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. =========== 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>