Darkness
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5 minutes, 19 seconds
Unabridged Narrative Poem
1816
In which our hero, the most Romantic of all the Romantic poets, takes on the end of the world.
Written in Geneva, Switzerland in the summer of 1816, when Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori spent their evenings telling each other ghost stories. The resulting tales included Shelley's Frankenstein, Polidori's creation of the vampire/vampyre genre (based on a novel fragment of Byron's), and this gloomy, speculative verse.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Posted by alex at 11:02 AM
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22 minutes
Unabridged Longform Narrative Poem
1816
The story of Francois Bonivard, a 16th century monk imprisoned in the Chateau de Chillon.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Prisoner of Chillon"
Posted by alex at 1:49 PM
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39 minutes, 28 seconds
Unabridged Free Verse Poetry Collection
1855
"Calamus" is the fifth book of Walt Whitman's legendary poetry collection Leaves of Grass. In these thirty-nine poems, Whitman compares "athletic love" (or love between two men) to the calamus plant, in terms of diversity and depth. It includes the poems:
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In Paths Untrodden Scented Herbage of My Breast Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand For You, O Democracy These, I, Singing in Spring Not Heaving from My Ribb'd Breast Only Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances The Base of all Metaphysics Recorders Ages Hence When I heard at the Close of the Day Are You the New person Drawn Toward Me? Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone Not Heat Flames up and Consumes Trickle Drops City of Orgies Behold this Swarthy Face I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing To a Stranger This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful I Hear It Was Charged Against Me |
The Prairie-Grass Dividing When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame We Two Boys Together Clinging A Promise to California Here the Frailest Leaves of Me No Labor-Saving Machine A Glimpse A Leaf for Hand in Hand Earth! my Likeness! I Dream'd in a Dream What think You I take my Pen in Hand? To the East and to the West Sometimes with One I Love To a Western Boy Fast Anchor'd, Eternal O Love! Among the Multitude O You Whom I Often and Silently Come That Shadow, my Likeness Full of Life, Now |
Read by Alex Wilson. Sample contains the complete poem "Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances."
Continue reading "Leaves of Grass Book V: Calamus"
Posted by alex at 5:55 PM
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2 minutes, 5 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1920
The classic war poem written by a British soldier during World War I. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Dulce et Decorum Est"
Posted by alex at 2:44 PM
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44 minutes, 3 seconds
Unabridged Free Verse Poetry Collection
1855
"Children of Adam" is the fourth book (of 35 total) of Walt Whitman's legendary poetry collection Leaves of Grass. This book is among Whitman's most controversial with its celebration of sexuality. It includes the poems:
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To the Garden the World From Pent-up Aching Rivers I Sing the Body Electric A Woman Waits for Me Spontaneous Me One Hour to Madness and Joy |
We Two--How Long We were Fool’d Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd Native Moments Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City Facing West from California’s Shores Ages and Ages, Returning at Intervals O Hymen! O Hymenee! As Adam, Early in the Morning |
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Leaves of Grass Book IV: Children of Adam"
Posted by alex at 9:37 PM
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2 hours, 20 minutes
Unabridged Free Verse Poetry Collection
1855
"Song of Myself" is the longest and most famous book (of 35 total) of Walt Whitman's legendary poetry collection Leaves of Grass. Song of Myself is a longform poem in 52 parts. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Leaves of Grass Book III: Song of Myself"
Posted by alex at 12:01 AM
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6 minutes, 58 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1816
Two poems by one of the founders of the Romantic Movement.
Coleridge claimed that "Kubla Khan," one of his most famous works, came to him in an opium-inspired dream. Coleridge's symbolic pleasure-dome of Xanadu in this poem is referenced and even built in Orson Well's classic film, Citizen Kane. The full title of the poem is "Kubla Khan Or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment."
"The Pains of Sleep" by contrast is a more conversational and emotional piece, dealing with nightmares instead of utopian fantasies, but it is very likely that this poem, too, was inspired by Coleridge's continued opium use.
Though both poems were first published at the same time in 1816, Coleridge wrote "Kubla Khan" a good 6 years before 1803's "The Pains of Sleep," revealing very different mental reactions to his continued drug use. 1816 was also the year when Coleridge finally sought help for his addiction.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Kubla Khan & The Pains of Sleep"
Posted by alex at 11:46 AM
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34 minutes, 25 seconds
Unabridged Epic SF Poem
1798
The classic longform adventure poem in seven parts. MP3 Sample below includes the entire first part.
