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Jason Alexander Glenn Seven Allen nancy Anderson Linda Balgord Christine Baranksi James BarbourBrent Barrett John Behlmann Reed Birney Danny Burstein Charles Busch Zoe Caldwell Ann Hampton CallawayAlan Campbell Len Cariou Douglas Carpenter Philip Casnoff Michael Cerveris Donna Lynne ChamplinChuck Cooper Donald Corren Veanne Cox Tyne Daly Daniel Davis Paige Davis Ed Dixon Mike DoyleChristine Ebersole Melissa Errico Francesca Faridany Barbara Feldon Lauren Flanigan Peter FriedmanPenny Fuller David Garrison Joanna Gleason Amanda Green Harriet Harris Roxanne Hart Florence HendersonEdward Hibbert Beth Howland Cady Huffman Barry Humphries George S. Irving Dana Ivey Gregory JbaraByron Jennings Moises Kaufman Judy Kaye Lauren Kennedy Charles Kimbrough Marc Kudisch Claire LautierMichael Learned Judith Light Rebecca Luker Patti LuPone Ramona Mallory Roberta Maxwell Jeff McCarthyCarolyn McCormick Keith McDermott Tom McGowan Michael Minarik Kate Mulgrew Cynthia nixonDiedra o’Connell Ciaran o’Reilly nancy opel Daniel okulitch Patrick Page Peter Paige Guy Paul Michele PawkDean Pitchford Alice Playten Paul Provenza Sam Robards John Rubinstein Michael Rupert Chris SarandonMatthew Schechter Paul Schoeffler Carole Shelley Lynn Sherr Douglas Sills Emily Skinner Bobby SteggertJames Patrick Stuart Richard Thomas Maria Tucci Kathleen Turner Tony Walton Brenda Wehle ChandlerWilliams JoBeth Williams Geraint Wyn Davies Michael York Catherine Zeta-Jones Chip Zien Louis Zorich
p R O lO g u eMusical interludea n e v e r- F i X e d M a r K – P o e M s a b o u t lo v e3. pat t i lu p O N eEmily Dickinson – Wild Nights! Wild Nights!4. e m i ly s K i N N e REdna St. Vincent Millay – Love Is Not All5. J Oa N N a g l e a s O NPablo Neruda – Sonnet XVIImiKe dOyle13.BOBBy steggeRtPablo Neruda – If You Forget Me14.Judith lightSamuel L. Johnson – Lovers on a Park Bench1. liNda BalgORdMark Strand – Eating Poetry2.12.(Translation by Mark Eisner)6. B R e N t B a R R e t tWilliam Shakespeare – Sonnet XXIXJonathan W. Stoller – Soft Knife15.chaRles KimBROughRobert Browning – Meeting at Night16.m i c h e l e paW KMary Karr – Last Love17.chaNdeR WilliamsFrank O’Hara – To the Harbor master18.Musical interludea s ta r d a n C e d – P o e M s o F J oy7. B a R B a R a f e l d O NMargaret Atwood – Variation on the Word Sleep19.c at h e R i N e z e ta - J O N e sWilliam Wordsworth – Daffodils8. m i c h a e l c e R V e R i sMichael Ondaatje – The Cinnamon Peeler20.caROle shelley9. c h R i s t i N e B a R a N K s iWilliam Shakespeare – Love looks not with the eyesWilliam Wordsworth – Composed UponWestminster Bridge, September 3, 180221.c i a R a N O ’ R e i l lyW.B. Yeats – Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven22.chRistiNe eBeRsOleEdna St. Vincent Millay – Renascence23.michael RupeRtAllen Ginsberg – A Supermarket in California10. J O h N B e h l m a N NWilliam Shakespeare – Hang there, my verse11. J u dy K ay ee. e. cummings –i thank you God for most this amazing day(Abridged)
24.Nancy OpelAmy Clampitt –29.The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews25.R e e d B i rn e yDon Blanding – Some Lines Scrawledon the Door of a Vagabond’s HouseB a rr y H u m p h r i e sStephen Spender –Poem for My Daughter30.Musical InterludeGuilding Monuments –Poems about Poems26.Brenda WehleJane Hirshfield * – Lake and Maple31.27.L a u r e n K e nn e d yWallace Stevens – The House Was Quiet32.Ann H a m p t on C a l l a w a yRainer Maria Rilke –Sonnets to Orpheus (No. 3 )33.Do u g l a s S i l l sPaul Monette – ContextsMarianne Moore – PoetryAnd the World Was Calm28.P h i l i p