James Schuyler "on the Day Before March First"

"It's February 28, and that means it's a good day to read and think about one of my favorite James Schuyler poems, 'February,' which takes place 'on the day before March first.'" Thus begins a post by Andrew Epstein on his indispensable blog, "Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets" published a year ago today. What follows is an excerpt from Epstein's latest book, Attention Equals Life, which is concerned with the poem's origins and its place within Schuyler's ouvre. 

As Epstein notes, "'February' seems to have been a breakthrough for Schuyler, ushering in his mature style and set of concerns;  years later, he decided to give it pride of place as the second poem in Freely Espousing, his debut full-length collection, published in 1969." He continues, telling us that it "was also one of only four poems by Schuyler included in The New American Poetry, the epochal 1960 anthology edited by Donald Allen, which ensured that it would become an early 'greatest hit' for the poet." He then moves on to discuss Schuyler's writing process:

"February" is one of the first of Schuyler's many "window" poems; it sets out to recount exactly what could be seen from his apartment window in New York during a wintry sunset, at precisely 5 P.M. "on the day before March first." Fortunately for us, Schuyler discussed the composition of this poem in a letter he wrote (and apparently never mailed) to a woman ("Miss Batie") who had written a fan letter to him about his poems.  In the letter, he explains that

the day on which I wrote the poem I had been trying to write a poem in a regular form about (I think) Palermo, the Palazzo Abatelli, which has splendid carved stone ropes around its doors and windows, and the chapels decorated by Serpotta, with clouds of plaster cherubs; the poem turned out laborious and flat, and looking out the window I saw that something marvelous was happening to the light, transforming everything.  It then occurred to me that this happened more often than not (a beautiful sunset I mean) and that it was 'a day like any other,' which I put down as a title.  The rest of poem popped out of its own accord.  Or so it seems now.

By deciding to abandon the other, unwritten hymn to Palermo and Serpotta's baroque cherubs, and by choosing to write "February" instead, Schuyler seems to have stumbled upon a recognition about subject matter, about attentiveness to daily life, and about form.

You can read more of Epstein's observations, along with the poem in its entirety here.  You can listen to Schuyler read the poem as part of a reading at New York's Dia Art Foundation on November 15, 1988 — where he was introduced by close friend and collaborator John Ashbery — on PennSound's James Schuyler author page.

Jonas Mekas: Two Newly Segmented Readings

It's been just over a month since we said farewell to legendary filmmaker and poet Jonas Mekas and announced his newly-created PennSound author page. Today, thanks to the hard work of PennSound staffer Luisa Healey, we're able to present segmented versions of our two Segue Series recordings.

The earlier of those two readings, from the Bowery Poetry Club in 2006, starts with the host's introduction of Mekas and his own opening comments, before he reads two pieces: "End of the Year Letter to Friends" and "Three Love Poems." The latter Segue reading, taken from Zinc Bar in 2015 starts in a similar fashion before Mekas launches into the lengthy piece "A Requiem for Manual Typewriter."

You can listen to both of these readings, as well as  a brief recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his classic "Sunflower Sutra" from one of Mekas' films, on our Jonas Mekas PennSound author page.

Rae Armantrout: Philly and NYC Readings 2018

We wanted to make sure you didn't miss out on this pair of readings by Rae Armatrout recorded last fall on an east coast swing that took her through Philadelphia and New York City.

The earlier of the two recordings is from our own Kelly Writers house on October 17th. Armantrout's 37 minute reading is available in both audio and streaming video format, with a brief supplemental mobile video shot from the front row. Then, from three nights later, we have Armantrout's Segue Series reading at New York's Zinc Bar. This 21 minute set is available in MP3 format only.

These two latest additions are only a small part of the massive archive of recordings you'll find on our Rae Armantrout author page, which is home to numerous readings, talks, interviews, and other miscellaneous recordings going all the way back to 1979. To start browsing click here.

PoemTalk #133: on Divya Victor's "W Is for Walt Whitman's Soul"

Earlier this week, we released episode #133 in the PoemTalk Podcast Series, which focuses on poet and Jacket2 Guest Editor Divya Victor's poem "W Is for Walt Whitman's Soul," taken from the alphabetical "Foreign Terms" series that concludes Victor's 2017 collection, Kith. Joining host Al Filreis for this program is a panel that includes (from left to right) Mytili Jaganathan, Angela Carr, and Anna Strong Safford

Filreis' PoemTalk blog post announcing this new episode starts by offering this very poetic appraisal of what's going on in Victor's poem: "The poem powerfully conveys the sense of inexorable forward motion in the relationships the poet progressively builds between and among words — and conceptually between and among things: those myriad elements of the specific and special thinginess colonial extraction has enabled. Increasingly dominant sounds, as words of the poem go by, compress those sounds; the already looted space between words (as read aloud, as thought about) closes up, so that one senses in the ears — and verily in the mouth — a dense intention of the dumping of a sonic motherlode." "What of Whitman?" he continues. "The work here might well be, the group considers, something akin to this: a notion of the poet as Suez Canal. In a sense, Mytili notes, the whole project of English derives from the colonial era, Whitman being on the hyperenthusiastic, plundering end of the word-extracting spectrum. Yet it is, of course, a spectrum."

You can read more of Filreis' introductory note here, and browse supplemental materials related to the poem and program produced for the free, open, non-credit online course ModPo, which Filreis had led for the past several years. The full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, can be found here.

A Tribute to Anne-Marie Albiach, IMEC, Paris, 2018

Thanks to the efforts of Pierre Doumergue, we are very happy to be able to share these videos of a tribute event for Anne-Marie Albiach, which was held at IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l’édition Contemporaine) in Paris, France on November 26, 2015. Running 69 minutes in total, there are four videos featuring three "interveners": Abigail Lang, Rémi Bouthonnier and Jean-Marie Gleize, with Gleize's portion split into two video files. 

You can click here to watch, and don't forget that almost exactly a month ago we announced another new addition to PennSound's Anne-Marie Albiach author page: a France Culture radio interview with Jean Daive recorded in 1978, which is exclusively for our French-speaking listeners. That's one of three France Culture broadcasts available there, taken from the radio program "Poésie sur parole," with the other two recorded in 2003 and 2004, respectively. There are also several home-made recordings of the poet, including a 1993 reading of « H II » linéaires and a 2005 recordings of ETAT and UNE GÉOMÉTRIE (triptych), along with a 2000 reading as part of the Paris-based Steel Bar reading series, and shorter recordings made for Grey Suit and Kenning. Charles Bernstein's 2012 Jacket2 tribute poet to the poet is a great starting point to learn more about Albiach's life and work.

Kathy Acker, "Redoing Childhood"

Today we're taking a dip into the PennSound archives to showcase Kathy Acker's album Redoing Childhood (Kill Rock Stars, 1999), which we first added to the site in December 2007. Here's what our original PennSound Daily announcement said about the record:

Produced by Hal Willner (William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lou Reed), the album features musical accompaniment by feminist punk band Tribe 8, as well as David Cunningham (keyboards), Ralph Carney (reeds), Joe Gore (guitar), Steve Bernstein (trumpet) and Kenny Wollesen (drums), who slip effortlessly between time signatures and genres, providing a roiling bed of sound which perfectly complements Acker's seething delivery. Willner originally recorded Acker's contribution in 1993 — a time in which the recurring references to President Bush were a not-yet-faded memory of a graceless political era — and though she worried about the timeliness of such allusions during the general political torpor of the Clinton era, they're eerily fitting now, a decade after her death.

Of course, our current political climate seemed practically unimaginable way back then, and Acker's strident and uncompromising perspectives are, no doubt, even more vital then than now. Hindsight also provides us with the opportunity to share these observations on the album and its origins, via Chris Kraus' After Kathy Acker: A Biography, which explains how Acker reframed large chunks of her recent book, My Mother: Demonology as "as an avant-operatic spoken-word CD":

Each take was done virtually nonstop, and Ralph Carney recalls Acker jumping up and down in the booth while Tribe 8 played. When it was finally released two years after her death, Redoing Childhood revealed a new dimension to Acker's work. "Her voice in general, there was something so lush and luscious and embracing and sexy," Ira Silverberg told the Seattle Weekly. "Kathy had rock star energy about her. [Her performance] had less to do with the punctuation of the actual sentences than with her almost reinterpreting her own work in a lyrical way … Kathy just got it."

You can listen to the complete album, along with a 1978 Segue Series reading (with selections from Blood and Guts in High School), recordings from SUNY-Buffalo in 1979 and 1995, and several recordings surrounding Acker's late novel, Pussy, King of the Pirates, including the 1995 album of the same name she recorded with the Mekons by clicking here. As always, we're grateful to Matias Viegener and the Acker estate for their permission to share these recordings with our listeners.

A Celebration of Gerrit Lansing, 2018

This week marked the one year anniversary of the passing of poet Gerrit Lansing, so it's a fitting occasion to highlight this recently-added tribute reading held in his honor in Kingston, NY on October 20th of last year.

