Should great poems be seen and not heard?
Friday July 11, 2003
Jim Lewis has obviously not had good experience of poetry readings -- why he was chosen to review the British Library’s recently released CD collection of recorded poets (the likes of Pound, Eliot, Frost & Gertrude Stein) for Slate is beyond me. He takes the now-outdated Modernist viewpoint, assuming from the beginning that “Modern poems are like Victorian children: They should be seen and not heard. The essence lies on the page, not in the air, if only because so much of the authors' effort goes into effects that can only be printed: line length, enjambment, stanza form—all these disappear when voice becomes the medium.” But his thoughts about “the emergence of a new kind of voice—a poetry-reading voice” are provocative, and the article is studded with links to audio clips so that you can hear many of the poets’ voices for yourself, and that’s a good thing.
Comments
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
© 1974 Michael Loose