Ocean State Libraries

In this lecture series, American poet and writer E.E. Cummings discusses his life and work on a personal level. He concludes each lecture with a poetry reading lasting about fifteen minutes. He reads mostly works of other poets.

"The varied forms of Leonard Bernstein's musical creativity have been recognized and enjoyed by millions. These lectures, Mr. Bernstein's most recent venture in musical explication, will make fascinating reading as well. Virgil Thomson says of the lectures: "Nobody anywhere presents this material so warmly, so sincerely, so skillfully. As musical mind-openers they are first class; as pedagogy they are matchless." Mr. Bernstein considers music ranging...

"One of the most rigorously presented and beautifully illustrated critical testaments in all of literature."-Boston Globe "A brilliant, original approach to literature, a key to Calvino's own work and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the world's greatest writing."-San Francisco Chronicle At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued, and which...

Features Cage reading a mesostic (a literary form generated by chance operations) to allow the listener to experience it as delivered; also features a selection from the question-and-answer seminars that conveys the lively flavor of the event.