The event begins with introductions by Michael Bisio (who also performs) and Pierre Joris, then continues with sets by Tamas Panitz, T. Urayoán Noel, Nicole Peyrafitte, George Quasha, Joris, Don Byrd, Charles Stein, and Robert Kelly. You can listen to the complete event, which has conveniently been broken into individual MP3 files here, and while you're at it, why not take a spin through the recordings of Lansing we're honored to host on his PennSound author page, including a wonderful, intimate Close Listening program with Charles Bernstein and special guest Susan Howe, which was recorded at Lansing's Gloucester, MA home in 2012. Those wanting to learn more about the late poet should also check out the "Mass: Gerrit Lansing," feature at Jacket2, which is part of Jim Dunn and Kevin Gallagher's sprawling and marvelous 2012 feature, “Mass: Raw Poetry from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

Hannah Weiner: Two Newly Segmented 1983 Recordings

Thanks to the efforts of PennSound staffer Luisa Healey, today we're happy to present two newly-segmented recordings from Hannah Weiner. Both are related to her October 10, 1983 appearance at the Ear Inn as part of the Segue Series: first, there's her complete set, which, after introductory comments, showcases selections from her 1984 Sun and Moon book SPOKE. Weiner reads "AUG 1," "AUG 3," "SEPT 4," "SEPT 6," and "SEPT ^survive 11." The second recording, an excerpt released on the 1994 CD Live at the Ear Inn, comes from that same reading.

As Patrick Durgin notes in his introduction to a recent edition of Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal, the poet made a distinction between SPOKE and her contemporaneous project, WEEKS: "SPOKE was written clairvoyantly. I saw the words in small groups on my forehead and wrote them down in a notebook. The large words were seen on the notebook page." In Weiner's "Working Notes," published in the January 1987 issue of HOW(ever): "I wrote it one summer late at night, in bed, in my mother's home." You can read the book in its entirety at Eclipse here, and  of course, don't forget that you can browse through an impressive archive of this important poet's work on PennSound's Hannah Weiner author page.

Hanif Abdurraqib reads "USAvCuba," 2019

Here's an exciting new addition to the PennSound Singles database to start the week off — Hanif Abdurraqib reading "USAvCuba" from his debut collection The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016).

Columbus-born Abdurraqib is a formidable poet and critic perhaps best known for the follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), which was hailed as one of the year's best books by as diverse an array of tastemakers as The Chicago Tribune, Esquire, NPR, the CBC, Buzzfeed, Paste, Pitchfork, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Go Ahead in the Rain, his biography of hip-hop legends A Tribe Called Quest, was just released to wide acclaim.

An homage to Frank O'Hara's infectious style, "USAvCuba" makes clever use of the late poet's time-stamp aesthetics ("It is 3:15 on a Saturday & I am in a car on I-95 on the way to the soccer game") and the deft wordplay seen in poems like "Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed]" ("Nate is riding shotgun which is also the name for when you plunge something sharp into a can of beer & split open its aluminum shell before swallowing its urgent sacrifice"), all the while updating his voice for the 21st century and avoiding the pitfalls and cliches of so many bad O'Hara imitations. That said, not even O'Hara could come up with a line as breathtaking as "David Ruffin is singing I wish it would rain & his voice is unfolding long & slow in the backseat like an eager lover & there is a whole history of men demanding the sky to shake at their command & I’m not saying out loud whether or not I believe in god & I’m not saying out loud what I know the rain means I’m only saying that I need this dry summer to stay dry I’m only saying that the tickets to this soccer game cost as much as my best suit & kickoff is at 3:30."

You can listen to the poem in its entirety here and read along at Western Beefs here. With any luck, we'll be able to showcase more of Abdurraqib's poetry in the future.

In Memoriam: Kathleen Fraser (1935–2019)

Unfortunately, we have yet another tragic death in the poetry world to report: news broke this morning that much-beloved poet, critic, and editor Kathleen Fraser had passed away at the age of 83. Nightboat Books, which is set to publish Fraser's Collected Poems in the near future confirmed the news and praised her for "ma[king] a unique, unparalleled contribution to American literature." The note continues, "She saw her work as 'making textures and structures of poetry in the tentative region of the untried.' Or as The New York Times said: 'Fraser inhabits a room unquestionably her own, outside any school of poetry.'"

