PennSound Daily

Poem Talk Episode #6: Jaap Blonk Sounds Off

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 5/7/2008 2:21:58 PM

The latest installment of the PoemTalk podcast series has just been released — a meditation on Jaap Blonk's "What the President Will Say and Do," an homage to Madeline Gins' book-length work of the same name. Al Filreis was joined by Kenneth Goldsmith, Tracie Morris and Joshua Schuster for this episode, which starts by exploring the relationship between Gins' text and Blonk's imaginative revision, as well as the limitations (or lack thereof) between live performance and audio artifact.

While one misses the auratic thrill of Blonk's strained, strangled and violet-faced performance, there's still a great deal of meaning to be discovered behind the words and sounds, and the PoemTalkers see a wide variety of politicized perspectives on the work — from an emulation of empty rhetoric to torture to a visceral representation of the impotence of power. From here, the discussion expands to broader consideration of the political potential of sound poetry as a whole (with John Cage, Miles Davis and Patti LaBelle invoked), as well as the politicization of everyday language.

To listen to this episode, along with the first five episodes of the PoemTalk series, click on the title above, and keep your eyes peeled for future episodes highlighting the work of Jerome Rothenberg, Rae Armantrout and John Ashbery, among others.

Many Recent Segue Series Readings Added

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 5/6/2008 3:25:48 PM

In addition to the Chris Funkhouser performance mentioned in the last PennSound Daily, we've added a number of new and exciting recordings from the Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club in the past week. Click on the link above to hear a November 10, 2007 reading by Sean Cole, Susan Howe and James Thomas Stevens' reading from January 26, 2008, and a number of readings from this spring, including Noah Eli Gordon and David Shapiro (recorded March 22nd), Mark Wallace and Rodrigo Toscano (from March 29th), and Tonya Foster and Anne Tardos (from April 12th).

These nine recordings are only the tip of the iceberg, and we'll continue adding the remainder of Segue's winter and spring reading series in the coming weeks. Don't forget that there are thirty years' worth of Segue Series readings available on PennSound, from the earliest events held at the Ear Inn, through the series' time at Double Happiness, and up to its tenure at the Bowery Poetry Club, which began not long after the club opened in 2002. We hope to be able to continue to host Segue Series recordings on PennSound for the next thirty years, and much longer beyond that.

Chris Funkhouser: Two New Recordings

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 5/2/2008 2:28:10 PM

We've recently added two new recordings by poet, musician and theorist, Chris Funkhouser to his PennSound author page.

The first, which we mentioned last week, is Funkhouser's lecture, "IBM Poetry: Exploring Restriction in Computer Poems,", recorded as part of the Machine series at the Kelly Writers House on March 26, 2008. In this talk, Funkhouser starts by discussing some of the earliest computer-assisted poetic compositions, including Emmett Williams' "IBM," and Theo Lutz's "Stochastic Text," before tracing their influences upon process-driven texts by the likes of Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Brion Gysin and others. We've put together a special page for this lecture — much like the page created for Brian Kim Stefans' "Language As Gameplay" — on which the audio is segmented into discreet discussions of individual texts, which you can explore as you listen, via the links provided.

The second new recording is a November 3, 2007 Segue Series performance at the Bowery Poetry Club of the soundtrack to "Enjoy the Ride...," a video collaboration with Alireza Khatami, which was created by Orquestra Descarrego in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in June of the same year. This ambitious performance — which weds electronic drones, wiry Indian textures, Gamelan percolations and snippets of appropriated voices — serves as wondrous setting for Funkhouser to deliver his poems, and judging from the enthusiastic response of the audience, we think you'll enjoy it immensely. Click on the title above to start listening.

Jerome Rothenberg: Kelly Writers House Fellows Program Now Available

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/30/2008 5:18:19 PM

If you were unable to attend either of this week's Kelly Writers House Fellows events featuring Jerome Rothenberg, or missed yesterday's webcast, you'll be glad to know that recordings of both programs are now available on PennSound's Rothenberg author page. You can also find streaming video of yesterday's discussion on the Writers House Fellows homepage.

On Monday night, those of us in attendance were dazzled by a lengthy reading which wove poems together with anecdotes, lessons and explanations, drawing upon Rothenberg's Technicians of the Sacred and A Paradise of Poets, among others, along with a generous selection of poems from 2007's Triptych (which includes Poland/1931, Khurbn and The Burning Babe). Nearing the ninety-minute mark, the poet concluded with a rousing rendition of A Seneca Journal's "Old Man Beaver's Blessing Song," which delighted the appreciative audience.

Al Filreis led Tuesday morning's conversation, starting off the program with a number of questions focusing on Jewish identity and the poetics of the Holocaust, which is a prevalent theme in Triptych and much of Rothenberg's work. This discussion was followed up by questions on Rothenberg's dada influences, the poet's relationship with Robert Duncan and Paul Blackburn, and Rothenberg's ethnopoetic investigations, asked by audience members CAConrad, Lee Ann Brown, Bob Perelman and Thomas Devaney, among others.

Jerry and Diane's visit serves as the perfect culmination of a marvelous year for poetry at The Kelly Writers House, which started with a September reading by Lee Ann Brown and Bernadette Mayer, and included events featuring Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Leslie Scalapino, Cecilia Vicuña, Fred Moten, Brian Kim Stefans, Johanna Drucker and Chris Funkhouser, along with tributes to Bob Cobbing and George Oppen. We hope you'll join us again next September for another year of exciting events.

Jerome Rothenberg at UPenn April 28-29 + New Recording

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/27/2008 11:57:05 PM

All of us at PennSound are very excited about Jerome Rothenberg's visit this Monday and Tuesday (April 28th and 29th) as part of this year's Kelly Writers House Fellows Program (which also included visits from Art Spiegelman and Lynne Sharon Schwartz).

Charles Bernstein deems Rothenberg, "the ultimate 'hyphenated' poet: critic-anthropologist-editor-anthologist-performer-teacher-translator, to each of which he brings an unbridled exuberance and an innovator's insistence on transforming a given state of affairs." The collection of recordings on Rothenberg's PennSound author page attests to his prodigious talents — there, you'll find poems, translations and musical collaborations which draw upon Native American, Asian, Spanish and Jewish traditions, as well as dadaist aesthetics. In addition to Rothenberg's own work, you'll also find links to a 1998 celebration of Rothenberg and Pierre Joris' anthology Poems for the Millenium, during which the editors, as well as Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Bob Perelman read selections from that volume. There's also a 1996 LINEbreak interview with Bernstein, and, if you're in search of a very brief primer on the poet's work, look no further than Al Filreis' PennSound Podcast #1, which showcases the Rothenberg's "A Paradise of Poets," "Esther K. Comes to America," and an excerpt from The Lorca Variations along with his reading of John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing." To celebrate Rothenberg's visit, we've added a new recording to our ample collection: a 2008 collaboration with musician Charlie Morrow, entitled "In Memorium: Jackson Mac Low," which you can listen to by clicking on the title above.

There are still a very limited number of seats available for the Monday night reading, as well as the Tuesday morning discussion; for more information on the Kelly Writers House Fellows Program, as well as contact information to RSVP, be sure to visit the program homepage. If you're unable to attend, you can watch the Tuesday morning program via a live webcast (click here for details), and, of course, recordings of both programs will be available on PennSound in the near future. We hope you'll be able to join us for this monumental event — whether virtually, or in-person.

