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Poets Speak
United States
Registrace 31. 12. 2010
A resource for teachers, students, and those who love poetry.
Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret.
Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret.
HOWARD NEMEROV reads "The Makers"
Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
~
From "Trying Conclusions: New And Selected Poems (1961-1991)"
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
~
From "Trying Conclusions: New And Selected Poems (1961-1991)"
zhlédnutí: 15
Video
HOWARD NEMEROV reads "To D-, Dead By Her Own Hand"
zhlédnutí 13Před 9 hodinami
My dear, I wonder if before the end You ever thought about a children’s game- I’m sure you must have played it too-in which You ran along a narrow garden wall Pretending it to be a mountain ledge So steep a snowy darkness fell away On either side to deeps invisible; And when you felt your balance being lost You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought For only an instant: That was when I ...
FLEUR ADCOCK reads "Weathering"
zhlédnutí 41Před 9 hodinami
Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well: that was a metropolitan vanity, wanting to look young for ever, to pass. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty, nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy men who need to be seen with passable women. But now that I am in love with a place which doesn’t care ho...
ROSEMARY TONKS reads "Badly Chosen Lover"
zhlédnutí 80Před 14 hodinami
Criminal, you took a great piece of my life, And you took it under false pretences, That piece of time - In the clear muscles of my brain I have the lens and jug of it! Books, thoughts, meals, days, and houses, Half Europe, spent like a coarse banknote, You took it - leaving mud and cabbage stumps. And, Criminal, I damn you for it (very softly). My spirit broke her fast on you. And, Turk, You f...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI reads "I Met A Genius"
zhlédnutí 48Před 16 hodinami
I met a genius on the train today about 6 years old, he sat beside me and as the train ran down along the coast we came to the ocean and then he looked at me and said, it's not pretty. it was the first time I'd realized that. ~ From "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame"
KEVIN HART reads "The Room"
zhlédnutí 74Před 19 hodinami
It is my house, and yet one room is locked. The dark has taken root on all four walls. It is a room where knots stare out from wood, A room that turns its back on the whole house. At night I hear the crickets list their griefs And let an ancient peace come into me. Sleep intercepts my prayer, and in the dark The house turns slowly round its one closed room. ~ From "FlameTree: Selected Poems"
DAVID CONSTANTINE reads "As our bloods separate"
zhlédnutí 56Před 21 hodinou
As our bloods separate the clock resumes, I hear the wind again as our hearts quieten. We were a ring: the clock ticked around us For that time and the wind was deflected. The clock pecks everything to the bone. The wind enters through the broken eyes Of houses and through their wide mouths And scatters the ashes from the hearth. Sleep. Do not let go my hand. ~ From "Selected Poems"
TONY HOAGLAND reads "America"
zhlédnutí 84Před dnem
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials, And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is, He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu Trooper with a gang of his friends,...
SEAMUS HEANEY reads "Oysters"
zhlédnutí 95Před dnem
Our shells clacked on the plates. My tongue was a filling estuary, My palate hung with starlight: As I tasted the salty Pleiades Orion dipped his foot into the water. Alive and violated, They lay on their bed of ice: Bivalves: the split bulb And philandering sigh of ocean Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered. We had driven to that coast Through flowers and limestone And there we we...
EARLE BIRNEY reads "David"
zhlédnutí 49Před 14 dny
I David and I that summer cut trails on the Survey, All week in the valley for wages, in air that was steeped In the wail of mosquitoes, but over the sunalive week-ends We climbed, to get from the ruck of the camp, the surly Poker, the wrangling, the snoring under the fetid Tents, and because we had joy in our lengthening coltish Muscles, and mountains for David were made to see over, Stairs fr...
LEONARD COHEN reads "Prayer for Messiah"
zhlédnutí 140Před 14 dny
His blood on my arm is warm as a bird his heart in my hand is heavy as lead his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love O send out the raven ahead of the dove His life in my mouth is less than a man his death on my breast is harder than stone his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love O send out the raven ahead of the dove O send out the raven ahead of the dove O sing from your cha...
GWENDOLYN MACEWEN reads "Dark Pines Under Water"
zhlédnutí 55Před 21 dnem
This land like a mirror turns you inward And you become a forest in a furtive lake; The dark pines of your mind reach downward, You dream in the green of your time, Your memory is a row of sinking pines. Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for Although it is good here, and green; You had meant to move with a kind of largeness, You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream...
