the line breaks are great. the point is painful.
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 16:33:23 -0700, Frank Parker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear, Alison,
> Before expanding my email message window I noticed these line breaks in the
> message "Reading &c" you sent. I thought the breaks interesting. If not,
> I'll go back to watering the garden.
> - Frank
> ***********************
>
> Why is it that almost all poets sound as if they were
> trained in the same
> read-a-poem school?
>
> I can't help feeling that there is something about poetry
> which draws all
> readers of poetry, all reciters of poetry, all performers of
> poetry, all
> Big-Poetry-Issue street sellers of poetry, towards roughly
> the same sort of
> voice. The poetry voice.
>
> 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 probably would not be expressing these thoughts on the
> churchy nature of
> the poetry voice if I had not found myself the other day
> listening to Andrew
> Motion. The Poet Laureate is presenting a series on
> Radio 4 in which he is
> grandly surveying British poetry, past and present.
>
> Every time I hear him reading poetry, the thing that hits me
> is not whether
> the poetry is good or bad but how ecclesiastical his voice
> tends to be. Not
> in a grand cathedral manner, more in a plain, parish
> church, small-but-brave
> congregation sense.
>
> &c
>
--
Sharon Brogan
http://www.sbpoet.com
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