Is Classic Poetry Aloud suitable for students of English literature?
A number of students have commented that listening to a poem adds greatly to their understanding of it. On the other hand, if you have an essay deadline and need facts, not reflection, it may not be so useful. Why the pebbles? The background to http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/ is a beach of pebbles. This is inspired by this line in ‘Morte d’Arthur’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought I like to imagine that readers and listeners become lost in thought in poetry, just as when you look, spellbound, at a fire, or sunset, or at pebbles. On the same lines, the great British scientist Sir Isaac Newton in a memoir late in life, said this of himself: I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. – and that is exactly ho
