Are Poets’ Spoken Voices Part of Their Art?

I recently spoke to a poet who said a surprising thing to me: “I don’t like going to poetry readings. I prefer not to hear a poet’s voice, because once I hear it, I always hear it in my head when I read their poems.” That amazed me, because that’s exactly why I do like to go to poetry readings. I enjoy hearing the poet’s individual and idiosyncratic use of the spoken language.

Can you imagine the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, for example, without that whiny, growly, funny, syncopated, and deeply tender voice of his? Here’s an example of Ginsberg reading his famous tribute to Walt Whitman, “A Supermarket in California.”

Allen Ginsberg

Who can conceive of the poetry of Sekou Sundiata without his soulful baritone, completely as musical as Charlie Parker’s solos, especially since Sekou chose to record and not to publish most of his poems. Here’s Sekou reading his irrefutable and still all-too-relevant indictment of racial profiling, “Blink Your Eyes.”

Or Adrienne Rich’s ringing voice calling out the powerful in her precise syllables, as exact and exacting as her diction and imagery and politics. Here is Adrienne reading her poem, “Diving into the Wreck.”

Adrienne Rich

Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Do we know what Shakespeare’s voice sounded like? Or Lorca’s? Not knowing their voices allows us the freedom to interpret their poems when they are spoken, just as a ballad singer can interpret “Fly Me to the Moon” her own way. Each singer sings it differently. That’s a good thing.

But even if we know the sound of a poet’s voice, that doesn’t preclude a great reciter from recreating the poem for herself. Think of the Oscar-nominated actor Alfre Woodard reinterpreting the late, great Ntozake Shange’s “Somebody Almost Walked Off Wid All My Stuff” in for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. Ntozake was a magnificent reader of her poetry, but that didn’t stop Alfre Woodard from reinventing the poem with her own voice, inflections, and choreography. 

Ntozake Shange

In the age we live in, where recordings can be preserved almost as easily as books, and maybe more permanently, a poet’s voice can be part of a writer’s legacy. And why shouldn’t it? In a way, that challenges writers to read their work more professionally and memorably. Isn't the sound of poetry what distinguishes it from the other literary arts? How sad that we don’t know the timbre of Lorca’s speech, since he lived in the age of recorded sound, but was assassinated before his voice could be preserved for all time. 

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Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies

Zack’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe

Other recent posts about writing topics: 

How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka, The Villanelle
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Writers and Collaboration
Types of Closure in Poetry

Movies with Great Screenplays You May Not Know

I’m devoting this blog to movies you may not have seen, movies with great screenplays. Some of the movies were suggested by friends or family members.

The Clouds of Sils Maria was chosen by the poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield. This is an amazing movie about a middle-aged actress, beautifully played by the great Juliette Binoche, who is returning to the stage to appear in a play that she acted in when she was an ingénue, only now she’s playing the part of the older woman. A beautiful and brilliant screenplay by Olivier Assayas, who also directed. Great ensemble acting. Highly recommended. If you like Assayas, who also writes and directs French films, Summer Hours is also quite good and also stars Juliette Binoche.

Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in The Clouds of Sils Maria

The Way Way Back is a surprising movie about a teenage boy caught in a world where grownups act like kids, and kids have to find their way without parental guidance. This film was recommended by the playwright Tamar Shai. Strong screenplay by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. The movie is lifted above the usual coming-of-age story by the character of Trent (played by Steve Carrell), the ne’er-do-well owner and denizen of a water park. Trent becomes the guru and unlikely father figure for the teenage boy. 

The poet Patricia Spears Jones suggested a couple of movies, including The Kids Are All Right, screenplay by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, a complex story about two lesbian mothers who have kids by the same sperm donor. When the man appears on the scene, the plot thickens. Great cast with Annette Beining, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo. Patricia also recommends Do the Right Thing, written and directed by Spike Lee, who also appears in the film as a character named Mookie—I love it! Probably Spike Lee’s best film, a nuanced treatment of race, set in Brooklyn.

Poet and fiction writer Robert Thomas picked an oldie but a goodie, the film noir Out of the Past, screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring. This movie has everything you want in a suspense drama: a decent tough guy pursued by scary villains, a femme fatale, and settings all over the West Coast, including vintage footage of San Francisco. Kirk Douglas plays against type as the bad guy—it’s one of his stronger roles.

Fiction and nonfiction author Richard Chiappone, who also writes screenplays, mentioned the movie Slap Shot. Great setting—minor league hockey in a rust belt town. One of Paul Newman’s best roles, scripted by Nancy Dowd. Great one-liners, engaging love story, political resonances.

Poet Lisa Houlihan Stice chose Paris, Texas, screenplay by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. This is a haunting film about amnesia and broken family ties set in the Southwest. Memorable.

My friend Ava Torre-Bueno reminded me of the film The Best Years of Our Lives, a classic about the difficulties soldiers face returning from war. Still a current topic, with resonant messages about disabilities. Robert E. Sherwood wrote the screenplay.

