Inside PennSound

Search PennSound

Poems for the Millennium

Poems for the Millennium I

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, September 28, 1998

Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg read selections from Poems for the Millennium, a two-volume anthology published by the University of California Press, which they coedited. The editors, and guest readers Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Bob Perelman, performed excerpts from a number of poems in the anthology (tracks 2 to 22) followed by readings of recent works of the editors' own (tracks 23 to 34).

  1. Introduction by Al Filreis (11:30): MP3
  2. Aime Cesaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, read by Rothenberg (0:19): MP3
  3. Paul Celan, Threadsuns, read by Joris (0:18): MP3
  4. Robert Duncan, Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow, read by Rothenberg (1:15): MP3
  5. Muriel Rukeyser, The Speed of Darkness, read by Joris (1:06): MP3
  6. John Cage, Lecture on Nothing, read by Rothenberg (2:10): MP3
  7. Guy Debord, All the King's Men, read by Joris (1:17): MP3
  8. Marie Louise Kaschnitz, Who Would Have Thought It, read by Rothenberg (1:49): MP3
  9. Adonis, Preface to the Pages of Night and Day, read by Joris (1:17): MP3
  10. Alice Notley, Desamere, read by Rothenberg (2:15): MP3
  11. Ed Sanders, Investigative Poetry, read by Joris (1:01): MP3
  12. Fujii Sadakazu, Where is Japanese Poetry, read by Rothenberg (2:31): MP3
  13. Diane DiPrima, Rant, read by Joris (1:59): MP3
  14. Andrei Voznesensky, Back into the Future, read by Rothenberg (0:25): MP3
  15. Ted Berrigan, People of the Future, read by Joris (0:15): MP3
  16. T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, read by Blau DuPlessis (3:11): MP3
  17. Jackson MacLow, The Pronouns, read by Perelman (1:09): MP3
  18. George Oppen, Myth of the Blaze, read by Blau DuPlessis (2:27): MP3
  19. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Aller, read by Perelman (3:20): MP3
  20. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All, read by Blau DuPlessis (1:49): MP3
  21. Inger Christensen, Alphabet, read by Joris (3:37): MP3
  22. Maria Sabina, The Midnight Velada, read by Rothenberg (4:13): MP3
  23. Rothenberg's Lorca Variations read by the author (3:30): MP3
  24. Rothenberg's Three Paris Elegies read by the author (7:40): MP3
  25. Rothenberg's Night Poems for Jackson MacLow read by the author (8:45): MP3
  26. Joris' Winnetou Old read by the author (7:05): MP3
  27. Joris' Deja Vu All Over Again read by the author (1:41): MP3
  28. Joris' Obit for Paz read by the author (1:21): MP3
  29. Joris' Ode or Nearly Here read by the author (3:09): MP3
  30. Joris' In the Nomad House read by the author (0:16): MP3
  31. Joris' Notes Toward a Nomadic Community (0:53): MP3
  32. Joris' Return to Kairouan read by the author (1:26): MP3
  33. Joris' Untitled (0:23): MP3
  34. Joris' Seesaw (0:29): MP3

Reading at *unknown venue*, 1998

Poems for the Millenium II

Reading at *unknown venue*, April 21, 1998

Poems for the Millennium III

Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York, March 29, 2009

A launch and reading for Poems for the Millennium III, The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson. Like its two twentieth-century predecessors, Poems for the Millennium I & II, this gathering sets forth a globally decentered approach to the poetry of the preceding century from an experimental and visionary perspective. Joining Rothenberg and Robinson in the reading and performance are Charles Bernstein, Bob Holman, Pierre Joris, Cecilia Vicuña, and Anne Waldman. Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties during the recording of this event, and therefore some of the following selections begin partly into the individual's reading or are prematurely curtailed.

