Comments on: On Memorization: Some Thoughts on “Owning” Your Own Work

By: Elliot Knapp

Elliot Knapp — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:47:00 +0000

Great article, I really enjoyed this. As someone who’s both a musician and a poet, I think memorization is pretty crucial–you wouldn’t be impressed if you went to a rock show and the musicians were reading off sheet music (and yet, somehow it’s acceptable in classical music). Memorizing your poem allows you to actually engage the audience with eye contact, one of the basics of effective communication. Finally, having your poem memorized doesn’t obviate the importance of having it visually represented on a page–the two can coexist, and ideally they’ll be mutually enriching if the poem fulfills the potential of its art form.

By: Siddiq

Siddiq — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:55:30 +0000

Me too! Emily, and Eliot, and Joyce, and Rexroth, and Wheelwright, and… That Pennsound website is a real gem. It’s totally converted me to recitation – to the point that I’d only rarely want to read something that I could hear from the horses mouth, mainly out of technical interest.

By: Economic Play Pin Links

Economic Play Pin Links — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:25:25 +0000

[...] Memorizing your poems [...]

By: Christie Ann Reynolds

Christie Ann Reynolds — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:19:19 +0000

CaptSnark—It has nothing to do with improvement and everything to do with an experience—an elevated experience. There are different kinds of experiences—private and public—and I make the argument for both. I’m simply making reference to the way a reading can be made amazing by the engagement of poet and audience. And yes, sometimes I wonder how Emily Dickinson would have sounded and yes, I sometimes wish I could hear her read.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:55:17 +0000

I feel similarly. I like to see how poets can engage an audience and make the poem a living thing. At the same time, I can’t be fully interested in the recitation of poems that I know I wouldn’t care about on the page. This is great: “But I do think, that if you can’t find something innate, something diamond and startling about a poet who delivers a poem, eyes locked to the audience, like a line drive to the heart, that you are missing one of the targets of poetry itself. Why keep all of it on the page? Why not give yourself up to the poem entirely?” I enjoyed this– thanks!

By: CaptSnark

CaptSnark — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:43:21 +0000

Milton or Dickinson would have been improved, then, if only they’d hit the circuit?

By: Christie Ann Reynolds

Christie Ann Reynolds — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:27:03 +0000

Of course, the work in relationship to performance artists matters. My point is that the performance and how the work is performed is often considered before the form of the work on paper. An actor can perform a mediocre script brilliantly, but actors also choose scripts based on how well-written they are and how well-developed a character is written. I’m not sure if you are referring to the idea of poet as actor–because I’m surely not. I’m not looking for the big bang of a performance every time. I’m simply suggesting that reciting one’s work is beneficial to the work and the way it is read and the way it is received.

By: CaptSnark

CaptSnark — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:29:36 +0000

It’s inevitable that poets reading their own work rarely if ever rise to the level of reading of which even a very mediocre actor would be capable. For one thing, as it’s their own work, they are self-conscious as to the particulars of its creation. For another, as it’s their own work, they tend, out of self-consciousness, to either over-dramatize (often with false notes) or veer to the other extreme and understate. For yet another, there is the division on the one hand of the ‘performance artists’ in which case the work matters little if at all, really, and, on the other the sustained self-conscious near-sing-song plangency of the infinitely sensitive infinitely self-aware and self-celbrating. Any actor, surely, would find the truth or the lack of it far more effectively, or the casting director would cheerfully cry out ‘Next!’