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Home , Christine Baranski, Christine Ebersole, Dana Ivey, Danny Burstein, John Rubinstein, Judith Light

Jason Alexander Glenn Seven Allen nancy Anderson Linda Balgord Christine Baranksi James Barbour Brent Barrett John Behlmann Reed Birney Charles Busch Alan Campbell Douglas Carpenter Philip Casnoff Michael Cerveris Donna Lynne Champlin Chuck Cooper Donald Corren Veanne Cox Daniel Davis Paige Davis Ed Dixon Mike Doyle Melissa Errico Francesca Faridany Barbara Feldon Lauren Flanigan Peter Friedman

Penny Fuller David Garrison Amanda Green Harriet Harris Roxanne Hart Florence Henderson Edward Hibbert Beth Howland Cady Huffman Barry Humphries George S. Irving Gregory Jbara Byron Jennings Moises Kaufman Judy Kaye Lauren Kennedy Charles Kimbrough Claire Lautier Michael Learned Patti LuPone Ramona Mallory Roberta Maxwell Jeff McCarthy Carolyn McCormick Keith McDermott Tom McGowan Michael Minarik Kate Mulgrew Diedra oConnell’ Ciaran o’Reilly nancy opel Daniel okulitch Patrick Page Peter Paige Guy Paul

Dean Pitchford Alice Playten Paul Provenza Sam Robards John Rubinstein Michael Rupert Chris Sarandon Paul Schoeffler Carole Shelley Lynn Sherr Douglas Sills Emily Skinner Bobby Steggert James Patrick Stuart Maria Tucci Kathleen Turner Tony Walton Brenda Wehle Chandler Williams JoBeth Williams Geraint Wyn Davies Michael York Catherine Zeta-Jones Chip Zien Louis Zorich pROlOgue 12. miKe dOyle Samuel L. Johnson – Lovers on a Park Bench 1 . liNda BalgORd 13. BOBBy steggeRt Mark Strand – Eating Poetry Pablo Neruda – If You Forget Me 2. Musical interlude 14. Judith light an ever-FiXed MarK – PoeMs about love Jonathan W. Stoller – Soft Knife 3. patti lu pONe 15. chaRles KimBROugh Emily Dickinson – Wild Nights! Wild Nights! Robert Browning – Meeting at Night 4. emily sKiNNeR 16. michele paWK Edna St. Vincent Millay – Love Is Not All Mary Karr – Last Love 5. JOaNNa gleasON 17. chaNdeR Williams Pablo Neruda – Sonnet XVII (Translation by Mark Eisner) Frank O’Hara – To the Harbormaster 6. BReNt BaRRett 18. Musical interlude William Shakespeare – Sonnet XXIX a star danCed – PoeMs oF Joy

7. BaRBaRa feldON 19. catheRiNe zeta-JONes Margaret Atwood – Variation on the Word Sleep William Wordsworth – Daffodils

8. michael ceRVeRis 20. caROle shelley Michael Ondaatje – The Cinnamon Peeler William Wordsworth – Composed Upon 9. chRistiNe BaRaNKsi Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 William Shakespeare – Love looks not with the eyes 21. ciaRaN O’Reilly W. B. Yeats – Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven 10. JOhN BehlmaNN William Shakespeare – Hang there, my verse 22. chRistiNe eBeRsOle Edna St. Vincent Millay – Renascence (Abridged) 11. Judy Kaye e. e. cummings – 23. michael RupeRt i thank you God for most this amazing day Allen Ginsberg – A Supermarket in 24. Nancy Opel 29. Barry Humphries Amy Clampitt – Stephen Spender – The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews Poem for My Daughter

25. Reed Birney 30. Musical Interlude Don Blanding – Some Lines Scrawled Guilding Monuments – on the Door of a Vagabond’s House Poems about Poems

26. Brenda Wehle 31. Roxanne Hart Jane Hirshfield* – Lake and Maple Marianne Moore – Poetry

27. Lauren Kennedy 32. Ann Hampton Callaway Wallace Stevens – The House Was Quiet Rainer Maria Rilke – And the World Was Calm Sonnets to Orpheus (No. 3)

28. Philip Casnoff 33. Douglas Sills Dylan Thomas – Fern Hill – Contexts

*An article by this poet is in the liner notes booklet. **The complete Poem is available for download on iTunes.

