PoemTalk #143: on Hannah Weiner's "Clairvoyant Journal"

Last Friday, we released episode #143 in the PoemTalk Podcast Series, which addresses two entries from Hannah Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal — "those composed on April 1 ('April Fool   BRAVE GIRL') and April 4 ('DONT COMPLAIN / April 4')." Joining host Al Filreis for this program is a panel including Charles Bernstein, Kate Colby, and Davy Knittle.

After discussing the origins and various editions of Clairvoyant Journal, Filreis' PoemTalk blog post on this episode frames the work with one key question: "What is clairvoyant about this text — or more generally about Hannah Weiner's seeing words? Her seeing was plain sight but also visionary perception. The group grapples with this mode — words as seen — through the striking daily and domestic (it is a journal or diary, after all) particularities of augury, foresight, and divination on view on the page by readers, and heard by listeners of the remarkable three-voice performance." "Augury?" he asks his readers, before offering an assured "Yes." 

You can read more about the program, find copies of the entries under discussion here, and much more info on Clairvoyant Journal — as both a text in and of itself and as a score of sorts for multi-vocal performance — by clicking here. The full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, can be found here.

Welcoming Winter with Bernadette Mayer

Winter will officially begin at 11:19PM EST tonight, well into the darkest night of the year. The winter solstice has long been a source of cultural inspiration and poetic inspiration as well, with one of the most notable recent manifestations being Bernadette Mayer's iconic Midwinter Day, which celebrates its forty-first birthday this year. While not published until 1982, Mayer famously wrote the book — hailed by Alice Notley as "an epic poem about a daily routine ... sedate, mundane, yet marvelous" — in its entirety while marking the the winter solstice at 100 Main Street in Lennox, Massachusetts on December 22, 1978.

As Megan Burns notes in her Jacket Magazine essay on the book: "A long held tradition on Midwinter's Day was to let the hearth fire burn all night, literally keeping a light alive through the longest night of winter as a source of both heat and a symbol of inspiration to come out the other side of the long night closer to spring and rebirth. It is fitting that a poem about surviving death and the intimacy of the family would be centered around this particular day that traditionally has focused on both. The hearth is the center of the home where the family gathers, where the food is cooked and where warmth is provided. Metaphorically, the poem Midwinter Day stands in for the hearth gathering the family into its folds, detailing the preparation of food and sleep and taking care of the family's memories and dreams."

Mayer read a lengthy excerpt from the book at a Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn on May 26th of the following year, which you can listen to on her PennSound author page along with a wide array of audio and video recordings from the late 1960s to the present. 

Angela Carr: New Wexler Studio Session, 2018

This week we're highlighting a trio of newly posted recordings made in our own Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House during the fall semester. Today we're closing things out with a short set by Angela Carr recorded on October 18, 2018.

Carr's set consists of four poems in total: "Other Signs," "First Signs," an excerpt from Signs of Interest and Currency, and an unnamed poem starting "When I board the train ahead of Iris..." These recordings are our sole holdings by Carr, which is why you'll find them on our Singles page, along with many other stellar recordings from poets we don't have enough material from to create proper author pages. You can listen in by clicking here, and you can browse through our Singles page by clicking here.

Kate Colby: New Wexler Studio Session, 2018

This week we're highlighting a trio of newly posted recordings made in our own Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House. Today, we're focusing on an extensive session with Kate Colby made on October 25, 2018.

Colby's set includes twenty-six poems in just over twenty-three minutes. They include "Green Flash," "Nature," "The Lesson," "Vessel," "Too Late," "Beauty," "Senescence," "Survivor," "Artificial Light," "Catch of the Day," "Aftermath," "Air Lock," "Tartarus," "Cold Comfort," "How I Look in the Mirror," "Shackleton, "Ars Poetica," and "A Diamond Is Forever."

These new recordings can be found on PennSound's Kate Colby author page, along with a career-spanning Wexler Studio Session from 2016 (covering selections from six collections: Unbecoming Behavior, Beauport, Blue Hole, Fruitlands, Return of the Native, and The Arrangements) and a half-dozen other full-length readings from 2011 to the present. You can listen in by clicking here.

erica kaufman: New Wexler Studio Session, 2018

This week we're highlighting a trio of newly posted recordings made in our own Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House. We start today with a new set by erica kaufman recorded on November 5, 2018.

In total, kaufman recorded seven poems for this twenty-two minute session, starting with the long poem "Bad Habit (for CAConrad)," followed by "Instant Classic on Contingence." The remainder of kaufman's set consists of selections from her project "Post Classic," starting with "an invocation" and then continuing with four more installments from the series.

You can hear these new poems on PennSound's erica kaufman author page, which is also home to a diverse array of recordings by the poet spanning the past fifteen years, from readings to interviews, panel talks, podcasts, and much, much more. Click here to start browsing.

Happy Birthday to Emily Dickinson!

Early December must be when formidable poets are born — yesterday we celebrated Eileen Myles' 70th, and today would have been the 189th birthday of Emily Dickinson. For many years, a treasure trove of Dickinson materials was scattered throughout our site, but a few years ago we pulled together a proper PennSound author page for the poet, gathering selected resources from throughout our archives.

