Some Notes Towards Finding a View of the New Oral Poetry

As its title suggests, this essay does not pretend to be a comprehensive statement on its subject, but it does propose to explore an aspect of contemporary that appears to many poets and critics (at least to those with a genuine interest in the contemporary) to be one of the chief definitive qualities of that poetry. I should state immediately that by new poetry I mean poetic work made specifically, but obviously in varying degrees, with an awareness of a live audience to whom that work could be read aloud, or of a reader-audience who could interpret that in print in such a way as to approximate in the mind's ear an performance of it in any voice the reader-audience chooses but ideally in the voice of the poet him/herself. Like many working definitions, this one may be in for a hard time, but at least it stresses the significance of the audio in both kinds of audience and indicates the existence of a phenomenon in our current which we are really just beginning to make use of and to understand. The term oral poetry, of course, brings to mind associations with the theory of the formulaic composition of primary epic: the creation in performance of traditional heroic narratives by specially trained poets in many parts of the world in all periods of history, although