Why a Poetry Album? 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, on this CD, 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, ”Are you kidding?“ I’d say, ”Thank you!” to the engineers who would say, “I never got this stuff, but these guys make it so beautiful.” This album 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. Glen Roven, Producer Those Dark Blue Bound Books I learned to love poetry from my dear mother who was enchanted by poetry and loved to hear it spoken. She arranged to see me after school almost every day from the time I was 10 until I was 16 years old. She would bring The Oxford Book of English Verse and we would take turns reading poems to each other from the book with the dark blue cover. It all seemed so natural to me but I realize now what a gift she gave me. My graduation present from my parents was The Oxford Book of English Verse and The Complete Works of John Keats inscribed by them: “Our favorite poet for our favorite daughter.” I remember the first poem I learned by heart to say to my mother—Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Blow Bugle Blow.” I think I should have chosen some­thing sim- pler. Now I see it on the page exactly where it was before. Number 704, “The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls.” I still have those dark blue bound books and I treasure them more as each Truth vs. Fact year goes by. , Actor Although poets are under no particular obliga- tion to be factually correct—I always say that poetry’s debt to Truth is greater than its debt to fact—I did, in fact, live next to a three-legged dog named Bodhisattva when I lived in Oakland (although I never knew him when he had four legs). This was just one of those stories I always knew would become a poem one day: the dog finally getting his leg back when the ashes of the two cremations were mixed. I meant to write more of a ballad and have the refrain come back one or two more times than it does, but that’s not what came out. As it is, the refrain does a good job of anchoring the poem, as well as letting the audience know when it is over. I love performing this poem in high schools because I’ve constructed a situation in which I can say “Bitch” with a perfectly straight face and NOT risk getting reprimanded by the administration. I live in City, a member of the tenth generation of my family to do so, but my wife and I have a house in The Berkshires to which we escape MORE than half the time (at least that’s the plan). I make my living writing, reading, and teaching poetry all over the world; it’s a dream come true. Taylor Mali, Poet

Taylor Mali’s poem, “A Dog called Bodhisattva” appears on CD 2 Track 11.

The Deepest Voice This poem’s lake and maple, its quicksand and egret, all still exist, or their descendents do, going through the same motions of eternity and subtraction, of surface breaking and quick disappearance, of one existence moving into another. It’s a bit like the child’s game of “scissors, paper, rock.” Maple drinks lake, lake becomes maple, leaves fall and feed fish, fish are eaten by egret, moonlight adds its weightlessness to them all, rain comes and leaves, then returns. Consuming and consumed, vanishing and returning, are what we are made of, and of all our loves and longings, as well. This poem signs on for longing—for the human grief of human longing, and for the enlarging longing that calls us into the lake a 14th c. Indian mystic once sang of, limitlessly large. Transparence restores beauty. Inclusion restores beauty. And when those consolations cannot be “Poetry is the found or felt, there’s still the beak of the egret touching the water, and the water’s answering shiver. There’s still Lal Ded’s human-voiced singing, if not her lake. music of the Poems live in people, one by one, as powerful secrets do. They pass between us in silence and on the voice—yet soul, and, above even read in silence, they are meant to be heard. A written poem is a score that wants to awaken inside the instrument all, of great and of a single human life—right now, yours. Poems are, for me, the deepest voice we hear, one whose overtones and under- feeling souls.” tones hold the music of full existence. It’s good to think that this poem and its 99 companions are traveling here between - Voltaire larynx, breath, and ear, each becoming an audible secret. “Lake and Maple” comes from upstate New York, where I still go often, but I’ve lived for 35 years now in the San Francisco Bay Area, writing poems and essays, traveling­ to teach and give readings, talking with as many kinds of peo- ple as I can—biologists, animal psychologists, geomorphologists, physicists, carpenters, artists, farmers, practitioners of all the many forms of awareness. Every one of them, it seems to me, is trying as best they can to save this world. Jane Hirshfield, Poet

Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “Lake and Maple” appears on CD 3 Track 26 1 . Musical interlude 13. paige daVis beauty’s rose – PoeMs For the younG at heart Edward Field – New Yorkers

2. 14. patti lu pONe Lewis Carroll – The Walrus and The Carpenter William Shakespeare – Sonnet CXVI

3. cyNthia NixON 15. michael miNaRiK A.A. Milne – Vespers A.R. Ammons – Beautiful Woman

4. peteR fRiedmaN 16. chaRles Busch Denise Levertov – Psalm Concerning the Castle Robert Browning – My Last Duchess

5. mattheW schechteR 17. BaRRy humphRies Shel Silverstein – Poison-Tester Cecil Day Lewis – Walking Away

6. alaN campBell 18. edWaRd hiBBeRt Thomas Lux – A Little Tooth John Betjeman – Sun and Fun 7. amaNda gReeN 19. mOises KaufmaN Lewis Carroll – You Are Old, Father William Tennessee Williams – Life Story 8. RamONa mallORy 20. peteR paige Shel Silverstein – Nap Taker Anne Sexton – To a Friend Whose 9. tONy WaltON Work Has Come to Triumph Peter Cook – Blue Football 21. deaN pitchfORd 10. Musical interlude Dorothy Parker – Song of a Hopeful Heart thereby hanGs a tale – story PoeMs 22. sam ROBaRds 11. cady huffmaN Shido Bunan – Die while you are alive Taylor Mali* – A Dog Named Bodhisattva 23. tOm mc gOWaN 12. gRegORy JBaRa D.H. Lawrence – William Shakespeare – Bottom’s Dream Afternoon in School—The Last Lesson

Poetry Album? 24. Musical Interlude Sound and Fury – Poems about Great Adventures Words that Bind 25. Donald Corren How does it happen that great poetry Edgar Allan Poe – Annabel Lee cuts through all the noise and noisy disagreements that separate us and 26. John Rubinstein set us at each other’s throats? How Samuel Taylor Coleridge – does it target and hit the note that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (excerpt)** quiets us, that unifies us, and that, in 27. Chris Sarandon turn, defines us as human? Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Ulysses The performers on this CD illum- inate the mystery. Beneath the trem- Musical Interlude 28. bling, faux enthusiasm of Donna Lynne A Dish For The Gods – Poems about Women Champlin’s reading of “Job Appli­ca­ 29. Francesca Faridany tion,” or the steely reserve of Charles Muriel Rukeyser – Myth Busch’s “My Last Duchess,” there lies the truth of the situation, like a beau- 30. Michael Learned tiful rock that’s been polished smooth Edna St. Vincent Millay – An Ancient Gesture by all of the people who have heard 31. Veanne Cox before and who have understood. John Milton – Paradise Lost (Eve) Here we are in 2010: living with- out the benefit of a unifying popular 32. Nancy Anderson culture, but with a culture frayed into William Blake – Mary a million semi-con­nected strands. 33. Guy Paul How sobering, how comforting it is Andrew Marvell – To His Coy Mistress to be reminded of the notes that bind

