The Spoken Word
Poetry exists both to read and to be spoken aloud. The experiences are very different not least because when read aloud patterns of sound and music in the lines of verse reveal themselves in ways that do not always appear when read silently. In this section we present audio selections in which the poems are spoken—by the poets themselves.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Sylvia Plath
From “Lady Lazarus,” 1966
Banner image: Sylvia Plath (detail cropping) / Photograph by Rollie McKenna / Gelatin silver print, 1959 (printed later) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Rollie McKenna / © Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona Foundation
