"The Sound of Writing is a significant contribution to the material history of literature. Its essays often remind us of the immodest assumptions we unconsciously make when opening a book or a score from hundreds of years past and turn us back to our own implications in the layers of mediation and artifacts of inscription that are closer to being 'the object at hand.' This is good and sobering advice."—Haun Saussy, The University of Chicago, author of The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies

"An eloquent guide to why being a good reader means being a good listener, too. Exquisitely attuned to the supposedly silent page's sonic dimensions, The Sound of Writing makes a resounding case for the benefits of reading with our ears as well as our eyes."—Matthew Rubery, Queen Mary University of London, author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book

"Listening closely to problems of sound and meter that might seem entirely embedded in the formal world of poetry, the essays in this collection reverse engineer both sensory and social dimensions of the historical soundscapes in which these poems first emerged. The result is a series of vivid and imaginative reconextualizations that, unlike some versions of historicism, always also take us further into the experience offered by the poems."—Lytle Shaw, New York University, author of Narrowcast: Poetry and Audio Research

"Speaking statues, buzzing bees, and a whole host of metrical and melodious manuscripts—beware of opening this noisy book in a quiet library! The concert's stars, however, are its expert editors and contributors, who offer one virtuosic performance after another of the art of reading as an art of listening."—Shane Butler, author of The Ancient Phonograph