Bill is in training camp, preparing to go off to World War I. This book is a collection of love letters written to his sweetheart, Mable. The letters are humorous, mis-spelled, and have many stories of life in an army camp – all from Bill’s unique perspective. (summary by Rob Kunkel) [chương_files]
Donne’s Style In John Donne’s day, a satire was such a poem as a satyr might compose. Satyrs were rough, savage creatures in Greek mythology, human to the waist but goat from there down. That is the reason that Donne’s style in these poems exceeds his normal difficulty in syntax, vocabulary, thought, and meter. His age enjoyed untangling such puzzles, and some poets cultivated obscurity as an art, called asprezza. Wordplay like “while bellows pant below” (Satyre 2), where the same syllables, stressed differently, produce two different words almost side by side, entertained them. An acoustical analogue to obscurity, Donne’s rhymes are often deliberately lame, while his rhythms nearly defy scansion and yet refuse to become mere prose. By keeping the drum beat just barely audible, he makes us feel that we are stumbling, out of step—neither marching nor merely walking. Why was this abuse of the reader enjoyable? Perhaps for the same reason that grafitti appeals to some people. At first glance Donne appears lax, but in fact he is naughty; not undisciplined but rebellious; he does not fail to abide by the rules but rather gives the impression of breaking them. Metempsychosis The poem appears to be incomplete, its “First Song” having no counterpart, no “Second Song.” Similarly its promise to end by identifying what celebrity the soul in question now inhabits is never fulfilled. On the contrary, the poem’s initial epic pretentions founder at the second generation of mankind rather than tracing human history from the Garden […]
These letters were arranged in two volumes by Albert Bigelow Paine, Samuel L. Clemens’s literary executor, as a supplement to Mark Twain, A Biography, which Paine wrote. They are, for the most part, every letter written by Clemens known to exist at the time of their publication in 1917. They begin with a fragment of a letter from teenaged Sam Clemens to his sister, Pamela, and conclude with a letter to his attorney two weeks before his death. These letters give us some degree of insight into the evolution of Twain’s style of speech and prose over the period of his lifetime; they are a small window into the psyche that created the various characters of his stories. But they also reveal the tragedies of his life: the lack of success in his business ventures, the passing of family. And as I read each one in this collection, I can almost detect the faint odor of one of his “devilish” cigars wafting across the room. (Introduction by James K. White) [chương_files]
Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac foi um jornalista e poeta brasileiro, membro fundador da Academia Brasileira de Letras. Criou a cadeira 15, cujo patrono é Gonçalves Dias. Sua obra compreende além de poemas, textos publicitários, crônicas, livros escolares e poesias satíricas. Foi considerado na sua época, o “Príncipe dos Poetas Brasileiros”. Juntamente com Alberto de Oliveira e Raimundo Correia, foi a maior liderança e expressão do Parnasianismo no Brasil, constituindo a chamada Tríade Parnasiana. A publicação de Poesias, em 1888 rendeu-lhe a consagração. “Contos para Velhos” é uma coletânea de poemas e pequenas histórias de tema adulto, publicada sob o pseudônimo “Bob”.(Sumário escrito por Vicente) [chương_files]
Although Edith Nesbit is best known for her innovative children’s books and classic ghost stories, she was at heart a poet. She began writing poetry at the age of 14 and published over 20 volumes of poetry during her lifetime. Her poetry was praised by authors and poets such as Algernon Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, and literary critic, Andrew Lang. Although her timeless poetry is little read today, she still ranks at 323 of the top 500 poets. – Summary by AnnaLisa [chương_files]
Als Zutaten man nehme die »Kinder- und Hausmärchen« der Gebrüder Grimm und Boccaccios »Decameron«. Diese vermische man gründlich miteinander und heraus kommen Unger-Sternbergs »Braunen Märchen«. Diese kleine Sammlung erotischer Märchen, 1850 erschienen, fügte Ungern-Sternbergs Ruf bei seinen Zeitgenossen jedoch erheblichen Schaden zu. (Wassermann) [chương_files]
By conservative estimates, more than 6.8 million out of earth’s population of 7 billion have access to cell phones. This has happened in just over 20 years. It’s safe to assume that almost all these people would prefer to communicate via their phones rather than by snail-mail, post or courier. Which leads us to the question: “Does this mean the death of the love letter?” For those of us who still remember the joys of receiving and sending romantic epistles, couched in purple prose, expressing our deepest feelings, these little messages were the most delightful way of keeping in touch with those we loved. The Love Letter Collection 2008 by Various takes us back to a more gentle and genteel time, when we used our imagination and creativity to convey our thoughts and weren’t compelled to use ugly abbreviations or acronyms, neither were we restricted to 140 characters! Receiving a handwritten letter which could be read and re-read at leisure was an experience that can never be matched by a mere e-mail or a text message! In this collection we find Abigail Adams, the wife of the second president and the mother of the sixth president of the United States of America, writing to her husband John Adams while he was in Philadelphia during the Continental Congresses in 1774. She wrote nearly 1200 letters to him, which are remarkable for their frankness, intimacy and literary skill though she was a self-educated woman. From Don Felipe to Louise is a letter […]
The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran. It was originally published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. It is Gibran’s best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over 108 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history, and it has never been out of print. The prophet, Al Mustafa, has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. Summary by Wikipedia [chương_files]
Born in 1878, Thomas published his first book when he was 18. Having married while still at university, he supported his family by writing articles and books, some in the form of what we might call slow travel writing, compiled on walks throughout England and Wales. He came to poetry late, encouraged by Robert Frost, and wrote 144 poems between 1914, and 1917 when he was killed, two years after enlisting, and shortly after arriving in France. His poetic life coincided with WW1, and though not a war poet, his is the poetry of loss, of life as it would never be again. What is powerful to the English imagination is his depiction of the fragility of the English countryside. This is inseparable from his deep understanding of the longings and regrets of those who would die. Transience and mortality are at the heart of his work. This is true in one of the country’s favourite poems, to be found on this recording: Adlestrop. He is important to other poets in that, at his best, his poetry is quietly, sometimes coldly, conversational, with a slow beat that takes us with him as he thinks through from line to line, and wraps us in his vision of life and the natural world. (Summary by Judith Brennan) [chương_files]
This is a book of more modern poetry by various authors. – Summary by Lynda Marie Neilson [chương_files]
Copyright © 2024 | FreeAudible