Inside PennSoundFeatured resources
Selected by Charles Bernstein (read more about his choices here) |
Robert and Bobbie Creeley Perform 'Listen' (1972)Posted 7/9/2025 In text-form, Listen is comprised of an extended back-and-forth between two narrators: a HE and a SHE. While listeners are likely to read the dialogue through the frame of the Creeleys' marriage — and here their words embody a broad range of nupital emotions, from acrimony to romance, new love and old love — the two occupy a number of varied discursive relationships, from mother to child, suitor to quarry, interrogator to interrogator, writer to actress. In his essay, "Meaning: I Hear You" (linked on Creeley's page), Kyle Schlesinger notes, "it quickly becomes evident that this conversation can't converge. It isn't quite like two ships passing in the night, but more like a submarine passing below the Mayflower; two vessels vacillating between irreconcilable pasts. Where the constitution of one was once affirmed by its ability to address the other, they now share shards of a language they can never reinhabit together." This disjointed effect is augmented by HE's extended meta-notations on the performance at hand — some of the radio play's most enjoyable moments — which range from suggestions as to sound effects to be (but not to be) added later, to questions (posed to the audience-as-producer) regarding how much of a given song should be shared with the listeners (another delight: Bob Creeley's tender and vulnerable croon). Schlesinger concludes his essay by noting, "It is here, in the atmosphere of Listen that the reader watches it all through a transparent revolving door; "listening out" for the signal, "listening in" on another conversation as it continues to turn. Tune in. Turn on. You hear." This eliptical effect is one of the radio play's most lasting sensations — in the abrupt aftermath of Creeley's final words, listeners will most certainly want to push "play" again to take another spin. Click here to start listening. A New Disability Poetics Symposium, 2018Posted 7/7/2025 Today we're highlighting A New Disability Poetics Symposium, which was recorded at the LGBT Center at UPenn on October 18, 2018. This ambitious, multi-part gathering was organized by Jennifer Bartlett, Ariel Resnikoff, Adam Sax, and Orchid Tierney, in collaboration with Knar Gavin, Declan Gould, Davy Knittle, and Michael Northen. The proceedings began with the panel "Larry Eigner's Disability Poetics," moderated by Charles Bernstein, with talks by George Hart, Michael Davidson, and Jennifer Bartlett. That's followed by "Disability and Performance," moderated by Declan Gould, with contributions by torin a. greathouse and Camisha Jones; and "Poetic Experiment and Disability," moderated by Orchid Tierney, with panelists Sharon Mesmer and Gaia Thomas. These talks are complemented by a number of readings, the first taking place as part of the symposium itself, with sets by Bartlett, Jim Ferris, Ona Gritz, Anne Kaier, Dan Simpson, and Brian Teare. There's a second set recorded at our own Wexler Studios with Kaier, Simpson, Ferris, Gritz, and Michael Northen reading their work. Finally, poet Kathi Wolfe was unable to take part in the symposium, but made home recordings of the pieces she would have read at the event, which we've made available to listeners as well. To start listening, click here. PennSound ItalianaPosted 7/4/2025 Today we shine the spotlight on our PennSound Italiana anthology page, lovingly edited by Jennifer Scappettone, which offers our listeners a stellar survey of contemporary Italian poetry. When we launched the page many years ago, Scappettone offered an introduction to the collection in an essay published at Jacket2. Here's how she starts off: We seek over the course of this ongoing project to offer a broad sense of the field, filling in the substantive gaps in global access to Italian poetry (as both written and sonic text — even within Italian borders), and expanding awareness of its range of practitioners, with an emphasis on marginalized and experimental voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is an effort — a unique one, in our reckoning — to "liberate" the spectrum of Italian poetry for as broad a public as possible through audio and video recordings, given that the publishing industry and the translation market are endangered and/or blinkered enough to condemn a significant swath of both historical and contemporary innovation to oblivion. As such, this