By: Lori Emerson

Lori Emerson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:58:58 +0000

Davin – all great questions that I don’t really know the answers to! First of all, it seems that even Williams never quite figured out what exactly the variable foot was and how we all might write poetry measured by the variable foot…although I know Olson thought that his breath-driven work was certainly Williams-inspired. I’m convinced that, whether or not digital poets are conscious of the influence, a digital “poems” (are they poems?) by Young-Hae Chang definitely seem to have a fluctuating, pulsating space-time and–rather than being aurally scored as in a Williams poem, it’s visually scored. As for sound recordings, I’m listening right now to him reading from Paterson Book 2 on PennSound – I assume he’s reading something that’s of the variable foot but he so far sounds as if he’s talking as an ordinary “country” doctor. Check this out – almost all the sound recordings from his career:

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.html

By: davin

davin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:05:37 +0000

Is there any audio of what a “variable foot” sounds like, or how it varies? Are there any electronic pieces that you can think of which play with this idea or which might help to illustrate it? Immediately, it seems like it might be a useful experiment to read poems, then to listen to archived readings of the poets reading their poems. Here are some links to some archives. I just read Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” and then listened to the audio at Poetry Archive. In addition to language changes, the marks of recording and archiving technology add layers of time to the piece. Audio Poetry Archive Naropa PoetryArchive.org

Comments on: Week One: Williams’ Paterson, Book 2

By: Lori Emerson

By: davin