Showing results by narrator "Ghizela Rowe" in All Categories

As private as she was eccentric, Emily Dickinson published only a handful of poems in her lifetime. Most of her work, much of which dealt with themes of death and immortality, was published posthumously, to mixed reviews. But it would be her unconventional poetic style, which was most criticized early on, that would ultimately gain her recognition as one of the greatest American poets of all time. Here, a lovely sampling of the poems of Emily Dickinson is presented for your listening pleasure.

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

Susan Keating Glaspell was born on July 1st, 1876 in Davenport, Iowa. Glaspell, a precocious child, was an active student at Davenport High School. By 18 she was earning a salary at the local newspaper as a journalist, and by 20 she was the author of a weekly 'Society' column. With her husband Glaspell founded the Provincetown Playhouse for plays that reflected contemporary issues. Her first play, ‘Trifles’ (1916), was based on the murder trial she covered as a young reporter and later adapted as the short story ‘A Jury of Her Peers’. S

The Poetry of Kissing. In many ways the title says it all. Kissing is Poetry. The kiss is perhaps the most loving and intimate moment there is. It is amongst our most soothing and treasured memories. This volume is not about the kiss of a mother’s to her child’s scraped knee, or the father to his baby’s head as he settles down to sleep. No, when the poets here talk of the kiss, they describe the longing and desire, the want and hunger to be part of something that so connects them to another.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. His classic "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" carefully pulls apart the relationship between two cousins one hot summer. Something has to give and with Fitzgerald its an absolute certainty that the brittle lives of young women finally snap in unique ways.

In this volume of classic poetry our wordsmiths are our companions on journeys near and far. They describe and create worlds that we can explore with them, word by word and line by line. In the company of Keats, Wordsworth, Bronte, Whitman, Kipling and a wealth of others these journeys in verse will be like no other.

Our quoted authority is not the people in white coats but those with a quill, a heart and a soul that can take these feelings of love and loss and with the ink of words put to verse feelings and emotions that can be re-lived and shared by all. As they venture through depression, war, slavery to heartache and the loss of loved ones our eyes may mist and tears gently fall at what collectively we have done, have experienced, have witnessed and lost.

Pearl Zane Grey was born on 31st January 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. From an early age, he was intrigued by history, fishing, baseball, and writing. Grey was an avid reader of adventure stories, consuming dime store novels by the dozen. His first magazine article, about one of his fishing expeditions, was published in 1902. It was not until 1910 that he wrote his first Western, ‘The Heritage of the Desert’. It was a breakthrough title and quickly became a bestseller.

December - the 12th and closing month in the Gregorian calendar. Winter is upon the land, and the poets, including such as Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Shakespeare, and Stevenson, share their views and thoughts.

The short stories written during and about World War I are often overshadowed by the excellent verse of the War Poets. Yet the short story is perhaps their equal in other ways. Within these succinct little time capsules of words are captured ideas, attitudes, feelings and life that are expressed in a few minutes just as movingly, imaginatively and tellingly as in any other form. Some of these stories will be familiar, but some may not. From Virginia Woolf to Katharine Mansfield and John Buchan to C. E. Montague, various writing styles try to make sense of this world at war.

As the sun lengthens its days to summer, so a sport begins to dominate the thoughts and actions of many people. This game, which so encapsulated the village greens and evening song of Middle England, has now spread across the world.

Summer beckons each and every one of us to its warm embrace. For many of us it is the season we can most enjoy; the days are long and warm and all manner of things become easier. Nature shows us her most colourful side as she fills the landscape with colours and textures of every hue. As for ourselves we all seem a little more approachable, a little more likable. For poets, the Summer season conjures up many themes and images.

Two Gentlemen of Verona is believed to be one of Shakespeare's early comedies and as a result provides us with the first examples of a number of themes and devices that are further explored in many of his plays. These include loyalty, friendship and the nature of love.

James Thomson was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, on the 23rd November 1834. Possessing a powerful and unique writing gift, unfortunately, his own demons curtailed him from leaving a larger literary legacy. Stories, essays and poems were submitted to various publications during his life and undoubtedly the creative high point of his life is ‘The City of Dreadful Night’. Within its bleak verse are the struggles of Thomson’s own chaotic tortures with depression, insomnia and alcoholism in the uncaring world that surrounded him.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide.

Born on 14th January 1866 the only details that can be confirmed are that he wrote the short story "Second Thoughts" and co-authored two works with Ernest Dowson. From there we only have the year of his death – 1934. The story unfolds around a man returning home to England after almost twenty years away and finds things have changed that leave him both unsettled and unsure of how to move forward. Seeing, by chance, an old friend reawakens his curiosity...and hopes.

Stephen Crane was born 1st November 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, and was the eighth surviving child out of 14. Incredibly, he began writing at the age of four and was published several times by the age of 16. Crane only began a full-time education when he was nine but quickly mastered the grades needed to catch up and move forward. Although educated at Lafayette and Syracuse, he had little interest in completing university and was keener to move on to a career, declaring college to be ‘a waste of time’.

The Graveyard Poets, also known as 'Churchyard Poets' or 'the Boneyard Boys' began in pre-Romantic days with a leaning towards gloom, melancholy and the general decay of churchyards. It should be remembered that in the 18th century city graveyards were a teeming mass of overcrowding and disease, their country brethren better but hardly idylls of worship. What would eventually lead to the Gothic literary genre began, in the main, with reflections by Christian clergymen upon God, mortality and the assumed afterlife.

Here, in this volume history’s greatest poets convey thoughts, feelings and sentiments of love to you in quick (or bite-size) conversations of verse that can slip into your day and your partner's heart.

Today perhaps we all agree that youth is spoilt, ill-disciplined and in search of constant and instant gratification. No matter how much we love them, our children, as they mature from child to youth, are pampered. A century ago, and even further back, even the most privileged of youth was rarely indulged. In this volume we look at those years of youth through the eyes and pens of classic poets. They reveal times of hardship, of fear, of love and loss.