Audiobook · read by volunteers
Where My Books Go
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Read by AliceG, Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Beth Dudek, Chip, Eugene Pinto, Hugh McGuire, Kayvan Sylvan, Kristin LeMoine, Linton, Peter Yearsley · 13 chapters · 9 min
About the book
Thirteen different voices read the same short poem, and the poem changes with each of them. Where My Books Go, by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, is only a few lines long: a quiet wish that the poet’s words might spread their wings and fly across dark and starry waters to a sad heart. Hearing it again and again is oddly absorbing: one reader lingers, another hurries, a third smiles at the end of a line, and meanwhile the images stay the same. This set was made by LibriVox volunteers as part of their weekly poetry project, and every version carries the personality of the person who recorded it. In under fifteen minutes in all, you can compare tones, accents and silences, and decide which interpretation you prefer. It is a lovely way to learn a poem by heart without trying, and an easy introduction to Yeats for anyone who has never opened a volume of his verse.
Introduction
William Butler Yeats, who lived from 1865 to 1939, is one of the major poets in the English language. Born in Dublin and closely linked to Ireland’s literary revival, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His early poems, such as this one, are often musical and dreamy, drawing on legend and on romantic longing.
Where My Books Go belongs to the 1890s, a period when Yeats was writing verse that was gentle, melancholy and finely tuned to sound. It dates from 1892. It is a very short piece, yet it carries a large feeling: the hope that what we make can travel beyond us and reach someone who needs it. The tone is quiet and a little wistful.
This collection is part of the weekly poetry project run by LibriVox volunteers. Each week a short text is chosen and anyone who wishes may record it. Here there are thirteen versions, read by volunteers such as AliceG, Annie Coleman Rothenberg and Beth Dudek, among others. The versions are numbered rather than named, and each lasts barely a minute.
Listening to several in a row is a small lesson in how a reader shapes a poem. Pauses, stresses and tempo vary, and with them the feeling of the text. It is an ideal quarter of an hour for anyone who enjoys poetry out loud. If you are short of time, a single version will do, but the pleasure of the set lies in the contrast, and many listeners find that the poem sticks in the memory after only a few hearings.
Public domain
William Butler Yeats died in 1939: 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