The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems [by Aldous Huxley]

Though later known for his essays and novels, Aldous Huxley started his writing career as a poet. Published in 1918, The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems is his third compilation of poetry. 

The volume begins with "The Defeat of Youth", a sequence of twenty-two sonnets that explores irreconcilability of the ideal and the disappointing reality. Jerome Meckier called it “the century’s most successful sonnet sequence, better than Auden’s or Edna St. Vincent Millay’s.” In the rest of the volume, Huxley continues to explore themes started in The Burning Wheel, his first volume of poetry, including vision, blindness, and other contrasts. 

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The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems [by Aldous Huxley]

The Wind Among the Reeds [by William Butler Yeats]

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. He studied poetry in his youth and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. One of his works, 'The wind among the reeds', published in 1899, by critics' opinion is the main achievement of his early works. Imagery of Yeats' poetry at this time is filled with characters of Celtic mythology and folklore.

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The Wind Among the Reeds [by William Butler Yeats]

Bars and Shadows The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin [by Ralph Chaplin]

Ralph Chaplin and many other prominent members of the Industrial Workers of the World were imprisoned under the Espionage Act of 1917 as the United States entered World War I. As with Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, these activists were accused of undermining recruiting efforts and the draft - even of encouraging soldiers to desert. Though they never gained the universal popularity of his anthem "Solidarity Forever," the poems and songs in this volume - composed during his four years in prison - represent the defiant attitude of a true rebel in the face of persecution. 

Read by Ben Adams.

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Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin [by Ralph Chaplin]

The Raven And Other Poems [by Edgar Allan Poe] [read by Phil Chenevert] [Audiobook]

Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849] was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.






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The Raven And Other Poems [by Edgar Allan Poe] [read by Phil Chenevert] [Audiobook]

The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life In Tales and Poems [by Sherwood Anderson]

“The Triumph of the Egg” is a collection of stories and poems by Sherwood Anderson. Abandoning the interconnected quality of his more famous “Winesburg, Ohio,” the author adopts a variety of perspectives and settings while exploring similar themes: personal growth, disillusionment, loneliness, and urban-rural contrast. In the North American Review, critic Lawrence Gilman wrote, “Mr. Anderson has achieved a beauty that irradiates his page.” Though largely overshadowed by that celebrated, earlier book, “The Triumph of the Egg” remains a foundational work for Modernist literature, proven by its winning the first annual Dial Award from the influential journal The Dial.

Read by Ben Adams.

link to the free audiobook

The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life In Tales and Poems [by Sherwood Anderson]

The Burning Wheel [by Aldous Huxley] [Audiobook]

Though Aldous Huxley is best known for his later novels and essays, he started his writing career as a poet. The Burning Wheel is his first work, a collection of thirty poems that pay homage in style to poets who wrote in the Romantic or the French symbolist styles. Many of the poems deal with themes of light, darkness, sight, music, art, war, and idealism vs. realism. Though the optimism in his early works waned as he became older, his characteristically optimistic and determined point of view shines through

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The Burning Wheel [by Aldous Huxley]

Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War [by Herman Melville]

Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.” Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville’s Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidescopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war America.

Read in English by Clark University.

link to the free audiobook

Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War [by Herman Melville]