PABLO NERUDA reads "How Much Happens in a Day"
zhlédnutí 92Před 21 dnem
In the course of a day, we shall meet one another. But, in one day, things spring up- they sell grapes in the street, tomatoes change their skin, the young girl you fancied did not come back to the office. They changed the postman suddenly. The letters now are not the same. A few golden leaves and it’s changed; this tree is now rich. Who would have said that the earth with its ancient skin woul...
PABLO NERUDA reads "Birth"
zhlédnutí 167Před 21 dnem
A man born among multitudes, I lived among multitudes living- no matter for history: it is land, the heartland of Chile that matters, where green hair grows dense in the vineyards, the grape lives on light and under the feet of a people, wine is born. Parral is the name for what winter brought forth. The house and the street no longer stand. The mountain untethered its horses, power massed in t...
CAITRÍONA O'REILLY reads "Octopus"
zhlédnutí 85Před 21 dnem
Mariners call them devil fish, noting the eerie symmetry of those nervy serpentine arms. They resemble nothing so much as a man's cowled head and shoulders. Mostly they are sessile, and shy as monsters, waiting in rock-clefts or coral for a swimming meal. They have long since abandoned their skulls to the depths, and go naked in this soft element, made of a brain-sac and elephant eye. The tende...
RICHARD MURPHY reads "Seals at High Island"
zhlédnutí 48Před 28 dny
RICHARD MURPHY reads "Seals at High Island"
FLEUR ADCOCK reads "For a Five-Year-Old"
zhlédnutí 162Před měsícem
FLEUR ADCOCK reads "For a Five-Year-Old"
THOM GUNN reads "Considering the Snail"
zhlédnutí 301Před měsícem
THOM GUNN reads "Considering the Snail"
POLLY CLARK reads "My Life With Horses"
zhlédnutí 31Před měsícem
POLLY CLARK reads "My Life With Horses"
ROBERT ADAMSON reads "The Stone Curlew"
zhlédnutí 52Před měsícem
ROBERT ADAMSON reads "The Stone Curlew"
JAMES DICKEY reads "The Heaven of Animals"
zhlédnutí 94Před měsícem
JAMES DICKEY reads "The Heaven of Animals"
BRENDAN KENNELLY reads "My Dark Fathers"
zhlédnutí 79Před měsícem
BRENDAN KENNELLY reads "My Dark Fathers"
JAMES WRIGHT reads "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"
zhlédnutí 112Před 2 měsíci
JAMES WRIGHT reads "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"
Interesting.
🙏
She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you and cast up from your childhood, cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February and as real as a cast-iron pot. Let's face it, I have been momentary. vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor. My hair rising like smoke from the car window. Littleneck clams out of season. She is more than that. She is your have to have, has grown you your practical your tropical growth. This is not an experiment. She is all harmony. She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy, has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast, sat by the potter's wheel at midday, set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel. If you glance up, the children are there like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling. She has also carried each one down the hall after supper, their heads privately bent, two legs protesting, person to person, her face flushed with a song and their little sleep. I give you back your heart. I give you permission - for the fuse inside her, throbbing angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her and the burying of her wound - for the burying of her small red wound alive - for the pale flickering flare under her ribs, for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse, for the mother's knee, for the stocking, for the garter belt, for the call - the curious call when you will burrow in arms and breasts and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair and answer the call, the curious call. She is so naked and singular She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid. As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.
19:10 What the thunder said
I have discovered Graves very late in life. But what a discovery.
To me, this is much better than his "more complicated poems"! It is a song of "sassy childhood."
Great
Chosen mother figure. Wish she were here to give me a hug, but just hearing her voice is like a hug.❤😢
I memorised this once.
❤
"My palate hung with starlight..." I admit I've never cared much for Heaney (I own his selected from about 1965 to 1980 or so, and I never finished it--every verse was peat bogs and rolling barrows and so on), but this caught my ear very nicely.
Thank you for posting this. I've been writing a piece on this poem for my English class and having it in a spoken form helped immensely
You're welcome! Good luck on your assignment.
I don't think anyone will ever beat Heaney's translation of "Beowulf". Ever. A master of language.
