PennSound Daily

We recently added a number of newly-digitized recordings from the Segue Series' second home, Double Happiness that were made in the late nineties and early oughts. Highlights include John Yau reading in December 2001, Anselm Hollo and Garrett Kalleberg reading in February 1998, Brian Kim Stefans and Joan Retallack reading in January 2002, a trio reading by Jonathan Skinner, Johanna Fuhrman, and Laird Hunt from February 2001, Maggie Nelson and Adeena Carsick reading later that same month, and three events from April 2000 featuring Pattie McCarthy and Heather Ramsdall and Tim Griffin and David Levi Strauss, and Greg Fuchs and Janice Lowe.

As part of the same project, we also digitized two readings from HERE, an alternate venue for the series during its years at the Ear Inn: Yunte Huang and Leslie Scalapino reading in February 1998, and Tom Raworth and Ann Lauterbach reading in October 1997. Follow the individual links above to listen to any and all of these readings.

The National Book Award shortlists were announced this morning and it was a pleasure to see three PennSound poets among the poetry finalists:

Claudia Rankine was nominated for Citizen: An American Lyric (Greywolf), which, Shaelyn Smith of The Rumpus notes, "mixes poetry with art, essays and images from the news to share her own experiences of racism ... and to reflect on stories that have made their way into the national conversation about race, like the death of Trayvon Martin and fallout from Hurricane Katrina." You can listen to seven recordings recorded between 2002 to 2012 in Paris, New York, San Diego, Berkeley, and here at UPenn, including radio appearances, readings and conversations on her PennSound author page.

Fred Moten's latest, The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions) was also cited. Tyrone Williams recently discussed this volume in his Jacket2 commentary series, "Hunches, Hedges, etc." calling it "a blunt, unsentimental (it is written against both pathology and apotheosis vis-à-vis Negro, black and African American cultures) survey of a commons that continues to thrive underground," that "like his other [books], is written against forgetting, which is to say, written for a future that will have always been." Moten's PennSound author page is home to a small but potent collection of recordings, including two Segue Series sets, readings at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and our own Kelly Writers House, and a lecture at UPenn as well.

Finally, Fanny Howe made the list for her latest collection, Second Childhood (Greywolf), which was hailed by by Craig Morgan Teicher in The New York Times Book Review as "offer[ing] glimpses of the unseeable, shards of the unsayable, between the slats of the words, between meanings." He continues, "Whether we see what this reflexive poetry tries to show may have more to do with our own sense of faith — in language, if not in God — than with hers." PennSound's Fanny Howe author page contains a diverse archive of recordings from the late seventies to the present, including talks, readings, radio appearances and a musical setting of her poem, "Tis of Thee."

We're especially grateful to Rosemary Ceravolo, widow of the legendary Joseph Ceravolo for sending us two cassettes to add to our Ceravolo author page.

The first of these, containing home recordings made in 1971 runs a little more than half an hour and includes selections from Wild Flowers Out of Gas, plus "Ho Ho Ho Caribou" (here divided into its ten sections), the first three sections of "The Hellgate," and "Where Abstract Starts." That's followed by a lengthy set of forty-nine poems recorded at the University of Chicago on May 11, 1976. Some titles included in this set: "Winds of the Comet," "Sleeping Outside My Mind," "The Spirit Mercury," "Interior of the Poem," "Kyrie Eleison," and "Good Friday." As Rosemary Ceravolo notes, there are some differences in titles between these recordings and the recently-published Collected Poems since "Joe must have changed or added titles after he did the readings."

While you're acquainting yourself with these new recordings, don't miss out on the other recordings housed on our Ceravolo author page, including a 1978 set at the Ear Inn and home recordings from the spring of 1968, along with the September 2013 celebration of Ceravolo's work at the Kelly Writers House, organized by CAConrad. Finally, if you haven't already, you'll want to head over to Jacket2 for "The Lyrical Personal of Joe Ceravolo," an ambitious 2013 feature organized by Vincent Katz.