Anne Sexton Reads

Anne Sexton ranks among the great poets of our century, and her worl continues to dazzle new generations of readers and listeners. On this recording, made shortly before her death in 1974, Ms. Sexton reads twenty-four poems selected from different periods in her creative life, all in a dramatic, resonant voice that complements the deeply personal quality of her dark, poetic explorations. Ms. Sexton had a wonderful unique literary vision, often brutally honest, often conversial-- always though-provoking.  52mins.  Caedmon: 1993.
Side One:

"Her Kind"

"The Ambition Bird"
"Ringing the Bells"
"Music Swims Back to Me"
"The Truth the Dead Know"
"With Mercy for the Greedy"
"The Starry Night"
"Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound"
"Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman"
"The Little Peasant"
Side Two:

"Self in 1958"

"Divorce, Thy Name Is Woman"
"Gods Making a Living"
"Jesus Cooks"
"Jesus Walking"
"The Fury of Overshoes"
"The Fury of Cocks"
"Rowing"
"Riding the Elevator into the Sky"
"The Play"
"The Rowing Endeth"
"Us"
"The Touch"

By Mark Doty.   University of Illiois Press, 1995

Side One:

"Broadway"

"Heaven"

"Esta Noche"

"Chanteuse"

"Fog"

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Side Two:

"Brilliance"

"No"

"With Animals"

"Lament-Heaven"

"Difference"

 

Wallace Stevens achieved international recognition as a master craftsman and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards. Trained as a lawyer and employed as a insurance executive, Stevens' reputation has flourished since his death, and he is now considered one of America's most significant and enduring poets. His poem, marked by an unmistakable individuality, are exquisitely formed, full of lush figures and daring images. The listener will enjoy how Stevens wittily confuses all the arts in a luxuriance he called "the essential gaudiness of poetry."  47 mins.  Caedmon: 1993.

Side One:

"The Theory of Poetry" (A Prose Note)

"The Idea of Order at Key West"

"Credences of Summer"

"The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain"

"Vacancy in the Park"

Side Two:

"Large Red Man Reading"

"This Solitude of Cataracts"

"In the Element of Antagonisms"

"Puella Parvula"

"To an Old Philosopher in Rome"

"Two Illustrations That the World Is What You Make of It"

      I: The Constant Disquisition of the Wind

     II: The World is Larger in Summer

"Prologues to What is Possible, I I"

"Looking across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly"

"Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"

"The Life of a Poet" (A Prose Note)

 
 

Of the many American poets who reached their zenith in the last few decades, perhaps none looms so large as the legendary Sylvia Plath. Comsummately crafted, Plath's poery is stormy but lumious, sharp but poignant. This unique, compelling and intriguing recording has been heralded as "a significant tribute to and record of the lyric art that Sylvia Plath let to the literary heritage of America."    50 mins.  Caedmon: 1992.
“T"The Ghost's Leavetaking"
“N"November Graveyard"
“A"Plethora of Dryads"
    "The Moon Was a Fat Woman Once"
“N"Nocturne?/font>
    "Child's Park Stones"
   "The Earthenware Head"
   "On the Difficulty of Conjuring up a Dryad"
   "Green Rock-Winthrop Bay"
   "On the Decline of Oracles"
   "The Goring"
   "Ouija"
   "The Beggars of Benidorm Market"
   "Sculptor"
  "The Disquieting Muses"
  "Spinster"
  "Parliament Hill Fields"
  "The Stones"
  "Leaving Early"
  "Candles"
  "Mushrooms"
  "Berck-Plage"
  "The Surgeon at 2 A.M."