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Over the course of three years, Alice Oswald recorded conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. Using these records and voices as a sort of poetic census, she creates in Dart a narrative of the river, tracking its life from source to sea.

Remembrance of Things Past audiobook cover art

  • Remembrance of Things Past

  • Swann's Way
  • By: Marcel Proust, Scott Moncrieff - translator
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Swann's Way is Marcel Proust's literary masterpiece and the first part of the multivolume audiobook Remembrance of Things Past. In the opening volume, the narrator travels back in time to recall his childhood and to introduce the listener to Charles Swann, a wealthy friend of the family and celebrity in the Parisian social scene. He again travels back, this time to the youth of Charles Swann in the French town of Combray, to tell the story of the love affair that took place before his own birth.

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • EXCELLENT!

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The Iliad audiobook cover art

  • The Iliad

  • By: Homer, Robert Fagles - translator
  • Narrated by: Derek Jacobi, Maria Tucci
  • Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
  • Abridged
  • Overall
    3.5 out of 5 stars 25
  • Performance
    3.5 out of 5 stars 19
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In this brilliant translation, Robert Fagles brings the vigor of contemporary language to Homer's 2,700-year-old tale. The result, the winner of the 1991 Academy of American Poets Landon Translation Award, is a wonderfully accessible Iliad that preserves every nuance of Homer's genius. The story begins when Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy, carries off the beautiful Helen, thereby precipitating the bitter Trojan War. The Achaean princes attack Troy in order to recover Helen. This great epic poem, attributed to Homer, deals also with the anger of the hero, Achilles....

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The Works and Days audiobook cover art

  • The Works and Days

  • By: Hesiod, Richmond Lattimore (translator)
  • Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
  • Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 111
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Among the finest poets of ancient Greece was Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, who lived in the eighth century B.C. It is still a matter of dispute whether Homer or Hesiod was the earlier poet, and sometimes whether they were one and the same person! At any rate, Hesiod's incredible poetry serves as a major source for our understanding of Greek mythology, farming practices, time keeping and astronomy. In and of itself, the "Works and Days" is unparalleled in its richness and beauty, easily rivaling Homer.

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The War That Killed Achilles audiobook cover art

  • The War That Killed Achilles

  • The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War
  • By: Caroline Alexander
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  • Unabridged
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Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer's hero Achilles. Today, the Iliad is celebrated as one of the greatest works in literature, the epic of all epics; many have forgotten that the subject of this ancient poem was war - not merely the poetical romance of the war at Troy, but War, in all its enduring devastation.

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The Poems of T. S. Eliot audiobook cover art

  • The Poems of T. S. Eliot

  • Read by Jeremy Irons
  • By: T. S. Eliot
  • Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
  • Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons' perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity. Major poems range from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' through the post-war desolation of 'The Waste Land' and the spiritual struggle of 'Ash-Wednesday', to the enduring charm of 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'.

  • 1 out of 5 stars

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Publisher's Summary

"Matthew Arnold praised the Iliad for its "nobility", as has everyone ever since - but ancient critics praised it for its enargeia, its "bright unbearable reality" (the word used when gods come to earth, not in disguise but as themselves). To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief 'biographies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer's glance.

"The Iliad is an oral poem. This translation presents it as an attempt - in the aftermath of the Trojan War - to remember people's names and lives without the use of writing. I hope it will have its own coherence as a series of memories and similes laid side by side: an antiphonal account of man in his world... compatible with the spirit of oral poetry, which was never stable but always adapting itself to a new audience, as if its language, unlike written language, was still alive and kicking".
—Alice Oswald
©2011 Alice Oswald, Afterword copyright 2012 by Eavan Boland (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Beautiful poetry

The text is beautiful and moving. The narration is excruciating. He ends every line with a rising intonation that drove me absolutely crazy. It's such a shame -- I feel like this is an ideal work to be experienced aurally!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

A clever idea brilliantly executed -- a poetic interpretation of the Iliad. The glimpses of the characters are so sharply drawn I could not have felt closer to them.

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

I Tried. Really, I Did.

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

It's a great idea: the lost names of real human beings that Greece and Troy saw fit to sacrifice to an immortality for others who had a lot already but wanted more. I tried several times to get through this but couldn't put it all together. In fact, my insistence on trying several times to make heads or tails only resulted in futility. I have to admit that I never got to the end but that I sure tried. I was expecting some type of intimacy with common folk barricaded inside the walls or dying beneath the sun.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Modern Greek language or George RR Martin

Would you be willing to try another one of Mark Ashby’s performances?

I have no reason to remember his name, so perhaps by chance I will stumble across him again, for better or worse.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Eternal frustration. I can't quite claim my anger and sadness are the author's fault; ay, the world is far too imminently catastrophic. This poem was a great idea, so I'll go with disappointment. Coupled with my city's traffic, this audiobook just made my ADD worse.

0 of 2 people found this review helpful