John Hollander Reads From His Own Works (1965) DL 9143

Walt Whitman: PBS American Experience (2008)

 

"I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul. I go with the slaves of the earth equally with the masters. And I will stand between the master and the slaves, entering into both so that both will understand me alike." — Walt Whitman He is today one of the most-recognized figures in American literary history: poet, patriot and faithful advocate of democracy. His name graces shopping malls, highway rest stops, and local high schools. He has adherents around the globe. But in his own time, critics denounced Walt Whitman as a "lunatic raving in pitiable delirium." They pronounced his signature book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, "slimy," "vile," and "beastly." One reviewer wished to see him whipped in public; another suggested he commit suicide. He was famously "banned in Boston." Even by his own measure, Walt Whitman failed in so many ways in his own lifetime: failed in his attempt to reach a vast audience of ordinary men and women; failed to achieve the laurels he craved; and most painfully, failed to talk the nation out of an impending civil war. American Experience presents Walt Whitman, a two-hour documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Mark Zwonitzer (Jesse James, The Massie Affair), featuring Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper (Seabiscuit, Adaptation) as the voice of America's first great poet. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, novelist Allan Gurganus, poet and essayist Martin Espada, and former Poet Laureate Billy Collins appear to recite some of Whitman's most important works, and reflect upon his enduring influence. Actor J.K. Simmons (Juno, The Closer) narrates. This American Experience tells Whitman's life story, from his working class childhood in Long Island, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support his impoverished family, then to his reckless pursuit of the attention and affection he craved for his work, to his death in 1892.

Tracing the life of the transformative American poet, this documentary explores the personal challenges and societal shifts that shaped a

D. H. Lawrence Documentary

 

David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence's writing explores issues such as sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. His novels include Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the literary critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness. D. H. Lawrence documentary DH Lawrence documentary 1984

Anthony Burgess explores the life and work of D. H. Lawrence, analyzing how the author's formative years in an industrial Nottinghamshire

T S Eliot reading his 'Four Quartets' (1947)

 

Recorded by Eliot for HMV, these 78 rpm discs were released in September 1947. While working on his play Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot came up with the idea for a poem that was structured similarly to The Waste Land. The resulting poem, Burnt Norton, named after a manor house, was published in Eliot's 1936 edition of Collected Poems 1909–1935. Eliot decided to create another poem similar to Burnt Norton but with a different location in mind. This second poem, East Coker, was finished and published by Easter 1940. (Eliot visited East Coker in 1937 and his ashes now repose there at St. Michael's Church.) As Eliot was finishing his second poem, World War II began to disrupt his life and he spent more time lecturing across Great Britain and helping out during the war when he could. It was during this time that Eliot began working on The Dry Salvages, the third poem, which was put together near the end of 1940. This poem was published in February 1941 and Eliot immediately began to plot out his fourth poem, Little Gidding. Eliot's health declined and he stayed in Shamley Green to recuperate. His illness and the war disrupted his ability to write and he became dissatisfied with each draft. He believed that the problem with the poem was with himself and that he had started the poem too soon and written it too quickly. By September 1941, he stopped writing and focused on his lecturing. It was not until September 1942 that Eliot finished the last poem and it was finally published. While writing East Coker Eliot thought of creating a "quartet" of poems that would reflect the idea of the four elements and, loosely, the four seasons. As the first four parts of The Waste Land have each been associated with one of the four classical elements so has each of the constituent poems of Four Quartets: air (BN,) earth (EC,) water (DS,) and fire (LG.) However, there is little support for the poems matching with individual seasons. Eliot described what he meant by "quartet" in a 3 September 1942 letter to John Hayward: ... these poems are all in a particular set form which I have elaborated, and the word "quartet" does seem to me to start people on the right track for understanding them ("sonata" in any case is too musical). It suggests to me the notion of making a poem by weaving in together three or four superficially unrelated themes: the "poem" being the degree of success in making a new whole out of them. The four poems comprising Four Quartets were first published together as a collection in New York in 1943 and then London in 1944.

