-
Minor Notes, Volume 1
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett, Jesse McCarthy, Tracy K. Smith, full cast
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
The first volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination, with a foreword by Tracy K. Smith
A Penguin Classic
Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood through the lens of a long-standing tradition of the poet as witness, as prophetic voice, as communal bard, and as scholar of the everyday and the miraculous. The poets featured in Volume 1 are George Moses Horton, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Anne Spencer, and Angelina Weld Grimké.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Spoken Word
- A Cultural History
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater.
-
-
Loved this rich, thoughtful cultural history of spoken word
- By Jean Burke-Spraker on 12-12-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Owed
- Penguin Poets
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting debut" that was "abounding in tenderness and rich with character", with a "virtuosic kind of code switching". Bennett's new collection, Owed, is a book with celebration at its center. Its primary concern is how we might mend the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant, as fundamentally unworthy of study, reflection, attention, or care.
-
-
another beauty
- By Maya on 05-23-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Recitatif
- A Story
- By: Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith - Introduction
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1983 short story - the only short story Morrison ever wrote - we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
-
-
Read the introduction last
- By Robert C Purnell on 02-01-22
By: Toni Morrison, and others
-
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley
- A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence
- By: David Waldstreicher
- Narrated by: Kim Staunton
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites, celebrated political events, praised warriors, and used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the injustice of her enslaved condition.
-
-
Good history book without a lot of filler
- By Tim Guy on 08-17-24
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Blackouts
- A Novel
- By: Justin Torres
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
-
-
Disappointed
- By P. Thurman on 09-16-24
By: Justin Torres
-
Spoken Word
- A Cultural History
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater.
-
-
Loved this rich, thoughtful cultural history of spoken word
- By Jean Burke-Spraker on 12-12-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Owed
- Penguin Poets
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting debut" that was "abounding in tenderness and rich with character", with a "virtuosic kind of code switching". Bennett's new collection, Owed, is a book with celebration at its center. Its primary concern is how we might mend the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant, as fundamentally unworthy of study, reflection, attention, or care.
-
-
another beauty
- By Maya on 05-23-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Recitatif
- A Story
- By: Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith - Introduction
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1983 short story - the only short story Morrison ever wrote - we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
-
-
Read the introduction last
- By Robert C Purnell on 02-01-22
By: Toni Morrison, and others
-
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley
- A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence
- By: David Waldstreicher
- Narrated by: Kim Staunton
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites, celebrated political events, praised warriors, and used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the injustice of her enslaved condition.
-
-
Good history book without a lot of filler
- By Tim Guy on 08-17-24
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Blackouts
- A Novel
- By: Justin Torres
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
-
-
Disappointed
- By P. Thurman on 09-16-24
By: Justin Torres
-
Soil
- The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
- By: Camille T. Dungy
- Narrated by: Camille T. Dungy
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.
-
-
Like medicine...
- By Broderek on 06-17-23
By: Camille T. Dungy
-
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
- Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
- By: Saidiya Hartman
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the 20th century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage.
-
-
Utterly beautiful!
- By L.A. on 12-27-19
By: Saidiya Hartman
-
School Clothes
- A Collective Memoir of Black Student Witness
- By: Jarvis R. Givens
- Narrated by: Shaun D. Scott
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black students were forced to live and learn on the Black side of the color line for centuries, through the time of slavery, Emancipation, and the Jim Crow era. And for just as long—even through to today—Black students have been seen as a problem and a seemingly troubled population in America’s public imagination. Through over one hundred firsthand accounts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Professor Jarvis Givens offers a powerful counter-narrative in School Clothes to challenge such dated and prejudiced storylines.
-
-
Educating Black children for a world that does not yet exist
- By Keisha Scarlett on 05-27-24
By: Jarvis R. Givens
-
In the Wake
- On Blackness and Being
- By: Christina Sharpe
- Narrated by: Melanie Nicholls-King
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake". Activating multiple registers of "wake" - the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness - Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation.
-
-
Necessary reading
- By Joe Wilson on 08-10-24
By: Christina Sharpe
-
Tremor
- A Novel
- By: Teju Cole
- Narrated by: Atta Otigba, Yetide Badaki
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis. We’re invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus.
-
-
Fractured narrative line but little gained from splicing of stories
- By Kirsten Scheid on 03-14-24
By: Teju Cole
-
The Hurting Kind
- By: Ada Limón
- Narrated by: Ada Limón
- Length: 1 hr and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.
