The Chicken President

While listening to the podcast, I was initially distraught by the performance. I felt that the performer was gagging and suffocating. I agreed with several of the critics... they described the performance as dramatic and intense. The feeling that the performance transmits really leaves the listener with a vibe of the ferocity of Tracie Morris physical presence (as commented in the show). The discussion of poems and how some of them say and some of them really "say and do" was interesting. One of the persons said that everything does something, and even though one reading might "say and do", another might "say and do something" else. The impression I got from this comment is that depending on the performer  the reading itself might generate something in the audience, but in other performances of the same poem the preformer might have a different effect on the audience, leading them to do other things themselves, or generate stronger feelings or greater emotions; the exemplification of the sounds really make a difference. The patriotic music to the "bla bla" that sounds like a "chicken" really narrowed down my listening to the performance. The fact that the president is questioned politically and what he will "say and do",later becoming a chicken-like  reading really made me think that to some extent, the president really doesn't do or mean anything, he is degraded to a chicken, that seems to be suffocating. The words of politicians loose meaning because they talk so much and do so little that their legitimacy really wavers. All this was demonstrated in the reading.