Performing Poetry
On Sunday morning I read poetry at the Union with Wystan Auden. He read a great deal of his own poetry including his poems to Coghill and MacNeice. Both very fine conversation pieces I thought but read in that peculiar sing-song tonelessness colourless way that most poets have. I remember Yeats and Eliot and MacLeish, who read their most evocative poems with such monotony as to stun the brain. Only Dylan could read his own stuff.
Auden has a remarkable face and an equally remarkable intelligence but I fancy, though his poetry like all true poetry is all embracingly and astringently universal, his private conceit is monumental. The standing ovation I got with the ‘Boast of Dai’ of D. Jones In Parenthesis left a look on his seamed face, riven with a ghastly smile, that was compact of surprise, malice and envy. Afterwards he said to me ‘How can you, where did you, how did you learn to speak with a Cockney accent?’ In the whole piece of some 300 lines only about 5 are in Cockney. He is not a nice man but then only one poet have I ever met was—Archie Macleish. Dylan was uncomfortable unless he was semi-drunk and ‘on.’ MacNeice was no longer a poet when I got to know him and was permanently drunk. Eliot was clerically cut with a vengeance.
The only nice poets I’ve ever met were bad poets and a bad poet is not a poet at all—ergo I’ve never met a nice poet. That may include Macleish. For instance R. S. Thomas is a true minor poet but I’d rather share my journey to the other life with somebody more congenial. I think the last tight smile that he allowed to grimace his features was at the age of six when he realized with delight that death was inevitable. He has consigned his wife to hell for a long time. She will recognize it when she goes there.
From The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams, Yale University Press, 2012. Copyright © 2012 Swansea University.
4 comments:
Dame Judi Dench offered two suggestions for reading Shakespeare, and the suggestions apply to poetry in general:
- obey the meter
- obey the punctuation
Another basic principle taught by John Barton (Royal Shakespeare Company Guru) pertaining to Shakespeare but applicable to poetry in general
- there's scant stage direction so you're free to vocally experiment any way you want
Even with punctuation you can experiment with how the poem is recited, for example, you can read words separated by a series of commas as a list, and read through quickly, or you can read words separated by a series of commas as mental hesitations, new thoughts or a progression of ideas slowing coming to mind
Regarding the above comment, I would say that some sneaky poets dare you to defy the punctuation for it is mere trickery. You might find more meaning in ignoring it and inserting your own. But not many poets would write like this, I'm sure.
I'm quite certain most poems could be read in a variety of ways, bringing to life different meanings each time. Certainly poetry should never sound dull or monotonous. What an insult to its energy and lifesource to minimize it to only combinations of words. If the reader is not excited about the poem, he shouldn't be reading it to others.
"I remember Yeats and Eliot and MacLeish, who read their most evocative poems with such monotony as to stun the brain. Only Dylan could read his own stuff." ... What a shame.
"look on his seamed face, riven with a ghastly smile, that was compact of surprise, malice and envy" ... Lovely. :)
Thank you for sharing this, Glenn.
P.S. I have had the most fun reading Hamlet, every word aloud in a British accent, and in the bathtub of course. Perhaps that is truly the key for reading Shakespeare. ;)
Okay, so I just went to read another poem and thought of you and this punctuation topic. Here is the opening:
"Gypsy dressed, the night sky
smooths her cloudy skirts"
So if I read it "as written" and completely straightforward, I see a girl dressed like a gypsy and a night sky smoothing the girl's fluffy, light-as-air skirts.
But if I isolate the first line, I read it as saying the night sky is gypsy dressed (dressed like a gypsy). Ever changing, ever moving, beyond grasp.
And if I isolate the first line and also remove the comma, I read that this gypsy girl dressed the night sky herself. What a power, what a magical beauty to wave her fingers and star the sky herself! And perhaps "dressed" means that the girl cared for and bandaged the wounds of the night sky; she is its nurse.
You see how much more meaning I have packed into one line by defying the writer? Perhaps she intended all this, and perhaps she did not. But the poem is mine now, and I am free to make it more and different with my own voice and mind, as every reader is. What a shame to neglect the possibilities. Most readers waste all the magic in poetry by just reading it instead of smoking it and holding their breath until it gets them high.
Here's the poem I referenced, should you like to read the entire piece:
http://mamaneedsshoes.blogspot.com/2012/10/reaping-wind.html
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