Collection of Tapes Donated by Simon Pettet & Ben Tripp

Note: many of these recordings were produced from secondary sources and may be low-quality clones. If you have knowledge of a higher quality version for any of the following recordings, please contact us: pennsound@writing.upenn.edu

Quick navigation: John Ashbery | Ted Berrigan | Paul Blackburn | Ray Bremser | Jim Brodey | Basil Bunting | William S. Burroughs | Gregory Corso | Robert Creeley | Samuel R. Delany | Ed Dorn | Aidan Andrew Dun | Rosebud Feliu-Pettet | Roy Fisher | Ulli Freer | Allen Ginsberg | Anselm Hollo | Kenneth Koch | Gerrit Lansing | Barry MacSweeney | Ed Marshall | Alice Notley | Tom Raworth | James Schuyler | Jack Spicer | Alex Trocchi | Philip Whalen | William Carlos Williams | Group & Memorial Readings

John Ashbery

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, May 26, 1971; CBGB's Benefit, c. 1980; The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, May 4, 1983

• Side A (47:36): MP3
• Side B (47:15): MP3

Reading, 1983 and 1987

• Side A (31:49): MP3
• Side B (31:35): MP3

Includes reading from "April Gallions," November 1987; reading from "A Wave," 1983; and "New Poems," 1987

Ted Berrigan

Reading, likely home recording, c. 1974

• Side A (31:37): MP3
• Side B (31:28): MP3

Includes Berrigan reading "Service at Upway," commenting "I have only one work and I hardly know what it is," reading from correspondence ("alive and well," "I'm living in Battersea, July 1973"), "Chicago Morning," "Newton," "The End," "Sandy's Sunday Best," "He," "She," "Communism" (referred to as "a radical work of mine"), "Red Air," sharing an "improvisational...collaborative tape" of Berrigan and Anne Waldman reading "Memorial Day," Berrigan reading "Ten Things about the Boston Trip," commenting "My poetry is domestic. It's conversational, it's concerned with rooms and streets and the household gods - that's what I'm interested in actually. I'm also interested in everything else but I do what I can do," reading "Conversation ("My Name Is Wesley Jackson"), "She," "Wind," "What I'd Like for Christmas 1970," "In the Wheel" (for William Carlos Williams), "Landscape with Figures (Southampton), "Ezra Pound/A Witness," "Paul Blackburn," "Sunday Morning," and "Apologies to Val & Tom"

Reading at West End Bar, NYC, introduction by Anne Waldman, c. 1980

Complete recording (31:34): MP3

Reading from The Sonnets, at 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, June 24, 1981

• Side A (46:50): MP3
• Side B (38:52): MP3

Recording introduced by Kush. Note that a more complete version, including segments, is availalbe on Berrigan's author page.

Reading, February 1980 and c. 1982

• Side A, February 1980 (46:13): MP3
• Includes Ted Berrigan's introduction and comments, "Cranston Near the City Line," "Wind," then three from "Easter Monday," "Chicago Morning," "Newtown" and "The End," then "From a List of the Delusions of the Insane," commenting "I just do what it is I do," remarks on Cubist painting and technique, commenting "I have great theories. I can't entirely remember what they are. I like rhyme a lot. I love the old-fashioned music. I'm strictly a formalist," reading "Personal Poem #9," "Crystal," commenting "The summation of my entire life and career!," reading "Ten Things I Do Every Day" (for Jack Collom), "Remembered Poem," discussion on Ron Padgett's Anthology of New York Poets (ordered by weight!), "Conversations (Wesley Jackson)," "She," "I Used to Be but Now I Am," "In the Wheel," "So Long Jimi, Janis," introductory comments on "Biographica Literaria," "Tom Clark" (after John Clare!), "Frank O'Hara," "Scorpio," and from elsewhere, "Words for Love," "Personal Poem #7," "Personal Poem #9," and "Ten Things I Do Every Day"


