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Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman
This May 31st is the 202nd birthday of Walt Whitman — one of the first truly authentic American poetic voices, and one which still resonates with readers more than century after his death.
While Whitman left behind no recordings of his poetry — that much heralded wax cylinder with four lines of the late poem "America" is unlikely to be the poet himself — but that doesn't mean that we don't have recordings of Whitman's work for your enjoyment. Today we'll highlight performances and interpretations by three poets.
We start with UPenn professor emeritus John Richetti, who has recorded a wide variety of Whitman's work over the years, including "O Captain! My Captain!," "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "The Sleepers," "Goodbye My Fancy," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "I Hear America Singing," and sections 1 and 2 of "Calumus." You'll find these tracks on a special page containing all of Richetti's renditions of Whitman's work, which also includes "Song of Myself" in its entirety, among other titles. Sticking with "Song of Myself," we're also lucky to have a 1974 recording of Aaron Kramer reading sections I-XXXII of that poem, and Basil Bunting winds things up with a 1977 reading at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he read "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" as part of a performance that also included work by Louis Zukofsky, Ezra Pound, Thomas Wyatt, and Edmund Spenser. You can click on any of the poets' names above to be taken right to the mentioned recordings.
Leslie Scalapino: Two Newly Segmented Recordings
We're wrapping up this week with a pair of newly-segmented recordings from Leslie Scalapino, who passed away eleven years ago this month.
First up is the poet and publisher's 1996 appearance on LINEbreak, hosted by Charles Bernstein. This thirty-minute radio program, originally recorded at SUNY-Buffalo, has been broken up into fourteen individual tracks, isolating read excerpts from texts including "The Front Matter, Dead Souls," "New Time," "Goya's LA," and "Deer Night," as well as thematic threads of their conversation on topics as diverse as "poetry in newspapers," "poetry in politics," "serial poetry," "sumo wrestlers," and Scalapino's dramatic works. It's a wonderful complement to her 2007 appearance on Bernstein's Close Listening program.
Then, we've also segmented the audio from Scalapino's final reading in March 2010, recorded at San Francisco's Small Press Distribution, which comes to us courtesy of Cloud House Poetry Archives. That event started with an introduction written by CAConrad and delivered by Samantha Giles, and then Scalapino's own introductory comments on the text from which she'd read, Floats Horse-Floats or Horse-Flows, published that same year by Starcherone. In total she reads a dozen selections from the book, including "a hartel," "asleep the dag appears," "hammer of horse ship," "a woman whorled," "no," "tea tree stars," "note," and "memory."
Two Rudy Burckhardt Films featuring Kenneth Koch
Today we're revisiting two remarkable films by Rudy Burckhardt, featuring his New York School compatriot Kenneth Koch that you can see on our PennSound Cinema page for filmmaker and photographer.
The earlier of the two, The Apple (1967), features a lyric and spoken interlude written by Koch, which was set to music by Tony Ackerman and Brad Burg, and sung by Kim Brody. In stop-motion and live action, it traces the sprawling adventures of its titular fruit. Running just one minute and fifty-four seconds, the film is nevertheless the subject of a marvelous essay by Daniel Kane — "Whimsy, the Avant-Garde and Rudy Burckhardt's and Kenneth Koch's The Apple" — in which he praises it for "the ways in which ideas of temporality, spontaneity, childishness, and parody are expressed within this tiny little film work," thus "revealing the latent and hilarious power of the whimsical affect."
The latter film, On Aesthetics (1999) has a sense of finality about it, coming during Burckhardt's last year and not long before Koch developed leukemia that would ultimately take his life in 2002. Running nine minutes and taking its name from the last poem in Koch's 1994 collection One Train, On Aesthetics — charmingly presented by "KoBu Productions" — features the poet's voice-over reciting the various micropoems contained under that title, from "Aesthetics of the Man in the Moon" and "Aesthetics of Creating Light" to "Aesthetics of Being with Child" and "Aesthetics of Echo," while Burckhardt's camera eye finds appropriate accompanying images, whether literary or abstract.
We're grateful to be able to share this work with our listeners, along with two other Burckhardt films: — The Automotive Story (1954) and Central Park in the Dark (1985) — which you can find here. Our Kenneth Koch author page also houses these films, along with a 1998 reading at our own Kelly Writers House and a few brief recordings from the St. Mark's Poetry Project.
Newly Segmented: Caroline Bergvall on Cross Cultural Poetics, 2015
The half-hour show, which initially aired on April 2, 2015, is focused on Bergvall's then-new book Drift (the second of three books rooted in the exploration and subversion of Middle English texts that also includes Meddle English and Alisoun Sings). After introductory comments and a discussion of the book's inspirations, the poet reads a lengthy excerpt consisting of sections 2–8 of "Seafarer." She then chats with Schwartz about a variety of topics, including "shifting the imaginaries of English," "balancing imagination and authenticity," usage of the English word "OK," and the concept of residency. She wraps up the program with "Closing Song."
You can click here to start exploring this fascinating conversation and reading, and don't miss out on the wide variety of recordings — of talks, performances, interviews, and more — spanning the impressive breadth of Bergvall's career on PennSound's Caroline Bergvall author page.
Jake Marmer Reads from and Discusses 'Cosmic Diaspora,' 2020
We close out this week with a new recording by Jake Marmer, made as part of an event celebrating his latest collection, Cosmic Diaspora. This virtual reading was held as part of the Sussman Poetry Program at our own Kelly Writers House on October 14, 2020.
This event takes place in two segments, with a reading from the book coming first. After introductory comments, Marmer reads a total of ten poems from the collection, including "Anima," "Turbine," "Testimony," "Warp Soliloquy," "Please Don't Panic at the Disco," "Content," and "Borscht." Then in the second half, Marmer discusses five of the poems he just read ("Circle Maker," "Anima," "Warp Soliloquy," "Content," and "Testimony") before closing with the poem "Tohu Bohu."
You'll find this new addition at the top of PennSound's Jake Marmer author page, which is home to a great many readings, performances, podcasts, interviews, and other events recorded between 2013 and the present.
New on Close Listening: Steve Clay in Conversation with Charles Bernstein, 2021
The latest episode in Charles Bernstein's long-running Close Listening series was recorded this past Monday and went live two days later. It features Granary Books publisher Steve Clay talking about the press' long and fruitful lifespan, as well as other projects he's undertaken. Here's Bernstein's write-up of the new episode:
Steve Clay is the publisher of Granary Books in New York. Granary specializes in limited edition artist's books and Steve also is an editor, curator, and archivist specializing in literature and art of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, also working with poets on placing their archives. He is the author or editor of several volumes including Intermedia, Fluxus, and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins with Ken Friedman, Threads Talk Series with Kyle Schlesinger, A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections about the Book & Writing with Jerome Rothenberg and A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980, with Rodney Phillips, the catalog of a magnificent show at NYPL.
To listen to this newest show, click here to visit PennSound's Close Listening series page and then scroll through the alphabetical listings. While you're there, be sure to check out some of the other programs (numbering more than a hundred) recorded between 2004 and the present.
Happy Birthday to Robin Blaser
The earliest document there is a 1965 reading in Vancouver, BC, which features "The Moth Poem" and "The Translator: a Tale." From the following decade, we have recordings from the University of British Columbia in 1970 and the San Francisco Poetry Center in 1976, along with the original raw audio for The Astonishment Tapes, recorded in Vancouver in the spring of 1974 and edited for eventual publication by Miriam Nichols under the title The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography with Robin Blaser and Friends (University of Alabama, 2015). Next, there's a 1986 appearance at the Portland Poetry Festival and Blaser's 1987 appearance at SUNY-Buffalo to deliver that year's Charles Olson Memorial Lectures, which concluded with a March 29th reading from his own work. Blaser would return to Buffalo for readings and lectures in 1991, 1993, and 1996, which are also available on his author page.
Other 90s-era recordings include a 1994 set at the Albany Writers Institute, 1995 readings at the University of British Columbia and the Kootenay School of Writing (where he'd also read in 1997), a 1997 appearance on the BBC Radio 3 program Night Waves hosted by Patrick Wright, and a lecture on Dante Alighieri delivered at Universita d'Annuzio that same year. The final years of Blaser's life are documented via a 2003 reading at Vancouver's Cultural Centre, a reading and talk at Woodland Pattern in 2004, and a 2008 conversation with Robert Hass at UC Berkeley, courtesy of Cloud House Poetry Archives, along with a trio of appearances on Cross-Cultural Poetics in 2003, 2004 and 2007 (a transcription of the first interview was published by Jacket2 in 2015), and in conjunction with that last visit, we've recently added video of Blaser's reading at Evergreen State College (home base of Cross Cultural Poetics and host Leonard Schwartz), which Leonard was kind enough to send our way. Last but certainly not least, Blaser's poem "A Bird in the House," was the subject of PoemTalk #113, featuring Kristin Prevallet, Jed Rasula, and Brian Teare, You can listen to all of the recordings mentioned above by clicking here.
PoemTalk #160: Two by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Filreis starts off his PoemTalk blog post announcing the new episode by establishing the publishing provenance for each poem: "'I Shall Forget You Presently' became widely available as one of the four sonnets presented at the end of the book A Few Figs from Thistles (first published in 1920). 'Love Is Not All' of 1931 was in Millay's collection of fifty-two sonnets, Fatal Interview." That timing is important as he notes, "When Fatal Interview was published in 1931, at the beginning of the worst phase of global economic depression, some reviewers noted that at a time of deep, massive deprivation there was no place for love sonnets." Filreis continues, "At the end of our discussion, the PoemTalk group considers whether indeed, on the contrary, there is a viable political reading of 'Love Is Not All.' It perhaps does convey a desperate general appetitiousness, and it ponders, more seriously than one might first notice, a willingness to sell private love for overall peace — to trade 'the memory of this night for food.'"
