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Tom Mandel

Photo © Tom Mandel

PoemTalk #19, Discussing Bob Perelman's "The Unruly Child", feat. Tom Mandel, Sarah Dowling, and Rodrigo Toscano

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

PoemTalk #15, Discussing Lyn Hejinian's "constant change figures," feat. Tom Mandel, Bob Perelman, and Thomas Devaney

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

Grand Piano Reading: Episode 5, October 20, 2022

Watch on media.SAS

Tom Mandel: Collaborating on The Grand Piano the ten of us exchanged thousands of emails. A recurrent subject in our correspondence was the question of the absent pianists—those poets & other artists with whom we had been & often still were close but who did not figure among the authors of our project. I decided to read passages from my Grand Piano essays that addressed the experience & significance of absence and those absent in a number of ways: my invention of a fictional poet nonetheless a member of our cohort (#10), a trip to New York with Ron to attend a memorial for Emma Bee Bernstein who had died at 23 some weeks earlier (#8), & one of the last visits Beth & I had from our dear friend the filmmaker Warren Sonbert about a year before his death of AIDS (#7).

David Bromige Memorial Reading, Kelly Writers House, September 25, 2018

Watch on Media.sas

Complete Recording: MP3

Tom Mandel, Studio 111 Session, Recorded June 4, 2008

  1. A Garment (by Abraham ibn Ezra) (1:09): MP3
  2. Gravity and Grace (3:28): MP3
  3. To Music (From Memory) (4:23): MP3
  4. No Takers (6:34): MP3
  5. Ut Pictura Poesis (5:36): MP3
  6. Communication Through Hints (7:25): MP3
  7. 1902 (1:50): MP3
  8. Spoken Quotation (0:56): MP3
  9. Xmas '73 (0:34): MP3
  10. Twenty Years War (0:57): MP3
  11. Only the Sun (0:18): MP3
  12. Biography (1:16): MP3
  13. Filmic (0:33): MP3
  14. Mandel discusses "Ramah" (0:46): MP3
  15. A Revealed Pattern (0:57): MP3
  16. Fire of Wandering (0:47): MP3
  17. Communication Through Hints (1:02): MP3
  18. Ben Siran (0:28): MP3
  19. Moscow Metro Station Mosaics (1:33): MP3
  20. Moscow Metro Station Mosaics III (1:01): MP3
  21. Ancestral Moscow Metro Station Mosaics (4:26): MP3
  22. Moscow Metro Station Mosaics: Marginalia (3:14): MP3
  23. Mandel discusses To the Cognoscenti (0:52): MP3
  24. from "To the Cognoscenti" (2:16): MP3
  25. "Persepolis and other hot spots . . ." (0:47): MP3
  26. "He has let slip . . ." (3:22): MP3
  27. "Blade along incline . . ." (3:34): MP3
  28. Part X: "Later the narrator finds himself . . ." (1:08): MP3
  29. Part XII: "Introduction" (1:48): MP3
  30. The Cave (13:35): MP3

Studio 111 Session Produced by Michael S. Hennessey

From A Celebration of George Oppen's 100th Birthday at the Kelly Writers House, April 7, 2008

"Entitlement & Doubt (Postcards & Procrastination)" (11:41): MP3

(click for photos of the postcard [front & back] and envelope Mandel discusses in his talk)

PoemTalk #19, discussing Bob Perelman's "The Unruly Child," July 6, 2009

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

PoemTalk #15, discussing Lyn Hejinian's "constant change figures," March 9, 2009

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

Segue Series Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, November 20, 2004

  1. Introduction (5:00): MP3
  2. Education of the Poet, an Autobiography (11:13): MP3
  3. Day (1:35): MP3
  4. Rust on a New Penny (3:38): MP3
  5. Standards of Compression (9:27): MP3
  6. Temptation Roofing (7:49): MP3
  7. Absence Sensorium (2:35): MP3

    8. Complete Reading (41:17): MP3

From PhillyTalks Episode #5, March 5, 1998

  1. Untitled (2:16): MP3
  2. Untitled (5:52): MP3
  3. Untitled (1:42): MP3
  4. Untitled (0:50): MP3
  5. Fire of Wandering (0:50): MP3
  6. Untitled (6:34): MP3

    Complete Program (also featuring Ammiel Alcalay) (1:38:18): MP3
    A transcript of the complete program (in PDF format) is available here

Logo Daedalus: Issue #6, Autumn 1993

  • note: Tom Mandel recorded the first poem, "Palestine 8," on In the American Tree, hosted by Lyn Hejinian, on December 15, 1978
  • "A Form is a Fragment of Content, "Philosopher's Song," and "No Takers" were recorded on October 8, 1993

  • Tom Mandel (16:20): MP3
  • complete recording (1:32:52): MP3

Talk on Spinoza: Philosophy and Poetry. June 24, 1979

 Above Recording Courtesy of Bob Perelman

"Blindness," 1220 Folsom Street, San Francisco, October 27, 1977

From the Talk Series curated by Bob Perelman

  • Tape 1 (1:31:21): MP3
  • Tape 2 (35:43): MP3

Also on PennSound:

Alan Berheimer's Particle Arms (1982), which featured Mandel as a performer.

Tom Mandel on PennSound Daily


These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only.
© 2009 Tom Mandel. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Distributed by PennSound.