C a s no f fDylan Thomas – Fern HillR o x a nn e H a r t*An article by this poet is in the liner notes booklet. **The complete Poem is available for download on iTunes.Why a Poetry Album?Easy answer: I love poetry. I love reading it. I love memorizing it. I love hearing great actorsrecite it. As the poet Mark Strand wrote, “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth / There is nohappiness like mine / I have been eating poetry.”In the past, when I was full from the eating, I have had the audacity to set poetry to music.But, on this CD, you will hear the music of the poems. Poetry unadorned. Words. Because intruth, great poetry needs nothing but a great actor, a voice as eloquent and expressive as thepoem itself, to lift the poem off the page and into the heart.I have never done a project which has elicited so much enthusiasm. From the actors arrivingat the studio who thanked me for inviting them to participate, ”Are you kidding?“ I’d say, ”Thankyou!” to the engineers who would say, “I never got this stuff, but these guys make it so beautiful.”This album has been a joy from beginning to end, a true labor of love. And whenever I heard mystomach rumbling during the production process, I always knew I could find something deliciousGlen Roven, Producerto eat in the studio. Mmmm. Yeats? That hits the spot.
Those Dark Blue Bound BooksI learned to love poetry from my dear mother who was enchanted by poetry and loved to hear it spoken.She arranged to see me after school almost every day from the time I was 10 until I was 16 years old. Shewould bring The Oxford Book of English Verse and we would take turns reading poems to each other fromthe book with the dark blue cover. It all seemed so natural to me but I realize now what a gift she gave me.My graduation present from my parents was The Oxford Book of English Verse and The CompleteWorks of John Keats inscribed by them: “Our favorite poet for our favorite daughter.” I remember thefirst poem I learned by heart to say to my mother—Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Blow Bugle Blow.” I think Ishould have chosen some thing simpler. Now I see it on the page exactlywhere it was before. Number 704,“The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls.”I still have those dark blue boundbooks and I treasure them more as eachyear goes by. Marian Seldes, ActorTruth vs. FactAlthough poets are under no particular obligation to be factually correct—I always say thatpoetry’s debt to Truth is greater than its debt tofact—I did, in fact, live next to a three-legged dognamed Bodhisattva when I lived in Oakland (although I never knew him when he had four legs). Thiswas just one of those stories I always knew would become a poem one day: the dog finally gettinghis leg back when the ashes of the two cremations were mixed. I meant to write more of a balladand have the refrain come back one or two more times than it does, but that’s not what came out.As it is, the refrain does a good job of anchoring the poem, as well as letting the audience knowwhen it is over. I love performing this poem in high schools because I’ve constructed a situation in whichI can say “Bitch” with a perfectly straight face and NOT risk getting reprimanded by the administration.I live in New York City, a member of the tenth generation of my family to do so, but mywife and I have a house in The Berkshires to which we escape MORE than half the time (atleast that’s the plan). I make my living writing, reading, and teaching poetry all over the world;Taylor Mali, Poetit’s a dream come true.Taylor Mali’s poem, “A Dog called Bodhisattva” appears on CD 2 Track 11.
