Spoken Word: Poets

From AudioFile What a treasure is this compilation from the sound archives of the British Library. This CD features English-language poets born before 1900 reading and performing their own poetry. Imagine hearing Tennyson reading “The Charge of the Light Brigade” or Robert Browning’s voice intoning “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” There are familiar recordings-T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song oF J. Alfred Prufrock” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”-as well as Kipling’s rarely heard “France,” and a previously unissued recording Hugh MacDiarmid’s “The Watergaw.” Because the technical quality of the earliest recordings is scratchy, the editors have included the texts of those poems to assist listeners. Overall, the opportunity to hear W. B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Edith Sitwell, Robinson Jeffers, Gertrude Stein, and others is priceless. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine– Copyright (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine