin converses with Qur’anic passages on the topic of Jews and Christians in the Qur’an and the Islamic virtues they embody. “East-West Poetry” shows Martin replying, in poems, to passages from both the Qur’an and Rumi. “Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance” offers 103 dialogues between Martin and Hafiz, the 14th century Persian pub poet he translates, a Muslim Sufi who was bisexual, like Shakespeare, and whom Germany’s greatest poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, called his “twin” brother! (Martin translates Hafiz from the same version Goethe used.) In fact, Martin has also translated Goethe’s own “West-East Divan” (divan means “collection”) and wrote conversational reply poems to all of Goethe’s 240 lyrics. Martin’s dialogue book with the greatest Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, contains, on facing pages, the sonnets he wrote in response to the “Crimean Sonnets” he translated from Polish. In “Like a Fine Rug of Erivan” he translates 39 Pushkin poems from Russian and recites them on a CD. His wide-ranging fascination with revelatory writing stems from “Patterns of Epiphany,” where Martin pioneered a method of analysis he has since applied to over 20 authors.

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Starting point is 00:01:47 He was born in 1943 in New York City. His father, Dave, was a professor of anthropology and philosophy in India University. His mother, Evelyn, a practicing physician and his sister, Rina, is a retired public school art teacher and Potter. When he was seven, they moved to Bloomington, Indiana, and he grew up studying classical violin, then took up folk fiddling and singing as well. And since retirement, 23 years ago, became a classical chorister. And he's received several different awards, tutoring, and then took Latin, French, and high school, all sorts of different things. But definitely he knows his music. They taught for 35 years at the University, writing two articles plus two books of literary criticism. Welcome to the show. How
Starting point is 00:02:35 are you, sir? Thank you. Thank you. Delighted to be here. Delighted to have you, Martin. Give us your dot-coms, where can people find out more about you on the interwebs? Martinbidney.org. So give us your 30,000 overview. What's inside this book? What's inside the book? Yeah, what's the book about? Yes, it's called bliss in triple rhythm. And the piece of thinking that's behind it, is that you can have a lot more fun writing poetry, and you can write much more colorful and varied poetry. If you aren't content with the chief traditions that have been passed down, a lot of species of poetry stanzas and shapes and forms,
Starting point is 00:03:18 just as in the animal world, so likewise in the cultural world, are threatened with extinction. And some people may think that, and in fact, who knows what extinction might mean as long as I'm alive, the ancient Greek forms and Roman forms, Greco-Roman tradition in poetry rhythms and stanza shapes will not die. But that's because I'm an archaeologist of such matters. I wish to discover what are the different shapes of rhythms that people have used for writing their poetry in the past. To think for a minute about rhythm, let's get a little context.
Starting point is 00:03:54 Shakespeare is famous for his iambic pentameter. and I am is Lala and if you have a pentameter that's five of them So let's see That'll work pretty easily Let's see To be or not to be
Starting point is 00:04:10 That is the question Whether it is better in the mind To suffer the slings and arrows Of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them La La La La La La La And one and two and three
Starting point is 00:04:25 And four and five There we are. That's the Shakespeare rhythm, and he wrote millions of those. But you notice there's a rhythm unit which has two syllables. La la la la la la la. And sometimes an extra syllable at the end. That's called a feminine rhyme. That's it. That's what he uses. And since some, he may well be the greatest poet that has yet lived. I'm not going to criticize that limitation. But it is a limit because what if you wanted to write in units where the number of syllables admissible is three and not two? Oh, wow. Wouldn't that be interesting? Shakespeare never tried it, but how about this?
Starting point is 00:05:07 La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la that's not bad. That's that form la la la is three syllables. It's called an amphibraq. and I used it and I'd like to tell you where I get my ideas from. My whole life is one of dialogue with other people who can teach me something. What I do is first I've started out,
Starting point is 00:05:32 I was very lucky, I majored in Russian. So that's a really interesting language of a culture that has one of the world's very richest stores of verse. And I love poetry. And I also did the same thing with German. I went to Germany. I went to France and French-speaking Switzerland, and I went to these countries in order to speak the language with the people and then come back and read their poetry in their language. And not only that, I decided I would do a dialogue in each case.
Starting point is 00:06:05 I would show each poet how much I loved the new verse form he or she was teaching me by writing a reply in that form. Oh, wow. And I've done that in a couple, how many books, 61 books I've published. 61? Yeah, since I retired. Rewired, much better word. I don't use rewired when I returned 61.
