24 January 2011

Tuesday Poem: 'Daddy' by Sylvia Plath (as read by Sylvia Plath)



If you can't view this embedded video, you can watch it on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM

A quick Tuesday Poem today. I stumbled across this yesterday, and goodness me it's so exciting to hear Plath read her own poem - to hear what her voice sounded like for one (I have listening to recordings of her a long time ago, but I don't remember her voice being so deep), and also to hear how she reads this - where she puts stresses, the rhythm she uses, where she pauses.

When I came across this, I also came across the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice, and I know there will be so many other wonderful treasures of poets reading their work and writers voices, but I'm afraid to get started looking for them, because where will it end!?

Well, you can go and have a look for poetry on Youtube, but you can also go look for more Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

6 comments:

Janis Freegard said...

You get a whole extra dimension hearing poems in the authors' voices. I was just re-reading 'Daddy' last week, as it happens. Now I'm off to listen to Virginia Woolf - thanks for the links!

Mary McCallum said...

God that woman was good - what a dark bloody angry thing, this poem is.

Emma said...

I love Sylvia's voice and this poem. Thanks for posting it!

Elizabeth Welsh said...

Ah, yes, what a delight to hear such an indignant, expressive voice! I have a bit of a collection of audio books of recordings of poets, Helen. I must confess to my delight in listening to these on my iPod just as often as I listen to my music. T.S Eliot's sonorous tone delights me, in particular.

Harvey Molloy said...

The poem never loses its dark power. Thanks for this.

Helen Rickerby said...

Glad you've enjoyed it. I found it amazing. And oh my god Elizabeth, I've just found some recordings of T S Eliot reading! So exciting. Here he is reading Prufrock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhiCMAG658M, and here The Waste Land: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ.

Fascinating. He reads the poems differently to how I imagine them...