-
-
The Beauty of her insights
- By Tom on 07-30-24
By: Ada Limón
-
Lone Women
- A Novel
- By: Victor LaValle
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader.
-
-
Amazing story, Phenomenal Narration
- By Frugalshopper on 04-02-23
By: Victor LaValle
-
Evangeline
- By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Narrated by: Leonard Wilson
- Length: 2 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitated from Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized.
-
-
Excellent
- By Anonymous User on 05-23-23
-
Walt Whitman's Selected Poems
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Brian Murray
- Length: 59 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This collection, narrated by distinguished Broadway actor Brian Murray, includes nine poems from Leaves of Grass - among them "I Hear America Singing", "O Captain! My Captain", and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d", plus four other selections.
-
-
Lively Selection
- By Traci on 03-16-17
By: Walt Whitman
-
Sappho
- A New Rendering
- By: Sappho, Henry de Vere Stacpoole - translator
- Narrated by: Leanne Yau
- Length: 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sappho was a female poet who was well known in ancient Greece and Rome for her lyrical poetry. She was most famous for her poems involving women who loved women, and it is from her name that sapphic, a term referring to sexual relations between women, originated. This is a compendium of her surviving work, a collection of 54 fragments translated by Henry de Vere Stacpoole.
-
-
This book is essentially all poetry.
- By AudioBookRomance on 08-09-17
By: Sappho, and others
-
The Complete Collection of Emily Dickinson's Poems
- By: Emily Dickinson
- Narrated by: Elaine Sepani
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.
-
-
It’s not Emily Dickinson’s Fault
- By Mary Beth Hammond on 04-04-21
By: Emily Dickinson
-
Leaves of Grass
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the great innovators in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves of Grass is his masterpiece, written in a pure, uninhibited style, combining sensual and mystical sensibilities. Its bold, joyous voice, its expansive optimism, and its transcendental vision made it uniquely American.
-
-
No chapters! Can't skip to a particular poem :(
- By April Antoniou on 02-08-13
By: Walt Whitman
Critic reviews
“You feel you’re meeting them on a human level. The book is slim and portable, as the best poetry books are (…) Bennett and McCarthy, in their introduction, set out their criteria for inclusion in ‘Minor Notes.’ They list things like ‘minimal appearance’ in anthologies and ‘very little, if anything, in the way of secondary literature focusing on their work.’ But it becomes plain that they chose these poets because they still speak across generations. This is a passion project.(…) This is a reclamation project that goes through you like a spear.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, both scholars of African American literature, aim to widen the canon of Black poetry by spotlighting poets who have been overlooked (…) giving readers an understanding of their unique voice and poetic concerns. (…) David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Henrietta Cordelia Ray, Anne Spencer, and other poets interrogate everything from labor politics to friendship in finely wrought lyrics that delight and surprise, prompting the reader to wonder how these geniuses could have been sidelined for so long.” —Poets & Writers
“The first in a series recovering the out-of-print words of Black poets whose work shaped the 19th and 20th centuries, Minor Notes, Volume 1 draws a bright line between the creations of the past and those of today’s bards. Curated by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, while featuring a foreword from former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, the book centers clear, resonant voices—like that of Angelina Weld Grimké’s, who ruminates joyfully on the beauty of living in a Black body.” —Essence
Related to this topic
-
Leaves of Grass
- The Original 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman, American Renaissance Books
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.
-
-
A brilliant classic
- By M.Biblioswine on 12-02-18
By: Walt Whitman, and others
-
Poems of Emily Dickinson: Series 1
- By: Emily Dickinson, Thomas W. Higginson - editor, Mabel Loomis Todd - editor
- Narrated by: Kendra Murray, Nancy Beard, Jennifer Fournier, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Dickinson was one of the most reclusive of all poets. She spent much of her life in seclusion in her father’s house in Amherst, and only a handful of her 1800 poems were published in her lifetime. Credit for the posthumous publication of her work must be given to her editor and friend Thomas W. Higginson, who reported that, in spite of the voluminous correspondence which passed between himself and Dickinson, he only met her twice in person.
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
-
Sappho
- A New Rendering
- By: Sappho, Henry de Vere Stacpoole - translator
- Narrated by: Leanne Yau
- Length: 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sappho was a female poet who was well known in ancient Greece and Rome for her lyrical poetry. She was most famous for her poems involving women who loved women, and it is from her name that sapphic, a term referring to sexual relations between women, originated. This is a compendium of her surviving work, a collection of 54 fragments translated by Henry de Vere Stacpoole.
