Poetry and the Physical Voice

First published in 1962, Poetry and the Physical Voice is a companion volume to author’s Poets’ Grammar and its conclusions might well be related to his own recently published collection, Morant Bay and Other Poems. An enquiry as to how far the fact- that poetry is vocal sound- was modified by the invention of printing. The eye-perusal of some kinds of prose, and even of verse, is one thing, the recognition of an individual voice behind an unsigned passage of poetry is another. Shakespeare, for