The Be-Loving Imaginer

About The Be-Loving Imaginer

This podcast is focused on 3 core values: a “be-loving” intercultural imagination, a love for wordsong as the calling of a modern “troubadour,” & the desire to compose in verse a modern-day scripture or testament as Wordsworth, Blake, or Whitman tried to do. I’m offering “workshops” & “interviews” in talk-show style to dramatize my daily verse-creating interaction with mentors for people who want to sample the fruits of a poetic life which is a pioneering venture in both melodious form & intercultural, inter-religious content. My mission is to illustrate my 3 main approaches to life-and-art.

Publisher

Martin Bidney

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Jul 2019

Latest episode

26 Jan 2026

Latest episodes

64 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Jan 2026

   TWIAtv: Martin Bidney - Shakespair: Sonnet Replies to the 154 Sonnets of William Shakespeare

   Was Shakespeare Bisexual? The Truth Hidden in 154 Sonnets - "Shakespair: Sonnet Replies to the 154 Sonnets of William Shakespeare" by Martin BidneyIn Shakespeare's 1609 book of 154 sonnets (14-liners), you'll notice the welcoming, inclusive, bisexual sensibility of thepoems' narrator. He gets involved in three love triangles: first a woman and two men, next again a woman and two men, and finally a triangle of three men. The book's 39 opening sonnets are love poems to his boyfriend. In poem 40 a woman appears, and when the Shakespeare narrator falls in love with her, he immediately learns that the boyfriend has been romancing her for several years already! The book, viewed as a whole, resembles a TV series filled with dramatic episodes. The narrator's bipolar mood-switches are themselves psychologically fascinating. A beloved, male or female, can suddenly turn into a frenemy. The emotional range is vast, the implications unending. My contribution? I write an original sonnet reply to every one the Bard offers. He becomes my sociable companion, teacher, mentor, also a joke-telling pal, suffering victim, and rapid imaginer it's exciting to be friends with. There's no book you can read that has more vital and empathetic LGBTQ+ interests and observations. I'm inexpressibly grateful for the chanceto dialogue with "Will" (that's what he calls himself) in his favorite verse form.Martin Bidney, Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University in upstate New York,taught there for 35 years, publishing Blake and Goethe and Patterns of Epiphany. In the first 23 years of his "rewirement" he has published 61 books of original and translated poetry, often including both in what he calls "verse translation interviews" with poets he has read in Polish, Russian, German, and French.

2. 

   26 Aug 2025

   Martin Bidney - The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 63 - Con-verse-ing with Stefan George

   The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 63: Con-verse-ing with Stefan GeorgeThe best response to a poem you value will be a poem you write in reply. The superbly crafted lyrics of German poet Stefan George (1868-1923) embody a range of moods that not only charm the hearer by their verbal music but make the responder want to continue the melody and to elaborate or amplify suggested implications. George’s contemporary, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). offers context in my replies, as do kindred spirits from Russia.From “The Book of the Hanging Gardens” the George lyric “Voices of the River” initiates a series of dramatic monologues embodying expressive psychological portraits, and Nikolai Gumilyov’s “Drunken Dervish” provides a comparable study of dramatic ambivalence and lyric exuberance.From “A Year of the Soul” I select a melancholy meditation relating to the tradition of 19th century poet Heinrich Heine, who liked to give his own folksong-like laments a humorous twist comparable in ambivalence to the “merry dread” of George.From “Mournful Dances” I choose a mentality-portrait that brought to mind another troubled bard from the Romantic period, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.From “The Tapestry of Life” I offer a hymn-like journal entry by George that brings to mind a closely comparable religiously oriented prayer-like masterwork I translate from the German of Rilke, showing the abiding legacy of early Catholic spirituality in the two bards’ writing.To a poem “The Word” from the brief sequence “Song” I respond with a presentation of Tyutchev’s Russian lyric “Silence” in a discussion of the dramatic strengths and hazards of incorporating maxims or adages in lyrical monologues. While George says, “No thing is, where the word has failed,” Tyutchev writes, “The thought, once uttered, is a lie.” With deep gratitude,Martin

3. 

   4 Aug 2025

   Martin Bidney - The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 62 - Impulse of the Lyric Moment

   Impulse of the Lyric MomentThe Be-Loving Imaginer Episode 62 Any lyric moment, or hour, or day can be the source of pure joy in poetry writing, as the best poets have known. Here’s how I start my book: opening paragraph with “Ode on the Moment.” Ancient Roman poet Horace in Book 1, Ode 11 wrote 8 lines on “seizing the day” that have resounded through the centuries (p. xvii). Turn the page and you’ll hear two German poets in more modern times debating on this theme. Poems 26 and 27 show the moment unfolding for Picasso and J. S. Bach. Poem 28 lets you watch it play out in a memory of junior high school string orchestra. Paintings on the net offer other priceless moments: Edward Hopper (44). A friend writes me an e-mail and the reply tries to make the moment timeless (51). Poem (56) shows me taking pleasure in learning how to do this. Poem (79) show how a birdsong collaborates. Poem (87) “Polygnostic” shows how openness to the moment can lead to a wider spiritual openness. A polygnostic is one who learns from many sources. (92)Psalmer” show awareness of the Judaeo-Christo-Islamic tradition. A poet from any background whatever can initiate the writing of a poetic scripture, a scripture of beauty (96). Poems 111, 112 and 113 show how to do lyrical “fortune telling.” Multiethnic memories arise in (116) from Poland, and (121) from Italy.In poem (158) Islamic and Christian memories combine. (160) “A Quiet Morning” commemorates a moment that extends to unite 3 generations.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 21 / 100

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YouTube

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Engagement

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