• Side B, c. 1982 (46:13): MP3
• Includes Berrigan commenting "I'm going to read you 500 poems but they're all very recent just to show you what you can do," reading "Yeah tho' I walk...," "Caesar" (after Catullus), "With Daring and Strength," "Coffee And," "Salutation," "Winged Pessary," "Do You Know Rene," "Paris Frances," "The By-Laws," collaborations with lines from Alice Notley and others, "When I was Alive," "Beautifulness," "Eye of the Beholder," "Bardolino," "The Sentiment," "The Sailor & the Samaon Schoolgirl," "Motto of the Whores and Poets Guild," "The Way It Was," "Delusions of the Insane" (alt. version), "A Mind...The Highest Question," "Homage to Keith G," "WCW Poem," "Clear by Grandma," "Little Travelog," "Dinner at George & Schneeman's" with Steve Carey, "Four Metaphysical Poems," "Who Was Sylvia?," "War and Peace," "In the Land of pygmies and Giants," with Greg Masters, "Edtude for Ten Thumbs," "Poets Tribute to Philip Guston," "Christmas Card," "Via Air," "People Who Changed Their Names," commenting "All us poets are interested in is craft," reading "Whoa Back Buck and Gee by Land," "That Poem George Found," "A Certain Slant of Sunlight," "Another New Old Song," and "Last Poem"

Reading, St. Clement's, NYC, possibly April 18, 1983

• Side A (32:02): MP3
• Includes comments on "So Going around Cities," etc. reading "Whitman in Black," commenting "I like to think of myself as a formalist," reading "Last Poem," "With Daring and Strength," "A Certain Slant of Sunlight," "Give Them Back Who Never Were," then reading from "Postcard Poems," "Providence," "Let No Willful Fate...," "Down on Mission," "Natchez," "Space," "A City Winter," "To Sing the Song Fantastic," "Tough Cookies," and "For Jacques Roubaud,"


• Side B (19:09): MP3
• Includes "Dice Riders," "Windshield," "Warrior," "My Autobiography," "Blue Galahad," "In Your Fuckin' Utopia," "The School Windows Song" (after Vachel Lindsay), "Ass-face," "Turk," "Creature," "Tompkins Square Park," and "Frances," before the recording cuts off, as well as "Heroin," "Buddha-ho" (word cut off midway), "Song, Prose, & Poetry," and "Hall of Mirrors"

Reading from and commenting on Easter Monday, c. 1978

• Side A (30:45): MP3
• Includes Ted Berrigan introducing Easter Monday (striving for "an impressionism of words"), reading "Chicago Morning," "Newton," "The End," "Method Action," "Swinburne and Watts-Dutton," "Soviet Souvenir," "Old-Fashioned Air," "The Ancient Art of Wooing," "Late November," "At Loma Linda," and "L.G.G.T.T.H."


• Side B (30:33): MP3
• Includes Ted Berrigan reading stanza from "Peking," then "Chicago English Afternoon," "She," "Innocents Abroad," "Sister Moon," "An Orange Clock," "Gainsborough," "Easter Monday," "Four Gates to the City," "In Blood," "The Joke and the Stars," "Where the Ceiling Light Burns," "So Going around Cities," "Quarter to Three," "Picnic" (with Addenda), as well as, from elsewhere, brief comments on "Biographica Literaria"

