The Sing-Song Rhythm of Poet Speak - Jeremy Richards, Krissy Clark

The BBC captured the voice of the great Irish bard William Butler Yeats in 1932. At the time, even those who loved Yeats' poetry would sometimes ask why he didn't take a more natural approach to reciting his poems. But Yeats was insistent: "I will not read them as if they were prose," he said. As a result, Yeats sometimes took a drubbing from critics for his other-worldly reading style. Of course, this is something you have to hear for yourself, but I'll give you an idea. When Yeats read, each syllable of his work marched forth with a measured emphasis on the rhythm:
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
To the untrained ear, all poets may sound the same, but poets have voiced a wide range of styles for centuries. Yeats exemplifies what we'll call the "sing-song" voice. Anecdotal theories trace it to influential European poets with accented English, and some think the voice took on new dimensions during the drug-induced stupors of the beatnik era. And then there's the jazz remix of the poet voice, popular in the spoken word world. The Sing-Song Rhythm of Poet Speak - Jeremy Richards , Krissy Clark [thanks VN]