Poetry audiobooks

Leaves of Grass

By: Walt Whitman
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Length: 4 hours 19 minutes
Abridged: No

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of twelve poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting... Read more »

The Odyssey

By: Homer
Narrated by: Ian McKellen
Length: 13 hours 2 minutes
Abridged: No

The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of every man's journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here, the energy and poetry of Homer's original is captured in a bold, contemporary idiom, giving us an edition of The Odyssey that is a joy to listen to, worth savoring treasuring for its sheer lyrical mastery. This... Read more »

Beowulf - Abridged

By: Seamus Heaney
Narrated by: Seamus Heaney
Length: 2 hours 13 minutes
Abridged: Yes

A New York Times Bestseller and Whitbread Book of the Year.

Heaney’s performance reminds us that Beowulf, written near the turn of another millennium, was intended to be heard not read.

Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes... Read more »

Homie

By: Danez Smith
Narrated by: Danez Smith
Length: 1 hour 32 minutes
Abridged: No

Danez Smith is our president Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a... Read more »

Don't Call Us Dead

By: Danez Smith
Narrated by: Danez Smith
Length: 1 hour 14 minutes
Abridged: No

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place... Read more »

Keep Moving

By: Maggie Smith
Narrated by: Maggie Smith
Length: 2 hours 14 minutes
Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“A meditation on kindness and hope, and how to move forward through grief.” —NPR

“A shining reminder to learn all we can from this moment, rebuilding ourselves in the darkness so that we may come out wiser, kinder, and stronger on the other side.” —The Boston Globe

“Powerful essays on loss, endurance, and renewal.” —People
... Read more »

And Still I Rise

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 22 minutes
Abridged: No

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.
 
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my... Read more »

A Fortune For Your Disaster

By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
Length: 1 hour 36 minutes
Abridged: No

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that... Read more »

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

By: Lana Del Rey
Narrated by: Lana Del Rey
Length: 38 minutes
Abridged: No

THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPOKEN WORD POETRY COLLECTION FROM LANA DEL REY, VIOLET BENT BACKWARDS OVER THE GRASS

“Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each... Read more »

Swimming Lessons

By: Lili Reinhart
Narrated by: Lili Reinhart
Length: 58 minutes
Abridged: No

This program is read by the author

The debut collection of poetry from Lili Reinhart, the actress and outspoken advocate for mental health awareness and body positivity.

I seem to be your new favorite novel.
One that keeps you up at night,
turning my pages.
Fingers lingering on me so you don’t lose your place.

Swimming Lessons explores the euphoric... Read more »

1919

By: Eve L. Ewing
Narrated by: Eve L. Ewing
Length: 1 hour 5 minutes
Abridged: No

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots comprising the nation’s Red Summer, has shaped the last century but is not widely discussed. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of this event—which lasted eight days and resulted in thirty-eight deaths and almost 500 injuries—through poems recounting the... Read more »

Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown

By: John Lithgow
Length: 1 hour 17 minutes
Abridged: No

Following the success of his New York Times bestseller Dumpty, award-winning actor, author, and illustrator John Lithgow presents a brand-new collection of satirical poems chronicling the despotic age of Donald Trump.

Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown is darker and more hard-hitting than ever. Lithgow writes and draws with wit and fury as he takes... Read more »

The Carrying

By: Ada Limón
Narrated by: Ada Limón
Length: 1 hour 39 minutes
Abridged: No

“Ada Limón’s new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot of if not hope, then perseverance amidst much uncertainty.”—NPR
From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying—her most powerful collection yet. Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious and brave poems, exploring with honesty... Read more »

The Death of Sitting Bear

By: N. Scott Momaday
Narrated by: N. Scott Momaday
Length: 2 hours 28 minutes
Abridged: No

Pulitzer Prize winner and celebrated American master N. Scott Momaday returns with a radiant collection of more than 200 new and selected poems rooted in Native American tradition. 

“The poems in this book reflect my deep respect for and appreciation of words. . . . I believe that poetry is the highest form of verbal expression. Although I have... Read more »

Little Big Bully

By: Heid E. Erdrich
Narrated by: Heid E. Erdrich
Length: 1 hour 51 minutes
Abridged: No

In a new collection that is "a force of nature" (Amy Gerstler), renowned Native poet Heid E. Erdrich applies her rich inventive voice and fierce wit to the deforming effects of harassment and oppression.

Little Big Bully begins with a question asked of a collective and troubled we - how did we come to this? In answer, this book offers personal... Read more »

Many Miles

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Mary Oliver
Length: 41 minutes
Abridged: No

Following the success of At Blackwater Pond, this second audio reccording from bestselling poet Mary Oliver contains a selection of thirty-seven previously published poems and four new, read by the poet in her steady, magnetic voice. Oliver recites from the full range of her poetry—from her classic nature writing to her verses for her... Read more »

Dumpty

By: John Lithgow
Narrated by: John Lithgow
Length: 1 hour 35 minutes
Abridged: No

New York Times Bestseller!

Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse is a satirical poetry collection from award-winning actor and bestselling author John Lithgow. Chronicling the last few raucous years in American politics, Lithgow takes readers verse by verse through the history of Donald Trump's presidency.

• Lampoons the likes of Betsy DeVos, William... Read more »

Make Me Rain

By: Nikki Giovanni
Narrated by: Nikki Giovanni
Length: 1 hour 40 minutes
Abridged: No

One of America’s most celebrated poets challenges us with this powerful and deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society while illuminating the depths of her own heart.

For more than thirty years, Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has inspired, enlightened, and dazzled readers. As sharp and outspoken as ever, this artist... Read more »

At Blackwater Pond

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Mary Oliver
Length: 1 hour
Abridged: No

Mary Oliver has published twenty-one volumes of poetry and six books of prose in the span of five decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings. With At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver gives her audience what they've longed to hear: the poet's voice reading her own work. In this audio, she has recorded forty of her favorite poems,... Read more »

Finna

By: Nate Marshall
Narrated by: Nate Marshall
Length: 1 hour 35 minutes
Abridged: No

Sharp, lyrical poems celebrating the Black vernacular—its influence on pop culture, its necessity for familial survival, its rite in storytelling and in creating the safety found only within its intimacy

“Terrific . . . illuminates life in this country in a strikingly original way.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Definition of finna, created by... Read more »

The Iliad

By: Robert Fitzgerald & Homer
Narrated by: Dan Stevens
Length: 13 hours 59 minutes
Abridged: No

Since it was first published more than forty years ago, Robert Fitzgerald's prizewinning translation of Homer's battle epic has become a classic in its own right: a standard against which all other versions of The Iliad are compared. This definitive translation of Homer's epic is timeless in its authority and always fresh in its vivid rendering... Read more »

The Tradition

By: Jericho Brown
Narrated by: JD Jackson
Length: 59 minutes
Abridged: No

Jericho Brown's daring new book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes... Read more »

An American Sunrise

By: Joy Harjo
Length: 1 hour 40 minutes
Abridged: No

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo... Read more »

The Iliad

By: Homer & Caroline Alexander
Narrated by: Dominic Keating
Length: 19 hours 46 minutes
Abridged: No

With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan War

Composed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion.... Read more »