TS Eliot delivers a reading of their renowned poetic sequence, Four Quartets. This recording offers a unique opportunity to hear the author

T.S. Eliot Reads From his Work (1950)

 

On December 4, 1950, two years after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot stood behind a lectern in the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y and read some of his best work in front of hundreds of people. Now the whole world can relive that moment: The 92nd Street Y has unearthed a never-before-heard recording ahead of a listening event on Monday night at 7:30 p.m. celebrating the Unterberg Poetry Center’s 80th anniversary. Eliot had recorded several poems before his death in 1965. But on that winter night, before delving into titles including “Preludes” and “La Figlia che Piange,” he delivered a preamble on his craft, often rousing the crowd to laughter. The clips below convey a more relaxed side to the modernist poet, one that’s thoughtful, humorous and self-effacing. When explaining why he always reads in chronological order (because an author “tends to like what he’s written most recently and therefore reads it best”), he admits that he’s “embarrassed” by his enduring, first published poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At one moment, he cautioned: “I want to impress upon you that I realize that nothing that I say in this way, and nothing that I’m saying at the moment, is of a slightest importance. At least, it is a matter of no importance whether anything I say is of importance or not.” He goes on to say that he has reached the point where, in selecting poems for live readings, he chooses works that he likes rather than those others may want to hear. But he prefers to leave their meanings up for interpretation. He also discusses “the good deal of trouble” that went into some of his recorded work. “One of the things he notes in the introduction about the experience of being in the recording studio is wanting to get it perfect,” said Bernard Schwartz, the director of the poetry center. But, he adds, “If you’re in a recording studio and you screw up, you can do another take — unless it’s post-World War II London and electricity is in short supply, which is something he also talks about.” Noting that many of his recordings are available to the public, Eliot wonders why anyone would leave the comfort of their home to hear him speak in person. Here, he offers advice for fellow poets and says that remarks between poems at live readings help both the reader and listener relax. For instance, during the event, he introduced each poem by placing it in a period of time or style in his career. “This is a collection of voices that were captured and properly preserved, in some cases, over many, many decades,” Mr. Schwartz said. “When you hear them, the experience is as if you were there.”

Louise Glück: Poetry Reading (1977)

 

Introduction (Douglas Bryant and Stratis Haviaras) The Racer's Widow Cottonmouth Country Messengers Nativity Poem Pomegranate The Blind Girl The Garden: The Fear of Birth The Garden: The Garden The Garden: The Fear of Love The Garden: Origins The Garden: The Fear of Burial The Logos The Mirror The Dream of Mourning Nocturne Rosy The Drowned Children For John Descending Figure: The Wanderer Descending Figure: The Sick Child Descending Figure: For My Sister Descending Figure: The Clearing

Joseph Brodsky Poetry Reading (1980)

 

Introduction (Stratis Haviaras) Six Years Later (read in English) Six Years Later (read in Russian) Nature Morte (read in English) Nature Morte (read in Russian) Odysseus to Telemachus (read in English) Odysseus to Telemachus (read in Russian) The Tams at Chelsea (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 1] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 1] (read in Russian) A Part of Speech [excerpt 2] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 2] (read in Russian) A Part of Speech [excerpt 3] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 3] (read in Russian) A Part of Speech [excerpt 4] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 4] (read in Russian) A Part of Speech [excerpt 5] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 5] (read in Russian) A Part of Speech [excerpt 6] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 6] (read in Russian) A Part of Speech [excerpt 7] (read in English) A Part of Speech [excerpt 7] (read in Russian) York: In Memoriam W.H. Auden (read in English) York: In Memoriam W.H. Auden (read in Russian) Plato Elaborated: Section 1 (read in English) Plato Elaborated: Section 1 (read in Russian) Letters from the Ming Dynasty (read in English) Letters from the Ming Dynasty (read in Russian) Elegy for Robert Lowell (read in English) Q&A Session

Yves Bonnefoy Poetry Reading (1973

 

