Well put, Daniel. On the whole I agree, especially about performance
poets today, the ones I've heard striking me more as stand-up comedians
than poets, their work an easy entertainment.
The poem on the page demands a lot, including perhaps slightly
different readings each time, even for such an accomplished reader of
his or her own work as Robert Creeley or Phyllis Webb.
Stephen Scobie & I do even our sound poems with page in hand, partly to
remind the audience that what they're hearing is a poem, not a play or
something like that.
The other thing, which Yevtushenko reminds us of, is that Russian is a
language given to high rhyme while English is not, & those of us who
work the open form hard don't make work that is easy to memorize.
As to the too personal implied in recitation, I agree completely.
Doug
On 21-Jun-05, at 5:57 PM, Daniel Zimmerman wrote:
> I remember Yevtushenko declaiming long sections of Babi Yar at Buffalo
> in the early 60s, scornful of American poets who read from the
> page--no lectern, just himself onstage. He cut an impressive, if
> somewhat alien, even 19th century, figure; had I known Russian, and
> had I grown up in Russia, I might have appreciated his performance
> better, without the lag for translation (read from the page, if memory
> serves!).
>
> When poetry foregrounds personal expression, e.g., personal response
> to an 'external' or 'public' situation, skilful recitation might prove
> most effective (as in a high school production of Spoon River
> Anthology--but hey: that involved dead characters talking, a special
> case), though it runs the risk of equating (for the audience and,
> worse, for the poet) poet and poem, inventor and invention. If a
> 'confessional' poet resorts to recitation in a poem about 'internal'
> or 'private' experience, it seems to me to go beyond such risk and to
> topple headlong into Narcissus' pool.
>
> One of the challenges of contemporary 'performance poety,' I think,
> lies in the handling of the boundaries between those two kinds of
> work, particularly in terms of keeping the audience in mind. A
> difficulty I've had in appreciating some such performances arises from
> my impression (which I had also from Yevtushenko) that the poet has
> practiced the recitation, has memorized it, alone, or perhaps before a
> mirror (a dreadful audience). Some of the more courageous, I suppose,
> 'workshop' their performances among friends and, more rarely, before
> more critical audiences.
>
> I usually value the fluent re-presentation of the poem read from the
> page: it underlines the difficulty that a reader might have, the
> possibility of different performances, whereas a recited performance
> seems to present a single authoritative version (how often, after all,
> do poets 'cover' each others' work in performance?). I like to hear
> the poet struggle (and to struggle myself, when reading my own work)
> to move the poem from the page to the audience in a way analogous to
> the way the reader has to struggle to move the poem from the page to
> himself or herself. It makes the poem (as event, at least) seem at
> least mildly perilous, while performance (even as increasingly better)
> makes the poet seem (increasingly) glib and the poem (increasingly)
> fixed through its thorax with a pin. (Having heard it masterfully
> performed, why buy the book rather than the CD or DVD?)
>
> ~ Dan
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
-- bring lust into the library
or it is hell.
Lisa Robertson
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