Poetry fans: do you enjoy it more when read silently, read aloud by you, or performed?

Cafe Society
1

Poll coming in a second.

On the other hand, screw that. I can’t be arsed. No poll.

I love a good poem, and I have a definite bias in favor of reading it aloud my ownself. I enjoy finding the rhythm of the language, of finding the author’s intent, of searching for my own interpretation in that process.

That said, I rarely enjoy poetry readings. In part that is because few poets in my experience are good performers; in part that’s because I process information best visually.

I have other thoughts on the subject but I’ll wait to see if the thread gains any traction first.

2

I would say I love reading a poem silently best, and then enjoy reading it aloud or hearing it read aloud by anyone in a private setting about equally. What I cannot abide is the standard sing-song tone adopted by most people who are reading poetry to an audience.

You know the one…

My LOVE (pause) is as a FEver LYing STILL (long pause)
For THAT which longer NURSeth the disEASE (longer pause)

Gag me.

3

I’m with you Skald, I like poetry best when read aloud by me. If I’m reading silently, I don’t get the effect of the rhythm (and sometimes read too fast to pick up all of the words, as I would with prose), and if someone else is reading, it’s never at the right pace for me. I can’t stand to listen to audiobooks for that reason (would you hurry up already!)

One exception would be a visual performance, like a Shakespeare play, where you can both hear the dialogue and see the action.

4

It depends on the poem, and on the reader. Some poems work really well for reading aloud, at least by someone who knows what he’s doing. There’s a real pleasure in hearing a good poem recited/performed/read really well. I’ve never gotten tired of hearing my Dad do “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” for instance.

But some poems actually work better on the page; and a bad reading of even a good poem is excruciating. (And as Skald said, not all poets are good performers.) So as a general rule, which certainly admits of exceptions, I’d prefer to read a poem for myself.

And that means, read silently, but slowly and carefully so that I hear the words in my head, getting the sounds as well as the sense. I could read it out loud, but the voice in my head is more versatile than the voice that comes out of my mouth.
A memory:

I’m sitting in sophomore high school English (American Lit.) class, reading ahead in the textbook, and I encounter, for the first time, Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells.” I read it silently to myself, and am blown away. I can hear the bells in my head as I read, and all the effects that Edgar was trying for work. I suspect it might be fun to recite aloud, but I am seriously doubtful that I could do it justice.

Then, at the teacher’s direction, the class reads the poem aloud. I forget how we did this—I think we read it in unison, but we might have gone around the room and each taken a few lines or a stanza or something. And the class’s reading, to my ears, fell flat. It didn’t even begin to do the poem justice.

What I’ve been annoyed by, in poetry readings/recordings I’ve heard, is the opposite: people (sometimes trained actors) who read a poem as if it were a paragraph of prose, so that the rhyme and the meter and the layout and the music of the poem get lost.

“Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself.” -Lewis Carroll

5

Read aloud by me.

6

If I’m to have any hope of grasping a poem, I must read it out loud. If I’m with somebody who has an ear for poetry and can do it justice, then I vastly prefer them to read it out loud while I read along. Poetry readings tend to leave me flat because I need to see the way a poem looks on a page. Though I’ve been listening to Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled, and I must say that my number one choice would be to have Stephen Fry read ALL of the poems for my pleasure.

7

I definitely like reading poetry aloud myself best. I’m very keen on the sound and the rhythm of poetry and I just don’t get it very well by reading it silently.

I’m also quite happy to listen to other people read – provided they’re good at it, otherwise it just grates on my very last nerve. I went to a poetry reading sponsored by a local literary magazine a few months ago. Everyone who read was experienced in doing poetry readings and most of them were good except for one woman. It didn’t really help that I thought her work was cliched and overly self-important anyway, but I’ve never been so tempted to go up, snatch pages out of someone’s hands, and give a proper performance before. You’d think she’d never seen her own work before. Apathetic half-asleep 9th graders who forgot to do the reading the night before have given better readings.

But regardless of the source – I definitely need the sound.

8

I find poetry to be best when being read aloud by a talented voice actor. I’m unable to appreciate the nuance and genius of it when I’m just reading it off a page.

For example, The Cremation of Sam McGee. Awesome.

9

I enjoy reading it silently, but it isn’t really silent because it makes sounds in my head.

I like to read it aloud, both in private and in public to a willing audience who knows what they’re in for.

I like to hear it performed well, but there’s this convention we have that the person doing the reading is the poet himself or herself - this is not always a good thing! Sometimes, the poets do not enjoy reading, or appearing in public. Sometimes, the poets enjoy it, but I’ve been to readings where I’ve walked away saying to myself ‘I liked those poems when I read them.’ I wish more poets would allow actor friends to read their work.

I also work with an acting coach to find the spot somewhere in between what gallows fodder and Thudlow Boink find annoying.

I was recently at a reading where the best poet of the night had a cold and just ruined his own work, followed by an average poet who was an average reader, followed by someone who had been working in a collective of dancers, actors and musicians for the last two years - her poetry was everything I hate, and yet, she had worked on the presentation to the extent that the performance was compelling even though the material was awful.