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Reading aloud
Readings and recitations
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
I bought the CD thinking it would be fun to listen to on long car trips. The dual obstacle turns out to be Ellen and Sylvia, who aren't into it. Hmm... but this morning for the first time (and admittedly on a short trip) I convinced Sylvia at least that it would be good listening because it is a Fairy Tale, which genre she enjoys. Who knows how long this will last.
Sylvia noticed midway in to the first book that elves were among the characters, something Beowulf has in common with the Fairy Tales CD she likes to listen to. (They don't, however, "talk in funny voices.")
I noticed while listening that the poem was written by a Christian; he calls the Danes "heathenish" and says they did not yet know "the Lord most high, ruler of heaven" (I think is how he phrases it). For some reason I had always thought the poem was from before Christianity was introduced to the British isles, I guess because the events it describes took place before Christianity. Also because I thought writing came along with Christianity* and that the poem was an oral legend, so pre-writing.
But I can try and make some sense of this -- could be that the oral legend predates British Christianity and it was written down (and maybe expanded on) by somebody afterwards. Kinda like with the legend of Troy and Homer. I want to find out if there is any record of the identity of the person who wrote it down, and what his dates were, and his position in life. Time to read more closely the introduction to Heaney's translation, which I just skimmed at the time I read the book but which I seem to recall being pretty long, it will probably contain the info I'm looking for.
Update: we took a longer trip this afternoon going to a friend's birthday party, and I was actually able to listen to the whole Book I, a bit more than an hour. Sylvia lost interest about 2/3 of the way through (around the point of the story-within-a-story about the war between Hrothgar and Finn the Frisian); but she did not demand different music, just started making up a conversation between two stuffed animals that were on hand.
Another Update: I realized I have been talking about "Book I" when I actually mean "Disc I". The epic is divided into 2 CD's. I thought based on an unclear memory of reading it, that that corresponded to a division in the text; but apparently not.
*Okay so there were runes before that. My whole idea falls apart if Beowulf was written down in runes but I'm pretty sure that is not the case.
posted afternoon of March 6th, 2005: Respond ➳ More posts about Beowulf
Reading the Inferno today and I was having a little trouble with figuring out what it should sound like. So I took the obvious path and started reading aloud. And what a revelation! I think I am going to read this whole book aloud -- the sound is lovely and I'm understanding it better. I think I "get" terza rima now, the way it leads you through the canto; Pinsky's introduction was helpful in this regard, but what really made it concrete was to listen to the reading.
My sense of reading poetry aloud has been heavily influenced by Heany's reading (or "declamation"?) of Beowulf, which I've been listening to a lot in the last couple of weeks.
Try reading this aloud:
"My son," said the gentle master, "here are joined The souls of all who die in the wrath of God, From every country, all of them eager to find
Their way across the water -- for the goad Of Divine Justice spurs them so, their fear Is transmuted to desire. Souls who are good
Never pass this way; therefore, if you hear Charon complaining at your presence, consider What that means." Then, the earth of that grim shore
Began to shake: so violently, I shudder And sweat recalling it now. A wind burst up From the tear-soaked ground to erupt red light and batter
My senses -- and so I fell, as though seized by sleep.
-- See how the meter leads you on through the passage. I'm finding it impossible to stop reading in the middle of a canto.
posted evening of May 12th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
Sergio Chejfec turned out not to be the highlight of the evening. His work -- the portion of it that is excerpted in BOMB -- is lovely and introspective; but because it is introspective it did not lend itself to being read aloud. You want room for your mind to wander while you're reading it. My favorite thing I heard this evening was the poetry of Nicanor Parra, read by his translator Liz Werner from the recent book Antipoems: How to Look Better & Feel Great. For instance, from the poem "Something Like That":
THE TRUE PROBLEM of philosophy is who does the dishes
nothing otherworldly
God the truth the passage of time absolutely but first, who does the dishes
whoever wants to do them, go ahead see ya later, alligator and we're right back to being enemies
Also very nice to listen to was Lina Meruana's short story "Ay" -- she writes a flowing, engaging narrative that pulled me in. She only read the first half of the story but it was enough to make me want to read the rest of it on the train coming home. Raúl Zurita was also there, reading some oddly dream-like poems about the coup of 1973 and about Akira Kurosawa; he has one of the most pleasant reading voices I've ever heard -- it was almost hard to get past the immediate sensory delight of listening to him speak, to get at the content of the poems. Zurita also has a piece in this issue of BOMB about Nicanor Parra, sort of bringing me full circle.
...his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name "Guermantes," with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind, pleasantly teasing Van's artistic vanity.
Hue or who? Awkward. Reword! (marginal note in Ada Veen's late hand).
