Featured resources
From "Down To Write You This Poem Sat" at the Oakville Gallery
- Charles Bernstein, "Phone Poem" (2011) (1:30): MP3
- Caroline Bergvall, "Love song: 'The Not Tale (funeral)' from Shorter Caucer Tales (2006): MP3
- Christian Bôk, excerpt from Eunoia, from Chapter "I" for Dick Higgins (2009) (1:38): MP3
- Tonya Foster, Nocturne II (0:40) (2010) MP3
- Ted Greenwald, "The Pears are the Pears" (2005) (0:29): MP3
- Susan Howe, Thorow, III (3:13) (1998): MP3
- Tan Lin, "¼ : 1 foot" (2005) (1:16): MP3
- Steve McCaffery, "Cappuccino" (1995) (2:35): MP3
- Tracie Morris, From "Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful" (2002) (3:40): MP3
- Julie Patton, "Scribbling thru the Times" (2016) (5:12): MP3
- Tom Raworth, "Errory" (c. 1975) (2:08): MP3
- Jerome Rothenberg, from "The First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell: 4-Voice Version" (c. 1975) (3:30): MP3
- Cecilia Vicuna, "When This Language Disappeared" (2009) (1:30): MP3
- Guillaume Apollinaire, "Le Pont Mirabeau" (1913) (1:14):
MP3
- Amiri Baraka, "Black Dada Nihilismus" (1964) (4:02): MP3
- Louise Bennett, "Colonization in Reverse" (1983) (1:09): MP3
- Sterling Brown, "Old Lem " (c. 1950s) (2:06): MP3
- John Clare, "Vowelless Letter" (1849) performed by Charles Bernstein (2:54): MP3
- Velimir Khlebnikov, "Incantation by Laughter" (1910), tr. and performed by Bernstein (:28) MP3
- Harry Partch, from Barstow (part 1), performed by Bernstein (1968) (1:11): MP3
- Leslie Scalapino, "Can’t’ is ‘Night’" (2007) (3:19): MP3
- Kurt Schwitters, "Ur Sonata: Largo" performed by Ernst Scwhitter (1922-1932) ( (3:12): MP3
- Gertrude Stein, If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1934-35) (3:42): MP3
- William Carlos Willliams, "The Defective Record" (1942) (0:28): MP3
- 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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Posted 3/28/2024
Today we're remembering legendary poet and theorist Adrienne Rich, who passed away on this day in 2012.
It would be difficult to list all of the accolades that Rich accumulated in the more than sixty years since her debut collection, A Change of World, was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1950, but they include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1952), the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1960), the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award (1970), the National Book Award (for Diving into the Wreck, 1974), the Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1986), admission to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991), the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1992), the Frost Medal (1992), an Academy of American Poets Fellowship (1992), a MacArthur Fellowship (colloquially known as the "genius grant," 1994), the Wallace Stevens Award (1996), the National Medal of Arts (1997), and the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award (2010). Among these, it is perhaps the penultimate honor that is the most important, as Rich refused it, citing the government's hostile policies towards culture. "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House," she stated, "because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration . . . The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored"
This impassioned gesture serves as one very public and high-profile culmination of the process of radicalization that began in the early 1960s, as Rich, along with the nation at large, underwent tremendous cultural, political and social transformation. These preoccupations — the rights of women, the civil rights movement, stopping the war in Vietnam (and others since), ending poverty, and championing queer identity — were freely espoused in a number of celebrated volumes, including Leaflets, The Will to Change, Diving into the Wreck, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, and An Atlas of the Difficult World, and also in a prodigious body of non-fiction writing, where Rich found a second life as a groundbreaking feminist theorist. These deeply-held beliefs only grew stronger in the new millennium, where Rich faced troubling political times with a strong faith in poetry's remediative powers. Writing in The Guardian in 2006, she evoked Shelley's oft-quoted appraisal of poets as "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," observing "I'm both a poet and one of the 'everybodies' of my country. I live with manipulated fear, ignorance, cultural confusion and social antagonism huddling together on the faultline of an empire." These sentiments were explored masterfully in later volumes such as Fox, The School Among the Ruins, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth, and her latest collection, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, and while Rich is often hailed as an exemplary feminist poet, or queer poet, or political poet, above all, she was an extraordinary (but otherwise adjective-less) poet.
