Word: poem
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...oversimplified a complaint as it may be, it would be unwise for the poetic community to dismiss the confounding quality of contemporary poetry entirely. It is often quite difficult to divine meaning from poems written today—even for those intimately involved in reading and writing them—particularly on the first go-round. This stems from the myriad ways of experiencing a given poem and each way’s respective degree of appeal. Readings based on analysis—a summary of the narrative thread or a pinpointing of the poem’s speaker...
...twentieth century, the visual layout of the poem—line breaks, indentations, punctuation, stanza breaks, spaces, etc.—has become increasingly important, replacing emphasis on the auditory landscape of rhyme and alliteration. The disappearance of these poetic devices, which formerly served to aurally delineate the poem, has resulted in an ambiguity as to how the poem’s visual arrangement informs the way it’s to be read aloud. Since the primary sense being used in reciting poems today is sight, the poet has shifted his aims to stimulate the eye, at times privileging...
Nevertheless, poetry has an oral component, and though it is underemphasized, there is something awoken in any poem when it is actually spoken out loud. Echoing sounds connect lines that are semantically distinct. An emphasis placed on a key syllable can release meaning in the same way a sound wave can shatter glass. Listening to a poem is to hear language in its most primitive usage: expression of the unapparent. But what happens when no one, save for the most astute listeners, can understand what is being expressed? Does this not defeat the original point of even talking...
...carpenter with wood. It is the most immediate pleasure of a reading, the way the sound of an instrument pleases more immediately than the composer’s melody. I remember, when Simon Armitage read in Houghton Library earlier this semester, sitting in rapt attention to a repetitive poem (that I would have probably rushed through had I been reading it) simply by virtue the sound of his voice. I ended up savoring the repetition because he recited it so beautifully. Seamus Heaney’s reading voice seems to be composed of the sounds of nature...
...poet’s voice that you start listening to the words. The voice conveys the emotion and cadence of his expression, and so an interest in the words naturally arises. However oblique the concatenation of lines and images, the voice sustains your attention, and you let the poem to begin to work within...