Audio Poetry

[The Comedian]

Hello all,

I'm looking for some good collections of recorded (audio) poetry by the poets themselves. I have the "In their own voices" collection, and I just love it. I listen to it like I used to listen to Pearl Jam in the early 1990s (which was a hellovalot).

Are there any more such collections? They could be collections by the one particular author or anthology-style collections.

Thanks for your feedback.

[Silas Thorne]

Sounds like a great idea. I found:
http://www.brautigan.net/recordings.html
and youtube (search for a poet's name and you might find something)

[JBI]

Reading is far better than listening - it allows for a more personal reaction to the words.

[imthefoolonthehill]

http://www.indiefeedpp.libsyn.com/
www.shopliftwindchimes.com
http://www.houseofparlance.com/koyczan/index.html

[imthefoolonthehill]

also there are some pretty amazing podcasts out there. You just have to search the itunes store.

[The Comedian]

Reading is far better than listening - it allows for a more personal reaction to the words.

Sometimes.

[wessexgirl]

Joseph90ie, you must have listened to/seen some very strange performances!

Comedian, I love to hear poetry read aloud too. There's nothing wrong with that. I have many audio versions myself, but they are all read by actors, not the authors. That would be particularly difficult in the case of Shakespeare :lol:! There's a lot to be said for someone reciting poetry. Although I love to read it, I also love to hear it. Good actors won't behave like those Joseph has heard. Less is more in most cases. I agree that Richard Burton's version of UMW is beautiful. What a fabulous voice. I don't know where you're from Comedian, but if you get the chance to hear John Nettles, an English actor best known for a quaint whodunnit series on tv, reading any poetry, (I have him reading some classics), take a listen. He is actually a very experienced Shakesperean actor, but he has such a lovely mellow, laid-back voice, not at all like the stereotype of an actor that Joseph has mentioned. I think that sort of performance was judged as "misguided", shall we say, many years ago. Most actors are much more naturalistic these days. I also have Judi Dench, Simon Callow, and lots of other leading lights of the RSC reading Shakespeare, and it's well worth a listen.

[mono]

I have this (http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Speaks-Expanded-Poets-Tennyson/dp/1402210620) exact anthology, and thought it entirely worth the price. Preceding each poetry and recitation, a commentator explains the method of recording, whether the poet recited at a live recitation, and even some of the history of the poem.
The list of poets' voices on the 3 CDs:
Lord Alfred Tennyson
Robert Browning
Walt Whitman
William Butler Yeats
Gertrude Stein
Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg
Wallace Stevens
James Joyce
William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound
Robinson Jeffers
John Crowe Ransom
T.S. Eliot
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dorothy Parker
E.E. Cummings
Robert Graves
Louise Bogan
Melvin B. Tolson
Laura Riding Jackson
Langston Hughes
Ogden Nash
W.H. Auden
Lous MacNeice
Theodore Roethke
Elizabeth Bishop
May Swenson
Robert Hayden
Muriel Rukeyser
William Stafford
Randall Jarrell
John Berryman
Dylan Thomas
Robert Lowell
Gwendolyn Brooks
Robert Duncan
Jack Kerouac
Philip Larkin
Denise Levertov
Allen Ginsberg
Frank O'Hara
Anne Sexton
Ted Hughes
Etheridge Knight
Sylvia Plath

[Schokokeks]

The BBC has a nice page called "Poetry out loud" where you can listen to poets reading out their own work. Here's the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/index.shtml

Performers include Seamus Heaney, W. H. Auden, Derek Walcott, Ted Hughes and many more.
Tennyson's reading is especially curious, with some strange noise in the background and all sounding very antique :). And Sylvia Plath is spine-chilling!

[The Comedian]

Wow. There is a lot of stuff to work with here. Thank you all for your responses.

I love to listen to poetry, and for those concerned, I like to read it too. But when I'm taking my kids to daycare and then driving to work, reading a sonnet hardly seems safe, let alone relaxing. And in the car is when I like to listen to poetry the most. Oh yeah that and working out on the treadmill, which again, unless I'm reading ultra-light weight material, I can't have a good time trying to read through the sweat drops on my glasses.

:-)