Paul Blackburn

Reading, 1966

Includes "Lines," "Trees," "Words," "A Miracle Has Happened," "There Are Doors," "How to Sublet an Apartment to Friends," "The Unemployment Bureau," "Spring Thing," "So Who Needs Legs We Do," "Laurel," "Cancer Ejaculations," "Going Up," "Flowers All over the Wall," Two Poems after Li Po ("Resentment" and "Poem to a Dead Girl"), "The Assassination of President McKinley," "Face 1," "The Necessary Goddess," "Origins," "You Light It," "Between Sets," "Ya Lift a Cold One," "The Young," "Listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot," "The Voices (for Alma - October Sun)," "The Man Turned against Himself," "Getting a Job," "Flexibility or the Rich," "Park Poem," "Here They Go," "Ritual VI," "The Gathering Winter Fuel," "This Couldn't Happen Again," "She Holds His Hand," "Pals Together," "Sunflower Rock," two poems: "Cockcrow Barcelona" and "It Was Noted after the Panel Discussion," "Think I Know," "The Bones," "Scoffing It," "The Old Days," "Democracy in California (Napalm)," "Blues for Austryn Wainhouse," "That Things Go Well Is My Whole Spiel," "It's a Matter of Tracing It All Back," "The Flower Phantom Strikes Again," "The Geologist," "Rockhound," "The Weathers," "Eat," "More of It," "Style," "The Differences," "O Whence Are You Going," "The Eastern Slopes," "Measure the Takers," "The Forty Five," "Chicken Soup," and "Bags"

• Side A (47:27): MP3
• Side B (18:43): MP3

Ray Bremser

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, February 22, 1995

Complete Recording (47:35): MP3

Jim Brodey

Reading "Breathlehem" with jazz improvisation at the Free Association, New York, April 15, 1978

Complete reading (48:55): MP3

Reading late poems at Re Cher Chez, St. Mark's Place, NYC, introduction by Susan Cataldo, March 30, 1984

Includes Elmore James 3, William Carlos Williams 4, Valery Larbaud 17, Tony Towle 4, Robert Fripp 5, Alice Notley, Gary Hull, Margot Howard-Howard, Jack Kerouac 4, Johann Sebastian Bach, Larry Young, Malcolm X, Charles Bernstein, The Gun Club, Kathy Foley, and Jim Brodey ("whosoever lives by the poem.")

Complete recording (32:40): MP3

Basil Bunting

Lectures at Percy Building, University of Newcastle, January–March 1979

1. on Ezra Pound and sources of poetry (1:35:28): MP3
2. on Ezra Pound and Medieval English poetry (1:03:27): MP3

Reading from Briggflatts and interview with Hugh Kenner, May 1, 1982

Complete recording (1:21:38): MP3

William S. Burroughs

Reading, date unknown

• Part 1, Side A (47:08): MP3
• Part 1, Side B (47:01): MP3
• Part 2, Side A (47:33): MP3
• Part 2, Side B (45:50): MP3

"Nothing Here but the Recordings," 1981

• Side A (23:14): MP3
• Side B (24:55): MP3

Includes Burroughs' cut-up tape experiments

Reading, date and location unknown

Complete recording (1:13:59): MP3

Includes readings from Word Virus, Burroughs on The White Queen, readings from Exterminator, French newspaper horoscope cut-up experiment, "The Evening News," Nova Express ("I was traveling with the Intolerable Kid..."), "The Unworthy Vessel," "Folkloric Text," on "Do-Rights," "Twilight's Last Gleaming," "The 103rd Street Boys," "Message from Doctor Benway," asection from Naked Lunch, additional reading from the meeting of the International Conference of Technological Psychiatry in Mexico, Dr. Benway routing=e, "The Hunstmen Have FGathered for the Hunt," "Breakfast in the Swarm Bar," Texan story from The Soft Machine, "Where You Belong" from Exterminator, "What Washington? What Orders?," and "On the Royal Family"

Reading, date and location unknown

Complete recording (47:37): MP3

Gregory Corso

Reading from Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit at St. Mark's Poetry Project, February 11, 1981