  1. Introduction (1:59): MP3
  2. Jerome Rothenberg (3:01): MP3
  3. Pierre Joris (13:23): MP3
  4. Anne Waldman (16:25): MP3
  5. Jeffrey Robinson (13:29): MP3
  6. Cecilia Vicuña (16:09): MP3
  7. Bob Holman (10:26): MP3
  8. Charles Bernstein (only intro salvaged, followed by Joris reading Charles Baudelaire's "Be Drunken" in French) (3:21): MP3
  9. Bernstein (from 3/14/09 recording at Segue/BPC), "Be Drunken" (1:57): MP3
  10. Rothenberg, reads from Rimbaud's "Farewell" and Lear (4:10): MP3

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, October 7, 2009

The previous two volumes of this acclaimed anthology set forth a globally decentered revision of twentieth-century poetry from the perspective of its many avant-gardes. Now editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson bring a radically new interpretation to the poetry of the preceding century, viewing the work of the romantic and post-romantic poets as an international, collective, often utopian enterprise that became the foundation of experimental modernism. Global in its range, volume three gathers selections from the poetry and manifestos of canonical poets, as well as the work of lesser-known but equally radical poets. Defining romanticism as experimental and visionary, Rothenberg and Robinson feature prose poetry, verbal-visual experiments, and sound poetry, along with more familiar forms seen here as if for the first time. The anthology also explores romanticism outside the European orbit and includes ethnopoetic and archaeological works outside the literary mainstream. The range of volume three and its skewing of the traditional canon illuminate the process by which romantics and post- romantics challenged nineteenth-century orthodoxies and propelled poetry to the experiments of a later modernism and avant-gardism.

Complete Discussion (1:22:09): MP3 / MOV (via KWH-TV)

Complete Reading (1:46:24): MP3 / MOV (via KWH-TV)

segmented reading:

  1. Michael Gamer introduction by Charles Bernstein (3:41): MP3
  2. Introduction by Michael Gamer (4:46): MP3
  3. Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffery Robinson reading "The Ancient Poets" and "The Voice of the Devil" from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; "Athenaeum Fragment 116" from Friedrich Karl Vilhelm von Schlegel; "To Richard Woodhouse, 27 October 1818" from John Keats; an excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, Fifth Book; and "An Archaic Torso of Apollo" from Rainer Maria Rilke (11:51): MP3
  4. Charles Bernstein reading a poem after Edward Lear's "The Old Man of Whitehaven"; CB tr. of an 1847 poem from Victor Hugo's Les Contemplations; "The Ballad of Burdens" from Algernon Charles Swinburne; CB tr. of Heinrich Heine's "Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht" followed by poem after "Der Tod" from Shadowtime; his own "The Introvert," after William Wordsworth's "The Hermit"; excerpt from Walt Whitman's "RESPONDEZ!"; CB tr. of Charles Baudelaire's "Enivrez-vous": "Be Drunken"; William Blake's "The Sick Rose" from Song of Experience (12:12): MP3
  5. Jerome Rothenberg reading a Samuel Taylor Coleridge and JR tr. of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Mignon's Song"; Coleridge on urine (3:38): MP3
  6. Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading from William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Book Five; followed by a brief selection from her own "Wanderer" (12:04): MP3
  7. Jeffery Robinson reading "Ode: Composed on A May Morning" by William Wordsworth; followed by his own "Vernal Song of Blithe May after William Wordworth"; an excerpt from Wordworth's "The Triad"; his own "Poem on the Letter 'A'" (6:29): MP3
  8. George Economou reading "The Shark" from Dionysios Solomos; "The Maldive Shark" from Herman Melville; "Shipwrecks and Sharks" from Isidore Ducassee, comte de Lautreamont; his own "The Amorous Drift of the First Hoplite on the Right Wing" (13:33): MP3
  9. Jerome Rothenberg reading "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery" from Percy Bysshe Shelley (3:02): MP3
  10. Rochelle Owens reading "Judith" from Adah Isaacs Menken; her own "Song from Out of Ur" (16:05): MP3
  11. Jeffery Robinson reading Emily Dickinson's "I think I was enchanted" (1:50): MP3
  12. Bob Perelman reading his own work "Transcription" (13:33): MP3
  13. Jerome Rothenberg reading his own poem "Romantic Dadas, for Jeffrey Robinson" (1:23): MP3

Reading at Harvard University, March 30, 2009

"Reconfiguring Romanticism: A Reading and Discussion of Experimental Poetics"

Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson read selections from Poems for the Millennium Volume III. Introduced by Harvard's Patrick Pritchett, they engage the question, "Is Romanticism the original experimental poetry?" Featured readers include William Corbett, Gerritt Lansing and Keith Waldrop, followed by critical responses and discussion from Sonia Hofkosh and Virginia Jackson of Tufts University.

