06-17-2011, 06:37 AM
(06-17-2011, 05:55 AM)abu nuwas Wrote: Your other point (1), about reading and layers triggered my usual Philistine gut-reaction, but finessed slightly. My thought was this. If one begins with the proposition that poems should be written at least as if to be spoken and heard, how many people, ever, have possessed sufficiently quick minds to pick up layers at the speed of the spoken word, even assuming that that spoken word is a clear as a bell? It seems to me that it would require the poetic human equivalent to Big Blue. Of course, I accept that there are those who live on a higher plane.....Ah, written to be spoken and heard, yes -- but why only the once? And certainly never ONLY to be spoken and heard, but spoken, heard, read, remembered, loved... and speaking a poem gives it an extra layer also, that of the speaker's emotive response through tone and body language (if it's seen as well). Poems like Coleridge's Kubla Khan are beautiful to the ear, but present many layers of meaning when read silently to oneself -- it's the sound that fixes it in the mind for later ponderings.
It could be worse