Robert Browning

Selected Poems

By: Robert Browning

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Given Browning's intensely romantic love affair with Elizabeth Barrett, it is characteristic that he should view love as the key to the meaning of life and life's animating force. This view of life is projected throughout his poetry. Included in this collection are "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of Galuppi's," "The Lost Leader," "The Statue and the Bust," "How it Strikes a Contemporary," "The Patriot," "Memorabilia," "James Lee's Wife," "Confessions," "Youth and Art," "A Likeness," "Mr. Sludge," "The Medium," "House," "St. Martin's Summer," "The Names," "Beatrice Signorini," "Spring Song," and others.(P)1992 by Blackstone Audiobooks

Lazy, Graceless Flop of a Performance

Robert Browning is one of my favorite poets, and so many of his poems -- dramatic monologues, narrative poems, etc -- are so readily performable, that I was quite excited to download this recording. But it sounds as if Frederick Davidson, having never so much as looked at the poems before, decided to wing it with all the wrong instincts. His reading is thoughtless, singsongy, and not even all that clearly enunciated. He steamrolls over the humor and nuance of the poems and absolutely flattens all the liveliness of the characters. Honestly, I want my money back.