Music of Poetry
Peter Nazareth introduces the poet Galway Kinnell who has come to talk about music and poetry. Kinnell begins by speaking about the unmusicality of the language in which people try to write poetry. Kinnell says that many people feel the singing has gone out of contemporary poetry. Kinnell feels that, in modern America, people are becoming uninterested in sound as Henry James noted at the turn of the century when he wrote about how a young lady he spoke with did not properly pronounce her vowels. Kinnell says that some of us are simply unable to speak our own language and he notices a lot of final consonants are dropped all together when people talk now days. Kinnell views it as a kind of speed talking taking place where the meaning is conveyed, but the physical object is not. It is an equivalent of short hand. Kinnell talks about how English actors cannot imitate an American accent because it is a state of mind with respect to words rather than an actual accent. Kinnell demonstrates the articulation of sounds through the tape recordings he plays for the audience of various poets reading from their work such as Elizabeth Bishop, Marion Moore, and a Spanish poet reading a poem in Spanish. Kinnell notes that the popularity of prose poems is acknowledgement that people don’t mind poetry which lacks music. Kinnell feels that the music aspect of poetry is what makes it poetry. There is a brief pause during the recording while the tape is switched from side A to side B. Kinnell plays sound recordings of animal noises such as a wolf howling. Kinnell ends by restating how important music is in poetry. Questions are taken from the audience at the end.
In: International Writing Program Archive
Authors: Galaway Kinnell
Date Recorded: September 22, 1983
Program: --
Format: lecture
Contributors: Peter Nazareth
Topics: Poetry; music; contemporary poetry; modern language; loss of formal language; communication; importance of music in poetry
Note: Sound quality is somewhat poor.