Haven't heard much of Bunting, Pound, Eliot read by themselves (a UBC, I
presume, reading of "Chomei at Toyama", is my favourite BB) but I am
curious about a phenomenon seemingly evident in the current innovative
poetries. This premise is based on a flimsy "research group" of one,
but she has a damned good ear so it may add up to something. Lyn has
not read much in this tradition & has had difficulty with the visual
text, ie reading from the page: she has, however, on hearing Drew Milne,
Miles Champion & Tom Raworth reading, on separate occasions at the KSW,
thoroughly enjoyed the work - sound, image even meaning, she remarked,
came through in an unexpected way. I think this may be because the
aural experience side-steps "working memory" which, if I understand it
correctly, is very much part of the reading experience, ie, we hold the
first part of a sentence in "wm" until we reach the end & then put the
whole thing together into its sense. (This could explain the difficulty
of actually reading recent JH Prynne works: the sentence does not go
where experience expects it to, so you start again, & again...)
A common experience?
Kamau Brathwaite has made a wonderful listening experience, always close
to "bursting into song", in fact, the two poems I've heard (one on the
Beeb yonks ago, from the Making of the Drum in his New World Trilogy,
the other in the Exact Change Yearbook CD) both end with sung lines.
Who are the not-to-be-missed readers among the living? Accounts from
Kevin Killian at the Buffalo list certainly would have Alice Notley in
that category.
Pete.
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