The World Record: Poetry Project Recordings 1969-1980

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/25/2008 5:37:20 PM

Today, we're very proud to unveil a selection of poems from the 1981 album, The World Record, highlighting some of the finest recordings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project between 1969 and 1980. Long before sites like PennSound, the Electronic Poetry Center, UbuWeb or Eclipse, the Poetry Project (founded in 1966 by poet Paul Blackburn) existed as a vital venue for New American Poetics, offering readings and workshops, publishing a number of mimeograph journals (including The World and The Poetry Project Newsletter, which continues to this day), and amassing a monumental archive of poetry recordings, the best of which are present here.

The World Record captures two generations of avant-garde American poetics, starting with Objectivist elder statesmen Charles Reznikoff and Carl Rakosi, along with proto-New York School poet Edwin Denby. You'll also find a number of poets closely affiliated with the Poetry Project itself — both as directors and workshop leaders — such as Bernadette Mayer, Lewis Warsh, Ron Padgett, and Ted Berrigan, as well as many of their peers (including Alice Notley, Lorenzo Thomas, Clark Coolidge, Joe Brainard and Robert Creeley). Altogether, there are 27 poems from 20 different poets, only half of whom we've mentioned here.

We're grateful to the Poetry Project — specifically artistic director Stacy Szymaszek and Bill Berkson (one of the album's editors) — for their permission to present these historic recordings. Click on the title above to start listening.

Flarf Poetry Festival at the Kelly Writers House, 2007

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/24/2008 6:58:14 PM

Organized by Steve McLaughlin as part of the Machine series at the Kelly Writers House, this event, recorded on February 8, 2007, brings together key members of the Flarf collective, including poets Nada Gordon, Mel Nichols, Rod Smith, Sharon Mesmer and Gary Sullivan, along with filmmaker Brandon Dowling, for an event which celebrates the uncompromising and unapologetic aesthetics of the Flarf movement.

A single file of the entire reading has been available since shortly after the event took place, but we've recently created segmented tracks for each individual poet, and in the process, created a new PennSound author page for Nada Gordon. You'll find many additional contemporaneous readings — most from the Line Reading Series and the Segue Series — on the individual author pages, which will help broaden your orientation to (or appreciation of) Flarf poetics. You'll also want to check out Al Filreis' PennSound Podcast #4, which discusses the origins and of Flarf poetry and this reading in particular.

Dedicated to showcasing "the literary uses of the computer," the Machine series has organized some of the most ambitious events at the Writers House in recent history, including Brian Kim Stefans' Janury, 2008 lecture, "Language as Gameplay: From the Oulipo to the Jew's Daughter" and Chris Funkhouser's talk "IBM Poetry: Exploring Restriction in Computer Poems," which we'll be highlighting next week.

Four New Author Pages For Line Reading Series Authors

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/23/2008 10:07:58 PM

As we continue to add segmented versions of many of the fantastic recordings of events from the Line Reading Series, we've created a number of new author pages, bringing together those singles with other resources from the site. On the "New at PennSound" bar on the right, you'll find links to newly created pages for Ange Mlinko, Ben Marcus, Damon Krukowski and Thomas Sayers Ellis. Mlinko's page also includes recordings from a Frequency Audio Journal, as well as a 1998 celebration of the life and work of Bernadette Mayer at the Kelly Writers House. Marcus' page features a recent appearance on Cross-Cultural Poetics, while, on Ellis' page, you'll find a 2004 Segue Series Reading from the Bowery Poetry Club. Finally, on Krukowski's page, you'll find links to Music Overheard compilation on UbuWeb, which he edited, as well as music by his band, Damon and Naomi.

These readings join newly segmented Line Reading Series recordings from Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Kenneth Goldsmith, Tom Raworth, Jena Osman, Darren Wershler-Henry, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Dan Farrell and Ron Padgett. Click on any of the links above to begin listening.

Close Listening Reading and Conversation with Elizabeth Willis

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/22/2008 12:26:39 AM

We've just added the latest installment of the Close Listening series — a two-part reading and conversation featuring poet and scholar Elizabeth Willis.

Charles Bernstein begins by asking Willis a number of questions concerning identity and poetry: whether one reads the poet's identity through a given text and how much of Willis' own identity she relates through her work. This leads to a larger discussion of the various sources which feed and shape her poetry — and here, Willis cites Loine Niedecker's use of Darwin, among other sources, as well as Niedecker's great influence on her own work (both creative and critical). The sweeping conversation also finds links between the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the 1955 noir-film Kiss Me Deadly, and discusses the unique situation of the poet in the university setting.

The second segment features Willis reading a generous selection of poems from her latest collection, 2006's Meteoric Flowers — including "The Principle Catastrophe," "Her Bright Career," "Viewless Floods of Heat" and "On the Resemblance of Some Flowers to Insects" — along with the title poem from 1995's The Human Abstract, "Sonnet" from 2003's Turneresque, and concludes with a handful of new poems. On Willis' PennSound author page, you'll also find a 2003 reading from SUNY Buffalo celebrating the release of Turneresque, which includes more than a dozen poems from that collection. Click on the title above to start listening.

Tom Mandel: New Author Page

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/21/2008 11:56:56 AM

We've recently created a new PennSound author page for germinal West Coast Language poet Tom Mandel, an organizer of the legendary Grand Piano reading series, as well as a former Director of the Poetry Center at the San Francisco State University.

The centerpiece of Mandel's page is a 2004 Segue Series Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, where he reads a wide array of poems from throughout his thirty-year writing life, which has taken him from Chicago to San Francisco to the Philadelphia area, where he currently resides. You'll also find Mandel's appearance on Episode #5 of the PhillyTalks series, where he appeared alongside Ammiel Alcalay, reading a number of untitled works, as well as his poem "Fire of Wandering," and a transcript of the entire program is available in PDF format.

Finally, Mandel's presentation at this month's George Oppen Centennial Event — "Entitlement & Doubt (Postcards & Procrastination)" — rounds out the collection, complete with scanned images of the postcard and envelope Mandel mentions in his talk. We're glad to be able to present Mandel's work, and hope to add more in the future.

Aime Cesaire (1913-2008)

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/17/2008 1:15:42 AM

PennSound mourns the loss of Martinique-born poet, critic and politician Aimé Césaire, with a pair of excerpts from Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, read by one of its two translators, Clayton Eshleman at the Mad Alex series in New York on March 8, 2001. In his essay, "At the Locks of the Void: Co-Translating Aimé Césaire," Eshleman recalls his first impressions of Césaire's work, confessing that it "sank into [him] like a depth charge," and describes the unique challenge of translating poetry so richly interwoven with African, Creole and Carribean terminology, not to mention numerous neologisms. In regards to Notebook of a Return to the Native Land specifically, he notes that it is "as allusively dense as 'The Waste Land,' and as transcendental as 'The Duino Elegies,' before declaring it "one of the truly great poems of the 20th century." We hope you'll enjoy listening to Eshleman's rendition of Césaire's work, and consider it a fitting tribute to a radical thinker whose contributions to contemporary aesthetic and political currents are immeasurable.

For more information on Césaire's life and work, please consult his obituaries in The Associated Press, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Guardian. To begin listening, click the title above — the recordings of Notebook of a Return to the Native Land are at the bottom of the page.

Films From Henry Hills' Emma's Dilemma

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/16/2008 12:03:53 AM

We're proud to announce the addition of a new page devoted to short films from Henry Hills' Emma's Dilemma project — a series of works, nearly a decade in the making, in which Emma Bee Bernstein plays Virgil to viewers' Dante as she investigates the worlds of poetry, drama and filmmaking. The subjects of Bernstein's interviews include Lee Ann Brown, Kenneth Goldsmith, Susan Howe and Julie Patton, among others. The scattershot fragments and quick edits of Hills' earlier films are present here, but the scale is dramatically reduced: instead of attempting to capture the teeming complexity of New York City through the divergent performances of a dozen or more poets, musicians and dancers, these films serve as microcosmic character studies; a testament to the playful potential of language and movement. Hills' recursive glitch-editing produces wonderfully absurdist effects, locking his subjects in goofy loops and making nonsense rhythms out of snippets of speech. This technique reaches its most dazzlingly hypnotic apex in a sort of slow-sync progression, as a sequence hiccups over and over again, moving through the scene at a glacial pace, until we're relieved by the (temporary) return to normal time.

