REELY'S POETRY BLOG

Last night I came across a website selling the “Edgar Allan Poe Ultimate Audio Collection” that you can download immediately for $12.95. Savor 9 hours of inside the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, it says.

Sound like a good deal? Well, it’s not. All the files come from Librivox and are already online available to download for free. Why would anyone want to pay $12.95 to download something you can download for free? The only reason I can think of is they don’t know it’s freely available.

How do I know they are from Librivox? Well, I have seen these same files being sold on CDs on eBay before, only on eBay the seller acknowledges that Librivox is the source. Here’s the link to the entire free ’shurtagal’ Poe audio readings: http://librivox.org/edgar-allan-poe-poems-by-edgar-allan-poe/. Here’s the site where they are being sold. Compare the running times. What a coincidence!

I’ve actually had occasion to listen to shurtagal’s Annabel Lee when I was looking for particular version of the poem (The Griswold version), but it wasn’t what I needed in terms of the words. I had to use the reading by Mr. H. Jeong.

So, what is Librivox (for anyone who doesn’t already know)? It is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks and poetry, read by volunteers and released into the public domain. As of July 2009, it boasts a catalog of 2,500 unabridged books and shorter works available to download – FREE.
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Couldn’t get to Baltimore on January 19th to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth? Or Philly, to hear the ‘Poe Down” debate, where Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia competed for the right to claim Poe as its own?

Visit www.nevermore.com to learn about all the events the City of Baltimore has planned throughout this year, which will culminate with the anniversary of Poe’s death on October 7th.

And to hold you over in the meantime, here’s a parody of The Raven by Dr. Seuss (Adrian, that is.)

Today is the day that Wyatt Earp died. There is a book out there “Wyatt Earp in Dallas,” that brings Wyatt back to try to save President Kennedy from assassination, but I can’t find any excerpts online.

Then I found this incredible poem on youtube that brings you an incident from the early 70s involving Wyatt Earp, which should resonate with anyone who grew up in the late 50s watching all those westerns and singing those catchy theme songs, like Maverick, Bat Masterson, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide and Wyatt Earp, brave, courageous and bold. (For anyone who doesn’t know these tunes, the links go to www.televisiontunes.com, home of all great TV theme songs, and even some not so great.)

Parental Advisory – this video contains profane language

I was watching a few Bye Bye Birdie songs today. For me, they never get old. One Last Kiss is really my favorite from that movie. Other singers have done it: I had a tape I made from an album by Bobby Rydell with all the songs and his One Last Kiss was pretty good, but then you gotta love just about anything Rydell sings. The man has always had style. You can also listen to Bobby Vee singing it on youtube. But no one does it quite the same as Jesse Pearson in the movie: “bay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-bee, just give me one last kiss.” An Amazon reviewer complains that on the soundtrack, although it does get sung all the way through, it’s totally different than in the movie.

There is scant information about Jesse online. Sadly, he is the only one in the Bye Bye Birdie cast who doesn’t have a wikipedia entry and I do hope someone who knew him corrects that omission someday. Doesn’t seem right. He really was the perfect Conrad in the film.

His IMDB entry doesn’t even say how tall he was but in the musical, he towered over 5′5″ Ann Margret, who only came up to his shoulder, and was at least a whole head taller than 5′8″ Bobby Rydell. In the gym rehearsal scene, he is taller than Dick Van Dyke, which you can see when Dick is standing next to Pearson at one point (when Mareen Stapleton comes over). Van Dyke was reportedly 6′1″”. But Jesse Pearson had boots with heels on, so it’s hard to say from that.

I did find this video on youtube with Jesse Pearson reciting Pushing the Clouds Away:

Pushing the Clouds Away
(Lyrics by Rod McKuen,
music by Anita Kerr, narrated by Jesse Pearson)

Clouds are not the cheeks of angels, you know
They’re only clouds.
Friendly sometimes, but you can never be sure.
If I had longer arms I’d push the clouds away
or I’d make them hang above the water
somewhere else,

But I’m just a man who needs and wants,
mostly things he’ll never have.
Looking for that thing thats hardest to find:
himself.

I’ve been going a long time now
along the way I’ve learned some things.
You have to make the good times yourself,
take the little times and make them big times,
and save the times that are all right
for the ones that aren’t so good.
I’ve never been able to push
the clouds away by myself.
Help me.
Please?

from The Sea: San Sebastian Strings (available on Amazon)

More info:
Rod McKuen’s Flight Plan 10 Oct 2002: More About Jesse Pearson
Jesse Pearson on IMDB

What if you had a great voice but didn’t have anything great to say? Or maybe you had something great to say, but didn’t have a great voice. Hey, It happens …

Then there are some who have not only a great voice but something great to say.

Today is Irish poet, Paul Muldoon’s birthday. You can visit his website

http://www.paulmuldoon.net/recordings.php4

and listen to some of his recordings that he has been kind enough to put online. You will really like his voice. I like his poem “At Least They Were Not Speaking French,” (though since my ancestors were both Irish and French, it probably has a different signficance to me than he means). He describes the deaths of two uncles against this nonsense refrain “fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do.”

Among his many accomplishments, Paul Muldoon is a professor at Princeton, chair of the university’s Lewis Center for the Arts, and poetry editor for the New Yorker magazine. In 2003, he won the Pulitzer for Moy Sand and Gravel.

More Irish Poet’s Audio Links:

Seamus Heany on The Poetry Archive – you will need realplayer for this page

Dylan Thomas Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night. If Dylan Thomas’ voice doesn’t blow you away, nothing will!