"Performance" as you call it - giving the squiggles their
voice - IS a most productive way of apprehending a text.
I am afraid our institutions suffer from an abundance of
literary and a dearth of "oracy".  READ IT ALOUD!
 
(For a full discussion of this idea, see my PI O - An Appreciation,
which will appear on 1 December, 1999, at Suite101.com
in the Performing Arts section under "Performance Poetry".)
 
 
Stoneking
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Caddel <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 1999 6:54 AM
Subject: Re: recordings of Ezra
 
 
> On Wed, 24 Nov 1999 02:40:11 -0500, Christopher Booth wrote:
>
> > I was in
> >college at the time, and had spent some time obssessed with classical
piano
> >and performance, and felt that the same standards should be applied to
> >poetry. So I memorized Canto I, developed my interpretation, and when I
went
> >home I "performed"
>
> I aggree so much with this approach - you understand so much more when
> you've made the sounds echo in your own head. Of course, no single
> "performance" may definitively carry everything from the score (or so
> I had to believe during my own shambling musical career!) but all may
> be instructive. To perform is to take choices. Even Pound's
> later-in-life recordings, when his voice was obviously past its prime,
> carry rhythmic and tonal sense which - to my mind - is more valuable
> than the highly mannered (if "correct") realisation of Canto 1 which
> we've been discussing.
>
> >[I just can't
> >imagine Canto I in an uninflected conversational tone
>
> - but the recording of Mauberley - made at the same time as the Canto
> 1 recording - does do something significantly different with the
> "grand manner" - i.e. it heightens it into almost-parody. So that, to
> my ears, a poetry which could handle a bit of conversational
> flexibility is intoned, a la Yeats and then some... Even though I
> agree with all the quality of the Canto 1 recording which Chris Booth
> presents, it's that moment when the inflexibility of the earlier style
> passes that particularly interests me.
>
> >Bunting...
>
> - polite plug: in January Bloodaxe Books will publish a new
> (centenary) ed. of B's Complete Poems, accompanied by a 2-vol tape
> compilation of yer man reading his work. For anyone who can't wait,
> there's a 7-vol tapeset available from Richard Swigg, English Dept,
> University of Keele. But this doesn't let anyone off from sounding the
> poems themselves...
>
> >It is also true that few composers are good performers of their own work,
>
> - I'll offer Ben Britten as a contrary example here, whilst not
> disputing the general point. At many of the poetry readings I've
> organised, The Poet has so significantly mismanaged the sound of
> his/her own work as to put me right off it... and I recall, way back,
> having to ask Philip Larkin, via his secretary, to read for us: "Oh
> no," I was told "Mr. Larkin NEVER gives readings." To which I replied,
> Oh good, as I hung up the phone...
>
> > The exquisite delicate rarified beauty of the
> >Drafts and Fragments, the haunting music of the Pisan Cantos, the
perfection
> >of _In the Station of the Metro_, the rocky jagged berglike textures of
_The
> >Seafarer_; what happens when they are brought to life in the air, in EP's
> >voice, or others'?
>
> - I'll - predictably - second this concern. I'd note that poetry
> recording - tho increasing - is still rare, and that public poetry
> reading didn't really take off (in the UK, certainly) until the 60's,
> and that for most people in a learning situation poetry is still
> page-poetry, even when the poet has stressed the importance of "music"
> at one level or another in his/her work. Quoth BB: "Reading in silence
> is the source of half the misconceptions that have caused the public
> to distrust poetry." And as more and more poets become able to record,
> it's important to remember that we don't have to view their versions
> as definative to the exclusion of others: it's important - to me -
> that we regain the art of reading the things aloud for ourselves.
>
> I think it should be possible to trace (tentatively) a provisional
> descent of poetry reading style running roughly Yeats > Pound >
> Bunting, and on to some of the younger UK poets. Gathering the
> evidence is not as simple as one might think, and tho I've heard  many
> recordings of Pound (for instance) gathering accurate ascriptions for
> them (many have been - uh - "informally loaned" by friends) can be a
> nightmare. Noting the exemplary edition of Schwerner's The Tablets
> from NPF, with CD selection inside back cover, could we press for a
> remastered CD selection of EP reading to accompany future publication
> of the Cantos?
>
> Thanks for all the responses to this thread - I too think it's
> important, and value everyone's take on it. 'Pologies for lengthy
> post.
>
> RC
>