Chekhov's Mistress

Auden Out Loud

by Bud Parr

SCMZZZZZZZ.jpg” style=“float:left;padding: 10px;” /> I’ve been reading Auden’s Collected Poems from start to finish, aloud, as formal as that sounds. Aloud doesn’t quite sound right, but out loud doesn’t sound right either, because I lower my voice whenever anyone’s around. I’m reading it aloud. The collection is nearly 900 pages, so let’s just say I keep a glass of water handy.


Today I read the entirety of Letter to Lord Byron. It’s 30ish pages and I occasionally found myself droning, which kind of misses the point of reading poetry aloud in the first place. But on I go. My goal isn’t to sit and think about the poems too much, just to find new poems I’ve never given any attention to and listen to them as I read.


I have a recording of Auden that seems to be collected from various readings over time. I listen to it to see if I’m doing it right, whatever that might mean, but he reads different poems differently. It’s hard to tell if the poem demands the verbal style or if it might have been his mood or thoughts about it.

posted March 14, 2006

comments

I read Auden, Frost, Poe and Eliot out loud all the time - sometimes to the baby, sometimes just to myself. You’re right, it’s an entirely different experience to hear poems being read aloud. To me, there’s a great pleasure in finding how the spoken words fit together - either in rhyme or free verse - as opposed to seeing how they work on the printed page.

Also, it is nice to see you back after the move!

    – Ella (03/15  at  12:38 PM)


Thanks, Ella. Reading aloud also makes you pay attention to poems differently. That’s why I’m doing a whole book that way. Normally I would skim through, hunting for things I like before reading out loud, but this gives even the obscure stuff even footing. This reading also has confirmed how much I dislike some of the rhymes (outside of children’s books, that is.) that he used to use.

    – Bud Parr (03/15  at  04:20 PM)


My friend sent me a link to this blog.

Pretty funny, I’m in the middle of a Seminar on Auden @ Umass Dartmouth right now, and we just read “letter to lord byron”.

I’m suprised that this particular poem hasn’t recieve much critisism.  It’s perhaps one of his most playful and sarcastic pieces.

There’s only seven of us in the class, and we read from the collected poems “out loud”.

It’s interesting to note how they’ve changed from the originals, as published in the “English Auden” (also edited by Mendelson, now out of print, but easily found online)

    – Dave (03/16  at  01:12 PM)


Thanks, Dave. I’ll have to find the English version. I believe Auden was a very heavy reviser. Letter to Lord Byron is great (don’t know if I would say it’s his most sarcastic, tho). It’s length is a little unwieldy for its structure, I believe, even though it’s supposed to be that way.

    – Bud Parr (03/16  at  02:43 PM)


Page 1 of 1 pages of comments

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

This site employs rank-denial and other anti-spam measures.
Your link here will do nothing for your rankings or traffic. Off-topic comments will be deleted.




Next entry: Of course the problem with Listmixer…
Previous entry: Poetry List at the Poetry Foundation

« Back to main

About this Post




Barack Obama Logo