Walt Whitman Aloud

I often ask my students how often they read poems aloud -- their own, of course, but also poems in general, for class, for pleasure, for various late-night interludes. The ear is remarkably instructive. I was part of a great little project to put Walt Whitman in the air; six of us, very different voices, each separately recorded the entire 1855 version of "Song of Myself". I think my studio session may have taken the longest, maybe four hours or more (as my reading, i.e. understanding, of the poem is a fairly energetic one, experimenting with crescendos, decrescendos, pauses). I learned quite a bit that day, not just about the poem, but the interplay of reading such a behemoth aloud in such a short period of time. Kudos to Coleman Hutchinson and team at UTexas.

From the splash page: ""I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen/And accrue what I hear into myself....and let sounds contribute toward me"