Werth sent the voice recordings to the DJ, asking him to match the emotional tone and connections to the elements of air, fire and water of each sonnet. “Margaret gave a beautiful, lucid reading that makes it sound simple although it isn’t,” Werth said. (Ronda will also present her research at the MLA convention.) The ideal reader was just a few doors down in the Department of English - poet Margaret Ronda, associate professor of English and a scholar of American poetry from the past 150 years. Werth also wanted to have a female voice for this sonnet, one of the first secular sonnets written by an English woman with a feminine point of view. “It’s perfect in being melodramatic, touched with irony and definitely over the top, but it is extra challenging because of it being linguistically dense,” Werth said. The Wroth sonnet posed a greater challenge. He read the Labé sonnet in French and took up the challenge to perform the Spenser sonnet in English. “Everyone says he has a sexy voice,” Werth said. One reader was close at hand - her husband Bertand W. Then Werth set about finding the right voices to record the sonnets that Frugaletti would use to build the beats around. She asked Claire Goldstein, a UC Davis associate professor of French, who immediately suggested Labé. Spenser and Wroth came to mind quickly, but she also wanted to bring in a continental example as sonnets were part of a larger humanist, cultural context of circulation and translation. “I wanted sonnets that are fairly well known and that could be used in classes,” Werth said. “I love collaborations, and this was my first opportunity to collaborate with someone outside the academic arena,” said Werth, whose research includes Renaissance literature, Reformation history, print culture and environmental narratives. When Werth, a house music fan, became friends with Frugaletti, she saw a collaborative, critical and creative way to connect with contemporary audiences. Atomic with lyrics from John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 “Batter My Heart,” and also shows images of controversial artworks that are related to metaphysical poetry. In classes, she often plays an aria from composer John Adams’ opera Dr. Finding creative ways to engage students with poems written centuries ago is something Werth is always thinking about. Werth will use the resulting mixes in her classes and make them available to professors - and house fans - everywhere. The mix, called “Sonnet Songs from The School of the Night,” will be played as part of the regular happy hour set at the Folsom Street Foundry on Jan. In other words, you can dance the sonnets. You’ve read it, you’ve analyzed it, now you can have an embodied experience with it.” “It shows how you can engage other senses – the auditory, the visual - for a multisensory approach to understanding these sonnets. “It’s a way to break down the walls between artistic genres,” said Werth, who will also present her research at the convention.
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