We were waiting for the Word

[melannen]

Okay, I meant to post these earlier, but then I got into this. (Ironic, as today's service was about the sin of procrastination.) Mp3s from "Teaching Shakespeare" and "National Poetry Recitation Contest" CDs given out at the National Book Festival. They're meant for teachers, so some of the tracks have annoying exposition at the beginning. I'm too lazy to cut it out, sorry. YSI, I'll keep them up for a week or so, there should be more coming later:

David Mason - The Good Morrow (John Donne)
Anthony Hopkins - The Lake Isle of Innisfree (William Butler Yeats)
David Schwimmer - Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll)
David Mason - Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town (e. e. cummings)
Kay Ryan - Pied Beauty (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Alfred Molina - Do Not Go Gentle (Dylan Thomas)
Angela Lansbury - The World is Too Much With Us (William Wordsworth)
Anthony Hopkins - Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas)
N. Scott Momaday - Ozymandias (Percy Bysse Shelley)
Diane Teil - When You Are Old (William Butler Yeats)
Dana Gioia - The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost)
Rita Dove - When I Have Fears (John Keats)
Anthony Hopkins - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

***

In other news, new icons! This one is from the best Star Wars book ever, "The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot," which I found while cleaning out the nursery room at church.

Comments

[zamochit.livejournal.com]

!!

Thank you! Pied Beauty is one of my favourite poems ever.

Although David Schwimmer reading ANYTHING, particularly Carroll, makes me very sad.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Pied Beauty is great, and it's a poem that needs to be read aloud.

The advantage of being largely immune to pop culture is that I didn't recognize any of the voices. q-:

[zamochit.livejournal.com]

All of Hopkins really needs to be read aloud. He's amazing.

Haha, but even if you weren't, isn't his nasally yawp just incredibly frustrating to you? :(

[necreavit.livejournal.com]

Admittedly it wasn't the best reading on the CD!

I may have to try to rip my old 'Nonsense Poetry' LP, which has Carroll being read much better.

[angabel.livejournal.com]

I snagged all of these. Thanks sooo much.

We're studying "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" on Monday. I am tickled.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Prufrock is great for reciting out loud at odd moments, wandering down the street at two in the morning, staying late at the library, testing mikes. I have most of it memorized just for that.

[atlashrugged.livejournal.com]

Came over here from greatpoets, and am slightly giddy. I'm a bit tired, but I love these poems, and will probably download all of them. But the Eliot takes precedence. Thanks.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Welcome! Giddy is how I felt when I ripped open the CD and saw what it was.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Thanks, this is great! The Wordsworth is one of my favorites, and I love Dylan Thomas. And I've always liked Shelley for some reason, although I don't really like most of his contemporaries.

It's interesting, growing up we never read aloud, or were accustomed to hearing poems aloud, so I've always found it's very hard for me to enjoy them being read by other people. The rhythm seems so much more immediately flexible yet sure in your head. The "sound" is almost too distracting, I like the meaning much more. Hmm.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You know, normally I'd agree that I prefer the meaning to the sound, expect that it's not true. I can take or leave video, but I love listening to plain audio of stories, if they're read well. But then, we did read out loud a lot when we were little - not poetry so much (except when we'd talk Mom into reciting 'Sam McGee' or 'Casey Jones') but books, books, books. I heard Twain read by my parents before I ever read it myself, and Katy read Narnia to me, and the Bobbsey Twins, and always Dr. Seuss and nursery rhymes. And lots of pirated books-on-tape. :p

And when I listen to poetry, actually, I almost never pay attention to the meaning -- I just listen to the sound and cadence of it. I *love* listening to poetry in languages that I speak, Old English especially.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

erf .. in languages that I *don't* speak. (Sometimes, English is one of them.)

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Aww, man! I got all excited for a minute ;)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I can pick through an Old English text if I have a really good glossary (like here (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1244229), for example) and I've slowly working through a parallel Beowulf, but by no stretch to I speak the language. Sorry! (Man, I wish I did.)

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

It's not a hard and fast rule for me... for instance, I'm currently addicted to this Prufrock, but I love the poem itself and it might be a combination of the pleasure of recognizing it and thinking along with it, or just Anthony Hopkin's voice, which is really nice.

I love listening to books on tape, too. But even that is bound up in the pleasure of learning someone's voice, if it's nice, and recognizing it, not so much the verbal noises themselves. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about, though. :P I definitely focus on the meaning of what they're saying, although I also love listening to the cadence of it.

We were read to aloud by my mother before we could read, of course, and my Dad read us Bible stories and Narnia. I think that Courtney also enjoys reading aloud more than I do... I'm sure a lot of it is just how my brain works - I enjoy this (Prufrock) much more as I pull up the poem in the next tab and read it at the same time. :)

[maboo.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, is that THE Natachee Scott Momaday? He/she (I'm confused as to what they were) caused a VERY bizarre situation over on a poetry website which is now no longer, but it REALLY, REALLY was incredibly bizarre.

It was something to do with vote-rigging and posting pompous "aren't I wonderful" posts on the boards under alternative IDs to make it look like lots of people loved his/her poems and generally very bizarre behaviour - ALL their poems on the site ended up in the Top 10 at one stage, and this triggered off a MEGA flame war and some VERY, VERY major vote wars.

In a way I'm not surprised the website in question was never renewed after it crashed one day...

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I have no idea; the CD insert says that he is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a pioneer of Native American Literature, whatever that means. Notably, however, it emphasizes his fiction over his skill at poetry :)

But, you know, it is not at all difficult for me to imagine that sort of behavior from such a luminary...

[invisible-k8.livejournal.com]

thank you so much for posting these (i wandered over from greatpoets) I love so many of these :~)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! The second half is now up here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/melannen/126075.html#cutid3).

[shalna.livejournal.com]

(I came from Greatpoets.) Thanks a lot for posting these, I'm saving almost everything :)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Glad to do it! The second half is now up here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/melannen/126075.html#cutid3).

[shalna.livejournal.com]

Great! I must go saving some from there too. Thanks a lot again!

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Completely off-topic, but how do the YouSendIt people keep their operation afloat? Never mind, I found it... sort of. :p

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Whenever I read (or hear, for that matter) Jabberwocky, I always seem to get lines from MAD's parody version, Joystick Jabberwocky, stuck in my head.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Whenever I hear Dover Beach (http://s58.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2SKVNCFO9NWNO1HR2T9VWYDB17), I get Dover Bitch (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16424) stuck in my head. At least yours is just dorky, rather than dorky and vaguely obscene!

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Oh! I probably should've put a link in there...

Joystick Jabberwocky (http://www76.pair.com/keithlim/jabberwocky/parodies/joystick.html)

[theplace.livejournal.com]

I also came from greatpoets, and took most of these. Thank you so much. These are fantastic.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes, they are fantastic. The second half is now up here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/melannen/126075.html#cutid3).

[decollete.livejournal.com]

Here from great_poets. These are awesome! I'm downloading. Thanks so much!

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Aren't they awesome? They are awesome. The second half is now up here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/melannen/126075.html#cutid3).