Guest Blogger! Graeme Roberts : On Reading "The Man from Snowy River"

"O Pen" keeps growing and new faces and voices add wonderful variety to our community of poetry appreciators.   Everyone would agree that Graeme Roberts, one of the newer arrivals in the fall of 2022,  is one such a delightful addition.  When he mentioned to me one of his favorite poems, The Man from Snowy River, it seemed a perfect match to have his Australian voice bring it alive.  I asked him if he would  comment on his experience preparing and sharing it which he kindly provided below.  See Dec. 28 for the recording! 

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 I love the poem The Man From Snowy River by Australian poet Banjo Paterson. The narrative, published in 1890, is brimming with action, energy, and heroism. The main characters: two seasoned horsemen, a youth, judged too young and inexperienced by the elder horseman, and the boy’s mountain pony, described as “a small and weedy beast” were part of a larger group of riders competing to catch and bring back an extremely expensive colt, full of potential as a racehorse and sire, but lately escaped to join a group of wild horses in the mountains. The boy and his mountain pony were the heroes of the day, a David and Goliath story of pluck and brilliant riding, so deeply appealing to an Aussie like me. Our young country needed heroes! I have never been able to read the poem without choking up, and when Kitty Jospé asked me to read it aloud I saw it as my patriotic duty to read with such energy and animation that our group of poetry lovers felt like they were roaring down the mountainside, dodging the scrub, logs, and wombat holes that spelled certain death.

When faced with the challenge of reading this beautiful, manly narrative to a group of people of whom I have become fond I immediately began to think of how to make the aural experience of the poem the best it could be, no longer allowing for the casual insouciance of being one of several readers. But what did I mean by best? At first blush, I listed the following:

• included the exact words written by the poet.

• captured the spirit of the poem

• fulfilled the overall intent of the poet.

• observed the punctuation and pauses intended by the poet.

• allowed quoted dialogue to be rendered in character, as an actor might present it.

• could generate excitement, energy, and passion in a way that casual reading could not.

• that did not include errors, unwanted pauses, mispronunciations, and verbal tics.

• allowed me to make roving eye contact with the audience—an elusive goal

These are just my thoughts, in the light of my recent reading experience and the reactions of the audiences during and after the readings. I have come to believe that reading poems aloud to an audience, large or small, can provide a matchless power to convince, inform, or entertain.

How could I read the poem with the greatest impact?

• I settled on a page format with a larger typeface and line spacing for easy readability.

• I looked for words that didn’t seem to get the right emphasis or power.
  For example, I was unhappy with my voicing of "horse" because it sounded like a surreptitious cough. I wanted it to sound like “hoarse" in “I am hoarse from shouting!" So every instance of horse was changed to hoarse.

• I noted words or phrases that caused me to pause or make mistakes.
  For a simple example, the words flint and stones appeared together in two places, including, “He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet.” I hated the idea of Fred and Wilma Flintstone distracting every listener. I inserted a tilde symbol (~) between the words to remind me to fully enunciate “flint” before I started on “stone”.

• I noted punctuation signals that seemed incorrect or contrary to the flow of the poem.
  Every line in the original, for example, started with a capital (upper case) letter which was a poetic convention in the late 19th century. Because we expect that capital letters will often start a sentence after a period we can mistakenly insert a longer pause where none is intended. So I changed most of the initial caps to lowercase letters.

• I judged, subjectively, the words or passages upon which I should place emphasis by frequent reading, then formatted them in bold, and if additional attention needed to be drawn I underlined them or used italics.

I was pleased with the result, and the listeners seemed enthusiastic too. Each of us will have different concerns and approaches to make reading various poems more effective, but I hope some of these ideas will prove helpful.