Listen to a Poem

Poems are so much more than words on a page. They are sound and experience. So much can be read from listening to a poem.

Here are a couple of places to catch a poem:
American Academy of Poets
Library of Congress
Poetry Archive
Wired for Books
The Writer's Almanac (plus a look at the day in history)

Listen to Australian poet Les Murray read Bats' Ultrasound by clicking here.

Bat's Ultrasound

Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wing
with fleas, in rock-cleft or building
radar bats are darkness in miniature,
their whole face one tufty crinkled ear
with weak eyes, fine teeth bared to sing.

Few are vampires. None flit through the mirror.
Where they flutter at evening's a queer
tonal hunting zone above highest C.
Insect prey at the peak of our hearing
drone re to their detailing tee:

ah, eyrie-ire; aero hour, eh?
O'er our ur-area (our era aye
ere your raw row) we air our array
err, yaw, row wry—aura our orrery,
our eerie ü our ray, our arrow.

A rare ear, our aery Yahweh.


by Les Murray
from Selected Poems, 1986