All of Hills' films are available in streaming format, and a number of the pieces are also downloadable in full-resolution, widescreen versions, which we're calling "PennSound Special Editions." Hills' main PennSound author page has also been redesigned, with streaming versions of the films already available, including Radio Adios, Money, Gotham and A New Life, among others. You can also listen to a Close Listening conversation with Charles Bernstein, recorded this past January. We're grateful to contributing editor Danny Snelson for his tireless work in constructing the Emma's Dilemma page, and above all, to Henry Hills for allowing PennSound to distribute more of his incredible films. Click on the title above to start watching.

Writers Without Borders: Cecilia Vicuna at UPenn, 4/15

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/15/2008 1:28:05 AM

Please join us Tuesday, April 15th, at 6:00 PM at the Kelly Writers House, for the inaugural event of Penn's Writers Without Borders series, featuring acclaimed Chilean poet, filmmaker and performance artist, Cecilia Vicuña, whose improvisational, multidisciplinary and multilingual pieces dwell, in her words "in the in-betweenness" of language, form and song, drawing audiences into a shared poetic space. In preparation for the event, you can listen to a September, 1995 LINEbreak program, hosted by Charles Bernstein (also the host for Tuesday's event), in which Vicuña performs selections from Unraveling Words, The Weaving of Water and discusses her ethnic and aesthetic origins, as well as her expressive methodologies.

Writers Without Borders, the Provost's International Writing Series at the Kelly Writers House (supported by a grant by Seth Gins), seeks to give a voice to those who "because of regional unrest, cultural turmoil, aesthetic misunderstanding, the difficulty of travel, problems of translation, etc." have gone unheard, writers whose works "demand an international — and, what's more, a globally minded — readership and response." You can read more about the series, and the Vicuña event, in a recent article in the Philadelphia City Paper.

UPenn's George Oppen Centennial Celebration Now Online

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/10/2008 2:26:07 AM

A recording of A Celebration of George Oppen's 100 Birthday — a fantastic tribute to one of the 20th Century's most influential poets — is now available on PennSound. The audience at a packed Kelly Writers House was treated to ten different perspectives on Oppen's life and work at Monday night's event, ranging from appreciations and analyses of his work, such as Rachel Blau DuPlessis' "Section 9: Of Being Numerous" and Al Filreis' "Oppen's Antifascism: Guilt in 'Myth of the Blaze,'" to personal recollections, including Ron Silliman's "Three Regrets for George Oppen," George Economou's "Inside a Tale that is Full of Eyes" (which nearly brought those assembled to tears with a tale of being moved to tears by Oppen's "Psalm"), and Tom Mandel's story of a mislaid envelope of Oppen poem postcards, which he distributed amongst the audience (nearly three decades after he promised to do so — you can see the postcard on our Oppen Centennial page).

You can also hear wonderful presentations by Ann Lauterbach (who discusses Oppen's influence on her work and shares her poem "Oppen's Way"), Bob Perelman ("Oppen's Knowledge"), Michael Heller ("Oppen's Thematics: What Are Poets For?"), Stephen Cope (who shares selections from Oppen's daybooks and discusses his process of editing Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers) and co-host Thomas Devaney, who wrapped up the evening with a discussion of the sustaining strengths of the marriage of George and Mary Oppen, sharing selections from the latter's Meaning A Life. You'll also find additional resources, including the evening's program in PDF format, links to PennSound's George Oppen author page and DuPlessis' reading of Oppen's "Myth of the Blaze" discussed during Filreis' presentation. We hope to add more materials as they become available, including photos and documents, so check back often.

Patrick F. Durgin: New Author Page

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/10/2008 1:20:23 AM

We've added a new PennSound author page for poet and critic Patrick F. Durgin, author of several collections of poetry, as well as the editor of Hannah Weiner's Open House, one of the most celebrated releases of 2007.

Our collection starts with a brief reading at Chicago's Myopic Books on March 30, 2008: "Craft Ballads" One, Two Three and Four. A quick set from earlier in the month — recorded March 6th at Milwaukee's Woodland Pattern — features three poems, "My Human," Facial Expression" and "To My Imitators." Finally, we have a pair of poems from the MLA Offsite Readings, an excerpt from "The Route" recorded in 2006 and "Song Ink for Jackson Mac Low," from the 2004 marathon reading. Durgin was also one of the organizers for the MLA Offsite Reading at the 2007 Convention in Chicago, and you can hear him read alongside dozens of readers. To start listening, click the title above.

New Close Listening Reading and Conversation with John Tranter

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/9/2008 12:31:29 PM

The latest installment of the Close Listening series — a collaboration between PennSound and ArtRadio WPS1.org — has just been posted: a two-part reading and conversation with Australian poet and critic John Tranter.

The reading segment features poems from Tranter's latest collection, 2006's Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected, beginning with a number of pieces which engage with, often via the process of (mis)translation, the works of other poets, such as "After Hölderlin;" "Festival," a deliberate mistranslation of Max Jacob's poem of the same name; and a transliterated version of Arthur Rimbaud's "Brussles." From there, the session continues with a selection of recent poems, including, "Snap," "Five Modern Myths," "Black Leather" and "Radium," which addresses James Schuyler's tribute to his departed friend, Frank O'Hara, "Buried at Springs."

Host Charles Bernstein begins his interview by asking Tranter about the context for his poetry: whether it's global, or more local, and this leads to a discussion of the tensions between Australian nationalism and an international focus in Tranter's own work, as well as the tremendous literary and cultural potential of the internet — as best embodied by Tranter's journal, Jacket — which elides and erases the differences imposed by national boundaries. Tranter then discusses his earliest influences (Chinese poetry, D.H. Lawrence, Gerard Manley Hopkins) and how they shaped his poetic development, as well as the tremendous import the work of Rimbaud, Ashbery, Schuyler and O'Hara, alongside more proximal inspirations, such as the great Australian hoax-poet, Ern Malley (whose collected works Tranter published in Jacket #17). "You can't really put Wordsworth in Australia — the environment's all wrong," he observes, underscoring the overwhelming, yet foreign dominion of English verse during his formative years, compelling him to break with traditions and invent new forms.

You can hear both installments by visiting PennSound's brand-new John Tranter author page — which also features a 2005 reading at the Kelly Writers House — and stay tuned to PennSound for several new and exciting Close Listening programs, forthcoming shortly.

George Oppen Centennial Celebration, Monday 4/7

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/4/2008 8:18:33 PM

Please join us at 6:00 PM on Monday, April 7th at the Kelly Writers House for A Celebration of George Oppen's 100 Birthday, which promises to be one of the most exciting events of the spring season at UPenn. Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Thomas Devaney will host the 100-minute reading, which will also feature performances and discussions of Oppen's work by Stephen Cope, George Economou, Al Filreis, Michael Heller, Ann Lauterbach, Tom Mandel, Bob Perelman and Ron Silliman. Of course, a recording of the event will be made available on PennSound, but if you're in the Philadelphia area, you owe it to yourself to come out for a marvelous evening with Penn's writing community. For more information, click on the title above.

