Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath [With CDs (3)]

by Elise Paschen

Book Overview

Offers brief biographies, critical interpretations, and selected poems by forty-two American, Irish, and English poets from 1892 to 1997, along with recordings of each of the authors reading the works... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570717206
• ISBN13: 9781570717208
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Mediafusion
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 3.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 9.4" x 10.6"

Customer Reviews

I was so excited when I ordered this book because of the cd's, only to receive it without the cd's.

I thank my friend for giving me this extraordinary gift

What a joy it is to see/read poems and be able to hear the poets read the poems to me, the reader. Poetry is breath and life and as the poet reads, and I read back, the exoerience between the artist and the audience is a unity. When PBS ran the poetry series, Bill Moyers talked about how when we read a poem from another it's like our breath echoing theirs. I feel this when I listent to these CDs and read the poems. We all need more poetry, but we need more poetry both written AND spoken. This volume is wonderful.

Poetry inspires poetry

The poets in this volume were listed in another review. I am here simply copying the list. Lord Tennyson; Robert Browning; Walt Whitman; William Butler Yeats; Gertrude Stein; Robert Frost; Carl Sandburg; Wallace Stevens; William Carlos Williams; Ezra Pound; H.D.; Robinson Jeffers; John Crowe Ransom; T.S. Eliot; Edna St. Vincent Millay; Dorothy Parker; e.e. Cummings; Louise Bogan; Melvin B. Tolson; Laura Riding Jackson; Langston Hughes; Ogden Nash; W.H. Auden; Louis MacNeice; Theodore Roethke; Elizabeth Bishop; Robert Hayden; Muriel Rukeyser; William Stafford; Randall Jarrell; John Berryman; Dylan Thomas; Robert Lowell; Gwendolyn Brooks; Robert Duncan; Philip Larkin; Denise Levertov; Allen Ginsberg; Frank O'Hara; Anne Sexton; Etheridge Knight; and Sylvia Plath. There is a great deal of great and inspiring poetry in this volume. There is also mediocre poetry. And I agree with one other reviewer who said that many of the poets read surprisingly poorly. They all should have listened to Dylan Thomas and learned from him. The power of his voice and the range of his feeling move greatly. I also was not overwhelmed by the various poetic appreciations. They seemed to me too subjective and did not add greatly to the knowledge of the poets under discussion. Yet with all the complaining the reading and listening to much of this poetry inspires to poetry. It lifts the mind and heart to another dimension in which there is a depth and a beauty to words which can be found nowhere else. This anthology has enough of such great poetry to be truly worthwhile.

Poetry as it's meant to be: heard AND seen

When I stumbled across this volume, I was thrilled, and a little amazed to think it's taken this long for somebody to tap the potential of technology. Poetry is meant to be heard as well as seen--and this volume gives the reader both, and beautifully. The poets and the selections of poetry are well chosen; the accompanying essays, by some of our most important contemporary poets, are enlightening and interesting, and it's all wrapped up in a beautiful package. This would make a great gift for a poetry lover, and it's the book in my enormous personal library that I'm proudest of--the one I leave out to leaf through again and again.

A TREASURE!!

This collection is simply a must for anyone who enjoys poetry or who wishes to learn more about the subject! The experience of poetry is so greatly enhanced by hearing the author's own voice speak each word. I truly found that I was more greatly moved than ever by some of my favorite poems upon hearing them spoken. A new life was brought to each and I find that I am able to hear poems like "The Waking" now, in my head, when I'm far away from the three CDs that comprise the collection.The collection is fairly extensive, including readings from forty three best known and loved poets reading their most memorable work. Included are: Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Edna St. Vincent Millay, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ogden Nash, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Theodore Roethke and e.e. cummings, to name but a few. There's even a treasured recording of Walt Whitman reading from "America". Hearing him speak brought tears to my eyes!Along with these marvelous recordings comes a book which not only contains each poem spoken on the CDs but numerous others by each of the highlighted poets. The book, in and of itself, is a wonderful collection of great poetry. Also, there is a brief biography on each poet presented with their work as well as photos. I highly recommend this collection to anyone interested in keeping poetry in their audio library.

You can hear Tennyson, Frost, Plath and MORE!

This is just amazing! This poetry and audio CD collection (there are THREE audio CDs in the book) lets you hear lots of different poets reading their own work. There's Auden and Bishop and Langston Hughes and Yeats. It's incredible. I don't know where they found all of these different poets. And the book has essays by some of the best poets around. Billy Collins has an essay, and Richard Wilbur, and Pinsky. So you can listen to and learn about the poets you know (like T.S. Eliot or Sylvia Plath) or you can discover somebody completely new to you (like Melvin Tolson). All in all, the best poetry collection I've ever seen!