VOETICA
Poetry, like music, is to be heard. It deals in sound— long sounds and short sounds, heavy beats and light beats, the tone relationships of vowels, the relations of consonants to one another which are like instrumental color in music. Poetry lies dead on the page, until some voice brings it to life, just as music, on the stave, is no more than instructions to the player. A musician can imagine the sound, more or less, and a reader can try to hear, mentally, what eyes see in print: but nothing will satisfy either of them till his ears hear it as real sound in the air. Poetry must be read aloud. (Basil Bunting)