To get yourself in the spirit for the evening, why not check out PennSound's George Oppen author page, where you can listen to a total of six different readings, starting with a 1963 reading at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, and ending with a 1979 session of Oppen's personal selections from his Collected Poems. There are also readings from SUNY Buffalo, the 92nd Street Y and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and Oppen's masterpiece, "Of Being Numerous," is represented by five different recordings. You'll also find links to Oppen's page at the Electronic Poetry Center, which features a biography, bibliography, links and a number of scholarly articles and testimonials.

We'll look forward to seeing you Monday night at 6:00.

PoemTalk #5: Ted Berrigan's "3 Pages"

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/3/2008 8:06:21 PM

The fifth installment of the PoemTalk podcast series (co-sponsored by PennSound, the Kelly Writers House and the Poetry Foundation) has just been released — a discussion of Ted Berrigan's "3 Pages," recorded as part of his 1978 appearance on KPFA's "In the American Tree" (hosted by Lyn Hejinian and Kit Robinson). Host Al Filreis is joined by poets Linh Dinh, Randall Couch and erica kaufman for this episode.

"3 Pages" is a particularly useful poem, in that it serves as a microcosm for so many of the characteristics we think of as Berrigan-esque: it's a list poem, a collage, a fine example of Berrigan's mid-career open-field form, a collaboration (his text originally accompanied a series of George Schneeman silkscreens), and, being addressed to another poet (Jack Collom), speaks to the sociable aspects of the New York School in all its permutations. Moreover, with lines which reappear in "10 Things I Do Every Day," "Things to Do in New York City" and "from 'Anti-Memoirs,'" "3 Pages" challenges us to read Berrigan's collected poetry as one cohesive, recursive body of work, or, as Charles Bernstein asserts, "not as a document of a life in writing but, inversely, as an appropriation of a life by writing."

The PoemTalk panelists struggle to find the ten things Berrigan does every day — finding nine, then twelve items, along with references to Charles Reznikoff and Frank O'Hara — and parse through his ironies and semantics. "There's something tremendously American about Ted Berrigan here," Filreis observes, framing the poem as an expression of the poet's "great, symbolic American selfhood," and yet, Couch counters, in its rejection of "the U.S. desiderata" (he interprets the final stanza as representing "technological achievement," "the work ethic," "patriotism and bravery" and "material success") "3 Pages" has a complex and conflicted relationship to mid-century American life. To hear more, along with past PoemTalk programs on Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, George Oppen and William Carlos Williams, click on the title above.

John Ashbery Reading At Haverford College

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/2/2008 6:26:00 PM

Today, we're highlighting a wonderful recent reading by John Ashbery, recorded February 19, 2008 at Haverford College.

Ashbery shares a selection of poems from Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (2007), including favorites such as "Redeemed Area," "A Linnet," "If You Said You Would Come With Me," "Disagreeable Glimpses" and "Hotel Lautréamont," along with the title poem from his latest volume, A Worldly Country. Those of us who were present recall a strong and charming performance, and we're glad to be able to share this recording with a wider audience. Click on the title above to start listening.

This latest addition is the one of sixteen full recordings now available on PennSound's John Ashbery author page, which we launched last October. Keep your eyes on PennSound Daily for news on a number of forthcoming readings — including our earliest recording to date, a 1963 appearance at The Living Theatre — as well as radio programs in which Ashbery is paired with Barbara Guest and John Hollander.

Ron Silliman: Two Recent Segue Readings Segmented

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 4/1/2008 6:47:49 PM

In the past few weeks, we've added two newly-segmented Segue Series readings by Ron Silliman, recorded at Double Happiness and the Bowery Poetry Club in 2000 and 2005, respectively.

"Ah, this is going to be fun," Silliman announces at the start of the first reading, recorded May 13, 2000. He then tells us, "I'm going to do something completely different," and launches into a series of five excerpts from the "You" section of The Alphabet (which will be published later this year) — pieces which bookend his move from Berkeley back east, and pay tribute to friends and colleagues, including Linh Dinh, Bob Perelman and Francie Shaw. These are followed by three excerpts from The Alphabet's "VOG" section: "Silence of the Looms," "Elegy for Larry Eigner" and "Spiderduck."

Recorded on November 15, 2005, the second recording begins with Silliman reading "Quindecagon" ("the one section in The Alphabet which uses rhyme," he notes), which is followed by 1981's "Albany," a one-hundred-sentence poem in which "every sentence is simultaneously personal and political." This serves as a segue to a number of selections from his 2004 memoir, Under Albany — "If a function of writing is to express the world," "A benefit reading" and "Co-payment" — which expand upon the content of that early poem.

These readings are but two of many which you'll find on Silliman's PennSound author page, including appearances on LINEbreak, miPOradio and PhillyTalks, along with readings from SUNY Buffalo; Chapel Hill, NC; Kutztown University; and several events recorded at the Kelly Writers House. Click on the title above to listen.

Philip Whalen: New and Newly Segmented Recordings

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/31/2008 5:56:06 PM

We've recently added a pair of recordings featuring the late Philip Whalen, whose Collected Poems, edited by Michael Rothenberg, has been drawing considerable critical accolades as of late.

Dating from August, 1971 in San Francisco, our recording of excerpts from Scenes of Life at the Capital comes from the personal reel-to-reel collection of Robert Creeley. Clocking in at just over forty-five minutes, it captures approximately half of Whalen's book-length poem, which was first published in a small-press version by Maya in 1970, before being picked up by Donald Allen's Grey Fox Press for an expanded edition in 1971. This new recording effectively fills in the gap between Whalen's hour-long 1987 reading in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his performance at the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Festival at the University of British Columbia.

We're also proud to announce a newly-segmented version of that highly-influential reading, which includes almost thirty individual MP3s. Whalen reads for over an hour, balancing longer works, such as "Dream & Excursus, Arlington Massachusetts," "Plums, Metaphysics, an Investigation, a Visit, and a Short Funeral Ode," "Letter to Michael McClure" and "Life and Death and a Letter to My Mother Beyond Them Both," with short, observational pieces, such as "To the Moon" and "An Irregular Ode." There also appear to be, as best as we can tell, three works which do not appear in The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, which we've provisionally titled "A Wednesday Morning," "This Boy at Princeton Studied Russian" and "The Self-Indulgence Poem." During the reading, Whalen mentions that he wants to read mostly new work, and this, combined with a comment when introducing "The Art of Literature," that he runs into trouble when lending his only copies of poems to friends, suggests that perhaps these works were either lost or discarded prior to publication.

To hear all of these readings, click on the title above to visit our Philip Whalen author page.

New Author Pages for Newly Segmented Segue Readings

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/27/2008 7:54:19 PM

In the past few days, we've added a number of newly segmented Segue Series readings from the Bowery Poetry Club, generating new author pages for the poets in the process. You'll find new author pages for Sharon Mesmer, Tonya Foster, John Wilkinson and Kamau Edward Brathwaite (shown at left), showcasing readings from 2002 and 2004.

Consistently presenting some of the finest and most influential voices in contemporary poetry, the Segue Series — now in its thirtieth season — has called the Bowery Poetry Club its home for the past six years. In the near future, we'll be posting segmented versions of many more recent Segue recordings, including readings by Anselm Berrigan, Elaine Equi, Frank Sherlock and CAConrad.

While you're checking out these recent Segue Series readings, be sure to listen to the dozens of recordings available from the series' earlier incarnations at both the Ear Inn and Double Happiness.

Three BBC Radio Documentaries by David Wallace

3/26/2008 3:46:44 PM

Today, we're highlighting three new recordings by noted medievalist and UPenn professor David Wallace — inventive and entertaining programs which originally aired on BBC Radio 3 between 2003 and 2007.