-
-
This book is essentially all poetry.
- By AudioBookRomance on 08-09-17
By: Sappho, and others
-
Leaves of Grass
- 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of 12 poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, this monumental work, now a classic of American poetry, was condemned as immoral upon publication.
-
-
password “primaeval”
- By Chas Carner on 05-28-20
By: Walt Whitman
-
Faust
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a poem, translated by Bayard Taylor, which tells the beautiful and emotional story of a man who has seen and done it all. However, despite all of his learning and education, his life still feels empty and unaccomplished. He believes wholeheartedly that there is something else out there. Faust, having exhausted all other fields of study, turns to magic for fulfillment. He summons the devil and makes a pact - that if the devil can show him something rewarding and fulfilling, he will give the devil his soul.
-
-
Misleading
- By Grant Pajak on 03-29-17
-
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bird of good omen is murdered. A fickle crew is punished by supernatural, spectral beings. A skeletal ship is sighted moving against the wind and tide. The figure of Death along with a singular, gruesome companion man the fiendish craft. And as they draw closer, it becomes clear that the two play at dice for the soul of the ancient mariner. The result is nothing short of cataclysmic.
-
-
A classic well read
- By Gary on 08-08-16
-
Leaves of Grass
- The Original 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman, American Renaissance Books
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.
-
-
A brilliant classic
- By M.Biblioswine on 12-02-18
By: Walt Whitman, and others
-
Poems of Emily Dickinson: Series 1
- By: Emily Dickinson, Thomas W. Higginson - editor, Mabel Loomis Todd - editor
- Narrated by: Kendra Murray, Nancy Beard, Jennifer Fournier, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Dickinson was one of the most reclusive of all poets. She spent much of her life in seclusion in her father’s house in Amherst, and only a handful of her 1800 poems were published in her lifetime. Credit for the posthumous publication of her work must be given to her editor and friend Thomas W. Higginson, who reported that, in spite of the voluminous correspondence which passed between himself and Dickinson, he only met her twice in person.
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
-
Sappho
- A New Rendering
- By: Sappho, Henry de Vere Stacpoole - translator
- Narrated by: Leanne Yau
- Length: 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sappho was a female poet who was well known in ancient Greece and Rome for her lyrical poetry. She was most famous for her poems involving women who loved women, and it is from her name that sapphic, a term referring to sexual relations between women, originated. This is a compendium of her surviving work, a collection of 54 fragments translated by Henry de Vere Stacpoole.
-
-
This book is essentially all poetry.
- By AudioBookRomance on 08-09-17
By: Sappho, and others
-
Leaves of Grass
- 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of 12 poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, this monumental work, now a classic of American poetry, was condemned as immoral upon publication.
-
-
password “primaeval”
- By Chas Carner on 05-28-20
By: Walt Whitman
-
Faust
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a poem, translated by Bayard Taylor, which tells the beautiful and emotional story of a man who has seen and done it all. However, despite all of his learning and education, his life still feels empty and unaccomplished. He believes wholeheartedly that there is something else out there. Faust, having exhausted all other fields of study, turns to magic for fulfillment. He summons the devil and makes a pact - that if the devil can show him something rewarding and fulfilling, he will give the devil his soul.
-
-
Misleading
- By Grant Pajak on 03-29-17
-
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bird of good omen is murdered. A fickle crew is punished by supernatural, spectral beings. A skeletal ship is sighted moving against the wind and tide. The figure of Death along with a singular, gruesome companion man the fiendish craft. And as they draw closer, it becomes clear that the two play at dice for the soul of the ancient mariner. The result is nothing short of cataclysmic.
-
-
A classic well read
- By Gary on 08-08-16
-
The Complete Collection of Emily Dickinson's Poems
- By: Emily Dickinson
- Narrated by: Elaine Sepani
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.
-
-
It’s not Emily Dickinson’s Fault
- By Mary Beth Hammond on 04-04-21
By: Emily Dickinson
-
The Courtship of Miles Standish
- By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Complete and unabridged, and read with meticulous care, in this story Miles Standish and John Alden both seek the hand of the fair Priscilla. See the Mayflower abandon the first settlers as it returns to England. Feel the heated vision of the Indians, perpetually keeping their watch in the dark forest. Love and adventure collide in one of Longfellow's most famous works
-
-
Longfellow's poem
- By Jan on 12-04-12
-
Evangeline
- By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Narrated by: Leonard Wilson
- Length: 2 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitated from Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized.
-
-
Excellent
- By Anonymous User on 05-23-23
-
Idylls of the King
- By: Alfred Tennyson
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Arthurian legend of Camelot has been told many times, but never better than by Alfred Tennyson. Employing some of the most stirring and beautiful blank verse ever written, Tennyson crafted his version of the Knights of the Round Table over the course of nearly fifty years, completing it in 1885. Despite the length of time, Tennyson managed to maintain a high level of style and continuity throughout.
-
-
Beautiful poetry
- By Roger on 01-15-08
By: Alfred Tennyson
-
Spoon River Anthology
- By: Edgar Lee Masters
- Narrated by: Patrick Fraley, Edward Asner
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a cemetery in a mythical small town in Illinois, the dead speak about their lives. Each free-verse monologue stands as an epitaph for the person speaking, yet the play is ultimately about life, not death. Featuring 50 performers with specially commissioned original music, this is the only audio version of this landmark classic available.
-
-
Magnificent American poetry
- By Admiral Pike on 04-14-05
-
Eugene Onegin
- A Novel in Verse
- By: Alexander Pushkin, James E. Falen - translator
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men - Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast, and a stylized Pushkin himself - and the fates and affections of three women - Tatyana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, and Pushkin's mercurial Muse.
-
-
Pushkin and Falen are brilliant, Corkhill not bad
- By Jabba on 05-17-15
By: Alexander Pushkin, and others
-
The Gods of Pegana
- By: Lord Dunsany
- Narrated by: Ritchard Milton
- Length: 1 hr and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
" The Gods of Pegana" is the first book by Lord Dunsany, published in 1905. The book is a series of short stories linked by Dunsany's invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegana.
-
-
Dunsany is great. This reader/performance is...
- By Advocatus Peregrini on 06-23-18
By: Lord Dunsany
-
The Scarlet Plague [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve billionaires rule the United States, while those called freemen are forced to serve the rich. But that was 60 years ago, before the Scarlet Plague. In this post-apocalyptic novella, a ragged and tattered old man tells his progeny of what life was like before The Scarlet Plague appeared - and wiped out civilization as they knew it.
-
-
wonderful listen very relevant today!
- By Johnny on 12-02-17
By: Jack London
-
Samson Agonistes
- By: John Milton
- Narrated by: David de Keyser, Philip Madoc, Matthew Morgan, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Samson Agonistes, the 'dramatic poem' by John Milton, was published in 1671, three years before the poet's death. Written in the form of a Greek tragedy, with the Chorus commenting on the action, it follows the biblical story of the blind Samson as he wreaks his revenge on the Philistines who have imprisoned him. A powerful subject, with a personal resonance for the blind Milton, it is a perfect work for the medium of audiobook where poetry and drama can be balanced equally.
-
-
Unbelievable
- By Anonymous User on 11-06-20
By: John Milton
-
Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
- By: John Milton
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold testimonial to his mental powers in old age. And, since he had gone completely blind in 1652, 15 years prior to Paradise Lost, he dictated it and all his other works to his daughter.
-
-
SELL YOUR SHIRT FOR THIS AUDIO BOOK!
- By thomas on 04-23-11
By: John Milton
-
She Walks in Beauty
- A Woman's Journey Through Poems
- By: Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, and others
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd, Campbell Scott, Jane Alexander, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She Walks in Beauty draws on poetry’s eloquent wisdom to ponder the many joys and challenges of being a woman. Caroline Kennedy has divided the collection into sections that signify to her the most notable milestones, passages, and universal experiences in a woman’s life, and she begins each of these sections with an introduction in which she explores and celebrates the most important elements of life’s journey.
-
-
Still struggling with poetry
- By Beatrice on 01-30-12
By: Adrienne Rich, and others
-
The Divine Comedy
- By: Dante Alighieri, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - translator
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dante's Divine Comedy is considered to be not only the most important epic poem in Italian literature, but also one of the greatest poems ever written. It consists of 100 cantos, and (after an introductory canto) they are divided into three sections. Each section is 33 cantos in length, and they describe how Dante and a guide travel through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
-
-
Not for listening.
- By Larry on 03-13-11
By: Dante Alighieri, and others