Non-Hosted Week: Free Association Game

[jjhunter]

Given how busy everyone seems to be right now, our theme for this upcoming week will not focus exclusively on a poetry audio recording fest like I initially suggested. Instead we'll have a free association game week. What does that entail? For each day someone different will post a poem, a sentence fragment/prompt, an image, or a song link. Your task will be to do at least one of the following at least once each day: a.) respond to the post or a comment with a poem that the post or comment reminds you of; b.) do an audio recording of a poem in the post or comment threads and link to it in your reply (SoundCloud is your friend for uploading); or c.) respond to one of the poems in the comment threads with a song link or a small image (with link to source) that it reminds you of.

For the purposes of this week alone, while alternatively published, non-published, or public domain poetry is preferred (yours or others'), contemporary traditionally published poetry is also fair game.

Please comment to this post to claim a day; days will be assigned on a first come, first served basis, and I'll fill in for any that are unclaimed.

MONDAY (12/12): alee_grrl
TUESDAY (12/13):
WEDNESDAY (12/14):
THURSDAY (12/15): georginasand
FRIDAY (12/16):
SATURDAY (12/17):
SUNDAY (12/18):

How listening to a poem can change the way you experience it

[luzula]

I'm going to talk about a specific reading here, because it's really the strongest such experience I've had: Elizabeth Klett's reading of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land". You can download it at Librivox, and the text is online at Gutenberg.

I'd read this poem several times before, and found it captivating even though I don't get all the scholarly references in it. I think it's mostly the landscape descriptions and the connections between those and how society is described in the poem that got to me. I am a sucker for landscape and nature descriptions in basically any form, so this is no surprise if you know me.

Elizabeth Klett is one of my favorite Librivox readers--for example, her readings of the Austen novels are to die for--so when I saw that she'd recorded this poem, I downloaded it immediately. And wow. When I first listened to it, it gave me goosebumps and a sense of almost physical pleasure.

I got a new appreciation for the dialogue in it especially--she infuses all the dialogue with character so it really contributes to the overall impression of the poem. I never got that when I just read it on the page, and I'm far more likely to listen to this poem now than to read it.

This is my last post for this week! Thanks for inviting me, I've enjoyed it a lot. : )