Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08882_Field_TCGG T647.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 915b | 16 lines

narrative; it was unmusical in the sense that it could not be
sung; it had marked proclivities toward rant and noise.”

     But the paradox is that the blank verse, being one of the
first kinds of “spoken,” as opposed to sung, poetry is very
much faster than song, or perhaps even than speech itself. It is
very safe, however, to commence with the consideration that
blank verse, unlike rhymed poetry, answered the new need of
the vernacular to have recognition and implementation as a
public address system. Aretino had been the first to seize the
vernacular as the mass medium which print had made it. His
biographers note his extraordinary resemblance to the most
vulgar press lords and emperors of our own century. Reviewing
a biography Citizen Hearst  by W. A. Swanberg, the New York
Times  headlined the review (September 10, 1961): “The Man
Who Made Headlines Scream.”