“Truly fine poetry must be read aloud.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

"The Divine Comedy" (1977)
Context: Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Truly fine poetry must be read aloud." by Jorge Luis Borges?

Jorge Luis Borges photo

Jorge Luis Borges 213

Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator… 1899–1986

Related quotes

“A teacher (of poetry) has to know and feel what poetry is, and be able - and this is crucial- to read it aloud effectively.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

'A Conversation with John Hollander' (by email) by Paul Devlin vol 1 St. John's University Humanities Review April 2003

“I mean to indicate the reading of poetry not merely for the sensual ear, but for the mind's ear as well; yet the mind's ear can be trained only by the other, and the matter, practically considered, comes inescapably back to the reading of poetry aloud.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

The Audible Reading of Poetry (1951)

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

“Compose aloud: poetry is a sound.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

I SUGGEST Advice to Young Poets

“Reading a poem aloud by someone who understands it, can be a crucial experience, but better yet is reading it aloud oneself.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

Article-Poems Aloud April 2009
Other

“One must read poetry with one's nerves.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

“In antiquity and the Middle Ages reading was necessarily reading aloud.”

Marshall McLuhan book The Gutenberg Galaxy

Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 94

“Poetry, perhaps the finest of fine arts, certainly the shynest and most elusive?, poetry which must have listeners, which cannot sing into a void.”

Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) American poet and editor

'A Poets life, Seventy Years in changing world' Macmillan, New York 1938
A Poet 's Life (1938)

“Poetry must be read to be poetry. It may be that one reader is all that I deserve. If this is so, I want that reader to be you.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Related topics