How (not) to Read Poetry Out Loud 

My sense is that Shakespeare was so good at English because he didn't have to study Shakespeare at school. Just saying!

I've spent my entire adult life thinking that a line break indicated a pause. I now have to edit all the poetry I've written, and re-read the poetry I've read. 😢

I'd say there is a special skill to reading _metrical_ poetry. Here, I always find out the regular rhythmic pattern first, then work on adjustments that bring out the meaning or that must create a metrical variation.

Alas, I have witnessed all the unfortunate modes of reading poetry that you ably discuss in the video, sometimes in the context of high school speech tournaments. Your comments are spot on. I can't completely agree, however, that there is a plain meaning mode of reading poetry that allows one to escape the dilemmas of performance . The same poem can mean many different things and a sensitive reading can enhance these and lead an audience to them -- the key term being "sensitive." A _good_ actor will not to attempt to over interpret a poem. In spite of what happens at speech tournaments, oral interpretation is old an honorable an art.

I am a 57 year old man who has lived a very active life (which I am not done with..lol). I have always had a love for reading. But I am just now beginning my journey into poetry. I truly wish that began reading it earlier. But as they say, better late than never. I just wanted to drop you a note saying thank you. I find your videos very entertaining and educational. They are most definitely helping me to learn to read poetry correctly, which in turn, is helping me to enjoy it more thoroughly. So thank you for these videos.

Great content, thanks for doing what you do. Poetry rules!

Thank you so much for posting this! I have my first reading in a couple days and no idea what to do. This helped a lot!

Thank you for helping me to speak in poetry! I'm going to write a poem for my middle school graduation event and I'm a bit doubtful and this is the first time I've written poetry in public, I appreciate this video, thanks Andrew! wish me luck!

I find your explanations seamless and your advise rock solid

Good Morning, Andrew. I would just like to tell you how much I enjoy your videos. I am learning so much and it’s such a pleasure to hear someone speaking so concisely and not murdering the English language. You also look vey smart too. Many Thanks for giving us such a fabulous channel to enjoy. PD - from the U.K. XXX

After hearing some of my favourite poets reading their own work, I can't imagine hearing their poems in any other voice. When I read silently, I can still 'hear' their unique voices - eg, Ted Hughes, Theodore Roethke, TS Eliot, WB Yeats. I quite enjoy reading poems aloud, but it only 'works' if I've never heard the poet's own voice.

I don't agree that SOME poems are not theatre, they are (The Walrus and the Carpenter, for instance).

I'm currently reading Beowulf and it's frustrating because it has so many appositives chained together. I will try this advice.

I'm a new subscriber that's very much enjoying your videos about poetry ❤

There shouldn't be a way to read poems, as long as you can bring out the meaning, you should let it flow

Thanks for the video. I had to research this as I'm reading The Iliad as a non-native English speaker

This was enjoyable and I subscribed and I wasn’t even asked and thank you so much for that. 🥰 ❤ I hope to learn more from you!

6:56 HE SAID IT SO DRAMATICALLY IT REMINDED ME OF RUSH E FOR SOME REASON WHAT?!?

Thank you for this video! In class, we had to over-dramatize the poem and we kinda do that to get a good grade.

Excellent channel. A lot of take aways here. 🙏

Very interesting and understandable presentation. Love more

as someone who's first language is not English , this video really gave confidence. Thank you.

Thank you. I still am unable to understand a poem. I liked the last example. When stationed in Bremerton, WA., the water was filled with jellyfish. The re-reading helped me picture those waters. I like the advice of follow the sentence. It was a crystal clear and hopefully, for me, will help me do a better job in reading and understanding the poem.

I have an English poetry competition in the future...after this video I've learn new things and also realized the mistakes I made. I hope I will do good in the upcoming competition . Thank you very much!

