[Arthur Seeley]

It is safe to tackle many aspects of what we read here on the forum, this was a good image, the metre was well sustained, rhyming was effective etc but one difficulty that will exist when we are reading poetry from poets around the world is the 'musicality' of the poetry.
Poetry is essentially to be read aloud but I am a Northern Englishman, Yorkshire to be exact, and my vowel sounds are distinctively different from any American or Australian voice. For me to read aloud the poetry of some one from Alabama , say, is like playing the violin concerto on a trombone, it doesn't sound the way the composer wrote it or conceived itit.
Is it legitimate to critique this aspect of another's work?

[Adam Elgar]

I don't think we can "critique" it, particularly if we haven't heard the poem being read by the accent that's different from our own. Certainly we may mention features that would be apparent in a reading, or we may query how the poet is pronouncing a certain word or phrase.

The nearest thing to a discussable topic of this kind that I've encountered in workshopping is transatlantic differences in stress. I remember getting into a tangle in a workshop on another board until I realised that the poet was stressing "dictator" on the first syllable, as is standard in US English. In a poem of my own Americans had the same problem with the UK and Australian stressing of "combatant".

But to venture into qualitative or comparative evaluation of accents - that would be perilous (if I'm understanding you correctly, Arthur). Recently Alan Wickes posted his delightful northern English reading of three poems by (southern English) Maz Griffiths. I got the impression that his accent was felt not to be "right" by some listeners.

[Arthur Seeley]

I think you are right Adam. Way way back in the early days of computing with a Spectrum I found a programme that allowed me to code my speech and play the numbers back and it would 'talk' to me. I spent a good part of two weeks codifying 'Daffodils' and was greatly surprised when my computer read it back with a deep Yorkshire accent.
Mind you given that Wordsworth was a Cumbrian my reading might have been close to his reading.

[John Whitworth]

In Robert Browning's poem 'Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister' I long found a problem with the lines:

I, the Trinity, illustrate,
Drinking watered orange pulp,
In three sips the Arian frustrate,
While he drains his at one gulp.

The a rhymes don't seem any good. Then one day it came to me that Browning pronounced the word ilLUSTrate, which solves the problem.

He also pronounced obese OH-beez and not, as we tend to do, oh-BEESS. That's the rhyme obese/robe ease. Of course there are lots more - Pope's 'tay' for 'tea', Yeats' 'FANatic' for 'faNATic'.

Many people snobbishly suppose that John Gielgud's pronunciation is closer to Shakespeare's than Charlton Heston's, whereas I am fairly sure that the opposite is the case.

If you should ever visit Dorchester, go to the museum where you can hear William Barnes' poems read in a Dorset dialect. They sound quite beautiful.

[Julie Steiner]

Most of what I've learned on this site, I've learned when I've blithely ventured a comment based on an assumption, only to be surprised when others say that they see (or hear) the matter differently. So I think we just have to blunder along together as best we can, maintaining good humor and helpfulness as we stumble into things in the dark.

(And any reading that conveys Maz's wit and passion is in exactly the right accent. Alan got it spot-on.)

[Will Gourley]

Arthur, excellent question because poetry is more stage than page for many. Sound gets in the way of sense when the music is off for some readers. I echo Adam's advice to ask the poet if an apparent sour note might be due to a pronunciation problem. Julie's good humor is also helpful when word traveling.

In that mode, you must tell me what the only way to pronounce "Yorkshire" is, and why "program" is not valuable because it is an ink saver. I just don't know why you Brits persist in degrading the English language. If American is good enough for Donald Trump, Sara Palin, and George W. Bush, it should be standard throughout the world. What does Jesus speak, after all?
Cheers wkg
'Tis a gift to speak in tongues, 'tis a gift to be in Rome

[Maryann Corbett]

Sometimes it's possible to get information about different dialectal pronunciations of a word before a poem gets to the boards here, but you have to suspect a difference so that you look the word up. Here's the tool:

howjsay.com