poetry – Page 27

LibriVox: If by Rudyard Kipling

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m not much for poetry. Perhaps that’s because, as a published poet myself, I know just how crappy most poetry really is. Still, there are a few poems that do speak to me. Here’s one, a popular one, from 100 years ago, that I revisited recently.

If
By Rudyard Kipling; Read by Chip
1 |MP3| – Approx. 2 Minutes [POEM]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 29, 2006
Described as “a memorable evocation of Victorian stoicism” and the poetic crystalization of the British virtue of keeping a “stiff upper lip.” First published in 1910.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son!
—Rudyard Kipling

And also:

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Spell Of The Yukon by Robert W. Service

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m not much for either poetry or magic. But some poems are magic. Here’s one…

The Spell Of The Yukon
By Robert W. Service; Read by Mark F. Smith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 4 Minutes [POEM]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 10, 2010

There are another dozen recordings of The Spell Of The Yukon by Robert W. Service available at LibriVox.org. I chose to point you towards Mark F. Smith’s version, but maybe you think another reader captures the poem better.

Here’s my annotated text version (can you spot the Star Trek connection?)…

The Spell Of The Yukon
by Robert W. Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it —
Came out with a fortune last fall, —
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth — and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer — no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness —
O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I’ve bade ’em good-by — but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back — and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;
I’m sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish
I’ll pike to the Yukon again.
I’ll fight — and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell! — but I’ve been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite —
So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

Posted by Jesse Willis

StarShipSofa’s Aural Delights: China Miéville’s ‘Tis The Season +MORE

SFFaudio Online Audio

It’s CHRISTMAS!

And… to celebrate this fine time, the StarShipSofa has decked herself out in holly, tinsel and mistletoe. This week sees her Christmas Special and what better way to enjoy this festive season with some grand and festive stories, all accompanied by a great looking cove by science fiction artist Skeet Scienski.

Click here to listen to the full Aural Delights No 56 China Miéville mp3

Editorial: Tony C Smith

Flash Fiction: A Christmas Tale by Davis Kopaska-Merkel

Flash Fiction: Robowassailing by Allen Steele

Fact: Sofa Art by Skeet

Main Fiction: ‘Tis The Season by China Miéville

Narrators: Diane Severson, MCL, Amy H Sturgis

Subscribe to the podcast via this feed:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/rss

Posted by Tony C. Smith

Five Free Favourites #9

SFFaudio Online Audio

Jesse here, with another batch of Five Free Favourites, five listens that won’t cost you a penny, but that will pay hefty rewards.

Have you got your own list of free favourites that you can count on the fingers of one non-hyperdactyli’d hand?

Five Free Favourites

1.
Despoilers Of The Golden Empire
By Randall Garrett; Read by Maureen O’Brien
5 Zipped MP3s – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: April 1st 2008
A seasoned military commander travels to another world to find the metal that brings power, and ends up bringing down a barbaric empire.
Maureen O’Brien’s Maria Lectrix podcast, has lots of content I care nothing about (theological audiobooks) – but, it also has several digital tons of content I care dearly about. On April 1st, 2008 released Despoilers Of The Golden Empire. She called it “…a very good story by Randall Garrett, and it makes a very good comment on sf as a genre….it was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, for April Fools’ Day.” This story is probably better enjoyed by fans of history, than by fans of science fiction. But if you’re like me, a fan of both, you’ll absolutely love it.

2.
EP073: Barnaby in Exile
By Mike Resnick; Read by Paul Fischer
1 |MP3| File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: September 28th 2006
Few authors have as many of their stories podcast as Mike Resnick, (although James Patrick Kelly’s definitely got to be in first place). Back in September 2006 Escape Pod podcast this tearful tale. At the time I was comparing to Pat Murphy’s classic Rachel In Love. Which is about as high a compliment you can give to an SF story. Powerful listening, bring a hanky.

3.
The Silver Tounged Devil The Silver Tongued Devil
By Roger Gregg; Performed by a full cast
2 MP3s – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: The Sonic Society (via Crazy Dog Audio Theatre)
Podcast: October 2006
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|
The Sonic Society has podcast much of the finest audio drama of the modern era. Their October 2006 podcast included a program that was originally broadcast on RTÉ (Ireland National Radio). Described as A documentary of poetry, pretension, and possession. and our review of it explained it thus: “This entire piece is done like a radio documentary, NPR-style, complete with interviews of average people about the ‘Silver Tongued Devil’. The actors who did these segments were perfect! If I had listened to this on the radio without knowing that Crazy Dog had done it, I’d have thought it was news. Who is the ‘Silver Tongued Devil’? He’s an incredibly famous poet from Cork who has the god-like ability to make people swoon with his words. Again, the piece is multi-layered, achieving both hilarity and poignancy.”

4.

