Writers Read - This page isn't built yet! Read at your own risk!
I love to hear writers read their own work. It's always better when they read it themselves rather than having some showy actor read it to prove how dramatic he can be.
When the poet reads her own work you hear things you never hear otherwise, every intonation is perfect, every meaning is clear. Of course.
And the jokes are always funny.
So this is an archive of famous poets reading their own works.
All the files are small so that you can leap around easily.
Paul Celan Death Fugue, (Todesfugue): (1947)
Paul Celan reads Todesfugue (1947)
This file is a Youtube link to a very rare 'video' of the poet Paul Celan reading Death Fugue, (Todesfugue) which is the best poem ever written about the Nazi concentration camps. He wrote it after the war, immediately after he was liberated from a Nazi labor camp, where both his parents were murdered.
Listen to the rhythm of it in German. Listen to the anguish.
The poem was published in 1947 and it's not well enough known in English. This reading is in German, the final section goes:
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith
(1947)
This final section is translated below by me: (slightly paraphrased for excerpted meaning). The drinking of black milk is a recurring motif throughout the poem. For death, for evil, for moral perversity. Sulamith is a Jewish women's name, for anyone unaware of it. Margarete is a German women's name.
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
We drink you at midday
Death is a Master from Germany
We drink you evenings and mornings,
We drink and we drink.
Death is a Master from Germany
His eye is blue
He shoots you with lead bullets,
He shoots you for sure
This Master writes in his house
Your golden hair Margarete
He sets his dogs on us
He tosses us a grave in the sky
He plays with his snakes
And he daydreams
Your golden hair Margarete..
Your ashen hair Sulamith.
You can read the complete poem in English on my Paul Celan page on this site (when it comes!). Death Fugue has never been well translated into English, I'm planning to make a new translation of it myself as soon as I can, which you can read on the Paul Celan page. When it's done.
All the other files below are in English.
The Magic of Writers Reading Their Own Works:
This page isn't made yet. I have dozens of them in my archive though, some quite rare and I am as busy as 10 angels already.
But keep an eye on it, it'll come eventually!
Omg I have Dylan Thomas reading and Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and.. TS Eliot and.. Yeats and Joyce and Pound and.. Tennyson! A lot of them, maybe even everything that exists of interest..
Maybe I even have Shakespeare!
Some of the archive:
I've managed to quickly put up some of these. I don't admire all of the poems or all of the poets. One of them I really dislike, I've put it up so that you can discover disliking it for yourself.
Sylvia Plath - ArielSylvia Plath - DaddySylvia Plath - Lady LazarusSylvia Plath - Letter in NovemberSylvia Plath - MushroomsSylvia Plath - November Graveyard (read by the poet)Sylvia Plath - On the Decline of OraclesSylvia Plath - On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad (reSylvia Plath - Sow (read by the poet)Ted Hughes - LovesongTennyson - Come Into The Garden, MaudTennyson - The Change Of The Light BrigadeTheodore Roethke - I Knew A WomanThomas Stearns Eliot - The Hollow Men (read by the poet)Thomas Stearns Eliot - The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (read by the poet)Titanic 128W.H. Auden -The Cave Of NakednessW.H.Auden - In Memory of W.B.Yeats (Part 1)Wallace Stevens - So And So Reclining On Her CouchWalt Whitman - America (Excerpt)William Butler Yeats - The Lake Isle Of InnisfreeWilliam Butler Yeats - The Song Of The Old MotherWilliam Carlos Williams - For Elsie (From Spring And All)Allen Ginsberg - AmericaAnne Sexton - All My Pretty OnesAnne Sexton - For My Lover, Returning To His WifeAnne Sexton - The Truth The Dead KnowCharles Bukowski - The Secret Of My EnduranceDorothy Parker - A Fairly Sad TaleDylan Thomas - A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire, of a ChildDylan Thomas - Among Those Killed In The Dawn RaidDylan Thomas - And Death Shall Have No Dominion (read by the poet)Dylan Thomas - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good NightDylan Thomas - If I Were Tickled by the Rub of LoveDylan Thomas - Light Breaks Where No Sun ShinesDylan Thomas - Love In The AsylumDylan Thomas - The Hand that Signed the PaperDylan Thomas - The Tombstonee.e. cummings - As Freedom Is A Breakfastfoode.e. cummings - next of course god americae.e.cummings - anyone lived in a pretty how townEdna St. Vincent Millay - Love Is Not AllEdna St. Vincent Millay - RecuerdoEzra Pound - Hugh Selwyn MauberleyGertrude Stein - If I Told Him A Completed Portrait Of PicassoHD - From Helen In Egypt (Excerpt)Hunter S Thompson - Notes For Hells Angels while drivingJack Kerouac - Charlie ParkerJack Kerouac - Readings From On The Road And Visions Of CodyJack Kerouac - The Beat GenerationRobert Browning - How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To AixRobert Frost - After Apple PickingRobert Frost - The Gift OutrightRobert Frost - The Road Not TakenRobert Lowell - EpilogueRobert Lowell - The Old FlameRobert Penn Warren - Love Recognized
