Poetry audiobooks page 30

Mirza Ghalib, full name Mirza Asadullah Khan Beig, pen name ‘Ghalib’ (1797-1869) was a famous Urdu- and Persian-language poet of India. He is best known for his lyrical and spiritual ghazals. Ghazal is a form of poetry in couplets. In a ghazal, each couplet is self-contained and generally unconnected with the next.

Ghalib was born in Agra, in northern India, and was raised by his uncle. Ghalib had no formal education, but was tutored in Persian by Muhammad Mu’azzam, a noted scholar of the time. It got married in 1810 to Umrao Begum, the niece of Nawab Ahmad Baksh Khan who was the ruler of Ferozepur and Loharu at that time. Ghalib was introduced to the elite circle of intellec...

LibriVox volunteers bring you 18 recordings of At Ease on Lethe Wharf, by Helen Coale Crew. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 14th, 2013.Helen Coale Crew was an American poet and novelist. Her touching evocation of forgetfulness comes from the Chicago Anthology, published in 1916. Lethe refers to the first river that souls bound for the Elysian Fields, the Heaven of the ancient Greeks, had to cross. Drinking from the river was said to have the effect of expunging all memories.

William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. His religious sentiment and association with John Newton (who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace") led to much of the poetry for which he is best remembered. His poem "Light Shining out of Darkness" gave English the phrase: "God moves in a mysterious way/His wonders to perform." Wikipedia

This is a collection of short pieces, poetry or prose, fiction and non-fiction, in several different languages. All chosen and recorded by Librivox volunteers. Brief description of the contributions: 01 Japanese - Shisyuu by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927) [1925] - Key words: prose, fiction, poetries 02 Japanese - Utsukushii Inu by Hayashi Fumiko (1904-1951) [1947] - Key words: prose, fiction, dog 03 Japanese - Konoteni kagiruyo by Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) [1937] - Key words: prose, fiction, dream 04 Japanese - Ookina Komorigasa by Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934) [1926] - Key words: prose, fiction, children, umbrella 05 Polish - O kaznodziei by Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584) [1883] - Key wo...

Venus and Adonis is Shakespeare's narrative poem about the love of the goddess Venus for the mortal youth Adonis, dedicated partly to his patron, the Earl of Southampton (thought by some to be the beautiful youth to which many of the Sonnets are addressed). The poem recounts Venus' attempts to woo Adonis, their passionate coupling, and Adonis' rejection of the goddess, to which she responds with jealousy, with tragic results. This recording features three different readers performing the narration, Venus, and Adonis.

Leconte de Lisle est né à l’Île de Bourbon.
C’est là que ses yeux d’enfant se sont emplis des couleurs et des formes des paysages prestigieux de l’Orient. Une nature sans tendresse, à la lumière implacable, aux faces énormes et aveugles, éveilla dans son âme cette idée obsédante de la fatalité, qu’il devait retrouver au long de l’histoire. Tout ce que l’Orient dans sa lourde immobilité traîne depuis des siècles de renoncement à l’impossible bonheur et de goût de la mort s’ajouta par ailleurs en lui à son pessimisme natif.
(Extrait de la notice de l’édition de 1920)

Leconte de Lisle was born on the island of Réunion.
His verse is clear, sonorous, dignified...

In 1921, American poet H.D. collected and published a selection of previously published poems by Marianne Moore. Although this angered Moore, as it was entirely unauthorized, she later accepted the edition as well made and used it as the basis for her own 1924 publication of Obersvations. Moore’s unique poetry matches the experimentation underway during the American Modernist movement. Much of it incorporates seemingly out-of-place quotations into complex free verse that often uses Nature as a subject matter.

Today, despite the self-motivated alteration of her poetry in later life, done much to the dismay of her devotees, scholars consider Moore a significant American poet wor...

This is a collection of poems read by LibriVox volunteers for May 2013.

LibriVox volunteers bring you nine recordings of "Mountain Song” by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. The Weekly Poem for August 31, 2014 takes us up to the mountain heights of Norway.

Nathaniel Parker Willis is also known as N. P. Willis. He was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day.