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

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

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

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PoemTalk #178: on Matvei Yankelevich's 'Dead Winter'

Posted 12/2/2022

Last week we released episode #177 in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on four poems/sections from Matvei Yankelevich's book-length work Dead Winter (Fonograf, 2022): "Winter comes calling" (7), "Winter have I lost your thread?" (12), "In a disjunctive age, disconsolate, without connection" (21), and "Winter and one more mine is the other guilt" (27). For this show, host Al Filreis was joined by a panel that included (from left to right) Ahmad Almallah, Huda Fakhreddine, and Kevin Platt.

Filreis' Jacket2 blog post announcing the new episode you'll find links to the texts for all four poems as well as segmented tracks from a special session recorded just for this program. That post also includes links to a video recording of a conversation with Matvei himself about Dead Winter — joined by Kevin, Ahmad, and Al as well as a dozen or so of Ahmad's students."

You can listen to this latest program and read 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.


In Memoriam: Doug Lang (1941–2022)

Posted 11/30/2022

We wrap up our trio of memorials for recently-deceased poets by honoring Doug Lang, who passed away on November 22nd at the age of 81. Born into wartime poverty in Swansea, Wales, Lang first distinguished himself as a novelist before moving to the US for a teaching appointment in 1973. Soon thereafter he was key conspirator in Washington, DC's burgeoning poetry scene, where he coordinated a much-beloved reading series, and formed relationships that would last a lifetime.

Lang's dear friend Terence Winch posted a tribute to Lang at the Best American Poetry blog, which speaks in part to his presence in the local scene: "He was known as a catalyst on the Washington poetry scene.
An accomplished poet himself, he also ran a nationally celebrated poetry reading series in DC at Folio Books in Dupont Circle, attracting many of the leading poets of the day, who were usually paired with a local poet." Lang's dedication and kindness also extended to generations of his students:
The Corcoran [College of Art] hired him, and Doug stayed for the next 37 years, becoming the most loved and respected member of the Corcoran faculty. His colleagues and his thousands of former students felt a tremendous debt to Professor Lang for his prodigious ability as a teacher and his generosity of spirit in all his interactions. In the literary world, he was known as a poet of fierce linguistic energy and technical skill. To his friends, he is an irreplaceable man of wondrous talent.
Introducing Lang at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in 2011, Stacy Szymaszek reached for remarkably similar words to encapsulate his talents: "I’ve been thinking a lot about the poem’s ability to alter our perception of time, and one thing that impresses me is that Doug's poems don’t play with pace as much as they are delivered as pure energy." "Past present and future aren’t part of his measuring system," she observes. "The poem is the sequencer of events, and throws the intervals between them into the realm of our own bodies."

We welcome you to visit to visit our PennSound author page for Lang, which starts off with a couple of vintage recordings from his earliest years in the states: a 1978 Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn and Xa, a collaboration with Tina Darragh released in 1979 on germinal cassette poetry label Widemouth Tapes. We then jump forward to another Segue set at the Ear Inn, this time from 1989, before finishing with a sprawling multi-part interview between Lang and Winch conducted in 2014. Taken together, its eight installments run roughly six hours in length. You can listen to any and all of these recordings by clicking here.

We send our sincere condolences to Lang's close personal friend Sandra Rottmann and family members, along with the generations of students and poets that will feel his loss acutely.


In Memoriam: Michael Rothenberg (1951–2022)

Posted 11/28/2022

Today we say goodbye to poet, editor, publisher, and environmentalist Michael Rothenberg, who passed away after a long battle with lung cancer on November 21st. Like Bernadette Mayer, Rothenberg is a poet that will be remembered as much for his service to the genre as much as his own work — a "good citizen" of the poetry world whose selfless hard work benefitted us all.

Those endeavors included the long-running press and web journal Big Bridge, Jack Magazine, the organization 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and their associated project "Read A Poem To A Child." You'l find an encyclopedic listing of links to those efforts and more on Rothenberg's homepage at the Electronic Poetry Center, which also houses a healthy sampling of his writing across genres. Our newly created PennSound author page for Rothenberg is home to a trio of recordings of the poet in performance: a 2007 reading in Tucson as part of the POG Sound series, and a pair of videos of the poet reading in Petaluma, CA in 2009.

We send our condolences to Rothenberg's family, fans, and collaborators worldwide. Click here to start browsing through the aforementioned recordings.


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