Audiobook · read by volunteers
Poet To His Love
Maxwell Bodenheim (1892–1954)
Read by Andrea L, Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Chip, Fox in the Stars, Linton, Mo, Nathan Miller, Nocturna, Peter Yearsley, Stefan Schmelz · 13 chapters · 9 min
About the book
A short poem, a day for lovers, and thirteen readings. Maxwell Bodenheim’s Poet to His Love is a brief love poem, short enough to be spoken in less than a minute, which makes it ideal for a project in which many readers each give it a different colouring. Here you can listen to thirteen readings in a row and notice how a small change of pace or tone can turn the same lines from a whisper into a vow. The set was chosen to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Bodenheim was a poet of the Greenwich Village scene of the 1910s and 1920s, a world of small magazines and bold new verse. The collection is a perfect companion for a quiet moment, a gift to share with someone you love, or a gentle experiment in how a single text can sound in many voices.
Introduction
Maxwell Bodenheim (1892-1954) was an American poet and a well-known figure of the Greenwich Village literary scene in the 1910s and 1920s. He wrote many volumes of verse as well as novels, and his life ended tragically in New York in 1954. Poet to His Love is a short love poem, as its title says, addressed by a poet to the person he loves. It belongs to the period when modern American verse was finding its voice.
The recording comes from LibriVox’s weekly poetry project, in which volunteers each record the same short poem so that listeners can compare their interpretations. This particular project was chosen to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Thirteen readings are collected here, and the versions are presented one after another as Version 01, Version 02 and so on to the end. Altogether the collection lasts about twelve minutes, so it is easy to hear in full.
Listening to many readings of a single poem has its own pleasure. One reader may linger over a phrase, another may hurry on, a third may smile as they speak. After a few versions you begin to hear details you missed the first time, and you start to form opinions about where the weight of a line should fall. It is a lesson in how much a human voice can add to a few printed words.
You can treat the set as a small anthology of voices, or pick the version you like best and keep it for a special occasion. Either way it is a short and gentle listen, and a reminder that poetry is made to be heard.
Public domain
Maxwell Bodenheim died in 1954: 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