Poet's Night: Eleven Leading Poets Celebrate Fifty Years of Poetry at Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre readings of mediocre poems (with exceptions).
Review: Having listened to poets like T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, and Ted Hughes give excellent readings of their work, the reinditions offered on this tape seem as banal as many of the poems, I'm sorry to say. Too many of the poets read with an awful, pseudo-low-brow academic accent- an exaggeration of the way Berryman and Lowell spoke- infusing flat poems with bland, artifical emotion. Listening to many of the poets on this tape read from other poets is disheartening: comparing Seamus Heaney reading Ted Hughes to Ted Hughes reading Ted Hughes, Frank Bidart reading Robert Lowell to Robert Lowell reading Robert Lowell, or (I can't remember who) reading John Berryman to John Berryman reading John Berryman highlights how mediocre most of the readings on this tape are. Nonetheless, I'd suppose that listening to poets read their work offers us an idea of how they'd like their work to be read, so this tape is an invaluable resource for connoiseurs of contemporary poetry- and, of course, many of the poems on this tape are quite good, although I think very few, if any, are extraordinary, and the quality of the readings is almost uniformly uninspiring. I would recommend instead tapes of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, etc., or tapes of young up-and-coming poets who put more energy and intelligence into their poetry and their oratory.

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful night
Review: This is an excellent compilation of poets reading their own work and the work of others not in attendance at this gala event. I learned much about poets who were unfamiliar to me, like Thom Gunn. The poems selected are great as are those of the poets assigned to each of the readers. Seamus Heaney is, as always, in great voice. Listen to "keeping going" and you will see what I mean.