live archive extends the task of PennSound writ large.Regular updates have been made to the page over the intervening years and we're always eager to have more work from Scappettone to share with our listeners. At present, the page has recordings from Gian Maria Annovi, Mariasole Ariot, Maria Attanasio, Luigi Ballerini, Gherardo Bortolotti, Franco Buffoni, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Alessandra Cava, Laura Cingolani, Corrado Costa, Elisa Davoglio, Milo De Angelis, Alessandro De Francesco, Antonella Doria, Giovanna Frene, Florinda Fusco, Samir Galal Mohamed, Marco Giovenale, Milli Graffi, Mariangela Guatteri, Giulio Marzaioli, Andrea Inglese, Eva Macali, Enzo Minarelli, Tommaso Ottonieri, Angela Passarello, Jonida Prifti / Stefano Di Trapani (a.k.a. Acchiappashpirt), Laura Pugno, Andrea Raos, Marilena Renda, Lidia Riviello, Amelia Rosselli, Rosaria Lo Russo, and Andrea Zanzotto. Click here to start browsing PennSound Italiana, and don't forget that Scappettone's Jacket2 intro includes some of her highlights from the collection, including background information on the historical nature of each recording. 'Mark Van Doren: Portrait of a Poet' (1994)Posted 7/2/2025
Today we are highlighting Mark Van Doren: Portrait of a Poet, a remarkable 1994 short film produced by Adam Van Doren, the poet's grandson. Running just over a half hour, the documentary offers up marvelous photo and video footage of Van Doren in conversation and reading his work, along with interviews with friends and contemporaries including Robert Giroux, Allen Ginsberg, Alfred Kazin, John Hollander, Louis Simpson, Daniel Hoffman, Richard Howard, and more. You can watch this documentary on PennSound's Mark Van Doren author page, alongside recordings from several sources, including a 1935 set of three poems for Columbia University's Speech Lab, a 1960 set of four titles for the Spoken Arts Treasury and the 1967 Smithsonian Folkways album, Mark Van Doren Reads from His Collected and New Poems, whose twelve tracks encompass thirty-two poems in total. Listen in to any and all of these recordings by clicking here. PennSound Rewind #2: Two of a KindPosted 6/30/2025 Today we’re proud to close out Pride Month with the latest episode in the PennSound Rewind podcast series, “Two of a Kind,” which offers up a lesson in grieving and acceptance from Allen and Louis Ginsberg. Even casual readers will be familiar with “Kaddish,” in which Ginsberg memorializes his mother Naomi, attempting to contextualize her debilitating mental illness within a newsreel of early 20th century history. We pick up the story two decades later, as Ginsberg now begins to document the decline of his father Louis in one, or eventually, two poems with the same name: “Don’t Grow Old,” the latter with the title in quotation marks. Here, the approach is likewise fragmented, but rather than reflecting the entropy of his life with Naomi, there is a unity of sorts in Ginsberg’s use of montage, allowing individual scenes, reckonings, and bits of wisdom from his father’s decline to resonate in brief poetic vignettes. The first “Don’t Grow Old,” written around the time of Louis’ death, appeared in the collection Mind Breaths in 1978; the latter can be found in 1982’s Plutonian Ode. However the two works were envisioned by Ginsberg as one complete poem, as evidenced by a number of recordings made by Robert Creeley at the time of the second poem’s composition and the broader recorded history contained on Ginsberg’s PennSound author page. As we explore “Don’t Grow Old” (and “‘Don’t Grow Old’”), we’ll witness Ginsberg come to terms with his father through his decline, then see how latter poem reframes that experience through Louis’ reciprocal acceptance of his son’s queer identity, offering up potent lessons in mourning, as well as an important statement regarding homodomesticity and intergenerational reconciliation. Produced by PennSound (and Jacket2) editor Michael Hennessey, PennSound Rewind, a new podcast series produced aims to tell the tales hiding among our 50,000+ recordings and “to look back and pinpoint some of the people, recordings, and moments — both big and small — that made PennSound what it is today,” guided by the notion that “an archive is a story that unfolds in real time.” Click here to check out the complete series and stay tuned for new episodes every month or so. Want to read more? Visit the PennSound Daily archive. |
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