Lecturer Rings a Poetic Note

Eminent literary critic M.H. Abrams ’34 addressed a rapt crowd in Lamont Library yesterday, emphasizing the value of appreciating poetry by reading it out loud.

The bespectacled scholar spoke to an overflowing crowd in a lecture entitled “On Reading Poems Aloud” in the library’s Forum Room.

“Read the lines aloud so as to savor the enunciation of the sweet sound,” he instructed his audience.

“Can you taste the consonants? You should,” he added, after the crowd—strewn on the floor because all seats were filled—complied.

James T. Engell ’73, the chair of the Department of English and American Literature and Language, spoke at the beginning of the event, calling Abrams “a titan who has not been overthrown by the Olympians.”

Cogan University Professor Stephen J. Greenblatt introduced Abrams by emphasizing how important his criticism—especially his 1971 book “The Mirror and the Lamp”—was in shaping the work of the many faculty members in attendance.

Greenblatt also noted Abrams’s achievements as a long-time editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, required reading for all Harvard English concentrators, which he said “many of you will have schlepped around for part of your adult lives.”

Greenblatt is also an editor of the Norton Anthology.

Having received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctorate at Harvard, Abrams had the opportunity to hear E.E. Cummings ’15 and T.S. Eliot ’10 recite their works, always uniquely, prompting him to say “that there’s no one way to read a poem.”

Abrams read various works of poetry last night, prefacing his reading by saying, “This is a dangerous thing to do, because I tell you how it should be done then you all have to judge if I’ve done it.”

Analyzing and then reading works by poets such as John Keats, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth and Lord Alfred Tennyson, Abrams emphasized the aural aspects of the works, which he said are often often lost when poems are read silently.

In W.H. Auden’s “On This Island,” Abrahms read aloud the line, “The leaping light for your delight discovers,” and then explained how the repeated syllable brings back the preternatural delight a baby takes in repeating newly learned sounds, such as “la la la la.”

Kingsley University Professor Helen Vendler, who met Abrams in 1960 after becoming a section leader for his introductory English class at Cornell, explained how influential the nonagenarian’s work has been to literary critics and listed former students of Abrams who have become important literary critics themselves, such as Yale’s Sterling Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom.

Abrams said he was pleased with his performance at the event.

“I can do it better now then when I used to teach it then. Or maybe my judgment has just deteriorated,” he told The Crimson after the event.

“It sort of rounds things off,” Abrams said of his Harvard visit. “I started here.”

—Staff writer Alexander B. Cohn can be reached at abcohn@fas.harvard.edu.