38 replies to this topic

[Stone]

When you pick one, and have that glass of wine by your side, read it aloud....

I do like the idea of reading aloud. I read most of Paradise Lost aloud, with a terrible British accent.

[galleygirl]

When you pick one, and have that glass of wine by your side, read it aloud....

I do like the idea of reading aloud. I read most of Paradise Lost aloud, with a terrible British accent.

I find it helps make Shakespeare clearer....altho I didn't have a plausible accent.

[Wilfrid1]

Okay, taking you seriously, as it's a Friday afternoon and I've nothing better to do: I think you can read a collection of poems by simply turning the pages once you have an idea of what effects the poet is looking for, how he/she gets them, and what the tone of voice is. I can't think of a better phrase than "tone of voice", but I find that I start making headway with a poet once I get some idea of what the poems typically "sound like". So my advice is to start by reading the shorter poems two or three times; maybe once through at regular speed, again slowly trying to figure out what is happening and why, and then again normally. But when you have done this for ten or a dozen poems, you may be able to go faster.

Specific tip with Stevens: don't get stuck trying to work out what point he is making. It's easy to do, because he writes in a somewhat scholarly, professorial tone, as if he's laying out an argument. He hardly ever is. Like other poems, these work primarily through association and imagery and mood; because they sometimes read like lectures, you may be misled into thinking something else is going on. This is not to say Stevens doesn't have ideas - he does. But don't get stuck looking for them everywhere.

Now, why haven't I seen you in Derrida class recently?

[mongo_jones]

my advice would be to put stevens down for a while and begin instead with auden. and i speak as one who once had two different extracts from the same stevens poem in his signatures on two different sites.

[g.johnson]

When you pick one, and have that glass of wine by your side, read it aloud....

I do like the idea of reading aloud. I read most of Paradise Lost aloud, with a terrible British accent.

I find it helps make Shakespeare clearer....altho I didn't have a plausible accent.

No one does. It might be something like this (from the site):

Frinds, Roomuns, coontrimun, lend me yurr eerrs.
Oy coom too berry Sayzurr, nut too preyze im.
Thee eevul that men doo livz aafturr theym,
The gewd iz awft inturrid with thyr boonz.
Soo et ut bee with Sayzurr. The nerbl Brootus
Eth toowld yu Sayzurr wuz ambishius.
If it ware soo, it wuz a greevus fawlt,
Und greevusly hath Sayzurr arnsserrd it.
Heerr, undr leeve uv Brootus un the rest
-- Fur Brootus iz un onawrubl mun --
Soo aar thay ol, ol onawrubl men --
Cum Oy too speek in Sayzurrs fyoonurrul.
Hee wuz mahy frind, faythful un djust too mee,
But Brootuz sez hee wuz ambishius,
Un Brootus iz un onawrubl mun.

I rather like "the nerbl Brootus".

[Daisy]

When I tried to read that aloud, I sounded like Sean Connery.

[galleygirl]

When I tried to read that aloud, I sounded like Sean Connery.

And that's a bad thing?

[Stone]

When I tried to read that aloud, I sounded like Sean Connery.

But do you have the eyebrows?

[Daisy]

When I tried to read that aloud, I sounded like Sean Connery.

But do you have the eyebrows?

No, thank God.

[Stone]

Now, why haven't I seen you in Derrida class recently?

I decided to skip class and see the movie instead.

[Wilfrid1]

When I tried to read that aloud, I sounded like Sean Connery.

Not Jasper Carrott? (One for the Brits.)

[g.johnson]

Sounds more northern than midlands to me, even though WS was from Shropshire (assuming he wasn't the Earl of Oxford).

Cool site on the great vowel shift.

[Wilfrid1]

Second attempt, it came out Geordie. The Bard on the Tyne is all mine, all mine...

[g.johnson]

There's some west country in there too -- oy, sayzurr.

[Wilfrid1]

Mm, Joolie-arse Sayzurr. Drink up thy zider.