Complete recording (39:50): MP3

Robert Creeley

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, 1984

• Side A (46:21): MP3
• Includes Bernadette Mayer introducing Eileen Myles who introduces "my hero," Robert Creeley, Creeley praises "basic Bostonclarity," reads prose from (at the time) recently-published Collected Prose ("Back to Bolinas..."and "Having Been Wakened by Screams in the Middle of the Night..."), followed by "the poetry sequence," "A Calendar" (including Creeley reading Chaucer, Wyatt), more prose, "The Cabeza" (for Ramon S)," poems again: "Heaven Knows," "New England," "Too Late," "Dogs," Four for John Daley ("Mothers Things," "Echo," "Leaving," "Buffalo Afternoon"), "For Ted Berrigan," "Hotel Heidelberg," "Ich Bin...," reading from Mirrors (from section 2 and 3) including "O Love," "Stone," "Hearts:," "Sad Advice," "Wishes," "Echoes:," "Summer:," "If...," "Some Echo," "Poems Written in Buffalo, February," "Buffalo Evening," "All the Way," "Kid," "Early Reading," "Beside Her to Lie," "Circles," and "On Phrase from Ginsberg's ‘"Kaddish'" - "Eat, drink, be merry, you fink"


• Side B (47:14): MP3
• Includes "So careful of... so slow to move without it..."," "Coming Home," "Be of Good Cheer," "Help Heavens," "She Is Far From Me," "O Like a Bird," "Provincetown:," "North Truro Light:" "1946," "R Had Said," "Tell Story:," RC talks continues (elegiac remarks on Alex Trocchi, "a great Scot maintainer," and notes on Max Feinstein (Poem to MF)

Samuel R. Delany

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, introduction by Ted Berrigan, c. 1980

Complete recording (31:30): MP3

Ed Dorn

"Satirical Verses," broadcast on Alternative Radio, hosted by David Barsamian, 2000

• Side A (29:11): MP3
• Side B (30:17): MP3

Aidan Andrew Dun

Reading Vale Royal, 1998

• Part 1, Side A (47:34): MP3
• Part 1, Side B (47:13): MP3
• Part 2, Side A (31:34): MP3
• Part 2, Side B (22:29): MP3

Rosebud Feliu-Pettet

Reading/memoir for Allen Ginsberg Memorial, St. Mark's Church, April 1997

Complete recording (11:01): MP3

Roy Fisher

Reading at Kings College London, February 7, 1984

Complete recording (31:00): MP3

Ulli Freer

Reading by Ulli Freer, produced by Balsam Flex, 1977

• Side A: T Chest (3:37): MP3
• Side B: Trunk Calls (4:47): MP3

Allen Ginsberg

Reading "Howl" on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, Columbia University, November 14, 1981

• Side A (31:11): MP3
• Side B (30:42): MP3

Reading "Kaddish," from Atlantic Records LP recording, 1966

• Side A (35:23): MP3
• Side B (31:47): MP3

Anselm Hollo

Reading, c. 1968

Complete recording (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..."

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.

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

• 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.

Liner notes (click to enlarge):

Reading from No Complaints, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, 1983

Complete recording (31:51): MP3

Includes 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)

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"

Kenneth Koch

Recording, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, 1972

• Side A (25:35): MP3
• Includes "A Serious Moment" and "In Bed"


• Side B (50:58): MP3
• Includes "First Trip to China," "Alive for an Instant," and "Today" from The Art of Love

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, 1983

• Complete recording (23:32): MP3
• Reading from "Impressions of Africa"

Gerrit Lansing

Phone interview on local radio, Buffalo, 1998

Complete recording (20:46): MP3

Barry MacSweeney

Reading, c. 1984

Complete recording (13:37): MP3

Ed Marshall

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, c. 1973

• Side A (31:40): MP3
• Includes: "How deep is thy love" - "One night I was breathed upon" - "To a few mentors" - "Cheers to Bob Lowell and words to Ogden Nash" - "Coyote" (declamation) - "In the year came more than Eliot's Tiger-Christ"


• Side B is damaged, but includes: "Leave the Word Alone" - "What we do to brownstones" - "The sad gay early fifties" - "From a Pot-Belly-Stove I Came to New York" - "A Little Talk Back to a Hustler" - "History" ("I've been told you can work at one place at one time...") - "How deep is thy love" - etc.

Note: Tape begins in media res with poor quality, but improves.

