Audiobook · read by volunteers
Tiger
William Blake (1757–1827)
Read by Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Brian Lojeck, Betsie Bush, Clayton J. Smith, Erin K. Sullivan, Glen Hallstrom, JemmaBlythe, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Lizzie Driver, Martin Clifton · 12 chapters · 16 min
About the book
Tyger Tyger, burning bright. Few poems in English are as concentrated, as musical and as mysterious as this one. William Blake looks at a fierce animal glowing in the darkness and asks a single, haunting question: what kind of hand or eye could make such a creature, and what kind of courage would it take to do so? The poem is short, but it has fed the imagination of readers for more than two centuries. Here it is offered in twelve different readings by volunteers, each with its own voice, speed and emphasis. Hearing the same lines again and again reveals how much a poem can change in the mouth of different readers. Twelve versions in about twenty minutes make a rich little experiment in listening.
Introduction
William Blake was born in 1757 and died in 1827. He was an engraver, painter and poet, and a visionary who claimed to see angels and spirits, and who produced his own illustrated books by hand. During his lifetime he was little known and often thought eccentric. Today he is regarded as one of the major figures of English Romanticism.
The Tyger comes from Songs of Experience, published in 1794. It is a companion to The Lamb in Songs of Innocence, and the two poems are best read together. The Lamb is gentle and trusting; the Tyger is fierce and unsettling, and where the first asks who made the lamb, the second asks the same question with a shiver. The poem is built from a series of questions and is driven by a strong, hammering rhythm which many readers hear as the sound of a blacksmith's forge.
This recording is a collection of twelve readings by different LibriVox volunteers, made for the weekly poetry project of early December 2006, in which volunteers each record the same short poem. The chapters are labelled with the initials of their readers.
Why listen now? Because a short poem can be heard many times without wearing out, and because comparing the readings shows how interpretation works. Each reader makes different choices about where to pause and which words to stress, and the poem remains inexhaustible.
Public domain
William Blake died in 1827: 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