Burl Burlingame got me to start following Roger Ebert on Twitter, back when I put out the call for interesting Twitterers to follow.

Then, today, Roger Ebert put me onto Spoken Verse, by Tom O’Bedlam, a site he says he checks daily. The Tweet in question:

This man and his voice have created a site to which I must daily go. http://j.mp/cX2jkv

I can see why. I was pulled in not only by the words, not only by the voice, but by the use of the Hopper paintings. Here’s something Mr. Ebert wrote about that site.

And here is “Tom’s” commentary on the above clip:

“To Speak of Woe that is in Marriage” by Robert Lowell (poetry reading)

I did two readings of this poem, a few days apart. It’s so short that I have given them both to make a small point. When I try to read a poem again, perhaps to correct a fault – I misread “swaggering” as “staggering” the first time – it still sounds much the same. I hear a voice in my head – and when I read aloud I’m reproducing that internal voice as well as I can. I can’t read it differently.

Emphasis tends to impose unintended meaning on poems, so I go for normal expression, clarity and even enunciation of the words.

Americans habitually use more emphasis: Fox News presenters emphasise almost every word – without any nuances of speech. THIS IS LIKE READING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. To British ears this makes them less credible than if they delivered the message calmly. I suppose Americans are used to it.

The criticism I get (only from Americans) is that I sound too serious or sinister – oddly enough, usually when the poem actually is serious or sinister. Maybe it’s because British actors are cast in serious and sinister roles in the movies. The British have a similar problem with American voices in that they sound inconsequential, insincere and over-excited.

Your internal voice isn’t my internal voice. If my reading sounds wrong to you then record your own, more cheerful, American version using all the emphasis you want. And, if you sound to me like Little Miss Perfect doing her Party Piece, why should you care what I think? It’s a more interesting world because we don’t all like the same things or share the same tastes.

With reference to “the climacteric of his want”, the word “climacteric” in men can refer to an overcompensation for the falling off of sex drive in middle age, now called a “mid-life crisis”. He may have been thinking of another quotation from Schopenhauer, “A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.” You can try to do whatever you’re motivated to do – but you can’t change what you’re motivated to do. You can’t even understand your motivations: they’re inherited.

“Human relationships depend on the exchange of small tokens of mutual concern, most of them counterfeit” Schopenhauer didn’t actually say that but he might have done.

The paintings have nothing to do with the poem and are just there for atmosphere. They are by Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) They are called Room in New York, Eleven am, Room in Brooklyn, Morning in a City and Summer Interior.

Just listening to that one clip made me feel way literary.