PennSound Daily

Last week we released the one-hundred-and-first episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, featuring a discussion of Ed Dorn's poem "The Sundering U.P. Tracks" from his collection The North Atlantic Turbine (1967). For this episode, host Al Filreis was joined by a panel including (from left to right) Simone White, Sophia Le Fraga, and Andrew Whiteman.

In his introduction on the PoemTalk blog, Filreis offers a rather complex contextualization of the poem: "The recording of the poem, available at Dorn's PennSound page, is undated and (as yet) unsourced. For the purposes of our discussion we assumed that the performance was roughly contemporaneous with the publication of the poem — so, let us say, late 1960s or early 1970s. Listeners to the episode will sense that the apparent importance of that dating is not entirely clear to us, but that in the emergence of our political reading of the poem we situate it as a late-1960s reflection back on a slightly earlier moment of realization and radicalization: it recollects and with a bit of distance and greater knowledge recalls the turning-point summer of 1965, when Dorn's collaborator, photographer Leroy McLucas, came to Pocatello only to discover that because of the racial dividing line he had to be housed on the other side of the tracks. The racial trope and idiom of the US East reverts to its literal origins in the making of the US West. And there it is: the key fault line, a built-environment actuality and metaphor. The drawing of a line is the sundering that is endemic to the use of Right of Way to abet the westward expansion of American capital." You can read more on Jacket2.


PoemTalk is a co-production of PennSound, the Kelly Writers House, Jacket2 and the Poetry Foundation. If you're interested in more information on the series or want to hear our archives of previous episodes, please visit the PoemTalk blog, and don't forget that you can subscribe to the series through the iTunes music store.

What's already been a rough week in poetry has gotten considerably sadder with the news that Ted Greenwald has passed away at the age of seventy-four.

Our own Charles Bernstein has posted a moving tribute to his close friend — with whom he co-founded the venerable Segue Series in 1978 — praising his work for "sing[ing] the commons and dance with a homely grace American poetry has rarely seen." He then goes on to share a 2005 video portrait of the poet, observing: "In the 1970s Ted and I would meet in the afternoons and talk till night. We even did a recording of a couple of dozen hours of our conversations. I owe a tremendous amount to those meetings and to our many conversations since."

Not surprisingly, you'll find a treasure trove of recordings on our Ted Greenwald author page dating from 1971 to the present, including readings, radio appearances, video from Public Access Poetry, and a two-part Close Listening program with Bernstein from 2005. Also included among the collection are two of my favorites, which I wrote up for PennSound Daily in 2015: "Voice Truck" (recorded as part of Gordon Matta-Clark's 1972 "Open Space" show) and Poker Blues (a 1991 video collaboration with artist Les Levine). To start exploring this tremendous poet's work, click the title above.

This afternoon news broke throughout the poetry world that Bill Berkson — a singular talent whose prodigious career as poet, art critic, literary critic, curator, editor, and publisher (of Big Sky Books) spanned six decades and two coasts — had passed away at the age of seventy-six.

At Jacket2, Al Filreis has posted a brief memorial detailing Berkson's appearances in both Jacket Magazine and Jacket2, starting, fittingly enough, with the publication of "Last Words" in Jacket #5. Other highlights include Berkson's 2015 Close Listening program with Charles Bernstein and "The Education of Poetry,", Thomas Devaney's 2012 interview with the poet. Those resources are an excellent complement to PennSound's Bill Berkson author page, where you'll find recordings from 1971 up to last year, including a great many appearances at our own Kelly Writers House. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the astounding collection of personal recordings that he was kind enough to share with us.

On social media so many people are mourning Berkson and recalling their friendships and encounters with him. I can't say that I had the pleasure of meeting him in person but we did have one long phone conversation at the start of the process of getting his recordings added to the site and I was surprised by how humbly he carried the weight of his own influence and associations, as well as how willing he was to teach and share his memories with me. So many folks have also noted how, even simply letting their Berkson books fall open to a random page, they've found poems that speak prophetically in epitaph-like ways. Towards that end, I'll conclude by fondly noting the Berkson broadside for "A Lady at Her Writing Table" that greets me in my on-campus office. Based, as he notes in this recording, on Virgil Thompson's dictum that one can only ever have two of the three essentials in life, he notes: "I chose love and friendship over / work, then / work and friendship over / suspended disbelief // — won't love conquer all? // I'll never work again / don't call me." In passing, it seems that Berkson has achieved all three.