Poetry
Casey at the Bat
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/The-Story-of-Casey-at-the-Bat.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 6/4/2003 Casey at the Bat Transcript Ernest Thayer did not start out as a baseball fan. He was most interested in pragmatic philosophy. Yet he had a humorous side and an ear for doggerel. And so he found himself editor of the Harvard Lampoon in the […]
William Blake and the Angel
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/William-Blake-and-the-Angel.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 11/27/2002 William Blake and the Angel Transcript When he was ten years old, William Blake (who was born on November 28th in 1757) saw an angel in a tree outside his family’s house in London. Though no one believed him at the time, he […]
e.e. cummings
That’s Dawn Upshaw and Bill Crofut on the guitar with his musical setting of “In Just,” one of the best-known poems by the American poet, e. e. cummings.
John Lennon – Imagining
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/John-Lennon-Imagining.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 10/9/2002 John Lennon – Imagining Transcript When John Lennon was 11 years old, he received a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as a birthday present. The surreal, nonsensical volume left a lasting impression on the young man. Lennon notes, “I was passionate about Alice in […]
Walt Whitman
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Walt-Whitman-Poets-Boyhood.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 5/31/2002 Walt Whitman Transcript It can be said of Walt Whitman that he was a poet who wrote with a voice of childlike boldness and charm. Writing in the mid-1800s, Whitman authored such well-known works as Song of Myself, I Sing the Body Electric, […]
The Days Gone By — Songs of the American Poets
You’re hearing the first part of the Emily Dickenson poem, “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” sung by Tahkus Ekedal and Amy Deegan from a collection of well-known 19th and early 20th century American poems for young people that have been set to music by Ted Jacobs and others.
The Child as Poet: Mattie Stepanek
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/The-Child-as-Poet-Mattie-Stepanek.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 4/12/2002 The Child as Poet: Mattie Stepanek Transcript It’s National Poetry Month, and because of the events of September 11th, we have turned to poetry as a way to give form and shape and language to those experiences that have stunned and overwhelmed our […]
Novel Poems
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/When-Poems-Become-Novels.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 4/5/2002 Novel Poems Transcript Several years ago, if you handed a ten year old child a seven hundred page novel and asked him or her to read it – one would likely have met with an expression of sorrow and woe. But with the […]
Poems for Women’s History Month
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Poems-for-Womens-History.mp3 Author John Cech (read by Fiona Barnes) Air Date 3/21/2002 Poems for Women’s History Month Transcript She was the one who seemed to run in the sky, legs from nothing, from nowhere, her feet surrounded by air. That’s part of a poem by Grace Butcher written in honor of […]
Rediscovering Laura E. Richards
Today, Rita Smith is helping us to rediscover Laura E. Richards.