Poetry readings are notorious for putting audiences to sleep. Which is why Poems Out Loud‘s devotion to the notion of experiencing poetry read aloud—and read well—is so thrilling. The site was inspired by Robert Pinksy’s just-published book Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud. Not to be confused with slam or spoken word poetry (which can be more performance art than poetry), the poems read here exist first and foremost on the page. But taking a poem in this way—many of the poems are read by the poet who wrote them—permits us to close our eyes and be knocked flat by these shots of compressed, refined language.
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Other things notorious for putting audiences to sleep: bland fiction readings, long movies, monotonous singing, boring TV, overwrought theater. While many a windbag have tried, I don’t think poetry has cornered the market when it comes to dull stage presence.
Well written and delivered verse should be a standard for every poet and not a lofty pedestal. If more poets believed that and didn’t fall back to simple stereotypes (which can be true in many cases), we’d have a lot more engaging poems to share and praise on a regular basis.
Other sites with engaging live work:
From the Fishouse, http://www.fishousepoems.org
IndieFeed, http://www.indiefeedpp.libsyn.com
Ubu Web, http://www.ubu.clc.wvu.edu/sound/index.html
Casa del Poesia, http://www.casadellapoesia.org
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