Poetry Speaks Expanded: Hear Poets Read Their Own Work from Tennyson to Plath

This anthology is very comprehensive - both as text and audio. The quality of the recording is really good and a delight to hear. Using the text as a companion to the audio makes for a very pleasurable experience!

Although poetry was read, recited and memorized by entire families through the 19th century, during the 20th century it fell out of general popular favor. "Modern" poetry was considered too difficult for the average reader, so while it was read in schools and adored in academia, it moved out of the family parlor and into the anthology. Enter the latest edition of "Poetry Speaks." Seeking to make a new connection with potential readers (and listeners) of 20th century poetry, Sourcebooks has again assembled a package that is at once enthralling and educational. Each poet (47 in all) featured in the volume receives a biography, an extremely readable analysis of the poet's work and several key poems. Some of the "chapters" also include a fascimilie of a poem or section of a poem written in the poet's own hand. The outstanding feature of "Poetry Speaks, Expanded" is, of course, the set of CDs which feature each poet reading their own work. This, aside from being extremely exciting for those of us with a bit of familiarity with a particular poet, also sheds some interesting light on the poems themselves. Who knew, for example, that Tennyson meant to emphasis the word "rode" in his poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (as in: "into the valley of death RODE the six hundred) or that Gwendolyn Brooks' "we" of "We Real Cool" was a barely audible syncopated beat in her famous poem? But the real thrill is that by listening to the poets read their beautiful poems, one gets a window into their very souls. Carl Sandburg sounds Swedish (who knew?) and musical, Robert Frost sounds weary, Sylvia Plath sounds bitter, Edna St. Vincent Millay sounds actressy, Dorothy Parker sounds melancholy, Jack Kerouac sounds cool (which is obviously to be expected from the author of "On the Road," but his beloved jazz music playing in the background helps!) and Robert Browning sounds, well, inaudible, but kudos to Sourcebooks for including him and several other 19th century poets -- they're a bit scratchy but, aside from Browning, basically audible. While listening to Dylan Thomas, one wonders if his absolutely gorgeous voice had something to do with his immense popularity, since he gave extensive readings of his work during his short lifetime. In addition to including well known poets such as those already mentioned, "Poetry Speaks, Expanded" also includes the work of many lesser-known poets including Louise Bogan, Louis MacNeice, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Duncan, and Robert Hayden. The book presents the material on each poet so thoroughly that it is a marvelous way to gain an introduction to the work of previously unfamiliar poets. The poems collected here are the very best of the very best and hearing them read by their creators is absolutely breathtaking. The CD also contains brief but very insightful introductions to each poet by Charles Osgood who is very easy on the ears. Poetry, in its essence, is meant to be heard, not merely seen, and this edition of "P

One again I have been blessed with the opportunity to review an extraordinary sampling of poetry published by Sourcebooks with their Poetry Speaks Expanded that is a sequel to the first edition Poetry Speaks published in 2001. As with the first edition, Poetry Speaks Expanded includes three CDs, and as I savored these beautiful poems, it reminded me of French poet Charles Baudelaire who wrote, "Anyman can go without food for two days-but not without poetry." This expanded edition honors forty-seven deceased poetic masters as Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Yeats, Stein, Frost, Sanburg, Stevens, Joyce, Williams, Pound, Jeffers, Ransom, Eliot, Millay, Parker, Cummings, and many more. It also includes an extra forty-five extra minutes of recordings as well as an additional one hundred pages of new poems and readings. And it certainly admirably lives up to its promise of its publishers that it is an attempt to collect some of the best poetry ever written as read by the poets. What is quite remarkable is the inclusion of some rare recordings as that of the legendary Jack Kerouac reading his Haiku poetry, James Joyce reading the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" episode from FinnegansWake, and Ogden Nash, who was probably one of the most widely read poet in America during the mid 1900s. The collection is divided into forty-seven chapters arranged in chronological order by the dates of birth of each of the poets. Readers are introduced to the poet with a short biography followed by an essay written by a prominent living poet assist us in gaining an insight into each of the poets. And as the introduction mentions, these essays are also meant to expose to us, albeit via prose, some of the great poets of today such as Sonia Sanchez, W.S.Merwin, Seamus Heaney, Robert Bly, Jorie Graham, Billy Collins, and Al Young. You will also find further information pertaining to these essayists in brief biographies enabling you to explore more of their work. Fascinating is the additional inclusion of handwritten manuscripts, letters, or photographs of some of these poets helping us understand what made them tick. Each poet's poems are likewise arranged chronologically to reflect when they are thought to have been published and a selection of these poems are included in the audio, and therefore have audio track numbers listed next to the poem's time and place. For example, if we refer to the chapter pertaining to Ezra Pound we are informed that he was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho and died in 1972. We can listen to his recitation on Disc 1 tracks 35-38. We learn about his education where for a brief time he taught Romance Languages at Wabash College, after which he left for Europe in 1908. He traveled to Venice, where his first volume of poetry was published in 1908, A Lume Spento, and from here he proceeded to London where he settled. We are also informed that much of his fame rests not only on his own poetry but his promotion and influence on many of his contemporaries'