34. Donna Lynne Champlin us. When you hear Emily Skinner say: Meryn Cadell – Job Application Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 35. Lynn Sherr Nor clean the blood, nor set the Lucille Clifton – she lived fractured bone; Yet many a man is making 36. Beth Howland with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. Dorothy Parker – Love Song Then you know that is true. And that 37. Maria Tucci is enough. Laurie Winer, Critic W.B. Yeats – A Prayer for My Daughter Content, Appearance and Sound! For a few years, when I was publishing poetry and working on my novel, I taught freshman English at Baruch College, here in . Part of the course was an introduction to literature, divided rather artificially by genre, and the unit the students feared most direly was poetry. Why was that? Why should young people who bravely take on The Age of Innocence and A Doll’s House be cowed by “The Road Not Taken,” which is short and so pleasingly accessible in its rhymes and meter? One answer is that they were only accessing about a third of the pleasure. Most Americans view poetry as something to be absorbed privately, perhaps in a meadow or a noiseless plush salon; it’s the art form we make room for by pushing away other stimuli. But as I told my students, poetry occurs on at least three levels: there’s the content, of course, as most people realize.But then there’s the poem’s visual appearance on the page; and finally, the way it sounds. How on earth did we forget this last? How, in our noisy and public world, did we relegate a medium rich in rhythm—rich in echo and voice and song—to a silent interiority? It must be simply a mis­­take! For as my students discovered, poems change when you say them aloud; in fact, a poem will change each new time you speak it aloud, just like that on­ rush­ing river you can’t step into twice. Poems re­ cited (even to one­­self, as I con­fess I do, alone in my office) instantly become per­for­mative, reverberat- A Poem a Day.... ing off the mood and the When I was an undergraduate, an English professor said, in day and whatever you had passing, “a poem a day keeps the doctor away.” He meant, I for breakfast and who assume, that being regularly exposed to the best that has been you’re hoping to be with thought and written is a universal medicine. This collection in the even­ing. And poems helps bring poetry off the page and back into the ear, where spoken aloud in pub­lic, it belongs, and hearing it read with such skill is a constant of course, are theater. revelation. I have not found myself ever, for instance, since I was So next time you read forced to in college, deciding to sit down and read Tennyson or a poem, please speak up. 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 Dave King, Novelist best. I plan on listening to this CD every day on my commute and saving a bundle on my mental health bills. Tom Lutz, Writer ­ “If I feel Performer Notes physically as if To me, poetry is a heightened language, heightened language is song. So poems, by their very nature, the top of have music. And music is something you listen to. You can read it on the page (if you can read music) my head were and say, “Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s going to sound amazing.” But it’s not until you hear it, that the full taken off, I know beauty comes through. I think poems are a verbal art, a written craft for a verbal art. JAson Alexander, Actor that is poetry.” Mr. Alexander reads Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and The Carpenter” on CD 2 Track 2 - Emily Dickinson On our 18th anniversary I woke up and on my side of the pillow was a copy of this poem my husband (Chris Sarandon) had typed up and left for me. So when I was to choose a poem, this came right into my mind. We’re at that stage in life where it’s more than finishing each other’s sentences. It’s that kind of synchronicity, that being in step with one another, that romantic notion of truly not knowing where one person ends and the other begins; it’s profoundly moving. I find this poem, as much as it is about love, is about that total absorption, that new identity that’s created when two people are in love. Joanna Gleason, Actor Ms. Gleason reads Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII” on CD 1 Track 5

Classical training is a wonderful base to have. It’s like a muscle. Everything else can spin off of it. While I was still in Juilliard, I was a lady-in-waiting in the Shakespeare in the Park production of with Stacey Keach, , and , and my first big role professionally was in‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. I also did Molière, Chekov, so many wonderful plays in my early years as an actress. Probably my most favorite thing I’ve ever done was Helena in Shakespeare in the Park, in Midsummer’s Night Dream. I remember it as the happiest time in my life. , Actor Ms. Baranski reads Shakespeare’s “Love looks not with the eyes” on CD 1 Track 9

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” -Coleridge 1 . Musical interlude 12. daNiel daVis TO THINE OWN SELF - POEMS OFFERING ADVISE C.P. Cavafy – Waiting for the Barbarians

2. tyNe daly 13. KathleeN tuRNeR W.H. Auden – If I Could Tell You Ariel Dorfman – Correspondence

3. zOe caldWell 14. alice playteN Zoe Caldwell – On Behalf of Trees Tony Kuschner – An Undoing World

4. daVid gaRRisON 15. ed dixON Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken Robert Frost – The Bearer of Evil Tidings

5. haRRiet haRRis 16. maRc Kudisch Jack Spicer – Robert Frost – Fire and Ice “Any fool can get into an ocean...” 17. Keith mc deRmOtt 6. deidRa O’cONNell W.B. Yeats – The Second Coming Jim Harrison – Barking 18. michael yORK 7. gleNN seVeN alleN Rudyard Kipling – Tommy William Shakespeare – Sonnet 138 19. paul schOeffleR 8. peNNy fulleR Wilfred Owen – Dulce et Decorum Est D. H. Lawrence – Terra Incognita 20. Musical interlude 9. dOuglas caRpeNteR IMMORTAL LONGINGS: POEMS ABOUT THE ETERNAL Walt Whitman - To What You Said 21. haRRiet WalteR 10. James BaRBOuR Thomas Hardy – The Walk Rudyard Kipling – If 22. JOBeth Williams

