Critical Commentary (Week 9)

This week's critical commentary might as well be the focus of Wednesday's Class. Looking at more at the oratorical sense of writing I realize how much of it is generalized. People like Adrian Matejka and Camille Dungy who write then recite, that gives their writing a deeper context because some words lose their mobility on the page; but on the flip side a lot of the mobility in performance pieces can't stand up to the form on the page. There's a tension that is lost between a performance poet and his audience because they are used to hearing the inflections in voice and stance, the actual person showing his emotion and with respect to writing (for me anyway) its harder to channel that because I'm used to distancing myself away from my written material. As part of a class whose history and basis for writing is books of poetry, I think seeing how some of the people I look at as lyrical giants versus the masters of the forms really adds dimension to my studies.