The Deepest VoiceThis poem’s lake and maple, its quicksand and egret, all still exist, or their descendents do,going through the same motions of eternity and subtraction, of surface breaking and quickdisappearance, of one existence moving into another. It’s a bit like the child’s game of“scissors, paper, rock.” Maple drinks lake, lake becomes maple, leaves fall and feed fish,fish are eaten by egret, moonlight adds its weightlessness to them all, rain comes and leaves,then returns. Consuming and consumed, vanishing and returning, are what we are made of,and of all our loves and longings, as well. This poem signs on for longing—for the humangrief of human longing, and for the enlarging longing thatcalls us into the lake a 14th c. Indian mystic once sang of,limitlessly large. Transparence restores beauty. Inclusionrestores beauty. And when those consolations cannot befound or felt, there’s still the beak of the egret touching thewater, and the water’s answering shiver. There’s still LalDed’s human-voiced singing, if not her lake.Poems live in people, one by one, as powerful secretsdo. They pass between us in silence and on the voice—yeteven read in silence, they are meant to be heard. A writtenpoem is a score that wants to awaken inside the instrumentof a single human life—right now, yours. Poems are, for me,the deepest voice we hear, one whose overtones and undertones hold the music of full existence. It’s good to think thatthis poem and its 99 companions are traveling here betweenlarynx, breath, and ear, each becoming an audible secret.“Lake and Maple” comes from upstate New York,where I still go often, but I’ve lived for 35 years now in the San Francisco Bay Area, writingpoems and essays, trav eling to teach and give readings, talking with as many kinds of people as I can—biologists, animal psychologists, geomorphologists, physicists, carpenters,artists, farmers, practitioners of all the many forms of awareness. Every one of them, itJane Hirshfield, Poetseems to me, is trying as best they can to save this world.“Poetry is themusic of thesoul, and, aboveall, of great andfeeling souls.”- VoltaireJane Hirshfield’s poem, “Lake and Maple” appears on CD 3 Track 26
1.Musical interlude13.2.JasON alexaNdeRLewis Carroll – The Walrus and The Carpenter14.3.cyNthia NixONA.A. Milne – Vespers15.4.peteR fRiedmaNDenise Levertov – Psalm Concerning the Castle16.5.m at t h e W s c h e c h t e RShel Silverstein – Poison-Tester17.6.alaN campBellThomas Lux – A Little Tooth18.7.amaNda gReeNLewis Carroll – You Are Old, Father William19.8.RamONa mallORyShel Silverstein – Nap Taker20.9.tO N y Wa ltO NPeter Cook – Blue Football10.11.12.cady huffmaNTaylor Mali* – A Dog Named BodhisattvagRegORy JBaRaWilliam Shakespeare – Bottom’s Dreampat t i lu p O N eWilliam Shakespeare – Sonnet CXVImichael miNaRiKA.R. Ammons – Beautiful WomanchaRles BuschRobert Browning – My Last DuchessBaRRy humphRiesCecil Day Lewis – Walking AwayedWaRd hiBBeRtJohn Betjeman – Sun and FunmOises KaufmaNTennessee Williams – Life Storyp e t e R pa i g eAnne Sexton – To a Friend WhoseWork Has Come to Triumph21.deaN pitchfORdDorothy Parker – Song of a Hopeful HeartMusical interludet h e r e b y h a n G s a ta l e – s to r y P o e M spa i g e daV i sEdward Field – New Yorkersb e a u t y ’ s r o s e – P o e M s F o r t h e yo u n G at h e a r t22.sam ROBaRdsShido Bunan – Die while you are alive23.tO m m cg O W a ND.H. Lawrence –Afternoon in School—The Last Lesson
