When Richard Powers speaks (yes, he speaks his work instead of writing it or typing it out), it is fascinating to hear polymath-ic range of his voice talking. Here is him talking in a NYT article about various writers who have talked their work into existence including masters such as Dostoevsky and Dickens. I am off to search for freebie speech recognition software.

While playing hooky in a break at work, I ran into this article at the Guardian, which led me to this absolute gold mine called The Poetry Archive where poets ranging from the greats and masters such as Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin to the younger ones such as Andrew Motion, Brain Patten, Don Paterson etc recite their poems[1]. Now after a hard day of work, I am lying in the middle of my hotel bed and listening to the cadences of these most beautiful of human voices greedily, some repeatedly, and watching my tiredness fall away.

"You ask for a poem. I offer you a blade of grass. You say it is not good enough. You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do. It has dressed itself in frost, It is more immediate Than any image of my making."

Sometimes, however, it is a poem that is indeed required.

This is another such archive of poets (and other writers in general) reading their poetry that I turn to often.