Tuesday, May 31, 2011

News at Eleven: But once I'm up there at the podium

I still enjoy reading and contact with an audience, and yes, I do believe public recitation can aid an audience's appreciation.

Ever since I read T.S. Eliot's words about the "auditory imagination" I've had a theoretical basis for that belief. Eliot called it a "feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling . . . (fusing) the most ancient and the most civilized mentality." The main thing is to be led by that feeling for syllable and rhythm so that the audience can hear the poem more or less as a score, and daydream in sympathy with it.

[--Seamus Heaney]

from Toronto Star: Seamus Heaney: Griffin Poetry Prize finalist

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