Sunday, June 26, 2005

Poetry on the Web & Camille Paglia

I like to hear poetry read aloud. A great source is sound files on the Web. I like to cruise over to one of the "Canterbury Tales" web sites and listen to recordings of professors reading it aloud. (The best source is here.)
My favorite is The Wife of Bath's Prologue. I'm working on memorizing the whole thing for myself, but right now I only know the first three lines:
Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, is right ynough for me
To speke of wo that is in mariage:
Recently, humanities professor Camille Paglia was a guest on the public radio show, "On Point." Paglia and show host Tom Ashbrook listened to some interesting examples of poets reading their own work: Sylvia Plath reading "Daddy," Robert Lowell reading "Man and Wife," and William Carlos Williams reading "The Red Wheel Barrow."
It gives me the shivers to hear Plath say:
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time --
Robert Lowell, meanwhile, has a reputation as New England's chosen son, but he sounds like a Southerner to me. I love the way he recites:
... Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God's creatures, still all air and nerve:
You can hear the interview with Paglia here; the poems are interspersed.
I strongly recommend listening to that interview; it's fascinating. Paglia's new book, "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems" is simply wonderful. It will particularly please those who enjoy poetry but have little patience for academic jargon. She writes plainly but with great intellectual rigor. Her book has very much stimulated my interest in poetry.
I love how Paglia is essentially conservative -- she takes on the poems honestly, not trying to subvert the author's intention. But she's also willing to see contradictions, sexual connotations, or pop culture implications. She's an old-fashioned nonconformist.
Paglia's web site is here.

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