tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14676701.post114076488584790926..comments2023-03-19T00:48:46.336+11:00Comments on Ocean without end: So long as we don't have to wear silly hatsKelly Gardinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02606354441688595341noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14676701.post-1141007343228861702006-02-27T13:29:00.000+11:002006-02-27T13:29:00.000+11:00It's a voice to induce vertigo. Solemn - like an a...It's a voice to induce vertigo. Solemn - like an archibishop, but always with that power. I've never heard him live, but you can hear him read Homecoming here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/.<BR/><BR/>Downright spooky in that archive is Plath reading Lady Lazarus. Weirdly, she sounds invincible. Perhaps she was.<BR/>And Stevie Smith, who I never thought of as posh, has a definite plum in her mouth. Tennyson really sounds on the Edison cylinder as if he's calling from the other side, and manages to make the Charge of the Light Brigade sound dull.<BR/>One you hear a poet read well, even on the radio or web, you can hear his or her voice forever more in every line - even when it's inappropriate.Kelly Gardinerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02606354441688595341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14676701.post-1141000621201747172006-02-27T11:37:00.000+11:002006-02-27T11:37:00.000+11:00Just reading that somewhere other than in my book ...Just reading that somewhere other than in my book brought chills to me, remembering other times I'd read it. I want to quote that beautiful, beautiful sad last line, but I won't, because someone who hasn't read all the other lines before it will read it, and it will it spoil it for them.<BR/><BR/>I once heard Walcott read it in Toronto, and he read the lines you quoted, but not the end. A few weeks after that reading, I met him, even went out for lunch with him. Every second week he'd do a poetry-reading seminar for the Comparative Literature department. He was the Nobel Laureate at the time, and I remember feeling a sense of giddy vertigo afterwards -- it's silly, I know. But he was the greatest poet I'd ever met. We read poets like Robert Frost and Edward Thomas, and I was utterly amazed at how much skill it seemed to take just to read the way Walcott read. I vowed never to write another verse again.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15524799342555455519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14676701.post-1140986249307945722006-02-27T07:37:00.000+11:002006-02-27T07:37:00.000+11:00I hadn't, but I have now, and am very pleased I di...I hadn't, but I have now, and am very pleased I did. Thanks. I'm embrrassed to admit I'd forgotten Walcott (and no doubt many others, but oh the joy of being proved wrong). Now I've got a half-baked riff about post-colonialism floating though my head. But perhaps it's just his sea:<BR/>"You ever look up from some lonely beach<BR/>and see a far schooner? Well, when I write<BR/>this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt;<BR/>I go draw and knot every line as tight<BR/>as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech<BR/>my common language go be the wind,<BR/>my pages the sails of the schooner Flight."Kelly Gardinerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02606354441688595341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14676701.post-1140978569324860122006-02-27T05:29:00.000+11:002006-02-27T05:29:00.000+11:00When's the last time a new poem made your jaw drop...<I>When's the last time a new poem made your jaw drop - with insight, technique, humour, emotion - anything?</I><BR/><BR/>The last <I>relatively</I> new poem that did such things to me was written by Derek Walcott. Several poems, actually. But sometimes I sit and read "The Schooner <I>Flight</I>" aloud to myself, and the end always chokes me up.<BR/><BR/>Have you read it?https://www.blogger.com/profile/15524799342555455519noreply@blogger.com