My Voice Is Visual

Any reading I or anyone gives is doubly affected: contingently, with one's currently chosen way of moving through the words (I speak them how they speak to me today, like); and necessarily, with the actual one way (however the words come out) the words come out.

At one point, in the Phaedrus, Socrates argues his complaints against written words as a source of wisdom. One of those complaints is that they always say "only one and the same thing." But that has not been my experience at all. The static written words of my favorite poems say handfuls of things, some of them dozens. The ambiguity of the oracular? Yes, that is what does it, and other forms of ambiguity, which other of my other posts have touched on.

Occasions of reading aloud: Those are what always say one thing. More carefully: Occasions of reading aloud may say just as many things as the quiet page does, but they always sound as if they say one thing—and then the listener has to try to separate the affectations of the speech from the manifold meanings of the words.

At some level, it's charming. You get to hear the words spoken from and with a personality unlike your own. (Whether it's really the author's is another matter.) But I am always ready to poke at the tyranny of the "poetry is sound" crowd. Poetry is much! Poetry is many! Poetry is sound, and sound is older—but poetry is sight, and sight is bolder! (He said in rhyme, noting the irony.)