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Article: Speak the speech ... trippingly: an anthology features poets reading their own work, with early recordings by Tennyson and Browning and masterful turns by T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop and Langston Hughes. (Books).(Poetry Speaks)(Savage Beauty) (book review)
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- February 11, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet who founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, devoted his life to developing "a passionate syntax for passionate subject matter." He wanted his poetry "spoken on a stage or sung," not read from a book, and recited his work with great drama.
"There are those who like the elevated chant and approve of the distinction it creates between formal verse and informal conversation," writes Seamus Heaney in Poetry Speaks (Sourcebooks, $49.95, 352 pp, three CDs). "And there are those who dislike it because they want the low-key give-and-take of ordinary speech to be retained when poetry is spoken aloud."
Heaney is one of 42 ...