Monday, June 7, 2010

Dennis Hopper and Rudyard Kipling?

I posted the poem If by Rudyard Kipling at the end of last year. I thing it is a great poem but it shares an attribute with Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright, or many passages of Shakespeare; that the cadence and verbal delivery are critical to carrying over the wonderful majesty of the poem. Read quickly and without reflective weighting of accents and words, these passages sometimes come across as awkward or trite pieces. Done well and they are memorable.

A librarian in Australia brought this video to my attention. The video features the recently departed Dennis Hopper, of all people, delivering Kipling's If in a way that makes it hard to imagine it being delivered better.

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