Here is a com­plete record­ing of T.S. Eliot read­ing the mas­ter­piece of his lat­er years, the cycle of poems called Four Quar­tets.

Eliot con­sid­ered the Four Quar­tets his great­est work. “I’d like to feel that they get bet­ter as they go on,” he told Don­ald Hall in a 1959 inter­view for the Paris Review. “The sec­ond is bet­ter than the first, the third is bet­ter than the sec­ond, and the fourth is the best of all. At any rate, that’s the way I flat­ter myself.”

The Four Quar­tets are per­haps the most mys­ti­cal and reli­gious of Eliot’s poems. Each one is a med­i­ta­tion on time, mix­ing Chris­t­ian and Hin­du imagery with per­son­al and his­tor­i­cal events. “In The Waste Land the waste was place, the ‘Unre­al City,’ ” writes Eliot’s biog­ra­ph­er, Lyn­dall Gor­don; “here, the waste is time–time unre­deemed by a sense of the time­less.”

As in The Waste Land, Eliot uses the four clas­si­cal ele­ments as a struc­tur­al device in the Four Quar­tets. The first poem, “Burnt Nor­ton,” is asso­ci­at­ed with the ele­ment of air. It is named for an Eng­lish manor house Eliot vis­it­ed in the 1930s. The poem was first pub­lished in 1936. “East Cok­er” (which begins above at 10:46) is asso­ci­at­ed with Earth, and takes its name from the vil­lage in Som­er­set, Eng­land, from which the poet­’s ances­tor, Andrew Eliot, set out for Amer­i­ca in 1669. The third poem, “The Dry Sal­vages,” (begin­ning at 24:17) is asso­ci­at­ed with Water and is named for a treach­er­ous clus­ter of rocks off Cape Ann that was among the haz­ards Andrew Eliot’s ship need­ed to avoid in order to safe­ly reach the coast of Mass­a­chu­setts. The final poem, “Lit­tle Gid­ding,” (39:08) was pub­lished in 1942. Its under­ly­ing theme is one of pur­ga­to­r­i­al Fire. The poem is named for a vil­lage in Cam­bridgeshire, Eng­land, which was the site of a 17th cen­tu­ry Angli­can com­mune that based its dai­ly life around the Book of Com­mon Prayer.

The Four Quar­tets were first pub­lished as a uni­fied whole in 1943. Despite their ini­tial appear­ance as four sep­a­rate poems, the themes are tight­ly inter­wo­ven and each poem is com­posed of five par­al­lel parts. You can hear Eliot read­ing the Four Quar­tets above. To fol­low along as you lis­ten, click here to open the full text in a new win­dow. The first poem begins:

Time present and time past
Are both per­haps present in time future,
And time future con­tained in time past.
If all time is eter­nal­ly present
All time is unre­deemable.
What might have been is an abstrac­tion
Remain­ing a per­pet­u­al pos­si­bil­i­ty
Only in a world of spec­u­la­tion.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Foot­falls echo in the mem­o­ry
Down the pas­sage which we did not take
Towards the door we nev­er opened
Into the rose-gar­den. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Last Wednes­day night, New York Insti­tu­tion Pat­ti Smith appeared at down­town venue Bow­ery Ball­room with a few friends to read poet­ry and play some music. The occa­sion? One of many in an almost two-month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Span­ish poet and play­wright Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lorca’s brief sojourn in New York City in 1929–1930 while he was a stu­dent at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. That year inspired a book, Poet in New York, which has been repub­lished in a revised bilin­gual edi­tion by Far­rar, Straus & Giroux.

In the clip above, watch Smith read a selec­tion of Gar­cia Lorca’s “Lit­tle Vien­nese Waltz.” Her Jersey/New York inflec­tions make the lines her own (love the way she says “piano”), and her ban­ter with the audi­ence is price­less.

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via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

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

“Add to the avail­able accounts of Plath (there are so many) this, please: nobody brought a house to life the way she did.” So writes Dan Chi­as­son in a Feb­ru­ary New York­er piece com­mem­o­rat­ing the fifti­eth anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s death. Chiasson’s plea is made all the more poignant by his care­ful read­ings of the tenderness—amidst the pain and horror—in Plath’s final col­lec­tion, Ariel, which she left sit­ting on the kitchen table to be found along with her body. (The col­lec­tion has recent­ly been restored to cor­re­spond to Plath’s final wish­es).

Chiasson’s refo­cus­ing of Plath’s lega­cy feels nec­es­sary, giv­en that, as James Park­er writes in The Atlantic, “Her short life has been tram­pled and retram­pled under the biographer’s hoof, her opus viewed and skewed through every con­ceiv­able lens of inter­pre­ta­tion.” It is some­times dif­fi­cult to con­nect with work—even with that as stun­ning­ly accom­plished and res­o­nant as Plath’s—through this thick haze of sen­sa­tion­al­ism and cult fan­dom. Even if many of the poems in Ariel—most famous­ly “Lady Lazarus”—seem to request this kind of scruti­ny, many oth­ers, Chi­as­son writes, includ­ing the title poem, need to be approached afresh, with­out the mor­bid celebri­ty bag­gage Plath’s name car­ries.

Is this pos­si­ble? Per­haps one way to recon­nect with the poet­ry is to hear Plath her­self read­ing it. In these record­ings, you can hear her read fif­teen poems from Ariel, her New Eng­land Brah­min vow­els inflect­ing every line, draw­ing out inter­nal rhymes and asso­nance, then clip­ping at caesuras like a well-bred horse’s trot­ting hooves.

The title poem “Ariel”—which Chi­as­son eulo­gizes as “a per­fect poem, per­fect in its excess­es and stray blasphemies”—is, in fact, part­ly named after Plath’s favorite horse. Also enfold­ed in the title is the cap­tive sprite bound to per­form tricks for Shakespeare’s mage Pros­pero in The Tem­pest, and an Old Tes­ta­ment name giv­en to Jerusalem, mean­ing “lion of God” (the sec­ond stan­za begins “God’s lioness…”). Plath’s poet­ic self-under­stand­ing is as com­plex as this allu­sive lay­er­ing sug­gests, and the poem’s jar­ring ellipses demand very close atten­tion.

The read­ings here are from record­ings made on Octo­ber 20, 1962. Poems include: “The Rab­bit Catch­er,” “A Birth­day Present,” “A Secret,” “The Appli­cant,” “Dad­dy,” “Medusa,” “Stopped Dead,” “Fever 103°,” “Amne­si­ac,” “Cut,” “Ariel,” “Pop­pies In Octo­ber,” “Nick And The Can­dle­stick,” “Pur­dah,” and “Lady Lazarus.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On 50th Anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’

For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birth­day, Hear Her Read ‘A Birth­day Present’

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

525 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

Long before the print­ing press, before parch­ment and papyrus, poet­ry was a strict­ly oral form. Many of the fea­tures we asso­ciate with verse—rhyme, meter, rep­e­ti­tion, and extend­ed sim­i­les—orig­i­nat­ed as mnemon­ic devices for poets and their audi­ences in times when bards com­posed extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly from pre­de­ter­mined for­mu­las. And while the image of the Home­r­ic poet, strum­ming a lyre and nar­rat­ing the deeds of gods and heroes seems quaint, poet­ry is still very much an oral art, in cul­tures tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern. Right this very moment, in cities across the world, poets and audi­ences gath­er in bars, cafes, book­stores, tem­ples, and libraries to hear poems spo­ken, rapped, sung, chant­ed, etc.

But we no longer assign to the poet god-like pow­er and fame. Those acco­lades are now reserved for actors and musi­cians. And while poets are often per­fect­ly good read­ers of their own work, some­times there’s noth­ing so excit­ing as hear­ing the utter­ly dis­tinc­tive voice of, say, James Earl Jones or Antho­ny Hop­kins, turn­ing over the words of a favorite poem, mak­ing them rum­ble and rus­tle in ways they nev­er did flat on the page. So today we bring you some mod­ern gods read­ing the ancient form, begin­ning with the great, grav­el-voiced Tom Waits, who reads the great, grav­el-voiced Charles Bukowski’s “The Laugh­ing Heart” (top, full text here). A more per­fect union of read­er and poet you may nev­er find.

Also above, watch my favorite com­ic actor, and prob­a­bly yours, Bill Mur­ray, read my favorite arcane mod­ernist poet, Wal­lace Stevens. Mur­ray reads Steven’s “The Plan­et on the Table” and “The Rab­bit as the King of Ghosts” (Orig­i­nal text here and here). His unaf­fect­ed Mid­west­ern voice sounds noth­ing like Steven’s posh East­ern bari­tone, but he brings to the poems a gen­uine ten­der­ness that Stevens’ read­ings lack.

Final­ly, the unmis­tak­able voice of Sean Con­nery (backed by the music of Van­ge­lis) beau­ti­ful­ly con­veys the epic jour­ney of C.P. Cavafy’s “Itha­ca” (above, full text here). These are but three exam­ples of the art of actors read­ing poets. Below, you’ll find sev­er­al oth­ers, along with a cou­ple of writers—Tennessee Williams and Harold Bloom—thrown in for good mea­sure. Hear­ing poet­ry read, and read well, cre­ates space in a widen­ing sea of dis­trac­tions for that most ancient of human crafts.

• Orson Welles and Richard Bur­ton read Samuel Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Orig­i­nal text here.)
• Antho­ny Hop­kins reads “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Orig­i­nal text here.)
• Lee Remick reads two of Emi­ly Dick­in­son’s poems, “This is my let­ter to the world” and “Dying.”
• Ten­nessee Williams reads Hart Crane’s “The Bro­ken Tow­er” and “The Hur­ri­cane” (Orig­i­nal text here and here)
• Michael Caine reads Rud­yard Kipling’s “If” (Orig­i­nal text here.)
• Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins reads “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas (Orig­i­nal text here.)
• Bill Mur­ray reads poems by Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins and Lorine Niedeck­er at a con­struc­tion site.
• British actors read World War I poet­ry by Wil­fred Owen and Rupert Brooke.
• Harold Bloom recites ‘Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” by Wal­lace Stevens (Orig­i­nal text here.)

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