Travalanche

by Trav S.D.

April is National Poetry Month and to mark the occasion a company with the attractive name “GPR Records” is releasing an amazing sounding CD of major Broadway, tv and film actors reading a rather eclectic selection of poems both famous and obscure. (The actors chose the poems themselves, explaining the tossed salad effect.) I’m someone who believes the soul of this nation suffers mightily from its ignorance (and downright disparagement) of poetry. Do you realize the Arab version of “American Idol” has its contestants reciting poetry? I think I could get at least slightly interested in the American version if it had the same format.

Unless you’re complete a Cro-magnon, there’s something here for everybody. Three of my favorite poems happen to occur all in a row: Poe’s Annabel Lee, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Tennyson’s Ulysses — it’s like back-to-back hits on the poetry Top 40. Furthermore, the indiscriminate mix of bold-faced names and literary classics produces more than usual interest. Florence Henderson reads Longfellow! Barbara Feldon reads Margaret Atwood! And a long list of others: Christine Baranksi, Jason Alexander, Cynthia Nixon, Charles Busch, Michael York, JoBeth Williams, Paul Provenza, Richard Thomas, Kate Mulgrew, etc etc etc.

Also, there’s some kind of contest (called TwitsPoetic) associated with the project. From the publicist:

On TwitsPoetic, people make an entry into the contest by simply posting a poem on twitter. Up to 5 tweets can be used to contain the poem, and the poet must simple put the hash-tag #twitspoetic at the end of the tweet to make sure it gets entered into the contest.

All entries will be streamed onto the gprrecords web site. People vote on poems by re- tweeting them and we will count retweets and announce a winner each month.

Each month, the contest has a special topic – for April, the topic is “Love Poetry” (sex poetry is fine too, really anything to do with love is fine.) The winner of the contest each month will have his or her poem read in the studio by a famous broadway star and that poem might be included on the next Poetic License album.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 8:54 pm. It is filed under Rave Reviews for Poetic License!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.