Featured resources

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

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

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

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Footnote: Daniel Ellsberg and the New York School

Posted 6/19/2023

People worldwide are mourning political activist Daniel Ellsberg, whose courageous leak of the Pentagon Papers through the New York Times in 1971 changed the course of the war in Viet Nam. What many of our listeners might not know is that Ellsberg's brief connection to Harvard classmates John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara in the early 1950s.

Andrew Epstein first told the story on the excellent Locus Solus: the New York School of Poets in July 2013 (read his recent observations on the blog's 10th anniversary here). Specifically, Epstein discusses "the tiny chapter of poetic history where Daniel Ellsberg and the New York School poets collided, in the basement of Christ Church Parish House in Cambridge, MA, in 1951" — the event that brought these Harvard undergrads together was a Poets Theater staging of four short plays, including Ashbery's Everyman and O'Hara's Try! Try!, which Ellsberg reviewed for the Harvard Crimson. Epstein is kind enough to reprint the review (which was included in Amorous Nightmare of Delay: Selected Plays of Frank O'Hara). In his opinion, Everyman "showed typical defects," namely "[t]he lines occasionally gave hints of being good verse, but not of the sort whose meaning is apparent at one hearing." Nonetheless, he also finds reasons for praise: "the monologues were delivered with enough sincerity to make even dubious listeners suspend judgment."

First added to our site in January 2010, our recording of Everyman is the by far the oldest Ashbery document in our archives, and a fascinating document of the poet's budding talents. Listen in by clicking here and see whether you agree with Ellsberg's judgments.


William Bronk: on 'Poems to a Listener,' 1984 and 1989

Posted 6/15/2023

Today we're highlighting a pair of appearances by poet William Bronk on Poems to a Listener, a pubic radio program hosted by Henry Lyman, which was produced for 88.5 WFCR-FM in Amherst, Massachusetts between 1976 and 1994. Bronk's two appearances took place in 1984 and 1989, and these half-hour programs certainly make for pleasurable listening.

Both shows are content-dense yet remarkably intimate, with Bronk offering poems at his own pace and Lyman posing questions, often hinging on a certain turn of phrase or image, as they come to him. Sometimes they're quick exchanges, sometimes protracted. Lyman isn't afraid to needle, and Bronk is willing to tussle as well — at one point, he says "I'm not going to tell you what the light is," then, after a pregnant pause, adds, "you know what the light is!" — and occasionally, if the edit's a bit too tight, it almost feels like Bronk offering his dissension to the line of questioning by moving on to the next poem, but that only makes the back-and-forth more charming. Both are fine examples of why we find public radio compelling, and, of course, recorded poetry as well: there's nothing more than human voices and the breathing space between them, and that's enough. Play one (or both) of these programs through a good set of speakers, sit back, and get carried away for half an hour. Click here to start listening.



"Poetry Is for Breathing" (2019)

Posted 6/13/2023

Organized by Orchid Tierney,  "Poetry Is for Breathing: A Reading Against Islamophobia" took place at our own Kelly Writers House on April 17, 2019, with sets by Aditya Bahl (poet, translator, and a current Johns Hopkins Ph.D. candidate), Husnaa Hashim (2017-2018 Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia), and Fatemeh Shams (shown at right, a poet and UPenn professor of Persian literature). 

The announcement for this event situates it as a direct response to both recent tragedy and and long-simmering prejudices: "On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist murdered fifty people at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Please join us for a special lunchtime poetry reading in support of the survivors and victims of this terrorist attack. Invited poets will read their works, and we encourage the audience to share their thoughts as we collectively examine the intersections of white supremacy in Christchurch and Philadelphia."

You can experience this very special reading via streaming video or MP3 format by clicking here. More recordings by both Tierney and Shams are available on their respective PennSound author pages.


Want to read more? Visit the PennSound Daily archive.