Starting point is 00:06:33 I like that paradigm shift that you have there. I'm not retired. I'm rewired. Yeah, yeah. That's the keynote, and that's why I just can't stop writing poetry. I simply love it. And it's these inspiring masters who get me going. And in order to acquire these masters and to learn from them,
Starting point is 00:06:51 I believe in travel, and I practiced this, travel widely in time and space. Wow. So I have looked for ancient Greek and Roman models of rhythm. And you can find those now on your wonderful modern computer. Even if you don't know Greek and if you've had limited Latin, you can discover rhythm charts, stress charts, where with symbols, the rhythms are all displayed for you on your computer screen. And if you have a sense for rhythm, I'm a violinist and I'm a singer, and I totally love music.
Starting point is 00:07:25 So what I do is I write in these rhythms that I'm learning from the computer. So that's in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and also modern languages. Modern languages are interesting because they write sometimes, as the ancients did, in rhythms that in English might as well be called extinct. And one of them is the amphibrac, la la la la la. Let me read you a poem that I learned about in Russian. I've translated it for you. Because it's one of my favorites.
Starting point is 00:07:56 It's by the great romantic poet Lermontov. Wermontov thought that his ancestors were actually Scottish. He thought the family was named Liermont, and that in the Renaissance time they had simply scooted over into Scotslop. love to wander, and some of them wandered to Russia, and it's a fact of history that that happened, and he thought, oh, the Leermont, who went to Russia, didn't do me a very good turn, because he basically stifled me amongst surroundings of nothing but snow and ice. This is a dreadfully dull and barren place. I could have been, I brought up in Scotland. My ancestor was a notable
Starting point is 00:08:36 warrior. I don't know where he got this information from, fighting against Macbeth. That is a worthwhile cause, and he did it while living amid the heather-covered hills of Scotland, which I wish I so much that I could revisit. And then Al-Lermatov has just spotted a raven. And he says, now if I were that raven, you know where I would go. I would head straight for Scotland. That's what the poem tells about, okay? The poem is very revealingly called Desire.
Starting point is 00:09:09 Oh, why can't I fly like that raven up there sweeping over me now through the air? How fine it would feel to soar high out of sight, with my freedom, the power of my flight. To the west, to the west right away I would fly where the fields of my forefathers lie. In mist-covered meadows, their fortress of stone forsaken, they mold alone. Their heraldic escutcheon, heroic reward might be viewed, and their rust-ridden sword. With my wing wide outspread, I would shake off the dust from the shield and the sword and the rust. I would strike once again the Scots harp, minstrel bird, loud the sound down the halls would
Starting point is 00:10:02 be heard. It would echo in one, in another would fade. from one sound would many be made. But my prayers are in vain. My hopes dashed with disdain by a fate that forever will reign. For between my loved lands, Heather Meadows and me
Starting point is 00:10:22 lies the vastating void of the sea. Ah. Final scion of warriors fearless, I fade. Oh, the snow. I feel broken. betrayed. Though I live here, was born here, this won't be my home. Over plains I, a raven would roam. Ah. Yeah. So you've been writing poems for how long now?
Starting point is 00:10:54 Oh, actually, I started at just about age 61 when I retired. You started at age 61? Yeah, I'm a very strange poet. I mean, you think about poets as young people, right? writing about their youthful romances and disappointments and such, like the teenage songwriters in America today. But there's another kind of a poet. We have our counterparts in other arts like, remember Grandma Moses? I don't think she painted anything before she was 90 years old. And so similarly, at age 61, that's a good time to start, as good as any.
Starting point is 00:11:32 And that's why I've been able to. I found it so exciting I've written the, took the 61 books and published them since then. And the excitement never stops. It's actually, it was triggered off by a crisis. The crisis was I had carpal tunnel. I had four versions of carpal. Actually, you see, it was in two wrists, and then on top of that, I had cubital tunnel in both wrists. So I had four nerve diseases at once, and I thought that was going to be just about the end of me, because I love to read and write and especially write, and how am I going to do that? But then I learned that that could be cured with nothing but stretches and no surgery
Starting point is 00:12:13 at all. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, while I did the stretching cure, the therapist said, leave that violin alone. I'm a violinist, and I love to play. And he said, it'll only take five or six weeks, but don't complicate the cure with the violin. Yeah. I listened, but I also got indignant and unhappy. I wanted to make music. So I went to the computer. He did allow me to use an ergonomic computer, which I still use. It's like a tent, not flat.
