Well, this is a bit far afield from our discussions of Pound.  But for
those who may be interested, in response to Christopher Booth's marvelous
message, here's an article from the Ramblings section of my web site.
 
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If you listen to someone like Laurie Anderson, who performs the spoken
word extremely well, you can realize that one of her secrets is the
realization that literature, especially poetry, is made up of words.
 
In reading poetry aloud, each major word should be recognized as a
thing of beauty in its own right and not just a component of a
sentence.  When such a very skilled performer such as Laurie Anderson
reads, they make the effort to give love to each major word in the
poem.  This word is not just a little nut or bolt that is part of a
sentence, but the word is something that the performer offers to the
audience as valuable in its own right.
 
Some of the ways of giving a word the love it deserves are stress,
intonation, drawing the word out, or isolating it with a preceding or
following pause.  Different words deserve emphasis in different ways.
It's not a mere matter of emphasis, though.  It's a matter of showcasing
the word, displaying it to the audience as the glorious word it is.
 
Preachers are very good at this, of course.  Fundamentalist preachers,
anyway.  They draw the important words out and make them vibrate
resonantly.  Which is a bit much for a lot of poetry, but that's still
the basic idea.
 
The example I like to use is the song ``Eleanor Rigby'' by the Beatles
(lyrics by John Lennon).  If one reads this in the typical way that
most students (and many professors) would read a piece of prose, it
sounds a bit disoriented, with questionable diction, but not otherwise
very distinguished.
 
``Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has
been.  Lives in a dream.  Waits at the window wearing the face that
she keeps in a jar by the door.  What is it for?''
 
Reading the first sentence this way is like having an actor making his
first appearance on stage immediately rush to the center of the stage
and start speaking lines.  But the actor (i.e. the words ``Eleanor
Rigby'') needs to stand on stage a few moments before speaking to give
the audience a chance to take him in, see who he is.  The music to the
song makes the singer give the needed amount of love to each of the
major words simply as words, as well as in their role as part of the
sentence.
 
``Eleanor Rigby ... rice ... church ... wedding ... been.''
 
It does take quite a bit of rehearsal.  You have to explore each poem
until you find the tone of voice you think is right for it.  I think
it's good to start out by doing a really exaggerated interpretation,
one that may seem somewhat hoakey.  Then you can tone it down to what
you consider a satisfactorily tasteful level.
 
<Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady/ramblings/aloud.html>