Catching life by the throat How to read poetry and why : poems from eight great poets

Clearly, theater producer and novelist Hart (Damage) loves poetry. In the 1980s she founded Gallery Poets, where leading British actors gave readings of classic poems; this well-received program later evolved into the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour at the British Library. Hart firmly believes that poetry is the highest form of human expression and that it must be heard and not simply read to be fully appreciated. That is why the CD accompanying this anthology--with Ralph Fiennes, Juliet Stevenson, and other actors reading 28 of the 60 poems--is as integral to Hart's purpose as the text itself, which features works by W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin, Maryanne Moore, Sylvia Plath, and William Butler Yeats. Hart prefaces the selected poems--ranging from Yeats's "The Pity of Love" to Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"--with brief but thoughtful biographical sketches and observations. Readers and listeners alike will be left wanting even more. For most public and academic libraries.--Anthony Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.