THE CAEDMON POETRY COLLECTION A Century of Poets Reading Their Own Work

No library or teacher or lover of poetry should be without this fine compilation of Caedmon’s extensive backlist of twentieth-century poets reading their work. Many are familiar selections; all are significant recordings--Eliot reading THE WASTE LAND, Thomas reading FERN HILL and DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT rare recordings by Yeats, Pound, Plath, Neruda. The sequence is neither chronological nor national, but seems ordered by a fine ear for accents, moods, and peculiarities of voice. For example, Williams, Cummings, Brodsky, Frost, Walcott, Moore, and Spender follow one another, a beguiling and playful sequence of accents and styles that minimizes historical differences and heightens the uniqueness of each poet. Poets rarely make the best readers of their own poetry, and often are not even the best interpreters of it; but always the voice of the poet adds something to our understanding of a poem. These 44 poems are, if not all the best of the last century, easily as great as or greater than any 44 others anyone could assemble. Together they comprise a treasure, a constant surprise and revelation, and an unparalleled listening experience. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 02]