Inside PennSoundFeatured resources
Selected by Charles Bernstein (read more about his choices here) |
Spending Midwinter Day with Bernadette MayerPosted 12/21/2024
At 4:19 EST this morning we officially made the transition from autumn into winter, and today will be the year's darkest day, with just over nine hours of sunlight. For many of us, this day inevitably brings bittersweet remembrances of the late Bernadette Mayer, whose beloved Midwinter Day celebrates the winter solstice in a wholly unique fashion. While not published until 1982, Mayer famously wrote the book — hailed by Alice Notley as "an epic poem about a daily routine ... sedate, mundane, yet marvelous" — in its entirety while marking the the winter solstice at 100 Main Street in Lennox, Massachusetts on December 22, 1978. Celebrating Mayer and Midwinter Day on this day is an annual PennSound tradition, dating back to 2014. As Megan Burns notes in her Jacket Magazine essay on the book: "A long held tradition on Midwinter's Day was to let the hearth fire burn all night, literally keeping a light alive through the longest night of winter as a source of both heat and a symbol of inspiration to come out the other side of the long night closer to spring and rebirth. It is fitting that a poem about surviving death and the intimacy of the family would be centered around this particular day that traditionally has focused on both. The hearth is the center of the home where the family gathers, where the food is cooked and where warmth is provided. Metaphorically, the poem Midwinter Day stands in for the hearth gathering the family into its folds, detailing the preparation of food and sleep and taking care of the family's memories and dreams." Mayer read a lengthy excerpt from the book at a Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn on May 26th of the following year, which you can listen to on her PennSound author page along with a wide array of audio and video recordings from the late 1960s to the present. Henry Hills, 'Plagiarism,' 1981Posted 12/20/2024 Today we're revisiting an iconic film from Henry Hills that was recently re-uploaded to the site in a newly-remastered version. Filmed in 1981, Plagiarism features Hannah Weiner, Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, and James Sherry reading from Weiner's notebooks that would eventually be published as Little Books/Indians (Roof Books, 1980). Hills offers these notes on the film: Begins jokingly proclaiming, "I'll make my Ernie Gehr film," a major preoccupation of my generation in the late 70s/early 80s, & then this very raw other thing proceeds to unfold, raw because I only had enough money (a loan from Abby Child) to do 4 shoots never having done sync & using outdated film stock from Rafik & an unfamiliar, undependable camera & trying to keep everything together & everything going wrong, yet determined to make concrete the ideas I had been abstractly developing over several years with whatever I got back from the lab no matter & so abandoning all caution to open a new area, I decided who could possibly talk better than poets? Edited in Times Square. Fans of Hill's Money (1985) will recognize many familiar techniques at play here, with rapid-fire cuts creating a dense, rhythmic collage of sights and sounds punctuated by pregnant pauses, bursts of noise, and enigmatic, orphaned fragments of speech. It would be a mistake to judge it solely in its relationship to Money, however, since the two films differ radically in scope and spirit: while the latter is an expansive survey of the city and its scenes (including poets, dancers, and musicians), the feel here is much more intimate, between the smaller cast and the more limited visual vocabulary. At the same time it's fascinating to see hallmarks of Hills' style in a raw early state, particularly given the influence of the considerable technical challenges that Hills enumerates above. You can watch Plagiarism by clicking here. Congratulations to bill bissett, CMPosted 12/19/2024 Today we celebrate bill bissett, who was appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada at a ceremony in Ottawa on December 12th. The citation summed up his achievements thusly: A revered poet, painter and musician, bill bissett is a pre-eminent figure of the 1960s counterculture movement in Canada. His poetry collections, which combine sound and visual elements with printed works, are acclaimed for breaking down artificial barriers between the arts. He is also the esteemed co-founder of the Secret Handshake Gallery in Toronto’s Kensington Market, Canada’s first and only peer-support facility for people with schizophrenia. On PennSound's bill bissett author page you'll find a fascinating assortment of recordings that span the breadth of bissett's career as well as depth of his talents. The most recent recordings include a brief home recording from 2021 and his set from a 2012 launch reading celebration of a new edition of his germinal collection, Rush: what fuckan theory; a study uv language. The earliest is a remarkable relic from 1967: an appearance by bissett and bpNichol on the CBC television program Extension, hosted by Phyllis Webb, during which they perform together and separately, and discuss their work and the contemporary Canadian poetry scene. In between, you'll find readings at the Bowery Poetry Club, the St. Mark's Poetry Project, and the Kootenay School of Writing, along with a 1978 radio appearance and the 1968 album Selections from Awake In The Red Desert. Click here to start exploring. Want to read more? Visit the PennSound Daily archive. |
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