Michelle Whittaker: Sound and Story

Michelle Whittaker presents recordings of poems that display their writers’ skill with both narrative and sound as they each consider the body as a site of conflict and grace. Whittaker considers the way Robert Hass employs sound to communicate strong emotion (“A Story About the Body”), connects with Ellen Bryant Voigt’s memories of seeing a family member’s scars (“Lesson”), and celebrates Michael S. Harper’s reflective pairing of narrative tension and cycling sounds (“The Borning Room”). To close, Whittaker reads her poem “In the Afterlight,” itself a complexly layered composition of sound and image. Listen to the full recordings of Hass, Voigt, and Harper reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:Robert Hass (1984)Ellen Bryant Voigt (2003)Michael S. Harper (1973)