Poetry in a Time of Corona

The Great Poets – Emily Dickinson

The Great Poets –

By: Emily Dickinson
Narrated by: Teresa Gallagher
Length: 1 hour 19 minutes

Born in Massachusetts in 1830, Emily Dickinson composed over 1770 poems; but apart from her closest friends, no-one knew she was writing at all. Only after her death was her astonishing output discovered and published. A reclusive figure for much of her life, few could have imagined the range of her subjects, the intensity of her imagination or... Read more

Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

By: Alice Walker
Narrated by: Alice Walker
Length: 2 hours 18 minutes

Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

Alice Walker, author of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple—“an American novel of permanent importance” (San Francisco Chronicle)—reads the English-language editions of the poems in her new bi-lingual collection, a collection that is both... Read more

The Great Poets – Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Great Poets –

By: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Narrated by: Jeremy Northam
Length: 1 hour 1 minute

A collection of the best-known poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). One of the Victorian era’s greatest writers, Hopkins’ reputation has continued to grow since his death. Our Great Poets series, launched in 2007, has proven very popular, offering many of the best-loved poems by popular poets in an inexpensive 1 CD collection – and well... Read more

Voices of Poetry - Volume 1

By: J.R.R. Tolkien, ee cummings, Archibald Macleish, Ted Hughes, May Swenson, Marilyn Hacker, Kenneth Patchen, Edith Sitwell & Theodore Roethke
Narrated by: J.R.R. Tolkien, ee cummings, Archibald Macleish, Ted Hughes, May Swenson, Marilyn Hacker, Kenneth Patchen, Edith Sitwell & Theodore Roethke
Length: 20 minutes

Hear rare recordings from some of the world's most-respected poets reading their own works: J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hoard; ee cummings, Prose Jottings; Archibald Macleish, The Old Man To The Lizard; Ted Hughes, Six Young Men; May Swenson, Naked In Borneo; Marilyn Hacker, The Dark Twin; Kenneth Patchen, 23rd Street Runs Into Heaven; Edith Sitwell, An... Read more

At Blackwater Pond

Mary Oliver reads Mary Oliver

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Mary Oliver
Length: 1 hour

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

The Great Poets – John Keats

The Great Poets –

By: John Keats
Narrated by: Samuel West
Length: 1 hour 6 minutes

Naxos AudioBooks continues its new series of Great Poets – represented by a collection of their most popular poems on one CD – with John Keats. Although this man had a short life, he produced a series of outstanding poems – many of which appeared first in letters to his sister. He was largely unappreciated during his lifetime, and died in Rome... Read more

Billy Collins Live

A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space April 20, 2005

By: Billy Collins
Narrated by: Billy Collins
Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

In this exclusive audio publishing event, Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, shares an evening of his poetry in a benefit reading for WNYC, New York Public Radio. Often compared to Robert Frost, his poetry has been embraced by people of all ages and backgrounds, and his readings are most often standing room only.

Performed by the author... Read more

Playing In The Dark

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 3 hours 9 minutes

An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner

Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that... Read more

The Great Poets – Walt Whitman

The Great Poets –

By: Walt Whitman
Narrated by: Garrick Hagon
Length: 1 hour 36 minutes

Seer, prophet, visionary, preacher, Walt Whitman stands out as one of poetry’s towering anomalies: in celebrating the trees, water, sky and air, the bear, the eagle, the buffalo and the lion, Whitman expressed a uniquely democratic vision that engulfs not only the American continent but the entire universe. His passionate vehemence, his faith in... Read more

Home Burial

By: Robert Frost
Narrated by: John Hitchcock
Length: 7 minutes

"Home Burial" is a poem about a man and woman who baby has died. It tells of the burial, how the parents react to this death, particularly their lack of communication. This piece is especially poignant given that Frost's son Elliot died at age 4, his daughter Elinor Bettina died when she was a few days old, his wife experienced a miscarriage,... Read more

Letters to a Young Poet

By: Rainer Maria Rilke
Narrated by: Marc Allen
Length: 1 hour 50 minutes

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the past century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers. This luminous translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's classic offers... Read more

The Poems of T.S. Eliot Read by Jeremy Irons

By: T. S. Eliot
Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
Length: 3 hours 40 minutes

Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons's perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity. Major poems range from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', through the post-war desolation of 'The Waste Land' and the spiritual struggle of 'Ash-Wednesday', to the enduring charm of 'Old Possum's Book of... Read more

Poetry Please

By: Various Poets
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh & Anton Lesser
Length: 2 hours 10 minutes

BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please is the longest-running broadcast of verse anywhere in the world. First aired in 1979, the programme, a request show which broadcasts to two million listeners a week, has become a unique record of best-loved poems over the decades since its inception.

The BBC has looked back through its rich archive of recordings to... Read more

Poetry

A Very Short Introduction

By: Bernard O'Donoghue
Narrated by: Roger Clark
Length: 5 hours 3 minutes

Poetry, arguably, has a greater range of conceptual meaning than perhaps any other term in English. At the most basic level everyone can recognize it—it is a kind of literature that uses special linguistic devices of organization and expression for aesthetic effect. However, far grander claims have been made for poetry than this—such as... Read more