11. Musical interlude John Keats – THE DOGS OF WAR: POEMS ABOUT CONFLICTS When I have fears that I may cease to be *

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” -Robert Frost

23. Danny Burstein 34. Rebecca Luker Robert Hayden – Those Winter Sundays Christina Rossetti – Remember

24. Paul Provenza 35. Kate Mulgrew Donald Justice – Men at Forty Emily Dickinson – Because I could not stop for Death 25. Jeff Mc Carthy Billy Collins – Conversion 36. Chuck Cooper Kahlil Gibran – On Death 26. Claire Lautier John Donne – A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 37. Chip Zien

27. James Patrick Stuart Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Robert Pinsky – Doctor Frolic Mezzo Cammin 38. 28. Florence Henderson Roberta Maxwell Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Day is Done Stevie Smith – Not Waving but Drowning 39. 29. George S. Irving Louis Zorich Kenneth Fearing – Elegy in a Theatrical Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Crossing the Bar Warehouse 40. Dana Ivey 30. Richard Thomas William Ernest Henley – Invictus Gerard Manley Hopkins – Spring and Fall 41. Len Cariou

31. Carolyn Mc Cormick William Shakespeare – Ye elves of hills, Edna St. Vincent Millay – Dirge Without Music brooks, standing lakes and groves 42. 32. Melissa Errico Geraint Wyn Davies Jane Kenyon – Otherwise Dylan Thomas – In My Craft or Sullen Art

33. Byron Jennings 43. Patrick Page W.B. Yeats – When You Are Old and Grey William Shakespeare – Our revels now are ended Poetry, the most ancient literary art, comes alive now through the most modern of technologies. nothing beats the sound of the human voice, and nothing reminds us so beautifully of the music as well as the words of the poem as the variety of voices assembled on these discs. The performers on this compilation come in all sizes and shapes and sounds, in all vocal timbres. listeners will be delighted to discover poems they have not heard before. They will be astonished to hear, as if for the fi rst time, old chestnuts that burst into bloom again through unexpected rendtions. Best of all, they will be reminded of poems they once knew but have forgotten. Give these Cds to everyone you love, especially to those who think they don’t like poetry. you will change their lives. —WillaRd SPieGelMan, author of Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness

PRODUCED BY Glen Roven Peter Fitzgerald Richard Cohen

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Robin Addison

ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS Donna Lynne Champlin, Ed Dixon and Scott Mauro Art Direction by Margot Frankel Recorded and Mixed by Megan Henninger; Associate Engineers: Bob Hanlon and Carl Casella; Mastered by Peter Fitzgerald and Megan Henninger; Recorded and Mastered at Sound Associates, New York City; Videography by Richard Cohen; GPR website design by Kevin Robillard; Press Representative for GPR Keith Sherman & Associates/Scott Klein; Brett Levenson/Interactive Media Consultants; Max Horowitz/Crossover Media; All music composed by Glen Roven

We alSo WanT To THanK Ellis@Studio Referral Service for arranging all the out-of-town recordings: Clear Lake Audio, Burbank; Hyde Street Studios, San Francisco: Stephen Armstrong, engineer; Studio 5109 Hollywood, CA: Mike Wolf, engineer Richard Rottman, MD, Videographer

GPR Records wants to especially thank the following artists who so very kindly reached out to their friends and brought them into Poetic License: James Barbour, Reed Birney, Ann Hampton Callaway, Donald Corren, Daniel Davis, David Garrison, Harriet Harris, Roxanne Hart, George S. Irving, Dana Ivey, Roberta Maxwell, Daniel Okulitch, Guy Paul,Tony Walton and Chandler Williams. Special thanks to Joan Harrison and Gary Zuckerbrod for also reaching out. More special thanks to David Garrison for coming up with the title. Gratias.

CoPyRiGHT noTiCeS All permissions and copyright notices for the poems appear on our website: gprrecords.com. Please note: We have done due diligence in meticulously searching out all copyright holders. If, by some unfortunate reason, we have inadvertently missed contacting a copyright holder, please contact us at [email protected].

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