#peter quartermain

[beingnumerous]

Peter Quartermain, Introduction to Kathleen Fraser’s il cuore: the heart

[biglucks]

Once we have read the poem...it inescapably moves within us, is within us, and in this the poem is like the world in which we move, which moves us, and is in us whether we are conscious of that or not. Our condition in language...is irremediable, irreparable. It is beyond “repair,” and doesn’t permit (presuming we want it) the perfect reading...others sought, in which we all acquiesce and are of one mind, “completely” understanding one another.

Peter Quartermain and this might just also be our battle cry.

[girlsprout-blog]

Response to Reading : Sound Reading

[Response to Sound Reading by Peter Quartermain. Please note: the article did not have accompanying page numbers] Quartermain sets out to determine what makes a “good” and a “bad” reading when it comes to poetry readings. There are many different kinds of poetry readings. Dylan Thomas was famous for his public readings where a combination between the lull of his accent and his popularity attracted large crowds. There were the virtuoso performance readings where Theodore Marcuse, a Dylan Thomas disciple, would read the poetry of Keats and Shelley. There are readings in native languages and readings in second languages. These are just a few of the many different methods that are used to perform readings of poetry. Quartermain is clear in his belief there is not one right or wrong way go about a reading. He claims “to insist on--or even expect--any sort of uniformity is to privilege one reading community over another.” Uniformity being the key word, this point seems rather valid to me. It isn’t just the performer effecting how “good” or “bad” a poetry reading went. The end results of a reading are partially determined by the audience. An audience, both in its expectations and its competence, plays a role in determining the success of a poetry reading. The article moves on to discuss the sound of a poem. Quartermain points out that “sound is the least constant part of the poem, the least durable, and possibly the most elusive.” Think about the way a poem sounds when we read it silently inside of our heads and think about how the poem sounds, how we sound, as we say it aloud. When we speak the words of the poem aloud, it doesn’t actually sound the way we had imagined it did in our heads. Quartermain suggests that this discrepancy between imagined sound and reality has to do with “a kind of tentative polyvocality.” Polyvocality-meaning the simultaneity of possible tones, rhythms, and interpretations that are only available to the inner ear and cannot be spoken. This suggests that while all of these possibilities exist within our own heads, these it is impossible that these possibilities exist in public performances. Next, Quartermain speaks of the voiced noncommittal crux. Initially explaining this term as the editorial activity where punctuation of old poems is changed and these alterations are motivated by the attempt to keep the meaning straight by bringing an authoritative and authentic register to a poem’s sound. However, as this article continues on, Quartermain provides this as the definition of the voiced noncommittal crux: the voice of coming-to-speech, that moment on the threshold of speech where syntax as we have been taught it is thrown over as we come to words, as words come to us. As we move to utterance, the mind and the body cast for and negotiate possibilities, overriding if only momentarily the rhetoric of socially differentiated understanding, with nothing quite adequate to the exact event… Meaning, tone, quantity, and stress are all interrelated. Quartermain insists their relationship happens because meaning “determines tone; tone determines quantity; quantity is a function of stress.” So, if we change the stress the quantity is changed, if we change the quantity the tone is changed, if we change the tone the meaning is changed and thus, all aspects are connected. Quartermain then focuses his discussion of sound on contemporary poetry. Recently, the poet’s own voice has gained the status of Authentic Source thanks to the widespread popularity of electronically recording readings. Quartermain finds this idea of the “Authentic Source” problematic. He says that in pursuing the authentic (which he refers to as the archaeological fallacy) is problematic because it implies that a particular reading could be both stable and timeless and have possess the quality of being transcendent. Quartermain continues to state that no reading can be definitive. He believes the poem is designed “not to be heard, but to be read with the eye. It’s a very deceptive piece of writing, for it comes trippingly and easily off the tongue, it makes a very pleasing noise. But voicing the poem closes down its play of indeterminacies.” Quartermain concludes by determining that neither “good” readings or “bad” readings are wholly possible, that either kind of reading may bring us all closer to the threshold of speech.