How does poetry imagine its own performance?

How does poetry imagine its own performance? Respond with reference to one example from the course, and another of your choice. A uni essay from Jan 22.

There is such a diverse social and cultural history when examining how poetry can imagine its own performance that I am not able to delve into and pay my respects to. For the purpose of this essay, I will mainly focus on possible contemporary understandings of how poetry imagines performance, while briefly looking at two examples both written and performed within this century by two individuals with distinct cultural backgrounds. Focusing on literacy and orality, and how the two are defined and distinguished from the other while contributing to each other regarding their effectiveness as a mode of artistic expression in conveying meaning; recognising how diverse styles and forms utilised by both literacy and orality can be used to represent diverse experiences. The attitude that orality is a more natural means of expression than literacy,[ Novak, Julia. Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. P25] or that 'feelings are conveyed when one speaks and ideas when one writes'[ Jean Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music, trans. John T. Scott (Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 1998).] will be questioned in the essay, respecting the boundaries while not being restricted by them.

In M. NourbeSe Philip's book She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, she writes: 'Only when we understand language and its role in a colonial society can we understand the role of writing and the writer in such a society.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. London: The Women's Press Ltd., 1993. p77] I'd like to note that her poetry is written on topics of great cultural heritage which has been shaped through trauma and injustice. For the purpose of this essay, I will not be examining how poetry is imagined through ancestral or personal history, not a telling of the self, but rather how poetry itself is imagined through the means by which it is shared. Her poem 'Discourse on the Logic of Language' is a textually rich example of how poetry conceptualises its own performance. When experiencing both the text and the performance separately, to then compare the effects of the two, it can be observed how the author's performance enhances the text's message through her personal tone and delivery, while the text's typographical arrangement holds its authority, which when re-read post-performance can be seen as the visual structure to the performance that reinforces the meaning of the text.

'Fundamental to any art form is the image … the musical image of the composer and musician, the visual image of the plastic artist or the verbal image, often metaphorical, of the writer and poet.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p78] The imagery of the tongue as a textual representation of orality further connotes the interplay between them. She writes: 'The tongue…(d) contains ten thousand taste buds, none of which is sensitive to the taste of foreign words.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p33] This sensually rich use of imagery strikes us with an immediate physical reaction. On the same page she continues: 'Air is forced out of the lungs up the throat to the larynx where it causes the vocal cords to vibrate and create sound. The metamorphosis from sound to intelligible word requires (a) the lip, tongue and jaw all working together.' The explicit symbolism denotes the direct correlation between text and the voice, the reclaiming of the voice and the empowering of the voice through the transition from literacy to orality. The effects of a poem are changed when the use of language is altered in its mode of expression, requiring one to adapt, to move between the senses as the poetry is imagined and reimagined, altered and interwoven through the senses, by the senses.

In an oral situation the focus is on the connection with the author and on the author's performance, which creates an immediacy to our attention; we must, in a sense, relinquish control and submit to the performance. Compared to the private handling of a book, where we have authority over the engagement with it, when presented with a performance of a text, the authority is given to the performer themselves. It is also true that the performance can be modulated in relation to the social exchange of the audience; all involved in the imagining of the poetic performance can contribute to an invasive overlapping of sentiment which may dictate how emotions are conveyed through sound. Yet it can still be felt to be a private experience; an intimate sharing between the author alone from whom the poem is read to and for an individual. With text, time can seem to be suspended and space created within to roam through the landscape of emotions as opposed to a publicly shared recital where mutuality is expected. In the reading of She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, the performance was personally affective; a personal bias I held toward the preferencing of literacy was revoked when experiencing the authentic and generous sharing of her live performance. In the poet's own words: 'Whatever the name given to the technique or form, the function remains the same — that of enabling the artist to translate the i-mage into meaningful language for her audience.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p78]

