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From "Down To Write You This Poem Sat" at the Oakville Gallery

Contemporary
  1. Charles Bernstein, "Phone Poem" (2011) (1:30): MP3
  2. Caroline Bergvall, "Love song: 'The Not Tale (funeral)' from Shorter Caucer Tales (2006): MP3
  3. Christian Bôk, excerpt from Eunoia, from Chapter "I" for Dick Higgins (2009) (1:38):  MP3
  4. Tonya Foster, Nocturne II (0:40) (2010) MP3
  5. Ted Greenwald, "The Pears are the Pears" (2005) (0:29): MP3
  6. Susan Howe, Thorow, III (3:13) (1998):  MP3
  7. Tan Lin, "¼ : 1 foot" (2005) (1:16): MP3
  8. Steve McCaffery, "Cappuccino" (1995) (2:35): MP3
  9. Tracie Morris, From "Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful" (2002) (3:40): MP3
  10. Julie Patton, "Scribbling thru the Times" (2016) (5:12): MP3
  11. Tom Raworth, "Errory" (c. 1975) (2:08): MP3
  12. Jerome Rothenberg, from "The First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell: 4-Voice Version" (c. 1975) (3:30): MP3
  13. Cecilia Vicuna, "When This Language Disappeared" (2009) (1:30): MP3
Historical
  1. Guillaume Apollinaire, "Le Pont Mirabeau" (1913) (1:14): MP3
  2. Amiri Baraka, "Black Dada Nihilismus" (1964) (4:02):  MP3
  3. Louise Bennett, "Colonization in Reverse" (1983) (1:09): MP3
  4. Sterling Brown, "Old Lem " (c. 1950s) (2:06):  MP3
  5. John Clare, "Vowelless Letter" (1849) performed by Charles Bernstein (2:54): MP3
  6. Velimir Khlebnikov, "Incantation by Laughter" (1910), tr. and performed by Bernstein (:28)  MP3
  7. Harry Partch, from Barstow (part 1), performed by Bernstein (1968) (1:11): MP3
  8. Leslie Scalapino, "Can’t’ is ‘Night’" (2007) (3:19): MP3
  9. Kurt Schwitters, "Ur Sonata: Largo" performed by Ernst Scwhitter (1922-1932) ( (3:12): MP3
  10. Gertrude Stein, If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1934-35) (3:42): MP3
  11. William Carlos Willliams, "The Defective Record" (1942) (0:28): MP3
  12. Hannah Weiner, from Clairvoyant Journal, performed by Weiner, Sharon Mattlin & Rochelle Kraut (2001) (6:12): MP3

Selected by Charles Bernstein (read more about his choices here)

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Remembering Gregory Corso

Posted 1/17/2025

January 17th marks 24 years since resilient Beat bard Gregory Corso passed away at the age of 70. While the last years of his writing — as captured in Gus Reininger's moving documentary Corso: The Last Beat — have finally seen print in The Golden Dot: Last Poems, 1997–2000 (read William Lessard's Jacket2 interview with its editors here), this key poet is still in need of a proper collected poems, and dare one hope for a critical resurgence to go along with it.

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. Our most recent addition is a 1969 recording session at Fantasy Records' San Francisco studios on Natoma Street showcasing "In the Fleeting Hand of Time," "Vision of Rotterdam," "The Last Warmth of Arnold," "Mexican Impressions," "Botticelli Spring," "Sun — A Spontaneous Poem," "Ode to Coit Tower," and "I Am 25," among others.

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 loner, 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.


Congratulations to T. S. Eliot Prize Winner Peter Gizzi

Posted 1/16/2025

Today we offer our heartiest congratulations to Peter Gizzi, who was recently announced as the winner of the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize for his 2023 collection Fierce Elegy. 

Judging committee chair Mimi Khalvati hailed the collection as "a work that is infinitely sad yet resolute, and so fully alive in body and spirit." "Written in the afterlife of grief," she continues, "Fierce Elegy brings us poems that revel in minutiae but also brave the large questions in a lyric sequence of transcendental beauty." Gizzi was announced as one of ten finalists last October, chosen from 187 submitted collections evaluated by judges Khalvati, Anthony Joseph and Hannah Sullivan. 

Dr. Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, a divisional dean Dean at Gizzi's home institution, UMass Amherst, noted that:
The UMass College of Fine Arts and Humanities joins the poetry world in celebrating Prof. Peter Gizzi’s T.S. Eliot Prize. Prof. Gizzi’s poems explore the imagination and the self. They examine love and grief and wrestle with despair, opening for the listener a way into our joys, our sorrows, and our songs of self. We are thrilled to have Prof. Gizzi teaching in the MFA and English department and to offer so many emerging writers the opportunity to work with and learn from him.
You can listen to Gizzi read from Fierce Elegy on his PennSound author page as part of his 2023 visit to Boise State University, one of nearly two dozen recordings spanning more than thirty years housed there. 


"Talking About David Antin," 2018

Posted 1/13/2025

Antin's "Sky Poem," 1987
Today we're highlighting "Talking About David Antin," an event featuring Eleanor Antin, Charles Bernstein, Julien Bismuth, and Ellen Zweig, which took place at New York's Artists Space on March 27, 2018.

Artists Space Director Jay Sanders provided introductory comments for the two-hour event, which featured individual talks by the aforementioned friends and colleagues, followed by a half-hour collaborative Q&A session.  As the venue's blurb for the event notes, "David Antin's influential work as a poet and artist led him to develop the hybridized format of 'talk poems' in the 1970s, whereby he would compose literary texts in an improvised, conversational manner in a public setting." Those assembled offer up "performances and interventions" that pay tribute to his prodigious, "multidimensional literary and artistic output."

You can enjoy video and audio versions of this event on PennSound's David Antin author page, which is home to forty years' worth of recordings highlighting his singular talents, which are sorely missed.


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