"God's First Englishman" (2003) explores the life and import of the Venerable Bede, the author and scholar whose The Ecclesiastical History of the English People is the foundational text of British history. Actor Kevin Whately lends his voice talents, giving voice to Bede. "The Miraculous Journey of Margery Kempe" (2005) features actress Prunella Scales in the title role, as the author of The Book of Margery Kempe, a chronicle of her visits to various holy sites throughout Europe and Asia in the early 15th Century, which is held by many as the first English-language autobiography. Wallace guides listeners through Kempe's travelogue, visiting cities including Norwich, Gdansk, Cologne and Aachen. Finally, "Mallory's Morte Darthur: A Tale of Two Texts" (2007) considers the challenge posed to the standard manuscript of Mallory's collection of French and English Authurian myths (the 1485 Caxton edition), by a unique manuscript uncovered in Winchester in 1934. British poet laureate Andrew Motion is featured as the voice of Mallory in this program.

Wallace is currently at work on a documentary on the work of English antiquary John Leland. While visiting his PennSound author page, you'll also want to listen to his Studio 111 Session from 2004, where he reads a number of excerpts from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, and discusses the importance of our comprehending the original diction in a Close Listening conversation with Charles Bernstein.

A Segue Series Reading From President of the United Hearts

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/25/2008 9:12:39 PM

We're extremely proud to announce the addition of an October 2007 Segue Series reading by President of the United Hearts, the Midwestern collective whose debut, The Big Melt, ably captures America's tempestuous social climate surrounding the 2004 presidential election, the ongoing war in Iraq, and a growing domestic dissatisfaction with politics as usual — messages every bit as important now as they were then.

Poet Tisa Bryant, who describes the collection as a "dystopian chronicle from a seemingly utopian project," observes, "each poem is a floe of traumatic memory, eulogy, poetariat backtalk, flippantly humorous. But what also seems to melt down is an awareness of address: who speaks to whom in these poems, with what ultimate intention, what unified sense of connection?" That poly-vocality, which imbues The Big Melt with a Whitman-esque, democratic spirit, is front and center in this ensemble performance featuring Claude Copeland, Elizabeth English, Belle Gironda, Robert Kocik, and Andrew Levy, reading round-robin at the Bowery Poetry Club.

When he awarded The Big Melt his annual "Sexiest Poem of the Year" award, CAConrad professed, "it's a poetry with a massive embrace on the problems in front of us, around us, deeply within us. It's not seeing a chain of events but a web of, an undeniably accurate web of, connecting every single action to its resulting deprivation, as accurate as any smart bomb, hopefully even smarter." This excerpt is no less breathtaking for its brevity (clocking in at just over fifteen minutes), however, PennSound hopes to be able to present a longer selection from the book in the future. We've also added a newly-segmented 2003 Segue Series reading by Andrew Levy today, which you can find on his PennSound author page.

Numerous New Additions To The Line Reading Series

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/24/2008 2:58:08 PM

In the two weeks since our last update, we've added a total of seven new recordings from The Line Reading Series, spanning the years 2000-2004. These events, corresponding to art exhibits at New York City's The Drawing Center, bring together some of the biggest and brightest names in contemporary poetics.

The earliest reading dates from November 17, 2000, and features the work of David Larsen, Emily McVarish and Johanna Drucker. This is followed by a March 13, 2001 event which includes performances by Anselm Berrigan, Jean Day and Lyn Hejinian. 2002 is well-represented, with a January reading by Rod Smith, Nada Gordon and Charles Bernstein, which is followed by an October event with Bernstein's L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E co-founder Bruce Andrews and Myung Mi Kim, along with a December set by Gary Sullivan, Anne Tardos and Nick Piombino. The new additions conclude with two pared-down readings from 2004: the first with Marcella Durand and Bernadette Mayer, the second featuring Damon Krukowski and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

Though we're getting close to the end, there are still a handful of very exciting readings which have yet to be digitized, so stay tuned to PennSound Daily for news on these final additions, as well as segmented readings from within the series.

(left to right, from top: Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Anne Tardos, Nick Piombino, Bernadette Mayer, Damon Krukowski, Marcella Durand and Anselm Berrigan)

Alice Notley Reading in Bolinas, 1971

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/21/2008 4:42:45 PM

Yet another exciting marvelous offering from the Robert Creeley reel-to-reel collection, this reading by Alice Notley in Bolinas, California, was recorded December 2, 1971.

"This was perhaps my third poetry reading ever," Notley tells PennSound via e-mail, "I was 26 years old," yet she delivers a confident performance, sharing a number of the sonnets which comprised 165 Meeting House Lane (published earlier that year by C Press) along with early works contained in Love Poems and Phoebe Light. Her maturity and self-possession are especially evident in the way she handles a heckler in the crowd — shaming him ("Is that all over with yet?," she asks) and waiting out the disruption before starting "Sonnet 5" a second time. Another highlight of the reading is hearing her rendition of the Giorno-esque piece "Conversation," a collaboration with her husband, Ted Berrigan (who introduces the reading), which is often attributed solely to him, though it would be published in Phoebe Light three years before appearing in his Red Wagon. As a collaborative work, written in the style of another poet, which uses as its source-text a line spoken by yet another poet (Frank O'Hara's paraphrase of the opening line of William Saroyan's The Adventures of Wesley Jackson), "Conversation" serves as an apt microcosmic metaphor of the New York School's sociable aesthetics.

PennSound's Alice Notley author pages contains a total of three full-length readings, including a wonderful recording from the University of Buffalo in 1987 (culminating with her masterpiece, "At Night the States") as well as her appearance at the Kelly Writers House in 2006. You can also hear her discuss The Descent of Alette on a 2004 episode of Cross-Cultural Poetics, along with a recording of "C. 81" from Mysteries of Small Houses as part of Frequency Audio Journal. Click on the title above to start exploring.

In the American Tree: 14 New Episodes

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/20/2008 3:37:30 PM

Over the past week or so, we've added a grand total of fourteen new episodes of the groundbreaking radio series, In the American Tree: New Writing by Poets from 1979-1980. Hosted by Alan Bernheimer, the show was originally broadcast on Berkeley's KPFA-FM, and provided poets with an opportunity to share new work as well as discuss their poetics, their philosophies and their influences. The 1979-1980 series includes programs featuring PennSound mainstays like Lyn Hejinian, Bill Berkson, Ted Greenwald, Erica Hunt, Kit Robinson and Norman Fischer — performances and conversations which broaden our understanding of the recordings already present on the site. You'll also find shows highlighting the work of Victoria Rathbun, Tom Veitch, Rogder Kamenetz, Alex Smith, Gary Burnett, Carol Gallup, Alan Lew, John Mason and Stephen Paul LaVoie.

All of these new broadcasts, along with older shows featuring Ted Berrigan, Stephen Rodefer and Bernheimer himself, among others, are all available on PennSound's In the American Tree series page. Click on the title above to start listening.

Fred Moten: New Author Page Added

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/19/2008 3:51:24 PM

We've just added a new author page for Fred Moten, featuring his recent reading at the Kelly Writers House, along with a lecture he delivered last year as part of the Theorizing series.

Recorded February 28, 2008, Moten's UPenn reading runs over an hour, featuring a broad selection of poems from his recent collections, B Jenkins, Hughson's Tavern and I ran from it and was still in it — works which speak to the struggles of African-American experience and celebrate its prodigious joys. In poems such as "Walter Benjamin/Julian Boyd," William Parker/Fred McDowell" and "Almeida Ragland/Cecil Taylor," Moten explores the lives which populate this rich history, while other works address epochal places and events in its past (Hughson's Tavern, for example, where the 1741 Slave Conspiracy was planned), in direct language as raw as it is mellifluous. His poetry is nicely complemented by "Black Kant (Pronounced Chant)," a lecture recorded a year and a day prior to the reading, which seeks to explore "the relationship in Kant's late philosophy between race and the imagination." Altogether, there's nearly two-and-a-half hours of Moten's PennSound author page. Click on the title above to start listening.

