Writen vs. Spoken poetry

[greenmountaineer]

I'm finding this thread to be quite informative (especially when couple with google/wikipedia to chase stuff down) and thought provoking. With reading now nearly universal, especially lately with internet, written words will predominate more and more. There are benefits to spoken performances, but at present are more appropriate to particular sessions, rather than whenever I sit down to read (or write). We speak, rather than write, when our audience is present, so it is to some extent more natural. But it remains more difficult when alone. Our technology (books, internet, radio, phones, ...) remains more capable in visual, rather than auditory methods, especially when it comes to sending out (who wants to listen to poetry over a phone?). Even with advances in audio technology there is still the temporal vs spatial difference. You can look up from your reading and return where you were. You lose the sounds as they pass by. Perhaps we lack a suitable 'rewind' to replay for sound - just go back and begin again. Tapes and the like are a very linear media - perhaps one needs to somehow know how to got back to where you left off. The characters I'm typing now are equally linear, but their representation is as words, lines, paragraphs.

The more I think about this, I believe poetry is embarking on a renaissance, both written and spoken, because of the internet, although others will continue to believe "only poets read/listen to poetry,' implying, of course, there aren't too many of us.

High speed internet service makes it easy to check the meaning of a particular word, discover the meaning of historical allusions, or even learn more about poetic properties of a given poem with a click of the mouse. Furthermore, podcasts of spoken poetry, often with accompanying video, from poetry web-sites such as poetry.org, make poetry more accessible than ever before.

I don't believe "only poets read poetry" or listen to it because I think we are programmed from the beginning to appreciate the musical quality of words. Just watch a group of pre-schoolers listen to Mother Goose or Doctor Seuss. Many of us lose that fascination, perhaps because we know longer play or re-define play at the exclusion of what poetry gave to us once.

Fortunately, some of us come back to that or find a new perspective about poetry. I do believe more will discover or re-discover these pathways.

 

[butters]

The more I think about this, I believe poetry is embarking on a renaissance, both written and spoken, because of the internet, although others will continue to believe "only poets read/listen to poetry,' implying, of course, there aren't too many of us.

High speed internet service makes it easy to check the meaning of a particular word, discover the meaning of historical allusions, or even learn more about poetic properties of a given poem with a click of the mouse. Furthermore, podcasts of spoken poetry, often with accompanying video, from poetry web-sites such as poetry.org, make poetry more accessible than ever before.

I don't believe "only poets read poetry" or listen to it because I think we are programmed from the beginning to appreciate the musical quality of words. Just watch a group of pre-schoolers listen to Mother Goose or Doctor Seuss. Many of us lose that fascination, perhaps because we know longer play or re-define play at the exclusion of what poetry gave to us once.

Fortunately, some of us come back to that or find a new perspective about poetry. I do believe more will discover or re-discover these pathways.

your posts always hold such interesting mental pathways to pursue.

i'm wondering if we won't see and even greater split between the written and spoken word as the teens/kids of today mature. so many now refuse to read books for any reason like pleasure - even my youngest, who's the most academic of my kids and word-interested, no longer picks up a book to read. they read from the net, and in school, but i think they find the bombardment of information their brains receive whilst gaming far more stimulating, and that makes books just too 'slow' for them. SO, perhaps this means poetry will become more the spoken word again, through the auspices of rap and slam, even though a lot of these are written before they're spoken. to the audiences, these are aural rather than visual word performances.

 

[Epmd607]

your posts always hold such interesting mental pathways to pursue.

i'm wondering if we won't see and even greater split between the written and spoken word as the teens/kids of today mature. so many now refuse to read books for any reason like pleasure - even my youngest, who's the most academic of my kids and word-interested, no longer picks up a book to read. they read from the net, and in school, but i think they find the bombardment of information their brains receive whilst gaming far more stimulating, and that makes books just too 'slow' for them. SO, perhaps this means poetry will become more the spoken word again, through the auspices of rap and slam, even though a lot of these are written before they're spoken. to the audiences, these are aural rather than visual word performances.

That's the thing, Slam poetry is derived from hip-hop, a musical form. Slam poetry is more like Kanye West/Talib Kweli http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGvZ9aXg5Xs than Ginsberg reading Howl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50

Howl is definitely a written poem. The most famous spoken word performance in poetry of the last century, a written expository letter/journal/poem preceding a recitation.

