Finding the rhythm.

from A Regular Maverick by Sean O'Hagan, 23 February 2013, The Saturday Age, Life & Style, p. 12

"How, then, does he actually prepare for a role? 'Well, it's not something I could fully articulate,' he says, 'but basically I prepare in the same way every time. I take the script, I stand in my kitchen and I quietly mumble it to myself. Over and over.' Is he being serious? 'Oh yes. See, I keep doing that until I hear something in there. I was trained as a dancer and that stuck with me, so I'm essentially looking for a rhythm. When I figure stuff out, it has to do with finding the rhythm. Always.'"

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/off-the-cuff-an-extended-interview-with-christopher-walken-20130204 

Philip Harvey - Poetry Editor - Eureka Street

Philip Harvey - Poetry Editor - Eureka Street

from Philip Harvey's report on 2012 Annual Poetry Competition organised by Poetica Christi Press, http://www.poeticachristi.org.au/home.html

"We want our poem to express pretty much exactly what we want to say. But if we make it too obvious then our thoughts and feelings will come out sounding simplistic and untested, or gushy, even flakey. While the more we try to impress, our expression can become obscure, overly artful, and even pretentious. How to manage to express truly and impress effectively while remaining true to our own origianl desires when making poetry is, I believe, a recurring state. It is our creative condition, cause for us to continue trying new ways of making words work. Our essential human need to talk of the spirit ..."

The Best Australian Poems 2012

Black Inc., Collingwood, Australia
http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/subject/poetry 

Editor: John Tranter
From Introduction, p. xiv

"Readers like to become involved in a good story, and many poems work like stories, only of course in a briefer compass. There was a time when poems were longer: much longer. They needed to be. If you were stuck in a cave all winter long, sitting around the campfire at night with a few smelly sheep for company, you would want the visiting storyteller to spin his stories out for several months. So the ancient epics were suitably long and dramatic to ensure that the travelling bard got dozens of good feeds before his audience grew tired of his tale.

That was before the mass-produced printed novel was developed, bringing huge audiences with it. Most people in Europe could read, by then, so novels became widely popular. Then the movies arrived to entertain everybody. You didn't need to be able to read, even, with radio, or the movies, or television. So as the decades passed, long narrative poetry, as the best means of reciting a memorised story, quietly faded away. 

But somehow, poetry hung on, in its niche. I was struck, in reading through over a thousand entries for this year's Best Australian Poems, by just how many poems depended on the ancient devices of the storyteller."

from 'Riding the Trains in Japan'

    "Stranger than her clothes was that, like the Mosuo girl I had met back in the old town in Lijiang, Numa Lamu sang constantly. She would sing under her breath, then launch into song at the top of her voice without a shred of embarrassment ...
The most consistent difference I have found between peole who remain attached to pre-modern traditions and we moderns is our neglect of song. For us, art is a thing that professionals make according to the tastes and disposable income of an educated middle class; for them it is common and vital, like breathing.
     Numa Lamu began a song that rose up and down a scale erratically and then settled into soft breaking notes. She ladled another cup of milk butter tea. 
     What a people for our world, I thought. Pray God it never finds them."

Patrick Holland 2011
Riding The Trains In Japan: Travels In The Sacred And Supermodern East
Transit Lounge, Yarraville, Australia
p. 143