Badge Of Infamy
By Lester del Rey; Read by Steven H. Wilson
15 MP3s – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: January 2006
Daniel Feldman was a doctor once. He made the mistake of saving a friend’s life in violation of Medical Lobby rules. Now, he’s a pariah, shunned by all, forbidden to touch another patient. But things are more loose on Mars. There, Doc Feldman is welcomed by the colonists, even as he’s hunted by the authorities. But, when he discovers a Martian plague may soon wipe out humanity on two planets, the authorities begin hunting him for a different reason altogether.Here’s a novel I dearly regret not having talked more about. I never reviewed it, as I was just listening for sheer enjoyment. It was released in January 2006 as part of the First SFFaudio Challenge. It was narrated by Steven H. Wilson of Prometheus Radio Theatre, and he did an outstanding job on this terrific little novel about a disgraced doctor. Lester del Rey was a major player in his day and his novels don’t show their years as many of their contemporaries do. I love novels set on a colonized Mars, if you do too, this is a sure bet.

5.
To Build A Fire
By Jack London; Read by Betsie Bush
1 |MP3| – 40 Minutes 03 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: 2006
A man and his husky, travel through the Klondike in seventy-five below zero weather (Fahrenheit). I’d heard of this story for a long time, and I’d always liked Jack London’s novels. I’ve compared it to Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations, saying that ‘the two tales are, essentially, the same ruthless story.’ This is also a I regret that this is not a better reading. Betsie Bush’s version is not recorded very well, her voice is fine, but the mic she’s using is weak, there’s a hum and even some noise. There is a very cheap semi-pro version available HERE and a version by a professional narrator HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Neil Gaiman audio roundup

OnlineAudio

If you start looking around the net for Neil Gaiman audio you’ll be hard pressed not to find it. The quantity is overwhelming in fact. Most of it consists of interviews, most from relatively mainstream media sources. But the guy gets podcast interviews like nobody’s business too. The MP3 files listed below are by no means the newest nor most exclusive but they are all good and they’re new links for us…

NeilGaiman.net / DreamHaven Books First, from the DreamHaven Books and NeilGaiman.net bookstore we’ve got three ultra-short “sample” (but unabridged) MP3s:

Poetry: “Instructions” |MP3| from Speaking In Tongues.
The liner notes for this one reads: “This is a poem about what to do if you find yourself in a Fairy Tale. It is guaranteed to work. If you find yourself in a Fairy Tale, and, despite following these instructions to the letter, you are eaten by wolves or lost, never to be seen again, the publisher will refund the cost of this CD.”

A Christmas card (a very short story): “Nicholas Was” |MP3| from Warning: Contains Language.
Gaiman sez of it: “This is a Christmas card. Exactly a hundred words long (102, including the title).”

Poetry: “A Writer’s Prayer” |MP3| from Telling Tales.
Gaiman describe it as “…written shortly before I began American Gods. I knew the first two verses when I began it, and the conclusion was there when I reached it. This is why I love writing.”

Next up, the always reliable Zombie Astronaut has a bit of Neil Gaiman poetry: “The Day The Saucer Came” |MP3|.

And also, from the same moulderingly cosmic source, this recent radio drama gem…

Anansi Boys
Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC World Service / World Drama
Broadcast: Nov 17th 2007
God is dead. Meet the kids. When Fat Charlie’s dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie “Fat Charlie.” Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can’t shake that name, one of the many embarrassing “gifts” his father bestowed — before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie’s life.

And from another site entirely comes…

Check out this 2006 “authors on tour” piece |MP3| of Neil Gaiman speaking to a receptive audience at The Tattered Cover bookstore. Gaiman reads from Anansi Boys tells stories and answers questions about the comic book, book, audiobook and movie businesses.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Review

The Raven
By Edgar Allan Poe, Read by Bill Mills
MP3 file – 19 min. [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: REB Audio books
Published: 2005
Themes: / Horror / Poetry / Mourning / Depression

“Once upon a midnight dreary,
While I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”
— A.E. Poe, The Raven

That’s how the poem begins, drawing a pall of melancholy over us with its first syllables. This audio book, however, takes a little more time getting there. As if reflecting the distance from this mood we might be starting, the first tones are of bouncy pop music as the company and title are introduced. Then comes Bill Mills’ voice, warm, and rich as hickory smoke, leading us down into darkness with a brief, stylish bio of the author.

When the first line finally arrives, I have to admit, I cringe for just a second. The slow, broken delivery—scattering audible periods where the text shows, at most, commas—has just a whiff of Shatner-reading-Lucy-in-Sky-with-Diamonds over-interpretation. But that passes in an instant, and I find myself discovering new wonders in nearly every spoken line of a poem I’ve read probably a hundred times. I have a tendency to dismiss rhymed poetry as lightweight, as my brain usually prefers humming the tune to learning the meaning behind the words, but Mills’ reading is a perfect foil for that. He treads a careful path between chanting the regular meter and disregarding it entirely, cleverly emphasizing the story the words tell while still respecting their poetry. What he presents is a tale of a man just tumbling off the edge of hope into a free fall of depression, a man who speaks the name of his lost love into the darkness outside his soul only to have the darkness reply with morbid hopelessness.

The one thing marring this production is the background track. Behind the serious lead vocals vamps a cartoon ghoul-band of horror excess: Howling wind, howling wolves, crackling thunder, soaring choirs, and crashing orchestras. It isn’t destructive, but it is ridiculous. That said, this is still an excellent recording. I highly recommend following Mr. Mills down this twilit path, no matter how many times you think you’ve seen it before.

Posted by Kurt Dietz