Poetry24.Musical InterludeS o u n d a n d F u r y – P o e m s a b o u t G r e at A d v e n t u r e s25.Don a l d Corr e nEdgar Allan Poe – Annabel Lee26.John RubinsteinSamuel Taylor Coleridge –The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (excerpt)**27.C h r i s S a r a n d onAlfred, Lord Tennyson – Ulysses28.Musical InterludeA Dish For The Gods – Poems about Women29.Fr a n c e s c a F a r i d a n yMuriel Rukeyser – Myth30.M i c h a e l L e a rn e dEdna St. Vincent Millay – An Ancient Gesture31.V e a nn e Co xJohn Milton – Paradise Lost (Eve)32.N a n c y An d e r s onWilliam Blake – Mary33.G u y Pau lAndrew Marvell – To His Coy Mistress34.Donn a L y nn e C h a m p l i nMeryn Cadell – Job Application35.L y nn S h e rrLucille Clifton – she lived36.B e t h How l a n dDorothy Parker – Love Song37.Maria TucciW.B. Yeats – A Prayer for My DaughterAlbumWords that BindHow does it happen that great poetrycuts through all the noise and noisydisagreements that separate us andset us at each other’s throats? Howdoes it target and hit the note thatquiets us, that unifies us, and that, inturn, defines us as human?The performers on this CD illuminate the mystery. Beneath the trembling, faux enthusiasm of Donna LynneChamplin’s reading of “Job Appli ca tion,” or the steely reserve of CharlesBusch’s “My Last Duchess,” there liesthe truth of the situation, like a beautiful rock that’s been polished smoothby all of the people who have heardbefore and who have understood.Here we are in 2010: living without the benefit of a unifying popularculture, but with a culture frayed intoa million semi-con nected strands.How sobering, how comforting it isto be reminded of the notes that bindus. When you hear Emily Skinner say:Love can not fill the thickened lungwith breath,Nor clean the blood, nor set thefractured bone;Yet many a man is making friendswith deathEven as I speak, for lack of love alone.Then you know that is true. And thatLaurie Winer, Criticis enough.
Content, Appearance and Sound!For a few years, when I was publishing poetry and working on my novel, I taught freshman Englishat Baruch College, here in New York City. Part of the course was an introduction to literature, dividedrather artificially by genre, and the unit the students feared most direly was poetry. Why was that?Why should young people who bravely take on The Age of Innocence and A Doll’s House be cowedby “The Road Not Taken,” which is short and so pleasingly accessible in its rhymes and meter?One answer is that they were only accessing about a third of the pleasure. Most Americansview poetry as something to be absorbed privately, perhaps in a meadow or a noiseless plushsalon; it’s the art form we make room for by pushing away other stimuli. But as I told my students,poetry occurs on at least three levels: there’s the content, of course, as most people realize.Butthen there’s the poem’s visual appearance on the page; and finally, the way it sounds.How on earth did we forget this last? How, in our noisy and public world, did we relegate a mediumrich in rhythm—rich in echo and voice and song—to a silent interiority? It must be simply a mis take! Foras my students discovered, poems change when you say them aloud; in fact, a poem will changeeach new time you speakit aloud, just like that on rush ing river you can’tstep into twice. Poems re cited (even to one self, as Icon fess I do, alone in myoffice) instantly becomeper for mative, reverberatWhen I was an undergraduate, an English professor said, ining off the mood and thepassing, “a poem a day keeps the doctor away.” He meant, Iday and whatever you hadassume, that being regularly exposed to the best that has beenfor breakfast and whothought and written is a universal medicine. This collectionyou’re hoping to be withhelps bring poetry off the page and back into the ear, wherein the even ing. And poemsit belongs, and hearing it read with such skill is a constantspoken aloud in pub lic,revelation. I have not found myself ever, for instance, since I wasof course, are theater.forced to in college, deciding to sit down and read Tennyson orSo next time you readMilton, but hearing them read has made me realize what I’vea poem, please speak up.been missing. This is the best of the best, read by the best of theDave King, Novelistbest. I plan on listening to this CD every day on my commuteand saving a bundle on my mental health bills. Tom Lutz, WriterA Poem a Day.
