A Mechanism for Better Poetry Reading

I often read poetry in public, usually my own, but sometimes the poetry of others. In particular, I have been reading poetry at Sulfur Books at its monthly Open Mic Night. Usually, reading a poem is straightforward, but not always. Sometimes a line, at least considered in isolation, can be read in more than one way.

Last night, I read my latest poem, “Lament for America,” at Open Mic Night. (Although it made no difference to me one way or another, for the first time, performers actually used a microphone, a helpful change in light of the larger audiences Open Mic Night has been attracting.) The poem does not rhyme, and its line lengths vary between 11 and 18 syllables. Every line, however, contains five metrical feet of varying meter. In other words, five syllables in each line are stressed. I thought it essential that this unifying characteristic of the poem be made as clear as possible in my recitation. A thoughtless reading of the poem could obscure its essential unity.

To assure a proper reading of the poem, I thought of annotating the text with accent marks to indicate stressed syllables. This seemed clumsy, however, and might even have obscured the words themselves. I then hit upon an idea that actually worked quite well. I rendered the stressed syllables in red. Well, technically, I used a red font to indicate each word or part of a word whose first syllable only is stressed. Coloring only individual syllables, I reasoned, threatened to encourage a choppy delivery.

Here is the beginning of “Lament for America” as it appeared on the page from which I read my poem:

Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, has lost her luster,

And Lady Liberty weeps for want of freedom,

Her torch of enlightenment no longer a beacon to the world.

The Mother of Exiles no longer welcomes the masses,

And those who accepted her welcome find it withdrawn.

I was surprised that this mechanism not only assured that lines were read with proper emphasis, but also that it made reading the poem more fluid. My working theory is that concentrating on the red text maintained my concentration generally, leading to a better reading.