After finishing reading some poems at a poetry cafe, a friend told me "Good delivery" and that simple comment remained for some strange reason in the back of my mind while I drove back home.
I guess that what that comment made me realise was a significant difference that exists between what we usually call performance and delivery. Delivery is, of course, a form of performance, but it represents both offering the poem we deliver to someone who is listening and setting the poem free. By delivering a poem, I'm inviting the audience into something that is intimate and, in this sense, invites participation in an inward movement, setting the poem free from my own view of it; by performing, I'm the source of an outward movement, taking as a mission to impress my view of the poem upon the audience and thus not setting it free. I realised, thinking again on my friend's comments, that my concern has almost always been that of delivering poetry the best way I can.
Is it the only right approach? I don't think so. It depends on the interactions between poem and reader. Me? my purpose is to deliver poetry.
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