Matching up music to poetry is where things get extra tricky. I don't want to talk about songs, whether folk or rap. I don't think they have that much to do with poetry. Song melody and rhythm is a different human strain than poetic melody and rhythm, same words different metaphors. Lyrics and meaning is always second order to music, sound over content. It's two different worlds.

There's a song on Bflag's profile that I sing on under PoetryWithAudio. http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=402523 Those are lyrics, if he tried to present that as poetry to me I'd laugh. I don't know what a future poetry would look like, a more popular version of poetry. Though I know it's not hip-hop, because that's one of the most popular musical forms and you don't get kids writing poems because of it, you get them writing rap songs or rap-induced performances. My SN is derived from my favorite hip-hop group. This isn't an elitist, possibly black vs. white deal to me. It's two very different ways of using symbols, wearing your heart on your sleeve via symbol instead of rhythm, tone, and cadence.

Slam poetry is often different than poetry recitation, and poetry performance has a very real conflict within itself because you have people writing poems they want to share from the page and people writing word-rhythms inspired by hip-hop. Symbol vs. sound.

 

[Epmd607]

There's another conflict between emotion and intellect that's somewhat related, specifically addressing GreenMountain's post. AE Housman thought poetry was organically anti-intellect("more physical than intellectual") that the contemporary hypertext style of poetry many of us write bears a false witness to the soul of poetry. He has a weird place, his poems accompany many art songs. The art song vs. the folk song...a whole other difficulty. Keats: "everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear." when describing his Fanny poems.

For Keats and Housman poetry was meant to illicit emotions, pretty much the exact same emotions that music is crafted to illicit, but the difference is symbol vs. sound. When sound's doing more work than symbol the soul of poetry loses to song. Maybe song is just superior at illiciting those emotions and language can never catch up. On the other hand the pure sound artists ala Aaron Copland, John Williams are quickly losing ground to pop music in film and culture.

So as our representatives of highest arts we have a continual middling mix up, pure symbol and sound artists both lose to The Beatles, or whatever pop song appears in all the feature films this year. The Beatles certainly aren't the highest form of sound and/or symbol in the 20th Century. Aaron Copland and Dylan Thomas put them to shame in each category, the jumbled category that they rule is fairly mediocre in comparison to the Copland/Thomas worlds.

 

[Epmd607]

A special query for jazz enthusiasts: Did singing destroy jazz? I assume there's a reason jazz isn't as popular as it was fifty years ago. Did Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday destroy the truest American art form? Did Louis break Art Tatum's knee caps? Did Etta James carry the dagger that was sunk in the heart of Thelonious Monk?

 

[Angeline]

A special query for jazz enthusiasts: Did singing destroy jazz? I assume there's a reason jazz isn't as popular as it was fifty years ago. Did Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday destroy the truest American art form? Did Louis break Art Tatum's knee caps? Did Etta James carry the dagger that was sunk in the heart of Thelonious Monk?

Most jazz enthusiasts would say that jazz singing, especially Louis Armstrong's, created the sound of American popular singing. And everyone else, Lady Day, etc., imitated him.

There are about 43 gazillion theories about why jazz isn't so popular anymore in the USA (it's still pretty popular in Europe and parts of Asia). I think it is because two things happened: 1) jazz ceased to be the music young people listened to starting in the 1950s because 2) rock and roll became increasingly popular and as it grew it absorbed jazz (and blues and even certain classical sounds) into its giant maw. But if you go to any large urban center in America, jazz is still pretty happening.

 

[CharleyH]

Last year, we went to the Flat Lakes Arts Festival here in Ireland. I would heartily recommend it for anyone who likes the flavour of quirky, low key, spontaneous, truly hip (dis)organization. Additionally, those enamoured of the Irish accent can enjoy eavesdropping in a queue at the beer tent behind Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea, and possibly get served a pint by Lily Allen's dad.

Anyhow, my main reason for posting is that at the festival, there was a guy doing poetry on horseback. He was dressed in casual riding gear, wasn't particularly handsome (IMO, sorry mate, if you're reading this) and drifted around on a magnificent steed looking for anyone who wanted a 'random' poem read to them on a one-to-one basis, from on high as it were, from the anthology he was carrying.