Vintage Rachel Blau DuPlessis: Robin's Books, 1988

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/17/2008 4:16:12 PM

A few weeks ago, we highlighted a recent recording of Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading at the Kelly Writers House, noting that PennSound's collection of DuPlessis' work (specifically her Drafts series) extended all the way from "Draft 19: Working Conditions," to the as-yet-uncollected poems "Draft 85: Hard Copy" and "Draft 88: X-Posting." We've since uncovered this very exciting reading, recorded May 11, 1988 at Robin's Books in Philadelphia, which presents some of the earliest Drafts along with the poet's commentaries on them.

Click on the title above to hear DuPlessis read "Draft 2: She," Draft 3: Of," "Draft 6: Midrush," and an excerpt from "Draft 7: Me," as well as discuss the development of this (at the time brand-new) project, along with the methods used to construct each work. "As for what the thematics of Drafts are, or what they mean or why I'm doing them," she notes, "I don't really want to think too hard about them, I just want to kinda do them, and then I'll worry about what they mean later . . . sometime, when I have the time." You can also hear "Attar," an even earlier poem from her volume, Tabula Rosa.

This recording is the first from The Herschel Baron Collection, a formidable archive of tapes recently donated to PennSound by the late poet's daughter, Ditta Baron Hoeber. Eulogizing her father, Hoeber observed, "My father believed people should have total access to all information." Thanks to her generosity, PennSound will be able to share these documents of Philadelphia's poetic past (including readings by DuPlessis, Greg Djanikian and many others) with a wider audience. Keep an eye out for more readings in the future, as well as a series page that will present selected recordings from his collection as a unified whole.

PennSound Welcomes C.D. Wright

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/13/2008 6:55:37 PM

After much preparation, PennSound is proud to announce the launch of a new author page for the great Southern experimentalist, C.D. Wright. We've worked together with Wright to assemble a comprehensive collection of audio documents which present a broad survey of her career, including studio recordings, live readings, interviews and lectures.

The centerpiece of the new author page is a 1999 studio session for Copper Canyon Press, which begins with a reading of her book-length poem Deepstep Come Shining (running over an hour long), followed by selection of highlights from her earlier volumes, String Light, Tremble, Just Whistle: A Valentine and Steal Away, including "And it Came to Pass," "Petition for Replenishment," "Song of the Gourd," "Why Ralph Refuses to Dance" and "More Blues and the Abstract Truth." Another studio session, recorded to serve as part of an art installation — listeners could hear Wright read over a series of bakelite telephones — features six excerpts from One Big Self: An Investigation, her exploration of the Louisiana prison system.

You'll also find a number of readings, including a 2000 appearance at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, where she read excerpts from Deepstep Come Shining; her 2005 visit to the University of Chicago, represented by a lecture as well as a reading; and a joint reading at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, where she read alongside her husband, poet Forrest Gander (we posted a recording of his performance a few weeks ago). Finally, a 2007 interview on RTE 1 Radio Ireland's The Poetry Programme rounds out the collection, providing a portrait of Wright's most recent work. Taken together, these recordings demonstrate Wright's poetic development over the course of nearly two decades, tracing the evolution of her mature style. PennSound is proud to have the opportunity to present these materials, and believe that our listeners will enjoy them immensely. Click on the title above to visit our C.D. Wright author page and begin exploring.

Two New Recordings From PennSound Co-Director Al Filreis

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/11/2008 9:29:31 PM

We've recently added two exciting new readings from Al Filreis, including a Close Listening conversation with his PennSound co-director, Charles Bernstein, which begins with a discussion of the recent death of arch-conservative pundit William F. Buckley, specifically addressing a recent entry on Filreis' blog. The conversation then turns to American master Wallace Stevens (on whom Filreis has written two books) exploring both his politics and poetics, finding a social conservatism and linguistic liberality, respectively. Furthering this distinction, the two explore the political dimensions of modernist and anti-modernist aesthetic debates, red-baiting and the communist scare — imploding stereotypes and historical fallacies as they discuss the social constraints which shaped and hindered poetry in postwar America.

This story of censorship and fear-mongering — deemed "surreal" and "almost unbelievable" by Paul Baker in a recent review — forms the core of Filreis' latest book, Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-1960, which the University of North Carolina Press released last month. Filreis celebrated its launch with an event at his home away from home, the Kelly Writers House, on February 11, 2008. A recording of this event, featuring an introduction Bernstein, and a generous selection of excerpts from the book, threaded together by Filreis' commentary, is also available on his PennSound author page. Click on the title above to listen to both of these recordings, and click here for more information on the launch party, as well as a number of photos.

The Line Reading Series with Watten, Hunt, Derksen

3/10/2008 7:27:40 PM

The most recently-posted installment of The Line Reading Series dates from October 3, 2000, and features poets Jeff Derksen, Erica Hunt (pictured) and Barrett Watten (whose new PennSound author page we launched last month).

Erica Hunt's reading begins with excerpts from 1993's Local History (Roof Books), and then proceeds to a number of more recent (at the time) poems. This is one of two new additions to Hunt's PennSound author page — the other being a 1979 appearance on KPFA's In The American Tree, hosted by Alan Bernheimer. Recorded more than two decades apart, these readings offer an excellent portrait of her poetic development, especially when taken together with her 1988 lecture at The New School, "Notes for an Oppositional Poetics," and a 2005 Close Listening reading and conversation with Charles Bernstein.

As the six installments already posted demonstrate, The Line Reading Series brings together considerable poetic talents in fascinating combinations — and this reading is no exception. Click on the title above to begin listening, and keep your eyes out for more events from The Line Reading Series being added in the near future.

Douglas Messerli on Close Listening

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/7/2008 11:38:08 AM

On January 21, 2008, Charles Bernstein sat down with old friend, and noted poet and publisher, Douglas Messerli to record a special three-part Close Listening program — nearly ninety minutes of readings and discussion, which provides a broad survey of his prodigious career.

Messerli begins, in the first program, by reading a generous sampling of his poetry, starting with the title poem from his 1979 debut, Dinner on the Lawn, and moving through Some Distance, Maxims From My Mother's Milk and Bow Down to a few selections from his latest work-in-progress, Stay. Program #2, an interview segment, starts by tracing Messerli's history as a publisher, starting with the germinal journals Sun and Moon and La-Bas and their respective presses, leading up to his current outlet, Green Integer. Messerli explains how his growing displeasure with the academic lifestyle spurred him to devote himself wholly to print endeavors. Given both men's familiarity with the ins and outs of small-press publishing, their conversation serves as an excellent behind-the-scenes portrait of the industry's perils and rewards, giving worthwhile advice to those interested in following in their footsteps. Finally, in the third program, Messerli and Bernstein discuss his career in poetry (along with drama and fiction), and then reads a selection of seven of his recent "Heavy Sonnets" to conclude the program.

This program is but one of several installments in Bernstein's engaging and entertaining Close Listening series released this year. Conversations with filmmakers Henry Hills and Ernie Gehr appeared in January, and we'll be launching his latest podcast — featuring Al Filreis discussing his latest book, Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-1960 — on PennSound Daily next week.

