Poetry Out Loud!!!!

'Poetry Out Loud,' as the host said at the start of the event, was meant to show how classic poems are powerful as oral performances and communal events. The thesis is just as true as the inverse, but I was not sure that it would not nevertheless be falsified. The program, handed out at the beginning, promised a diverse show--'The Walrus and the Carpenter' and 'The Raven,' which have probably been recited at every reading competition (ever), the enigmatic selections from 'Song of Myself,' poems by Stevens and Plath, 'Persimmons,' and a few less well-known ones.

Following the advertisement, the majority of the poems read are usually encountered in books. 'Beethoven' was a clear exception, belonging to the spoken-word genre. The performance was dynamic and heartfelt, but the poem was an endless series of cliches, moral injunctions and vague reassurances that seemed awkward in the midst of more accomplished works. The other poem that was clearly enhanced by oral presentation was the monologue of a harmonica player, an apology for his less finished art. The reader was, if I remember correctly, a marine biology doctoral student who was frequently at sea. Read alone, the poem might have been enjoyable but certainly not great. The reader, however, managed to capture the persona of the worn harmonica player perfectly, without caricature or haughtiness, resulting in a brilliantly energetic performance. Second place was certainly justified.

I was delighted when the next reader said he would read the conclusion of Song of Myself, one of my favourite sections of the poem, but his performance underwhelmed. The previous reader managed to raise a rather folksy figure to poetic dignity, but here Whitman was successfully reduced to an occasionally witty braggart. The delivery completely ignored the aphoristic elegance and perfect balance of Whitman's self-dissolution. I was ambivalent about the performance of 'The Idea of Order at Key West,' which won third place. The judges, in their final comments, said the performance was intelligent and subtle, avoiding theatricality. I thought that the poem did call for a conscious elevation at certain points, where the reader remained meditative.

'The Walrus and the Carpenter' and the 'The Raven' were both enjoyable performances. I find Poe's poem phenomenally boring and the reader's excision of large sections certainly improved it. The performance of Lewis Carrol's comic verse was unabashedly farcical, with each of the main characters distinctively voiced.

The reading of Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy' won first place, deservedly I thought. I had not read the poem, which is very famous, and, as a result, received the full shock of the reading without mitigation. It is an incredibly bitter poem and also, I felt, very offensive:

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

I do not like the poem any better after the reading, which is an argument for its success. The reader inhabited it completely, pronouncing each new note of viciousness (it's incredible how many there are). The intensity of anger combined with an attention its subtleties distinguished the performance.