You can listen to a variety of recordings spanning four decades on PennSound's Adrienne Rich author page, which is home to recording spanning from a 1951 set at Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room all the way up to a 2006 reading at The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. In them, and the twenty or so readings that come in-between, you'll find a thoroughgoing survey of almost her entire poetic career — from iconic poems to deep cuts — as well some representative prose. Of course, one of our favorite recordings is from Rich's 2005 visit to UPenn as a Kelly Writers House Fellow. Click here to start exploring.
Posted 3/26/2024
This year's overwhelming procession of deaths within the poetry community continues with news that critic Marjorie Perloff passed away on March 24th at the age of 92.
Our own Al Filreis posted a remembrance today, noting "I spoke for a lively, *lively* hour with the late and already much-missed Marjorie Perloff just a week ago. I loved her energy always and even then — was and am inspired by her skills & daring as a careful reader of and talker about supposedly 'difficult' poetry." He continues,"From the moment we met in 1982 (at the Huntington Library, where we shared days together for a month), she showed interested in me and my work and was unfailingly supportive. Even last week, during our final conversation, she wanted to know what I was doing, how my family was, how my ideas were evolving, what I was reading." He also encouraged everyone "to have a look back at that array of comments and criticism" in his 2012 co-edited Jacket2 feature "Marjorie Perloff: A Celebration."
We also direct listeners towards Perloff's PennSound author page, which archives a wide array of recordings spanning 35 years, including talks, interviews, podcasts, and more. One key highlight is Perloff's epic, three-part 2009 Close Listening program hosted by Charles Bernstein, in which she reads from her 2004 memoir Vienna Paradox and discusses topics ranging from Kristallnacht and literary figures associated with Nazi Germany to her European outsider's perspective on American arts and culture, as well as several key "schisms that seem to divide 20th century poetry" — Yeats and the Futurists, O'Hara and Lowell, Pound and Stein/Stevens. Another is her 2011 visit to UPenn as one of that year's Kelly Writers House Fellows. You can browse all of these recordings and more on PennSound's Marjorie Perloff author page.
We send our condolences to Perloff's family and her friends and colleague worldwide.
Posted 3/24/2024
Today we celebrate the long and fruitful life of poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was born 105 years ago today in Bronxville, NY. We first launched PennSound's Lawrence Ferlinghetti author page in March 2018 on the poet's 99th birthday and mourned his passing just shy of two years later by highlighting recordings from that collection.
The most recent recording you'll find there is an hour-long set from 1994 at Page Hall in Albany, which comes to us via Chris Funkhouser. Next we have a pair of recordings from the archives of George Drury and Lois Baum, including an appearance on the program Word of Mouth and a forty-minute reading of selected poems at the Art Institute of Chicago. Then there's Ferlinghetti's Watershed Tapes release Into the Deeper Pools, recorded in two sessions in Bethesda and Baltimore, Maryland in 1984 and 1983, respectively, and his 1981 S-Press cassette release, No Escape Except Peace. Jumping back a few decades, there's a set of poems recorded in 1969, including "Assassination Raga" and "Tyrannus Nix," which were digitized by Joel Kuszai for The Factory School, and the Ferlinghetti/Ginsberg episode of Richard O. Moore's Poetry USA series from 1966. Finally, along with a short recording from the Berkeley Poetry Conference and a few assorted recordings without dates. You can listen to any of the aforementioned recordings by clicking here.
Posted 3/23/2024
Earlier this week, we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series — a special program recorded abroad at the Fruitmarket Arts Center in Edinburgh, Scotland — which focuses on two poems from Veronica Forrest-Thomson, "S/Z" and "Lemon and Rosemary." For this program, host Al Filreis was joined by a super-sized panel including host and co-organizer Iain Morrison, Laynie Browne, Lee Ann Brown, and Anthony Capildeo. After thanking Browne ("who chose the poems and curated this episode"), Filreis' write-up of this new episode on Jacket2, offers some provenance for the recordings under discussion here: "The audio you'll hear toward the beginning is from a recording made at the important Cambridge Poetry Festival of April 1975; we note that Forrest-Thomson's performance there preceded her death by just a few weeks." He continues, "If you follow the reading of 'Lemon and Rosemary' along with the final published text you'll notice that there are significant differences between that and the version she read at the festival." He concludes with thanks for Dr. Gareth Farmer and Forrest-Thomson's estate for permission to use these recordings.
