I hope that you have enjoyed your visit to this site.
Please feel free to add your comments here. If you have comments on a particular poem, you may prefer to add those to the poem itself, on the podcast site.
You can request a reading by mailing classicpoetryaloud [at] yahoo co uk.
Just a quick note to say congratulations and keep up the excellent work!
The note that displays the poem omits certain lines of the conquering worm. Fanatastic poem!
Justin
Hi, we’d be grateful if we could put your blog as a link on our blog.
Keep up the good work.
I featured your site a while back and have a link posted on my blog, please let me know if it’s okay to keep the link up.
Great site by the way, I’ve listened to several poems and plan to keep listening to more. This is a great service you are providing for poetry readers everywhere.
My pleasure! Please link away and listen to your hearts’ content everyone.
Glad to have been of service.
This is a terrific podcast service for people for whom poetry is important in their lives. Poetry is not just for reading but for listening to and this is a much harder resource to come across than it ought to be. Reading it well is a real skill as there is so much to interpret in the conversion of meaning and feeling from the written word to the spoken. I do hope you are inspired to continue this superb podcast. Many thanks.
Can you direct me to a poem that might be sent to a couple for their anniversary which will be the couples’ last. The husband is dying of cancer.
Lousie – thank you for your kind words. Your response inspires me to continue to interpret these wonderful poems as best I can.
TAJ – there are two poems by John Clare that spring to mind: Love Lives Beyond the Tomb and The Instinct of Hope. They can both be found here: http://www.johnclare.info/default.html
I will record them both before Christmas, and I hope that your friends will hear them. Clare had a tough life, and the optimism in these poems is inspirational.
How delightful, I’ve just found this site via the Performance Channel blog and will have a good look round and hopefully be able to download something I’d like.
I don’t know if this is possible but are the podcasts playable via MS Windows Media Player? This way I could listen to them before deciding whether or not to download.
Hi Chrome
Thanks for the comment. This site is an index for
http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/
If you visit that site, you can play poems by clicking the ‘Play’ button next to each one, without having to download.
To find a poem, scroll down the list, or use CTRL+F to look for key words.
Many thanks for the visit.
Thank you for all the great readings of classic poetry. I never read most of the poems and I’ve certainly never heard them read aloud. Your readings bring the poems to life and have given me a new appreciation for poetry.
YS – many thanks for your comments. This is exactly the point of Classic Poetry Aloud. I hope that I will be able to make future readings enjoyable for you, too.
> > This site is indeed a boon to all lovers of classic poetry.Who miss the presence of such works in this modern world. I wa searching for this poem ‘Death’ by John Doanne for so long because I had read this as a child and then for all these years I could not lay my hands on a copy of this poem. I could recall only the first line ‘Death be not proud’. Thank you for the great service you are extending to classics lovers and spreading real english literature. Thank you more than anything else for all the memories attached with this poem that you have let me relive. Thank you.
Thanks so much for keeping this going. I really enjoy it.
I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your podcast. I am sure to download anew cast every day. I am an English Lit major and was so excited to come across this podcast and am also glad that you also have a website as well. Thanks again! Keep up the great work!
Reshma, Kai and Jessica – it is wonderful to hear that you have enjoyed these readings. I trust that future readings will continue to be of value to you.
Dearest Sir,
Thank you for reaching out to touch the hearts of so many of us with your beautiful readings. You have granted me an excuse to indulge my romantic imagination. Listening to you read aloud, inspires an innocent excitement, allowing me to temporarily escape into a nineteenth century salon.
With warmest appreciation,
Ms. Brenne Meyro
Brenne
You are more than welcome – I hope that future poetry readings on Classic Poetry Aloud will continue to excite your imagination and give you cause for reflection.
Thank you so much for your podcast. I enjoy listening to it everyday. You truly interpret the poems and express the emotion within the poem through your voice. I enjoy listening to the familiar poems of the past and as well as new poems which I have never heard. Keep up the good work.
- Caitlin from Louisville, KY, USA
Caitlin
Thank you for your support. I will do my best to continue to provide enjoyment, and some cause for reflection.
What a great site to have on ones list. Now I can lean back in my chair and hear the poetry of the greats read to me. To me. Marvelous. What an inspiration to hear. Thank you.
I am searching for a poem to go along with my local ladies’ book club for May. I love to add a poem to the selection to create a theme and perhaps add some more “food for thought” while reading.
I have selected the biblical story of Mary and Martha as the theme, hoping to created a dialog about how we women frequently spend so much time taking care of everyone else that we neglect ourselves. I thought of the “Song of the Shirt” by Thomas Hood (one of my new favorites, thanks to you-isn’t the rhythm and imagery great?), but it’s not quite right. It doesn’t inspire me to take time for myself.
Any suggestions?
Mothers and Daughters is an additional theme.
Thanks.
JoAnn
The Song of the Shirt is a great poem of injustice, but that focus doesn’t sound quite right for your group. How about Woman Work by Maya Angelou ? This is still in copyright, so it doesn’t fall under the remit of Classic Poetry Aloud, but you can find it here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/woman-work/
Or perhaps Overheard in County Sligo by Gillian Clarke, which you can find here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_Wb1aKmJezAC&pg=PA778&lpg=PA778&dq=%22+married+a+man+from+County+Roscommon%22&source=web&ots=GGXJikyWha&sig=cz4JdHJPOXbaeIw2Zq1yMTCTFcw&hl=en
Have a great book club this month!
Thank you for this site. We have created links on Eighteenth-Century Audio (a web site for audio poetry published between 1660-1800) for each of your recordings that fits our dates, and hope to steer still more listeners to your lovely recordings.
I would love to hear Some Edna St. Vincent Millay aloud; I did not see her among the archives.