It's a testament to Fraser's longevity that the body of recordings found on her PennSound author page only represents about half of her writing life, which began in the mid-60s with her debut Change of Address (1966), which was soon followed by an appearance in the Paul Carroll-edited 1968 anthology The Young American Poets (where I first encountered her work). Our earliest recording is a 1982 reading at San Francisco's Intersection for the Arts, and you'll find many readings from familiar sources there — a half-dozen Segue Series readings at practically every venue the series has called home, readings from SUNY-Buffalo, the Kootenay School of Writing, the St. Mark's Talks series, Cross Cultural Poetics, and our own Kelly Writers House — but what I'd most like to highlight are some of the more unconventional recordings, including a pair of Kelsey Street Press recordings featuring Fraser talking to Suzanne Stein about her own work and to Hadley Guest about her mother, Barbara, for example, or a 2009 reading with Erica Hunt as part of Belladonna's ADFEMPO event. Fraser was also the subject of an early PoemTalk episode (#13, focusing on her poem, "The Cars"). You can browse through all of these remarkable materials by clicking here.

Kristin Prevallet and Stevent Brent: What She Said (2017)

Here's a strange and wonderful recent addition to our author page for Kristin Prevallet: a 2017 collaboration with musician Steven Brent, titled "What She Said," which first appeared on Brent's 2018 album, Even the Failures Are Beautiful, which you can listen to in its entirety here.

In "What She Said," Prevallet presents us with a lengthy inventory of questions asked of an unnamed "she," which casts a wide net, encompassing all manner of somatic and psychological experience, and occasionally folds back on itself, before evolving into a more objective narrative in the final section. It's undergirded by Brent's subtle soundscape, which blends a foundation of menacing drones, atonal guitar chime, and orchestral gravity with periodic overlays of ticking typewriters and threshing clacks, and Prevallet's performance here is just as musical and important, wavering from sedate calm to a more fervent delivery, sometimes speaking naturalistically and other times veering into stop-start Creeley-style hesitations, which interact beautifully with the sounds around it. Click here to listen now. It will be nine and a half minutes well spent.

Happy Birthday, Gertrude Stein

February 3rd marks the 145th anniversary of Gertrude Stein's birth, and that's a wonderful reason to reacquaint our listeners with the Stein-related resources that are available at both PennSound and Jacket2.

Our Gertrude Stein author page, edited by the late scholar Ulla Dydo, is home to all known extant recordings of the iconic author, including the contents of her 1956 Caedmon album Gertrude Stein Reads From Her Works — which were recorded during the winter of 1934–35 in New York City — and several tracks not used for the album. The other large body of material you'll find there are Stein's sessions for Columbia University's Speech Lab, uncovered by our own Chris Mustazza several years back.

We're also very proud to be able to share a 1947 recording of Virgil Thompson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts, based on Stein's work of the same name, which came to us courtesy of John Whiting. In addition to complete audio of the performance and the full text of its libretto, we've provided listeners with a link where they can see a brief clip from the production, which includes gorgeous sets by Florine Stettheimer.

Beyond that, Stein has been the subject of two PoemTalk programs: episode #10 from 2008, which addresses "Portrait of Christian Bernard," and episode #90 from 2015, which discusses "How She Bowed to Her Brother." Audio and video from the 2014 Kelly Writers House celebration "Tender Buttons at 100" rounds out our holdings, along with a link to "A Little Bit of a Tumblr," which is quite possibly the only single-serving website influenced by Stein and her work.

Over at our sister site, Jacket2, you'll want to check out Charles Bernstein's ongoing dossier, "Gertrude Stein's War Years; Setting the Record Straight," and Julia Bloch's micro-reviews feature, "Twenty-Two on Tender Buttons." Readers might also enjoy Rachel Galvin's review of Stein's Stanzas in Meditation: The Corrected Edition or Joshua Schuster's 2011 article, "The Making of Tender Buttons," and you can browse our complete archive of commentary posts tagged with Stein's name here.

In Memoriam: Sean Killian

Sadly, we're closing this week of mourning with news of the passing of one more poet: Sean Killian, who succumbed quickly to metastatic bladder cancer just four weeks after receiving his diagnosis. Private tributes have come in by the likes of Bruce Andrews, Sharon Mesmer, and Bruce Kaplan, among others, and in honor of Killian's life and work, we've created a PennSound author page for him.

There, you'll find a pair of recordings from the Segue Series — the earlier recorded at the Ear Inn on October 9, 1993; the latter from a March 23, 2001 reading at Double Happiness — where he read with Elizabeth Robinson and Mesmer, respectively. We send our condolences to those who knew and loved Killian, and hope that February will offer more opportunities for celebrating life than mourning those we've lost. To start listening to the Sean Killian readings mentioned above, click here.