# Poets: How important is performance to your work?



## Coffee (Jan 12, 2008)

Personally, for myself, being essentially a strict slam poet, performance is everything. I admit regularly that my poetry looks rubbish on a page or simply recited, but in the heat of the performance, chanted, shouted, whispered, I think my poetry is completely beautiful and is a true expression of my feelings and opinions.

How about you?


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## Madame (Jan 12, 2008)

Performance certainly factors in to how good a poem sounds. There's a young man in my Lit. Society that occasionally reads the anonymous submissions that come in. No matter how bad I think a poem looks on the paper, when he reads, it's like he infuses poetry into a chaotic mess of words and lines. When he reads, I can't help but think a poem has some artistic merit no matter how bad. My own work? I like it to read well whether being performed or simply read/recited. Most people aren't as talented as the young man I mentioned when it comes to reading poetry. For that, I write to the general population so that my words look good on their own and when performed properly can be even more brilliant.


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## yak (Jan 12, 2008)

It is a normal feeling to criticize your own work the day after. Many famous people destroyed their masterpieces in the course of the next few days because they were not satisfied with them in one or several aspects.

And i think i will not be too far off when i say most of the artists are not satisfied with what they have done a few days after they've done it. Performance is highly susceptible to mood swings, and so is your perception. At the time you're doing it it does seem perfect, but the day after you don't think so any more. 

But the thing is, you're just looking at it from a different angle, a different point of view. That's something to learn from right there, as no form of art will be appealing to everyone at once. The key is to make it appealing to as much people as possible, and that includes the many sides of yourself too.


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## Poetigress (Jan 12, 2008)

I write for the page, personally... I have done readings, and some of my work translates tolerably well to being read aloud, but in my experience with both slams and regular readings, too often the _way_ things are said is given far more attention than what's actually _being_ said, and for me that gets tiresome.  It's all a matter of personal taste, but the poems I like best usually aren't the sort that would translate all that well to performance.

I also don't know why so many poets wind up reading their work in what I call the "Poetry Voice," that breathy, halting voice (with the slight uptick at the end of each phrase) that, after a solid hour or so, starts to sound something like a bad impression of William Shatner.  It's like a virus or something.  >_<


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Jan 13, 2008)

Poetigress said:
			
		

> I write for the page, personally... I have done readings, and some of my work translates tolerably well to being read aloud, but in my experience with both slams and regular readings, too often the _way_ things are said is given far more attention than what's actually _being_ said, and for me that gets tiresome.
> 
> I also don't know why so many poets wind up reading their work in what I call the "Poetry Voice," that breathy, halting voice (with the slight uptick at the end of each phrase) that, after a solid hour or so, starts to sound something like a bad impression of William Shatner.  It's like a virus or something.  >_<



Amen to that.


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## TakeWalker (Jan 13, 2008)

I _wish_ I was cool enough to be a slam poet. D:

I could totally do a boring poetry reading of the sort Poetigress has described, however. :3


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