Matthew Weiner Performs Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems for Audible
July 19 2016 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Listen to the Evocative Poems That Inspired
the Hit Television Show Mad Men, Available as an Audio Collection
for the First Time
Audible Studios, a production arm of Audible.com, today
announced the release of writer, director and producer Matthew
Weiner’s narration of Frank O’Hara’s pioneering poetry collection
Lunch Poems, first published in 1964. Weiner, who has cited Lunch
Poems as a tremendous influence on his creative approach to the
award-winning Mad Men, now adds his own voice to O’Hara’s
distinctive verse with this Audible performance, exactly nine years
after the show’s premiere. This bewitching new recording is now
available for download at audible.com/LunchPoems.
“When I was asked to read Lunch Poems it scared me,
because I love Frank O’Hara’s voice and didn’t want mine to get in
the way,” said Weiner. “His work became a part of Mad
Men not only as a touchstone of the period, but more
importantly, it supported my emotional purpose for the show, which
was to say that our inner lives are timeless. Getting a chance to
live in his work this way by reading it out loud made me appreciate
the joy and pain that he seems to effortlessly capture. Of course,
as a writer, it is a gift to truly experience the construction of
someone’s work this way and, as a person, it made me miss him and
wish we could go and grab a bite.”
“At Audible, we strive to attract creatives of all stripes to
the art of audio performance,” said Audible EVP and Publisher Beth
Anderson. “Matthew Weiner’s interpretation underscores how personal
and intimate an audio performance can be, and how tightly it can
connect with a creator’s larger artistic vision.”
With a 30-day membership trial at Audible, new listeners can
enjoy any one audiobook, including this performance of Lunch Poems,
free.
In addition to Weiner, among the acclaimed performers who have
narrated works of literature for Audible are Maggie Gyllenhaal,
Lily Collins, Thandie Newton, Emma Thompson, Rosamund Pike, Dan
Stevens, James Franco, Jesse Eisenberg, Kate Winslet and Tim
Robbins. In 2013, Audible Studios won its first Grammy Award, for
its production of Janis Ian’s memoir Society’s Child, and also won
the Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year, for Colin Firth’s
performance of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.
Audible, the world’s largest seller and producer of downloadable
audiobooks and other spoken-word content, invented and
commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997, and has
since been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook
download segment. In 2015, Audible members downloaded an average of
more than 17 books over the course of the year. Two thirds of new
Audible members are first-time audiobook buyers.
ABOUT AUDIBLE, INC.
Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary
(NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading provider of premium digital spoken
audio information and entertainment, offering customers a new way
to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible was created to
unleash the emotive music in language and the habituating power and
utility of verbal expression. Audible content includes more than
300,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers,
broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and
business information providers. Audible is also the preeminent
provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes
Store.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160719005491/en/
Audible.comEsther Bochner, 973-820-0781bochnere@audible.com
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