"Writing is the good stuff and poetry is the best of the good stuff." 👨‍🍳💋

Thank you ! Thank you! I am just a little less stupid this evening! Great presentation

Hi Andrew. I am really enjoying your poem related videos. Thank you for all the time spent into producing them and for post them on yt. Could you make a playlist of all you poetic videos? And out of curiosity, did you watch Lucky Hank? If do what are your thoughts? Any tv or movie writing related recommendations? Not eng speaker but your explanation of things, humor and knowledge makes me want to try and start reading and writing again. Thank you

I don't like ice cream either! I really liked the jelly fish poem. It was very visual. I think i'm an over dramatic poem reader. lol. But I like how you gave the three ways to not read a poem. so now I can I can be more aware of how I ready my poems :) And the skull never fails to be funny lol

Thank you

Very helpful

WB Yeats himself did not read his poetry in the cadence you suggest, especially as regards puntuation and pauses: From a BBC article about Yeats in 2015: "The Irish poet made a series of radio broadcasts for the BBC in the 1930s. He seemed to know even then that his reading manner was going out of style. “I am going to read my poems with great emphasis upon their rhythm, and that may seem strange if you are not used to it,” warned Yeats when introducing the Lake Isle of Innisfree in a 1931 recording. “I remember the great English poet, William Morris, coming in a rage out of some lecture hall where somebody had recited a passage out of his Sigurd the Volsung. ‘It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble,’ said Morris, ‘to get that thing into verse.’ It gave me the devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read, and that is why I will not read them as if they were prose.”

Thank you. I always read in my own voice, but I kept hearing other people read in poet voice, so I thought I was doing it wrong. I was also always told that line breaks are for pausing.

I've never read poetry before this is kind of neat

Interesting.

Ever heard john Cooper Clarke reading his poetry?

Thanks so much for these videos! Poetry seems so cool until people start talking about special rules for it, and then it starts to feel impossibly obscure. Thanks for taking the time to demystify both its writing and its reading for us!

playing on your skin -golden every little layer to reach a heart fragrant of a recursive emotion absent of care my love language frolicking down a cool pasture of flowers due for bloom my nose close to yours

Hello, I'm a 15 y/o and I love poetry. I've written some poems and wish to publish a book soon! But, English isn't my first language and I have never taken any kind of classes related to creative writing so I don't really know if my poems are good enough. Would you please rate some of my poems? and maybe tell me where/how to improve. Thank you for reading.

Do you remember the "Classic Poetry Out Loud" podcast? "The Lady of Shallot" was my favorite clip. 🙂

Helpful!!! Please do more poetry device videos

Thank you so much!! I have a speech meet and i was put in poetry (Ive never preform poetry, i always went with info or original oratory) and i sound so awkward reciting it

What are your advice about speaking or reading in public? thanks

Hi Andrew, I've enjoyed all your videos on poetry. I'm writting this comment to give some pushback on the second part of the video. I hope you (and whoever reads this) recieves it with the good faith it was intended. Spoken poetry is a performance - it is a monologue. It is by its nature a different artform from reading written poetry silently or even aloud to oneself. I think this whole section of the video is essentially inconsistent with the rest of the video because your arguments seem to suggest you believe the same. The first section warns about a common trap for new players which leads to bad poetry performances. Given that there is a way to perform that you think is worse, you must believe that there are ways to perform it better. I agree that overly melodramatic readings are not usually good to listen to and diminish the work of the author. However, can you really believe that the second much better reading you do doesn't express emotion? That you in reading it (albeit in a much more subtle and nuanced way) doesn't impart the emotion and feeling that you the performer are expressing? You seem to imply that the focus should fall squarely on the words of the author; in which case, why bother with the reading aloud at all? I think the more consistent and historically accurate approach is to treat spoken poetry in line the oral tradition it decends from and lean into it as a form of monologue. Would love to hear back from you (or anyone else) on the subject.

A very good evening sir, just could you help me out with atleast three poems which compliment each other and during the elocution few props can be taken up to make them look fancy .The poems I selected are The Walrus and the carpenter ,The blind man and the elephant and Middlesome Matty. Ma'am really need ur help kindly suggest more according to you which compliment each other. Regards Jade

Hi. Great videos.. I was wondering if you could recommend some examples of modern poetry. This video focuses on poems that rhyme. I often hear that rhyming and stanzas are outdated. Ive looked up some poetry journals to see what is submitted. I dont mean to put down anyone's craft , and people have different preferences , but I didnt enjoy it. I usually had a hard time understanding what the poem was about. I know it other videos you mentioned to give readers something specific to identify with and that poems are riddle, but If I cant figure out the poem its hard to connect to.. I feel like the rhymes are less about rhyming and more about the sytax and structure. It seems hard, but Im sure not impossible to recreate, without rhymes, but Im not sure Im fidning it with non the non rhyming poems ive read. ive tried to search modern poetry and the results i find seem to focus on 'instagram' poetry. People point out examples of a nice cliche phrase that is popular more becuase of followers. I feel like its a distraction to a good conversation. I feel like it might be true that some influencers have sold books as 'poetry' , that might have limitations in talent/form, but Im guessing there is still alot of ''modern' poetry writing that isnt getting talked about for that reason. I also wonder about 'slam poetry' and its connection to this conversation. I havent explored this to have an educated opinion. If I read a 'slam poetry' piece of work, without the performance, would I still interpret the structure /syntax or would I just read it as a speech. These performances usually have a specific speech pattern that emphasize a structure, and maybe this is valid application for the form, understanding that it is going to be heard instead of read. You should listeen to the band 'HOTEL BROOKS' its basically part of a small spoken work niche genre of music that I feel would appeal to anyone that likes poetry. NIL

Dylan Thomas used a poet's voice to recite his poems. RU-vid has several of his recitations.

What do you make e. e. cummings' recitations of his own poetry?

Guilty of bad examples one and two here. Pretty sure I've done those AT THE SAME TIME. But it was for my children, so I don't feel to embarrassed. The third is a massive put off. Pretentious -- even if it's a menu!😂 Thank you. PS -- do you have a recommended reading list of contemporary poetry for this novice to dig in to?

Would you classify Jeremy Irons' reading of T.S. Eliot a "dramatic reading"? It has some hallmarks of it, but I don't think it's in bad taste at all. Perhaps your critique on that point is more from the understanding that most people will botch a dramatic reading.

I just missed some context depending on the nature of the topic of the poem... a really noble or heightened one needs a less ordinary tone of voice, this poet voice that you called, a pathetic one needs a more dramatic reading... Specially if you are reading any poetry until the XIX it was specifically requested to perform them with the particular changes of affects and such, i can recall the treatise by John Walker "elements of elocution"

1. Literally poetry and Slam poetry

Your advice is reasonable, but, I think, incomplete. There must be a way, in reading, to indicate lineation (otherwise, why have lines?). Of course, if there are rhymes or a clear meter (neither prevalent in contemporary poetic genres other than rap [if that counts]), there’s no problem, but that’s not usually the case nowadays. So I take the late Judson Jerome’s advice and lengthen, very slightly, the last syllable of every line, but not pausing unless there’s punctuation. You can hear something similar when good singers sing songs with many verses: No two are alike, even though the music remains the same.❤

Me confused! This really good vid about the nature of poetry is accompanied by snarky crtique of it purportedly coming from the skull. Who's writing that snark and why? I just don't get it.

Your final reading of "A Jelly-Fish" made me cry... Marianne Moore and you made me really see the jellyfish, and want it.

How are you related to yt channel Technology Connections?

When you say people would like poetry more if they read poems from this century, do you mean 20th or 21st?

Pashōōō! Banana tree! Woo!

If all of this is true and poetry isn't about performing it (i.e. putting in so much effort), then why have poetry reading contests at all?