Brian Kim Stefans: "Language as Gameplay"

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/6/2008 2:04:16 AM

"Language as Gameplay: From the Oulipo to the Jew's Daughter" is the full name of a recent lecture delivered by poet and theorist Brian Kim Stefans at the Kelly Writers House as part of the Machine reading series this past January. Based on ideas first espoused in his collection Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics (Atelos, 2003), Stefans explores some of the ideologies and pitfalls involved in constructing digital literary works, and specifically, the solutions that ludic processes — i.e. the spirit of gameplay — might offer towards these endeavors. Stefans begins by listing his "Five Holy Grails of Electronic Literature," which include dispensing with any conventional sense of both the author and the page, creating work that's fun, yet also provides a "non-trivial" literary experience, and which also makes a daring aesthetic statement. He also discusses the characteristics of games themselves and the role of both the banal and the vulgar within these works, and analyzes the ways in which we parse digital texts when confronted with them.

After the main lecture, Stefans continues by considering the implications of his theories as embodied in a number of digital works — including his own adaptation of Christian Bök's Eunoia, as well as Judd Morrissey's The Jew's Daughter, Jason Nelson's Literary Textual Games, and the works of John Cayley. On the special page we've put together for "Language as Gameplay", you'll be able to listen to separate audio segments for each author, and by following the links provided, interact with the texts themselves as Stefans describes them. There also links to several of Stefans' own works, along with his "Language as Gameplay" blog, where you can find even more information. It's only fitting that this innovative lecture, which blurs the boundaries between media be presented, in a similar fashion, and we're proud to be able to share both this recording and the accompanying digital texts with our listeners.

In addition to this special event page, be sure to visit Stefans' PennSound author page, where you'll find a pair of readings at the Kelly Writers House, as well as recordings from SUNY Buffalo, the Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Line Reading Series, and PhillyTalks.

PoemTalk #4: Allen Ginsberg Sings William Blake

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/4/2008 1:51:24 PM

The fourth installment of the PoemTalk podcast series — focusing on Allen Ginsberg's performance of William Blake's poetry — is being released today. Joining host Al Filreis in discussing Ginsberg's countrified rendition of "The Garden of Love" (from Songs of Experience), are PennSound co-director Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Kelly Writers House director Jessica Lowenthal.

The panelists start by discussing the effect of wedding Blake's lyric to a musical setting — whether that choice is appropriate or not, and whether it's meant to create an intentional irony. Bernstein, who listened incessantly to this album in college, contends that "Ginsberg really was creating a connection between the illuminated manuscripts of the Songs of Innocence and Experience and the alphabetic poem, the text that we read, and the idea that they also were sung, to bring it into a kind of fourth-dimensional reality," and by the end of the conversation, Filreis divines how this album, and it's approach to the text, might have had some influence on Bernstein's own poetics. The larger issue of whether poets naturally want their work set to music, along with the inherent differences between poetry and rock lyricists (Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Jim Morrison are mentioned), are also explored, as well as the allegorical and erotic content of Blake's poem (and how this is reflected through Ginsberg's persona) All this, and more, in twenty-five minutes. Click on the title above to begin listening.

PennSound is very proud to be able to present Allen Ginsberg's Songs of Innocence and Experience in its entirety, complete with links to Blake's illuminated manuscripts of the poems, as well as musician credits for the album — which features jazz luminaries such as Don Cherry, Bob Dorough and Elvin Jones. You'll also want to check out PennSound's Allen Ginsberg author page which includes a number of recordings from throughout his writing life, starting with a 1956 reading at The Poetry Center at The San Francisco State University. You'll find a number of recordings of some of his most important long-form works — including "Howl," "Kaddish" and "Wichita Vortex Sutra" — along with "A Supermarket in California," "The Lion for Real," "HUM BOM" and many more.

David Shapiro: 2005 Segue Series Reading Now Segmented

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 3/3/2008 4:48:59 PM

We've just updated our PennSound author page for poet, critic and art historian, David Shapiro with a newly-segmented recording of his November 19, 2005 Segue Series Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. Comprised of more than twenty poems, including "A Song for Rudy Burckhard," "Weequahic Park in the Dark," "Walter Benjamin" and "Subject: A Song" — many of them appearing in last year's New and Selected Poems: 1965-2006 — the reading gives an excellent sample of his recent work, and these recordings are augmented by a 2003 appearance on New York City's WKCR-FM with Tom Kelly, which features renditions, and extensive discussions of, several of the same poems. Click on the title above to start listening.

LA-Lit Makes Its PennSound Debut

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/29/2008 1:19:26 AM

Today, we're launching a new page for LA-Lit, an innovative podcast series hosted by Mathew Timmons and Stephanie Rioux. Recorded at Betalevel, the program seeks to capture "the shifting nature of Los Angeles as a place," through the voices of "poets, novelists, hybridists, and non-genre text authors" living in or visiting the LA area. The series features readings and conversations with authors familiar to PennSound listeners — including Lee Ann Brown, Will Alexander, Sawako Nakayasu and Diane Ward — along with panel discussions on LA and Bay Area poetics; yet, perhaps even more importantly, LA-Lit provides an opportunity to discover emerging voices within this thriving West Coast literary community.

We're introducing the series with twenty-four episodes recorded between 2005 and 2007, and will be adding newer episodes at a later date. Click on the title above to visit PennSound's LA-Lit series page, which includes details on specific episodes as well as a link to LA-Lit's home page, where you'll find photos, author bios and information on how you can attend upcoming recording sessions.

Will Alexander Benefit Reading in Los Angeles

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/28/2008 2:19:27 AM

We're proud to be able to post a third benefit reading for poet Will Alexander, who is currently battling cancer without proper health insurance. This reading, recorded at Skylight Books in Los Angeles on January 13th, features performances from Clayton Eshleman, Wanda Coleman, Jen Hofer, Diane Ward, Harold Abramowitz and Mathew Timmons, who was kind enough to provide us with a recording of the proceedings. Alexander himself was recovered enough to be able to take part in the event, and his forty-minute reading is nothing short of triumphant.

Click on the title above to visit the special page we've put together to house the three benefit readings for Alexander (in New York City, San Francisco and this LA event), which have featured the likes of Bob Holman, Anne Waldman, Bob Perelman, Rodrigo Toscano, Jerome Rothenberg, Joel Kuszai, Tisa Bryant, Juliana Spahr and Nate Mackey, among many others. You'll also find more information about Will's condition, along with information on how you can donate to his health care fund.

Osman & Seldess: Newly Segmented Segue Series Readings

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/27/2008 1:52:29 AM

Today, we're highlighting a December 2004 Segue Series event at the Bowery Poetry Club, featuring poets Jena Osman and Jesse Seldess, which has recently been broken into individual poems.

Jena Osman has taken part in a number of Segue Series readings, including this one, which features a selection of what Osman calls "swerves" (an idea borrowed from Joan Retallack), that is, "interruptions" or "remixes" of works in progress, including "The Franklin Party" and "Aphetic Lexer Knot," as well as "A Series of Questions" written that afternoon. You'll find this recording, along with many others, on Osman's PennSound author page, including recent readings as part of the Line Reading Series and the Emergency Series.

Jesse Seldess, who read with Osman that night, is a central figure in Chicago's avant-garde poetry scene, and, at that time, was the curator of the Discrete Reading series and the editor of Antennae. His segmented set — which includes the poems "Ewe," "Prompt," "In Contact" and "Ewe Too" — is the first addition to his new PennSound author page.

Stay tuned to PennSound Daily for more new content — both old and new — from the Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club in the near future.

