Sydney Opera House mural" Salute to Five Bells " by John Olsen inspired by Slessor's " Five Bells"
" Kenneth Slessor" A biography by Geoffrey Dutton.
Kenneth Slessor (1901 - 1971 ) another well known Australian poet was a successful journalist and Australia's official war correspondent in WW2. His poem ' Five Bells' was voted Austalia's favourite poem.It's the story of his friend Joe Lynch who fell off a Sydney ferry and drowned in 1927 on his way to a party on the north shore. A mural ' Salute to Five Bells' by John Olsen at the Opera House is inspired by Slessor's poem.
I have always found the reading of poetry (particularly by the authors cringe making) Slessor explains why much better than I could.
" Whether or not poets should be encouraged to read their own works aloud is a question on which I have always been sceptical. For one thing many good writers are bad readers - and many 'professional' readers ( not to mention the abominal elocutionists) have tricks and mannerisms which almost totally destroy the poetry.
For another thing, I sometimes wonder whether - in spite of the sentimentalists who talk so much about the bards and jongleurs - poetry of a tenuous or a certain haunting kind can be read aloud at all, no matter how proficient the reading, without depriving the listener of some of those marginal pleasures which are part of the act of reading of the printed page.
For example,in eye reading a line of verse the reader usually has two other lines
( the line before and the line after )on the periphery of his consciousness and this casts an aura of context over the words he is in the act of reading. The ear cannot apprehend what has gone before or is to come but the mind's ear can hear the sounds of spoken words,just as the deaf Beethoven could hear the music he composed."
It would be interesting to know if any one shares the view of Mr. Slessor and myself.
ReplyDeleteIt may be the intersection of apples and oranges.
ReplyDeleteThe two forms are different experiences. I wouldn't call reading better. It's more involving. Maybe. You are creating the sound in your mind as you read. But the listener is active, too, putting sense to sound, and tying past and present together, anticipating the future.
Some poetry is written for sight more than sound. Some poetry is written to be spoken. There are people with the skill to read well (something that doesn't appear out of the clear blue, but comes from practice, if at all). Some of us can barely speak, much less read as performance.
Bad reading hurts, even if it gives you some insight into the writer's intentions.