Starting point is 00:12:45 Okay? None of your laptops. Anyway, so there we are. I'm using my new computer, and I went in a spirit of defiance and indignation, and I said, I am going to make music, if not on the violin, with words, and I translated a poem from Russian. I majored in Russian. I told you that. So I had my head full of them. I was as much a teenager as anybody, even though I was considerably more advanced chronologically. I still found it valuable to memorize things like love by Wittchislav Ivanov. And that's a very musical piece. And so I
Starting point is 00:13:23 translated that. And I gave it to the creative writing person, the poet, next day. And I asked, What do you think of it? And she said, do a dozen. I'll print them in my journal. Ah. That started me. All it takes is a crisis. Uh-huh.
Starting point is 00:13:41 All it takes as a crisis. And what a wonderful thing you've done. You've written a lot. That's a lot of different things you put on. Now, on your website, you have a thing where people can go there and interact with different stuff. Tell us about that. Yes. On my website, martinbidney.org, you will find.
Starting point is 00:14:00 that all of the verse forms that I illustrate here, nine different kinds of them, I think. You will find a book devoted to each, nine books on my website. If you get attached to one form or another, or all of them, just buy the book, read it. Buy the book, read it, and away you go. On top of that, I've made 88 YouTube's. So if you don't even want to buy the book, just listen to me, recite from it. So you have a YouTube channel, too, as well. I sure do.
Starting point is 00:14:30 Uh-huh. The, that's awesome. That's awesome. Man, you are busy. You are not retired. You are rewired. Retread and, and put back out there. The, what do you think people misunderstand about poem or poetry?
Starting point is 00:14:47 What do you think people don't get about it that maybe they should realize the value of it? I think it's partly the, the predominance everywhere of free verse. People seem to think that it's the only kind of poetry you can write. But I call it gulag verse, because with free verse, you sacrifice all of the things that clearly distinguish poetry from prose. If you don't have complicated, intricate forms of rhyme, if you don't hit the beat hard and illustrate your love of rhythm, which comes straight from the heart, with innumerable forms of beautiful rhythms, and the melody, the melodious character of recurrent. patterns of vowels and consonants? What have you got left? You've really got, I think, most of the time, sort of prose. It's sometimes called shredded prose, because the margins are kind of funny. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. There's always that stanza that, that, that ticototony metronome sort of thing that goes into poetry. Tell us about that. I'm not sure about what you mean. Stanzas? Stanzas. Yeah. A stanza is simply the shape of,
Starting point is 00:16:01 it's a subdivision of a total poem and in each stanza you get in traditional verse writing the the rhythmic pattern shall i demonstrate one of them yeah sure okay let's begin with poem one in the book just a second here we go i call this poem weather retort no that's not a weather report That's a weather retort. And it's in amphibratic tetrameter. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la okay? Snowed in by the drift of the outer environs, my spirit I lift with a vigor like byrons who pacing to shoreline the wrinkles marine called free of all aging in glory pristine.
Starting point is 00:17:00 The river of time in your mind that is flowing, compliant will feel that your spirit bestowing the tempo, direction, and speed of the peace can grant from dull slowing a freedom release. I'll cover more space and more time in a minute. Should life to a triumph pay tribute within it and generate luck where no lack will be known, if glory outpoured to the heaven be shown. Philosophy, helmsman, you aid in preparing the ventures that poetry soon will be daring
Starting point is 00:17:39 when thought of the snow long ago is forgot by sailor who bravely an odyssey lot. Hmm. That's interesting, yeah. And so tell us how that applies and why that makes a difference in a poem. What application does it utilize? Rhythm is something we feel deeply because our heartbeat is in the rhythm. Billions and billions of rhythms we hear, or we don't hear, but we could hear, which occur because the heart never stops beating. And in fact, my idea, I wrote a book called The Boundless and the Beating Heart.
Starting point is 00:18:22 The beating heart is what you have here. And the boundless is the cosmic, the universe, the bigger energy outside of us. Okay? And so there really are both ways of thinking about the heart. So if you keep this relation in mind, you will enjoy, I think, be excited by rhythms. We like rhythms. Our heart makes us fascinated by rhythms. and you've got to admit that piece had a lot of rhythm.
