I certainly see value in both oral poetry as well as written poetry. Specifically with poetry in the modernist age I believe it is best as written because it is so mysterious and it does not explicitly explain the meaning of the poem; it is behind what you are reading. This kind of poetry takes a lot of contemplating and piecing together like a puzzle and you need to have perpetual access to it, in order to figure it out. It can not be figured out in one reading. There is a lot hidden details, that one might simply skim over, if just listening to it. For example, it took me several read throughs of “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” to pick up on different details. In the middle of it, he was randomly talking about “scuttling across the ocean floors of silent seas” (paragraph 11) ,and I later realized that he was alluding to the ocean scene he talks about in the end.
I do also see the value in oral poetry though. Another big theme of modernist poetry is to write like a rolling stream of consciousness and this is much more effective orally, I believe. In “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”, I think there is a certain instinctual understanding of the poem that I would otherwise not have, due to the tone of his voice and which parts he slowed down at. At some points he sounded monotone and other parts his voice became very dynamic and almost musical. This definitely added to my deeper understanding of it; he seems to be going through very existential contemplations having to do with time and how he spent his life.
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