Poetry and the Physical Voice

First published in 1962, Poetry and the Physical Voice is a companion volume to author’s Poets’ Grammar and its conclusions might well be related to his own recently published collection, Morant Bay and Other Poems. An enquiry as to how far the fact- that poetry is vocal sound- was modified by the invention of printing. The eye-perusal of some kinds of prose, and even of verse, is one thing, the recognition of an individual voice behind an unsigned passage of poetry is another. Shakespeare, for a career, wrote words to be spoken by voices which he could hear in imagination since their owners were well known to him, but Tennyson composed aloud and so was confined to effects which his own voice could produce.

Besides Shakespeare and Tennyson, Mr Berry considers other poets, including some who have spoken out for themselves on gramophone records. He further establishes that if a poet's physical voice, it's timbre and range, tends to condition his achievement, it also predisposes him to the use of particular syntactical and grammatical forms. Some kinds of voice to show special advantage when using such forms and thus exploit the emotional moods appropriate to these forms. This is an interesting read for scholars and researchers of English poetry and English literature.