<3
for years i searched for "john whitside" I even called Andrew Lytle who said " Whiteside? Whiteside? No Whitesides in this part of Tenn". It turned out Ransom wrote it after watching some girls playiing a street game of some sort--however if you go through anthologies he is often footnoted as s workman around the house
This seem like sumn Kendrick would sample
This is why margenalized ppl make art
Great poet
❤ exquisite poetry
The Everyman edition of Poems and Songs is well worth your time.
Utterly brilliant!
I was obsessed with Dorothy Parker as a teenager. A friend bought me a collection of her poetry AND a biography about her. She is still my favourite poet. It is good to hear her read one of her own.
Gorgeous embroidery of consonants and vowels!
VII But always we talked of the Finger on Sawback, unknown And hooked, till the first afternoon in September we slogged Through the musky woods, past a swamp that quivered with frog-song, And camped by a bottle-green lake. But under the cold Breath of the glacier sleep would not come, the moonlight Etching the Finger. We rose and trod past the feathery Larch, while the stars went out, and the quiet heather Flushed, and the skyline pulsed with the surging bloom Of incredible dawn in the Rockies. David spotted Bighorns across the moraine and sent them leaping With yodels the ramparts redoubled and rolled to the peaks, And the peaks to the sun. The ice in the morning thaw Was a gurgling world of crystal and cold blue chasms, And seracs that shone like frozen salt-green waves. At the base of the Finger we tried once and failed. Then David Edged to the west and discovered the chimney; the last Hundred feet we fought the rock and shouldered and kneed Our way for an hour and made it. Unroping we formed A cairn on the rotting tip. Then I turned to look north At the glistening wedge of giant Assiniboine, heedless Of handhold. And one foot gave. I swayed and shouted. David turned sharp and reached out his arm and steadied me Turning again with a grin and his lips ready To jest. But the strain crumbled his foothold. Without A gasp he was gone. I froze to the sound of grating Edge-nails and fingers, the slither of stones, the lone Second of silence, the nightmare thud. Then only The wind and the muted beat of unknowing cascades. VIII Somehow I worked down the fifty impossible feet To the ledge, calling and getting no answer but echoes Released in the cirque, and trying not to reflect What an answer would mean. He lay still, with his lean Young face upturned and strangely unmarred, but his legs Splayed beneath him, beside the final drop, Six hundred feet sheer to the ice. My throat stopped When I reached him, for he was alive. He opened his grey Straight eyes and brokenly murmured, "over ... over. And I, feeling beneath him a cruel fang Of the ledge thrust in his back, but not understanding, Mumbled stupidly, "Best not to move," and spoke Of his pain. But he said, "I can't move... If only I felt Some pain." Then my shame stung the tears to my eyes As I crouched, and I cursed myself, but he cried Louder, "No, Bobbie! Don't ever blame yourself. I didn't test my foothold." He shut the lids Of his eyes to the stare of the sky, while I moistened his lips From our water flask and tearing my shirt into strips I swabbed the shredded hands. But the blood slid From his side and stained the stone and the thirsting lichens, And yet I dared not lift him up from the gore Of the rock. Then he whispered, "Bob, I want to go over!" This time I knew what he meant and I grasped for a lie And said, "I'll be back here by midnight with ropes And men from the camp and we'll cradle you out." But I knew That the day and the night must pass and the cold dews Of another morning before such men unknowing The way of mountains could win to the chimney's top. And then, how long? And he knew... and the hell of hours After that, if he lived till we came, roping him out. But I curled beside him and whispered, "The bleeding will stop. You can last." He said only, "Perhaps . . . For what? A wheelchair, Bob?" His eyes brightening with fever upbraided me. I could not look at him more and said, "Then I'll stay With you." But he did not speak, for the clouding fever. I lay dazed and stared at the long valley, The glistening hair of a creek on the rug stretched By the firs, while the sun leaned round and flooded the ledge, The moss, and David still as a broken doll. I hunched to my knees to leave, but he called and his voice Now was sharpened with fear. "For Christ's sake push me over! If I could move . . . or die . . ." The sweat ran from his forehead But only his head moved. A hawk was buoying Blackly its wings over the wrinkled ice. The purr of a waterfall rose and sank with the wind. Above us climbed the last joint of the Finger Beckoning bleakly the wide indifferent sky. Even then in the sun it grew cold lying there... And I knew He had tested his holds. It was I who had not . . .I looked At the blood on the ledge, and the far valley. I looked At last in his eyes. He breathed, "I'd do it for you, Bob." IX I will not remember how or why I could twist Up the wind-devilled peak, and down through the chimney's