Literature

Background, context, and transcript: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/09/sylvia-plath-spoken-word-tulips-bbc/

Sylvia Plath reads "Tulips": A Rare BBC Recording

Background, poem text, and context: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/09/charles-bukowski-reads-friendly-advice-to-a-lot-of-young-men/

Charles Bukowski reads his "Friendly Advice To A Lot Of Young Men"

"April is the cruellest month..." In a rare recording from 1933, T.S. Eliot reads an extract from The Waste Land. Part of The Waste Land app for iPad, now available to download in the App Store: http://bit.ly/kJATn3

T.S. Eliot reads The Waste Land (The Burial of the Dead, extract)

Background, context, and poem text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/18/t-s-eliot-reads-burnt-norton/

POEM TEXT

T. S. Eliot reads "Burnt Norton" (1935)

With all the talk of a "golden age" of audio, it can be easy to forget that producers have been putting together intimate, conversational audio pieces for decades. In this Popcast, hear about the surprising podcast-like feel of a 1972 radio documentary about Sylvia Plath.

Listen on Pop Up Archive, along with a full machine transcript: https://www.popuparchive.com/collections/4425/items/34632

Hear the original piece from the Pacifica Radio Archives on Pop Up Archive: www.popuparchive.com/collections/925/items/6821

O my Homunculus: The proto-podcast about Sylvia Plath

A reading of my favorite John Keats poem for World Poetry Day.

La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats

Mad Girl's Love Song - a poem by Sylvia Plath

Performed by Natalie Clark

Mad Girl's Love Song - a poem by Sylvia Plath. Performed by Natalie Clark

Performed by Maggie Gyllenhaal

About the Book

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath

Background and poem text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/28/amanda-palmer-reads-humanity-i-love-you-e-e-cummings/

Join me in supporting Amanda on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/amandapalmer

BACKGROUND / POEM TEXT

Amanda Palmer reads "Humanity i love you" by e.e. cummings

read by Tom O'Bedlam

“Alone”
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
________________

From childhood’s hour I have not been 
As others were I have not seen 
As others saw I could not bring 
My passions from a common spring


From the same source I have not taken 
My sorrow I could not awaken 
My heart to joy at the same tone
And all I lov’d I lov’d alone
Then in my childhood in the dawn 
Of a most stormy life was drawn 
From ev’ry depth of good and ill 
The mystery which binds me still
From the torrent, or the fountain
From the red cliff of the mountain 
From the sun that ’round me roll’d 
In its autumn tint of gold 
From the lightning in the sky 
As it pass’d me flying by
From the thunder, and the storm
And the cloud that took the form 
(When the rest of Heaven was blue) 
Of a demon in my view

________________________________
So Now? by Charles Bukowski

the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die. 
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it's a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn't know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun. 
there's nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone. 
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!

"Alone"  Edgar Allan Poe -  So Now?  Charles Bukowski

What's it all about? A dramatic monologue about wanting it all, in the words of the immortal Sylvia Plath.

"The Fig Tree" - Sylvia Plath

SOURCE/CITATION: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/poems5.shtml

S.T. Coleridge - "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - BBC

SOURCE/CITATION: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/poems6.shtml

William Wordsworth - "Tintern Abbey" - BBC

SOURCE/CITATION: http://vincentprice.org/audio/audio.html

P.B. Shelley, "Ozymandias" - Read by Vincent Price

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley (female)

The acclaimed actors Helena Bonham Carter, Bill Nighy, Tom Hiddleston and Harry Enfield bring poems alive with the iF Poem iPhone/iPad App. 10% of all sales goes to the Save The Children charity.

The iF Poems App is available here on iTunes: 
For the iPad: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/if-poems/id474446630?mt=8 
For the iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/if-poems-for-the-iphone/id476329476?mt=8

For more information, visit us on our website: 
http://ifpoems.com/

Tom Hiddleston - Bright Star - (Download our app for more audio!)

For full poem text, plus Eliot on idea-incubation and the mystical quality of creativity, go here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/26/t-s-eliot-on-creativity/

MORE / POEM TEXT

T.S. Eliot Reads "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Sylvia Plath reads "A Birthday Present." Written in September of 1962, recorded in October. Background and full text: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/29/sylvia-plath-reads-a-birthday-present-1962/

Sylvia Plath Reads "A Birthday Present" (1962)

From a BBC radio segment broadcast on April 29th, 1937. Background and transcript:http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/29/craftsmanship-virginia-woolf-speaks-1937/ 

Literature

Ritika Nath