Maryann
I think I agree with Didi Mendez: many poets do a lackluster job with their own work aloud. As I said above I've just finished listening to Norton's CD
anthology and quite a few of the readings are flat. When actors are called in (Ian McKellen, Ossie Davis, Julie Harris) the texts come alive.
But Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur et al. are rather tame. Sylvia Plath, on the other hand, is downright scary.
Mendez argues that poets need to spend more time with their poems. Where to pause, comma? colon? What about between stanzas? Actors labor long and hard to learn how a line should be delivered.
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