I’m not particularly bowled over by the reading performance in the reading below by Eleanor Ross Taylor, but I am bowled over by her terrific North Carolina accent. Personal prejudice, I admit — I’m a sucker for a southern US accent. There is an interesting Wikipedia entry on her ‘southernness’ which alas, doesn’t mention her voice. The Wikipedia also entry mentions her ‘use of both metrical and nonmetrical lines’, and after reading that, I wonder whether/how she writes in/scans the extra syllable the North Carolinian accent adds to words like appear, chair, here in her metrical lines.
(57 secs)
August 19, 2011 at 5:38 pm
Now, see, I like the reading performance a lot. It sounds as if the poem is lived. Like you, I love the accent. While growing up in Tidewater, Virginia, I could distinguish natives of Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, and Poquoson (cities within a few miles of one another, three of them contiguous) by their accents. I couldn’t do it today: they’ve lost their accents, and I’ve lost some of my ear for it.
August 30, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Sad how that happens, isn’t it!