Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. America - Walt Whitman
2. Lake Isle of Innisfree - W.B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats
3. Song of the Old Mother - W.B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats
4. Road Not Taken - Robert Frost
5. Birches - Robert Frost
6. If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso - Gertrude Stein
7. So & So Reclining on Her Couch - Wallace Stevens
8. Red Wheelbarrow - William Carlos Williams
9. To Elsie - William Carlos Williams
10. Hugh Selwyn Mauberley [Excerpt] - Ezra Pound
11. Bird-Witted - Marianne Moore
12. Recuerdo - Edna St. Vincent Millay
13. Next of Course God America - E.E. Cummings
14. Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town - E.E. Cummings
15. To Juan at the Winter Solstice - Robert Graves
16. Openings of the Battle of Gettysburg - Steven Vincent Benét
17. Negro Speaks of Rivers - Langston Hughes
18. Ballad of the Gypsy - Langston Hughes
19. Mulatto - Langston Hughes
20. Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man - Ogden Nash
21. Love Recognized - Robert Penn Warren
22. King of the River - Stanley Kunitz
23. In Memory of W.B. Yeats, Pt. 1 - W.H. Auden

Disc 2:

1. I Knew a Woman - Theodore Roethke
2. Elegy for Jane - Theodore Roethke
3. Rough - Stephen Spender
4. Thoughts During an Air Raid - Stephen Spender
5. My Sisters, O My Sisters - May Sarton
6. In Our Time - Muriel Rukeyser
7. Despisals - Muriel Rukeyser
8. Ballad of Orange and Grape - Muriel Rukeyser
9. World Is So Difficutl to Give up... - David Ignatow
10. This Is the Solution, to Be Happy With Slaughter... - David Ignatow
11. Here I Am With Mike in Hand, Shooting Down the Rapids... - David Ignatow
12. I Killed a Fly... - David Ignatow
13. What About Dying?... - David Ignatow
14. Scars - William Stafford
15. It Is - William Stafford
16. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas
17. If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love - Dylan Thomas
18. Happiness - John Ciardi
19. Old Flame - Robert Lowell
20. Skunk Hour - Robert Lowell
21. Epilogue - Robert Lowell
22. Crossing Over - William Meredith
23. See It Was Like This When... - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
24. Underwear - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
25. Secret of My Endurance - Charles Bukowski
26. Thanksgrieving - Howard Nemerov
27. Sonnet for Minimalists - Mona Vanduyn
28. Shame - Richard Wilbur
29. Apology - Richard Wilbur
30. Love Calls Us to the Things of This World - Richard Wilbur
31. American Haikus [Excerpt] - Al Cohn, Jack Kerouac, Zoot Sims, Zoot Sims
32. Monet Refuses the Operation - Lisel Mueller
33. America - Allen Ginsberg
34. Song - John Ashbery
35. After Making Love We Hear Footsteps - Galway Kinnell
36. Last Gods - Galway Kinnell

Disc 3:

1. River Bees - W.S. Merwin
2. Blessing - James Wright
3. Truth the Dead Know - Anne Sexton
4. All My Pretty Ones - Anne Sexton
5. Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou
6. Even in Paris [Excerpt] - Richard Howard
7. Diving into the Woods - Adrienne Rich
8. Omeros [Excerpt] - Derek Walcott
9. Song of the Taste - Gary Snyder
10. How Poetry Comes to Me - Gary Snyder
11. Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh Computer - Gary Snyder
12. Daddy - Sylvia Plath
13. Ariel - Sylvia Plath
14. Greatest Poem in the World - David Ray
15. Oddly Lovely Day Alone - John Updike
16. Learning About Easter and Passover - Dan Jaffe
17. Bang, Bang Outishly - Amiri Baraka
18. Rhythim Blues - Amiri Baraka
19. Shazam Doowah - Amiri Baraka
20. Story of Issac - Leonard Cohen
21. Dahomey - Audre Lorde
22. Putting the Good Things Away - Marge Piercy
23. Right to Life - Marge Piercy
24. Keeping Things Whole - Mark Strand
25. Way It Is - Mark Strand
26. Poem - Mark Strand
27. Zimmer Imagines Heaven - Paul Zimmer
28. Yes Lord, He Was Born... - Lucille Clifton
29. Cruelty - Lucille Clifton

