[John Isbell]

Hi Roger,

I'm not sure your question is addressed to me, but if it is, my feelings about silence are fairly metaphysical. I believe poetry is a constant engagement with silence, the silence behind all things. Poetry readings to me are kind of a tangential question to that central point.

Cheers,
John

[Mark McDonnell]

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.

I really haven't, Roger. They just don't happen where I live in the uncultured wilds of the Staffordshire moorlands, and I've only been writing poetry with any degree of seriousness for about four years, so my younger days were sadly bereft of poetry readings too. And if I make the trek to the bright lights of some nearby metropolis (Manchester, say, or Stoke) it's generally with my family who would look at me extremely askance if I suggested an evening of poetry rather than a cinema/pizza combination. I really don't know anyone in 'real life' who reads, let alone writes, poetry. The Sphere is my life raft. I contributed a reading to the issue of Antiphon I was just published in, and it's the first time I've read one of my poems aloud for any kind of audience apart from my wife. Even she prefers to read them silently, as she can't help laughing at my 'serious' poetry voice.

I'd like to go to one, see what I'm missing. I imagine the first one I go to will be one that I read at. Like the old Billy Connolly line, on joining the territorial army aged 17: 'I jumped out of the first bloody plane I was ever in!'

Anyone who has heard a really good performance of "The Cremation of Sam McGee" will know what I'm getting at

Kevin, yes now that's a poem that needs to be read aloud. My dad used to have a good stab at it on Friday nights, along with 'Dangerous Dan McGrew' and selected Burns, so in that sense I've attended many poetry readings. Ha.

[Clive Watkins]

Larkin was right.

Clive

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Clive Watkins

Larkin was right.

Clive

Though I'll get in terrible trouble with several publishers, all of whom want me to give readings to sell books, I too usually agree with Larkin about readings. If you want me to buy a book, show me some sample poems on a page or a screen.

Theo Dorgan's reading has been the only exception.

[Jim Moonan]

Roger: 'Im 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?

In the end, I want to hear it all in my head (both with my own poetry and others) -- Though at different stages of writing a poem I will typically read it (or parts of it) aloud, but only to myself (and the dogs). It is a kind of amalgamation of the audible and the visual. Not unlike looking at a painting or a sculpture. For me, it's nearly impossible to separate sound from it's visual component and vice versa. There could be exceptions I'm not able to think of...

To John's mention of the relationship of silence and poetry... Yes, it feels like silence is speaking when I read a good poem. A singular sound forming potent words strung together that I'm slowly devouring. Then it reverberates for days.
x

[Susan McLean]

Wow, I must be the odd person out, because I have been to some terrific poetry readings, many of them at the West Chester poetry conference. Not all poems can be conveyed well when read aloud, and not all poets are good readers of their own poems. But Kay Ryan, for instance, had me in stitches with her droll introductions to her poems, and the poems themselves came off very well when read aloud. I was almost rolling on the floor laughing at Wendy Cope's reading. Dick Davis, Alicia Stallings, Sam Gwynn, Rhina Espaillat, Anna M. Evans, Dave Mason, Kim Addonizio, Michael Donaghy, just to name a few, have given splendid readings. I will admit that I walked out of a reading at the AWP conference at which famous poets sang some of my favorite poems. I couldn't bear to associate music that I actively disliked with poems that I loved. That is not to say that I don't appreciate a good musical setting of a poem, and I love many songs whose lyrics I consider to be good poetry as well.

Susan

[Kevin Greene]

All this talk about silence...

For me, it's a theological question. I don't believe silence exists. It may have once, but no longer. (I'm a music of the spheres kinda guy.)

Point the way for me, John. I'm intrigued.

N.B. I do recognize that there are those who cannot or will not hear.

[John Riley]

I've been to some readings in which there was a good joining of poem and voice. I don't think all poems, maybe most poems, even some great ones, are best read aloud. I don't reject the performance poem, although my problem with performance readings is the amount of ego that usually accompanies the poem drowns me. Much of it is as egotistical as a jack-leg preacher. I also have a tough time with the "poet voice," that well-practiced drone that sounds like bad Frost or Yeats imitations. Why do people do that?

[John Isbell]

Jim, I like how you put this: "it feels like silence is speaking when I read a good poem."

Kevin: I guess I'll start this way. I see the universe as fundamentally, even essentially without speech. Speech is an interloper. The problem is, we humans are phasic from infancy, and stepping through that web or veil of meaning into the world's essential silence is not easy.
This I believe is what good poetry does: it propels us through the veil of language, via language, and back into unutterable silence. A bit metaphysical, I know, but it's how I feel.
Similarly, two of my favorite moments in playing a 45 are lowering the needle into the groove and seeing it lift back out. A burst of extreme, patterned noise interrupts the primordial silence, and then silence is restored.
So, pretty much that. Meditation also opens that door: the mind is like a monkey who's on fire, say the Upanishads, how can you get it to sit still?

Cheers,
John

[Kevin Greene]

Thank you, John. That helps.

For me, I try to quiet the mind so that I can hear what lies beneath the silence. Does that make sense? That it's silence we hear when we're just not paying attention?