Planned Readings

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 623, 8 June 1951, Page 12

Planned Readings

NCE or twice I have been submerged beneath the sheer mass of disjointed material that has been broadcast during a 15-minute poetry reading session. Station 3YC’s new series which began with "What is Man?" suggests an approach to poetry which gives order and purpose to a short anthology. In eliciting the answer to their question the producers ranged from Psalm VIII. to "We are the Music Makers." Like a thread carrying beads of many colours and shapes the main idea gave the many pieces of poetry and prose a cogency they would otherwise have \ lacked. Surely, too, the force of the question engages the mind instead of letting the unmoored listener slip on the tide of empty sound and feeling. Interesting contrasts or comparisons can be madefor example, the almost Biblical sentiment of Pope’s "being darkly wise, and rudely great," so unusually like Psalm VIIL.’s being, "a little lower than the angels." A- greater range of voices would improve an already good programme, and also more strongly suggest the content of some of the excerpts. For certain portions, notably the extracts from Plato and Milton, much older voices would have made a fitting contrast with the younger voices which read A. W. O’Shaughnessy’s "We are the Music Makers" and portions of Alexander Pope’s "Essay on Man,"