Wonderful to be able to hear Alfred Tennyson reading from “The Charge of the Light Brigade” in the Historic Readings section of The Poetry Archive website. He died in 1892. And Robert Browning who died in 1889. Others audio clips include Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, RS Thomas, Patrick Kavanagh, Yeats Pound, Stevie Smith, Sitwell, TS Eliot and many more. Check out the following pages:
Alfred Tennyson http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1569
Robert Browning http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1545
Sylvia Plath http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7083
Siegfried Sassoon http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1561
And, of course, YouTube is a treasure trove. Here are some pages to start: Ginsberg reading his best, Philip Larkin and Betjeman and Jenny Joseph not old enough yet to be wearing purple.
Philip Larkin interviewed by Betjeman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdDS05x6d0
Seamus Heaney reading Digging http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzJgbNANzk
Ginsberg reading Howl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50
TS Eliot reading Prufrock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhiCMAG658M
Thomas Kinsella http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l4PETJ5Z_Q
Anna Akhmatova http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htW5XzUD24k&feature=related
Jenny Joseph reading Warning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cACbzanitg
This last video’s closing banner "killed by ignorance" prompts me to post my own poem from Sunfire which carries a similar message.
Reflecting with Goya.
Of course not;
of course no one that ever cracked open a head
has seen a symphony pour out.
No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside
with its intimate and tangling caresses
drain from the split skulls of lovers
nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes
seen rafts of memories spilling, carrying the children,
the birthdays, the orchards, the dances.
When they shot the poet Lorca,
the bullets sailed in a universe; yet when the blood spurted,
it was only blood to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment