Christmas Poetry

By: Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, W B Yeats, John Donne, Daniel Sheehan, Ben Jonson, Rudyard Kipling, G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by: Ghizela Rowe, Tim Graham

Christmas, they say, comes but once a year. In these days, it seems to also last for much of that year - but this volume is not just for Christmas!

For the religious amongst us, this annual celebration of the Birth of Christ must seem bitter sweet: it's acknowledgment by billions of people, countered by the pervasive spread of material possessions translating the event to little more than a sales pitch for material wares. Most religions celebrate their founders, but Christianity seems somehow to have lost possession of one of its key rituals in an ever more secular West. The spread of globalisation seems to have hindered rather than helped the true meaning of the festival. Children today are much more interested in what presents they might receive than any spiritual message. As parents too, most of us buy into this and indulge our offspring rather than instil the underlying themes and aims of the festival's meaning common to us all.

In this collection, we rely on the words and wisdom of such fine poets as John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Sir Walter Scott, Daniel Sheehan, William Wordsworth, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and a whole host of others to absorb us in a Christmas time of hope and togetherness. The experiences and memories they share with us speak of a time, of a world that did have a common purpose and an ambition to share good fortune with everyone.

©2009 Portable Poetry (P)2009 Portable Poetry

Lovely collection of Christmas poetry

This was a delightful collection of Christmas poetry, much of which was new to me. I enjoyed the two narrators as well. Recommended if you are looking for some inexpensive holiday listening!

Excellent Selection - Could Have Been Read Better

I enjoyed the poems the editors included. The narrators were okay, but I do wish they'd slowed down a bit and put a little more emotion into the reading. It sounded more like they were reading a textbook to the rest of the class then poetry.

Wow, What a lovely group Christmas Poems..

It was an interesting group of Christmas poems that were special and heart warming,. My favorite was Charlie's Moore's The Night Before Christmas it's a classic, and it juus not Christmas without hearing that, it always make smile.

Nice selection including many Christian poems.

I liked this because it is a Christmas poetry selection with quite a few Christian selections.

Spoiled By Narration

This is an excellent collection of poetry rendered useless for me because of the dreadful narration. It isn't just the raspy harsh voices but the fact that both readers rush through the reading as if it is a race. No pauses, paced tempo or inflection--just rapid, I've got somewhere else to be and let's get this done feeling. What a waste. Does no one proof these recordings?