Theorizing Awareness of Performance Poetry: A Close Listening of “The Blue Roofs of Japan” Danaë Brandt College

“To listen is to simultaneously attend to what is present and what is absent”. In “Understanding the Sound of Not Understanding,” Jed Rasula analyses the impact of the spoken word on the understanding of poetry. Historically, poetry, and most literary forms, started as an oral tradition. They were sung by barbs in various cultures. The very notion of poetry, originating from the the ancient Greek poiēsis meaning “to create”, has always implied a way of structuring sound to create meaning. However, the actual sound in poetry is undeniably the most overlooked aspect of the art form. The convention has long been to study what the poem “says” and not take into account the layers of meaning added when spoken aloud. In poetry analysis, the sound pattern is sporadically mentioned and undeveloped as many scholars focus on the physical text itself. Another aspect of the sound in poetry that does not appear frequently, is the connotations attached to sounds. The rhyme, alliteration or the poet’s delivery is associated to the understanding of the message, however, the evaluation of sound as its own is regularly falls between the cracks. In the 20th Century, modern art movements such as Dadaism or Surrealism have strove to push the...