Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost (Voice of the Poet)
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Book Reviews of Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost (Voice of the Poet)
Book Review: Beautiful Poetry
Summary: 4 Stars
The poems of Robert Frost are remarkable; soft and peaceful, his voice is slow but sadly the sound is not great (not terrible, either).Book Review: Beautiful
Summary: 4 Stars
Frost has never been one of my favourite poets / writers, though I do read and enjoy him and appreciate a lot of his work constitutes a landmark in 20th century literature. In terms of voice I didn't know what to expect. I put the cd in my laptop and my attention was grabbed from the moment he started reciting until the recording was over. It is now apparent to me that Frost was a master storyteller and this recording has actually increased my appetite for his work. Recommended to anyone interested in poetry performance. Book Review: Delightful
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this for my wife who had raved about Frost for ages.When I saw that we could get him reading his work I thought this better tha book. To have him read while I read the text is a sheer delight,how the words LIVE.
Thank you.
Book Review: Excellent!
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this cd - it's fabulous. In response to some of the other reviews - of course the sound quality isn't great - he died in the 1960's, and was quite old. I'm grateful someone put together this collection with the recordings they had available. I've had no trouble hearing each and every word, and was not aware that there weren't enough pauses in between the tracks.
Did he read too fast? I doubt it. The one who wrote the poetry reads it as it's supposed to be read, imho. It's fascinating to hear how it would've come out of his own head.
I highly recommend it.
Book Review: Seeing the Ocean for the First Time
Summary: 5 Stars
In this series "The Voice of the Poet" America's most popular poet of the Twentieth Century, Robert Frost, reads 36 of his poems if you consider "Forgive, O Lord" a poem. Whatever it is, it is one of my favorite things that Frost ever wrote:
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
J. D. McClatchy, the series editor, includes his brief bio of Frost in the booklet containing all the poems on the CD that the poet reads aloud. Much of what McClatchy recounts is known to devotees of Mr. Frost, his early success, his very difficult private life, the misunderstandings that many people have about him, his life in New England. McClatchy describes Frost as "a Puritan without a God." He says that some of the readings are as old as 1930, that Frost gave some of them in 1962 and that they are released here for the first time. If my memory serves me right, I liked the Caedmon recording of Frost's reading better LP better but I cannot offer specifics as to why.
But to the poems. If you are hearing this divine poet read for the first time, it's a little like the first time you saw the ocean. Certainly poems should be read aloud; and usually who is better qualified to read his poetry than the writer, himself? Frost's voice resonates, and you will hear it long after you have listened to the CD: "Provide, provide, one could do worst than be a swinger of birches," etc.
Frost reads many of his most beloved poems here: "Fire and Ice," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "Birches," "The Road Not Taken," "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" the darker poems, "Acquainted With The Night" and "Desert Places." Then there is "The Gift Outright" that Frost read from memory at the inauguration of President John Kennedy after he was unable to read the poem he had written for the occasion.
Finally Frost reads what to me is his best poem and one of the great poems of American literature, "The Death of the Hired Man." Silas, who has worked for Warren in the past, not wanted by his brother, with "nothing to look backward to with pride,/And nothing to look forward to with hope," has come back to the farm to die, "a miserable sight." The tension between the hard-nosed Warren and his kinder, gentler wife Mary is palpable. Every line of this dramatic poem is perfect. From it we get the conflicting definitions of home:
'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you haven't to deserve.'
Finally
'But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.'
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned--too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught her by the hand and waited.
'Warren?' she questioned.
'Dead,' was all he answered.
Poetry doesn't get a lot better than this. Frost once said that a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom. Certainly that is true of "The Death of the Hired Man" and much of his other work as well. The reader/hearer who believes that Frost's very accessible poetry with its natural speech rhythms is simple does so at his peril. As McClatchy concludes in his notes, Frost is "ultimately a poet of loss and limitation and loneliness, of desolation and extinction." But he is indeed such a great one.