{"id":1273,"date":"2008-08-12T18:01:05","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T18:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2008-08-12T18:01:05","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T18:01:05","slug":"i_heard_words_and_words_full_o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/12\/i_heard_words_and_words_full_o\/","title":{"rendered":"“I heard words and words full of holes.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought that Terry Teachout made an unfortunate omission in his recent column, “Hearing is Believing: The Vanished Glories of Spoken-Word Recordings<\/a>.” After glimpsing into BBC’s giant vault of sound recordings, Teachout bemoans the inaccessibility of most spoken-word albums:<\/p>\n

Why are so many of these priceless documents out of print? Because the market for spoken-word recordings is too small for them to be worth reissuing on CD. So why don’t the BBC, HarperCollins and Sony BMG (which now owns the Columbia Masterworks and RCA catalogs) make their spoken-word archives available for digital downloading via iTunes? Imagine being able to click a few keys on your laptop and listen to, say, Truman Capote reading excerpts from “In Cold Blood” or Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Jessica Tandy and David Wayne performing Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie.” Wouldn’t you pay 10 bucks for that privilege? I sure would.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what about poets.org<\/a> and Penn Sound<\/a>? Both websites host catalogs of sound clips and boast thousands of mp3s, for free nonetheless. In fact, archived audio exists across the internet, in fabulous–even if sometimes hidden–pockets. Over at Slate<\/a>, all weekly poems are accompanied by author readings. On Kenneth Goldsmith’s UbuWeb<\/a>, you can listen to Ezra Pound reading at the Harvard Vocarium<\/a>, experience Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape<\/a>, and even enjoy a rare 1929 recording <\/a>of James Joyce.<\/p>\n

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Earlier in the summer, I raided Penn Sound’s archives for Robert Creeley audio files. I adore Creeley’s readings<\/a> – ?\u009dhow he ascended each stanza, how he stumbled through an enjambed line. In his voice, you can hear when his poetry is downright mean, irresistibly tender, and forever hesitant<\/a>. Having listened repeatedly to Creeley’s “I Know a Man<\/a>,” I was disappointed in Teachout’s treatment of what author readings tell the audience. Tsk, Teachout writes to all literary critics that picked up that popular “unfortunate habit” of using “voice” when they mean “style.” Teachout’s lead forgets that poetry began as an oral\/aural tradition, a tradition which PennSound is looking to revive. Director Al Filreis hopes that the project “has already had an impact on the way poets, critics, teachers, and students talk about the sound of poetry, which is, after all, its most fundamental quality.”
\nIs there scholarship on how poets read their work? The space between how a reader interprets the text and how an audience hears the words is often vast – ?\u009da canyon of blank page and intentional pauses. Shouldn’t we consider the poet’s performance? When I listen to Creeley read, the way he forfeited line breaks and rushed toward conclusions frequently changes my sense of the poem. On poets.org<\/a>, John Berryman starts The Dream Songs<\/a>, introducing his Huffy Henry, grumbling and gruff. Berryman takes a sharp breath, and his voice goes staccato, “It was the thought that they thought\/they could do it.” Then, there is a pause and he proceeds, “made Henry wicked & away.” In Berryman’s vocal staggering, you can almost hear the departure from when the world was once like a woolen lover…
\nHow can we use our listening experiences with our readings of texts? Or, maybe the more practical question: what should these hybrids look like? In the end, I do agree with Teachout; I want more. After hearing “Dream Songs 1,” I am greedy to hear Berryman tackle “Dream Songs 4<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought that Terry Teachout made an unfortunate omission in his recent column, “Hearing is Believing: The Vanished Glories of Spoken-Word Recordings.” After glimpsing into BBC’s giant vault of sound recordings, Teachout bemoans the inaccessibility of most spoken-word albums: Why are so many of these priceless documents out of print? Because the market for spoken-word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}