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Burt Kimmelman

PoemTalk #42, discussing Nathaniel Tarn's "Unravelling / Shock," April 21, 2011

Listen to the complete recording and read program notes for the episode at Jacket2.

Reading from Wings Apart in Don Yorty's apartment, NYC, January 10, 2020

Watch on Vimeo (11:53): LINK

video by Don Yorty

Reading at Pioneer Valley Poetry Festival, Amherst College, September 14, 2019

Watch on YouTube (1:37:27): LINK [begins at 1:25:25]

Interview excerpts (from poetry is volume 2 by George Quasha), Spring 2015

Watch on YouTube (1:30): LINK

video by George Quasha.

Reading from Gradually the World at Kinokuniya Books, New York City, Spring 2015

Watch on Vimeo (5:00): LINK

Reading at Cornelia Street Café, New York City, Late Winter 2015

Watch on YouTube (4:39): LINK

Reading for Heatstrings, at Alan Golding's Home, Louisville, KY, February 20, 2016

  • Kimmelman's Segment (1:42): MP3

Poetry Thin Air Interview with George Spencer at A Gathering of the Tribes, NYC, August 17, 2011

Complete recording, part 1 (27:47): MP3

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, October 26, 2010

  1. Introduction by Al Filreis (6:53): MP3
  2. on "Self-Portrait" (4:13): MP3
  3. on Backwoods Broadsides and syllabic poetry (4:27): MP3
  4. Late October (0:30): MP3
  5. Late December (0:15): MP3
  6. Late February (0:16): MP3
  7. Late April (0:15): MP3
  8. Late May (0:16): MP3
  9. Late August (0:16): MP3
  10. Motherwell's Sepia Elegy / Museum of Modern Art 1.4.88 (2:20): MP3 text
  11. Musée Rodin 8.1.86 (4:41): MP3
  12. on "Warsaw Ghetto, Ritual Bath, 1941" (4:57): MP3
  13. Warsaw Ghetto, Ritual Bath, 1941 (viewing "An Unfinished Film" at the Film Forum, New York City, 2010): MP3
  14. Summer, Young Woman by the Westside Drive (1:07): MP3
  15. Arctic Terns (3:12): MP3
  16. Taking Dinner to My Mother (5:07): MP3
  17. Blackeyed Susan (0:42): MP3
  18. Frangelico at the Met (1:48): MP3
  19. Raking the Leaves (1:40): MP3

Complete reading (46:49): MP3

Discussion of "Self-Portrait" from Somehow


Burt Kimmelman discusses the background to his poem "Self Portrait" (from the book Somehow) at the Kelly Writers House on October 26, 2010.

Discussion of "Motherwell's Sepia Elegy / Museum of Modern Art 1.4.88"


A few days after Kimmelman's 2010 reading at the Kelly Writers House, Al Filreis wrote the following on his blog: "I've been reading and thinking about Burt Kimmelman's writing recently because Burt was here at the Writers House visiting. Before we move away from this poet, as is inevitable given so much that's going on, let's take one more look. It's a poem with a fabulously open first line: 'Nothing is ever decided'" Open enough out of context--just as a line--but now add that the poem is about a Robert Motherwell painting (seen at MoMA in January 1988) and, further, that the poet gave an illuminating brief intro to the poem before reading it at KWH the other day. Sometimes I like blogging about these matters because in such a space (as a matter of lasting record) several contexts can be laid out so easily across the various shareable media: the video (above) of the poet's intro; a PDF (click here) of the text of the poem (from the book Musaics, pp. 20-21); the audio-only recording of the poem being performed."

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, October 26, 2010

The Shape of Disclosure: George Oppen Centennial Symposium at Poets House, New York, April 8, 2008

  1. "'That they are there': Aletheia, Thingliness and the Question of Poetry in Heidegger and Oppen" (21:56): MP3
  2. Kimmelman reads Oppen's "Population" (0:42): MP3
  3. Kimmelman reads Oppen's "Boy's Room" (0:35): MP3

There Are Words

Recorded by Dos Madres Press, Loveland, OH, 2007

  1. Introduction (0:12): MP3
  2. Monet's Garden (0:33): MP3
  3. House, Normandy (0:58): MP3
  4. Crumbs Upon the Table (0:44): MP3
  5. Laocoon and His Sons, Museo Vaticana (1:03): MP3
  6. Susan Sontag Has Died (0:48): MP3
  7. Fra Angelico at the Met (1:25): MP3
  8. "Queen's View" of Loch Loman (0:34): MP3
  9. Lido Cristoforo Columbo (0:56): MP3
  10. Poem for Jackson Mac Low (1:08): MP3
  11. Taking Dinner to My Mother (1:54): MP3
  12. Early March Afternoon (0:24): MP3
  13. Ed Ruscha's Course of Empire (1:02): MP3
  14. Hameu de l'Eglise 8.25.05 (0:54): MP3
  15. The Coming Snow (0:43): MP3
  16. The Variation of Green (1:09): MP3
  17. That Boy (1:01): MP3
  18. Edvard Munch's Despair (0:45): MP3
  19. The Waves (0:39): MP3
  20. After Robert Creeley (1:10): MP3

Burt Kimmelman on PennSound Daily

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to Burt Kimmelman. © 2016 Burt Kimmelman. Used with permission of Burt Kimmelman. Distributed by PennSound.