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Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American to publish a book of poetry in 1773. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at age seven, and bought by a wealthy Massachusetts family who taught her to read and write. Her extraordinary literary gifts led to the publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, and to her eventual emancipation by her owners. Although some of the poems demonstrate an apparent acceptance of the racist values of the white slave-owning classes (which viewed Africans as savage), Wheatley's considerable talents simultaneously contradicted these stereotypes. ( Summary by Elizabeth Klett )...

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Poetry

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This powerful poem narrates the fateful return of Count Lara to the British Isles after spending years abroad traveling the orient. Returning to his patrimony with a retinue consisting of one foreign-born page, Count Lara resumes the management of his landed estates. Lara's first efforts are crowned with success: only to be undermined by the jealousy and envy of his his peers. After a successful duel to defend his honour, the count becomes inexorably caught up in local blood-feuds; which quickly escalate to open warfare between his own followers and the private armies of his enemies. - Count Lara remains a bold and skillful leader: is he strong enough to triumph yet over adverse fortune? - And what is the secret of his mysterious foreign page: who left kindred and homeland behind in order to follow Count Lara to the uttermost ends of the earth? (Introduction by Godsend)...

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Poetry

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Summary text The following is a recording of the first volume of poetry published by Edna St. Vincent Millay. When the author had graduated from high school, she couldn't afford to go to college. In the summer of 1912, Vincent's sister, Norma, found work as a waitress at a hotel near where they lived. One night, Norma insisted that Vincent attend a masquerade ball, given at the hotel, if only to get Vincent out of the house and to meet people. Vincent finally gave in, and while there, sang songs and recited Renascence, the first poem in this collection. This immediately won over the support of one Miss Dow, who would help Vincent raise enough money to attend Vassar College. From there, she would meet others and become fully entrenched in, and later a major influence on, the literary community. (According to Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford.) (Summary by Linda Leu)...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 17 recordings of Days Too Short by William H. Davies. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 3, 2011.

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Poetry

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As we get older, many of us return to youthful memories of poems once significant to us. Outside their association with our youth, we may wonder what significance they have to us now. There were other poems we've met along the way as well: some held no appeal while others were forgotten. And there were others we never had the opportunity to meet. This selection hopes to go beyond the experience of meeting old friends and on top opening the door to new ones — poems that might relate more significantly to our current lives. Originally titled Personal Poems for Later Years, this collection gestures towards poems that ask us to slow down some we can consider them more deeply than before — no matter our age. Each time we read a good poem it brings with it a different meaning. Meeting a poem with an open ear, be it old friend or new, we can find its deeper significance. (Summary by Alan Davis Drake)...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 19 different recordings of The Miller's Daughter by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of July 13th, 2008....

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Poetry

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The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. With more than 74,000 verses, Mahabharata is said to be the longest poem. Mahabharata tells the story of the epic Kurukshetra War and the fates of the cousin brothers Kauravas and the Pandavas. But more than that the Mahabharata contains much philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four goals of life or 'purusharthas'. The latter are enumerated as dharma (right action), artha (purpose), kama (pleasure), and moksha (liberation). (Introduction by om123)...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 8 recordings of An Ode to Bahá'u'lláh by Nabíl-i-A'zam (Mullá Muhammad Zarandí). This was the Weekly Poetry project for February 21st, 2010. Mullá Muhammad-i-Zarandí (29 July 1831 – 1892), more commonly known as Nabíl-i-A`zam or Nabíl-i-Zarandí, was an eminent Bahá'í historian during the time of Bahá'u'lláh, and one of the nineteen Apostles of Bahá'u'lláh. He is most famous for authoring The Dawn-breakers, which stands out as one of the most important and extensive accounts of the ministry of the Báb. Besides writing a lengthy history of the Bahá'í Faith, he wrote poetry about the historical events of the religion, which he would send to the Bahá'ís of Iran. He learned about the Bábí Faith at the age of 16 and met Bahá'u'lláh in 1851. He made several journeys on behalf of Bahá'u'lláh, was imprisoned in Egypt and is the only person known to have made the two pilgrimages to the House of the Báb in Shíráz and the House of Bahá'u'lláh in Baghdád in accordance with the rites set out by Bahá'u'lláh. After the passing of Bahá'u'lláh, and at the request of `Abdu'l-Bahá, he arranged a Tablet of Visitation from Bahá'u'llá...

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Religion, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 17 recordings of Business by Ambrose Bierce. This was the weekly poetry project for August 2nd, 2009.

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Satire, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 18 recordings of Oh, No - Not Even When First We Loved by Thomas Moore. This was the Weekly Poetry Valentine's project for February 13, 2011. Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death. In his lifetime he was often reffered to as Anacreon Moore. [...

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Poetry, Romance

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The First Book of the Faerie Queene Contayning The Legende of the Knight of the Red Crosse or Holinesse. The Faerie Queene was never completed, but it continues to be one of the most beautiful and important works of literature ever written. Spenser wrote it as a paean to the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, and to the golden age which she had brought to England. Sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh and commended by the foremost literary minds of his day, Spenser's book remains one of the crowning poetic achievements of the Elizabethan period.(Summary by Annise)...

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Poetry, Myths/Legends

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volunteers bring you ___ recordings of A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover by John Wilmot. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 6th, 2009....

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Romance, Poetry

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The Versio Latina, or Latin translation of the works of Homer, has existed since the 14th century, but was first printed, under the name of Andreas Divus, in 1537. It is a crib, to give it no finer name, but a crib which had immense influence, being the first introduction to Homer for generations of mediaeval and early modern scholars.(Introduction by hefyd)...

