Recordings

We are going to be doing two different kinds of recordings this term.

The first is the recording of individual poems. At first, we'll all record the same poems, and share those recordings on the forum. This is partly in place of memorizing poems--a traditional pedagogical strategy in poetic technique courses. But, more importantly, it's a way of engaging with a poem in the way that a poem is meant to be engaged with--aurally. Often we get drawn toward the text of a poem like it were some kind of encyclopedia entry, or puzzle to be unlocked. Recording them allows the poem to exist off the page as well--an experience in space and time. The other recordings we are doing are from our textbook as a way of allowing us to enter the text in multiple ways--this way, we can listen to Hirshfield's words and physically connect with them with our ears, but also with our hands as we draw, sketch, doodle, jot, and annotate in our comp books. This doesn't replace reading the text itself. To fully comprehend, we'll have to reread the text on the page. This allows us to pay attention to the text in multiple ways, as well, similar to our purposes for recording poems. The "energies" and "gates" in the book are the ways in which we'll be interacting with poems throughout the term--"published" and our own. So it is important that you engage with the text deeply. These recording should be emailed to me at mwenzel@fsu.edu so that I can add them to our playlists. For now, make your account public so that I can add them to the playlist. At the close of the course, we'll probably delete or make private these recordings so as not to abuse copyright. I hope that using Soundcloud will be easy and intuitive. If you need help, please ask a group member for some assistance or come to my office hours for technical assistance. I'm looking forward to hearing all your voices, poetic and otherwise!