You can learn more about this latest program, read both poems, and listen to the podcast here. PoemTalk is a joint production of PennSound and the Poetry Foundation, aided by the generous support of Nathan and Elizabeth Leight. You can browse the full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, by clicking here.
Melvin B. Tolson on PennSound
Today we're taking a look at the recordings you can find on PennSound's Melvin B. Tolson author page.
The heart of this collection is a two-part career-spanning reading at Washington, D.C.'s Coolidge Auditorium, on October 18, 1965 — an event held in coordination with the Library of Congress — which serves as a fitting tribute to the influential poet, politician, and pedagogue, who'd pass away less than one year later. After a lavish introduction, Tolson starts with his debut collection, Rendezvous with America and hits many of the high points of his prestigious career, including his magnum opus, Dark Symphony, and Libretto for the Republic of Liberia, written during his time as that nation's poet laureate. Running just short of eighty minutes, Tolson's reading includes the poems "Sometimes," "The Gallows," "If You Should Lie to Me," "The Primer for Today," "The Dictionary of the Wolf," "Harlem Gallery," "The Birth of John Henry," "Ballad on Old Satchmo," and "The Sea Turtle and the Shark," among others, with commentary provided along the way.
This retrospective performance is nicely complemented by a second recording of excerpts from Dark Symphony, for which, unfortunately, we have no information regarding its recording date and location. Nevertheless we're grateful to be Tolson's estate and the Library of Congress for the opportunity to present these materials to our listeners. Click here to visit PennSound's Melvin B. Tolson author page.
Soleida Ríos Reads "Pies de Palma," 2021
Here's a new recording from Cuban poet Soleida Ríos reading her well-known poem "Pies de Palma" to start the new week off in fine fashion. Recorded in Havana this past February, the track comes to us courtesy of Kristin Dykstra, who also sent along this recent photo of the poet (taken by Omar Sanz). A tribute to Cuba's national tree, the Silken Palm (roystonea lenis), "Pies de Palma" makes music of its myriad uses and unique features:
Boards ceilings canes baskets wrappings
for tobacco plants
bundled fan palm: nourishing sprout and heart
oleaginous fruit. I am:
a Cuban Royal Palm, tall, coronated, barefoot, unarmed
sessile flowers, pinnatisect leaves
This recording of "Pies de Palma" joins a modest set of recordings on PennSound's Soleida Ríos author page — a very old page, created in 2004 before our official launch — including a 15 minute interview with Rosa Alcalá from 2001 and a half-dozen poems. Click here to start listening.
Hanif Abdurraqib: New Author Page
We're bringing this week to a close with a new author page for poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib, which is anchored by his virtual reading at our own Kelly Writers House on April 19th. Video footage from that event is available, along with segmented MP3 audio that you can stream or download. In the first half, Abdurraqib reads the ten-part poem "All the TV Shows Are About Cops," which is split into individual tracks. The Q&A session that followed has also been split into thematic segments, such as "on the writing process," "on making an office space," "tips for aspiring cultural critics," "on being influenced by his favorite books," and "on sneakers."
These new tracks join an old favorite, a January 2019 reading of "USAvsCuba," taken from his debut collection The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016). Listeners can read along with that poem in Western Beefs here. To listen to all of the aforementioned recordings, click here.
In Memoriam: Gary Lenhart (1947–2021)
We're a little late hearing about the passing of poet, editor, and teacher Gary Lenhart, who succumbed to cancer on March 31st, but didn't want to miss the opportunity to commemorate his life and work. A thoughtful obituary in Valley News notes that "Ever attentive to his craft, he was working on poems and a book review the last morning of his life." It continues:
To his devoted wife and daughter he was the fine mind that enlivened theirs, the wry wit that brightened their days, and the heart so true they never felt alone. He lived with deep personal integrity and unfailing courtesy to all. He was, in the words of one friend, the best of men. His broad knowledge and inventive attention to thought and language combined with a profound love of poetry to inform the rich body of work he left behind.
PennSound listeners might best be acquainted with Lenhart through his work as (co-)editor of the journals Mag City and Transfer or as part of the group behind the groundbreaking Public Access Poetry, and while the videos on our PAP series page are currently unavailable due to the absence of Adobe Flash, we're currently working to make them — and our other video holdings — available as soon as possible. Lenhart appeared a total of three times on the program, reading on July 14, 1977; February 14, 1978; and July 27, 1978. We also enthusiastically direct our listeners towards "'Readers of the Future' Would Be Interested," at Jacket2, an astounding interview with Lenhart conducted by Ben Olin, which provides a lot of inside information on the development and history of Public Access Poetry.
In a remembrance posted last month, Michael Lally recalls that Lenhart "was always a calm but radiant presence on the downtown scene and I admired him a lot." Certainly, many others felt the same, and we send our condolences to Lenhart's friends, family, colleagues, and fans, as well as thank him for his visionary work with poetry and media, prefiguring projects like our own.