 Introduction to Audio Poetry
At root, poetry is an oral art. In totality of sound, meaning, emotion, and pleasure, the poem embodies its fullest experience for welcome listeners.
Hearing poets read their works reconnects listeners to poetry’s origins in orality: ancient poets speaking or singing their poems to the assembled tribe and clan.
Hearing the poem voiced by its author, listeners encounter language’s essential music as well as its rhythms and silences. They come to know the poet’s tone,
inflections, and pauses. They not only discover each as portal to the poem’s various pleasures but also enrich their own solitary reading and study.
Using current audio technology, listeners may hear the poet’s intimate performance at any time they like, and they can repeat the listening experience at their will.
Listeners thereby overcome boundaries of time and space that have limited potential audiences in the past. If one true goal of poetry is transport – to deliver the
self beyond the self – audio poetry provides contemporary means to enable as well as to accentuate this process.
You will need to download and install RealPlayer to play the audio clips on this page. |
