Giuliana Savini
Editor in Chief
Poetry can move–it has not found its eternal resting place on the pages of high school English curricula. Its rhythm can flex, its stanzas can shift, and it can transcend its printed medium. But when lines that once travelled across a page are carried on the back of a sound wave, do they change? Is a poem any different when analyzed under a meticulous eye or heard from the mouth of some velvet-voiced speaker? Regardless of the vehicle of delivery, poetry is meant to be enjoyed. And enjoying poetry means different things for all of us: a poem may simply bring you a singular moment of clarity and happiness, or on a grander scale, closer to the truths you seek. So, what exactly happens when poetry moves from the page to the stage?
At one point or another, we’ve all experimented with the idea that if you stare at a poem long enough, the meaning will simply absorb into your mind. Voilà! Poetic osmosis has occurred and you now have a deeper understanding of literature and the meaning of life. Right? Wrong.
It’s a safe assumption that poetry has acquired an unpleasant stigma–that it could be written in Sanskrit and one would still have the same understanding of it. But why is it that a collection of words arranged on paper proves to be so daunting to many a student? On the page, poetry is solely your interpretation–how you notice what you noticed. It’s how you read the line breaks, how you recognize deliberate devices of the poem, and how you draw meaning from each element. These poetic inquiries are a formidable task, which is why, every Monday night, a group of students gathers together to help guide each other in these pursuits. This is the NCHS Spectator Literary Magazine, an annual student driven publication of poetry, prose, artwork, photography and the likes. When reviewing submissions (which are submitted to ncspectator@yahoo.com :)), we often don’t begin with a purely analytical lens, but simply just talk about what we liked and what we wished we knew. Our best discoveries occur when we let our collaborative thoughts guide us to an understanding. Though, if you are lacking direction in your poetic inquiries, the popular yahoo answers search of “what is the meaning of poem x?” probably looms in your near future. The page holds immense discovery and enjoyment–you just need to know where to look, and how.
Last spring, over 50 students flocked to the Wagner Room to share their poetry in the Annual Poetry Fest. One by one, they approached the podium and delivered their words, each imparting a touch that was deeply personal and unique.
Listening to the poetry was an experience completely different than that of the page– our perception of the work was no longer solely a product of our own thoughts and conclusions, but rather, it was influenced by the speaker’s delivery. Lines are no longer stagnant on the page, but they are now laced with the deliberate artistic decisions of the speaker. That is not to say that poetry on the page lacks spiritual and sensory qualities– but when listening to somebody deliver their poem versus reading it, I like to think of it as a distinction between unmistakable and mistakable. For example, on the page, you may overlook line x as being insignificant and not central to the meaning, for whatever reason. But, when listening to that same line being spoken, the poet may slow down their pace and unmistakably articulate each word on that line.The speaker has the power to partially eliminate ambiguity and to give the poem an extra lift. The audience can use the speaker’s tone of voice, movement, volume and other elements to lead them to a discovery that otherwise may not have been as prevalent on the page.
A wise woman once told me that poetry is like pooping. Sometimes it comes out easily, and sometimes, it’s really, really hard. The same thing goes for reading poetry. In the end, both the page and the stage are simply two different ways of going about the same thing: making the poop a little more enjoyable.
If you want to experience some amazing spoken word, watch these performances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6DFoVwZLB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-spXvscU80
Here are their websites, respectively:
http://rudyfrancisco.tumblr.com/
http://www.project-voice.net/