My daughter Lena Rogow mentioned a movie with a great screenplay that she loves, Mostly Martha. It’s an exquisite German movie about a gourmet chef who winds up raising her orphaned niece, a girl in deep mourning who refuses to eat. Screenplay and diretion by Sandra Nettelbeck. 

I don’t think I could write a blog about screenplays without mentioning John Sayles, who is also a fine fiction writer (check out his books The Anarchists Convention and Union Dues). Sayles has the ability to dive into a region or topic and find the truth below the surface. My favorites are Baby It’s You (class differences in high school), Eight Men Out (one of the best baseball movies ever!), and Passion Fish (stellar performance by Alfre Woodard).

Alfre Woodard in Passion Fish

A few other films where I’ve enjoyed the screenplays, randomly selected:

A Voyage Round My Father, an autobiographical film written by John Mortimer of Rumpole of the Bailey fame. This could actually be Laurence Olivier’s best screen performance. He plays a cranky old lawyer who is a loving father to Alan Bates, almost in spite of every single thing the dad says and does.

I love the movie Va Savoir (Who Knows?), the masterpiece of director Jacques Rivette, who passed away in 2016. The screenplay was a collaboration of Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer, and Christine Laurent, based partly on a play by Luigi Pirandello. It’s a play-within-a-move device, with a moving story and great ensemble acting.

I can’t finish a blog about great screenplays without mentioning the films of the French director Patrice Leconte. His movies are all incredibly provocative, intelligent, and haunting. My faves are The Hairdresser’s Husband (written by Leconte and Claude Klotz), and The Girl on the Bridge (about a knife-thrower performer who finds his assistants by rescuing would-be suicides from jumping off bridges—screenplay by Serge Frydman).

And one last one, a favorite flick: Norma Rae, Sally Fields’ best role, and the script is also beautifully written by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. Funny, emotional, politically powerful, about unionizing workers in a Southern factory town.

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Zack’s memoir about his writer dad, Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry

The Next Big Thing

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this blog to bring you an installment of: The Next Big Thing. This week I’m taking part in an Internet chain letter for writers by that name. The idea is for a writer to answer a series of questions about a current project in the works, and then tag other writers to respond to the same questions about their own work.

What is your working title of your book (or story)?

I’m working on a book of poems called Talking with the Radio.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I live in California and I spend a crazy amount of time driving in my car. I always listen to the radio to calm me down while I drive—I didn’t learn to drive till I was 39 years old, and I can use some calming.

I mostly listen to the jazz station in the San Francisco Bay Area, KCSM 91.1, also available streaming at KCSM.org. Whenever I hear a song I really like, I start talking to the radio, imagining that artist’s voice in a monologue. Or I just react to the music, making up words that go along with it. I know, I should be paying attention to the road! But that’s how I’ve written a lot of the poems in this book.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. But some of the poems are intended as song lyrics.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

There are some dramatic monologues and dialogues in the book that would work well for actors to recite. I’d choose Beyoncé or Queen Latifah to sing some of the lyrics in the book, and B.B. King to sing the blues song “Washing the Soap.” I wrote a dialogue between the singer Dinah Washington and her mother—I’d pick Alfre Woodard to play the mother. I’m not sure who would play Dinah. OK, I’d settle for Beyoncé again.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Talking with the Radio features poems and song lyrics about popular music and jazz.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Do any agents represent poetry? If they do, they must be one sonnet short of a sequence.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’ve been writing this book very slowly, since a poem about a singer or a song doesn’t come to mind every day, or even every month. I’ve written several poems a year for this book over a five-year period.

What other books would you compare this to within your genre?

Many, many poets have written about popular music and jazz in their work. Their work inspired me. My book is dedicated to those poets, from Jack Kerouac to Ntozake Shange to Cornelius Eady.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I just love jazz and popular music. I grew up listening to my mom’s Ella Fitzgerald vinyl LP records as she puffed on her cigarette holder, sipping Johnny Walker Red Label. I had a little transistor radio as a kid that I snuck into my bed at night and listened to Top 40 hits to put me to sleep.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The book includes a series of ghazals. The ghazal is a popular song form in South Asia. It’s also one of the oldest poetic forms still used. It comes from Arabic, and it was perfected during the Golden Age of Persian poetry in 12^th century Iran, during the period of Rumi and Hafez. I like to sing my ghazals as blues songs. Obviously, that’s not how ghazals are sung in Asia. But the blues was originally a fusion of African and European vocal styles. Many of the Africans who were brought to the U.S. first as slaves were Muslims who knew how to chant Arabic prayers. Quite possibly the blues was influenced by Arabic song and poetic forms as well, forms such as the ghazal.

I’m tagging three wonderful writers whose work I admire greatly, to post blogs next week in The Next Big Thing: Richard Chiappone, one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever met; Beverly Burch, who is triply talented as a published fiction writer, poet, and author on psychology; and Andromeda Romano-Lax, a terrific historical novelist. Thanks to the amazing Sammy Greenspan of Kattywompus Press for tagging me.

Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer