The Wrong Voices
HOUGH poets at times read their self-composed rhymes (in New Zealand they’re ready and willing), the results at the best very seldom attest to their power of moving or thrilling. Professional skill can capture at will both meaning and cadences meetly, while poets intense often mangle their sense,
and ruin the rhythms completely. And such was conveyed when 1YC played Americans reading their choices. Some poems were handsome examples, but Ransome, Shapiro and Williams had voices so dullish and lacking inflec*ions that whacking great sections went past me unrelished. Only Cummings, though flat, read so carefully that his substan-tive-verbs were embellished. Historically, true, such recordings will do to preserve writers’ voices; yet verses of value demand more sensitive and more expressive projection which nurses both rhythm and sense. I, for one, would dispense with hearing Shapiro right through, They who easily soar in their volumes can bore when they read. So I wonder, why do they?
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540312.2.20.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 764, 12 March 1954, Page 10
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159The Wrong Voices New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 764, 12 March 1954, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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