Performer NotesTo me, poetry is a heightened language, heightenedlanguage is song. So poems, by their very nature,have music. And music is something you listen to.You can read it on the page (if you can read music)and say, “Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s going to soundamazing.” But it’s not until you hear it, that the fullbeauty comes through. I think poems are a verbal art,a written craft for a verbal art. JAson Alexander, ActorMr. Alexander reads Lewis Carroll’s“The Walrus and The Carpenter” on CD 2 Track 2“If I feelphysically as ifthe top ofmy head weretaken off, I knowthat is poetry.”- Emily DickinsonOn our 18th anniversary I woke up and on my side ofthe pillow was a copy of this poem my husband (ChrisSarandon) had typed up and left for me. So when Iwas to choose a poem, this came right into my mind. We’re at that stage in life where it’s morethan finishing each other’s sentences. It’s that kind of synchronicity, that being in step with oneanother, that romantic notion of truly not knowing where one person ends and the otherbegins; it’s profoundly moving. I find this poem, as much as it is about love, is about that totalabsorption, that new identity that’s created when two people are in love. Joanna Gleason, ActorMs. Gleason reads Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII” on CD 1 Track 5Classical training is a wonderful base to have. It’s like a muscle. Everything else can spin offof it. While I was still in Juilliard, I was a lady-in-waiting in the Shakespeare in the Parkproduction of Hamlet with Stacey Keach, James Earl Jones, and Colleen Dewhurst, and myfirst big role professionally was in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. I also did Molière, Chekov, somany wonderful plays in my early years as an actress. Probably my most favorite thing I’veever done was Helena in Shakespeare in the Park, in Midsummer’s Night Dream. I rememberChristine Baranski, Actorit as the happiest time in my life.Ms. Baranski reads Shakespeare’s “Love looks not with the eyes” on CD 1 Track 9“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” -Coleridge
12.daNiel daVisC.P. Cavafy – Waiting for the Barbarians13.K at h l e e N t u R N e RAriel Dorfman – Correspondence3. z O e c a l dW e l lZoe Caldwell – On Behalf of Trees14.a l i c e p l ay t e NTony Kuschner – An Undoing World4. daV i d g a R R i s O NRobert Frost – The Road Not Taken15.ed dixON5. h a R R i e t h a R R i sJack Spicer –16.maRc KudischRobert Frost – Fire and Ice17.K e i t h m cd e R m Ot tW.B. Yeats – The Second Coming18.michael yORKRudyard Kipling – Tommy19.pau l s c h O e f f l e RWilfred Owen – Dulce et Decorum Est20.Musical interlude1.Musical interludeTO T H I N E O W N S E L F - P O E M S O F F E R I N G A D V I S E2. t y N e d a lyW.H. Auden – If I Could Tell You“Any fool can get into an ocean.”6. d e i d R a O’ c O N N e l lJim Harrison – Barking7. g l e N N s e V e N a l l e NWilliam Shakespeare – Sonnet 138Robert Frost – The Bearer of Evil Tidings8. p e N N y f u l l e RD. H. Lawrence – Terra Incognita9. d O u g l a s c a R p e N t e RWalt Whitman - To What You Said21.h a R R i e t Wa lt e RThomas Hardy – The Walk22.Musical interludeJOBeth WilliamsJohn Keats –T H E D O GS O F WA R: POE MS A B O UT C O N F LI C T SWhen I have fears that I may cease to be10. J a m e s B a R B O u RRudyard Kipling – If11.I M M ORTA L LON GI N GS : P O EMS ABO U T TH E ETERNAL
