For my poem I chose Edgar Allan Poe’s Dream within a Dream. I like the cadence and the surreal feeling it gives after being read. In my recording I decided to replicate the feeling I get from it by creating a dreamlike, surreal, and somewhat haunting feel.

To achieve this I pitched my voice low, high, and extremely low (to the point of incomprehensibility). I also slowed my reading down, just by a little bit. I then added the sound of wind, slowing it down, pitching it high and low, and repeating it a number of times. I finally added the ticking of a clock, slowing that down and pitching it low.

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe