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Anselm Hollo


Anselm Hollo in NYC, 2007 (photo by Charles Bernstein)

Reading at The Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury, London, April 18, 2012

with Andrei Codrescu, Gunnar Harding, and Tom Raworth

Video by Stephen Fowler

Watch on Media.sas

Reading as part of the Left Hand Reading Series, Boulder, Colorado, January 18, 2001

  1. Introduction (2:25): MP3
  2. Window by Gregory Corso (4:32): MP3
  3. My Hands Are a City by Gregory Corso (1:25): MP3
  4. old "red" years now quite forever over? (1:30): MP3
  5. Guten Tag Herr Schopenhauer Bonjour Monsieur Cioran (0:56): MP3
  6. cannon goes boom boom canon goes round and round (0:44): MP3
  7. walking down oldtime hotel lobby corridor (0:51): MP3
  8. "Successions of words so agreeable" (0:39): MP3
  9. & should I buy this Scientific American (0:39): MP3
  10. My first computer (0:34): MP3
  11. Glazed with alcohol, old sailor (0:56): MP3
  12. So the Ants Made It to the Cat Food (0:49): MP3
  13. Traveling into the past on the Internet (0:48): MP3
  14. Tracking down some of the (now unreadable) books of my youth (1:42): MP3
  15. What's current? I mean misheard? (0:59): MP3
  16. from up there on the ridge (0:52): MP3
  17. riding the thermals all the time BORING (0:37): MP3
  18. All of last year's farewells (1:00): MP3
Complete reading (19:48): MP3

Reading as part of the Left Hand Reading Series, Boulder, Colorado, September 16, 1999

  1. Introduction (1:42): MP3
  2. from Rue Wilson Monday (5:30): MP3
  3. from Where If Not Here (1:37): MP3
  4. because our lives were so short (0:48): MP3
  5. old "red" years now quite forever over? (0:45): MP3
  6. Guten Tag Herr Schopenhauer Bonjour Monsieur Cioran (0:56): MP3
  7. brain hovers above keyboard (1:00): MP3
  8. Once you've said something, you can't unsay it (0:45): MP3
  9. Fought the hungry ghosts here on Earth (1:01): MP3
  10. and of course it won't do, it won't do at all (0:39): MP3
  11. walking down oldtime hotel lobby corridor (0:52): MP3
  12. They sit on some of the furniture (0:50): MP3
  13. Private they are, the sums of grief, "impossibly private" (0:54): MP3
  14. lives deaths "A Life" (0:40): MP3
  15. From the sayings of Chairman Berrigan (0:38): MP3
  16. ah guillaume this aviation morning (0:58): MP3
  • Complete reading (18:16): MP3

Reading from AHOE/And How on Earth, NYC, 1998

Complete recording (38:48): MP3

Includes introduction by "Dan", epigrams from Jack Spicer and Robert Creeley, "O Ponder Bone of Fabled Carp", "Head Sky Convoy Pattern", Benign Evening Comedown", "Hey Dr. Who…", "Emptier Planet" (in memory of Larry Eigner), "Sur la Terrace", "Cat-God’s Channel", "After the Newscast", "Caught with a Pronoun", "And What’s Your Derivational Profile", "Rundfunk", "September Song", "Air" (for Jane), "Passing Vapors", "Lost Original", "A Hundred Mule Deer…", "Much of It Unconscious Work, But Work", "Leave It to the Bonobos", "Hanging with Harpocrates", "The Ghostly Screen in Back of Things", "So Fix that Broken Axel", "Sorrow Horse Music", "Old Cat Somber Moon", notes and "Give Me Big Shoes", "From the (Illegible)", "Ultraista Oneiric"

Courtesy of Simon Pettet

Reading for the Segue Series at Double Happiness, New York, February 2, 1998

  1. Dan Macklin's introduction (01:52): MP3
  2. Ponder Bone of Fabled Carp (03:47): MP3
  3. Head Sky Convoy Pattern (01:27): MP3
  4. Benign Evening Comedown (00:39): MP3
  5. Hey, Dr. Who, Let's Dial 1965 (01:42): MP3
  6. Emptier Planet (00:27): MP3
  7. Sur la terrasse (01:21): MP3
  8. Cat-Gods' Channel (00:41): MP3l
  9. After The Newscast (00:46): MP3
  10. Caught with a Pronoun (incomplete) (01:28): MP3
  • Complete reading (14:22): MP3

Reading at the Naropa Institute, January 1, 1991

  1. La vie litteraire (1:50): MP3
  2. The Older Artist (0:45): MP3
  3. A Chipmunk (0:49): MP3
  4. Chicago (0:46): MP3
  5. Delight (0:32): MP3
  6. Cripple Creek Aforismos (2:02): MP3
  7. From the Helliad (0:33): MP3
  8. Blue March (0:35): MP3
  9. On reading Schelling's Sanskrit poems (0:24): MP3
  10. Lit. Group History (0:26): MP3
  11. Schiller's Rotting Apples (0:44): MP3
  12. O Lalou (1:37): MP3
  13. Note Found on Meditator (0:32): MP3
  14. Time For Your Greek Anthology Sir (7:40): MP3
  • Complete reading (19:23): MP3

Reading at The Kootenay School of Writing, Vancouver, 1986

  • Reading in October 1986 (54:08): MP3

Anselm Hollo reading c. 1968, and reading from No Complaints at St. Mark’s, 1983

  • Side A (31:51): MP3
  • Includes Anselm Hollo’s comments on "No Ideas but in Things", "Romance", "In the Mission" (for Robert Creeley), "Spider in the Morning", "Cumbersome Love", "We", "Gracias…When the rent is paid…", "Hard Words", "1982", "City Lights", "Never Ask for Whom the…", "Ted", "Suddenly" (for TB), "Amazing Grace", as well as, from an earlier tape, "It is drawing a picture…", "La Noce", "La Noce 2", "Domestic Poem", "Poet (Not many words in my mouth…)", "Prayer for an Old Lady", and "Sunflowers" (incomplete)

  • Side B (31:35): MP3
  • Includes introduction, "…new ways of walking", reading from "The Empress Hotel Poems", "Instance", "For the Sea-Sons and Daughters We All Are", "Three Bear Poems", "The Coherences", "A taxi-cab…", "Love Discontinuous Consciousness", "Possible Definitions of ‘Beauty’ and ‘Happiness’", "The One", "The ISS", "Meeting Another", "The Change", "Walking the Beach with My Brother’s Eyes", "In a Place Named after Simon Bolivar", followed by Hollo reading poems from 1960-1965: "Recording/Playback" and from "A Book of Rites and Events 1962", "The Lions", "The Red Piano", "My Ancestor", "The Daughter, New", "Air to Dream In", "Late the Aspen Hour", and "1962 October Dream…"

Courtesy of Simon Pettet

From The World Record: Readings at the St.Mark's Poetry Project, 1969-1980

  • From The Empress Hotel Poems (1:30): MP3

Reading from With Ruth in Mind, Widemouth Tapes, Barrytown, NY, July 21, 1978

  • Part 1 (29:22): MP3
  • Part 2 (12:22): MP3

Version from the Ben Tripp Tapes:

  • Side A (31:55): MP3
  • Includes "Or, to hocus the animals of pursuers by changing their dream cassettes (old Thibetan trick), for Tom Raworth, "Dragons & gazelles, for Carl Sagan & Olaf Stapleton", and "Over there by the hibiscus"

  • Side B (31:48): MP3
  • Includes "Over there by the hibiscus"

Recorded live at George and Susan Quasha’s Stained Glass Studio (Open Studio/Station Hill Press) in Barrytown, NY. Recorded by John Magner.

Courtesy of Simon Pettet

Liner notes:


Anselm Hollo reading at The Body Politic, February 26, 1973

  • Side A (46:43): MP3
  • Side B (3:44): MP3

Includes Hollo on Apollinaire matches (found poem), "My Beauties..." (after William Carlos Williams), "In the Mirror", "Sunday morning, naked woman bending over...", "Double Martini", "Life, blinking up at the plane", Hollo reading old work ("Trobar", "…and he has been…two hours", "Going Upstairs", and "Both dragon and elephant" (for TB)), and recent poems ("Autobiographical" ("grew up in Finland"), "Elephant Rock", "1939", "One of the pens has a bend in it", "Where was it I fell asleep", and "The Dimensions of the World"), and then reading "Versions/Takes" and "The Gypsy Poems" ("My little stalk of alfalfa...", "Moon Shines on Valley", "Hey God, Old Buddy", "When Fall Comes...", "A Lullaby", "Another Lullaby", "Sister Peony Leaf", "See the Great Vultures", "It’s You Who Puts the Green Sprig in my Heatband", and "You Are the Moon up on High"), and then continues with "Botticelli’s Venus/Anselm’s Life", "Poem Remembering Paul Blackburn", "Chinese Love Poem in the Manner of Rexroth", "A Problem Solved" (a "hybrid prose/found work"), "Beginner’s Luck", "Isle of Wight, 1967, A distant bathing beauty…", "…a lady who plays the piano" (for Ezra Pound), "Night Thoughts in Bowling Green, Ohio", "…wear the head as it grows", "Translation Workshop" (translation from the English - 1840s), and "American Lady Poets"

Note: Poor/variable audio quality.

Courtesy of Simon Pettet

Reading in Grand Valley, Michigan, July, 1971

  • Complete recording (25:11): MP3

For many more recordings of Hollo, visit the Naropa Archives.

© 2013 the estate of Anselm Hollo. These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. Used with permission of the author. Distributed by PennSound.