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Poetry, Classics (antiquity)

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In an era before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles, there exists a small cluster of aristocratic old revolutionary stock families that rule New York's social life. Under the rules of this society, being things is better than doing things and reputation and outward appearances come at the exclusion of everything else. In this Gilded Age, when America’s expansion and increased industrialism produce a group of newly wealthy robber barons and financiers, the patient, time-honored values of the old ruling class, and century, are giving way to the expediencies of the new. Caught at this cusp, a triangle of lovers, who must choose between the expectations of family and society, and the deepest yearnings of the heart. Newly engaged couple, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, and May Welland, a society debutante, are part of the old world, where the right people follow the correct rules and marry into acceptable families. The arrival from Europe of May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, complicates their union, as Ellen’s mysterious past threatens to cast a shadow of scandal over the newly betrothed couple. Newland A...

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Poetry

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Robert Frost, who lived from March 26, 1874 to January 29, 1963, was a winner of 4 Pulitzer prizes and one of America’s best loved poets. This selection of his poems is a short walk through the variety of his simplistic natural themes and complex social understandings. (Summary by Becky Miller, Canal Winchester, Ohio)...

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Nature, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 10 recordings of An Apology for Sadness by Anne Lynch Botta. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 13, 2011. Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta was an American poet, writer, teacher and socialite whose home was the central gathering place of the literary elite of her era. At Mrs. Botta's receptions every Saturday night, attendees would find the most well-known writers, actors and artists, such as Poe, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Horace Greeley, Richard Henry Stoddard, Andrew Carnegie, Mary Mapes Dodge, Julia Ward Howe, Charles Butler, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Delia Bacon, Grace Greenwood, Bayard Taylor, William Cullen Bryant, Helen Hunt Jackson, actress Fanny Kemble, Daniel Webster, and many more. Her friend Kate Sanborn started her literary lecturing career at these receptions. Said a Boston writer: It was not so much what Mrs. Botta did for literature with her own pen, as what she helped others to do, that will make her name a part of the literary history of the country. (summary from Wikipedia)...

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Romance, Poetry

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The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, the last great work of literature of the Middle Ages and the first great work of the Renaissance. A culmination of the medieval world-view of the afterlife, it establishes the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. - The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or cantiche) — Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) — composed each of 33 cantos (or canti). The very first canto serves as an introduction to the poem and is generally not considered to be part of the first cantica, bringing the total number of cantos to 100. - The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during the Easter Triduum in the spring of 1300. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 8 recordings of To Autumn by John Keats. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for November 21st, 2010. To Autumn is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's 1819 odes. He composed To Autumn after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year following the publication of To Autumn, Keats died in Rome. To Autumn has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language and it is one of the most anthologised English lyric poems....

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Instruction, Literature, Nature, Poetry

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The narrative poems in this collection are written by Sir Walter Scott - the well-known English poet and novelist. Each of these five poems are based loosely upon German ballads: rewritten in flowing English meter. * The Chase - a.k.a. The Wild Huntsman - A profligate, noble-born keeper of the royal forest - avidly addicted to the pleasures of the hunt - cruelly uses and mistreats his fellow-men. One day God's messengers come to test him: executing sentence immediately in just proportion to the huntsman's responses * William & Helen - William - long thought dead - unexpectedly returns at midnight from the crusades to marry his betrothed. Helen - relieved at his return - joyfully agree,s after initial misgivings: follows him on horseback into the night. Approaching the church in which they will celebrate their wedding: it is clear to Helen that all is not what it seems. But, with their mutual love strong enough to transcend death itself - what can possibly go wrong? * The Fire King - Count Albert never returns from crusade: having being imprisoned by Saracens. Rosalie, his betrothed, swears to leave at once for Lebanon to find him. R...

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 18 recordings of There Was a Cherry-Tree by James Whitcomb Riley. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 13, 2012. Riley began his career writing verses as a sign maker and submitting poetry to newspapers. Thanks in part to an endorsement from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he eventually earned successive jobs at Indiana newspaper publishers during the latter 1870s. Riley gradually rose in prominence during the 1880s through his poetry reading tours. He traveled a touring circuit first in the Midwest, and then nationally, holding shows and making joint appearances on stage with other famous talents. Regularly struggling with his alcohol addiction, Riley never married or had children, and was involved in a scandal in 1888 when he became too drunk to perform. He became more popular in spite of the bad press he received, and as a result extricated himself from poorly negotiated contracts that limited his earnings; he quickly became very wealthy. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Instruction, Memoirs, Nature, Philosophy, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 13 recordings of Longings for Home by Walt Whitman. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 26, 2012. Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and – in addition to publishing his poetry – was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle. ( Summary from Wikipedia )...

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Adventure, History, Memoirs, Nature, Poetry

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Aeneas flees the destruction of Troy, abandons Dido, queen of the Carthaginians, and wends his way to Latium in Italy, where slaying Turnus, leader of native resistance, he founds the future Rome. (Summary by Malone)...

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Ancient Texts, Classics (antiquity), Poetry

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volunteers bring you 9 recordings of The Feast of Lights by Emma Lazarus. This was the Weekly Poetry project for December 18, 2011. Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, is the Jewish festival commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem during the 2nd century BCE. This poem celebrating Hanukkah was written by Emma Lazarus, a Jewish American poet. Emma Lazarus also wrote 'The New Colossus,' a sonnet which is inscribed on a plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty....

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Ancient Texts, Holiday, Religion, Poetry