Soundtracked Poetry

Having had the opportunity to witness a plethora of readings - some by amazing writers, like John Ashbery and Susan Wheeler - I've realized that, often, something gets lost in the oral presentation. While we get to hear these authors' voices, their cadence, and we're transported back to the sonic birth of a poem's words, we still don't fully experience the music of the language, which is poetry's very core.

Far too many times have I heard readings by writers who have the same inflection -- you know, that one where they hang on the last word of each line and it sounds like they're accentuating some sort of mutant that was bred by the coitus between a comma and a period... you know that one, right? That style of reading must be used by 75% of the poets out there, so much so, that it virtually becomes robotic, failing to do the musicality of the poem any justice.

Furthermore, poetry accomplishes a great deal on the page itself: line length, white space, juxtaposition, italics, and numerous other elements that make poetry a visual form of art just as much as an auditory one. When we don't have the poem in front of us, it's the author's responsibility to convey all of this orally. It's not even a responsibility, rather a chance to perform. Perhaps the best performance I was privileged enough to experience was Anne Carson, who incorporated several readers along with choreographed dance into her presentation. On a lesser scale, Cathy Park Hong, reading from Dance Dance Revolution, brought her poems to life by pacing tempo, changing pitch, and at times, nearly singing.

Not only does it make the presentation entertaining, but it also allows us to really feel the poem, its emotional current.

And that's what I wanted/want for my audience. I don't want them sitting there, hands folded, listening to each and every word, trying to determine what the poem is 'about.' I want them to be aware of how the presented experience actively makes them feel.

That got me stroking my goatee [that I don't actually have], conjuring all of the possibilities that I could achieve in presenting the poems from my manuscript, Tremulous. Without going into those details, it eventually led me to the idea of music. Since my manuscript is a story that ebbs & flows, and as I created it, I envisioned things cinematically, I thought a soundtrack could compliment it perfectly.

Soooo, I've been collaborating with my friend, Justin Rudolph (who's a brilliant musician), and we've been creating sound f/x, voice distorition, ambiance, etc to accompany each poem, based on the specific poem's tone & content. Ultimately, like a well composed soundtrack for a film, I hope to compose a soundtrack for this story.

The process is time consuming. I have approximately 70 poems that comprise the story, and thus far, we've soundtracked about 7 of them. I've uploaded them onto YouTube to provide people with a glimpse, as well as a way for me to gauge general reaction. If you'd like to czech them out, you can go to The Garden. Once there, you'll see more on the right side of the screen from Tremulous (user name: dangercurt). Also, my friend, colleage, and awesome writer, Ben Mirov, briefly mentioned these soundtracked poems in his pondering, which you can read on Ben's page (under Sunday, May 31, 2009). And if you visit that site, read some of his stuff because it's spectaculous.

That's all for now. Stay thirsty, my friends.