You can listen to this latest program and learn more about the show here. PoemTalk is a joint production of PennSound and the Poetry Foundation, aided by the generous support of Nathan and Elizabeth Leight. Browse the full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, by clicking here.
Posted 3/22/2024
Today we are sad to share news that poet, biographer, and memoirist Neeli Cherkovski passed away on March 19th at the age of 78. His death was announced by Garrett Caples on the City Lights Booksellers blog — a fitting tribute given his long, loving association with San Francisco. I was particularly struck by his summation of Cherkovski's dedication to poetry itself and its broader communities. While he was "occasionally exasperating, needy, desperate to be read and loved," Caples notes, "he was no less desperate for the poets he loved to be read and loved, and he loved a lot of poets." He continues: And by this I mean not his pantheon or his peers, but generations of younger poets, whom he read with a discerning eye. Perpetually curious and voracious as a reader, he kept up with new poets to his dying day. There are poets who want to lord what they have over you and poets who want to share what they have with everyone they esteem, and Neeli was firmly in the latter camp. I don’t know how he kept up with so many poets, and I’m almost 30 years younger. It takes a generosity and largeness of spirit few possess and poets like Neeli are valuable for the continuity they impart to the vast and everchanging ocean that is poetry.
On PennSound's Neeli Cherkovski author page, you'll find a couple of vintage recordings from the poet — including a 1969 reading with Charles Bukowski and a 1980 set from San Francisco's Caffe Malvina — along with a number of videos from the last 15 years or so. These include readings, talks, conversations, and interviews and provide a wonderful sense of Cherkovski's diverse talents. We send our condolences to the poet's friends and fans worldwide.
Posted 3/15/2024
As part of my work to excavate, digitize, and contextualize one of the first poetry audio archives in US, The Speech Lab Recordings, I'm thrilled to announce a significant addition to the collection: new digitizations of previously unreleased Robert Frost recordings, made in the Speech Lab in 1933 and 1934.
These recordings, which may be the first recordings ever made of Frost, in one sense mark a departure from the aesthetic circumscription of the collection. Many of the poets who were recorded in Professors W. Cabell Greet and George W. Hibbitt's Columbia University lab built for the study of American dialects operated in a modernist tradition of formal innovation. From the collection's founding with the performance-forward, Dada-esque incantations of Vachel Lindsay through James Weldon Johnson's Afro-Modernist scoring of speech sounds and Gertrude Stein's proto-Language poetics, it's clear that the editors favored a particular strain of modernism.
But while Frost is known for his use of and variation upon traditional forms and rhyme schemes, his poetics do bear affinities to those of the more formally innovative poets recorded in the series, most especially his interest in the aural properties of the poem.
You can read more of his detailed intro here. The two sessions archived here were made in 1933 and 1934 and include iconic poems like "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall," and "The Road Not Taken" along with "Dust of Snow," "Once by the Pacific," "Mowing," "Spring Pools," "Birches," "The Grindstone," "The Runaway," and "An Old Man's Winter Night," along with two takes of "The Code," which Mustazza singles out in his notes.
Posted 3/12/2024
We at PennSound regretfully share the news that beloved poet and critic Tyrone Williams passed away on March 11th at the age of 70. The author of numerous books, including c.c. (2002), On Spec (2008), "the Hero Project of the Century" (2009), Adventures of Pi (2011), Howell (2011), As Iz (2018) and washpark (with Pat Clifford, 2021), Williams had recently joined the SUNY-Buffalo faculty as David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters after a long teaching career at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Our own Charles Bernstein, shown with Williams at right, noted that both "had the honor" of leading the Buffalo Poetics Program as the David Gray Professor and offered this lament: "The pleasure of his company now so painfully the pleasure of his memory."
That's just one of many PoemTalk programs you'll find on PennSound's Tyrone Williams author page, along with a wide array of recordings from 2006 to the present. One of my favorites is Tyrone's brief intro set to a reading by Sueyeun Juliette Lee, whom he'd invited to Xavier University. It was early evening at the end of the semester, with an enthusiastic audience crowded into a classroom on a high floor, the sunset seeping in through the windows. As tired as I was that late in the semester, the experience was sublime. Not knowing about his illness, I had just reached out to Tyrone recently, with hopes that he'd be involved in a PennSound project that I was putting together, and had hoped I would see him at the upcoming Louisville Conference. Certainly, our city was already lessened by Tyrone's departure, but now the whole world knows that feeling just as well.
Posted 3/11/2024
Today we celebrate endlessly influential author and artist Joe Brainard, born on this day in 1942. Our Joe Brainard author page is anchored by four readings from the St. Mark's Poetry Project recorded between 1971 and 1981. They include copious excerpts from his magnum opus, I Remember, along with selections from his journals and numerous other pieces such as "Thanksgiving," "Insomnia," "Worry Wart," "The Zucchini Problem," "Today (Monday, February 23rd, 1981)," and "Sick Art." Additionally, you'll find excerpts from Train Ride read at SFSU in the mid-1970s and a stellar reading with Bill Berkson at Intersection for the Arts in 1971, plus more I Remember selections taken from a 1974 Giorno Poetry Systems session and a recording session at home in Calais, VT in 1970.
Filmmaker Matt Wolf (who directed the much-lauded Wild Combination, a documentary on the life of avant-pop cellist Arthur Russell) is back with an exciting new project — I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard — a haunting and gorgeous meditation that deftly intertwines both imagery and audio to create a compelling tribute to the artist and author. We're very glad to see Brainard commemorated in such grand fashion, and happier still that Wolf was was kind enough to share an exclusive clip with PennSound. In it, longtime friend, collaborator and confidante Ron Padgett discusses Brainard's early development as a visual artist and his ability to work confidently in a wide variety of media and forms, never becoming complacent in one style.
You'll find all of the recordings mentioned above by clicking here. It's also worth checking out Andrew Epstein's 2014 Brainard birthday post on his New York School-focused blog, Locus Solus, which features excerpts from a tribute poem by James Schuyler, excerpts from I Remember "thinking about birthdays, and our frustrating efforts to understand 'time,'" and a few examples of his artwork. Brainard's birthday is also a wonderful reason to revisit the Make Your Own Brainard site, where you can make your own collages using fragments from his visual work.
Posted 3/8/2024
Belladonna* Collaborative promotes the work of women and feminist writers who are adventurous, experimental, politically involved, multi-form, impossible to define, unpredictable, and dangerous with language. Belladonna* is committed to publishing and building literary community among women and LGBTQIA+ authors who write off-center, producing work that is political and critical; situational rather than plot-driven; inter-subjective, performative, or witnessing rather than personally revelatory; work that reaches across the boundaries and binaries of literary genre and artistic fields, and that questions the gender binary.
You'll find a vast archive of recordings on PennSound's series page for the collective, going all the way back to the summer of 1999. Recent Belladonna* events posted to our site have included performances by Erica Hunt, Anne Waldman, Carla Harryman, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Rachel Levitsky, Sawako Nakayasu, Tonya Foster, Julie Patton, Marcella Durand, Lyn Hejinian, Anna Moschovakis, Gail Scott, Bernadette Mayer, Stacy Szymaszek, Tina Darragh, K. Lorraine Graham, Mónica de la Torre, Patricia Spears Jones, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Orchid Tierney among many others. Start exploring this groundbreaking series' quarter-century history by clicking here.
Posted 3/6/2024
Here's an opportunity to get to know another side of poet Will Alexander through his jazz duo, Aural Monsoon, where he plays piano alongside drummer Mark Pino. Today, we're proud to highlight Live at the Haight, an album recorded on August 13, 2017. Click here to listen to all nine tracks, including "Bamboo and Fire," "Calm and Furious Waters," "Verdigris Panorama," "Lyrical Jasmine Towers," "Aural Diamonds in Motion," and "Double Recognition."
Here's what Pino had to say about his their collaboration: "Los Angeles poet and musician Will Alexander's work been shaking my perceptions for several years now. I was happy to play with him on sets with Cloud Shepherd, and continue to love to read his writing. Hence, when Will contacted me to ask about my being available for a house show in San Francisco, with me on drums and he on piano, I jumped at the opportunity." Later, he says of the same gig, "Towards the end of the second set, I simply stopped playing my drums and listened to Will, more as a fan than a duo partner. I guess I kind of got lost in that for a few minutes. Will's Surreal Trance moves will have that effect!"
For those craving more of Alexander's work, click here to visit his PennSound author page, which is home to a variety of talks, readings, and interviews going back to 1994.
Want to read more? Visit the PennSound Daily archive.
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New at PennSound
- Richard Foreman at Segue / Artist Space, New York City, March 16, 2024
- Belladonna* GIST Event Reading featuring Peter Myers and Jameson Fitzpatrick, Brooklyn Central Library, February 24, 2024
- Six Poems by Giovanni Fontana
- Barbara Henning reading with Jaime Manrique, St. Mark's Poetry Project, January 27, 1993
- George Quasha reading crossroads angelics, Barrytown, NY, December 30, 2023
- Charles North reading for the William Corbett Poetry Series, MIT Virtual Event, April 21, 2022
- VOX Audio Collection, 2005–2011
- Fall 2023 readings at Boise State University's Hemingway Center: Peter Gizzi,
Dan Beachy-Quick, Srikanth Reddy, and Alice Notley
- New author page: Davide Balula
- Hugh Seidman: New Author Page
- Paul Dutton's Oralizations, actuellecd, 2005
- Richard Foreman's production of John Zorn's Astronome,
2010, film by Henry Hills
- Jena Osman and Adam Pendleton reading for the launch of A Very Large Array, Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore, October 21, 2023
- George Quasha reading mirroring by alterity, Barrytown, NY, September 29, 2023
- The Swan 20: Dorota Czerner, September 2, 2023
- Tracie Morris and Tongo Eisen-Martin performing for the Flow Chart Foundation, Hudson, NY, September 22, 2023
- Harryette Mullen on Morton Marcus's "The Poetry Show," KUSP, March 18, 1987
- Ann Lauterbach reading at 'T' Space, Rhinebeck, NY, July 8, 2017 and July 16, 2023
- George Quasha reading non binding horizon, Barrytown, NY, September 1, 2023
- Ron Padgett reading for the Yale Literary Magazine, November 1, 2022
- A reading with Chris Martin and Adam Wolfond, February 15, 2023
- Julia Bloch reading Valley Oak for PoemADay, August 12, 2023
- Clark Coolidge, The Painter's Poet: a talk on Philip Guston, Poets House, April 4, 2013
- Philip Whalen reading at National Poetry Festival, Allendale, MI, July, 1971
- Lew Welch reading The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings, Planning and Conservation League, date unknown
- Philip Whalen reading at the Unicorn Bookshop, Santa Barbara, February 6, 1967
- Performance of Louis Zukofsky's "A"-24 Act I at UCSD New Writing Series, April 11, 1986.
- Leslie Scalapino reading in the USCD New Poetry Series, May 9, 1979
- Jerome Rothenberg and Bertram Turetzky Performing For Poet's Voice and Contrabass, 1984
- Hoa Nguyen reading at Kelly Writers House, February 28, 2023
- Joan Retallack reading and conversation for Kelly Writers House Fellows Program, February 20–21, 2023
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- Barbara Henning and Maureen Owen reading from Poets on the Road, May 27, 2023
- Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian reading, November 6, 1995
- Robert Creeley reading for Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles, April 16, 1990
- Thin Air Lectures with Ron Silliman, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, and Ron Padgett, St. Marks Church, May 1988
- Kass Fleisher interview on The Bear River and the Making of History, Access Utah, Utah Public Radio, June 25, 2004
- Cliff Fyman reading, San Francisco, CA, June 11, 2023
- Charles Olson reads from Maximus Poems IV, V, VI, c. 1969
- The Marginalization of Poetry, Segue Series at Double Happiness, NYC, March 22, 1997
- Adam Fieled reading from Equations: The Thesis Episodes, Carriage Hill, Plymouth Township, 2023
- New videos for Aaron Kramer
- Thomas Devaney reading at Wexler Studio, Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, May 30, 2023
- New video of Joan Retallack for Alternative Poetries and Alternative Pedagogies Reading and Discussion at the Kelly Writers House, February 28, 2001
- George Quasha reading waking from myself, Barrytown, NY, May 20, 2023
- Clark Coolidge reading from A Book
Beginning What and Ending Away for 80 Langton Street Writers In Residence Readings,
October 15–21, 1979
- Vincent Katz reading at Green Arcade, SF, November 18, 2022
- George Quasha reading flayed flaws & other finagled opacities, Barrytown, NY, May 5, 2023
- Joel Newberger's The Swan reading series, nos. 2 & 25
- William Fuller Wexler Studio Recording Session, March 16, 2023
- Newly Segmented: Charles Borkhuis Segue Reading, November 18, 2006
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