Introduction

Abstract

This book contains chapters on poetry readings—the sound and the visual performance of poetry—opening many new ideas for critical discussion. Since the 1950s, poetry reading has become one of the most important avenues for the distribution of poetic works in North America. However studies of distinctive features of such poem-in-performance have been rare and readings are rarely reviewed by newspapers or magazines. This collection introduces a complex and multi-layered response to poetry reading. This collection also looks at poetry reading not as a secondary extension of “prior” written texts but as its own medium and asks how can it explain the common dislike, among poets, of actors' readings of poems? The book also aims to understand better the relation of sound to meaning and explores the concept of whether poetry reading can be used as an example to answer this.