{"id":19638,"date":"2018-03-07T11:40:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T17:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=19638"},"modified":"2018-03-07T11:40:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T17:40:23","slug":"reading-edna-st-vincent-millay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/07\/reading-edna-st-vincent-millay\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Edna St. Vincent Millay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in my coffee house days (yes, those very ones which produced the poems within <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Coffee-House-Memories-Brian-Noggle\/dp\/0983212341\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;qid=1520444157&#038;sr=8-1&#038;keywords=coffee+house+memories\" target=\"_new\">Coffee House Memories<\/a><\/em>), I hit numerous open mike nights around town, and attendees knew what to expect from me, from sonnets to ending with the poem &#8220;An Evening Walk.&#8221;  I would mix in some &#8220;covers,&#8221; where I would recite a poem by another poet or even cool prose from someone like Raymond Chandler.<\/p>\n<p>But if I went to an open mike for the first time, I would do a little trick: I would perform Edna St. Vincent Millay&#8217;s &#8220;Love, though for this you riddle me with darts&#8230;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can see what this sounds like when a proper British woman reads the poem:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Hi-RZJmioh0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not how I did it, though.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d sign my name on the sign-up sheet, and when the MC would call it, I&#8217;d go to the stage or the microphone with slumped shoulders, clutching a set of papers shyly, and I&#8217;d warble my voice breathlessly into the microphone, &#8220;This is a, um, sonnet&#8221; as though I were suffering stage fright (which Edna St. Vincent Millay herself did&#8211;she was known to take a belt before readings).  And then I would throw the papers aside, leap from the stage or in front of the mike, and shout\/snarl the first ten lines like a challenge to fight Cupid waving my fist in the air.  Then, I&#8217;d deliver the last two lines like an aside.<\/p>\n<p>Less formally than <a href=\"http:\/\/neoneocon.com\/2018\/03\/06\/childhood-is-the-kingdom-millay-reading-millay\/\" target=\"_new\">Edna St. Vincent Millay herself<\/a> would have done.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t need to pick up the prop papers I brought, though, as I had whatever I was going to perform memorized.  Ask me someday how long it takes to recite Eliot&#8217;s &#8220;The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock&#8221; at the Venice Cafe.<\/p>\n<p>Good poems, good memories.  Like my book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in my coffee house days (yes, those very ones which produced the poems within Coffee House Memories), I hit numerous open mike nights around town, and attendees knew what to expect from me, from sonnets to ending with the poem &#8220;An Evening Walk.&#8221; I would mix in some &#8220;covers,&#8221; where I would recite a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19640,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638\/revisions\/19640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}