Audiobook · read by volunteers
To the United States of America
Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
Read by Ancilla, Bookworm, David Best, Arouet, Joe Brenneman, Lee Ann Howlett, Nicholas James Bridgewater, Robert Scott, Sean McKinley, Shurtagal · 12 chapters · 13 min
About the book
For American Independence Day in 2007, a group of volunteers decided to mark the holiday in an unusual way: twelve readings, one poem. Robert Bridges, who was the poet laureate of Britain when he wrote To the United States of America, addresses the young republic across the Atlantic in a spirit of friendship and plain-spoken respect. What follows is not a single performance but a chorus of twelve, each reader bringing a different pace, a different accent and a different emphasis to the same lines. Listening to them in succession is a small lesson in how much a voice can do. Each recording is brief, so the whole set takes only a few minutes, and it is easy to hear them one after another or to pick a favourite voice and return to it. A poem of goodwill, heard twelve ways.
Introduction
Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was an English poet who held the office of poet laureate from 1913 until his death. He is remembered for his careful craftsmanship and for his interest in the sounds and rhythms of English verse. To the United States of America, published in 1917, belongs to the years when Britain and America stood together in the First World War, and its tone is one of public address, speaking from one nation to another.
This collection is a multi-version recording, a format that LibriVox volunteers have often used for short poems. Instead of one reading, there are twelve, each made by a different volunteer and each given as its own file. The project was prepared for American Independence Day in 2007 as part of a weekly poetry series.
The purpose of hearing the same poem so many times is not repetition but comparison. A line that sounds solemn in one voice can sound warm in another, and a pause placed differently changes where the weight of a sentence falls. For anyone who wants to understand how poetry lives in performance, this is a modest but instructive experiment.
The whole set runs only a few minutes, so it asks very little of your time. Listen to it as an occasion piece, as a small anthology of voices, or simply as a short and dignified poem of friendship between nations.
Public domain
Robert Bridges died in 1930: 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