Should poetry always be read aloud, or does silent reading actually reveal more?

[Connor97]

Poetry occupies a genuinely unusual position among literary forms in that it was originally, for the vast majority of human history, an exclusively oral art, composed to be spoken, chanted or sung long before written language was widely available to preserve it in any other way. Advocates for reading poetry aloud argue that the sound of a poem, its rhythm, its carefully chosen consonants and vowels, and the natural pauses created by line breaks, are all genuinely essential parts of the actual meaning that silent reading on the page simply cannot fully deliver on its own.

On the other hand, defenders of silent, private reading argue that it allows for a slower, more deliberate kind of engagement, giving a reader the freedom to pause indefinitely on a single striking phrase, reread a confusing stanza multiple times in a row, or simply sit with an ambiguous image for as long as they want without the forward momentum that reading aloud almost inevitably imposes on the experience.

Spoken word poetry and slam competitions have leaned heavily into the oral tradition side of this argument in recent decades, treating live performance and audience reaction as absolutely central to the entire art form, while more traditionally published, page based poetry often seems to assume a solitary, silent reader working through the text entirely alone. Which approach actually reveals more of what a poem is genuinely trying to do?