Wallace Stevens (Voice of the Poet) [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Wallace Stevens (Author), J. D. McClatchy (Author)

Book Description

Series: Voice of the Poet | Publication Date: March 26, 2002

THE VOICE OF THE POET

A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliography, and commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of The Yale Review.

"Hearing poetry spoken by the poet is always a unique illumination. This series opens our ears to some of the most passionate utterances and enthralling performances ever recorded."--Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize winner, Poetry

"There has been a great need for a well-edited audio series for poetry, with high literary and technical quality. J. D. McClatchy has filled this need with great style."--Robert Pinsky

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up-A selection of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954), comes alive in the author's own voice. Insurance lawyer by day and poet by night, Stevens is known for his command of language and an abstraction he felt was necessary to provoke interest in his work by fostering a sense of mystery. In "The Idea of Order in Key West," Stevens writes about walking on a beach and seeing a girl singing to the ocean, and deciding it is her way of creating order out of chaos. "It may be that in all her phrases stirred/The grinding water and gasping wind/But it was she and not the wind we heard." A poem of his old age, "The Auroras of Autumn" is emotionally powerful and sadly poignant as he bids farewell to his past in a noble and dignified tone. The 15 readings are edited from live performances and at least one studio recording, evident by the change in sound quality from one poem to another. You can hear peripheral noise such as coughing in the audience during the live readings, but the studio renditions are extremely clear nearly 50 years later. American literature teachers will find this a valuable primary source for students.
Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a giant in the history of American poetry, at once an exhilarating modernist dandy and a champion of earlier Romantic traditions. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he spent his professional life as an inusrance company executive, but kept a sharp divide between his business and literary interests. A private man, he composed his poems while walking to and from work and at home tended to his garden and his collection of French books and paintings. All the while, there stirred in his mind an intense sensuality as well as a somber realization of human limits. He poured it into poems that stand now as landmarks in our cluture, poems that sing of the power of the imagination to both transform and transcend reality. For Stevens, poems were meant to quicken our sense of the world, to refresh us, to take us back to an "immaculate beginning," to give each of us "a new knowledge of reality." And so they do: the work of Wallace Stevens is of glittering, challenging, ultimately consoling richness.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Random House Audio (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553714902
• ISBN-13: 978-0553714906
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,372,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sir Frank Kermode has been a prominent figure in the world of literary criticism since the 1960s. He has been King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge and Professor of Poetry at Harvard. He was knighted in 1991.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The literal character, the vatic line..., June 10, 2006

By 

Adrian Corleonis - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wallace Stevens (Voice of the Poet) (Audio CD)

Stevens is a meditative, mantic, hieratic poet, hence his auditory manner is majestically reflective, slow, & oracular. If you know & care for his poetry his readings are revelatory of its sounds, gestures, gait. It may not be what you expect. It may well be an acquired taste. But once you have his voice in your inner ear you respond to his work as you read it in a more knowing - slower & measured - way. A pity we don't have more of him, more poems from "Harmonium," & especially readings of the longer works, in particular his supreme masterwork, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." But if only for "Large Red Man Reading," "To an old Philosopher in Rome," and "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour" this album is indispensable. I can't complain about audience noises - what little we have of Stevens is valuable beyond measure.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Voice of Nobility, December 27, 2006

By 

Ethan Jaffee - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wallace Stevens (Voice of the Poet) (Audio CD)

Stevens' voice is slow and deep. His readings show that he is rediscovering his own poems with each reading. His voice is not "weak and meek" like the first reviewer says. Especially "Key West," Stevens' recitation will give you new incite to his poems.

10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Caveat About Stevens' Voice, August 24, 2004

By 

Gregg G. Brown "gregglory.com" (Aberdeen, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wallace Stevens (Voice of the Poet) (Audio CD)

Those who have never heard Wallace Stevens read any of his poetry should be forewarned that his voice is quite weak and meek. For so large a man, his voice is as little as a mouse. The rewards for those dedicated to Stevens' poetry is, however, great. The intesity and simplicity of the meaning of the poems he reads is transmitted by the emphasis placed by his own voice. You have no doubt what the poem is about when you hear Stevens read them. That's revelatory. But those who hope to hear the stirring performance of a Dylan Thomas or the range of a Richard Burton should listen elsewhere.