Comments on: Why Actors Stink

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:31:54 +0000

I am willing to endorse the above comment & would like to sign up for the related newsletter.

By: bob

bob — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:59:45 +0000

how dare you actors are amazing you guys do not know good intertamit

By: Tom Shill

Tom Shill — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:10:10 +0000

In fact, Daisy, Tom Waits has acted in numerous films, including The Outsiders, The Cotton Club, Ironweed, The Fisher King, Coffee and Cigarettes, Short Cuts, Domino, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and the forthcoming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:22:52 +0000

Jennifer–I *love* the Tom Waits reading Buk video. Thank you! (Of course, he’s not an actor…) Daisy

By: J.E. Stone

J.E. Stone — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:30:59 +0000

I should clarify, per Tim’s remarks. Yes, Shakespeare’s sonnets are part of an anti-Petrarchan wave that was sweeping across Europe. But remember, several hundred years had passed between Petrarch and Shakespeare. An entire genre of poems often referred to as the “deformed mistress” poems were in vogue prior to Shakespeare penning those lines–they were not all sonnets, it should be noted, but certainly took part in anti-Petrarchan imagery. Sidney has anti-Petrarchan moments, as does Daniel, Fulke Greville, and others. Donne engages in some significant anti-Petrarchan imagery at about this time as well. Remember, the English Renaissance poets start using Petrachan conceits much later than the Italians and the French–they’re modeling themselves on poets from other countries, as well. The French sonneteers, who write several decades prior to the hey day of English sonnets, use anti-Petrarchan imagery.
All I was saying was that our culture is most familiar with Shakespeare’s work, and we tend to think that his work is exemplary of everything that is original or that he “reinvents” things. But, in terms of his poetry perhaps more than his plays, he operated on the principal of imitatio as well, and picked up on things that were fashionable. The trick of any poet in this period is to imitate, and in imitating, add your own twist. “My mistris eyes” is a fine poem, but a little flat and conventional compared to some of the more inventive takes on this subject.

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:12:35 +0000

Actors who are trained in meter and scansion–as certainly used to be the case with Shakespearean actors in the UK–do a much better job with metrical verse such as Shakespeare for a lot of obvious reasons. But when actors or poets gallop across line breaks and bend meter to the “natural” sense of the line (as one sees in so many newer films of Shakespeare plays–that are almost unintelligible because of it), they miss the point. It is meter that tells us how a line is to be emphasized, not emphasis that tells us how to scan–otherwise, in fact, there would be little point to blank verse. And it is this tension between “natural” rhythm and “metrical” emphasis–sometimes suspended, sometimes resolved–that gives English meter under the mastery of Milton and Shakespeare its glorious depth of color and tone.

By: john

john — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:07:06 +0000

And Don, thanks for the tip! I’ll check to see if the library has it.

By: john

john — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:05:46 +0000

The disappearance for a taste for public recitation may be related to the stylistic change in poetry wrought by modernism — as well as the growth of the movies.
Actors used to TV and Hollywood writing, or Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams, or even Shakespeare and Aeschylus, might simply have no performative reference with which they could relate to pages from H.D. or Williams or Zukofsky or Creeley.
This doesn’t make the actors stinky.
19th century poetry had a close tie to oratory and dramatic monologue as well as song. Browning has important things in common with “Casey at the Bat” and “The Face on the Barroom Floor” that he doesn’t with H.D. and Zukofsky or Pound, just as Brahms has things in common with Sousa and J. Strauss that he doesn’t with Schoenberg and Stravinsky.
Rexroth contended that most modernist American verse was difficult to project in recitation. With the exceptions of the Beats and the Illinois poets Sandburg and Lindsay (and Masters?), and maybe Stein, I agree.
Don’s observation about the decline of elocution and public speaking from the curriculum is extremely suggestive in all sorts of contexts. Related to the decline of public space? Coincidental? Incidental or coincidental to the rise of the movies? In any case, probably related to the decline of professional recitations.
Recitation isn’t dead — I’ve recited Sandburg and sentimental 19th century poetry at parties, and people have enjoyed it, me included. I’ve seen Stein recited to good effect. If you want to recite to a non-specialist audience, the poetry has to lend itself to projection.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:24:12 +0000

John, you can still hear Dylan Thomas recite poems by others; his Dylan Thomas Reads: a Personal Anthology is now part of a CD box set, Dylan Thomas Unabridged: The Caedmon Collection.

By: john

john — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:06:49 +0000

I should add, in case anybody wants to track the poem down, that “The Face on the Barroom Floor” includes an example of a now outmoded ethnic stereotype that contemporary sensibilities — mine included — would reject.
Does anybody know; Do very many poets read other poets’ work? I once came across an anthology of other poets’ poems that Dylan Thomas recited publicly; I regret not buying it.