Alice Notley

Interviewed by Stevens Institute of Technology Students, 1980

Complete recording (39:18): MP3

Reading at The Body Politic, Chicago, February 26, 1973, and at Lines Radio, Detroit, c. 1980

Complete recording (57:37): MP3

Reading from "Songs for the Unborn Child," University of Essex, England, March 8, 1974

Complete recording (49:25): MP3

Reading from "The Descent of Alette" on WKCR, NYC, 1992

Complete recording (13:43): MP3

Reading, date and location unknown

Complete recording (51:33): MP3

Reading, date and location unknown

Complete recording (47:29): MP3

Tom Raworth

Reading at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, introduced by Ted Berrigan, April 7, 1982

Reading "Little Trace Remains of Emmett Miller," "The Big Green Day," Haiku 1-366, The Relationship 368-584.

• Side A (44:46): MP3
• Side B (34:45): MP3

Reading "Big Slippers on – Fourteen Poems" at Tom and Val's Base, October 20, 1993

Includes "Vein," "Wit Wither," "Blue Screen," "All Fours," "Gaslight," "Proust," "Catacoustics," "Belt," "Poe," "Attitude," "What's This All About," "Los Angeles," "Infinite Variety Stales," and "Blue Vacuum Cleaner."

• Part 1 (15:01): MP3
• Part 2 (15:05): MP3

Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, introduced by Ed Friedman, 1995

Complete recording (29:12): MP3

James Schuyler

Reading and interview with Tom Savage on Mitch Corber's Radio Thin Air, c. 1990

• Side A (20:52): MP3
• Side B (20:45): MP3

Jack Spicer

Reading "One Night Stand," c. 1957

Complete recording (42:19): MP3

Poetry and Politics Lecture for the Berkeley Poetry Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, July 4, 1965

Complete recording (1:17:45): MP3

Alex Trocchi

In conversation, via Allen Ginsberg, London, c. 1975

• Part 1, Side A (47:41): MP3
• Part 1, Side B (21:17): MP3
• Part 2, Side A (47:20): MP3
• Part 2, Side B (48:19): MP3

Documentary tape via Allen Ginsberg

Philip Whalen

Lectures on Gertrude Stein at New College of California, San Francisco, February 1985

• Part 1 (1:35:00): MP3
• Part 2 (1:34:58): MP3

Lecture on Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, NYC, 1989

• Part 1 (47:55): MP3
• Part 2 (47:34): MP3

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams interviewed by Jack Gerber, June 1950

• Side A (31:29): MP3
• Side B, Part 1 (20:11): MP3
• Side B, Part 2 (4:35): MP3

Transcribed in New Directions

Various & Group Readings

Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso at Harvard University, March 26, 1959

• Part 1, Side A (30:41): MP3
• Part 1, Side B (34:07): MP3
• Part 2, Side A (30:45): MP3
• Part 2, Side B (13:10): MP3
• Part 3, Side A (27:44): MP3
• Part 3, Side B (31:46): MP3

Note: Part 1, Side B ends mid-sentence.

Ted Berrigan and Allen Ginsberg in conversation with students, Norman, OK, April 23, 1980

• Side A (47:48): MP3
• Side B (47:35): MP3

Documentary tape via Allen Ginsberg

James Schuyler Memorial Reading, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, February 26, 1992

• Part 1, Side A (44:55): MP3
• Part 1, Side B (44:47): MP3
• Part 1 includes introductions by Ed Friedman and Eileen Myles, and features John Ashbery, Patricia Jones, Ron Padgett, Father Ousley, Raymond Foye, Anne Dunn, Bob Rosenthal, Ed Friedman, Jane Freilicher, Joe Brainard, Douglas Crase, Frank Polach, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Rochelle Kraut, Tom Carey, Geoffrey Young, Elinor Nauen, Honor Moore, Vincent Katz, William Corbett, and Frank Bidart
• Part 2 (44:20): MP3
• Part 2 features Susan Baran, Gerritt Henry, Marc Cohen, Morris Golde, and Jonathan Galassi, and includes a reading of "Hymn to Life" by Tom Carey, Eileen Myles, Nathan Kernan, Charles North, Ann Lauterbach, and Darragh Park

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