Customer Reviews

Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath (Book and 3 Audio CDs)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fourty-two poets read their own work on three CDs. The accompanying text is a large and rather weighty book with a chapter for each of the poets. Each chapter includes a one-page biography, a two or three page essay on the works, and several representative poems including those read on the CD. Poetry fans of all stripe will be fascinated by the readings, which range from early (and difficult to understand) recordings by Lord Tennyson to fairly recent (and good quality) recordings by Sylvia Plath. Some of the recordings are quite rare and hard to find; others have been widely available for many years.

The great interest in this collection, of course, is the opportunity to actually hear a great poet--and possibly one of your own favorites--read their own work. And the result can be disconcerting, magical, and sometimes both. The earlier poets found in the collection do not read their poems so much for content as they do for rhyme, giving the rythms of their work emphasis above all else; later poets, however, are prone to read very dramatically, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. And there are a number of suprises. Carl Sandburg reads with a significant accent and such a lilt that he often sounds as if he is about to flow into song. Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker, two poets as different as night and day, have unexpectedly rich and warm voices. e.e. cummings reads very, very slowly--almost to a point at which you'd like to shake him by the shoulders and ask him to speed it up! Interestingly, it becomes increasingly obvious to the listener that a poet is not necessarily the best reader of his own work, for some are clearly more successful readers than others.

The recordings, be they good or bad, are always interesting. The same cannot be said for the text. The short biographies of each poet are reasonable, but the essays concerning their works are a very mixed lot. Some are quite interesting, addressing elements in both the poetry and the poet's reading of it; a few are so completely spurious that one wonders why the editors bother to include them at all. (I also find it a bit frustrating that two personal favorites--Marianne Moore and Stevie Smith--are not included in the collection, but this of course is a matter of personal taste.) In spite of the very occasional short-comings in the text, POETRY SPEAKS would be an ideal purchase for both budding and lifelong poetry lovers. It would also be ideal for the English teachers, literature professors, and librarians in your life.

Since none of the editorial reviews actually include the poets found in this collection, I note them here: 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.

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!

I love poetry and I love hearing poets recite their own work. I can't think of another CD which brings together such a broad collection of recordings. It really is an idea whose time has come. This collection has exposed me to some poets I didn't know before, has deepened my appreciation for some that I had barely heard of, and has given me a real feeling for how tastes in poetry reading change over time. So basically it is a good book/cd set. If you have a lot of money, or if you have been yearning for this kind of thing for a long long time (as I had), then you might consider getting it.
Now the problems. Interspersed with the poetry tracks are tracks of a really dorky sounding narrator (that would be Charles Osgood) giving you a bio on the poet who follows. He sounds like a cheesy voice-over speaker from an overproduced tv documentary. He is so annoying that I cannot bear to let the CD run, as I do my other recorded poetry CDs. And who wants to keep listening to bios, anyways? It's as if the CDs were made to be listened to only once. I have the terrible feeling that the editors thought this narration would be helpful for high-school teachers. I cannot even imagine being forced to listen to his voice while sitting in class . . this kind of thing is what made high school intolerable. Especially when you move from Osgood's narration to someone like Etheridge Knight reciting, the disparity couldn't be more disheartening. When I want to listen to the poems, then, I have to sit by the player or keep a remote in my hand to keep skipping the narration tracks. It really has dampened my appreciation for this effort, since my favorite way to listen to poetry is while washing dishes (hands occupied). I wish they had decided just to let the poets speak for themselves. The biographical information is in the book, anyways.
I rated the set so far down because my sense is that in their effort to make it 'accessible,' the editors of this set overprocessed it. The text layout and the presentation of information (what information they choose to provide as well as the way of providing it) have a sterile, commercial feel (even forgetting the narration on the CD). The book is far too heavy. The editors could have included all the same poets, all the essays, biographical information, etc. in a much simpler set, in paperback perhaps, with clean lines and normal book paper, and they would have created an instant classic. It's disappointing that poetry lovers would have such bad taste. So get it, but don't expect to be really happy with it.

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.

I admit that I found the book itself to be pretty but ultimately not all that useful. It will be displayed on my public bookshelf (which is of course much better looking and better organized than my overloaded private shelves), and I may occasionally take it out to read a poem or two, but I doubt I'll use it more than that.

