One hundred Hollywood and Broadway stars, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cynthia Nixon and Jason Alexander, are recording their favorite poems for a soon-to be-unrestricted baby book of poetry called Poetic License.
The baby book is being produced by GPR Records, a new mark which describes itself as “dedicated to Broadway, classical, spoken word and for children music.” Both GPR founders have ties to Broadway, and the lineup for Poetic License teems with stars of the huge stage. In a press release, artistic director Glen Roven described the drive for the baby book:
“I like poetry. I like reading it. I like memorizing it. I like hearing fantastic actors recite it. In the past, I have had the audacity to set poetry to music. But, on this CD, the only music you will find is the music of the poems. Poetry unadorned. Fantastic poetry needs nothing but a fantastic actor with a voice as eloquent and expressive as the poem itself to lift the poem off the page and into the heart.”
Contributors were questioned to choose poems to record, which has led to an eclectic mix. Meaty selections like Yeats’ “Prayer for My Daughter” and even a part of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” are set beside the lighter verse of Lewis Carroll and Winnie-the-Pooh creator A. A. Milne. Contemporary poets are also well represented (you can take a look at the entire lineup here).
Tony award winning actress Joanna Gleason recorded a poem that “chose her”–her husband left it on the bed in honor of their wedding anniversary–Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII (translated by Mark Eisner).
I don’t like you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that publicize fire:
I like you as one likes certain obscure equipment,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I like you as the plant that doesn’t bruise but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, surrounded by itself,
and thanks to your like the tight aroma that arose
from the planet lives dimly in my body.
I like you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I like you directly without problems or pride:
I like you like this because I don’t know any other way to like,
apart from in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Chris Sarandon, whom you may dredge up as Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride, chose to record Tennyson’s inspirational poem “Ulysses.” He told GPR that the poem has been on his communiqu? board for the last 30 years. Here’s an excerpt:
Come, my friends.
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my function holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Lucky Isles,
And see the fantastic Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in ancient days
Went planet and heaven, that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Another baby book highlight will no doubt be Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander reading Lewis Carroll’s macabre small poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”:
“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
“Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very excellent indeed–
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can start to feed.”
“But not on us!” the Oysters cried,
Turning a small blue.
“After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!”
“The night is fine,” the Walrus said.
“Do you admire the view?
Patrick Stuart will read Robert Pinsky’s poem “physician Frolic,” a poem that is also, coincidentally, focused on shellfish.
He strolls the jetties when the month is right
With a knife and lemons in his pocket, after
Live mussels from among the smelly rocks,
Preventative of impotence and goitre.
Will all the star power generate some publicity for poetry? We’ll find out when the baby book is unrestricted on April 2nd, just in time, fittingly, for National Poetry Month.
Read more: Cynthia Nixon, Yeats, Poems, Poets, Jason Alexander, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Poetry, John Lundberg, Pablo Neruda, hollywood“>Hollywood, Living News
