Philip Larkin on Reading Poems Aloud
Taken from a note by Larkin on an LP record of The Whitsun Weddings ,
Marvell Press / Listen Records, [1965]
I have never seen why poems need to be read aloud. Anyone so bereft of aural
imagination that he can't hear what the words sound like in his own mind is
not likely to get far with them on any other terms. And what you gain on the
sound you lose on the sense: think of all the mishearings, . . . the
submergence of rhyme, the disappearance of stanza-shape, even the comfort of
knowing how far you are from the end! No, the proper medium for the modern
meditative non-communal poem is the silent eye on the printed page.
However, I suppose it can be said that when we have really absorbed a poem,
. . . there comes a moment when we want to hear it read as its author would
read it. . . . It was very much in these two minds that the forthcoming
recording of The Whitsun Weddings was made. . . ."
Quoted in the bookseller's catalogue from Ulysses (London) July 1995, s.v.
item 664.
Ernest Slyman
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