Audiobook · read by volunteers
House on the Hill
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
Read by Alan Clare, Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010), cricket, Délibáb, JemmaBlythe, James Gladwin, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Lee Ann Howlett, Laura Caldwell, ML Cohen · 16 chapters · 18 min
About the book
A deserted house on a hill, a handful of lines and a feeling of quiet loss: The House on the Hill is one of the best-loved short poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson. Written in a strict, circling form, it evokes a place where people once lived and which now stands empty, and it does so with remarkable restraint. In this collection you can hear sixteen different recordings, each by a different LibriVox volunteer. The poem is the same every time, yet each voice can bring its own mood, from tender to bleak to almost matter-of-fact. In less than twenty minutes, you can compare readings, find the one you prefer or simply let the poem's repeated phrases sink in. It is a small collection with a surprising emotional reach, and a fine introduction to Robinson's verse.
Introduction
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) was an American poet who grew up in Maine and later became one of the most respected poets of his generation. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry three times, and his portraits of ordinary people in a fictional New England town, Tilbury Town, remain among the finest in American verse. His poems are often marked by irony, compassion and a spare, controlled style.
The House on the Hill is a villanelle, a French verse form of nineteen lines built on two refrains that repeat in a fixed pattern. Robinson used the form to create a mood of quiet resignation, in which the repetitions seem to echo the silence of the empty house. It was first published in the 1890s and is regularly included in anthologies as a model of the form.
This recording is a multi-version poem, one of the LibriVox projects in which many volunteers read the same short text so that listeners can compare their performances. It was prepared as the weekly poetry project for the week of 30 September 2007, and it contains sixteen readings, among them those of Alan Clare, Alan Davis Drake and a reader who goes by the name cricket. The files together last about twenty minutes.
The structure of a villanelle makes it a particularly interesting test for a reader. The refrains return again and again, and each performer has to decide whether to vary them or let them fall in the same way each time. By listening to several versions in succession, you will hear those decisions made differently, and you may come to appreciate the poem all the more.
Public domain
Edwin Arlington Robinson died in 1935: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text