David, when you say: 'I always notice with my own poems, as a rule of
thumb, that I can do one performance only, and after that it becomes
mechanical. The moment is gone.' it doesn't ring true to me in my readings.
So this is a personal thing perhaps, for all of us? I find, perhaps from my
experience in sound poems, where, as in a jazz performance, every time is
new in one small way or another. Performance, in this case, even of the
written poems, alters partly due to something else you mentioned that can't
travel, the ambience, which includes the audience & its participation in
the event.
Most of our sound poems (mine & Stephen Scobie's and my co-written pieces
for Re: Sounding) are 'texts' but they are also only beginnings, like
heads for jazz improvs. So a record of some kind or other will help, a tape
or whatever, but I confess we shy from that because we know each
performance is different.
So that's sound poetry, but the written poems are, for me, 'scored' (in the
sense Charles Olson had) to help anyone read them aloud, as close as
possible to what the author hoped for.
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
the heart in its cage stands up
desiring fine instruments
Michele Leggott
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