87 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful!, May 12, 2005
This review is from: The Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost (Audio CD)
This review refers to" "The Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost" (CD and book by Random House)
Dust of Snow
"The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued."
His voice is old, sometimes a little shakey, sometimes a pause or a little different rhythm then expected, a word or phrase occassionally different from the original work, but it's Frost, reading Frost, and any fan could not ask for a more wonderful hour of listening pleasure.
How fortunate we are to be able to experience this master reading his own works. It's a haunting, but wonderful feeling, and I highly recommend this set to lovers of Frost. The CD is a compliation of various readings. Some are recordings he made on 78 records as early as 1935 and 1951. Others recorded at Yale University and Pierson College, before a live audience(and sometimes you can hear the reactions), in 1961, and 1962. All are an excellent, crisp and clear quality on this CD by Random House Audio.
There CD runs just under an hour. There are 36 works read. They include: Mending Wall, After Apple Picking, Reluctance, Mowing, The Tuft of Flowers, The Death of the Hired Man, The Road Not Taken, Birches, The Oven Bird, Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening,Spring Pools, The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, The Witch of Coos(I love that one), Dust of Snow, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Fire and Ice, The Onset, Acauainted With The Night, Design, Desert Places, Neither Out far Nor In Deep, Two Tramps in Mud Time, Provide, Provide, Departmental, The Gift Outright, The Secret Sits, The Most of It, Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same, The Silken Tent, Directive, One Step Backward Taken, The Objection to Being Stepped On, Forgive, O Lord(short but sweet), Questioning Faces,"In winter in the woods alone"(this one is reprinted in his own hand on the back cover of the companion book), and Away!.
The CD comes with a nice 64 page companion book, with each work read, printed. There is also some biographical information included. Very nice. I enjoyed reading it on it's own, after the listen(and I could now hear the author's voice and feelings).
This is part of a series of "Voice of the Poet" readings put out by Random House. There are many others. e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, and Sylvia Plath among them. Just type in Voice of the Poet in the Search and you may find your favorite there.
Frost's own personality shines through during the readings. Short or long, humorous or deeply meaningful, all will touch your heart and soul on some level. Robert Frost's words and voice will have you under a spell.
Enjoy by a cozy fire, or let Mr. Frost keep you company on a long drive......Laurie
more fabulous audio book experiences:
Great Expectations (The Classic Collection)(read by Michael Page)
Back When We Were Grownups(read by Blair Brown)
A Christmas Carol(read by Geoffrey Palmer)
Les Miserables (Focus on the Family Radio Theatre)(fullcast performance lead by Brian Blessed)
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seeing the Ocean for the First Time, May 24, 2007
This review is from: The Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost (Audio CD)
In this series "The Voice of the Poet" America's most popular poet of the Twentieth Century, Robert Frost, reads 36 of his poems if you consider "Forgive, O Lord" a poem. Whatever it is, it is one of my favorite things that Frost ever wrote:
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
J. D. McClatchy, the series editor, includes his brief bio of Frost in the booklet containing all the poems on the CD that the poet reads aloud. Much of what McClatchy recounts is known to devotees of Mr. Frost, his early success, his very difficult private life, the misunderstandings that many people have about him, his life in New England. McClatchy describes Frost as "a Puritan without a God." He says that some of the readings are as old as 1930, that Frost gave some of them in 1962 and that they are released here for the first time. If my memory serves me right, I liked the Caedmon recording of Frost's reading better LP better but I cannot offer specifics as to why.
But to the poems. If you are hearing this divine poet read for the first time, it's a little like the first time you saw the ocean. Certainly poems should be read aloud; and usually who is better qualified to read his poetry than the writer, himself? Frost's voice resonates, and you will hear it long after you have listened to the CD: "Provide, provide, one could do worst than be a swinger of birches," etc.
Frost reads many of his most beloved poems here: "Fire and Ice," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "Birches," "The Road Not Taken," "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" the darker poems, "Acquainted With The Night" and "Desert Places." Then there is "The Gift Outright" that Frost read from memory at the inauguration of President John Kennedy after he was unable to read the poem he had written for the occasion.
Finally Frost reads what to me is his best poem and one of the great poems of American literature, "The Death of the Hired Man." Silas, who has worked for Warren in the past, not wanted by his brother, with "nothing to look backward to with pride,/And nothing to look forward to with hope," has come back to the farm to die, "a miserable sight." The tension between the hard-nosed Warren and his kinder, gentler wife Mary is palpable. Every line of this dramatic poem is perfect. From it we get the conflicting definitions of home:
'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you haven't to deserve.'
Finally
'But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.'
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned--too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught her by the hand and waited.
'Warren?' she questioned.
'Dead,' was all he answered.
Poetry doesn't get a lot better than this. Frost once said that a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom. Certainly that is true of "The Death of the Hired Man" and much of his other work as well. The reader/hearer who believes that Frost's very accessible poetry with its natural speech rhythms is simple does so at his peril. As McClatchy concludes in his notes, Frost is "ultimately a poet of loss and limitation and loneliness, of desolation and extinction." But he is indeed such a great one.
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