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 12/27/2024

Today we revisit the St. Mark's Talks series, which was organized by Charles Bernstein at the Poetry Project from the fall of 1984 to the spring of 1986. The St. Mark's Talks series was an extension of the New York Talks series Bernstein curated and moderated during the first half of 1984. In a Jacket2 commentary post announcing the new additions in 2012, Bernstein explains the origins of the series: "In 1985, Eileen Myles was the new director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York. [They] asked me to curate a lecture series, the first such program at the church. I modeled the series at the Poetry Project on my earlier series New York Talk, giving it the amusing title, given the sometimes seeming resistance to poetics at the St. Mark's at the time, St. Mark's Talks. And talk it did." "I made these recordings myself," he continues, "and we are missing some of the talks, and in some case parts of the talk ... Here is what we got."
Altogether, PennSound has preserved all or part of fifteen events in the series, which follow the same general pattern of talk followed by discussion established during New York Talks. The series began with "Politics and Language," featuring Bruce Boone, P. Inman, Erica Hunt, and Jackson Mac Low, and continued with events including David Antin's "line music counterpoint disjunction and the measure of mind," Nathaniel Mackey's "Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol," "The Tradition of Marginality," featuring Kathleen Fraser and Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Barbara Guest's "Mysteriously Speaking of the Mysterious Byzantine Proposals of the Poem," and Ron Silliman's "Postmodernism: Sign for a Struggle, the Struggle for the Sign." Other participants included Steve McCaffery, Lyn Hejinian, Anne Waldman, David Bromige, Nick Piombino, Lorenzo Thomas, and Bob Perelman, among others.
Posted 12/25/2024
Filreis further explains the complex lineage of the poem(s) under discussion in his program notes on Jacket2: "One version, titled 'when will my love return from the culture war?,' is six quatrains long. A second, for which we have a recorded performance, is four quatrains; there's a variation on thinking about the second that invites us to call it a sonnet." He continues, "Callie added a version — organized in the quatrains — to their blog on May 1, 2020. On November 19, 2020, Callie read the shorter version of the poem as part of a live-streamed remote (lockdown-era) reading given by eight poets," and this is the source of the performance featured on the show.
You can listen to this latest program, read the texts discussed, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.
Posted 12/23/2024
More frequently known by its opening phrase, "'Twas the night before Christmas ...," "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was first published in Troy, New York's Sentinel on this day in 1823 with no attribution. It became wildly popular, reprinted far and wide, and its author — a professor of literature and divinity at New York City's General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, who initially sought to downplay his connection to the poem — would finally be credited in 1837, with Moore including it in a collection of his verse in 1844. Click here to listen to Richetti's performance of the poem. You can read along on the Poetry Foundation's copy of the poem here. Many more recordings made by Richetti form the backbone of our PennSound Classics page, which is organized by author name. To start browsing, click here.
Want to read more? Visit the PennSound Daily archive.
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New at PennSound
- Jerome Rothenberg memorial program, June 24, 2024
- Rachel Blau DuPlessis's complete grid of Drafts, 1988–2024
- George Quasha reading the laryngeal uterus of the word, Barrytown, NY, June 17, 2024
- Piotr Gwiazda reads from Grzegorz Wróblewski's Dear Beloved Humans, February 7, 2024
- Adam Fieled reading from Something Solid: Portal-Ways
- Leonard Schwartz with Simon Carr at Bowery Gallery, 2024
- Michael Ruby reading from Close Your Eyes, Visions, 2023
- David Shapiro reading and talk for UMass Amherst Visiting
Writers Series, Spring 2004
- Anne-Marie Albiach reading ÉTAT, Hotel de Ville, Neuilly, France, October 10, 2007
- Spring 2024 Boise State Reading Series: Christina Piña, CAConrad, Jennifer Moxley, Endi Bogue Hardigan, Rob Schlegel, and Ian Dreiblatt
- Belladonna* GIST #2 featuring Kaleem Hawa and Rachelle Rahmé, Center for Brooklyn History, March 23, 2024
- George Quasha reading strange beauty by stranger attraction, Barrytown, NY, March 18, 2024
- Richard Foreman at Segue / Artist Space, New York City, March 16, 2024
- Belladonna* GIST #1 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
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