Not only did T.S. Eliot draw the cov­er for the first edi­tion of his Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, fea­tured yes­ter­day, he even read it aloud for the audio­book edi­tion. You may think the time of the audio­book, now a pop­u­lar form on dig­i­tal audio devices every­where, must have begun long after the time of Eliot had already end­ed. (Eliot died in 1965.) But as we know from hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their mid-1970s albums of Leonard Nimoy read­ing Ray Brad­bury, the record label Caed­mon posi­tioned them­selves well ahead of the audio­book game. Using record­ings made from read­ings giv­en in Lon­don in 1955, Caed­mon man­aged to release albums of Eliot speak­ing his own work aloud. Today we offer you T.S. Eliot Reads T.S. Eliot, made avail­able via Spo­ti­fy. The 18 tracks, run­ning some 75 min­utes, most­ly fea­tures Eliot read­ing from Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats. But he also recites a hand­ful of oth­er clas­sic poems. (If you need Spo­ti­fy, you can down­load the soft­ware here):

Oth­er audio edi­tions of Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (some includ­ing a score) would come out lat­er, but, for many Eliot enthu­si­asts, noth­ing else can quite match hear­ing the man him­self intro­duce the likes of Rum Tum Tug­ger, Mr. Mistof­felees, and Busto­pher Jones. Lis­ten­ers in most geo­gra­phies should be able to access the Spo­ti­fy playlist. But if you live in Cana­da and South Africa (where some read­ers have report­ed prob­lems) we can rec­om­mend that you lis­ten (or re-lis­ten) to Eliot’s read­ings of his mod­ernist mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, plus his Four Quar­tets. And if, by chance, you feel like hear­ing Eliot’s verse but not Eliot’s voice, how about let­ting Bob Dylan take over read­ing duties?

Eliot’s read­ing of Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Many a singer-song­writer who first rose to promi­nence in the 1960s has tak­en the label of “poet,” usu­al­ly applied by ador­ing fans, no doubt to the objec­tion of a fair few seri­ous poet­ry enthu­si­asts. But who among them could deny Leonard Cohen’s sta­tus as a poet? Though best known as a musi­cian, Cohen has also racked up indis­putable writer­ly cre­den­tials, hav­ing pub­lished not just the nov­els Beau­ti­ful Losers and The Favorite Game but many books of poet­ry includ­ing Death of a Lady’s Man, Let Us Com­pare Mytholo­gies, and Flow­ers for Hitler. Some of them include not just poems writ­ten as poems but song lyrics — or per­haps works that began as songs but became poems. Sure­ly his albums con­tain songs that began as poems. Those inter­est­ed in fig­ur­ing out Cohen’s simul­ta­ne­ous devel­op­ment as a poet and song­writer would do well to lis­ten to his ear­ly poet­ry read­ings, like that of “Prayer for Mes­si­ah” at the top of the post.

Just above, you can hear Cohen read­ing sev­er­al more poems in the hal­lowed halls of New York’s 92nd Street Y in Feb­ru­ary 1966. Below, you can watch a tele­vi­sion clip from that same year in which the famous­ly Cana­di­an Cohen appears (nat­u­ral­ly) on the CBC in a seg­ment “con­sid­er­ing the poet­ic mind.”

He reads more of his verse and offers a bit of insight into his atti­tude toward the lega­cy of his own art — specif­i­cal­ly, that he pays no atten­tion to its lega­cy at all. Per­haps that more than any­thing allows him the free­dom to move as nec­es­sary between fields of cre­ative tex­tu­al endeav­or, retain­ing his inim­itable sen­si­bil­i­ty no mat­ter what shape his work takes at the end of the day. And, in any case, at least for my mon­ey, if pieces of his more mature work like “First We Take Man­hat­tan” don’t tran­scend their form, what does?

You can read a piece where Pico Iyer reflects on Cohen’s 92nd Y poet­ry read­ings here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Few pub­lic fig­ures of the 20th cen­tu­ry are as dear to the hearts and minds of Latin Amer­i­ca as Chilean poet Nef­tali Ricar­do Reyes Basoal­to — AKA Pablo Neru­da. He became famous for his writ­ing before he was 20 years old and he won the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1971. In between, he wrote sur­re­al­ist poems, Whit­manesque epics and polit­i­cal man­i­festos. Fel­low Nobel Prize win­ner Gabriel Gar­cía Mar­quez called him “the great­est poet of the 20th cen­tu­ry in any lan­guage.”

Yet Neru­da was known almost as much for his pol­i­tics as for his writ­ing. After Franco’s forces exe­cut­ed his friend Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War, Neru­da shift­ed hard to the left. In the 30s and 40s, he pub­li­cal­ly sup­port­ed Joseph Stal­in at a time when his tri­umphs were obvi­ous and his crimes were hid­den. Neru­da even wrote a cou­ple odes to the strong­man. When Neru­da was sta­tioned as a diplo­mat in Mex­i­co City, he report­ed­ly helped mural­ist David Alfaro Siqueiros flee the coun­try after he led an assas­si­na­tion attempt against Stalin’s rival Leon Trot­sky.

