Hearing the Voice of Poetry

1. Hearing the Voice of Poetry Nor would I be a Poet – It’s finer – own the Ear – Enamoured – impotent – content – The Licence to revere. A privilege so awful What would the dower be, Had I the Art to stun myself With Bolts of Melody! ( “I would not paint – a picture” - Emily Dickinson) Joy Alexander Queen’s University, Belfast

3. The Wedding GuestWoodcut by Gustav Doré, 1889

4. Ferocious AlphabetsDenis Donoghue. 1981. London: Faber and Faber. • Graphi-reader The graphireader deals with writing as such and does not think of it as transcribing an event properly construed as vocal and audible. (p.151) • Epi-reader Epireaders say to poems: I want to hear you. (p.152) Reading Frost’s “Desert Places” is like reading Hardy’s “During Wind And Rain” or “The Haunter”:you don’t even think of language in any way that separates it from the voice and the feelings that have made the voice what it is. (p.130)

5. The How of Literature Ruth Finnegan Oral Tradition, 20/2 (2005): 164-187 Literature is experienced in terms of its immediacy, in the temporal moment. This can come in a variety of forms: through embodied enactment, for example, or public theatrical display, or, more subtly, through the enperformancingof a written text, the “now” when the reader personally encounters and re-creates it—“performs” it. (p. 176)

6. You learn to read poetry by reading poetry.

7. You learn to read poetry by reading poetry. • Find as many ways as possible to get young people reading poems aloud for themselves.

8. l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness e ecummings

10. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeahShe loves you, yeah, yeah, yeahShe loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahYou think you lost your love,When I saw her yesterday.It's you she's thinking ofAnd she told me what to say.She says she loves youAnd you know that can't be bad.Yes, she loves youAnd you know you should be glad.She said you hurt her soShe almost lost her mind.But now she said she knowsYou're not the hurting kind.She says she loves youAnd you know that can't be bad.Yes, she loves youAnd you know you should be glad. Ooh!

11. You learn to read poetry by reading poetry. • Find as many ways as possible to get young people reading poems aloud for themselves.

12. You learn to read poetry by reading poetry. • Poets write poems in such a way as to direct us to read them as they intend. • Find as many ways as possible to get young people reading poems aloud for themselves.

13. Influences: The power of T. S. Eliot. Seamus Heaney. Boston Review, October, 1989. http://bostonreview.net/BR14.5/heaney.html

14. Re-construct:4 four-line verses (counting the title as a line).The only punctuation is one full stop, which is not at the end. To a Poor Old Woman munching a plum on the street, a paper bag of them in her hand. They taste good to her. They taste good to her. They taste good to her. You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand. Comforted, a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air. They taste good to her.

15. To a Poor Old WomanWilliam Carlos Williams munching a plum on    the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good    to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

18. We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We jazz June. We die soon.

19. We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We jazz June. We die soon. We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We jazz June. We die soon.

20. We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We jazz June. We die soon. We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We jazz June. We die soon. I’m real cool. I left school. I lurk late. I strike straight. I sing sin. I thin gin. I jazz June. I’ll die soon.

21. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June.

22. Tone of last line: (a) factual (b) sad (c) bitter (d) other

23. THE POOL PLAYERS SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL by Gwendolyn Brooks We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

24. reading/hearing the poem

25. reading/hearing the poem • pupil discovery rather than teacher talk

26. reading/hearing the poem • pupil discovery rather than teacher talk • inclusive – accessible to all

27. golden shovel

28. We real cool. We die soon. golden shovel

29. A Harlem Pool HallThe Golden Shovel We real cool. We die soon. golden shovel

30. Perhaps the kind of effort (as sacrifice or self-restraint) associated with listening in the classroom is the product of resistance, by teachers and pupils, to fixed outcomes. ('Listening, Juggling and Travelling in Philosophical Space,' J Haynes and K Murris, http://www.arasite.org/pwc.html) To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he Looksand not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles. (The Personal Heresy, C S Lewis and E M W Tillyard, 1939) The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender, Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (An Experiment in Criticism, C S Lewis, 1961)

31. “The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.” Robert Frost. “Keats is my guy, but Yeats has endless discovery. I read it out loud to myself because then it becomes comprehensible. I ask my kids’ teachers why they don’t have to learn poetry by heart. It’s a drag, a bit poofy, but boy, does it stay with you.” Bob Geldof. “I tell kids that poetry has to be part of education because it is the very point of education, as exam-passing is not.” Les Murray.