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What Is the Grass
- Walt Whitman in My Life
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty - a poet, a New Yorker, and an American - keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work.
"What is it then between us?" Whitman asks. In search of an answer, Doty explores spaces - both external and internal - where he finds the poet's ghost. He meditates on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work: a radical experience of transformation and enlightenment, queer sexuality, and an obsession with death, as well as unabashed love for a great city and for the fresh, rowdy character of American speech. In riveting close readings threaded with personal memoir and illuminated by awe, Doty reveals the power of Whitman's persistent presence in his life and in the American imagination at large.
How does a voice survive death? What Is the Grass is a conversation across time and space, a study of the astonishment one poet finds in the accomplishment of another, and an attempt to grasp Whitman's deeply hopeful vision of human possibility.
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In the Company of Rilke
- Why a 20th-Century Visionary Poet Speaks So Eloquently to 21st-Century Readers
- By: Stephanie Dowrick
- Narrated by: Stephanie Dowrick
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Rainer Maria Rilke was a giant of twentieth-century writing who remains a rare visionary voice for our own time. This audio edition of Dr. Stephanie Dowrick's acclaimed book allows you literally to "hear" how and why Rilke's extraordinary words continue to captivate readers, not least through his profound understanding of the depth and beauty of human existence.
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Delicately & Nobly Written ....
- By Essam Rajab on 12-20-15
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Feel Free
- Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.
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great material, thoroughly brilliant narration
- By Mary E. Magin on 03-09-18
By: Zadie Smith
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Devotion
- By: Patti Smith
- Narrated by: Patti Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture's beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections. Patti Smith first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession - a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story.
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No Disappointment Here
- By Roger L. Walraven on 06-11-18
By: Patti Smith
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The Book of Disquiet
- By: Fernando Pessoa
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Assembled from notes and jottings left unpublished at the time of the author’s death, The Book of Disquiet is a collection of aphoristic prose-poetry musings on dreams, solitude, time and memory. Credited to Pessoa’s alter ego, Bernardo Soares, who chronicles his contemplations in this so-called "factless" autobiography, the work is a journey of one man’s soul and, by extension, of all human souls that allow their minds and hearts to roam far and free.
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The book that saved my life
- By Hutchinson on 03-09-21
By: Fernando Pessoa
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Henry Miller on Writing
- By: Henry Miller
- Narrated by: Ian Patrick Mendes
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Some of the most rewarding pages in Henry Miller's books concern his self-education as a writer. He tells, as few great writers ever have, how he set his goals, how he discovered the excitement of using words, how the books he read influenced him, and how he learned to draw on his own experience.
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learn how to say lao tzu
- By Pinklotuspolo on 11-18-22
By: Henry Miller
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He Held Radical Light
- The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art
- By: Christian Wiman
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Christian Wiman explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known.
By: Christian Wiman
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Dancing at the Edge of the World
- Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos - in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.
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Not my favorite Le Guin collection, but...
- By Cameron on 05-11-19
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Recollections of My Nonexistence
- A Memoir
- By: Rebecca Solnit
- Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher, and of the small apartment that, when she was 19, became the home in which she transformed herself. She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer.
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Observant, organized, and real...
- By Jesse Rolfer on 03-25-20
By: Rebecca Solnit
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Artful
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Ali Smith
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2012, Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Those lectures, presented here, took the shape of discursive stories that refused to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form. Thus, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. A hypnotic dialogue unfolds between storytelling and a meditation on art that encompasses love, grief, memory, and revitalization.
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#Reality/Loss/Mythology
- By Ellen K. on 11-14-18
By: Ali Smith
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The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis
- How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind
- By: Jason M Baxter
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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C. S. Lewis had one of the great minds of the 20th century. Many know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker?
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Excellent
- By andrew wilson smith on 03-08-22
By: Jason M Baxter