An Audio Guide to Poetry Recitation - 30. "Annabel Lee"

An Audio Guide to Poetry Recitation - 30. "Annabel Lee"


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Most poems tell stories. Even when a poem is made of just images, those images tend to be arranged in a way that creates a narrative of emotions. In reciting a narrative poem, your purpose is to make the listener pay attention to the human drama being presented, to feel the events in the emotional terms, and to understand their personal importance to the characters. That means that you need somehow to put that drama and those emotions into the words you are speaking. Listen, for example, to the actress Khandi Alexander read the opening of Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. Notice how she suffuses the opening lines with joy so that you feel the sadness of the ending later on more powerfully.

Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe
[Read by Khandi Alexander]

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

[Voice of Dana Gioia] Now listen to a few lines from the end of the poem. Can you feel how she has shifted the emotion?

[Voice of Khandi Alexander]
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
 

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• 欣赏了介绍和朗诵.谢谢肖庄分享,问好! -南山松- ♀ (0 bytes) () 01/17/2015 postreply 06:13:30

• 松松，谢谢你一直跟读！ -肖庄- ♀ (0 bytes) () 01/19/2015 postreply 19:39:51