Listening to Poetry Really Can Give You Chills and Goosebumps

Has listening to a poem ever given you chills or goosebumps?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 100.0%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I've never listened to a poem.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    10

William Haskins

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excerpted from Seeker.com

To examine how poetry affects listeners, Wassiliwizky and his team conducted two experiments. For the first, the researchers monitored the heart, face, and skin hair activity of 27 native German speakers as they listened to recordings of self-selected poems that were deemed to be emotionally powerful. The poems were drawn from a wide span of time, covering everything from Shakespearian sonnets to modern German works.

During chill-inducing moments, the listeners experienced activation of multiple brain regions, including the nucleus accumbens. This is an area of the brain that’s involved in processing rhythm, rewards, and in establishing and testing anticipations. Wassiliwizky noted that listening to music produces different brain activation patterns.

The researchers are not yet certain why poetry and music affect the brain differently, but they suspect that processing the meaning of words in poetry is the key.

“The semantic component is essential for poetry no less than for ordinary language; this component is further amplified by the musical features of poetic language,” Wassiliwizky explained. “Thus, poetry fuses elements of language and music, but is not designed to reach its full power in the absence of semantic meaning.”

<snip>

Poetry might conversely fall flat on the ears of some listeners, but its innate power to incite a physical response could amplify with exposure and learning. The researchers recommend that poetry should be given more importance in school lessons. Recitations by professional speakers could be helpful, but they say that students should be able to write and recite their own poems as well as those of others.

https://www.seeker.com/health/mind/listening-to-poetry-really-can-give-you-chills-and-goosebumps
 

Ari Meermans

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"Has listening to a poem ever given you chills or goosebumps?" Oh, yes, but too infrequently for my liking, I guess. I'm sensitive to cadence and strength of voice, and when the voice and the poem are perfectly paired it can be a transportive experience—it's akin to a seduction and nothing exists for that short time but the world of the poem.
 
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iszevthere

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I got chills when I was fifteen and someone I had an enormous crush on read Robert Hayden's "The Tattooed Man" to me. I realized then the crush was mutual, but never did anything about it. (This turned out to be a good thing, as they were already in a relationship.) It remains one of my favorite poems.

Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening" is my current favorite, and has been for a few years. Shemar Moore recites the final stanza in one of my favorite Criminal Minds episodes, and the fact that he does makes it one of my favorites. The episode got me to read the whole poem. I did get the chills, couldn't get it out of my head--it was powerful.

There are others; I have a good feeling I'll come back to this thread.
 

Perks

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I've absolutely gotten goosebumps from poetry, but I can't remember if it's been from listening to poetry from the outside or from hearing it only my mind's ear. Does that still count?
 

Chris P

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I prefer to read poetry, not have it filtered through someone's performance. But I do like Bryan Cranston's take on "Ozymandias" (in character as Walter White from Breaking Bad).

Yep, that one will do it. A coworker this week thought I was a huge fan of Breaking Bad because I have Ozymandias pinned up on my cubicle wall. He kept making references I didn't get, as I've never seen the show. Not even trailers for it. I have the poem on my wall because during the campaign when Trump said "I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures" the line "Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair" ran through my head.

I prefer to have poetry read to me. I miss a lot when I read it myself.

When I was about 4 years old, this one scared the crap out of me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoen4gLK5I8

James Earl Jones reading The Raven on The Simpsons was great.

Can anyone link to a reading of Ginsberg's Howl? I love the poem, but all I can find are readings by him, which I find rather monotone.
 

shakeysix

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"We are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams..."

"Now as I was young and easy as the apple boughs about the lilting house..."

"verde, que te quiero verde..."

"silver bark of beech and sallow..."

How can anyone read these lines and not pop out with goosebumps?

"...on a darkling plain, swept by confused alarms...where ignorant armies clash by night"

How can these lines not bring to mind today's news? And yet they were written almost two hundred years ago, about a whole different human misery and a whole different darkling plain. I don't get people who don't get poetry and yet, my sister, all of my friends say it leaves them cold--s6
 

Kylabelle

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I'm back from the Out There Wilds and just finding this thread. I have posted a few videos of spoken word poetry in the Poetry forum, with little response -- maybe I should try posting those links here instead?