Customer Reviews

The Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost

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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)

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.

I love this cd - it's fabulous. In response to some of the other reviews - of course the sound quality isn't great - he died in the 1960's, and was quite old. I'm grateful someone put together this collection with the recordings they had available. I've had no trouble hearing each and every word, and was not aware that there weren't enough pauses in between the tracks.

Did he read too fast? I doubt it. The one who wrote the poetry reads it as it's supposed to be read, imho. It's fascinating to hear how it would've come out of his own head.

I highly recommend it.

Frost has never been one of my favourite poets / writers, though I do read and enjoy him and appreciate a lot of his work constitutes a landmark in 20th century literature. In terms of voice I didn't know what to expect. I put the cd in my laptop and my attention was grabbed from the moment he started reciting until the recording was over. It is now apparent to me that Frost was a master storyteller and this recording has actually increased my appetite for his work. Recommended to anyone interested in poetry performance.

I bought this for my wife who had raved about Frost for ages.When I saw that we could get him reading his work I thought this better tha book. To have him read while I read the text is a sheer delight,how the words LIVE.
Thank you.

It is great that these poems were recorded by Robert Frost and that they are readily available. You can hear the words. All the poems are in a booklet that comes with the CD, and that is a great idea. Those are the good things, and they are very good. However... his reading is not clear, he rushes the poems and he is not close enough to the microphone. He does not seem to value the poems or his readings nearly as much as we do. (Dylan Thomas he is not.) He gives the title sometimes and sometimes justs start with the first line. But he is Robert Frost, so that is all forgivable. Then there is the production. There is not enough dead space before and after the tracks, so one ends and boom! another starts way, way too soon. It sure seems like they could have produced this CD much, much better with today's technology, even with old tapes. I hope someone else buys the rights to these readings and produces a much better CD -- but keep the packaging the booklet with the CD! Since this is poetry and not pop music, this is not likely. The best approach might be to buy the CD and then to tinker with your favorite tracks with your own editing software.

It was thrilling to hear Robert Frost's voice and delivery of 36 of his beloved poems. I was able to hear every word, every chuckle, every pause as they were intended to be by this great poet.

Listening to Frost recite his own works is amazing. I cant think of anything beyond that that needs said.

This is okay and interesting to hear the actual reading and rhythm of the poem by the author. However, years ago I had a 33 1/3 recording that was of much better sound quality, and I was hoping this would be a replica. It isn't, sad to say. I will not be listening to it for pleasure, although it may be helpful in my poetry studies.

The poems of Robert Frost are remarkable; soft and peaceful, his voice is slow but sadly the sound is not great (not terrible, either).