Galway Kinnell
"Kinnell believes that poetry is inherently personal - it's one person's exploration of life, of what it means to be on earth."
Listening to Kinnell's voice in class reminded me of Charles Bukowski's voice. I'm almost surprised that Joe Mills calls this a "reading." It kind of begs the question of what is the fundamental difference between a "reading" and a "performance" because I would say that listening to Kinnell or Bukowski read their work is as affecting emotionally as any slam poet.
However, life is short and this question almost entirely irrelevant, so let's move on and just say that both work well enough.
- Galway Kinnell reads After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
- Charles Bukowski reads Dinosauria, We
- Animated Version of Charles Bukowski's The Man With the Beautiful Eyes
- Harry Dean Stanton reads Charles Bukowski's Bluebird
- Billy Collins reads The Lanyard
- Some guy with a gravely voice reading Billy Collin's Forgetfulness
- James Joyce reading
- T.S. Eliot reads Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- Dylan Thomas reads Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
- Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood in a car commercial
I'm not privileging one over the other or suggesting that one is more emotional than the other. And, there are certainly performance aspects in a reading, but it seems that reading a work, literally reading it from a page, is different than memorizing and performing it. There is a reason that we talk about "staged readings" as opposed to performances and productions of plays. Or even the reading of a script in the early rehearsals.
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