“First Recitation” Reflection

1. In the first recitation, the poem I chose is Japan by Billy Collins. This poem was a spirit-orientated poem, by which I mean that it needed deeper comprehension, appreciation and imagination. It was also beautiful and peaceful. So I decided to use a piece of  music as the background.  Coincidentally, the poem mentioned piano, thus I picked a smoothing piano solo. Since the inspiration of the poem is the author’s favorite haiku, I printed the haiku out, making paper tapes and passed them out to everyone so that my audience could have some background of the poem and comprehend the author’s emotion in the poem. I recited the poem in a soft voice and slow pace. The second stanza made an analogy between the feeling of reciting the poem and the feeling of eating a perfect grape again and again. Even if it was easy to understand, the audience needed time to imagine and appreciate. So I made my pace particularly slow here. When I said, “I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf”, I tapped lightly on the floor. And I looked down at the floor to imitate the movement of the author when it came to “when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor”. I fastened my pace a little bit when I recited the middle part of the poem until the last two stanzas. I considered the last two stanzas the most beautiful part of the whole poem, so I paused several times during this part to allow my audience had sufficient time enjoying it. I also made very nice eye contact with my audience. I looked in their eyes and tempted to pour my comprehension to the poem and emotion to them. However, I still had some defects. This was a morning recitation and many people were sleepy at that time. My pace might be too slow to arouse attention to my recitation. And at first, I was so nervous that I forgot my words and caused an awkward pause. When I rehearsed, my pace fitted the tempo of the music so that the climax of the poem is anastomotic with that of the music. However, I failed to do so during the recitation. Although the music was gentle and its climax was not so obvious, the miss of pace influenced the overall quality of recitation.