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The Voice of the Poet book cover
The Voice of the Poet
American Wits: Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Phyllis McGinley
2003
First Published
4.20
Average Rating
64
Number of Pages

Part of Series

A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing—a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience—poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliograohy, and commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of The Yale Review. "To hear a poem spoken in the voice of the person who wrote it is not only to witness the rising of words off the page and into the air, but to experience an aural reenactment of exactly what the poet must have heard, if only internally, during the act of composition. THE VOICE OF THE POET recordings deliver these pleasures as they broadcast the pitch and timbre of many of the major voices in twentieth-century poetry."—Billy Collins, U.S,. Poet Lauerate.

Avg Rating
4.20
Number of Ratings
30
5 STARS
43%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
17%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Authors

Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinley
Author · 10 books

McGinley was educated at the University of Southern California and at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. After receiving her diploma in 1927, she taught for a year in Ogden and then at a junior high school in New Rochelle, New York. Once she had begun to establish a reputation for herself as a writer, McGinley gave up teaching and moved to New York City, where she held various jobs. She married Charles Hayden in 1937, and the couple moved to Larchmont, New York. The suburban landscape and culture of her new home was to provide the subject matter of much of McGinley's work. McGinley was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955. She was the first writer to win the Pulitzer for her light verse collection, Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades with Seventy New Poems (1960). In addition to poetry, McGinley wrote essays and children's books, as well as the lyrics for the 1948 musical revue Small Wonder.

Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Author · 44 books

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base. Dorothy Parker was an American writer, poet and critic best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed as her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker." Nevertheless, her literary output and reputation for her sharp wit have endured.

Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash
Author · 28 books
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".
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