Against Indifference

Charles Webbe, the author of “Against Indifference”, is a poet about whom very little is recorded. His name survives chiefly through this single short poem, which has found its way into anthologies of English verse. What can safely be said is that the poem belongs to the English tradition of the witty, compact lyric, in which a speaker makes a case in a few neat stanzas and turns a small situation into a piece of rhetoric.

The title tells you the argument. As its name promises, the poem takes a position against indifference, and the pleasure lies in how it makes its case: in its structure, its irony and the way each stanza answers the one before. It is the kind of poem that rewards a second and a third hearing, because its tone can be taken in more than one way.

This collection is the result of a weekly poetry project at LibriVox, held in January 2008. In such projects many volunteers record the same short poem, so that listeners can compare their readings. Here you will find seventeen versions, with a total running time of about twenty minutes. Because the poem is so brief, it is easy to listen to many of them in a row and to notice how each reader decides what the poem is about: wit, sorrow, mockery or tenderness. Some readers take it quickly and others slowly, and a pause in a different place can shift the meaning of a line.

Nothing in the format asks you to hear every version. You can begin with the first and let curiosity guide you, or choose a handful and compare them side by side. It is a small lesson in what reading aloud adds to a poem, and a pleasant short listen for anyone who loves English verse.