Annotations for Voice: Social

There is uptalk at end of the sentence.

There is uptalk at the end of French-language title.

In listening to her revisit this time, we hear a change in her vocal delivery when Marlatt talks about her younger self: she uses more uptalk, or high rising terminal, in this early biographical narrative than she does in other portions of the recording. Today, uptalk is most often identified as a feature of the speech patterns of young women and girls (see Warren 2016), but this vocal feature didn't become predominantly associated with young women until the last couple of decades. There is an interesting overlay, here, of a newer trend in young women's vocal style onto Marlatt discussing her youth. For us, it indicates discomfort and a recollection of the uncertainty and unhappiness Marlatt describes. The echoes that this discomfort has with contemporary gendered speech reveals Marlatt's situatedness to us as listeners who interpret her speech patterns through our own context.

There is an extended o sound in "move."

In this discussion of Ponge and Alexander, Marlatt turns to a discussion of language in which she performs the poetics of embodiment that her poetry would come to be known for. The drawn out-vowel sounds in verbs that stretch the rhythms of her speech and then condense into direct and indirect objects. What Marlatt performs is a retrospective narrative of her development as a poet, away from objects and towards what language and bodies do. Rather than becoming legible in narrative events, she performs this development through her shift in vocal delivery that increasingly adopts the social voice, the self-reflexive "unique voice that signifies nothing but itself."

There is an extended i sound in "alive."

In this recording from 1969, Marlatt's vocal quality is at turns precise and rounded, articulating sharp consonants and mouthing the vowels of her poem. This delivery is at once part of the conventions of poetry voice at the time and part of the oratory style Marlatt would have developed through her association with such teachers, mentors, and peers as Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Dee Alexander, Mary Ellen Solt, the TISH writers and others at the Writers Workshop, UBC. The background of the recording is quiet, almost muffled.

As Marlatt switches to reading in 2019, her delivery leaves more space between words and less sharply delivers consonants. The portion of the poem that she reads is conversational, which further softens a now conversational vocal delivery.

As the reading switches between 1969 and 2019, we hear sounds like movement and clunking, alongside changes in sound that differentiates between 1969--a recording made on open reel in a room that is more muffled by upholstery--and 2019--a slightly clearer digital recording in a crowded room. One sound, pages rustling overlaps with these changes in the sound quality of the recording.

There is uptalk after the word "more."

By the end of the recording, Marlatt's vocal delivery has lost much of the self-conscious performativity of the beginning. Even in these moments of situated voice, where she addresses the audience, she is focused on the poems that she sorts through and the decision of what to read. In this moment, we hear the reading voice begin to overtake speaking, situated, and social voice. It may be that Marlatt is more tired, or perhaps more comfortable in front of her audience. But what we hear is also the ways that written poetry, which she holds in her hands, becomes her object of attention. It would be tempting to interpret this shift within a conventional approach to literary audio, given primacy to the pre-existing textual artwork. However, we think instead that we hear the material object of the poem begin to shape Marlatt's performance and embodiment. There is a compelling resonance, then, with the contrast between object and action that Marlatt sets up near the beginning of the recording. The mediated object of the written poem is shaping the action of reading, not just the sounds that Marlatt articulates, but her situatedness within a room and her relationship to audience.

In this final poem, Marlatt seems to blend the past and present reading conventions that we have heard in the recording. The poem she chooses demands the precision and round, assonant vowels most prominently featured in the 1969 clips. But it is brief poem, and her 2019 reading is also present in a softness and spaciousness which which she delivers the poem. Here, in a social voice, Marlatt is perhaps aware of her own voice across time.

To listen for the social voice is to apprehend the lived histories telescoped in a performer's embodied vocal expression. As McClure moves in and out of beast language, letting the phonemic order of English dissolve into long vowels wrapped in deliciously indulged alveolar approximates and glottal fricatives, he means for us to hear the body, as it were. More particularly, though, we hear the 43-year-old male-gendered body that spent its childhood between Kansas and the Pacific Northwest and its adulthood in countercultural California.

Rukeyser pauses between the first and second stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the second and third stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the third and fourth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the fourth and fifth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the fifth and sixth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the sixth and seventh stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the seventh and eigth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the eighth and ninth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the ninth and tenth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the tenth and eleventh stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the eleventh and twelfth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses between the twelfth and thirteenth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Rukeyser pauses after the thirteenth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."