Starting point is 00:18:56 Yeah. It's almost musical. I mean, really, a lot of people don't realize a lot of lyrics for songs are basically poems in some sense or another. You know what? I'm going to prove the truth of what you just said. Okay. Because I sometimes notice that while I'm writing a poem, I start singing it.
Starting point is 00:19:17 And I did that with home number one thing. 38. Oh, this is fun. Here we go. This is in a form that mixes together the threes and the twos. One and two and a three and four. One and two and a three, four and a five and six. One and two and a three and four.
Starting point is 00:19:46 One and two and a three, four and a five and six. I might be the only person in the world that is currently writing in rhythms like that. It was called in ancient days the fourth Asclepeatic. And in the late 18th century, there was a revival of these ancient Greek forms, but they didn't get to all of them. I still don't remember reading anything like this in German. But here we go. You of life can a Bible write. Let's just move right into the singing, okay?
Starting point is 00:20:22 You of life can a Bible write, gospel? tale with a plot, letters on what you've learned, book of acts for your travel notes, then Apocalypse Dream, telling of what's to come. You of life can a temple build, big cathedral inspired, dwarfing the hordes that crowd, rosy pain with where a smiling lies, now remembered forever, gave you a courage word. You of life an orchestral world Two can form Where the four symphony sections blend
Starting point is 00:21:08 Themes recording of which a hint given First will expand filling the whole with light. You of life may a mural paint showing how the divine flame could an upburst rise, learning circle to whirl round one, who the lesson had told, those that behold will shine. Wow, that was amazing. Wonderful there.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Oh, thank you. And you're talking about the rhythms and math and stuff like this. And how does the math apply to the, to the rhythms. I noticed you were talking about the twos and threes. Tell us a little bit more in depth about how we understand that. That's a subject on which I am uniquely incompetent to speak. And the reason is I'm bad at numbers and I don't know that much about math. I feel the numbers, but sometimes I get sucked into the mood so completely that I just forget to count. And there are a few pages in this book where there's an extra beat here or there that happens
Starting point is 00:22:22 to me. But no, I don't do any math over it. But, but, you know, You are right. If you do statistical searching, you will find an amazing correlation between mathematicians and musicians. Lots and lots of musicians are really great at math. Yeah. I mean, you can reverse engineer a lot of music, and it's mathematical equations, I think, if you want. But this is great. I mean, a lot of people think of poetry, and they're like, oh, I had to learn that in English school,
Starting point is 00:22:49 teaching, and I wanted to claw my face off with it. But now that I've lived a life where I understand music and lyrics and the written word, and of course I appreciate it because I write books as well. And you can appreciate these things and you can see the rhythm and the patterns. And there's a certain comfort in those patterns, I think, too, as well. And probably because, like you said, our biological upbringing, there's an old thing that we respond to, like you'll see a baby or a young kid in a car, they'll fall asleep when the car starts moving.
Starting point is 00:23:23 Because it resembles the rhythm of the mother moving when they were in the womb. I know my dogs and their puppies, they like to sleep against my hand or some sort of any body part. Usually a hand, I'll stick into the cage when they're created, when they're teaching and potty training. And they'll sleep against my hand. And someone had told me a long time ago, there's two things you do when you get a new puppy. You either, you bring the blanket that he had with the mother or she had with the mother. And then you either let them sleep against your hand where they can feel the pulse, the rhythm of your pulse. And it reminds them of their mother's heartbeat.
Starting point is 00:23:59 Or you can get one of those old TikTok clocks and wrapping a blanket, put it in their bed. And they'll feel the rhythm of that. And I think that's their mother's heartbeat. So they'll feel just more secure, basically. Plus they kind of bond to you, too, if you do that. So I tend to do that. I leave my hand in the cage. and it's a little hard to do when you're asleep and stuff,
Starting point is 00:24:23 but at the very least I'll put my fingers in there. Actually, that's a fascinating thing, because I've done some thinking about natural rhythms of oceans and seas, along with the rhythm of our heartbeat. And I went to a science encyclopedia, and I looked up what makes a shell supposedly sound like the ocean? I've written poems about this. Oh, really?
Starting point is 00:24:49 Yeah, and you know what the answer is? What? Your parents probably told you that's the distance C that you're hearing in the shell. Yeah. But in fact, you are listening to a kind of C, but what you're hearing is the hugely amplified sound of your own blood in your own ear. Oh, really? That would make sense because it is kind of a speaker, right? It is a speaker.