  1. introduction by Patrick Pritchett (2:07): MP3
  2. Jeffrey Robinson on counterpoetics and British Romanticism (2:40): MP3
  3. Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson reading epigraphs by Friedrich Schlegel, Andre Breton, Octavio Paz, Robert Duncan, Lyn Hejinian, and Gregory Corso (3:35): MP3
  4. Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson reading the introduction to Poems for the Millennium Volume III (14:20): MP3
  5. William Corbett reading from Joseph Joubert, from The Notebooks: 1789-1794 (2:51): MP3
  6. William Corbett reading from James Schuyler, Unlike Joubert (2:11): MP3
  7. William Corbett reading from Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere, Lineated (2:03): MP3
  8. William Corbett reading from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream (3:34): MP3
  9. William Corbett reading from Herman Melville, from Billy Budd (2:48): MP3
  10. Jeffrey Robinson introducing The Book of Origins (0:42): MP3
  11. Jerome Rothenberg reading from William Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1:03): MP3
  12. Jeffrey Robinson reading from E.A. Wallis Budge, from The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Chapter of Changing into Ptah (1:13): MP3
  13. Jerome Rothenberg reading from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow / Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Song of the Owl [Ojibwa] (0:39): MP3
  14. Jeffrey Robinson and Jerome Rothenberg reading from Washington Matthews, from The Night Chant: Prayer of the First Dancers [Navajo] (5:47): MP3
  15. Keith Waldrop reading from John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (5:58): MP3
  16. Keith Waldrop reading from Charles Baudelaire, To the Reader (3:35): MP3
  17. Keith Waldrop reading from Charles Baudelaire, The Bad Glazier (7:17): MP3
  18. Keith Waldrop reading from Charles Baudelaire, The Dog and the Flask (1:26): MP3
  19. Keith Waldrop reading from Charles Baudelaire, Invitation to the Voyage (7:38): MP3
  20. Gerritt Lansing reading from Gerard de Nerval, Delfica (1:33): MP3
  21. Gerritt Lansing reading from Gerard de Nerval, Artemis (1:25): MP3
  22. Gerrit Lansing reading "The Welcome" (1:59): MP3
  23. Gerrit Lansing reading from Walt Whitman, This Compost (4:14): MP3
  24. Gerrit Lansing reading "The Compost" (2:34): MP3
  25. Jeffrey Robinson reading Walt Whitman, Good-Bye My Fancy (2:11): MP3
  26. Jerome Rothenberg reading Edward Lear, There was an Old Man (3:00): MP3
  27. Sonia Hofkosh (5:19): MP3
  28. Virginia Jackson (6:09): MP3
  29. Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson on the anthology in relation to pedagogy (6:28): MP3
  30. Q&A Discussion (12:03): MP3

complete reading (1:59:24): MP3, MOV

Poems for the Millennium V

Reading and Launch of Barbaric Vast & Wild, The Poetry Project, Oct. 14, 2015

published 2015 by Black Widow Press, ed. Jerome Rothenberg and John Bloomberg-Rissman.
Information about the anthology can be found at Jacket2.
  1. Simone White, Introduction (03:53): MP3
  2. Jerome Rothenberg (21:15): MP3
  3. Charles Bernstein (11:01): MP3
  4. Jennifer Bartlett (11:19): MP3
  5. Cecilia Vicuña (23:08): MP3
  6. Gary Sullivan (11:54): MP3
  7. Anne Waldman (15:01): MP3
  8. Jerome Rothenberg, Conclusion (05:16): MP3
  • Complete Reading (1:42:42): MP3

Poems for the Millennium on PennSound Daily

Also of interest:

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only.
All rights to this recorded material belong to the authors. © 1998 Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Pierre Joris, Bob Perelman, and Jerome Rothenberg. Used with the permission of Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg. Distributed by PennSound.