Theatre (read in English) Dans le leurre du seuil (The Lure of the Threshold) Théâtre (read in French by Yves Bonnefoy)

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Louise Glück Poetry Reading (1994)

 

Introduction (Stratis Haviaras) Cottonmouth Country For My Mother The Garden Mock Orange Metamorphosis Legend Celestial Music Matins (“Unreachable father, when we were first”) Trillium Field Flowers The Red Poppy Matins (“Not the sun merely but the earth”) Vespers (“In your extended absence, you permit me”) Vespers (“You thought we didn't know. But we knew once,”) The White Rose Retreating Light Vespers (“Your voice is gone now; I hardly hear you.”) The Silver Lily The Gold Lily The White Lilies

Elizabeth Bishop and James Ingram Merrill Read their Poems (1974)

 

Bishop reads three poems from her collection Poems: North & South--a cold spring; three poems from The complete poems, and three uncollected poems. Merrill reads three poems from Braving the elements and the poem, Verse for Urania.

Robert Hayden at the Brockport Writers Forum

 

Robert Hayden reads "Those Winter Sundays" and discusses W.B. Yeats, accusations of "literary Uncle Tomism," the Bahá’í faith, and Frederick Douglass. This is an edited version of an hour-long interview conducted in Brockport, NY on March 3, 1975. The full video, with many others, is available in our archive: https://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/b...

Aldous Huxley on the Ultimate Revolution (1962)

 

Audio recording of a 1962 lecture by Aldous Huxley at UC Berkeley. He discusses some of the themes of his famous work Brave New World regarding authoritarian state control and the various methods of psychological manipulation.

The Epic of Gilgamesh | Full Reading | Human Voiced, No Ads

 

Embark on a journey through ancient Mesopotamian literature with "The Epic of Gilgamesh," one of the earliest known pieces of literary work. Join us as we explore this profound narrative that delves into the themes of heroism, friendship, the quest for eternal life, and the human condition. Discover the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu, as they navigate the complexities of life and the inevitability of death. 📜 Set sail into the world of ancient Sumer, around the third millennium BCE, where Gilgamesh, part god and part man, reigns as the powerful but tyrannical king of Uruk. Witness his early exploits and the creation of Enkidu, a wild man crafted by the gods to challenge Gilgamesh’s arrogance and temper his excesses. 👬 Venture into the deep bond formed between Gilgamesh and Enkidu as they undertake perilous adventures together. Experience their heroic battle against the monstrous Humbaba, the guardian of the Cedar Forest, and their defiance of the gods by slaying the Heavenly Bull sent to punish them. These tales not only entertain but also explore themes of friendship, loyalty, and the transformative power of companionship. 💔 Journey through the heartbreak of Enkidu’s death, a pivotal event that plunges Gilgamesh into profound grief and sets him on a quest for immortality. Delve into his existential crisis as he confronts the reality of his own mortality, leading him to seek out Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood and the only human to be granted eternal life by the gods. 🌊 Witness Gilgamesh’s arduous journey to the edge of the world and his eventual meeting with Utnapishtim, who recounts the story of the Flood and tests Gilgamesh’s worthiness of immortality. Explore the lessons Gilgamesh learns about the inevitability of death and the importance of accepting one's human limitations. 🌿 Reflect on the return of Gilgamesh to Uruk, where he comes to terms with his mortality and embraces his role as a wise and just ruler. His epic journey concludes with a newfound understanding that his true legacy lies in the enduring accomplishments of his civilization—the walls of Uruk—and the stories that will survive him. 🌟 Join us on this enlightening odyssey through "The Epic of Gilgamesh," where ancient myths and philosophical inquiries into life and death converge to form a narrative that resonates across millennia. Subscribe now to embark on this epic journey and experience one of the foundational stories of world literature, reflecting the early human insights that continue to intrigue scholars and readers today. #gilgamesh #ancientliterature #mesopotamia #epicpoetry #asmr #history #fallasleep #fallasleepfast #asmrhistory #ancientcivilizations