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

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

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

PennSound Daily

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In Memoriam: Robert Coover (1932-2024)

Posted 10/8/2024

We start this week off with the sad news that postmodern novelist Robert Coover passed away on Saturday, October 5th at the age of 92. 

In his New York Times obituary, John Williams situated Coover "along with Donald Barthelme, John Barth and others" as "the vanguard of postmodern American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s" and hailed his "long and prolific career writing and teaching" at Brown University. The tribute also quoted Michiko Kakutani, who "called Mr. Coover 'probably the funniest and most malicious' of the postmodernists, 'mixing up broad social and political satire with vaudeville turns, lewd pratfalls and clever word plays that make us rethink both the mechanics of the world and our relationship to it.'" While best known for the workshop staple "The Babysitter" (no, I had no clue that the Alicia Silverstone film was an adaptation) or The Public Burning, his critique of wrongheaded American politics from McCarthyism to Watergate, but my favorite will always be The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., which I taught many times in my Baseball Literature course over many spring semesters.

While not many novelists have PennSound author pages, Coover does. It houses audio and video footage from the his two-day visit to UPenn as one of the 2009 class of Kelly Writers House Fellows. The February 23rd reading includes excerpts from The Public Burning, Pinocchio in Venice, and Noir, along with "The Grand Hotel Nymph Light" from The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell), "In Anticipation of the Question 'Why Do You Write?,'" and "The New Thing." You can also listen to his complete conversation with Al Filreis from the following day, as well as a condensed version and several excerpts cut from the longer conversation. Click here to start exploring.

We send out our heartfelt condolences to Coover's family and friends, as well as his generations of fans worldwide. 


Congratulations to T. S. Eliot Prize Nominee Peter Gizzi

Posted 10/5/2024

We close out this week with congratulations to poet Peter Gizzi, who was recently named to the shortlist for the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize for his 2023 collection Fierce Elegy. He joins nine other poets chosen from among 187 submitted collections by judges Mimi Khalvati, Anthony Joseph and Hannah Sullivan. Now in its 31st year, the Eliot Prize is perhaps the preeminent honor for poets published in the UK and Ireland, with Sir Andrew Motion naming it "the prize poets most want to win."

Writing in World Literature Today, Nicholas Skaldetvind described Fierce Elegy as "an impactful rumination of sixteen poems on the transformative capacity of myopic observations and the inherent shifts in perspective that carry these verses." "The poems are unsurpassed," he continues, praising their language, which "is fired at the reader with deadly aim and intent, rooted in the senses with a contemporaneous language that silences and omits and invites us to engage with the subject matter in concrete clarity," along with "their weird and delightful imaginings of the moon, fields, art, night, and the unseen."

You can listen to Gizzi read from Fierce Elegy on his PennSound author page as part of his 2023 visit to Boise State University, one of nearly two dozen recordings spanning more than thirty years housed there. Once more we congratulate Gizzi for this great honor and will excitedly wait to see who's named the winner at the January 2025 ceremony.


In Memoriam: Michael Brownstein (1943–2024)

Posted 10/2/2024

Today we mark the passing of poet and novelist Michael Brownstein, whose influences and affiliations bridged the Beat Generation and the New York School. According to his obituary, Brownstein died unexpectedly on September 18th at the age of 81. It continues:
[H]e moved to New York City in 1965 and quickly became part of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. In his poetry and prose, Brownstein drew on shamanic and indigenous healing practices from South America as well as non-Western wisdom and mystic traditions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. He published numerous collections of poetry, including Behind the Wheel (1967); Highway to the Sky (1969), which won a Frank O'Hara Poetry Award; 3 American Tantrums (1970); Strange Days Ahead (1975); and Oracle Night: A Love Poem (1982); Slipping the Leash (2017); Let's Burn the Flags of All Nations (2018). His novels include Country Cousins (1974), The Touch (1987), and Self-Reliance (1994). His experiences in the anti-globalization movement led him to write the "treatise/poem" World on Fire (2002). Brownstein taught at the University of Colorado, Columbia University, and the Naropa Institute.

We're proud to be able to share a broad selection of audio and video recordings on our Michael Brownstein author page, spanning from the 1979 S Press Tonbandverlag cassette release Brainstorms to a 2018 video of Let's Burn the Flags of All Nations being read in Woodstock, NY. In-between, you'll find a number of readings, an interview conducted by Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the 1979 lecture ""Imagination for Adults," a 1977 appearance on Public Access Poetry, a 1989 reading at the Library of Congress, and the 2006 short film Healing Dick. 

We send our condolences to Brownstein's family and fans. Click here to start exploring the artistic legacy of Michael Brownstein.


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