How I Read Aloud, 9

[The poem [see yesterday's post] is by Jacob Glatstein, "The Sunset Prayer."]

       This is a poem I was asked to read aloud at services.  Unfortunately, I was given only a handful of minutes to look it over before I'd have to present it.  I like much more time to prepare than that, but these are things I discovered during the ten minutes or so.
 
       The first line announces an intimate confidentiality between a speaker and his/her listener(s); the “I” and the “you” immediately let me know that I can have this relationship with my audience; I can let them in on a secret, taking a familiar tone we have all enacted or heard dozens of times.  And when I look up from the words, where do I look?  Right at the “you,” my audience; and how?  With that friendly conspiritoriality the words contain.  Right away I am not a ”reader,” and right away the audience is not hearing “words” but rather is being enticed to share in a secret.