Thank you for everything you do.
Sarah
Happy Birthday!
Congrats on one year of wonderful poetry. I’m a new listener and very excited to hear more readings.
Congrats again and keep up the great work.
Andy C.
Minneapolis, MN, USA
Marie – thank you for your kind comments. I have also replied by e-mail.
Sarah – Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote some wonderful verse, but her work is still, sadly, in copyright, so I cannot read it. I will write to her estate, but on previous experience, I do not hold out much hope.
Andy – thank you very much for the birthday wishes. I aim to continue for another year, and hope it will be as productive as the last.
Every Sunday, I download the previous week’s poems and listen to them on my way to work on Monday morning. Thank you for giving my week such a wonderful start!
I love the voice of the reader and I can’t help but think I’ve heard him somewhere before. Who is he? His voice reminds me of Ted Hughes.
Dear everyone – many thanks for the kind comments. I’m quietly pleased by the idea that I sound like Ted Hughes, but believe me, I’m just a poetry fan like yourself, and delighted if you enjoy a reading or two.
I’m glad not only I worship the soft lilt of Ted Hughes. I take it the reader’s identity is a matter of National Security, is it?
At least tell me if the ‘sessions’ are recorded in the UK, they musty be!
Thanks for your reply!
I downloaded about twenty podcasts in June the night before leaving for a three week trip to Japan and Thailand. The poems could not have been better companions, and since returning to Philadelphia, I’ve been listening (and introducing others) to your podcasts often). It is wonderful to HEAR poetry, instead of just reading it. It is leaven for the day. THANK YOU!!!
There was a long car ride.
There were four passengers.
There was an iPod full of your readings.
Joyous.
Thank you.
Many thanks for this kind comment. I hope that the rest of the trip went well!
Hi this is a COLLLLLL KOOL COOL SITE I GO ON FOUR TIMES OR TEN TIMES A DAY
The Link attach’d will take thee to a site
That mimicks Pope in all it dares to Write.
Tho’ Wit and Judgement far behind are left,
It’s hoped that Pope thy Cholick Mood will heft.
Of cult’ral Topicks high and low it sings;
Pierian Springs and You Tube Things it clings.
So, fly to Valley of the Shadwells soon–
Thy clicks, my woful Hackny couplets’ boon!
Oh, may I request a poem? I have been listening to your podcast for over a year now and enjoy on the drive in to work. As someone else mentioned, listening to a poem read well is a great treat. And for me, the best way to understand and “get” a poem.
Anyway, I believe this should be public domain: “Cards and Kisses” by John Lyly. For some reason, this is nearly my most favorite poem. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Thanks for helping to fill a yawning gap in my life. It’s wonderful to have found your site and a kindred ‘poetry was meant to be read – and heard – aloud’ spirit. I’ve been regretting not having bought more of the old Caedmon and Argo LPs while they were still available, and cursing the short-sighted CD industry that mostly hasn’t made transfers of them. If anybody reading this comment knows of a supplier who still holds stocks of either label I’d be grateful for contact details. And might you consider at some stage readings from Macaulay’s ‘Horatius’ or ‘The Battle of Lake Regillus’, or Chesterton’s ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’? Meanwhile, all the best to you and yours for the New Year.
First, thank you for the service you’re providing. We’ve never subscribed much to poetry but now with iTunes, my wife and I are making a dedicated effort to expand our literary horizons.
Second, thanks to your service, I’m beginning to understand poetry as art, and (as with all art) the interpretation is in the eye of beholder–or in this case listener. However, as a newbie, I really appreciated your added interpretation at the end of John Donne’s “The Ecstasy.” I re-listened to the poem with a new appreciation and an understanding.
If you feel so inspired in the future, I would greatly appreciate any insight you could offer into the poem’s meaning, structure, etc. Again, a big thank you for everything you’re already doing.
Thanks for Lord Byron’s “So, We’ll Go No More A´Roving”. I enjoyed every sound of it. I’ll look forward to more readings of my requests. Thanks 1,000,000
This is a wonderful podcast. You have the perfect voice to read these poems and you really do them justice. I look forward to further updates!
thank you! To me – it’s a pure treasure – for my native language is russian and I don’t always get how to read some of the English classic poetry, how it sounds.
If you please – I’d be thankful to find audio of Lord Byron’s “Stanzas to Augusta” someday. This is one of my favorite and I don’t completely understand how it sounds.
God bless you for your excellent work.
just drop by to say thank you for your wonderful works! i truly deeply enjoy your site. wish you a nice day wherever you are. (:
ah, would you please read A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe?
Exodus – great request!
A Dream within a Dream is available at http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2009-04-03T11_22_38-07_00
i have searched for but found no reference to Yeats. Am i doing something wrong?
Bob – Yeats is a wonderful poet, but until recently all his work was in copyright (Jan 28th 2009 was the 70th anniversary of his death). I will start reading some Yeats just as soon as I am sure that the poetry *is* in fact all out of copyright.
The poem “To The Virgins, to make Much of Time” by Herrick is like an argument. What is the speaker’s main point
Jane – thanks for the question. The speaker’s main point is that life is short and it’s better to experience love than ‘to forever tarry’ (wait/delay). It’s a common theme of poets, but Herrick lived it more than most – he experienced a great deal of love, but never married himself.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. The most beautiful thing you have treasured for me. I love this. Keep it up. Thanks.
I am so happy to hear that the podcasts will now be daily. Thank you so very much.
Thank you very much for Byron’s Stanzas to Augusta – I’m listening to it again and again. Wish you all the best and waiting for some “new” – classic poems
curious if you’re planning on bringing this podcast back to life…it was a great resource and much enjoyed