Showing results for "Listen" in Art & Literature

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3, 1892 to September 2, 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings precipitated an avalanche of new books and authors in the genre.

Joan Didion (December 5, 1934 - December 23, 2021), born in Sacramento, California, was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California.

At thirty-five, Elsie Robinson feared she’d lost it all. Reeling from a divorce in 1917, she had no means to support herself and her chronically ill son. She dreamed of becoming a writer and was willing to sacrifice everything for this goal, even swinging a pickax in a gold mine to pay the bills. When the mine shut down, she moved to the Bay Area, where she barged into the offices of the Oakland Tribune and was hired on the spot. She went on to become a nationally syndicated columnist and household name whose column ran for over thirty years and garnered fifty million readers.

William Seward Burroughs (February 5, 1914 to August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced both underground and popular culture and literature. Much of Burroughs' work is highly experimental and features unreliable narrators.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along is part-memoir, part-polemic about the state of public discourse in Britain and the world today. In an increasingly divided society, Iain examines why we’ve all become so disrespectful and intolerant. Using experiences from his career in politics and the media...

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935-January 17, 2019), from Maple Heights, OH, was an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by wonderment at the natural environment, vivid imagery, and unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared the best-selling poet in the United States.

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 - September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was imprisoned in an internment camp, which provided the basis for his 1922 novel The Enormous Room. The following year he published his first collection of poetry.

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 to July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.

John Anthony Ciardi (June 24, 1916-March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, Ciardi pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont, and recorded commentaries for National Public Radio. In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry, How Does a Poem Mean?, which has proven to be among the most-used books of its kind. The following recording is from a speech Ciardi gave in 1965.

James Augusta Joyce (February 2, 1882 to January 13, 1941), born in Dublin, was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century. The following recording was made in 1929 by C.K. Odgen in the studio of the Orthological Society in Cambridge during which Joyce read from his novel, “Finnegans Wake.”

When best-selling mystery writer David Rosenfelt and his family moved from Southern California to Maine, he thought he had prepared for everything. They had mapped the route, brought three GPSs for backup, as well as refrigerators full of food, and stoves and microwaves on which to cook them. But traveling with 25 dogs turned out to be a bigger ordeal than he anticipated, despite RVs, the extra kibble, volunteers (including a few readers), and camping equipment.

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928-February 22, 1987), born Andrew Warhola Jr., was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and filmmaking. The following recordings are from interviews in 1966 and 1981.

Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 to April 9, 1959), born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 - February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who founded the gonzo journalism movement, a style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative. He rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972). The following is from a 1975 interview on gonzo journalism.

Joan Didion (December 5, 1934-December 23, 2021), born in Sacramento, California, was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California.

The following recording is from the late 1950s.

Sylvia Plath born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, MA, was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), and also The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide on February 11, 1963. In this recording, Plath discusses writing, her youth, and her life.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his four novels—This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is The Night—depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. In this recording, Fitgerald reads from Shakespeare's Othello, John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, and John Masefield's On Growing Old.

In 1961, poet Robert Frost was invited to read at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. It would be the first by a poet for an inaugural ceremony. President-elect Kennedy asked Frost to recite the poem "The Gift Outright" unless the poet planned to write a poem especially for the occasion. Frost did, in fact, write a new poem for the day entitled "Dedication." However, when the time came to read, the wind and sun's glare made this impossible, though Frost made a valiant attempt. Instead, he reverted to "The Gift Outright," which he read by heart.

Hear a recorded interview between Donald H. Kirkley and H.L. Mencken, American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English.