But that was fine with me, because the allure of this purchase was the CDs. After all, it's relatively easy to find more comprehensive collections of poetry if you're looking for printed collections. But to hear poetry read by the poets themselves is a rare thing indeed, particularly in the case of older poets who passed away before audio recordings were a matter of routine.

Unfortunately, the CDs were easy to lose track of, since the sleeve attached to the book cover was less than handy to use. Initially, I felt like I didn't get what I bargained for, since many of the recordings were terribly poor in quality. Even more to the point, I felt that some of the poets were poor... no, if I'm going to be honest, I have to call them terrible readers. I set the disks aside with a feeling of disappointment.

But when I picked them up again later, I found enough gems to make this a more than worthwhile purchase. There are some readings in the mix that are not read but performed, and the contrast between those works and the dreaded monotone (or perhaps even worse, the overacting) of other poems really made me think about what makes a good spoken word poem versus a good visual or printed one. As a result of this purchase, I evaluate poetry on more levels than I did before, and that's a valuable thing indeed. When you combine a handful of priceless readings with the lessons to be taken from the less entertaining ones, it makes for a worthwhile purchase overall.

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.

The Poetry Speaks collection features works and readings by 42 of the greatest poets ever.

The book itself is rather weighty (literally), but the essays and poems themselves are organized in such a way as to make even the non-poet appreciate them.

The one complaint I have about the collection is the narrator's unbearable way of trailing off mid-sentence. The "introductions" to the poets and their works were bearable enough--- as I said, the book is very user friendly and is a good intoduction to the world of poetry to those who dont know Donne from Shelley--- however, not saying the whole sentence (whether for theatrical effect or simply to save CD space) leaves listeners frustrated. For example, in the introduction to Robert Browning: "At the end of the historical recording, Browning..." Browning what? We know that Browning apologizes for forgetting the words in "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", but with simply "..." Browning could have hit Thomas Edison over the head with a phonograph for all we know.

Mysterious narration is not a good enough reason not to get the book however. The joy of hearing Whitman and Pound and Plath far surpasses even the most irritating introductons.

The solution: import all the audio files onto your computer, delete the introductons, transfer the files onto your iPod and voilà. C'est parfait. Find a nice shady tree to sit under, balance the book on your knees, switch on your iPod and experience history.

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.

This book/cd set is such a great idea for the poet in your life. Although the hardback book is quite cumbersome, it must be to fit all the poets and poetry that is encompassed in this anthology. For anyone who has studied poetry, it is almost magical to hear the voices like Whitman, Frost, Plath, and Langston Hughes reading their work. If you love language, you will love this wonderful collection!!

Once in every 100 years a book is created which captures, both in written and spoken word, the ongoing development of an art form. Poetry Speaks is one such book. Glancing at its cover and size, some people will conclude it to be a 'coffee table book', impressive to look at but hardly ever read. For those persons whoread the smaller print: Hear Great Poets Read their Work from Tennyson to Plath, they experience a pregnant pause ..'Tennyson to Plath'...Tennyson?? It is then book's pages have called and the reader/listener are absorbed into its binding. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman and Robert Browning, were all 19th century poets who died in the late 1880s - 1890s. Yet, because of wax cylinders and the wizardry of Thomas Edison, his desire to capture the human voice, and his love of poetry,1886,he recorded each. Nearly 120 yars later,we are able to listen to these poets reading selections of their own writings. We are invited into the studio, hear their puzzlements, frstrations aw well as triumphant celebration, after recording and hearing,for the first time, their own voices.

Poetry Speaks not only has selections of writings, it includes three CDs. Narrated by Charles Osgood, listeners are escorted through a century of recorded voices and explains how recording itself changed the way poetry was presented when read out load. Within the book's pages, each selected poet is introduced with a brief biography, explanation of th poet's style,as well as how outside events and societal changes and influences shaped both poet and poetry. Some presenters include handwritten copies with lined out deletions and revisions. The study of each poet is an educational find.
The collection is a treasure. Whether you enjoy poetry, find it a bit
intimidating or just what to share something a very special for a very special person...such as yourself, Poetry Speaks will let your spirit soar. You will need to take it from the coffee tabe, open its pages, and read along with its authors.

Margaret C. Barno