Jorge Luis Borges - about poetry

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. 

A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. 

If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. 

Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

 It remembers that it was first song.

Jorge Luis BOrges - Lecture entitled "The Divine Comedy," 1977