THE GREAT POETS: W.B. YEATS

This volume in Naxos's Great Poets series offers 32 poems from Yeats's prodigious creative output, which spanned fifty years, from 1889 until his death at the dawn of WWII. Of the three readers, Denys Hawthorne (who recently suffered a stroke that ended his acting career) is the most dramatic in poems such as "To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time," while Nicholas Boulton's younger voice highlights the playfulness of "The Fiddler of Dooney" and others. Jim Norton, meanwhile, handles the whole range of Yeats's verse with lyricism and authority. Unlike some other titles in this series, this one contains commentary before some of the poems, which helpfully places them in context. D.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2008]