Does recitation as it was practiced in the Victorian period survive as a cultural activity today? If you google “recitation” you will find a staggering amount of links to sites about the recitation of the Quran (or Koran: see Ralph the Sacred River blog about the spelling of the title of this holy book in English), which is clearly an important religious activity in Islam. But you don’t find much in the way of what the Victorians would have understood as recitation. Today we have “readings,” usually done by writers reading their own work. But since many of them envision themselves as artists rather than performers, they don’t see such readings as ‘performances’ (and sometimes one wishes they would!). But these readings, which are part of the the necessary self-marketing of writers, are not really the same as the recitation.
Here’s a really quite interesting and beautiful site that I think shows one place where recitation is today: the Favorite Poem Project. What I found especially interesting was how the reciters generally delivered the poems in what might be considered an ‘artless’ manner (that is, it was the content rather than the performance of the poem that was of importance). But one exception is Katherine Mechling, a fifth grader, who reads Theodore Roethke’s “The Sloth” (twice!) with great panache, fully reveling in the histrionic potential of the poem. In the interview, she says something that is worth quoting: “I like to write poetry because, well, for the same reason I like to read it: ’cause I just like finding words that are, like, you know, interesting and fit well together.”
What a great description of writing poetry: finding interesting words that fit well together.
Posted by Jason 
