Sleepytime Poetry

Follow theater professor Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  This evening features a delightful long work, "Goblin Market" (1862), by Victorian-era writer, Chistina Rossetti. In this story, sisters Lizzie and Laura witness a goblin market night after night, filled with sumptuous fruit, and danger—a perfect bedtime story. Stay tuned for next week for the c...

Follow theater professor Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep. This evening features beautiful works by important women writers. Poets include Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sara Teasdale, Christina Rossetti, & Matilda Blind. With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of the episode will lull you into peace. Full best...

Follow theater professor Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  This evening features beautiful poems about dancing by William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carrol, Sir Henry Newbolt, & Richard Lovelace.  With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of the episode will lull you into peace. Full best results, listen with headpho...

Follow theater professor Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  This evening features a beautiful long poem by Edna St. Vincent Milay, "Renascence" (1912), about a speaker who experiences a spiritual death and rebirth through the act of beholding nature.  Milay's virtuosic rhyming proves hypnotic.  With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation,...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  This evening  features beautiful sonnets by William Shakespeare about sleep.  Works include Sonnet 27 ("Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed"); Sonnet 28 "(How can I then return in happy plight); Sonnet 43 ("When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see"); and Sonnet 61 ("Is it thy will, thy i...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  The evening  features beautiful poems about the soothing quality of rain.  Works include " A Drop fell on the Apple Tree," (1890) by Emily Dickinson, "Rain in Summer" (1845) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and “Little Raindrops" (1860) by Aunt Effie.  With deep breathing, along with progressive rela...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  The evening's beautiful poems feature Four by Frost: four popular poems by Robert Frost, perhaps America's greatest poet.  Works include "The Mending Wall" (1914), "The Road Not Taken" (1916), “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923), and "Acquainted with the Night" (1928)....

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  The evening's beautiful poems explore the wonder of the stars.  Poems include Jane Taylor's "The Star" (1806), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Light of the Stars” (1838), John Keats' "Bright Star" (1819), Lucretia Maria Davidson's "To a Star" (1824),  Sara Teasd...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  The evening's beautiful poems explore the moon as a universal symbol of the night.  Poems include Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To the Moon" (1817);  Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Moon" (1885); William Stanley Braithwaite's "Golden Moonrise" (1902); E.E. Cummings' "Amores (III)&q...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  Tonight's beautiful poems harken back to the English language's distant past.  From William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" (1609) in its original pronunciation, we hear the "General Prologue" in Middle English from Geoffrey Chaucer's "Cant...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  Tonight's beautiful poems all feature the ocean.  Selections include Edmund Spencer's Sonnet LXXV, “One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand";  Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach"; Rainer Maria Rilke's "Song of the Sea"; and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Ocean."   With deep breathi...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into as he guides you into sleep.  Tonight's poems all have to do with sleep.  Poems include William Shakespeare's Sonnet 27 ("W eary with toil, I haste me to my bed" ); To Sleep , by John Keats; A Dream within a Dream , by Edgar Allen Poe, and Shakespeare's Sonnet 43 ( "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see") .  Wi...

Follow Jeff Kaplan's relaxing voice into a beautiful forest in your imagination as he guides you into sleep.  Poems include Titania, Queen of the Faeries' speech from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream ,; Twilight Calm , by Christina Rosetti; and The Comfort of the Woods, by Amos Russel Wells.  With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of...