Sleepytime Poetry

<p>Soothing classical poetry with guided meditations to help you get to sleep.  Relax to theater professor Jeff Kaplan's calming voice as you drift into dreams.</p>

Episode 7: Sleepy Poems by Robert Frost

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). With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of the episode will lull you into peace. Full best res...

10-17
30:00

Episode 6: Sleepy Poems of the Stars

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 Keat's "Bright Star" (1819), Lucretia Maria Davidson's "To a Star" (1824), Sara Teasdale's "Winter Stars" (1920), and Emily Dickinson's “Ah Moon-and Star!” (ca. 1830-86). With deep breathing, along with progressive relax...

10-13
31:01

Episode 5: Sleepy Poems of the Moon

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. Cumming's "Amores (III)" (1925); Sara Teasdale's "Dusk in Autumn" (1914); Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "A Hymn to the Moon" (ca. 18th c.); and William Blake's "Smi...

10-09
28:09

Episode 4: Sleepy Poems from Ancient English

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 "Canterbury Tales" (1387). Then, we hear the ancient echoes of Old English of the Lord's Prayer as it might have sounded in the 11th century....

10-06
27:45

Episode 3: Sleepy Poems of the Ocean

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 breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of the episode will lull you into peace. Full best results, listen with h...

10-03
27:29

Episode 2: Sleepy Poems About Sleep

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 ("Weary 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"). With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of the episode will lull you into peace. Full best re...

09-29
31:07

Episode 1: Sleepy Poems of the Forest

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 By Amos Russel Wells. With deep breathing, along with progressive relaxation, the gentle cadence of the episode will lull you into peace. Original guided meditation script written and performed ...

09-25
31:48

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