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As the summer days wind down, volunteers bring you 11 different recordings of A Summer’s Afternoon by Benjamin King. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of July 29th, 2007....

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This book of poems, written between 42 en 39 BC, was a bestseller in ancient Rome, and still holds a fascination today. Held to be divinely inspired not only by the Romans themselves, but by the Medieval Catholic church, The Eclogues is one of the most beloved collections of Latin short poetry. (Summary by Caeristhiona) The translator of this version is unknown. This recording is done in the form of a dramatic reading: in each eclogue, every character is read by a different volunteer....

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volunteers bring you 16 different recordings of Sympathy , by Paul Laurence Dunbar in honor of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Day Martin Luther King Day . Listeners will recognize a line from this poem as being the title of Maya Angelou's 1969 novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . This was the weekly poetry project for the week of January 14th, 2007....

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Sonnets from the Portuguese chronicles one of the most famous romances in history. The renowned Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett wrote the sonnet sequence during her courtship by Robert Browning, and later presented them to him as a wedding gift. Robert was astounded by the quality of the poetry, and encouraged her to publish, but Elizabeth objected on the grounds that the content was too personal. At last, Robert prevailed, and Elizabeth published her sonnets. The title of the book comes from a joke between Robert and Elizabeth Browning. Elizabeth was too embarrassed to publish the sonnets as a personal chronicle, so she decided to pretend they were a translation from a foreign language. Robert’s nickname for her was “My Little Portuguese” due to her dark hair and olive complexion, and so the sequence was forever known as “Sonnets from the Portugese.” (Summary by Kirsten Ferreri)...

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volunteers bring you fifteen different readings of Mother Night , by James Weldon Johnson. This weekly poetry project (for the week of 2/26/2006) was selected to celebrate Black History Month. (Summary by Annie Coleman)...

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Poetry

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McGonagall has been widely acclaimed as the worst poet in British history. He campaigned vigorously against excessive drinking, appearing in pubs and bars to give edifying poems and speeches. These were very popular, the people of Dundee possibly recognising that McGonagall was so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius....

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The Battle of Marathon is a rhymed, dramatic, narrative-poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Written in 1820, it retells powerfully The Battle of Marathon: during which the Athenian state defeated the much larger invading force during the first Persian invasion of Greece. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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In honor of President’s Day, brings you thirteen versions of O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman. This classic poem was written by Whitman following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It appears in Leaves of Grass , Whitman’s masterpiece of a poetry collection and is considered by many to be one of his greatest poems. This was the Weekly Poetry Project for the week of February 19th, 2006. (Summary by Annie Coleman)...

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A Boy's Will is Robert Frost's first full volume of poetry. Issued when Frost was approaching forty, it established his reputation and created a revolution in American poetry. With this publication, Frost became an established poet. He later became the major American poet of the twentieth century. A Boy's Will is characteristic of Frost's ability to conjure photographically clear physical images while ruminating on the complexities of the human condition, its frailties and strengths, and its temporal state, like that of his beloved New England landscape. (Summary by Becky Miller)...

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In Memoriam is Tennyson's elegiac tribute to his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died in 1833 at the age of 22. Tennyson wrote this long poem over 17 years as a chronicle of his mourning process. The poem became a favorite of Queen Victoria when she was grieving for her husband, and was one of the most popular and artistically influential poems of the Victorian period. (Summary by gloriana)....

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An English epic poem that follows the exploits of Alfred the Great in his defense of Christian civilization in England from the heathen nihilism of the North. Following a string of defeats at the hands of the invading Danes, a vision from heaven in the river island of Athelney fills Alfred with joy and hope. Though it gives no promise of victory in the coming struggle, it inspires him to rally his chieftains for a last stand against the invading hordes. His adventures lead throughout the country as he gathers his men, and take him through the Danish camps disguised as a minstrel before culminating in the Battle of Ethandune and the prophesying of the enemy's subtle return in the ages to come. (Summary by Joshua B. Christensen)...

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William Blake’s volume of poetry entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience is the embodiment of his belief that innocence and experience were “the two contrary states of the human soul,” and that true innocence was impossible without experience. Songs of Innocence contains poems either written from the perspective of children or written about them. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience, with quite a different perspective of the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the despair found in Songs of Experience. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Annie Coleman)...

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A collection of poems by Wallace Stevens published before 1923. Trained as a lawyer, within eleven years after these poems were written he was a vice-president at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Connecticut. He continued to pursue a quiet life of poetry and correspondence and for the remainder of his life nurtured his contemplative habit of observation and writing as he walked from home to work and back again. Few at Hartford knew of his world acclaim as a poet. While his major work is considered to have been written when he was much older, many of these early poems are firm classics in the American poetic canon, including: Anecdote of the Jar, The Emperor of Ice Cream, Peter Quince at the Clavier, Sunday Morning, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and others. Stevens died of cancer in 1955, not long after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. All poems and recordings are in the public domain. This collection was recorded for .org. (Summary by Alan Davis-Drake)...

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volunteers bring you 20 recordings of The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. This poem was written, as the concluding part of a series of sonnets, on the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Brooke, himself, died the following year on his way to a battle at Gallipoli. This was the Weekly Poetry project for November 8th, 2009....

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Harold the Dauntless is a rhymed, romantic, narrative-poem by Sir Walter Scott. Written in 1817, it weaves together elements of popular English legends and folklore using dramatic themes. The poem recounts the exploits and the personal spiritual journey of a doubtful knight errant - Harold the son of Danish Count Witikind: who seeks to recover his lands and wed a suitable spouse. Fire-breathing Harold is as much a stranger to love as he is addicted to dangerous adventure: yet his own confrontations with the spirit-world shake his faith in supposed omnipotence of the traditional Norse pantheon. Can a blood-thirsty warrior like Harold ever feel the raptures of love? Can a man born to cherish gods of war really wish to exchange them for a God of peace? (Introduction by Godsend)...

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A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman. A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War, Housman's nostalgic depiction of rural life and young men's early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a bestseller. Later, World War I further increased its popularity.(Summary from Wikipedia)...

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readers bring you 19 recordings of The Red Cross Spirit Speaks by John H. Finley. At this time of year, all around the world, we remember the fallen and those who served their countries in time of war and other calamity. This poem reminds us of the dedication of the Red Cross, and the comfort they brought and, together with the Red Crescent, still bring, to the wounded, dying and distressed. John Huston Finley headed the Red Cross Commission in Palestine during the First World War....

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Sir John Suckling (1609-42) was one of the Cavalier poets at the court of King Charles I of England. He took up arms in the conflicts of that era but was said to be more fit for the boudoir than the battlefield. He was a prolific lover, a sparkling wit and an excessive gamester and is credited with inventing the card game, Cribbage. Cavalier poetry was witty, decorous and sometimes naughty. The Constant Lover displays these elements as well as Suckling's conversational ease and charm....

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Poetry

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Ballads of a Bohemian is a collection of poems tied together by the narration of the author Stephen Poore. The poems speak of bohemian life in Paris before the war, his experiences during World War I and its aftermath. (Summary by Kristin Hughes)...

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This was the weekly poem for Flag Day 2006. It tells the largely-apocryphal but nonetheless inspiring story of one old woman’s act of patriotism during a Confederate advance in the civil war. (summary by LauraFox)...

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Poetry