Monday, December 8 - Two New Shows - Buhle, Ryan

Short-term programming changes by station management put you in the catbird seat, or the booklover-listener's seat anyway. So, NOON on Monday, an interview. Then, at 12:30, another program from the good folks at San Clemente's Casa Romantica Poetry Series, who share a recording of the night's reading. I edit slightly for length and to accomodate the FCC.

NOON - Historian (and hero) PAUL BUHLE

Paul Buhle is the hardest working man in Leftbiz, a popularizer, archivist, cultural polemicist, revisionist historian whose CV is a who’s he of the last forty years of our national story. Recently Buhle edited a comic book version of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States as A People’s History of American Empire and Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History with Harvey Pekar. His newest is Jews and American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form. A recent favorite of mine is the beautiful Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, featuring art by Pekar, Seth Tobocman, Sue Coe and Spain Rodriguez. Paul Buhle is Senior Lecturer at Brown University and a leading American historian --- author or editor of more than thirty books, including the three-volume Jews and American Popular Culture. He founded the iconic New Left journal Radical America as an SDS activist himself, co-edited the incredibly useful and comprehensive Encyclopedia of the American Left, and wrote the authorized biography of CLR James. Paul Buhle is a scholar and activist who I have long admired, so that it is a real honor to welcome Paul Buhle to Bibliocracy.

12:30 PM

United States Poet Laureate KAY RYAN


This program’s collaboration with the poetry series at Casa Romantica in Orange County continues, celebrating the happy coincidence that one of its recent guest readers, Kay Ryan, was just named the newest poet laureate of the United States of America. Hot damn! Recorded in springtime at the Casa’s San Clemente Poetry Series, Kay Ryan’s most recent collections are Say Uncle and The Niagara River, and she reads poems from both. Ryan has won countless awards and honors, fellowships from the Guggenheim and won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. There are Pushcarts and Best American Poetry credits and, yes, she is our nation’s newest poet laureate. And here she is, poet Kay Ryan, on Bibliocracy, reading for you. For more information on their excellent series, with readings the final Wednesday of each month in beautiful San Clemente, visit the Casa Romantica site: http://www.casaromanticareadingseries.org/.