Poe, Dickinson, Whitman Video Blog

Christopher Walken's reading of The Raven, had actually frightened me a little. I've read the poem before, I've gone through it in classes before. But the tone of his voice, the pauses he would take and even the picture of Poe that started off so tiny and enlarged throughout the reading had made the feeling of the poem a lot more intense. In the video of "Because I could not stop for death" from Emily Dickinson, it certainly was freaky. I think that having the woman in the background saying the poem, gave the reader a much better view on the poem, because when I was reading the poem before watching the video I read it in a more upsetting tone, and throughout this video the speaker is going through several different tones. She starts off very seriously with the first line, but then when talking about the school, fields and setting sun the speakers tone changed and was a lot more soft. I absolutely loved the reading of "O Captain! My Captain!" from Walt Whitman. I think the speaker did a terrific job on emphasizing certain points of the poem and the change of tone throughout the poem really made the listener want to listen. I think it would be very difficult for a person to read the poem and to recite it this way, between the lengths of pauses that were taken, the seriousness of the voice at certain points it really made a huge difference to the poem. In Earl Jones reading of "The Raven," I enjoyed this video a lot more than Christopher Walkens. I think Earl Jones did a better job at showing the softer side of the poem, while Christopher Walkens was more concerned with the horror part of the poem. The two different videos for the same poem were just an example of how people can interpret a poem in many different ways. Overall I think that the videos were able to help us look at a different way of viewing the poem. When we all read poems we all interpret the poems differently, and hearing how other people are reading the poem helps us as poetry students look at the different meanings that the poem is trying to give off.