The Pleasure of Listening

[Angeline]

Sometime we get so caught up in the words on the page, we forget that poetry began with speech. It's a pleasure to listen to poetry being read aloud. You can hear the rhetoric and music of it.

Post poetry being read aloud here. All poets and styles of poetry are welcome. And we get to introduce each other to the poets and poems we love. So please come in and post those links!

Here is Frank O'Hara reading his poem, September 14, 1959

 

[theognis]

Sometime we get so caught up in the words on the page, we forget that poetry began with speech. It's a pleasure to listen to poetry being read aloud. You can hear the rhetoric and music of it.

Post poetry being read aloud here. All poets and styles of poetry are welcome. And we get to introduce each other to the poets and poems we love. So please come in and post those links!

Here is Frank O'Hara reading his poem, September 14, 1959

Here's an entire thread of such readings, a number of them by the poet himself or herself:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=841944

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

The sex lives of vegetables

Packing for the Future

My Last Erotic Poem

Lorna Crozier.

 

[Angeline]

Here's an entire thread of such readings, a number of them by the poet himself or herself:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=841944

I forgot you had started that thread. Thank you for linking it. Lots of good stuff there.

 

[Angeline]

Tess, love the Lorna, especially that last one.

Here's one especially for bogus: Litany by Billy Collins. It's my favorite ode to metaphor!

 

[theognis]

I forgot you had started that thread. Thank you for linking it. Lots of good stuff there.

No problem. And yes, there is a lot of good stuff there, still, but there was a lot more before so many readings were taken down due to claims of copyright infringement. I especially like the readings by the poets themselves, in their own voices, but several of those were taken down, unfortunately.

 

[theognis]

Sarah Kay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0snNB1yS3IE#t=65

I found this TED talk on spoken word interesting.

 

[Angeline]

Here are two poets

both of whom I saw read at St. Marks Church in NYC (when I was a teenager, which may explain a lot lol). For those who think slam is a new phenomenon, I present

John Giorno

and for pure wonderful weirdness, the incomparable Helen Adam and her "Cheerless Junkie Song."

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Patrick Lane

Margaret Atwood (one of my favourites)

P.S. WOW Some of these are powerful.

 

[pelegrino]

The idea of recited poetry was, as this thread suggests, the original concept of poetry itself. In other words poetry was a performing art like theatre, music or dance.
Most poetry remains thus to me. Mute reading deprives it of so much more there is in it.
In trying to appreciate its "rhetoric" and "music" (irrespective of its message or its quality, which anyway is supposed to be enhanced), we cannot but be aware of the quality of the performance.
We are not all born performers, so a bad performance may destroy a piece which otherwise is fine.
I have only heard six pieces today out of the ones submitted here by the following poets:

Frank o' Hara,
Lorna Crozier,
Billy Collins
John Giorno

I thought that the first performance by Frank o' Hara was a flat miserable rendering of a poem which may be good otherwise.
The other three poets are natural born performers with developed skills and personal style.
Especially the last one, John Giorno, had a very difficult job to do with all those repeated lines and he brought them out amazingly well!

The performance issue will always be there in any live reading. Perhaps it should be left to trained people or to naturally gifted.

 

[Angeline]

The idea of recited poetry was, as this thread suggests, the original concept of poetry itself. In other words poetry was a performing art like theatre, music or dance.
Most poetry remains thus to me. Mute reading deprives it of so much more there is in it.
In trying to appreciate its "rhetoric" and "music" (irrespective of its message or its quality, which anyway is supposed to be enhanced), we cannot but be aware of the quality of the performance.
We are not all born performers, so a bad performance may destroy a piece which otherwise is fine.
I have only heard six pieces today out of the ones submitted here by the following poets:

Frank o' Hara,
Lorna Crozier,
Billy Collins
John Giorno

I thought that the first performance by Frank o' Hara was a flat miserable rendering of a poem which may be good otherwise.
The other three poets are natural born performers with developed skills and personal style.
Especially the last one, John Giorno, had a very difficult job to do with all those repeated lines and he brought them out amazingly well!

The performance issue will always be there in any live reading. Perhaps it should be left to trained people or to naturally gifted.

In each case, the artist was reading (or in Adams' case, singing) his or her own works. I sort of agree with you though about O'Hara's reading and yet he was a great poet.

John Giorno wrote a lot of repetition into his poems. It was one of his things that he did when he wrote poems.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

both of whom I saw read at St. Marks Church in NYC (when I was a teenager, which may explain a lot lol). For those who think slam is a new phenomenon, I present

John Giorno

That leaves me exhausted.

 

[Angeline]

That leaves me exhausted.

When I saw him read, he did a long poem about Watergate that began with, "You are floating on a river, you are floating on a river..." and went on for around 20 minutes. It was both amazing and exhausting.

 

[Angeline]

Forgive me if you have seen this here before..... It's a beautiful presentation that showcases the genius of Langston Hughes~

Weary Blues.

 

[Angeline]

Seamus Heaney Blackberry Picking

 

[Angeline]

A wonderful reading of the great (and repetitious) I am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

 

[Angeline]

Charles Bukowski reading The Secret of My Endurance