Donald Hall: Listening to Poetry and Reading It on the Page

“When you hear poets read their poems loud, you needn’t translate these sounds into the visual shape of the poem on the page; imagination of visual shape is not part of listening, and it even distracts us—as when people try to follow a reading with an open book. On the other hand, when we read poetry in solitude and silence, the visual shape on the page helps us hear the poem. Or it should.”—From “Working Journal” in Death to the Death of Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 1994)