On Mar 10, 2005, at 00:06, Alison Croggon wrote:
>
> The poetry voice? It’s sing-songy without being musical. It’s
> incantatory
> without being hypnotic. It’s slow, it’s monotone, it’s somewhat
> self-important and it’s always slightly reverential. It’s not unlike
> the
> voice of a clergyman who is doing the daily service on Radio 4 and
> wants to
> sound a bit like God without actually giving himself airs.
>
I'm curious how the Anglo-American poetry voice compares to the
Norwegian. The last issue of Jacket magazine happens to include (I
don't know why) a recording of Jan-Erik Vold reading his translation of
"The Day Lady Died" to jazz music. Jan-Erik Vold is one of the "grand
old men" of Norwegian poetry but has a very irreverent style even now
(it's no coincidence he's translated Frank O'Hara). His poetry voice
has pretty much defined poetry voice for whole generations here, I
think every poet reading after him has emulated him either consciously
or un-.
It seems very different from the "plain, parish church, small-but-brave
congregation" style you describe. The Norwegian style is full of starts
and stops, words drawn out long and clipped short, not many changes in
volume but certainly in pitch; it sounds almost like I imagine ancient
Greek would have sounded with its supposedly pitch-based system of
accents and emphasis of long and short syllables.
I'm not sure I actually like this style; it can sometimes be
appropriate, but more often sounds terribly affected, at least coming
from those who haven't mastered it like Vold has. Anyhow, the
Vold-O'Hara recording is at:
http://jacketmagazine.com/26/vold-ohara.html
Less like God and more like a weird hermit soothsayer who might be wise
and might be full of crock. ;)
--Knut
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