Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes

I may be protesting too much, since, as I say, I've never tried it. But this seems like a solution to the problem where the narrator's reading speed is a fixed percentage of your reading speed, whereas I have in mind the way that I read, which is that I might go very quickly through some sections that don't need or to which I don't want to pay detailed attention, and then slow way down in the more difficult sections. I think it is fairly rare for audiobook narrators to approach the book this way (but maybe they do it so seamlessly I don't notice?).

Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poetry) tells me that its etymology is through "poet," which in turn means "author" or "maker," and that its meaning is "Literature composed in verse or language exhibiting conscious attention to patterns and rhythm." Neither of those things uniquely privileges its spoken experience. But it doesn't really matter what the etymology or meaning of the word is when discussing the best way to enjoy it, and it's at best useless to try to tell someone else that they're enjoying it wrong.

Poetry in some languages and traditions is at least as visual as it is oral/verbal. Calligraphy is tightly bound to some poetic traditions. In others, the form of a poem is chiefly or entirely calligraphic, not oral, acoustic, or rhythmic.

Even if we restrict ourselves to Western Anglophone poetry of the past 100 years, you'll find that the sound of poetry itself has changed drastically. Find a recording of someone reading an English-language poem in the early 20th century. You'll likely find its sound quite alien, not just because of the antiquated pronunciation but because there's a strong element of something like chant -- and delivery is far more affected than it would be today. I'm not so sure the sound of poetry for you would sound at all like poetry to, I don't know, Yeats or Kipling.

In turn, poetry in Greece and Rome was so tightly coupled to music that it would be more correct to say that poetry in these civilizations was defined by its characteristics when sung, not spoken. Hence in Homer and Classical Greek the word "aoidos," singer, is frequently used of poets.

(I'm not familiar with We Do Not Part; thanks for the recommendation. I love all of the other authors you mention, and will check Han Kang out.)

By the way, I spent the first two or three years of my professional career performing school-tour Shakespeare. That was a joy. Hard graft: sometimes three shows in a day, along with loading and unloading the van in between, but my goodness it was rewarding. Great training, too. We'd do a show in the morning for twenty people in a library, and then in the afternoon in a 2,000 seat auditorium. You had to learn quickly how to modulate your performance, and what choices land with what kinds of audience.

I disagree, a book like Finnegan's Wake has a lot in common with Java. Think about a clean, clearly written book that tries to craft an enjoyable narrative, such as Snow Crash, that's the python of books. Now a book like Finnegan's wake, the narrative is completely impenetrable, instead the author focuses on other things like wordplay, sound play, rhythm, etc. In the same way, Java isn't so much about clearly and cleanly stating an algorithm, but more focused on the rules and regulations, terminology, the paperwork and formalities of programming. In this regard Java is more analogous to a legal tax code, but Finnegan's Wake is a good foundation for either.