Inside PennSoundFeatured resourcesFrom "Down To Write You This Poem Sat" at the Oakville Gallery Contemporary
Selected by Charles Bernstein (read more about his choices here) |
Newly Segmented: Amiri and Amina Baraka Read in Buffalo 1985Posted 4/3/2019 We recently segmented this very exciting 1985 recording of husband and wife duo Amiri and Amina Baraka reading at the Allentown Community Center in Buffalo, NY. Recorded on June 14th of that year, the event began with a twenty-five minute set by Amina, who read "Soweto Song," "I Wanna Make Freedom," "Oh Say Can You See," "Dirge for the Lynched," and "For the Lady in Color," among other titles. Amiri then took the state for a forty-five minute set that draws largely from his 1995 collection, Wise, Why's, Y's, including "Wise" parts 1–10, "1929: Y you ask?," "Ya Gotta Have Freedom," "Reflections (for Thelonious Monk)," and "How to Beat Reagan," among many other titles. These two sets, consisting of thirty-two segmented tracks in total, can be found here. As we mentioned last week, when highlighting Baraka's 2005 recording of "Funk Lore," our Amiri Baraka author page, is home to a broad array of recordings going as far back as 1964. PigeonSound at 10Posted 4/1/2019 Here's our original announcement, which, in true April Fool's Day fashion, came a month early, alongside the unveiling of our Twitter account: It's been less than 24 hours since we launched our PennSound Twitter page, and already we have 50 followers. Sign up to follow our feed to get micro-updates — from co-directors Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein, and managing editor Michael S. Hennessey — highlighting changes to the site, new additions and favorite recordings from our archives. Recent tweets have featured Bernadette Mayer & Lee Ann Brown, Tracie Morris, the PennSound Podcast series and our video page. Are you getting the most out of your PennSound experience? Aside from Twitter, don't forget all of the other ways in which you can keep up to date with the site through the web or your cell phone: first, there's the PennSound Daily newsfeed, which automatically delivers entries like this one to your iGoogle page, Google Reader, or favorite feed reader.PennSound is also on FaceBook, along with pages for our sister sites, including the Kelly Writers House and the Electronic Poetry Center. One additional option is the Kelly Writers House's Dial-a-Poem service: just dial 215-746-POEM (7636), and aside from news on upcoming KWH events, you can also hear a recording from a past reading, courtesy of the PennSound archives.  Finally, for those of you who feel overwhelmed by all this new technology, and liked the world a lot more before it Twittered, Tumblred and Bloggered, we're currently beta-testing yet another, more traditional means of transmission. Utilizing homing pigeons equipped with state-of-the-art (well, state-of-the-art circa WWI) wire recording technology, PigeonSound ™ (see prototype at right) will be able to deliver three minutes of telephone-quality audio up to several hundred miles from our home base at UPenn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (our apologies to the rest of the world). Though there have been numerous unfortunate setbacks to date, we hope to have the program up and running by the first of next month with our inaugural offering: The Selected Poems of Ern Malley (read by the author himself). From sites that tweet to birds that tweet, we have all of your poetry options covered at PennSound. Happy Birthday, Gregory Corso!Posted 3/26/2019 March is certainly the month for Beat Generation birthdays: we've already recognized Jack Kerouac earlier this month, and just fêted Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his centenary. March 26th would have been the eighty-ninth birthday of American poetry's Dead End Kid made good, Gregory Corso. We launched our Gregory Corso author page in June 2017, with assistance from Raymond Foye. There, you'll find five full readings plus one individual poem recorded between the 1970s and 1990s. The earliest recording is a April 1971 reading at Duke University, which is followed by an August 1985 appearance at the San Francisco Art Institute as part of their "Art of Poetry" series. Jumping forward to the 90s, there's a March 1991 Brooklyn College reading notable for the appearance of Corso's iconic late poem "The Whole Mess ... Almost" and for the half-hour candid conversation recorded in the car on the way home. From December 1992, there's a stellar reading in New York City also featuring Herbert Huncke, John Wieners, and Allen Ginsberg, and finally, from March 1993, we have a half-hour reading from Rutgers University including "I Met This Guy Who Died," "Earliest Memory," "Youthful Religious Experiences," and "How Not to Die," among other poems. Corso's birthday is a wonderful time to remember his unique voice and perspective. Ginsberg famously offered high praise for his dear friend, calling him ""a poet's Poet, his verse pure velvet, close to John Keats for our time, exquisitely delicate in manners of the Muse," who "has been and always will be a popular poet, awakener of youth, puzzlement & pleasure for sophisticated elder bibliophiles." He continues, judging Corso as "'Immortal' as immortal is, Captain Poetry exampling revolution of Spirit, his 'poetry the opposite of hypocrisy,' a longer, laughably unlaurelled by native prizes, divine Poet Maudit, rascal poet Villonesque and Rimbaudian whose wild fame's extended for decades around the world from France to China, World poet." Click here to start listening. Want to read more? Visit the PennSound Daily archive. |
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