Monday, July 6, 2015

Thought you might enjoy. Very endearing. A tribute to the late, great Walter Dean Myers - http://www.cbcdiversity.com/post/123370330093/andrea-davis-pinkney-is-the-new-york-times

2 comments:

  1. First week of school! 90 degrees and shifting the energy to self and exploration! Looking forward to seeing you all on Sat.

    THE VOICE YOU HEAR
    WHEN YOU READ SILENTLY
    is not silent, it is a speaking -
    out-loud voice in your head: it is spoken,
    a voice is saying it
    as you read. It's the writer's words,
    of course, in a literary sense
    his or her “voice” but the sound
    of that voice is the sound of your voice.
    Not the sound your friends know
    or the sound of a tape played back
    but your voice
    caught in the dark cathedral
    of your skull, your voice heard
    by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
    and what you know by feeling,
    having felt. It is your voice
    saying, for example, the word “barn”
    that the writer wrote
    but the “barn” you say
    is a barn you know or knew.
    The voice
    in your head, speaking as you read,
    never says anything neutrally – some people
    hated the barn they knew,some people love the barn they know
    so you hear the word loaded
    and a sensory constellation
    is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
    hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
    a water pipe, a slippery
    spilled chirr of oats from a split sack,
    the bony, filthy haunches of cows . . . .
    And “barn” is only a noun – no verb
    or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
    The voice you hear when you read to yourself
    is the clearest voice: you speak it speaking to you.

    Thomas Lux New and Selected Poems (New York 1997, pg. 15))

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  2. Love this! Going to read it to my kids. Thanks!

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