Showing results by narrator "Robert Bethune" in All Categories

This is Carl Sandburg's fourth collection of poetry. His signature style, a rough-and-ready free verse that often transforms into poetic prose, is in full view. Like Whitman before him and like Masters and Frost in his own time, he puts his focus directly on life as he sees it around him, life in the rough-and-tumble Chicago of the early 20th century and life in the American West at a time when that wild country was finally succumbing to civilization

Stephen Crane's poetry is torn by a sense of his own sin, outraged by the capricious behavior of a God he rejected, his poems brim with bitteness, yet carry with them a sane and sarcastic humor as well. Tremendously laconic and always moving directly to the point, he demands his listener's full attention, and rewards it.

Stephen Crane's second book of poetry followed up the success of his first book, Black Riders. His search for love, his lonely, bitter struggle to make his peace with God, the war in his heart between cynicism and an unshakeable longing for truth and beauty in the world--these all continue in his second book. Sadly, this second book was also his last, for he died tragically young.

There's a long tradition of English Christmas stories, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, often revolving around ghosts and apparitions. Dickens drew on it in a serious vein in A Christmas Carol; here, Jerome K. Jerome tells hilarious stories from around an English Christmas fireside.

Five wonderful stories by Ambrose Bierce, full of vivid characters, precise and evocative language, surprises, and suspense. Written more than a century ago, these stories still capture the imagination with vivid, precise language that bites - and may even draw blood! This Freshwater Seas production presents these five classic stories performed by Susie Berneis and Robert Bethune, with subtle musical underscoring to enhance and enrich Bierce's words.

As in the first two volumes of this series, our interest in these poems is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come. In these poems, mostly written in the years just before Byron left England to tour in Europe, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself.

To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times. In particular, the torture of Beatrice Cenci at the hands of the authorities of Rome is given in brutal and clinical detail, sparing nothing.In this, the second of the series, Dumas tells the frankly horrifying story of the tragic sons and daughers of Francesco Cenci.

This presentation of the beloved tale tells the classic story of the long night Ebenezer Scrooge spent with the ghosts of Christmas, the lessons it taught him, the change it made in his life, and the joy it brought to him and all who knew him. It tells the story the way Dickens wrote it, including scenes and descriptions other versions skip over.On this recording, the story is not merely read, it comes to life with voices and music.

Carl Sandburg fixed his eyes on the people of his time and place. He ignored or scorned the wealthy, the comfortable, the complacent, the powerful and those who serve them; he had no time for the ruling class. His eyes were open to the immigrant, the laborer, the hobo, the farmer, the man who works with his hands, the woman who runs a family, the soldier who goes to war for them.

Three stories by Rudyard Kipling, all about the marvelous nature of elephants. In "The Elephant's Child", we learn how the elephant got his trunk - one of the favorite tales from the Just-So Stories. In "Moti Guj, Mutineer", we learn what happens when an elephant has made a bargain - and humans have failed to do their part! In "Toomai of the Elephants", we learn how a special child and his relationship to a special elephant allow him to see something no one in the world has ever seen before. These marvelous stories, told with wit and wonder by Rudyard Kipling, are for young and old of all ages.

Here are two terrifying and sobering stories of ghosts who will stop at nothing. In Henry James' "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes", a woman's envy of her dead sister threatens to destroy her. In "Lost Hearts", three children learn that a classical scholar's love of the past has led him into a terrible and bloody delusion.

Here are three of the most wonderful Christmas stories ever written, presented for you along with two short pieces that just can't be left out of any Christmas collection worth its salt.

Rupert Brooke possessed one of the most amazingly sensitive, amazingly sensual poetic minds of the 20th century. Born into a world swiftly sliding into war, torn between highly idealized, romanticized relationships with men and conflicted, often bitter love for women, he expressed his complex emotions and vivid perceptions in verse of startling force, striking sensory intensity, and sometimes sly and biting humor. He left us just under 100 poems before his terribly untimely death of sepsis while serving in the British Navy.

In this, the 10th of the series, Dumas places us at the court of Joan of Naples, a beautiful, emotional, highly capable woman at the center of 30 years of plotting, betrayal, intrigue, war, beauty, love, and death. Hers is a world at war between both secular and ecclesiastical centers of power: the Pope at Avignon, the king in France, the emperor in Germany, and most importantly for her story, the kings of Hungary, so far away in culture and temperament, so close across the Adriatic Sea.

To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times. In this, the third of the series, Dumas tells the story of three centuries of sectarian violence and civil war between the Protestants and the Catholics of the south of France.

In this, the twelfth of the series, Dumas, the novelist-historian, is back in full force. His subject is a well-documented historical fact: that a man named Arnaud du Thil was able to pass for two years as Martin Guerre, deceiving villages, neighbors, friends, family, and even the wife of Martin Guerre with equal success, even to the point of becoming the father of two children by Martin Guerre's wife.

In this set of "Uncanny Tales," Mary Louisa Molesworth deftly makes us feel the shiver of ghostly mystery without actually giving us a ghost! Or, to put it another way, she's interested in a different kind of ghostly presence. In "The Man with the Cough", it is the ghostly presence of a secret agent, and the ghostly experience of events that seem like a dream, but have real-world consequences. In "Halfway Between the Stiles", it is the ghostly presence of old memories of love that will not die away, and again, the real world responds. In "Will Not Take Place", it is a man who almost becomes a ghost.

Three great tales of meetings with ghosts, and perhaps more than ghosts: "The Vacant Lot" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; "On the Brighton Road" by Richard Middleton; and "Sister Johanna" by Amelia B. Edwards.

In this, the 18th of the series, Dumas explores the history of a famous French aristocratic family: that of Marie de Rossan, also known as Diane de Joannis de Roussan and as Anne-Elisabeth De Rossan, but in any case the Marquise de Ganges and La Belle Belle Provençale - often described as the most beautiful woman of her time. It was, indeed, her beauty that undid her.

In this, the 17th of the series, Dumas, in this case more a novelist than a historian, turns his attention to a story from Russia: that of Vaninka. Her father was a Russian count and a general in the Russian Imperial army under Paul I. She falls in love with one of her father's officers, whose tragic but accidental death leads her to a savage crime. Ironically, bringing her to justice requires a great perversion of justice itself.