Continue reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Posted by alex at 8:25 AM
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43 minutes, 21 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poem
1820
Shelley at his most playful (starting with the dedication to his wife, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley: "On her objecting to the following poem, upon the score of its containing no human interest."), combining Greek and Egyptian myths into a fanciful meditation on creativity. A longform poem of the fantastic, read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Witch of Atlas"
Posted by alex at 6:24 PM
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45 minutes, 56 seconds
Unabridged Lyrical Poetry Collection
1913
A Boy's Will is the first poetry collection by Robert Frost. Includes 32 poems, painting pictures of New England and tackling Frost's famously grand themes of isolation, death, coming of age (in literature and in life), and the world's natural spirituality.
Continue reading "A Boy's Will"
Posted by alex at 1:15 AM
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12 minutes, 5 seconds
Unabridged Baseball Poetry
1888, 1907, 1910
Three baseball classics:
- Casey at the bat (Thayer/Phinn)
- Mudville's Fate (Rice)
- Casey's Revenge (Rice)
Ernest L Thayer (writing under the pen name "Phinn") wrote the baseball classic Casey at the Bat: "A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888" for the San Fransisco Examiner. In the century since, the poem has spawned hundreds of sequels, including a handful of updates by sports columnist Grantland Rice.
Just in time for baseball season 2005! Read by Alex Wilson. Sample audio from "Mudville's Fate" below:
Continue reading "Casey at the Bat (and two sequels)"
Posted by alex at 1:13 PM
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2 hours, 15 minutes
Unabridged Free Verse Poetry Collection
1916
This complete collection includes the Telltale Weekly recordings of all 7 volumes of Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems, originally sold individually as
- Chicago Poems - 55 poems - 65 minutes
- Handfuls - 11 poems - 4 minutes
- War Poems 1914-1915 - 11 poems - 11 minutes
- The Road and the End - 11 poems, 10 minutes
- Fogs and Fires - 28 poems - 17 minutes
- Shadows - 9 poems - 6 minutes
- Other Days (1900-1910) - 23 poems - 22 minutes
Continue reading "Chicago Poems"
Posted by alex at 12:10 AM
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1 hour, 19 minutes
Unabridged Lyrical Poetry Collection
1907
Thirty-four accessible, adventurous poems including the famous narrative oft-memorized poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee." This collection has also been published as "Songs of a Sourdough." Read by Craig R Currier. Complete audiobook collection includes:
Continue reading "The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses"
Posted by alex at 12:13 AM
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2 hours, 40 minutes
Unabridged Formal Verse Poetry
1609
A complete reading of Shakespeare's 154 timeless sonnets, composed between 1593 and 1601. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Complete Sonnets"
Posted by alex at 9:51 PM
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2 minutes, 21 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1798
A poem by one of the founders of the Romantic Movement.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Dungeon"
Posted by alex at 9:28 AM
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5 minutes, 30 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1798
A quiet, conversational poem by one of the founders of the Romantic Movement. The frost is both harsh like reality and comforting like the speaker's imagination, and the poem deals with the juxtaposition of being present and of longing.
The University of Alberta offers an in-depth examination of this poem as a joint project between the Department of Psychology and Department of English. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Frost at Midnight"
Posted by alex at 9:43 PM
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6 minutes
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1846
Two poems based on the Arthurian legend, written by the founder of trancendentalism. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Merlin & Merlin II"
Posted by alex at 8:49 PM
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5 minutes, 13 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1816
A confessional poem by Shelley, written during the summer he spent on the shores of Lake Geneva. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"
Posted by alex at 8:47 PM
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25 minutes, 8 seconds
Unabridged Free Verse Poetry
1855
The second book (of 35 total) of Walt Whitman's legendary Leaves of Grass. "Starting from Paumanok" is a longform poem in 19 parts. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Leaves of Grass Book II: Starting from Paumanok"
Posted by alex at 8:47 PM
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8 minutes, 29 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1845
The archetype of dark poetry by the master of macabre. Read by Alex Wilson.
Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered,
"tapping at my chamber door--
Only this, and nothing more..."
Posted by alex at 8:36 PM
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33 minutes, 59 seconds
Unabridged Speculative Poetry
1990
An 18-poem audio chapbook by the Grand Master of Science Fiction Poetry. Read by the author and set to music by Jack Poley. Features the 1985 Rhysling Award Winner "For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets" and Rhysling Award Nominees "The FTL Addict Fixes" (1984), and "The Evolution of the Death Murals" (1986). The poems in this collection first appeared in Asimov's SF, Amazing Stories, Aboriginal SF, Berkely Poets Cooperative, Lost Roads, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, StarLine, Velocities, and Weird Tales. Full list...
Continue reading "Other Voices, Other Worlds"
Posted by alex at 8:32 PM
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19 minutes, 12 seconds
Unabridged Free Verse Poetry
1855
The first book (of 35 total) of Walt Whitman's legendary Leaves of Grass. Contains 24 poems including...
Continue reading "Leaves of Grass Book I: Inscriptions"
Posted by alex at 8:07 PM
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