A moving meditation on voice from Christopher Hitchens who, defining himself by his voice, is losing his voice to throat cancer.
losing your voice
Voice Alpha
about reading poetry aloud for an audience
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May 11, 2011 at 10:12 pm
I can’t imagine.
As he’s losing his voice, he certainly hasn’t lost his voice in the literary sense. And the tone is wonderful — not light, exactly, but serious and in love with life, intellect, and words.
May 11, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Yes! – I agree absolutely.
May 14, 2011 at 2:08 am
Moving and full of insights available only to those whose ‘rage de vivre’ flares most brightly close to the end.
May 15, 2011 at 9:10 am
A wonderful essay, and I was just listening to Leonard Cohen yesterday, so it struck that chord, so to speak. It is good to hear the gravel in Cohen’s own renderings of his songs, but it might be a comfort (someday) to Hitchens that other voices, even the smooth and pure, carry forward the meaning and emotion of Cohen’s words even without the gravel. A thrilling weaving of word, voice, sound, song, etc. through time.
I was pleased to read his advice to students to read their essays aloud as part of the composition process, and also that he likes it when people feel “personally addressed” by his essays. What a thing he’s going through….