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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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Halloween Poems: a Brief Playlist

Posted 10/30/2024

With Halloween coming up tomorrow we're sharing our annual playlist of poems celebrating the spookier side of life. With a mix of poets both old and new you're bound to find something to set your nerves on edge.

Lewis Warsh, "Halloween" MP3

Kimberly Lyons, "Halloween Parade" MP3

Aaron Kramer, "Halloween" MP3

Robert Grenier, "Measure's Halloween" MP3

Cecilia Corrigan, "Christmas Halloween is in a body bag..." MP3

Elizabeth Willis, "The Witch" MP3

John Giorno, "The Wisdom of Witches" MP3

Lee Ann Brown, "Witch Alphabet, Mistranslation of Mayakovsky, Pledge & Love" MP3

Robert Duncan, "Witch's Song" MP3

Edgar Allan Poe (read by John Richetti), "Annabel Lee" MP3

Edgar Allan Poe (read by Jerome McGann), "The Raven" MP3

Yuri Andrukhovych, "Werewolf Sutra" MP3

Matthew Rohrer, "Werewolves" MP3

Adrienne Rich, "What Ghosts Can Say" MP3

Michael McClure, "Ghost Tantra #49" MP3

Bernadette Mayer, "Spooky Action from a Distance" MP3

Bob Kaufman (read by Chuck Perrin), "All Hallows, Jack O'Lantern Weather, North of Time" MP3


'Troubling the Line' Launch Readings, 2013

Posted 10/29/2024

We start off this week by highlighting recordings of a pair of launch readings for TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson's groundbreaking anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2013). 

Hailed as the first collection of its kind, Troubling the Line was — as Matthew Cheney noted in rain taxi — "big and vehemently eclectic," in order that "the diversity of writers and poems across its pages is animated by such a rich diversity of identities that generalizing about them becomes impossible." Stacey Balkun, writing for the University of Arizona Poetry Center's blog 1508, echoes this sentiment. She singles out Peterson's framing of the book as "'an opening gesture to provoke what TC and [she] both hope will be a long and productive conversation' about genderqueer poetics" and praises its open-ended curation, saying of Peterson's introduction:
She rejects definition, proving instead how genderqueer poetics is no one thing (except that it's definitely not binary). Rather than set out to rigidly delineate the term genderqueer, Peterson offers us a refreshing sense of possibility. She discusses how the editors chose trans and genderqueer as "the most inclusive umbrella terms" they could find to describe "lived identities that challenge gender norms," building bridges between rather than walls around the terminologies of identity.
For all these reasons and more the anthology was rightly celebrated at a pair of launch readings we're proud to be able to share with our listeners. The first of these was held on May 8, 2013 at New York's Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and runs over two hours, including sets by Peterson, Ariel Goldberg, Ely Shipley, Aimee Herman, Jake Pam Dick, Maxe Crandall, Joy Ladin, Jamie Shearn Coan, Eileen Myles, and Kit Yan. Seven months later, Peterson presided over a December 11th reading at the St. Mark's Poetry Project that featured Ching-in Chen, Joy Ladin, Jaime Shearn Coan, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Dawn Lundy Martin, Samuel Ace, Trish Salah, Zoe Tuck, and Emerson Whitney along with Raymond Foye reading John Wieners and Peterson reading both reading kari edwards (as well as her own work). Click here to start exploring.


PoemTalk #201: on Two by Trish Salah

Posted 10/25/2024

Earlier this week we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on a pair of poems by Arab Canadian poet Trish Salah — "Interlude 4: The Voice" and "Detoured Come Tomorrow" — both of which can be found in Salah's 2017 Metonymy Press collection, Lyric Sexology Volume 1. The panel convened by host Al Filreis for this program consisted of Kay Gabriel, Syd Zolf, Levi Bentley (shown below, from left to right).

As Filreis notes in his announcement of the new episode on Jacket2, "Our recordings of Trish Salah performing these poems comes from an interview conducted by Christy Davids in the same Wexler Studio February 10, 2017" You'll find the complete results of that session, which was published as PennSound Podcast #57, on Salah's PennSound author page, along with a small but potent selection of readings, talks, and panel discussions going back to 2009.


You can listen to this latest program, read the poems 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.


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