My friends in Austria wonder why I don’t much like to speak English anymore. Not in its current bastardised and crude form.
Here’s the missing link..
I’ve rarely heard such awful readings of fine poetry in my life. Of all the female voices only Laura’s reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Spring and Fall would have got you out of high school in Canada in the late eighties.
After suffering through the female readings, I had no stomach left for the men at all.
It makes me laugh that a certain Google Adwords expert is praised as a fine speaker in English – he sent me an audio CD to promote his products (the guide is not bad) – it’s like listening to a bad radio commercial promoting AmWay. Hey, that’s his other life.
His speaking was dire enough, I almost didn’t buy the book.
It seems that nobody in America has any idea what good speaking public or private – sounds like anymore.
Anyway, that’s why I don’t like speaking English much anymore, apart with literarily inclined Brits. It used to be that Aussies sounded rough around the edges, but next to the Americans commercial whinings – even an Australian voice is beginning to take on the characteristics of a nightingale.
Does anybody have a list of some very fine free readings of poetry in English online?
French, Russian and German would be fine too.
I’ve listened to a couple, and the vocalisation is crap, I’m afraid. No feeling, little regard for decent enunciation, no engagement with the text in order to make the words the reader’s own (as an actor would).