> > Although you may not like it, I think your
> > English teacher is right. From what I can
> > remember, since high school and throughout
> > college, each and every English or Speech
> > teacher I had taught the same thing. When we
> > had to recite poetry in college speech lab, we
> > lost points off our scores if we recited the
> > poems line by line in what our teacher called
> > a "singsong" pattern of voice. No, we had to do
> > it the way your English teacher does.
> >
>
> It's good to know it's not just something *she* does.
>
> > Can't say as it bothered me, either. It doesn't
> > come naturally to recite words that are divided
> > up into lines that way, but I think it makes
> > poems sound niftier and less childlike. Or
> > something. Whenever I recite a poem (which
> > is hardly ever) I try to do it that way.
> >
>
> That does make sense, now that I think about it. I guess I always considered rhyming to be one of the main purposes of poems (one of the reasons I don't like most non-rhyming poetry). Thanks for broadening my horizons a little :-)

To add to Grishny's comment, I too did a lot of poetry and literature classes at university and every lecturer read them this way. However, if the person who is reading the poem is doing it well, it doesn't *detract* from the rhyme and rhythm structure of the poem. It should make them *more* noticeable, and is also much more effective and pleasing to the ear. It's hard to explain exactly why, but I have heard some very skilled speakers reading poetry, and in their hands (er, mouths?) this technique always improves the poem. The only way I can describe the difference is that natural speech makes the rhymes and rhythms impact pleasurably on the hearer whenever they come along, instead of making it painfully obvious that OOH HERE COMES A RHYME, *thud*.

The same goes for Shakespeare and other playwrights who use very rhythmically structured and/or end-rhymed lines. If you read it the way most schoolkids do -- "baDUM baDUM baDUM baDUM PAUSE" -- it's not only unnatural and unattractive, it becomes far more difficult to grasp the meaning of the lines.

Poetry uses rhyme and rhythm to accentuate the meaning of the words used and to give them strength and power. I think the proper reading of a poem should be approached in a similar way to playing a piece of music. It is possible to play music *exactly* as written, with perfect technical skills and yet without any musical feeling whatsoever. In the same way, someone who churns out a poetry reading in the "baDUM baDUM baDUM baDUM PAUSE" style is paying attention to the letter of the author's intentions without getting across any idea of the spirit. This isn't to say you should plough straight through the end of every line -- just that you need to look at many aspects of the poem to decide how it should be read aloud. Rhyme, rhythm, sentence structure, punctuation, and words are all part of this.