Disc 4:

1. I Have Had to Learn to Live With My Face - Diane Wakoski
2. Dear John, Dear Coltrane - Michael S. Harper
3. We Were So Poor... - Charles Simic
4. I Was Stolen by the Gypsies... - Charles Simic
5. Everybody Knows the Story - Charles Simic
6. Lester Leaps In - Al Young
7. For Poets - Al Young
8. Dance for Militant Dilettantes - Al Young
9. Odysseus to Telemachsu - Joseph Brodsky
10. Ode to My Shoes - Erica Jong
11. Prayer - Joseph Bruchac
12. Translator's Son - Joseph Bruchac
13. Wonder - Sharon Olds
14. Lost Pilot - James Tate
15. One Kiss - Tess Gallagher
16. Tent People of Beverly Hills - James Ragan
17. Uh Oh Plutonium - Anne Waldman
18. Fine Printing on the Label of a Bottle of Non-Alcohol Beer - Adrian Louis
19. Sweat Lodge - Adrian Louis
20. Logan Heights & The World - Juan Felipe Herrera
21. Colonel - Carolyn Forché
22. Wild Gratitude - Edward Hirsch
23. For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash - Joy Harjo
24. Tia Sophia - Carmen Tafolla
25. This Is Number 26 - Jimmy Baca
26. I Am Offering You This Poem - Jimmy Baca
27. Parsley - Rita Dove
28. Raisin Eyes - Luci Tapahonso
29. Children's Undercroft - Donald Revell
30. Concrete River - Dr. Luis Rodriguez
31. Tia Chucha - Dr. Luis Rodriguez
32. My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud - Li-Young Lee

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98614 in Music
• Released on: 1996-09-17
• Number of discs: 4
• Format: Box set

Customer Reviews

A Feast For The Ears
I wonder what our world would be like if our ancestors had learned first to preserve language in an archival form (that is, durable, convenient for shelving, and available for idle perusal) as spoken rather than written. Before we knew how to write, poetry was already a living and ancient art. We knew it as spoken word, recited before a crowd. The recital was as much of a performance as a play. Somewhere in the last two or three millenniums we have forgotten how important the spoken word is to poetry, how far a voice carries toward making the art accessible.

This anthology of 20th century recorded poetry, released without an accompanying text, forces us to reconsider our normally complacent approach to verse. We cannot *read* these poems, we can only *listen* as their creators perform them for us. It's a wonderful opportunity and a thrilling experience!

The collection starts with a scratchy take of Walt Whitman, notable mostly because it is the first recording of a poem. It progresses smoothly through the 20th century via a multi-cultural variety of 79 known and lesser-known poets reading 122 known and lesser-known poems. Most poetry is spoken, some is sung. A few include music. One of these--an excerpt of Jack Kerouac's "American Haikus" punctuated with a saxophone--is one of the high points of the collection. Another--Anne Waldman's clumsy "Uh Oh Plutonium"--is the worst of the bunch. Even it can be excused, as all selections contribute to the theme at the heart of this anthology: at least some poetry, even in this book-bound age, is meant to be read and heard aloud. The ancient art in its richest tradition is alive and well.

END

Astonishing-long overdue per my ears!
Received as a gift that keeps on giving. Each hearing's another present. Liner Notes and order of presentation superb.

We need another set like this of more and more and more; find all old Caedmon and Voyager audio tapes plus Burton's Donne and make one! Stuart, light bearer, led the way to this; he is thanked and thanked ever after...

It will break your breath in half!
if you're into poetry...this is essential. best purchase of an audio cd i ever made.