As a point of starter, I can say that the way in which Cecilia’s performances are transcribed, their format, makes it easy for me to recognize them as poems, if compared with my reading experience of Antin’s poems. However, certain things or spots impel me to stop to ponder on them. These things are all related to words’ and sentences’ italicization, words written in block letters, division of lines, spacing between lines, and poetic lines’ different structures. Precisely, what is important to me is the ground on which some words are italicized, written in block letters, on what paradigms lines are formed as they appear on papers. How the transcriber gets to transfigure her speech in lines of different lengths forming such an architecture keeping in mind these lines have abstract basis, recorded oral performance. It comes to my mind that block letters, italicization and spacing could say something about the performer’s intonation patterns, heightened emotional status and recurrent pauses. After matching the written lines with the “aural” performances, I found the previous supposition possible to some degree, but not all the time. In relation to this, my observations could be resolved if I had the chance to watch Cecilia’s performance, videoed performances. Meanwhile, one interesting thing I found in the transcripts in the notations written in bold on the right margins of the pages. These notations, functioning as visual aids, also help me projecting Cecilia’s movement on stage and her reliance on different written material such as notes and books.
2 thoughts on “Cecilia Vicuna’s performances”
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Very good points. There is a critical / methodological literature on transcription. Dennis Tedlocks’ _Spoken Word and the Work of Written INterpretation_ is one of my main sources. It becomes a question of scale or granularity. How much and how precisely do you want to notate. We should discuss this in class.
Thanks professor. I think without these notations my reading experience would be different. they allow me to envision what is going on onstage. this seems to me a psychological issue because I already know that the transcriptions are not where Cecilia firstly inscribed her thoughts, so while reading, I always tried to construct a lively image of her movements, body language and the material she consults which surely affect my reception of the performance.