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Unread 03-02-2018, 08:09 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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Default Poetry and its relationship to the spoken word.

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I will say at the outset that, to my ears, poetry is the voice of silence speaking to me. To break the silence by hearing a poem recited out loud – especially if I’m not familiar with it beforehand – is inevitably underwhelming to my senses. At worst, it drowns out my own interior voice.

It’s a fine line. On the one hand, the assonance and rhythms and rhymes of a piece of poetry are supremely important. And all auditory. On the other hand, the catch for me is that I have to discover those sounds inside my own head by reading it, sometimes out loud, most times silently, always repeatedly, sometimes stopping to dwell, then starting over... A sonnet can take me an hour to read from beginning to end.

In a poem by Aaron Novick posted (presently) on the metrical board tagged "Poem for Morton Feldman" (“Indeterminacy”) he evokes the musical sound of Morton Feldman, a composer I had not heard before. His music, as I found out, is eclectic and spacious and lingering and so many other things. Once I had a grasp of Feldman’s musical voice I was then better able to understand the poem’s conceit. To his credit, Aaron has evolved the poem on the page to resemble the sound of the music by altering the space in the poem. It is a poem I would love to hear read aloud in a way that echoes the music. Performance art. Is it fair to compare a poetry reading to a live performance of music?

That is not to say that poetry read aloud can’t be done well. (It would be good to hear from poets here on the Sphere whom they enjoy hearing read poetry to an audience out loud.) In my limited experience, there are very few that do a poem justice reading it aloud. Most notably for me is Garrison Keillor. Not his own poetry, but the poetry of others. The quality of his voice and his ability to synthesize all aspects a poem (assonance, rhythm, content/meaning, etc.) is really excellent.

To be fair, there are other things that I enjoy about attending poetry readings. The company, for one. The coffee for another. The sheer act of paying homage to the art of writing poetry by making a pilgrimage to a library, a bookstore, a café. All those things are enjoyable. But the poem being read aloud? Not so much.

That’s my take. Help me understand.
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Unread 03-02-2018, 08:14 AM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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Fortunately, we are not restricted to an either/or! It's there, when you want it to speak, and there, when you do not.

Sylvia Plath is far better heard, than simply read. Dr. Seuss. Not sure I would tolerate him -- or, in truth, that the man could have even had a career -- were it not for read-alouds

Jennifer

Last edited by Jennifer Reeser; 03-02-2018 at 08:17 AM.
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Unread 03-02-2018, 08:20 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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Thank you Jennifer. I will listen to her.
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Unread 03-02-2018, 08:36 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Hi Jim,

You might appreciate Larkin's thoughts here from a 1982 interview. Grumpy uncle Phil wasn't keen either and, though one could blame his general misanthropy and distaste at socialising, he does make some interesting and valid points.

'Hearing a poem, as opposed to reading it on the page, means you miss so much—the shape, the punctuation, the italics, even knowing how far you are from the end. Reading it on the page means you can go your own pace, taking it in properly; hearing it means you’re dragged along at the speaker’s own rate, missing things, not taking it in, confusing “there” and “their” and things like that. And the speaker may interpose his own personality between you and the poem, for better or worse. For that matter, so may the audience. I don’t like hearing things in public, even music. In fact, I think poetry readings grew up on a false analogy with music: the text is the “score” that doesn’t “come to life” until it’s “performed.” It’s false because people can read words, whereas they can’t read music. When you write a poem, you put everything into it that’s needed: the reader should “hear” it just as clearly as if you were in the room saying it to him. And of course this fashion for poetry readings has led to a kind of poetry that you can understand first go: easy rhythms, easy emotions, easy syntax. I don’t think it stands up on the page.'

I've never been to a poetry reading btw.
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Unread 03-02-2018, 08:42 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I can't track it down, but there's an essay or interview with Philip Larkin that I recall in which he said that he didn't like to go to poetry readings since he preferred to hear the poem in his own head and to see it on the page, and I basically agree with him. Leaving aside the important fact that most poets are not very good performers, I often prefer to hear and experience the poem as it is shaped through myself and not someone else. For me, that's one of the "points" of writing a poem, that you are creating a stand-alone unit of words that embody an experience that is self-contained and doesn't require or invite another live human being (other than oneself) to give it life. Even if the poet reads well, it is extraneous to the poem in a way, and it deprives me of one of the pleasures of reading poetry, which is to figure out for myself how a given poem should be read and to apply my own ideas of tempo, expression, cadence, etc.

And sometimes I actually feel that a poet does violence to his/her own poems. I don't think I ever would have loved Millay's poetry if I had only come to it through recordings of her reading it. It's almost like she doesn't even get her own poetry.

The best part of a poetry reading is going out for drinks afterwards.
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Unread 03-02-2018, 08:46 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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I'm less interested in the question of poetry readings than in the question of silence. Or as Paul Claudel put it: "Le poème n'est point fait de ces lettres que je plante comme des clous, mais du blanc qui reste sur le papier." That's pretty much how I feel about it.

Cheers,
John
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Unread 03-02-2018, 09:01 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I'm not sure I'm getting your point. Are you saying that you don't like to hear a poem read aloud, even if you're the one doing the reading? You'd rather "hear" it entirely in your head?
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Unread 03-02-2018, 09:08 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Roger - I think I quoted from the Larkin you were referring to. We cross-posted!
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Unread 03-02-2018, 09:13 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Thanks, Mark. I hadn't noticed it.

You've never been to a poetry reading? Wow. They're generally quite boring, though, unless you know people and they take place in a bar.
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Unread 03-02-2018, 09:17 AM
Kevin Greene Kevin Greene is offline
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I'm not feeling very well today, so I'm not certain I can keep up if this thread develops, but I want to make a small contribution.

Many of us today are overwhelmed by---and desensitized to---the sights and sounds, messaging, conflict, and confections of the modern world. One does not have to go very far to see that communication has not been improved very much by technologies that have followed after the family piano. For me, and perhaps for others, poetry is a kind of sanctuary for sincere dialogue. That, obviously, doesn't sound quite right, but the reader brings as much to the words as does the poet. There is a dialogue conducted of sorts, or at least a pleasant and often challenging musing that occurs. That this might happen in a crowded room is suggested by the way we listen at the symphony.

There are distractions, of course, and other difficulties. At the poetry readings I have attended, I'm always bothered by the need to applaud so often. (Hahahhah! Does anyone remember snapping one's fingers or was that only done in the movies?) It's difficult to get 'settled' at a modern poetry reading. Pieces are short, difficult, ironic, and fabricated often enough to show poetry's very limitations. And poetry that is 'too' accessible is perhaps looked on as 'corny' or even childish.

If I had my way, I'd create a separate category here at the Sphere for performance pieces. It need not be characterized as, or compared with, light opera or Pops or opera buffa, but it would be nice for many of us to be able to embrace those styles without being misunderstood. Anyone who has heard a really good performance of "The Cremation of Sam McGee" will know what I'm getting at. Alternately, think of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Folks can dither about that, but I was enraptured by his recorded performance. Did I follow it all at the time? No, but meaning was not all I was listening for.

Hope I haven't rambled. I'm going to have a lie down.
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