Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

"The Raven" and other poems suitable for the 10th and 11th grades.

A collection of over 30 poems for the entire family from kindergarten to adult. The majority of this poetry is from Common Core Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks.

Remember those biggies we loved in high school English? Well, here they are again performed by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti. You'll hear "Chicago" by Carl Sandberg, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson, "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, "Song VII ("My song has put off her adornments")" by Rabindranath Tagore, and who can ever forget "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.

"Annabel Lee" tells the story of young love cut short by tragedy. As the speaker (often assumed to be based on Poe himself, whose young wife died shortly before he wrote this poem) discusses his relationship with the now-deceased Annabel Lee, he presents the love between them as pure, eternal, and all-conquering. The love between the speaker and Annabel Lee may have been short-lived, but it remains too powerful to be defeated, even by death. Through describing this intensely idealized love, the poem argues that love is the strongest force on earth.

A short touching story about a man who is poor but becomes rich through an act of kindness.

Probably one of the most dissected seduction poems ever written, "To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649-60). It was published posthumously in 1681. This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s.

As we grow older and look back upon our lives, there are moments and decisions in those moments that changed our lives forever. Carpe diem, or seize the moment. Did we seize the right moment? These are nine poems that suggest the poet is remembering moments past.

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", known for its first line, "Come live with me and be my love," is a poem written by the English poet Christopher Marlowe and published in 1599 (six years after the poet's death). In addition to being one of the best-known love poems in the English language, it is considered one of the earliest examples of the pastoral style of British poetry in the late Renaissance period. The poem was the subject of a well-known "reply" by Walter Raleigh, called "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd".

As well as writing Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson also wrote the perennially popular A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), a collection of poems for younger readers. Many of Stevenson's greatest poems were included in that volume. Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti recites six of these favorites including "Looking-Glass River", "My Shadow", and "Sing Me a Song of a Lad that is Gone".

His power came from some great reservoirof spiritual life, else it could not have been so universal and so potent....

Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison, part of which he spent in Reading Gaol. About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his common-law wife (and promptly presenting himself and confessing to a policeman) on 29 March 1896; on 17 June, Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896 - the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. The poem is dedicated to him.

Temptation looms large in love poetry and religious poetry, but over the centuries, poets have described and explored the topic of temptation from a variety of different perspectives, choosing some very unusual metaphors to illustrate the dangers - or the delights - of temptation. Here are six all-time favorites.

The Christmas Banquet mentioned in the title is an annual feast, funded by an old misanthrope, in which the 10 most miserable people who can be found are gathered together for the holiday. Each year the guests chosen are different, but Gervaise Hastings, a man unafflicted by any obvious misfortune, is included year after year.

Thought by many to be the greatest Christmas story ever written. Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti takes us to a shabby apartment where love rules. This is a Christmas story but worth a listen any time of the year.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads Edgar Alan Poe's classic The Pit and the Pendulum, taking us back to the Spanish Inquisition. Vendetti's performance takes us into the dungeon where we can all but feel the sharp edge of the deadly pendulum brushing across our body, hear the ravenous rats scurrying about the cell, and worst of all, the final terror. The panic of Poe's narrator becomes palpable as you listen to this classic tale so well-narrated.

Eric Branson is still weeks from reaching his daughter in Colorado, but an opportunity to get there a whole lot faster has him participating in business he wanted no part of when he returned to the homeland. Just like in the old days, things change and go downhill fast when the action begins, and the mission he's agreed to will test even a war-hardened SEAL and private contractor.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, a tale of unspeakable devilry - of blatant, bacchanalian Satanism - that probes and prods the soul of America, whispering, "What is truth?" through the demonic cacophony of a Witch's Sabbath.

On August 5, the Coast Guard cutter Seabright put to sea at 13.30 hours, in response to information concerning the auxiliary sloop Hope, and its crew consisting of the owner and one guest. After steaming for three hours through heavy seas and gale-velocity winds, the Hope was encountered at a point four miles east of the Port Everglades offshore buoy. The sailboat was found derelict, and an attempt was made to take it in tow. There was only a single survivor, one man having been washed overboard in an attempt to aid the other.

The Fir Tree, a classic tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Masterfully narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, the fir tree finds that you don't always get what you want and you don't always want what you get.

Deception, trickery, and ambush threaten to derail Eric Branson's plans shortly after his arrival in South Louisiana. Eric soon learns that the sheriff's department Keith works for has been decimated by riots and terror attacks. The infrastructure here has also been severely crippled by the same hurricane that devastated South Florida, leaving the survivors hungry and desperate in a world where law and order is impossible to enforce. For Eric, reaching Louisiana is just another step in a difficult quest that will take him overland to the Colorado Rockies in search of his daughter.