Author: IanB (---.tnt2.mornington.au.da.uu.net)
Date: 03-20-04 18:21
Talia
The Millay poem would be a fine choice as a short performance piece. Your feeling and enthusiasm for it should enable you to do well.
That's good advice from Pam to make your voice the main performer. Your aim is to speak the poem so that a mere listener gets a really good appreciation of it. There are some techniques that can help in that:
Nouns don't often need voice emphasis; the listener's mind attributes weight to them anyway. Emphasising adjectives (including past participles like 'gone' and 'lost' used adjectivally), and to a lesser extent adverbs, works better to convey meaning to a listener. Also emphasising negative particles, such as 'no' 'not' 'never' 'un-' (e.g. in the Millay, 'IN-discriminate').
We're talking subtle emphasis here, not to be confused with the necessary giving of weight to the 'beats' in a line. That's done by the speed and rhythm of word delivery. In musical terms, you can pace syllables as quavers, semi-quavers or demi-semi-quavers as may be needed to fit the rhythm, and insert occasional pauses. Like a musician, you should always be aware of and conform to the poem's rhythm, so that the listener gets it too. Which is not to say that the rhythm has to be constant, or can't be interpreted differently by different performers.
The Millay poem is interesting in varying the number of beats to a line, matching the surges of emotion and meaning. The first two lines strike me as 8-beat. The third is probably best spoken as 5-beat, though could be 6. I'd treat the fourth as 4-beat, though could be 5. The next three lines are surely 5-beat. And so on.
Finally, let your enjoyment of the occasion overcome your shyness. Show confidence and maintain the flow of the poem by keeping your voice tone up at the end of each line. Don't drop it like a heavy schoolbag on the last word of each line, as many reluctant or bashful readers of poetry do.
I'd tell the accompanying mood musicians to keep quiet, unless I had rehearsed with them. Will you have any control over the music?
Good luck!
Ian
Post Edited (03-21-04 04:59)
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