Thursday
Jan032008
New Year's Resolution
Thursday 3 January, 2008
From How We Came Into Performance: A Personal Accounting by Jerome Rothenberg:
'When I was first coming into poetry – more than fifty years ago by now – the opportunities for readings, much less “performances,” were very few. That isn’t to say that poetry was never read or performed in public – in traditional verse plays and early modernist theater, in readings by actors, in lieder and operas and other musical settings, and sometimes (but not then so often) by established poets on what was still a limited lecture circuit, with readings few and far between. What changed, as we then entered into it, were the venues and the participation of increasingly large numbers of poets as readers (later, for some, as performers) of their own work. Once readings could exist and find an audience – as they did – in non-institutional settings, the possibility of readings opened for poets of all ages and with or without established reputations.'
Link (PDF)
'When I was first coming into poetry – more than fifty years ago by now – the opportunities for readings, much less “performances,” were very few. That isn’t to say that poetry was never read or performed in public – in traditional verse plays and early modernist theater, in readings by actors, in lieder and operas and other musical settings, and sometimes (but not then so often) by established poets on what was still a limited lecture circuit, with readings few and far between. What changed, as we then entered into it, were the venues and the participation of increasingly large numbers of poets as readers (later, for some, as performers) of their own work. Once readings could exist and find an audience – as they did – in non-institutional settings, the possibility of readings opened for poets of all ages and with or without established reputations.'
Link (PDF)
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