empty Horror, and over the traverse alone. I remember Only the pounding fear I would stumble on It When I came to the grave-cold maw of the bergschrund.... reeling Over the sun-cankered snowbridge, shying the caves In the neve . . . the fear, and the need to make sure It was there On the ice, the running and falling and running, leaping Of gaping green-throated crevasses, alone and pursued By the Finger's lengthening shadow. At last through the fanged And blinding seracs I slid to the milky wrangling Falls at the glacier's snout, through the rocks piled huge On the humped moraine, and into the spectral larches, Alone. By the glooming lake I sank and chilled My mouth but I could not rest and stumbled still To the valley, losing my way in the ragged marsh. I was glad of the mire that covered the stains, on my ripped Boots, of his blood, but panic was on me, the reek Of the bog, the purple glimmer of toadstools obscene In the twilight. I staggered clear to a firewaste, tripped And fell with a shriek on my shoulder. It somehow eased My heart to know I was hurt, but I did not faint And I could not stop while over me hung the range Of the Sawback. In blackness I searched for the trail by the creek And found it... My feet squelched a slug and horror Rose again in my nostrils. I hurled myself Down the path. In the woods behind some animal yelped. Then I saw the glimmer of tents and babbled my story. I said that he fell straight to the ice where they found him, And none but the sun and incurious clouds have lingered Around the marks of that day on the ledge of the Finger, That day, the last of my youth, on the last of our mountains.
What a glorious find..
This is one of my favorite poems, and it's especially good to hear it read by Louise Bogan herself.
Neruda is reading his poem in English?
Yes; this reading is from the September 5, 1971 episode of the radio program "Comment," soon before he won the Nobel Prize.
My rule for great poetry is that it should touch the head, the heart, and the ear. This one did. Thank you.
THANK you so so much for posting these! Love your page. I found very less Asian or Indian English poets. Can you please upload more of them?? thank you!
Beyond Too Many Caged Birdsss Unheard UnBeKnownst judges ... Freedom? LIVE LOVE PRINCIPLES VERBS. Words have carry transfer frequencies often more powerful than actual swords.
Hi, I’m wondering if you’d be able to share where you got this audio from! I’ve been looking for years and I can’t seem to find any of them anymore :(
This was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of their series "Three Score and Ten."
Thanks again.
Very gosh. Thank you.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Brilliance from first word to last!
😄😄happy, because I just love her voice so much
I love his voice. And "....makes me want to believe that words have meanings" made me pay closer attention to what followed.
Thank you for uploading this. Where can one find more early recordings of Les, I wonder? His delivery sounds faster, a bit harsher than in the later readings you can hear on CZcams. You can hear his intelligence along with an edge of anger. Reading this poem on the page, I’ve always heard it in his voice of later years, a bit softer, cracked, even teary. But here he sounds unsentimental, his delivery indeed ‘absolutely ordinary’ in a no-nonsense way and it’s very effective.
There aren't many early recordings, but for a later retrospective try this edition of his collected poems: www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30945883361 This edition included a CD of Les reading many of his works. There are also two live readings at the Library of Congress, from 1980 and 1985: www.loc.gov/item/n50034270/les-murray/ I hope these may be of some interest.
😂😇😛
On repeat!
I've always liked this one. From time to time the first line pops into my head seemingly for no reason. :)
word
Why he sounds so scary
Fascinating.
Such beauty and such pain in this marvelous poem so well read by its author. Thank you.
Interesting.
I absolutely relate to this. As a child though. Breathing the neglect and loneliness añd desolation of several generations.
English class
'I'll leap up to my God - who holds me down' and 'see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament' are from Dr. Faustus' last speech in Marlowe's play
I seek the light under my feet I seek bright colours I cannot meet Cause I walk too fast and I oose my beat Or I hear the whisper starring quick Oh I wish this light was quieter And I wish it could always be gentle As I believe a secret is golden And a unique spark is due to the eye That's not chasing but feeling the try All of us are timid and never want to depart So let's pray for destiny And for the sake of humankind I seek the light under my feet I seek bright colours I cannot meet Cause I walk too fast and I oose my beat Or I hear the whisper starring quick Oh I wish this light was quieter And I wish it could always be gentle As I believe a secret is golden And a unique spark is due to the eye That's not chasing but feeling the try All of us are timid and never want to depart So let's pray for destiny And for the sake of humankind