AWB (in the course of an amusing story about the film rights to Ada) calls it "the least filmable story in the history of fiction" -- she is probably right; but I am thinking it would work really well as a reader's theater. The sentences have such a vibrant energy, such rhythm, it would be a treat to hear them read aloud, with feeling. It seems like pacing is a crucial element of this story -- like wandering off in thought will detract from the reading.
posted afternoon of February 16th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Ada
Two things about The Hobbit, which I started reading aloud with Sylvia last night: It is a whole lot of fun to read aloud, with opportunities for doing new voices at every turn; and it seems like it will be kind of fun to be reading in parallel with The Fellowship of the Ring.
I'm just at the point in Fellowship, where the party is leaving Rivendell; in a lot of ways this seems like the real beginning of the story, with the first half of the book having been a prologue. I'm interested in Frodo, Sam, and Strider; none of the other travellers has really got my attention yet. (Besides Gandalf of course; but he distinctly does not strike me as a real character, as a human.) Pippin and Merry both have had moments but they are generally in the background so far.
The story I posted about below, "Asemblea los martes" by Slavko Zupcic, is just lovely to read aloud and listen, without the stream of language being fully comprehensible at reading-aloud speed. This is like the experiences I was having with recordings of spoken Spanish earlier this year -- or like reading e.g. Faulkner or Pynchon can be, where I slip in and out of understanding language as sentences containing meaning, and hearing language as melodic, rhythmic bits of sound.* So all this is keeping in mind Dave Barber's post from Thursday, "What We Lose in Growing Up" -- the way that post resonates for me is with my constant need to craft a narrative that justifies what I'm doing, that points out how I am productively enabling my development into a better person. I was thinking, the moment of joy in the reading aloud, the unreflective perceiving language as sound, is a moment where this narrative is absent; what I'm doing now is constructing the narrative around that moment, where what I'd really like to be able to do is to communicate the moment of rapture. Not quite sure where to go from that...
Porque sí. Porque ya hemos enviado las tarjetas. Porque las invitaciones quedaron bellísimas. Porque les pusimos los cruasanes míos y las tamaras de Ernesto. Porque las hicimos con cartulina rosada. Porque les dibujamos corazones por todas partes. ...
Having a lazy morning and I thought I would pick up and look at A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.... This is a book which I read and loved when I was 14 years old, but which has over the years resisted efforts at rereading. I picked up a copy at a garage sale recently and was enchanted again by the opening paragraphs.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...
His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.
This morning's discovery is, this is a great, great read-aloud book. I haven't enjoyed reading anything aloud so much since The Hobbit. Try reading this aloud, in an even, relaxed tone:
They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar. He tried to think of Wells's mother but he did not dare to raise his eyes to Wells's face.
(And in addition to thinking this sounds great, I am identifying with it -- I can feel myself getting hot and confused as I try and figure out how to make the boys stop laughing at me...)
You know what book this is reminding me of in its opening pages, is Boy by Roald Dahl.
We saw this video of Robert Frost reading his most famous (? -- I think) poem last night -- I had never heard Frost reading before and was really struck by the hypnotic, incantatory quality of his voice. Also he reads a little faster than I would have pictured.
"And I created the mouth and the lips of the mouth, to imprison ambiguous smiles; and the teeth of the mouth to keep watch on the absurdities that enter our mouths.
"I created the tongue of the mouth, the tongue which man tore from her proper role, making her learn to speak... She, she, the gorgeous bather, torn forever from her proper role, aquatic, purely sensual."
My parachute began to fall vertiginously. Such is the force of the attraction from death, from the open sepulchre.
You must believe it, the tomb holds more power than the eyes of my beloved -- the open tomb and all its charms. And I'm saying this to you, to you who when you are smiling, you make me think about the beginning of the world.
My parachute became entangled with an extinguished star, one which went conscientiously about its orbit as if it were not aware of the futility of its efforts.
And making good use of this well-earned respite, I proceeded to fill in, with my profound thoughts, the blank squares of my gameboard:
"Authentic song is arson. Poetry weaves herself through every thing, she lights the way for her consumations with her shivers of ecstasy, of agony.
"One must write in a tongue which is not one's mother tongue.
"The four cardinal points are three: the South and the North.
"A poem is a thing which is coming into being.
"A poem is a thing which never exists, which must exist.
"A poem is a thing which never has existed, which could never exist.
"Flee from the sublime external, unless you want to die brought low by the wind.
"If I did not commit some madness at least once every year, I would surely go mad."
Thanks are due Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson of Montevidayo for making available these recordings of Raúl Zurita and his translator Daniel Borzutsky, appearing together at Notre Dame last month. They are reading from Zurita's book Canto a su amor desaparecido (1985), newly published in translation.
Zurita is my favorite reader of any poet I have heard reading. Such a beautiful voice, such a magnificent connection with his words. They are tragic words and bitter, and Borzutsky's translation communicates their tragedy and their bitterness clearly -- even if he is not in Zurita's class as a reader...
Pegado, pegado a las rocas, al mar y a las montañas.
Murió mi chica, murió mi chico, desaparecieron todos.
