I wandered lonely as a cloud...

The boy stood on the burning deck...

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan...

Come into the garden, Maud...

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy...

Lazy, laughing, languid Jenny...

A panther is much like a leopard...

Tiger, tiger, burning bright...

Do not go gentle into that good night...

Once upon a midnight dreary...


I grew up with poetry. My grandfather, born and educated in Britain at a time when poetry recitation was a mainstay, sought to fill the gap in his grandchildren's Canadian education with a fine round of poetry. It was never dreary, it was fun. I loved memorizing the rolling phrases, I loved hearing him recite a poem with enthusiasm and zest, or, when the poem demanded, with great spooky mystery, and I loved doing the same.

And yet, when I hear the strains of a poetry-reading beginning on the CBC, I almost always turn the radio off -- generally with an exclamation of exasperation -- within the first fifteen seconds. I just can't stand it.

When my grandfather and I shared poetry, it vibrated with energy. When I hear poetry declaimed on the radio, it is moaned in a deadpan, the words falling like some relentless drip, drip, drip. Not dripping of water, clean and fresh. More like, oh... the plop, plop, plop of (so I imagine) sludge from a sewage pipe.

Who wants to listen to that? The poetry of my childhood was not "kiddy poetry". It was rich and layered and nuanced, full of marvellous sounds and meaning -- and yet it was presented as exciting, interesting, full of LIFE.

There is no life in their droning. Only tedious, pretentious efforts at sounding portentious.

Or something. I have no idea why they feel they must read the stuff like that. Why turn something so rich and vibrant into a tedious, dreary droning? It doesn't have to be that way. I've heard the odd Poetry Slam on the CBC, where poetry is turned into a rhythmic, pulsating form of performance art. Very cool.

Let's have more of that, shall we? More life and less droooooning.