Poetic Performance Quotes

I've got mixed feelings about poetry cause done well poetry is fantastic. But not many people are capable of doing it well. I think you should have some kind of license to perform poetry. A poetic license perhaps.

I actually remember celebrating National Poetry Day at school; I remember having to write and read a load.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

I grew up in a place in which, if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and perform it and do it and flourish it.

Written poetry is different. Best thing is to see it in performance first, then read it. Performance is more provocative.

There was this girl who went to my school, and she did a Nikki Giovanni poem, 'Ego Tripping,' and it was just different from everyone else's. It wasn't flat recitation. It had an energy and a life to it. And it made me sit up in my seat, and my eyes got wide, and I really felt inside myself, 'She's making me feel things. I want to do that.'

I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets.

Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.

When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don't read or overhear the voice in the poem - you are the voice in the poem.

Obviously, if I'm reading in Vienna or Venezuela or Italy, there's the issue of language, and I will make choices that are more sound oriented. Or I'll try to incorporate those languages and occasions somehow.

If art doesn't require an audience, can an intimate conversation be a work of art? Can a thought be a work of art? Maybe. I don't know. These questions are completely hypothetical for me, because I love interacting with audiences. I want my poems to be heard.

Life as a poet and actor truly became full circle as I stood on stage as host of 'Verses & Flow' and lived in both of these outfits. It was one of the best experiences of my professional life.

Troubadours have always been more important and influential than theologians and bishops

My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.

I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience.

For me rappers and dancers are poets and artists and often times the most interesting performances are given by them.

The first time I heard Ron Whitehead read I felt what I imagine those who heard Abraham Lincoln deliver The Gettysburg Address felt.

There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends.

What is the point of narrating poetry when the listener can't appreciate and enjoy the meaning?

Most people who write and publish poetry teach or do something else.

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.