The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor, credited to Wallace Irwin, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor by Wallace Irwin. Read in English by Bruce Kachuk. The comic genius of Wallace Irwin is boldly evident in this saga of the daily life and romantic aspirations of a humble but fervent New York City transit worker. In sonnet form we follow our hero's romantic challenges in his wooing of Pansy, the love of his dreams, and through Irwin's skill as a poet share in the classic tribulations that follow, "I got the zing from Pansy's orb / Which says, 'Dry out now, Shorty, --please absorb!'". Irwin's poetic virtuosity is brashly displayed in his use of the everyday jargon of New York City, adding both realism and brilliance to our understanding of and subsequent empathy for the daily trials of a hard working streetcar conductor and those he meets, "The yap that kicks and rings a deadhead call / Must either spend or else get off the car". Irwin takes us on a comedic streetcar ride through a life - a ride which is both amusing and instructive with frequent flashes of both wisdom and folly - leaving us with the prophetic and invaluable advice: "Up against Love the Candy Kid is nix; / The Porous Plaster wins because it sticks". - Summary by Bruce Kachuk

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor
• Author credits: Wallace Irwin
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 3
• Listed recording duration: 27:57

Catalogue topics

• romance
• love
• Courtship
• humorous poetry
• yearning
• working life

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 8:45
2. 01 - Prologue and Sonnets I to IX — 7:45
3. 02 - Sonnets X to XXII and Epilogue — 11:27

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.