Basically, after the experience, women were metaphorically (and literally) throwing themselves at him.

Not sure if the listeners would have obtained the same response by reading a poem. :]

An aside from the current discussion to say that this sounds eccentrically fabulous and right up our alley. If not for Eyjafjallajokull's plane-choking snaps of ash, we'd book a ticket today!

Perhaps, next year.

I truly miss poetry readings - Angeline mentioned Pandora's live-online readings once before, but by the time they begin, we are well asleep. I used to go to a number of them back home, but thus far I've felt apprehensive about attending poetry readings here. My foreign language skills are confined to "yes, no, I want, I need, I like." lol - joking. Still, I read better than I understand the spoken Portuguese word because reading the language gives me more time to think about what is being said (and time to reverse it so I can understand- lol). Nevertheless, Portuguese is a beautiful language. Its words are rich, supple and sensual, which shouldn't be surprising since it's the only language I know of (right now) whose lexicon originated from poetic language. Thanks for the links ... bookmarking!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Hope this hasn't been said before as I have quickly been reading through this thread but accents make one hell of a difference, when I've read your poems in my head and then heard the audio of them a lot changes. I've only got one audio poem on here but I was told at the time that hearing my accent after reading the poem made it better!

 

[EroticOrogeny]

I could be mistaken, but I don't think jazz ever reached the levels of popularity that rock did.
Not sure what preceeded that, 'classical' had benn somewhat 'elitist', with just the eudcated/well off involved for the msot part. Sacred music should have been well-know, but isoalted to church services, with some sort of folk music probably predominating in pre-Gutenberg days.

 

[The_Fool]

I could be mistaken, but I don't think jazz ever reached the levels of popularity that rock did.
Not sure what preceeded that, 'classical' had benn somewhat 'elitist', with just the eudcated/well off involved for the msot part. Sacred music should have been well-know, but isoalted to church services, with some sort of folk music probably predominating in pre-Gutenberg days.

Swing has been considered Jazz and was probably the most popular musical type prior to R&R.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

I'm no expert on poetry, but I'm finding this thread thought-provoking and I might as well add my tuppenceworth.

I'm thinking that poetry is essentially oral (and aural) and that written poetry is in a fundamental way 'secondary'. Aren't we, as a species, deeply embedded in and wedded to almost compulsive communication more than any other creature? How many thousands and thousands of years after language developed was it before stuff got to be written down in any quantity?

To me, poetry is in large part storytelling (linked in some ways to music also), even if it's only one complicated and articulate ape trying to communicate an idea or a feeling to another. In this sense, it was surely a shared activity, and functioned as an oral, performed tradition for much, much longer than in the written form.

That is not to say that written poetry has not added different, pleasurable and interesting qualities (of course it has, the ability to savour, reread and reflect at one's own pace for example), just that I would guess that these are not the core of the reasons why we have poetry at all, rather than there being no poetry.

Compulsive communication, I love that! Kind of like dreaming... The experts say we dream every night even if we don't remember... Kind of like we talk every day, even if we don't remember... Even our own poems become strangers to us over time, LOL

The thing about writing is that it has a history that goes back probably as far as oral language... just in the sense that people did things with their fingers and made marks on walls and on objects and on themselves and on dirt and what have you... kind of a stretch, but...? Maybe written language "caught up" to spoken language somehow with all the odd things it can do that spoken can't? I dunno...

I don't believe "only poets read poetry" or listen to it because I think we are programmed from the beginning to appreciate the musical quality of words. Just watch a group of pre-schoolers listen to Mother Goose or Doctor Seuss. Many of us lose that fascination, perhaps because we know longer play or re-define play at the exclusion of what poetry gave to us once.

Fortunately, some of us come back to that or find a new perspective about poetry. I do believe more will discover or re-discover these pathways.

I like this point... I think a lot of creative writing comes from the same places as play or make believe in a child... Maybe a compulsive impulse like yessplease was saying...

That's the thing, Slam poetry is derived from hip-hop, a musical form. Slam poetry is more like Kanye West/Talib Kweli http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGvZ9aXg5Xs than Ginsberg reading Howl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50

Howl is definitely a written poem. The most famous spoken word performance in poetry of the last century, a written expository letter/journal/poem preceding a recitation.

Matching up music to poetry is where things get extra tricky. I don't want to talk about songs, whether folk or rap. I don't think they have that much to do with poetry. Song melody and rhythm is a different human strain than poetic melody and rhythm, same words different metaphors. Lyrics and meaning is always second order to music, sound over content. It's two different worlds.

There's a song on Bflag's profile that I sing on under PoetryWithAudio. http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=402523 Those are lyrics, if he tried to present that as poetry to me I'd laugh. I don't know what a future poetry would look like, a more popular version of poetry. Though I know it's not hip-hop, because that's one of the most popular musical forms and you don't get kids writing poems because of it, you get them writing rap songs or rap-induced performances. My SN is derived from my favorite hip-hop group. This isn't an elitist, possibly black vs. white deal to me. It's two very different ways of using symbols, wearing your heart on your sleeve via symbol instead of rhythm, tone, and cadence.

Slam poetry is often different than poetry recitation, and poetry performance has a very real conflict within itself because you have people writing poems they want to share from the page and people writing word-rhythms inspired by hip-hop. Symbol vs. sound.

I guess I don't see that much of a difference between Talib Kwali and Ginsburg... it's two guys reciting poetry, right?

A special query for jazz enthusiasts: Did singing destroy jazz? I assume there's a reason jazz isn't as popular as it was fifty years ago. Did Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday destroy the truest American art form? Did Louis break Art Tatum's knee caps? Did Etta James carry the dagger that was sunk in the heart of Thelonious Monk?

Well, I think perhaps be-bop would be more responsible than singing, even that is overly simple. But the be-bop people weren't always real fond of "pandering" to the audience... Even a lot of musicians didn't really quite understand what the be-bop guys were doing at first. Contrast that with the big-bands and dance bands that came before be-bop, where the function and pay check came from entertaining the audience. Be-bop had a very political element to it, mixed in with the civil rights struggle, etc, it wasn't about entertaining a crowd, it was more expressive and inward in some ways and, in my opinion, much less accessible to your average casual music fan. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, for example, would be like a best-selling paperback, whereas Charlie Parker would be more like some underground poet who, if a Glenn Miller fan liked something he did, would immediately change what he did until he could be disassociated with the Glenn Miller fan.

Be-bop was in some ways a protest and didn't aspire to popularity with the audience who would have enjoyed previous iterations of the form, just my opinion.

 

[Xelebes]

-edit delete-

 

[Angeline]

Swing has been considered Jazz and was probably the most popular musical type prior to R&R.

I was about to say that and then saw your post.

The other point is that comparing the popularity of jazz and rock is sort of apples and oranges because when jazz had its heyday in America, mainly from the 1920s through the mid 50s people listened to the radio or records or went to see a show. There was no television until the late 1940s, and the impact of tv on the spread of rock and roll as a cultural phenomenon can't be overstated imho.

 

[Yesspleasse]

An aside from the current discussion to say that this sounds eccentrically fabulous and right up our alley. If not for Eyjafjallajokull's plane-choking snaps of ash, we'd book a ticket today!

Perhaps, next year.

Continuing briefly with the aside.......

One of my memories of last year is of being urged by announcements on the tannoy (aka loudspeaker mounted on converted minibus manned by the author Pat McCabe - see previously posted photo) to have a go at a sideshow game called 'sticky tins'.

Every time I wandered over to see it, there was either no one there or there was a young man trying, unsuccessfully, to erect a small three-sided enclosure on the grass, by leaning several lengths of old corrugated steel up against each other, around some empty tin cans sitting on the ground. About 15 yards away (opposite the open end of the enclosure) was a pile of sticks. It was homemade skittles, basically.

The best part was, throughout the day, he never seemed to be able to get the corrugated sheets to stay upright, so as far as I could tell the game never actually got going and the stallholder* spent most of the day in the beer tent. :]


* aka local chancer who probably realised it was cheaper to gain entry that way.

 

[Epmd607]

...


I guess I don't see that much of a difference between Talib Kwali and Ginsburg... it's two guys reciting poetry, right?


...

If Talib Kweli performing a rap song on stage(minus the beat) is the same as Ginsberg, then Ginsberg is the same as Paul McCartney playing Eleanor Rigby live in Moscow. Def Poetry has many rap guys come up and perform their stuff without the music, it pretty much set the standard for what slam poetry looks like on college campuses across the country. Hip-hop lyricism without a backing track. If you don't separate music(lyrics) from poetry(written word) poetry has no chance making it. Symphonic composition has no chance this century, the pros only choice is writing music for television and film. But wait, EPMD607, the music and poetry is gonna make it, it just looks different in a rap song or as a backing track for an NBC drama. Boo!

 

[Xelebes]

If Talib Kweli performing a rap song on stage(minus the beat) is the same as Ginsberg, then Ginsberg is the same as Paul McCartney playing Eleanor Rigby live in Moscow. Def Poetry has many rap guys come up and perform their stuff without the music, it pretty much set the standard for what slam poetry looks like on college campuses across the country. Hip-hop lyricism without a backing track. If you don't separate music(lyrics) from poetry(written word) poetry has no chance making it. Symphonic composition has no chance this century, the pros only choice is writing music for television and film. But wait, EPMD607, the music and poetry is gonna make it, it just looks different in a rap song or as a backing track for an NBC drama. Boo!

Um, lyrics or lyrical poetry has been a part of poetry since at least the Ancient Greeks (hence the name lyrics.) Are Ukrainian dumas not poetry because they are recited to the picking of a kobza?

 

[Yesspleasse]

Compulsive communication, I love that!

I think it was British Zoologist (and author of 'The Naked Ape' and 'Peoplewatching') Desmond Morris who said something about us being fundamentally compulsive communicators. As far as I know (and I am no expert) there are various theories about the development of language and brain size, with no agreed solution to the chicken and egg situation regarding which prompted which to develop in what sequence.

Kind of like dreaming... The experts say we dream every night even if we don't remember... Kind of like we talk every day, even if we don't remember... Even our own poems become strangers to us over time, LOL

Well, some say writing is just an extension of memory, for the individual and their culture. I was reading something just yesterday in a newspaper about how some experts have done studies which indicate that cultures with strict caste systems around the world (such as some in India for example) have much poorer written histories. The theory suggested was that recording stuff eventually leads to greater progress and not recording it tends to allow silly old myths to be perpetuated. Not sure what to make of the idea. Not my area of expertize. :]

And don’t start me on the topic of dreams. I’ll be here all day.

The thing about writing is that it has a history that goes back probably as far as oral language... just in the sense that people did things with their fingers and made marks on walls and on objects and on themselves and on dirt and what have you... kind of a stretch, but...? Maybe written language "caught up" to spoken language somehow with all the odd things it can do that spoken can't? I dunno....

Hm. Maybe you are going out on a limb here, though to be fair, I’m not in a position to do anything much more than muse myself. It was my impression that oral traditions developed and perpetuated before language, or coherent, complicated language in any case. A bit like the bible, as I understand it, which even after its component bits were written (I believe nothing of the life of Jesus was recorded until 50 years or thereabouts after his death for example) were not widely read because there were very few copies and most people couldn’t read anyway.

Isn’t this thread interesting?

What’s the topic again? Lol.

 

[Epmd607]

Um, lyrics or lyrical poetry has been a part of poetry since at least the Ancient Greeks (hence the name lyrics.) Are Ukrainian dumas not poetry because they are recited to the picking of a kobza?

Yes, lyrical poetry has been around since the Classical period, so has pastoral poetry. Song lyrics have nothing to do with lyrical poetry same as the lyrics to a pastoral song have nothing to do with pastoral poetry. Poetry has been recited with backing music since at least the Greeks, though lyrical poetry was born without musical accompaniment. Ballads and songs are ancient, but balladeers, such as Thomas Campion, hated the idea that their lyrics would be written down and exchanged as if they were sonnets. Any musician worth their salt will say that the composition only works as a whole, music with lyrics.

Who's going to say that recited poetry isn't poetry? I'm not saying slam poetry isn't poetry either, even when a rap song's being spoken without the backing track. My interest is in a future for poetry, not song lyrics, or a performance of a written work. Poetry is a written language, it hasn't been a spoken language since before the printing press. The current strain in performance poetry and recitation has very little do with what poetry once was as a performance.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

If Talib Kweli performing a rap song on stage(minus the beat) is the same as Ginsberg, then Ginsberg is the same as Paul McCartney playing Eleanor Rigby live in Moscow. Def Poetry has many rap guys come up and perform their stuff without the music, it pretty much set the standard for what slam poetry looks like on college campuses across the country. Hip-hop lyricism without a backing track. If you don't separate music(lyrics) from poetry(written word) poetry has no chance making it. Symphonic composition has no chance this century, the pros only choice is writing music for television and film. But wait, EPMD607, the music and poetry is gonna make it, it just looks different in a rap song or as a backing track for an NBC drama. Boo!

Funding for the arts is major concern for all of us. I'm not sure I understand how mixing music and poetry is killing poetry?

Speaking of killing an art form, I think one way to seriously wound an art form is to try to keep it the same as it has always been. I guess if you can let the form go and let people do what they will with it, make it their own, you may lose some of what was liked about it, but you stand to gain something, too...

Um, lyrics or lyrical poetry has been a part of poetry since at least the Ancient Greeks (hence the name lyrics.) Are Ukrainian dumas not poetry because they are recited to the picking of a kobza?

Good point, Xelebes. And if a person is reciting poetry, there might be ambient noise in the room or from the street. Or perhaps the sounds of nature, if one happens to be reciting outdoors. I was once in a church where a person played the guitar behind some spiritual poem being read and I about floated out of my chair. I guess soundtracks in films and things play an important role in that art form...

Isn’t this thread interesting?

What’s the topic again? Lol.

Yes I agree I'll have to look up Desmond Morris

Song lyrics have nothing to do with lyrical poetry same as the lyrics to a pastoral song have nothing to do with pastoral poetry.

You don't think those forms have anything in common?

EDIT: I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on the future of poetry. It's not a topic I think of very often.

 

[Tzara]

I'm game. Who else?

I will, via e-mail anyway, though she may not care for the result.






I know. You quote something that was part of a conversation that has since wandered off into history and no one knows what the hell you're talking about.

I am counting on that, kinda.

Have a nice day.

 

[Yesspleasse]

"Poetry as an art form predates literacy. Some of the earliest poetry is believed to have been orally recited or sung..."

"Poetry was employed as a way of remembering oral history, story (epic poetry), genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely related to musical traditions,..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_poetry

 

[butters]

I will, via e-mail anyway, though she may not care for the result.






I know. You quote something that was part of a conversation that has since wandered off into history and no one knows what the hell you're talking about.

I am counting on that, kinda.

Have a nice day.

thankyou! i'll send you my e-mail address in pm. and it's just for fun anyway, and curiosity.

the other way around this stuff is to do Voki's.

 

[Yesspleasse]

This site is driving me barmy. Not for the first time, there appear to be two versions of the same thread floating about.

'Game for what?' I was thinking, since there appeared, initially, to be no previous posts relating to this.

I can't be bothered with this confusion.

 

[butters]

This site is driving me barmy. Not for the first time, there appear to be two versions of the same thread floating about.

'Game for what?' I was thinking, since there appeared, initially, to be no previous posts relating to this.

I can't be bothered with this confusion.

did you find it?

i put up 2 poems for charley and anyone interested to voice for me - just for fun.

i think we need a whole new thread for this, and anyone can put up theirs to be voiced by anyone up for it.

 

[Yesspleasse]

did you find it?

i put up 2 poems for charley and anyone interested to voice for me - just for fun.

i think we need a whole new thread for this, and anyone can put up theirs to be voiced by anyone up for it.

Hi Chipbutty,

I'm not sure if I found it or if I didn't to be honest (the 'complete' thread I mean) and not for the first time. That is to say, it seems to fluctuate. Sometimes, I get a notification to my email address, to a thread I haven't contributed to.....

Well anyhow, maybe I'm the only person this happens to, so I won't moan at length.

Actually, no, I hadn't seen your poems. I have to get back to work now, but I will look for them later, because it sounds like a fun idea, which I would certainly have a go at.

I find the idea of reading someone else's poem aloud to them to be a tempting novelty.

I will hopefully log in later and have another look.

I should add that I'm not a poet, or even a fan (up until now). I'm just experiencing a spell of curiousity. I mean, I'm passionate about books, art, architecture, photography, film and music and so on....but somehow I've tended to neglect poetry.

I'm quite tickled to find myself discussing it here, of all places, in some ways. I hadn't quite envisaged ...........Lol.

Probably I shouldn't be so surprised, given the connection between poetry and...matters of attraction.