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This audio guide contains distinguished actors and poets reading and speaking about poetry. Listen to these tracks to help you or your students master the art of recitation.

Introduction

The power of poetry

BY DANA GIOIA

“Jenny Kiss’d Me”

BY LEIGH HUNT
Read by Kay Ryan

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Read by Anthony Hopkins

“We Wear the Mask”

BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Read by Rita Dove

“Fire and Ice”

BY ROBERT FROST
Read by N. Scott Momaday

“The Good-Morrow”

BY JOHN DONNE
Read by David Mason

“anyone lived in a pretty how town”

BY E. E. CUMMINGS
Read by David Mason

“Pied Beauty”

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Read by Kay Ryan

Conveying emotion, with excerpts from Hamlet

“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

BY DYLAN THOMAS
Read by Alfred Molina

“The World Is Too Much with Us”

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Read by Angela Lansbury

“Fern Hill”

BY DYLAN THOMAS
Read by Anthony Hopkins

Punching words

“Ozymandias”

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Read by N. Scott Momaday

Kay Ryan remembers her grandmother

N. Scott Momaday remembers his parents

David Mason on knowing poems by heart

“Hope is the thing with feathers”

BY EMILY DICKINSON
Read by David Henry Hwang

“When You Are Old”

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Read by Diane Thiel

“The Road Not Taken”

BY ROBERT FROST
Read by Dana Gioia

“Sonnet 55”

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Read by James Earl Jones

“When I Have Fears”

BY JOHN KEATS
Read by Rita Dove

“To My Dear and Loving Husband”

BY ANNE BRADSTREET
Read by Alyssa Milano

“I think I should have loved you presently”

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Read by Alyssa Milano

“Dream Deferred (Harlem)”

BY LANGSTON HUGHES
Read by Khandi Alexander

“I Hear America Singing”

BY WALT WHITMAN
Read by Richard Rodriguez

From “Annabel Lee”

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
Read by Khandi Alexander

“The Unknown Citizen”

BY W. H. AUDEN
Read by Alfred Molina

“Miniver Cheevy”

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Read by David Mason

“My Last Duchess”

BY ROBERT BROWNING
Read by Alfred Molina

“Dover Beach”

BY MATTHEW ARNOLD
Read by Angela Lansbury

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

BY WALLACE STEVENS
Read by N. Scott Momaday

“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died”

BY EMILY DICKINSON
Read by Kay Ryan

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

BY T. S. ELIOT
Read by Anthony Hopkins

Credits