Forrest Gander At the Beinecke Library, 2004

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/25/2008 1:57:57 PM

We've just added a wonderful 2004 recording of Forrest Gander reading at the Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Described as "one of our most wide-ranging poets" in the introduction, Gander illustrates his divergent roles as teacher, editor, translator, and above all, poet, beginning his set with Robert Creeley's poem, "The Rain" (in honor of the day's inclement weather), followed by an excerpt of his translations of the visionary Bolivian poet Jaime Sáenz. He then launches into a selection of his own recent poems, including "Ligatures," "Time and the Hour," "To Live Without Solace" "The History of Domesticity" and the "unorthodox" sonnet sequence, "Voiced Stops" — imperative works full of dazzling imagery. Gander's performance was part of a joint reading with his wife, the poet C.D. Wright, whose work will be coming to PennSound in the very near future.

This new Yale reading is one of three full recordings featured on Gander's PennSound author page — there's also a 1996 reading at the San Francisco State University, along with his 2002 visit to the Kelly Writers House at UPenn. You'll also find singles for "Ligatures," and "Present Tense" (which Gander also reads at the Beinecke Library). Click on the title above to begin listening.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis at the Kelly Writers House

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/22/2008 5:15:19 PM

Earlier this week on his blog, poet Ron Silliman spent three days writing an impressively thorough rumination on the work of Rachel Blau DuPlessis, beginning "[t]he only thing I’ve ever been able to find 'wrong' with Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ marvelous life poem Drafts is the idea that some day it’s going to end, and that day is drawing increasingly near." He alludes to the fact that he has recently heard DuPlessis read from Torques: Drafts 58-76, her latest collection, and that the experience has sent him back to re-examine her writing as a whole. We're glad to announce that that particular reading, recorded February 5th at the Kelly Writers House has just been added to PennSound.

Fans of DuPlessis' work not already acquainted with her PennSound author page will want to visit it immediately, for selections from all three volumes in her Drafts series — Drafts 1-38, Toll, Drafts 39-57, Pledge with Draft, unnumbered and Torques — starting with an excerpt from "Draft 19: Working Conditions," taken from a 2005 Close Listening recording session with Charles Bernstein. This most recent recording also includes two newer poems recorded after Torques: "Draft 88: X-Posting," which has its roots in a translation of Ingeborg Bachmann's poem "Keine Delikatessen," and a brief excerpt from "Draft 85: Hard Copy," which Al Filreis recently highlighted on his blog. A full version of "Hard Copy," whose forty sections model themselves after George Oppen's 1968 masterpiece "Of Being Numerous," is also available as part of a Studio 111 Session from last October. An ambitious epic in its own right, her recording runs forty-one minutes long.

For these, and many other readings, along with scholarly talks on the works of Virginia Woolf and Louis Zukofsky, click on the title above to visit our Rachel Blau DuPlessis author page, and stay tuned to PennSound Daily for news regarding a number of early recordings of the poet, which should be coming in the near future.

Edmund Berrigan: New Author Page Added

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/20/2008 3:09:34 PM

We've just created an author page for Edmund Berrigan, showcasing a newly-segmented Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club from 2004, which features a selection of his brief, haiku-like work (it's telling that he fits twenty poems into a sixteen-minute reading). These evocative minimalisms are reminiscent of the fragmented observations of William Carlos Williams and Richard Brautigan, not to mention Edmund's father, the poet Ted Berrigan.

Indeed, as the son of Alice Notley and brother of Anselm Berrigan, Edmund comes from an immensely talented family tree — one which, as evidenced by his mother's collages and his father's frequent collaborations with artists (including Joe Brainard, George Schneeman and Donna Dennis), understands the deep underlying connections between poetry and other art forms. For Edmund, however, his mode of expression outside of poetry is music, and you can listen to a number of tracks from his band, I Feel Tractor, taken from Frequency Audio Journal on his author page. You'll also find his appearance on Radio Poetique's Poetic Brooklyn series, recorded at three different locations throughout the borough in January of 2007. Clicking on the title above takes you directly there.

John Ashbery: Several New Recordings Added

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/19/2008 11:37:32 PM

On a day when John Ashbery is visiting the Philadelphia area (to give a reading at Haverford College this afternoon), we're proud to announce the addition of several new recordings to his PennSound author page.

This latest batch of recordings includes a number of radio appearances, including a 1996 feature on the Swedish radio program Lyrikmagasinet, which appears to offer some sort of historical retrospective on the poet's work through recorded excerpts from both readings and interviews, which are interspersed with translations and commentary in Swedish. There's also a 1986 discussion between Ashbery, June LeBell and Ned Rorem on New York's WQXR, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, which nicely complements a second recording of Ashbery and Rorem, entitled "Setting Poetry to Music." Taken together, these interviews and conversations provide a broad context for the various recordings available on PennSound — and for Ashbery's poetry as a whole — yielding, perhaps, some answers in regards to his highly enigmatic work.

We've also added two new readings. The first, from WBAI-FM in 1991, features Ashbery reading excerpts from Flow Chart. There's also a lengthy recording from the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which includes a number of important poems, such as "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name," "The Other Tradition," "The New Realism" and "Thoughts of a Young Girl." Recorded in November 1985, this reading fills out our selection nicely, providing a number of readings from the 70s, 80s, 90s and this decade, as well as a broad sampling of Ashbery's collected works.

Finally, as this year's series of Kelly Writers House Fellows begins with events featuring Art Spiegelman last night and this morning, we'd like to highlight the recordings from Ashbery's visit to UPenn as part of that program in 2002. In addition to a reading featuring poems from your name here (2000) and As Umbrellas Follow Rain (2001), there's also a conversation with PennSound co-director Al Filreis. Click on the title above to visit PennSound's Ashbery author page. For more information on the Kelly Writers House Fellows program, click here.

A New Author Page for Barrett Watten

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/18/2008 1:53:28 PM

We've recently added a new author page for West Coast Language-writing mainstay Barrett Watten, combining materials already present on PennSound with a handful of new recordings — the most exciting of which is his October 2007 Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. That reading joins two recordings from November 1999: a reading at the Kelly Writers House, along with an episode of the PhillyTalks series (also featuring Rachel Blau DuPlessis), which showcases an early excerpt from Watten's "experiment in collective autobiography," The Grand Piano.

You'll also find a 1993 excerpt from Under Erasure from the Live at the Ear CD, as well as Watten's contribution to a number of MLA Offsite readings from the past few years. We're glad to finally have brought all of these resources together on a proper author page — something that was long overdue for an author of Watten's influence. Click on the title above to start listening.

It also seems appropriate, on Presidents Day, to announce that we'll be adding two recordings by Watten's reading partners for that October Segue Series event — President of the United Hearts — in the near future.

PennSound Podcast #9 Featuring Robert Creeley

pennsound@writing.upenn.edu — 2/15/2008 4:01:53 PM

The latest installment of the PennSound Podcast series, hosted by Al Filreis, has just been posted, showcasing a conversation with Robert Creeley, recorded during his April 2000 visit to UPenn as a Kelly Writers House Fellow. Filreis begins by noting some of the highlights available on Creeley's PennSound author page, including an intimate recording from his Bolinas home and his performance at the Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965.

The conversation itself begins with a discussion of Creeley's use of enjambment throughout his career, and William Carlos Williams' influence upon it, concluding with the poet playing a voice-synthesizing program's rendition of one of his works, which elides the line breaks. Creeley responds to questions from Bob Perelman, Marjorie Perloff and Stuart Curran, and discusses, among other varied topics, the effects of the internet upon poetic communication and his love of hip-hop. Click on the title above to listen to this program, and the rest of the PennSound Podcast series.

Robert Creeley is one of many innovative poets — along with John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan and Lyn Hejinian — who've visited the University of Pennsylvania as Kelly Writers House Fellows, since the program's inception in 1999. This year's program kicks into high gear with two events featuring Art Spiegelman at the Writers House next week, and poet Jerome Rothenberg will be visiting UPenn in late April.