In M. NourbeSe Philip's performance, she challenges the expectations of writing as a linear form by verbally communicating her text in a way that is unpredictable. Her 'Poetry sparks imagination,'[ Sjöholm, C., 2013. Lessing's Laocoon; aesthetics, affects and embodiment. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, (no 46,), p22] showing that writing can be seen as a visual medium and that oral performance can also be considered a temporal medium, further challenging the idea that writing is a temporal medium and that poetry is a spatial medium. In oral performance there is a spatial and social interaction which creates a live dynamic in which the poem can reimagine itself through the artistic sensibilities of others; poetic text as a means of self-expression, as a way to communicate our soul and humanity, is a spiritual experience, a sharing of the self with the self and with others. In this way poetry is imagined through this ontological sharing and honest interchange. Performance poetry is a beautiful way to connect and bond with the author, if the audience submits to being suspended in the rhythm of the performance. During a communal experience of a text, the relationship between the author and the audience is deepened. To have the author share in person and to experience the text through the visual and auditory senses creates a physical reaction, an exchange between the author and the reader.

A poet can never be sure how the reader will imagine the poem; if the intended meaning of the text is tangible, or whether the written rhythm is found in the reimagining of the text. Yet when performed, the meaning is translated in a personal manner, making it clear the writer's own sentiments towards the text. M. NourbeSe Philip writes: 'in her attempt to translate the i-mage into meaning and non-meaning, the writer has access to a variety of verbal techniques and methods — comparison, simile, metaphor, metonymy, symbol, rhyme, allegory, fable, myth — all of which aid her in this process.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p78] These too aid in performance, when translating the text, when moving from literacy to orality. Her own work shows such; the typographical arrangement of her words is used as rhythmic instruction; the use of line breaks to imply a pause both creates suspense and informs how the reader experiences the page as a visual medium and how it could be read aloud when imagined orally.

The typographical structure of the language creates a visual rhythm as the words are read from the page. Her choice of typography is destabilising and unpredictable, which provokes the readers to re-examine what they expect a book to be; how a story should be shaped in an accessible and orderly manner. 'The process of giving tangible form to this i-mage may be called i-maging, or the i-magination.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p78] Whether performance is seen as an extension of the written text, or as a distinctly unattached piece of work born from the text, affects how the poem is imagined through the one experiencing it. If it is seen as a performing of the text itself, it is considered as an alternative way of experiencing the poetry. If regarded to be completely separated from its origin, the poem itself has imagined a new way of existing in its verbal form, as a new 'process of giving tangible form to this i-mage (…) or the i-magination.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p78]

Poetry is free to imagine itself when in its chaos it can freely explore the possibilities of self-expression, to remain open to interpretation both in meaning and how this meaning is translated and communicated. M. NourbeSe Philip shows this through her choice of vocalisation, the phonetic pronunciations. How she enunciated certain words or chose not to articulate others, the breaking down and stretching of the words allows the reimagining of the text in this way. M. NourbeSe Philip notes that: 'I-mages that comprised the African aesthetic had previously been thought to be primitive … The only exception to this is to be found in musical traditions, where despite the hostility of these predominantly white societies, the African i-mage-maker in musical art forms was successful in producing authentic art which has also permanently influenced Western music.'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese p79] This observation deserves much analysis of its own. However, the distinction between poetry and lyrics, performance poetry and song are of relevance to this essay and to the next poet we will consider.

The intrinsic musicality of language is hard to define as it could be seen to permeate all language; the texture and shape of the words when spoken appeals to the physical senses, especially by the tongue when spoken aloud. T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is but one example of poetry that has imagined a musicality in its performance. Its structure can be seen to imitate that of a 'Sonata cycle or the single-movement "somatic allegro."'[ Nicolosi, Robert J. "T. S. Eliot and Music: An Introduction." The Musical Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 2, Oxford University Press, 1980, p196] In Eliot's own words: 'the music of poetry is not something which exists apart from the meaning.'[ Nicolosi, Robert J p192] This shows the intrinsic connection between poetry and music and is a reminder, albeit a biased one, that poetry should imagine performance, not that a performance can be created to imitate poetry for entertainment purposes at 'the expense of meaning.'[ Nicolosi, Robert J p192] Eliot's use of repeating sounds such as 'O O O O … Weialala leia…Jug jug jug jug jug jug'[ Eliot, T. S. 1888-1965. The Waste Land: And Other Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1940] and their typography, display a sense of musicality. This is also created by the 'interaction between rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and meaning.'[ Nicolosi, Robert J p196]