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thoughtand the thought has found words.” -Robert Frost23.D a nn y B u r s t e i nRobert Hayden – Those Winter Sundays34.24.P a u l Prov e n z aDonald Justice – Men at Forty35.25.J e f f M cC a rt h yBilly Collins – Conversion36.Claire LautierJohn Donne – A Valediction: Forbidding MourningC h u c k Coo p e rKahlil Gibran – On Death37.Chip Zien26.27.J a m e s Pat r i c k S t ua rtRobert Pinsky – Doctor Frolic28.F l or e n c e H e n d e r s onChristina Rossetti – RememberG e or g e S . Irv i n gKenneth Fearing – Elegy in a TheatricalWarehouse30.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow –Mezzo Cammin38.R ob e r t a M a x w e l lStevie Smith – Not Waving but Drowning39.Lo u i s Zor i c hAlfred, Lord Tennyson – Crossing the Bar40.31.C a ro l y n M c Cor m i c kEdna St. Vincent Millay – Dirge Without Music32.M e l i s s a Err i c oJane Kenyon – Otherwise33.B y ron J e nn i n g sW.B. Yeats – When You Are Old and GreyD a n a Iv e yWilliam Ernest Henley – InvictusRichard ThomasGerard Manley Hopkins – Spring and FallK at e M u l g r e wEmily Dickinson –Because I could not stop for DeathHenry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Day is Done29.Rebecca Luker41.Len CariouWilliam Shakespeare – Ye elves of hills,brooks, standing lakes and groves42.Geraint Wyn DaviesDylan Thomas – In My Craft or Sullen Art43.Pat r i c k Pag eWilliam Shakespeare – Our revels now are ended
Poetry, the most ancient literary art, comes alive now through the most modern of technologies.nothing beats the sound of the human voice, and nothing reminds us so beautifully of the music as well as thewords of the poem as the variety of voices assembled on these discs. The performers on this compilationcome in all sizes and shapes and sounds, in all vocal timbres. listeners will be delighted to discover poems they havenot heard before. They will be astonished to hear, as if for the first time, old chestnuts that burst into bloom againthrough unexpected rendtions. Best of all, they will be reminded of poems they once knew but have forgotten.Give these Cds to everyone you love, especially to those who think they don’t like poetry. you will change their lives.—W i l l a R d S Pi eG el M a n , author of Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary HappinessPRODUCED BYGlen Roven Peter Fitzgerald Richard CohenEXECUTIVE PRODUCERRobin AddisonASSOCIATE PRODUCERSDonna Lynne Champlin, Ed Dixon and Scott MauroArt Direction by Margot FrankelRecorded and Mixed by Megan Henninger; Associate Engineers: Bob Hanlon and Carl Casella;Mastered by Peter Fitzgerald and Megan Henninger; Recorded and Mastered at Sound Associates,New York City; Videography by Richard Cohen; GPR website design by Kevin Robillard;Press Representative for GPR Keith Sherman & Associates/Scott Klein; Brett Levenson/Interactive Media Consultants;Max Horowitz/Crossover Media; All music composed by Glen RovenEllis@Studio Referral Service for arranging all the out-of-town recordings:Clear Lake Audio, Burbank; Hyde Street Studios, San Francisco: Stephen Armstrong, engineer;Studio 5109 Hollywood, CA: Mike Wolf, engineer Richard Rottman, MD, VideographerWe alSo WanT To THanKGPR Records wants to especially thank the following artists who so very kindly reached out to their friendsand brought them into Poetic License: James Barbour, Reed Birney, Ann Hampton Callaway, Donald Corren,Daniel Davis, David Garrison, Harriet Harris, Roxanne Hart, George S. Irving, Dana Ivey, Roberta Maxwell,Daniel Okulitch, Guy Paul,Tony Walton and Chandler Williams. Special thanks to Joan Harrison and GaryZuckerbrod for also reaching out. More special thanks to David Garrison for coming up with the title. Gratias.CoPyRiGHT noTiCeS All permissions and copyright notices for the poems appear on our website: gprrecords.com.Please note: We have done due diligence in meticulously searching out all copyright holders. If, by some unfortunatereason, we have inadvertently missed contacting a copyright holder, please contact us at info@gprrecords.com.GPRRecords.comGPR 30013 2 0 1 0 G P R R E CO R D S . COM A L L R I G H TS R E S E RV E D . M A D E I N AU ST R I A .
William Shakespeare - Hang there, my verse Judy Kaye e. e. cummings - i thank you God for most this amazing day miKe dOyle Samuel L. Johnson - Lovers on a Park Bench BOBBy steggeRt Pablo Neruda - If You Forget Me Judith light Jonathan W. Stoller - Soft Knife chaRles KimBROugh Robert Browning - Meeting at Night michele paWK