So it isn’t sur­pris­ing that Neruda’s pol­i­tics would make him unpop­u­lar in some cor­ners of Wash­ing­ton. He was offi­cial­ly barred from com­ing to the Unit­ed States and he was report­ed­ly at the cen­ter of a CIA smear cam­paign. But, in 1966, the poet was invit­ed to the Inter­na­tion­al PEN con­fer­ence in New York City by Arthur Miller. When the play­wright beseeched the White House, Pres­i­dent John­son, dis­play­ing far more polit­i­cal courage than is imag­in­able today, grant­ed Neru­da a visa.

The poet was treat­ed like a rock star. He gave a read­ing of his poems with trans­la­tion, at the 96th St. Y. in Man­hat­tan to a packed audi­ence on June 11th of that year. You can lis­ten to it above, or down­load the audio here. After an intro­duc­tion by Archibald MacLeish, Neru­da begins speak­ing at the 9:00 mark.

When the New York Times asked what he thought of Amer­i­ca, he said, “Your coun­try – how shall I say it? – seems more pre­pared for peace than for war. Peace and poet­ry…”

Neru­da died in 1973, twelve days after a CIA-backed coup in Chile over­threw Neruda’s polit­i­cal ally Sal­vador Allende and installed Gen­er­al Augus­to Pinochet.

You can find oth­er poet­ry read­ings in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Me Bird” by Pablo Neru­da: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­pre­ta­tion

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

As we mourn Maya Angelou on the day after her death, it’s heart­en­ing to remem­ber that she lived sev­er­al more life­times than most in her 86 years, some filled with pain and strug­gle, some with great joy. While gen­er­al­ly known as a poet, writer, teacher, actress, and activist, Angelou actu­al­ly got her start in the pub­lic eye as a Calyp­so dancer and singer, even appear­ing in a film, Calyp­so Heat Wave and releas­ing an album, Miss Calyp­so, both in 1957. It’s said that Bil­lie Hol­i­day told Angelou in 1958, “you’re going to be famous but it won’t be for singing,” She was right of course, but Angelou retained the air of a per­former as a read­er of her work.

Above, see her deliv­er an ani­mat­ed read­ing of her famous poem, “Still I Rise,” which ref­er­ences many of her past lives, includ­ing lines that seem to allude to her Miss Calyp­so days: “Does my sex­i­ness upset you? / Does it come as a sur­prise / That I dance like I’ve got dia­monds / At the meet­ing of my thighs?” The stan­za is indica­tive of anoth­er qual­i­ty among the many she enu­mer­ates, “sassi­ness.” But she begins the read­ing on a more sober note, with a state­ment about human resilience, the abil­i­ty to get up and face the day, despite the fears we all live with. “Wher­ev­er that abides in a human being,” she says, “there is the noble­ness of the human spir­it.”

That resilience, the tran­scen­dence of painful per­son­al and ances­tral his­to­ries, was the great theme of Angelou’s work, whether in poems like “Still I Rise” or her reveal­ing 1969 auto­bi­og­ra­phy I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, also the title of a poem from her 1983 col­lec­tion Shak­er, Why Don’t You Sing?. While the caged bird is a very per­son­al sym­bol for Angelou, her poem “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing,” which you can see her read above at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inau­gu­ra­tion, speaks to the whole human species in ele­men­tal terms. Again she twines themes of tran­scend­ing painful and bloody his­to­ries with those of the “noble­ness of the human spir­it.” The speak­er of the poem is the earth itself, who address­es each of us as “a bor­dered coun­try / Del­i­cate and strange­ly made proud.” “His­to­ry,” she writes in much-quot­ed lines from the poem’s ninth stan­za, “despite its wrench­ing pain / Can­not be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.” For all the pain Angelou her­self endured and faced with courage, it’s a sen­ti­ment she earned the right to pro­claim. Her cel­e­bra­tion of not only the par­tic­u­lar African-Amer­i­can strug­gle, but also its part in the uni­ver­sal human strug­gle for dig­ni­ty and pur­pose stands as her endur­ing lega­cy. She ends the poem where she begins her read­ing of “Still I Rise” above, with a call for us to treat each oth­er with care and respect, to not be “wed­ded for­ev­er / To fear, yoked eter­nal­ly / To brutish­ness”:

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sis­ter’s eyes, and into
Your broth­er’s face, your coun­try
And say sim­ply
Very sim­ply
With hope –
Good morn­ing.

Both poems will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Clas­sic Poem, “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Stream Clas­sic Poet­ry Read­ings from Harvard’s Rich Audio Archive: From W.H. Auden to Dylan Thomas

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.