"Downtown Women": Five Audio Recordings

[jjhunter]

There's something about how listening to a poem can change the way you experience it. I find that is doubly true when I have the opportunity to listen to several different readers' interpretation of the same poem. If one or more of the following recordings moves you as a listener, try to articulate why in the comments. Likewise, readers, please feel free to share your own thoughts about the experience of recording this particular poem.

Note that you may need to click the play triangle twice on some of the audio players.

Julia Niedermaier (LibriVox) [mp3 link]

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CP [mp3 link]

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luzula/Elin (LibriVox) [link to SoundCloud page]

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Tricia G (LibriVox) [mp3 link]

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J.J. Hunter/jjhunter [mp3 link]

Comments

On Reading (and Listening to) Downtown Women

[(Anonymous)]

There are times I get ready to record a poem, and I have to "try on" a few personalities before I settle on the one I like best. "Downtown Women" was not like for me. I could feel her determination against huge institutions, seemingly insurmountable odds, working to better things for her fellow immigrant workers. But, I think the lines that touched me most were the ones she began and ended with mentioning the idea of refusing the match maker and choosing her own husband, which in its own right is railing against a much bigger institution than just the "big business" of Chicago, even in her eyes. She's quite a complex little speaker.

Of course, I had to listen to the other recordings, as well. They are wonderful! I especially liked luzula's. While it still had that sense of momentum, moving toward the goal, it had more of tempo of city life, steady, level, beaten down but not defeated; at times, I could almost feel the pulse of a train on tracks. It was very interesting to see her from that perspective.

Anyway, it was a very interesting poem and project. Thanks for letting me a part of it!

CP

[alee_grrl]

I really enjoyed all the different readings. There was so much to hear and note in each reading. Julia Neidermeir's reading made me wonder if that might have been what the poem sounded like if read by my German/Russian great grandmother, whose story I know so little about. CP's reading captured the fire and determination. Luzulu's captured the rhythm of the city, the heart of downtown, and that you can knock us down but we will rise feeling. Tricia G's reading reminded me of my midwestern grandmother, who might have been better off had she accepted her "downtown" roots (both parents German immigrants from Russia) rather than chasing uptown dreams. Instead she married the man her brother set her up with. I wish I could have heard this kind of fire in her voice.

[jjhunter]

I'm very much a novice compared to the other readers, most notably in terms of technical sound quality. Still, I like how preparing and delivering a poem recital helps me focus on certain elements of a poem's mouth feel and rhythm.

For example, in "Downtown Women", the lines

I come from downtown women,
                   not uptown ladies.

are repeated five times. They offer a stylistic challenge: should I repeat them the exact same way each time, or should I attempt to give them a slightly different spin each time?

In the take I choose to use for the post above, I decided that the first iteration I would deliver neutrally; for the second, after the lines about throwing the uptown ladies' charity baskets back at them & telling them to 'go to hell', I would emphasize 'downtown' versus 'uptown' to stress the class differences at play. For the third, I switched the emphasis to 'women' versus 'ladies' in reference to the previous line "I organized a band of twelve immigrant girls" [emphasis added] and the line directly following about men workers laughing at the speaker's band. I didn't make deliberate choices for the fourth and fifth iterations, but I found the diction choice of 'women' over 'girls' (and note that 'girls' can refer to immigrants OR those who attend Ivy League girls' colleges [emphasis again added]) for the refrain very telling and powerful - the speaker comes from responsible, powerful adult women, not people who allow themselves to be defined as child-like on account of their gender.

[luzula]

I loved reading this poem! I have to admit I felt a bit like a fake at first while I was reading it, because I am not a downtown woman (I'm an academic, and my parents are academics). Not that one always has to share the experience/gender/accent/social class/etc of the person one is acting (if that were the case, we audiobook readers would be pretty limited in what we could read) but this poem is so clearly about claiming an identity that it still made me pause. OTOH, I do feel an affinity to the narrator--I'm a member of a syndicalist worker's union, I walk in May Day parades, and I read Emma Goldman's autobiography a few years ago and was captivated.

Okay, so, the actual reading. Like CP, I was struck with the narrator's conviction and determination, so that's something I tried to capture. To me, the poem also had a clear and driving rhythm. My recording is almost a full minute shorter than the longest one, so I guess I read it pretty fast! I was intrigued by how other readers captured the determination without having the fast rhythm.

(Hey, J. J., my name is Elin, not Erin. It's a Swedish version of Helen. : ) )

[jjhunter]

My sincere apologies, Elin! You have a friend on the LibriVox forum who pointed out the typo to me this morning as well, and I fixed the post accordingly. (I really should know better, given that I have your name spelled correctly on the landing sticky post for poetree; we're still featuring a post of yours from last year - Setting poetry to music and singing it - in the vintage section.)

In regards to your recording, it may be shorter time-wise than the others, but listening to it now it doesn't sound rushed to me. There's just an implacable sense that nothing, no nothing, is going to stand in the speaker's way. When the poet uses so many short lines, one can really take it either way - string the lines together like prose in how one reads it, or give each distinct line time-space to stretch. No one right way, though I happen to like your take on yours very much. Thank you for participating!

[luzula]

No problem! : )

I enjoyed yours a lot, too. And hmm, I don't think you had longer pauses so much as that the overall reading speed is slower. Anyway, I think my favorite thing about your reading is that to me it sounds like there's a glint of humor in there--like the narrator knew how to have fun, too, along with the political and personal struggle.

[raze]

I really enjoyed hearing different presentations of this poem, and while I can't quite pinpoint a favorite, I did find that hearing speakers' interpretations of it allowed me to "read" it differently with each listen. I want to thank everyone who performed this poem for us, because it really did add to the experience of enjoying it!