YEATS AND THE POET VOICE. Rich Smith in his attack on the “Poet Voice” acknowledges that there are exceptions, that sometimes the Poet Voice can be “an effective and affecting style”. He links to a video of Yeats and says: “[Yeats] proceeded to read his famous poem, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree,’ in a Poet Voice to end all Poet Voices. He’s basically singing. It sounds amazing, and not only because he’s got a great tenor but because his employment of Poet Voice matches up with the style and content of the poem—they make sense together.”
My post earlier this year linked to a different reading by Yeats of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. Mary Jane commented: “Well, I can certainly picture him, with his white hair, in robes like a magus, as I hear him intoning these lines….Yeats sounds old, old–as old as an oak.”