Poets reading

„Poetry readings“ boomen in den Staaten, und das droht noch zuzunehmen nach der Millionenspende für das Poetry magazine. Aber ist das wünschenswert?

But anyone who has sat through the typical poetry reading — the recitation of difficult verse in a strange, singsongy voice; the rambling preamble about the experience that led to the epiphany that led to the idea that led to the poem; the knowing murmurs that accompany the hint of a joke, whatever the punch line — understands why George Orwell, in his essay “Poetry and the Microphone,“ called the live reading a “grisly thing.“ …
Poetry readings don’t have to be grisly. A skillful reader plus a knowledgeable listener can add up to an instructive encounter. The critic Helen Vendler says that when good poets read, “what is transmitted is not only an individual style of thought but an individual intonational style“ that sharpens her sense of how a poet relates to his own work and makes her aware of new inflections. But few of us have read as much poetry as Vendler, and relatively few American poets know how to avoid the pitfalls of reading aloud (British poets tend to be more adept at public presentation). The most common of these is the tendency to lapse into a sort of quivering, nasal incantation, in which the voice trails upward, uncertainly, at the end of a line. This mannerism lends an oracular cast to much modern poetry, as if the poets were delivering dire prognostications or trying to awaken in the masses some sense of religious awe. But this “poetry voice,“ as one poet I know calls it, is actually the result of a technical error. It came into the world with the kind of free verse William Carlos Williams made popular, which, since it features lines broken in unexpected places, leaves the reader unsure where to pause. (Williams himself didn’t read that way until after he’d had a stroke.)

/ Judith Shulevitz, NYT *) 1.12.02