Starting point is 00:25:17 And what I didn't realize, until I said, saw the complicated diagram in the science encyclopedia is that the ear is the same kind of a thing. It's actually multiple echoing chambers. And that explains the very big difference in volume between the sea and the sea that you hear and the ear blood flow that you don't hear. Yeah. It has that conical shape. I mean, they even call speakers cones. So I don't really thought about it.
Starting point is 00:25:48 But yeah, that is really a speaker, so it's going to bounce the sound back and forth, especially you can press it. Wow, I learned something new today. I learned awesome stuff. I do love going to the ocean and seeing by the waves and that repetitive. Even up here when I visit in Utah, I go to a place called the lake, and you can hear the lapping of the lake against the port of the patio that you eat at. And I find comfort in that. And I always have that pacing, that rhythm of the shore, hitting the shore. Some people say it's because we originally walked up out of the primordial soup onto the land
Starting point is 00:26:28 and converted from fish to oxygen breathing idiots. And that's why we have that affinity with water and the rhythm of it and wanting to be near it. There's something peaceful we find. I find it peaceful. So if anybody doesn't find it peaceful, I mean, I don't know, check what you're doing, I guess. What more do we need to know? What do you hope people come away with when they read your books?
Starting point is 00:26:52 I want them to get a refreshed sense of rhythm, all the different rhythms. For example, let me give you another one, okay? Sure. I can't prove my thesis about variety unless I show you some variety. Let's do it. So let's do that. There's me. You have a lot of books on Amazon.
Starting point is 00:27:07 I'm trying to go through them all. Why? Yeah, you've got a lot of books. Wow. It's about everything you can ever find on. Yeah, yeah. Oh, here we go. Here's a beautiful rhythm. La la, la, la, la, la. Haven't done that rhythm yet. This is the dactyl. And the dactyl is danceable. It's good to talk about poetry and tides and water and oceans, but it's also fun to talk about poetry and dancing, all the different kinds of dances. And so here is an example of, just a moment. From 104, I'll show you. Here's an experiment that I did. It struck me that. It struck me that. when you do your dactyls,
Starting point is 00:27:48 you might as well be playing an Irish jig on the fiddle. So here's a song, a poem called Maggie Brown's Favorite, which is one of my favorite jigs. And I call it Irish folk jigs on it because it has 14 lines. Here we go.
Starting point is 00:28:08 Steadily venturing, simple, habitual, bland, undemanding, though handily danceable, melody mellow and mildly enhanceable, planned, unelaborate rhythmical ritual, feeling of galloping, prancing, and cantering, triple-time fiddling to cheer you, relaxingly, festive, equestrian, gently, untaxingly, rapidly chanting and happily bantering. Presently then, what was pleasantly pillowing, confident calm,
Starting point is 00:28:41 a predictable, merrily singable thing became crazily, scarily, swaying and raving, a breaker wave, billowing, roaring and rising, then sinking, subsiding. Fine, I survived it, inspired by the riding. Ah. I mean, these are wonderful. I love how much energy you put into these. You really enjoyed it. You know, who really liked that poem was the guy I had in mind that as I wrote it.
Starting point is 00:29:11 I've played this song, Maggie Brown's favorite, with him many times Jeff Braunfeld. He's a mandolinist. He really appreciated mandolin. That's like a violin, only you pluck it. Yeah. Actually, a violinist, a fiddler, already knows where all the notes are on a mandolin. Yeah. I hope they do, because that's their job.
Starting point is 00:29:34 Yep. I'd like to show you one more thing about Dactyls. Uh-huh. Because each of these forms that I'm telling you about can be used for various things. You notice that in that jig poem, I went through a number of moods. It wasn't uniform. And similarly here, you get to stop and think, that was a fast-paced dactual poem. But it's also very suitable for a slower-paced, thoughtful poem.
Starting point is 00:30:03 In fact, I would say it, it's just about the best thing and the most popular. used by the Romans to tell about whatever they felt like. You can write a letter in these dactyls. Here, I wrote one page to sum up a tour of the nature preserve right next to Binghamton University campus. My friend Julian Shepard, who's a biologist, took us on this little tour, and I decided I'd write it up in what are called Ovidian districts or couplets, which here's the main pattern that we use.
