Dean Pitchford Alice Playten Paul Provenza Sam Robards John
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Jason Alexander Glenn Seven Allen Nancy Anderson Linda Balgord Christine Baranksi James Barbour Brent Barrett John Behlmann Reed Birney Danny Burstein Charles Busch Zoe Caldwell Ann Hampton Callaway Alan Campbell Len Cariou Douglas Carpenter Philip Casnoff Michael Cerveris Donna Lynne Champlin Chuck Cooper Donald Corren Veanne Cox Tyne Daly Daniel Davis Paige Davis Ed Dixon Mike Doyle Christine Ebersole Melissa Errico Francesca Faridany Barbara Feldon Lauren Flanigan Peter Friedman Penny Fuller David Garrison Joanna Gleason Amanda Green Harriet Harris Roxanne Hart Florence Henderson Edward Hibbert Beth Howland Cady Huffman Barry Humphries George S. Irving Dana Ivey Gregory Jbara Byron Jennings Moises Kaufman Judy Kaye Lauren Kennedy Charles Kimbrough Marc Kudisch Claire Lautier Michael Learned Judith Light Rebecca Luker Patti LuPone Ramona Mallory Roberta Maxwell Jeff McCarthy Carolyn McCormick Keith McDermott Tom McGowan Michael Minarik Kate Mulgrew Cynthia Nixon Diedra OConnell’ Ciaran O’Reilly Nancy Opel Daniel Okulitch Patrick Page Peter Paige Guy Paul Michele Pawk Dean Pitchford Alice Playten Paul Provenza Sam Robards John Rubinstein Michael Rupert Chris Sarandon Matthew Schechter Paul Schoeffler Carole Shelley Lynn Sherr Douglas Sills Emily Skinner Bobby Steggert James Patrick Stuart Richard Thomas 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 California 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 Paul Monette – 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 some thing 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. MARIAN SELDES, 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 New York 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 .