The Rudhyar Audio Archives were created by and are curated by Nicki Michaels.
Like his activities in other forms of the arts, Rudhyar’s poetry is a spontaneous, very personal—yet transpersonal—expression, unburdened by prolonged technical training or conditioning; and his poems unselfconsciously exemplify his philosophy and demonstrate his overall attitude to life.
In his 1983 autobiography, Rudhyar says this about his poetry, “The crises of growth, which in my life took the form of the breakdowns of my first and second marriages, released inner realizations and a power of creative formation which in turn took form in a number of poems. The process of poetic formulation that is an integral and significant part of my total destiny had started many years before when I deliberately severed all connections with my ancestral and cultural past. I believe this process should be understood in a way that most present day poetry seems to make irrelevant and fanciful. I have often stated that my music and paintings should be approached in a non-traditional way. By dealing more specifically with my poetry, further light may be shed on the all-inclusive character of the creative impulses that have been operating, and still operate, in my life. To do this seems important today, if only to help people who read my published poetry not to approach it with false or inadequate expectations.”
The following is quoted from the Foreword of Of Vibrancy and Peace (1967), an anthology of poems from 1916 to 1962: “My poetry was not written with the view of conforming to a literary tradition and to fit into esthetically appreciable forms. It is the quite spontaneous expression of my inner life; it was written in most cases of time of great stress, of challenging, perhaps devastating emotional and/or spiritual experiences. It was meant to express and to communicate the fervor and intensity of what psychologists now often call peak experiences.”
Read more about Rudhyar’s poetry, from his autobiography, in Concerning My Poetry and Its Place in My Creative Activity.
From The Essential Rudhyar: An Outline And An Evocation (1983) by Leyla Rudhyar Hill.
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All audios on this, the Poetry Audios page of the Rudhyar Audio Archives are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. For more information on exactly what this means for you, please read License FAQ page.
White Thunder
Dynamic Recitations by Rudhyar of his powerful and moving poetry from the book of the same name written in 1938.
Part 1 – 31 minutes – Click here to download mp3
Part 2 – 32 Minutes – Click here to download mp3
Autumnal Poems
Presented at the 1983 RITA conference, this moving series of poems all constellate around the theme of Autumn. Though a man in his late 80’s at the time of this reading, Rudhyar’s dramatic recitations powerfully reveal his passionate nature.
7 minutes – Click here to download mp3
Cycle of the Living Seed: Four Apocalyptic Poems
Highly mythical and subliminal—cosmic poetry powerfully recited by Rudhyar.
Part 1 – 31 minutes – Click here to download mp3
Part 2 – 31 minutes – Click here to download mp3
Rudhyar’s Poetry
In her well honed book The Essential Rudhyar, An Outline and an Evocation, Leyla Rael, Rudhyar’s wife in his later years, presents a well organized and comprehensive overview of Rudhyar’s entire body of work. Read the section on Rudhyar’s Poetry to understand his poems within a greater context. Read this section online.
Over 100 extraordinary poems are included in this anthology of Rudhyar’s poetry from 1916 to 1962.
Read poems from this book for free online.
