Poetic License: 100 Poems, 100 Performers
“This collection helps bring poetry off the page and back into the ear, where it belongs, and hearing it read with such skill is a constant revelation. I have not found myself ever, for instance, since I was forced to in college, deciding to sit down and read Tennyson or Milton, but hearing them read has made me realize what I’ve been missing. This is the best of the best, read by the best of the best.”
Tom Lutz, author of Cosmopolitan Vistas
Why Poetry? Easy answer: I love poetry. I love reading it. I love memorizing it. I love hearing great actors recite it. As the poet Mark Strand wrote, “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth / There is no happiness 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, in this production, you will hear the music of the poems. Poetry unadorned. Words. Because in truth, great poetry needs nothing but a great actor, a voice as eloquent and expressive as the poem 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 arriving at the studio who thanked me for inviting them to participate, to the engineers who would say, “I never got this stuff, but these guys make it so beautiful.”
This production has been a joy from beginning to end, a true labor of love. And whenever I heard my stomach rumbling during the production process, I always knew I could find something delicious to eat in the studio. Mmmm. Yeats? That hits the spot.
Praise