Starting point is 00:30:37 The pattern has a cup, it's in two line sections and each one has this pattern one into two and a three
Starting point is 00:30:46 and four and a five and a six hand one and a two and a three four into five and a six. So this second line you noticed
Starting point is 00:30:55 had a pause in the middle of it and take a break and also a pause at the end of it where you can take a breath. Oh, it's important
Starting point is 00:31:04 to probably leave those in there. I think so. I think it's one of the things that made the Ovidian district so very, very popular. There's a lot that goes into poetry, isn't there? Yeah, there is. That is. That's exactly right. So here we go. You're going on a tour with me of the nature preserve. Heavy and brownish and slothful and monkey-like, sparkling with quilled frost, high on a hemlock's bare branch, piercing, midwinter's pure blue. Napping, the porcupine wakes. You can watch how he's groping and stretching.
Starting point is 00:31:45 Want to predict what he'll think? Glance at the damage below. Look at the sugar pine punched full of holes, half demolished, a ravage. That's because year after year, pilli ate woodpeckers banged, jolted, concussed, the hard husk, having hoped for a beetle grub, feast day. Standing in snow-covered marsh, only one willow remains. All the less lucky were felled by the beavers that hapless at walking, like to have dinner at home, bringing the wood to the wet. Now, though, a dam they created when all the doomed others went under. Weakening, coming apart, letting new water pour through, makes a fresh forest arrive. came the Aspans, impatient invaders, then the intrepid white pines, branches low, spreading out wide,
Starting point is 00:32:46 seeing familiar destroyers revisit, the beaver included, banished a century back, harried by fashion-mad hats. There used to be a terrible trend for beaver hats. I bought one of them once in a flea market, and I tried to get rid of it later. caught in the mondering muddle of wondering where we are going, grateful we come to a stop, stirred by the rule of return. The beavers are back. Wonderful stuff there, wonderful stuff. Is there any future books that you may have coming out that we should know about?
Starting point is 00:33:26 Any future works you might be up to? Oh, I'm doing all kinds of things. I can tell. I quickly finished a book where I translated 20 or 30 of my favorite Russian poems, and I wove them together with the commentary in verse, but for verse I chose not any American form, but rather, it is half American, because I altered it, I hybridized it. I used the waka.
Starting point is 00:33:54 You've heard of haikus, right? Yes. Hikus go one and two and, let's see. and one and two and three and four and five and one and two and three and four and five and six and seven no it's one and two and three and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four okay i rather seventeen seventeen is the magic number and what i do is i write and one and two and three and three and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four in other words it's a little longer than one and three and three and four and one and two and three and four in other words it's a little longer than than a haiku. So I get to conduct something more like a lecture, the way I did here, explaining to you what's in that Russian poem. And I do that throughout the entire book. The Japanese or altered Japanese English, Waka's are commenting on the Russian poems, which can be in any form at all, and I faithfully copy the form.
Starting point is 00:34:55 Ah, that sounds great. And now, as we go out, give people a final pitch out to pick up your books, get to know you better, reach out to you on the website, etc., etc. A little louder, please. Give people a final pitch out as we go out on show to pick up your books, your dot-coms, where can they find out more about you, et cetera, et cetera. The best, I'm on Facebook, certainly, but the most convenient place to go is martinbidney.org, because that will feature not only a list of all, all the things that I've done, and links to it all the different books, so you can link them all immediately,
Starting point is 00:35:32 if you like the title and think you might like to try them out, but also the 88 performances that I've done on YouTube and elsewhere, and what you get from that is it's acted out for you, and they very greatly in length. Sometimes I'll talk for, I'll recite and talk for half an hour, but one of them went on for an hour and a half. That was when I had a professor of Russian come in and talk with me about the poems of Nikolai Gumi
Starting point is 00:36:02 of whose work I had just translated eight complete collections. Boy, he is wonderful. You can read about him in a book that I call Russia's world traveler poet. Ah, that's a good deal then. You can do that. So we got your dot-coms from the dot org, correct?
Starting point is 00:36:23 We got your dot org, right? Yeah, martinbidney. Thank you very much, Mark, for coming the show. We really appreciate it. It's been very insightful, and we learned a lot poems and has some of you. I enjoy talking with you. You know what you're talking about too. I like kind of could fake it till I make it. But thank you very much for coming on the show. Folks, pick up his books wherever fine books are sold. You can find a ton of them on Amazon.
Starting point is 00:36:46 The one we've been talking about, Bliss in Triple Rhythm, a toolbox for poets, nine ways to shape a word song shown in 300 original poems. Thanks for honest for tuning it. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Chris Faw is one on the TikTokity and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts.
Starting point is 00:37:25 Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed.

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