We recently added segmented versions of two recordings of poet Erica Hunt to our archives that are separated by thirty years.

The more recent of the two is Hunt's Segue Series Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club recorded on January 17, 2009. This extended set runs a full forty-five minutes and includes the poems "Prime Space," "Curmudgeon," "Privacy," "What We Do Not Dream We Cannot Manufacture," and "Slipper Slope," among others, before concluding the essay "Rorschach of Race in America."

Jumping back to August 12, 1979, we have Hunt's appearance on KPFA's In the American Tree, hosted by Alan Bernheimer. Titles read in this set include "Night Baseball," "Radio Nights," "Higher Numbers, Intimate," "Market Street Jams," and "The Conservation of Volume."

Thanks to the efforts of Richard Swigg, PennSound is able to share this recording of George Oppen reading and discussing his work with Eric Homberger at Univeristy of East Anglia on May 7, 1973. Their conversation has also been transcribed, and Charles Bernstein recently posted this as a commentary on Jacket2.

Beginning with a provocative observation by Homberger — that Oppen's work "is a poetry that no Englishman could have possibly written," and continues to address language and the vernacular, Oppen's compositional practices, the visual presentation of poetry, the poet's influences (and their presence and/or absence from his writing), art's influence on the creative process, and much more.

To start listening to this fascinating and intimate conversation, and to find a link to the aforementioned transcript, click on the title above to visit PennSound's George Oppen author page.

We're closing this week out with poet, translator and editor Paul Hoover's October 18, 2008 appearance on the Joe Milford Poetry Show, which has been segmented into twenty-nine individual MP3s.

In this wide-ranging program, which runs for nearly eighty minutes, Hoover discusses his work editing Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology and Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry, discusses his work as a translator and reads several of his translations of Friedrich Holderlin, and speaks about his own poetry and poetics from several different angles. He also reads a healthy sampling of his work with selections from Edge and Fold, Sonnet 56 and Desolation: Souvenir, among others. Aside from thematic segmented tracks on a variety of topics, there's a particularly interesting sixteen-minute exchange during which Hoover discusses the New York School and Language Poetry schools, and discusses how his own work fits into those contexts.

To start listening to this fascinating conversation, and a number of other recordings from 1991 to the present, click the title above to visit Paul Hoover's PennSound author page.

One of our newest author pages is for poet Caroline Crumpacker. It's anchored by a pair of segmented recordings spanning more than a decade.

The earlier of these two readings is Crumpacker's November 4, 2000 Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn. This twenty-seven minute set includes eight poems, including "Timorous Unhandled," "The First Line of My Dissertation," "Chairman of the Bored," "To The Editor," and "Drama No. 6."

Jumping forward eleven years, we have Crumpacker's contribution to a Belladonna* event entitled "Our Material Lives: Feminism and Poetry at Various Ages," which took place on September 13, 2011. This brief four-poem set included readings of "Afternoon of the Public Body," "A Charm Detection," "Convention of the Airwaves: A Note," and "Upon Nostalgia."

We've recently segmented the three readings that make up Aaron Shurin's author page.

First, we have Shurin's contribution a November 1990 tribute reading to Robert Duncan, which comes to us courtesy of A.L. Nielsen's Incognito Lounge. This set begins with "The Natural Doctrine," the first Duncan poem Shurin encountered, and continues with "In the Mist," "The Place," "Saturated," and "Sailed."

Next up is Shurin's Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn: in June 1989, at which he read two titles, "Elsewhere" and "Into Distances." Finally, we have another Segue set from the Ear Inn — this one recorded April 1984 — which also included two poems, "Parallel Views" and "Codex."

In the mid-to-late 70s, Susan Howe produced a number of groundbreaking radio programs for New York's Pacifica Radio station, WBAI-FM. Today, we're highlighting one such program, dating from 1977 or 78, featuring the inimitable Helen Adam, which has just been broken into segments.

In this hour long program, Adam talks with Howe and co-host Charles Ruas about a wide variety of topics, from her childhood in Scotland, her migration to San Francisco and interaction there with poets including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Spicer, and the influence of William Butler Yeats, George MacDonald and Robert Duncan on her work. Their conversation also gets into more esoteric topics, including "gothic romances, magic, and the relationship between love and death," and "on madness, the Elizabethan era, and reincarnation."

These discursive sections are interspersed with readings by the poet, and multi-vocal performances that also include Daniel Haberman and Barbara Wise, of "Ballad of the Hawthorn Bower," "In and Out of the Horn-Beam Maze," "At the Window," "The Fair Young Wife," and "A Walk in the Wind."

You can listen to this complete program and a variety of additional recordings on PennSound's Helen Adam author page

Today we're highlighting another newly-segmented recording — this time, Charles Bernstein's Close Listening program with Erin Mouré, recorded on February 21, 2010 during the "IN(TER)VENTIONS: Literary Practice At The Edge" conference at the Banff Center.

Program one consists of Mouré reading sixteen poems from O Resplandor, including "Dear Valentine," "Initial Elegy," "Cronica Six," "The Dreamy One," "Undrastically," "Great Southern Cross," and "Wing."

Program two has been segmented into eight individual tracks, including Mouré's identity as a Canadian and living in Montreal, her literary influences and affinities, the importance of identity and nationality in reading a poem, and how sound as a texture operates in her work.

You can find these newly segmented recordings on PennSound's Erin Mouré author page, along with "Hot Texts," a Belladonna* reading series event from 2012.

All of us at PennSound send birthday greetings to Bill Berkson. The venerable poet, editor and critic turns seventy-four today.

On PennSound's Bill Berkson author page you can listen to a wide variety of readings, talks and interviews from the early 1970s up to this past spring. Our earliest recordings include Berkson's 1971 reading with Joe Brainard at San Francisco's Intersection for the Arts and his performance of "Blue is the Hero" taken from The World Record: Readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project, 1969-1980. Other 70s recordings include a 1978 talk on "Talking" at 80 Langton St. and a 1979 appearance on In the American Tree.

From the 1980s, we have a lengthy 1983 reading from an unknown location and a 1987 Bolinas reading with Stephen Ratcliffe and Lyn Hejinian. We then jump forward to a 2002 Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. There are also a number of radio appearances — two appearances on Cross Cultural Poetics, a 2004 interview with Carlos Villa on San Francisco's KUSF and a 2011 appearance on the Joe Milford Radio Show. You'll also find "Collaboration and the Artist's Book", a 2011 event in Paris also featuring Vincent Katz, Charles Bernstein, Susan Bee, Shirley Jaffé and Raphael Rubinstein. Finally, there are two appearances at UPenn: a 2007 reading at the Kelly Writers House and a special session recorded earlier this spring.