Poetry is... The attempt to define beauty in the least amount of words It is also the act of describing the complexity of a single moment While comparing it to the rest of eternity For example, take the one where you're reading this The lines entice you to look into your memories And see a time when you felt beyond yourself Empathy in second person Introspection through extraversion The art of philosophy That is poetry

I'm enjoying your commentary. Would you consider dialing back the heavy breathing critic skull just a bit? I get that it is a useful device, but find it just a little irritating. Not saying to get rid of it, just maybe downsize the way it comes and goes. Maybe a smaller balloon, and no heavy breathing at all. The breathing part is jarringly out of place with the rest of your well thought out presentation. Thanks for your analysis.

Can I just say that it's really annoying when non-rhyming, non-metered poetry is written with line breaks that unnaturally break sentences grammatically? It's unnerving seeing a sentence written as a "poem" with random breaks in between for no reason. It makes it harder to read naturally for the reader, and frankly that styling is the only thing that makes it separate from prose. I have more respect for rhyming, metered poetry... 😬

10:39 I’d disagree with you here. Poetry doesn’t have to be peaceful at all, and I’ve read some very interesting poems that were the exact opposite of peaceful lol

Maybe poetry shouldn’t be read out loud at all. There is always some loss of line structure that can’t be conveyed vocally without at least some artifice.

Don't over emphasize every word when reading/ Read a poem like you are having a conversation with the audience, which you are. Don't gesticulate.

This is a very good video, but I disagree with your statement that poetry is natural language.

I liked the second two "bad" recitations. The approved recitations were bland and pretentious.

Well in a sense I think maybe English poems in today's contexts are just bad ideas. Not terrible ones, but bad enough that there're lots of better forms of arts and activities more worthy of your time and efforts. Considering the fact that English poems might not even have lines that match the end of sentences, resulting in punctuations and rhythms not in agreement, this seems like a really bad language for poetry. In Chinese poetry, both classical and modern, it's unthinkable to write sentences that don't end with the lines but instead carry into the next ones, just so that a random middle word of that sentence could be used for rhyming. As for the readers who read poems too deeply, both the actors and the poets, well they're feeling that way because their lives are not suited for and do not require poetry to express their feelings. We think too logically and scientifically today to want to use poetry to express even our own emotional struggles, rather than say through an essay, through making or viewing movies or videos, or through making or playing video games. Trying English poetry today is like trying to learn Welsh. Anyone who speaks it that you'd want to talk to is 100% percent guarenteed to also speak English, making it useless, just like how anything you want to do with poetry can also be done, and done more effectively, through other forms of arts. When this happens, it, whatever it is and however important it once was, belongs in a museum now. In another sense, we also don't need to go out of our ways to use poetry to protect or preserve poetry, just like you don't need to personally learn Welsh or put it on maps or somethings to preserve it. Some Welsh words are now a permanent part of the English language, just like poetic techniques and tricks are part of English prose. For example, we don't need to write poetry to use alliteration, or certain very meaningful wordplays. Poetry as its own art form had had its time to shine in the history of English literature, and it's now it's time to go just like epic poems did before it.

Please stop with the skull... or break for the joke

I would disagree with spoken poetry not being performative. It ellicits emotion and give emphasis on the words in the poem. Now your rendition of it was over the top for sure, but poetry that is read monotonously is dull and lifeless. The way the poem is read should simply be appropriate to the experience captured by the poem!

I am a poet and have listened to your ideas. I can't say I agree with what you say about recitation. To recite a poem is in all cases IS performative, and is a form of acting. The person reciting in a way becomes the poet, so your arguments are misleading in that they discourage the person from creating an event. In other words, you are letting the air out of the tires of the car and ticketing the driver for going over 25 miles an hour. A poem is a living thing, not a school assignment or "contest". Sorry, too many rules and no fun means poetry that isn't a lot of fun.