James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Tune of Myself”

Word: With the unhappy cross­ing of James Earl Jones, at age 93, we’re convey­ing again a put up from our archive–one fea­tur­ing Jones learn­ing two nice Amer­i­can poets, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whit­man. These learn­ings first appeared on our website in 2014.

For all its many flaws the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy nev­er strayed too far afield due to the deep properly of grav­i­tas in James Earl Jones’ voice. The omi­nous breath­ing, the echo impact, and that arrest­ing baritone—no quantity of danc­ing Ewoks may take away from his vocal per­for­mance. And although Jones’ expres­sive face has additionally automotive­ried many a movie, his unmis­tak­ready voice can provide even the sil­li­est of mate­r­i­al the load of an oil tanker’s anchor. So then imag­ine the impact when Jones reads from already weighty lit­er­a­ture by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whit­man? “Chills” solely begins to explain it. Simply above, hear him learn Poe’s “The Raven,” a poem whose rhymes and sing-song cadences con­jure up the mad obses­sion that mate­ri­al­izes as that the majority por­ten­tous and intel­li­gent of all of the winged crea­tures.

Whereas Vad­er and Poe seem to be nat­ur­al com­pan­ions, the learn­ing by Jones above of selec­tions from Whitman’s “Tune of Myself” additionally makes per­fect sense. As com­fort­ready on the stage as he’s earlier than the cam­eras, Jones has an excel­lent ear for the Shake­speare­an line, clear­ly good prepa­ra­tion for the Whit­man­ian, an “oper­at­ic line,” writes The Bro­ken Tow­er, “resulting from its brea(d)th.” Within the fact Whit­man sings in his expan­sive tran­scen­den­tal poem, “the physique, the physique politic, and the nation’s physique, are all lit­er­al­ly the stuff of the uni­verse, star­mud smat­tered and strewn from the uni­fy­ing explo­sion of our shared ori­gin.” There are few learn­ers, I aver, who may maintain such “stuff” togeth­er with the power and depth of voice as James Earl Jones. The report­ing above, of sec­tions 6–7 and 17–19, comes from a learn­ing Jones gave in Octo­ber of 1973 on the 92nd St. Y. Under, hear the com­plete report­ing, with sev­er­al extra stan­zas. Jones begins on the start­ning, rum­bling and bel­low­ing out these strains that trans­mute ego­tism into magazine­is­te­r­i­al, self­much less inclu­siv­i­ty:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fred­er­ick Douglass’s Fiery 1852 Speech, “The Imply­ing of July 4th for the Negro,” Learn by James Earl Jones

Darth Vader’s Voice: The Orig­i­nal Voice Ver­sus the Vocals of James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones Reads Oth­el­lo at White Home Poet­ry Jam

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Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness