GPR Records releases the recording comprised of 100 poems read by 100 performers from both the stage and screen. (There are officially 105 tracks in the disc; apparently "100" sounded like better marketing.) "Poetic License" is available at iTunes, Amazon.com and gprrecords.com.
Also represented on the disc are Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joanna Gleason, Michelle Pawk, Douglas Sills, Emily Skinner, Charles Busch, Michael Cerveris, Florence Henderson, David Garrison, Paige Davis, Kate Mulgrew, Harriet Harris, Kathleen Turner and Michael York.
"I love poetry. I love reading it. I love memorizing it. I love hearing great actors recite it," said GPR Records artistic director Glen Roven in a statement. "In the past, I have had the audacity to set poetry to music. But, on this CD, the only music you will find is the music of the poems. Poetry unadorned. Great poetry needs nothing but a great actor with a voice as eloquent and expressive as the poem itself to lift the poem off the page and into the heart."
The partial list of poems and performers on "Poetic License" follows:
Jason Alexander (Robinson: Richard Cory)
Glen Seven Allen (Shakespeare: Sonnet 131)
Nancy Anderson (Blake: Mary)
Linda Balgord (Strand: Eating Poetry)
Christine Baranski (Shakespeare: How Happy Some)
James Barbour (Kipling: If)
Brent Barrett (Shakespeare: Sonnet 29 When In Distress)
John Belhamm (Shakespeare: Hang My Poems)
Reed Birney (Blanding: Some Lines Scrawled on a Door of a Vagabonds House)
Charles Busch (Browning: My Last Duchess)
Danny Burstein (Hayden: Those Winter Sundays)
Zoe Caldwell (Caldwell: On Behalf of Trees)
Ann Hampton Calloway (Rilke Sonnet 3 from Orpheus)
Alan Campbell (Lux: A Little Tooth)
Douglas Carpenter (Whitman: To What You Said)
Len Cariou (Shakespeare: Ye Elves)
Donna Lynne Champlin (Cadell: The Job Interview)
Philip Casnoff (Thomas: Fern Hill)
Michael Cerveris (Ondaatje: The Cinnamon Peeler)
Chuck Cooper (Gibran: On Death)
Donald Corren (Poe: Annabel Lee)
Veanne Cox (Milton: Paradise Lost)
Tyne Daly (Auden: But I Can’t)
Daniel Davis (Cavafy: Waiting for the Barbarians)
Paige Davis (Field: New Yorker)
Ed Dixon (co Producer) (Frost: Bearer of Evil Tidings)
Melissa Errico: (Kenyon: Otherwise)
Francesca Faridany (Rukeyser: Myth)
Barbara Feldon (Atwood: I Would Like to Watch You Sleeping)
Lauren Flanigan (Weinstein: Grosz)
Peter Friedman (Levertov: Psalm Concerning the Castle)
Penny Fuller (Lawrence: Terra Incognita)
David Garrison (Frost: Road Less Traveled)
Joanna Gleason (Neruda: Sonnet XVII)
Amanda Green (Carroll: You Are Old Father Williams)
Harriet Harris (Spice: Any Fool Can Get Into an Ocean)
Roxanne Hart (Moore: Poetry)
Florence Henderson (Longfellow: The Day is Done)
Edward Hibbert (Bentjamin)
George S. Irving (Fearing: Elegy in a Theatrical Warehouse)
Dana Ivey (Henley: Invictus)
Beth Howland (Parker: Sympton Recital)
Moises Kauffman (Williams: Life Stories)
Cady Huffman (Taylor Mali: A Dog Named Bodhidsattva)
Byron Jennings (Yeats: When You Are Old and Grey)
Judy Kaye (cummings: I thank God for this…)
Lauren Kennedy (Stevens: The House was Quiet…)
Charles Kimbrough (Browning: Meet At Night)
Marc Kudisch (Frost: Fire and Ice)
Claire Lautier (Donne: A Valediction…)
Judith Light (Stoher: Soft Knife)
Patti LuPone (Dickinson: Wild Nights! Wild Nights!)
Rebecaa Luker (Rosetti: Remember)
Ramona Mallory (Silverstein: The Nap-taker)
Jeff McCarthy (Collins: Conversion)
Carolyn McCormick (Millay: Dirge Without Music)
Roberta Maxwell (Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning)
Kate Mulgrew (Dickinson: I Could Not Stop for Death)
Tom McGowan (Lawrence: Afternoon in School)
Keith McDermott (Yeats: Second Coming)
Michael Minarek (Ammons: Beautiful Woman)