However, like music it may seem, Eliot himself felt that poetry could never emulate music, 'because to arrive at the condition of music would be the annihilation of poetry.'[ Nicolosi, Robert J p204] This statement reinforces the implication that the arts and the means of artistic expression are seen to have clear boundaries between them, yet to the French composer Boulez, 'in music word and thought are one.'[ Breatnach, Mary. Boulez and Mallarmé: A Study in Poetic Influence. Aldershot, England: Brookfield, Vt., USA: Scolar Press, 1996. P70] Perhaps boundaries provoke poetry to imagine its performance in more unapologetically expressive and novel ways by consciously becoming aware of the 'mutually fulfilling relationship between imagination and technique'[ Breatnach, Mary, p72] as well as the relationship between the arts themselves. To move past these boundaries, Mallarmé believed that 'poetic activity was to express this extra-terrestrial perfection... a poet is therefore irremediably confined within the material world, prevented by the intrinsic nature of poetic language from transcending matter and reaching beyond it.'[ Breatnach, Mary, p74]

Poetry is defined as a work of literature, and yet poetry in its essence is much broader than that definition. The beauty of literature is incomprehensible, and yet words already convey an implied understanding, whereas poetry when understood to extend beyond language as we understand it can invoke feelings intangible, organic and new. This concept of poetry being confined in such a way doesn't give room for free interpretation. For example, the poetic sound of music, regardless of key or tempo, without words, is formless compared to text. Is this not a poetic performance? Before language was formed and developed, what of the sound of the human voice without the alphabet or words? Without words, without human language, we move beyond the concept of what poetry is, to see it can be much more; poetry can imagine itself beyond our human conception. What about the poetry in nature? Not only how we experience the sounds of the earth, but also the scientific structures of life; the sequences in nature that are poetic in their patterning. The earth is performing; nature is always entertaining those who choose to listen.

This in no way diminishes the power and possibilities of the use of language, both written and spoken. We each embody different forms of communication in different ways. Through a poem imagining itself through the performativity of language, there is a celebration of self-expression as opposed to performance as a function. Orality is rooted in a history of verbal emancipation. Through the verbalising of the written text, we can experience a reclamation of a language, the redemption of a voice. What had been suppressed can be reclaimed, through literature and through vocal performance. The oral performance of poetry, whether witnessed live or watched via a recording, invites us 'into another person's thoughts and feelings.'[ DeMott, Benjamin. "Learning How to Imagine the Poem: A Proposal for the Teaching of Literature." English Education, vol. 20, no. 2, National Council of Teachers of English, 1988, pp. 71–87, p78] We are welcomed into their physical presence, by the listening and/or observing of the delivery of the text, thus creating an immediate physical connection.

When examining the differences between 'the alphabetic text of a poem and its performance,'[ Bernstein, Charles. "Hearing Voices". The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound, edited by Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 142-148, p142] we can see that both literacy and orality can share emotional sentiment. The poem performs itself through a self, through the poet, the poetry itself, and the reader of the poem; all who personally identify what is longing to be expressed and by which means one can express it or experience it being expressed. The text is reimagined when we re-operate it, through reading and performance. Poetry imagines its performance through those who experience it, as it is felt by another, and as it is received and revived through each individual's perception and interpretation thereof. 'If we accept that living language continually encapsulates, reflects and refines the entire experiential life,'[ Philip, Marlene Nourbese, p80] we see that poetry is continually reimagined through each person that engages with a text or with the performance of it.

another essay out of the uni archive, (connecting the arts at BBK) R x