It should come as no surprise that Susan Howe would be prominent featured, and here you'll find complete talks on the poet from 1984 (from the New York Talk series) and 1990 (from SUNY-Buffalo) in addition to several smaller excerpts from larger talks pertaining to the poet. There's also a link to PoemTalk #32, which discusses Howe's interpretation of Dickinson's "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun."

Full series of lectures on Dickinson are also available from Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, both at the New College and dating from 1981 and 1985, respectively. Among other substantial contributions, there's also the 1979 Dickinson Birthday Celebration at the St. Mark's Poetry Project (featuring Jan Heller Levi, Charles Bernstein, Susan Leites, Charles Doria, Virginia Terrace, Barbara Guest, Madeleine Keller and Vicki Hudspith, Armand Schwerner, Karen Edwards, Jackson Mac Low, Maureen Owen, and Howe) and Rae Armantrout's 2000 presentation on Dickinson from "Nine Contemporary Poets Read Themselves Through Modernism."

You'll also find performances of individual Dickinson poems from John Richetti and Jeffery Robinson as well as brief excerpts of radio interviews — with John Ashbery, Guest, and Elizabeth Bishop — pertaining to the poet.

Our hope is that this page, which brings together disparate resources already available in our archives, will be a useful tool for teachers, students, and casual readers, as well as serious scholars. Click here to start exploring.

Happy 70th Birthday to Eileen Myles!

We send out birthday greetings to Eileen Myles, who reaches the momentous milestone of 70 today! There's no better way to celebrate than browsing through the selections available on PennSound's Eileen Myles author page. 

Whether you're an old fan or newly acquainted with Myles, a great place to start is their two-part 2009 Close Listening radio program with Charles Bernstein that includes readings of twenty-one poems from throughout their published work, and a half-hour conversation between the two. 

Our earliest recordings of Myles are three appearances on Public Access Poetry in the late 1970s. They're nicely complemented by a 1978 appearance on Susan Howe's WBAI radio program and an October 1978 Segue Series Reading at the Ear Inn — one of seven total Segue Series appearances from the 1970s to the present. That's followed by a 1981 reading at the St. Mark's Poetry Project, a pair of Belladonna* readings from 2003 and 2009, visits to our own Kelly Writers House in 2010 and 2016 (when they were one of that year's Kelly Writers House Fellows). Other full-length readings include sets from the Dia Art Foundation, Mills College's Contemporary Writers Series, the ICA in Philadelphia, the California College of the Arts, the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona (via POG Sound), LA Lit, the CUNY Graduate Center, Basilica Soundscape, and the Penn Book Center, and there are also numerous individual tracks scattered over the past five decades.

Certainly, the promise of the poet's early writing and the audacity of their 1992 presidential campaign have flourished fully in our new century, with Myles taking their rightful place as one of our era's most influential poets, as well as one of our community's greatest ambassadors to lay audiences. Therefore we not only celebrate them today, but wish them many happy returns!

Claude Royet-Journoud: Close Listening Conversation with Charles Bernstein

Our latest addition to the site is Charles Bernstein's recent Close Listening conversation with French poet Claude Royet-Journoud, which was recorded in Paris late last month. In his Jacket2 commentary post announcing the episode, Bernstein offers this summation: "I recorded this Close Listening conversation with Claude Royet-Journoud in Paris on November 24, 2019. We talked about his early years in London, his editing of Siècle à mains, meeting Anne-Marie Albiach, his extraordinary poetry interview program for France Culture, as well as his trips to the United States."

One of the more notable recordings on PennSound's Claude Royet-Journoud author page is the poet's November 3, 1984 reading with Keith Waldrop at the Ear Inn. Waldrop reads his translations of La Notion d'Obstacle alongside the French originals, and to close out the set, Royet-Journoud reads prose excerpts from book three of Les Objets Contiennent l'Infini. Strangely enough, segmenting this reading was one of the very first projects I undertook after starting at PennSound and it's wonderful to revisit it now. You'll also find a 1974 documentary film on the poet that also features Edmond Jabés and Lars Fredrikson, along with a 1995 reading at SUNY-Buffalo as part of the First Poetics Program French Poetry Festival, a 2008 video portrait by Bernstein, a 2012 lecture in Paris, and a pair of 2016 videos celebrating the release of La finitude des corps simples. Click here to start listening.

Congratulations to Premio Velázquez de Artes Plásticas Winner Cecilia Vicuña

We could not be happier for the one and only Cecilia Vicuña, who — in the words of no less respected a source than The New York Times — "is having a new North American moment," though we'd amend that worthy praise to "worldwide" instead, particularly with the recent news that the she's won the Premio Velázquez de Artes Plásticas for 2019. As ARTnews explains, this prize, which is "given out by the Spanish Ministry of Culture to an artist based in the country or from the Ibero-American Community of Nations" is "Spain's most prominent art award." The jury hailed Vicuña's "outstanding work as a poet, visual artist and activist” along with her “multidimensional art that interacts with the earth, written language, and weaving.”

As ARTnews attests, this well-deserved honor is one of several recent accolades for Vicuña, including her nomination for the the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize and work that "figures in the Museum of Modern Art’s rehang that debuted last month." This week also saw a lavish profile in The Times — "For Cecilia Vicuña, 'Consciousness Is the Art'" — which centers on About to Happen, which is now taking Miami by storm after previous stops in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Berkeley. One especially fascinating passage in the article describes the epicenter of Vicuña's lifelong relationship with art and nature:

While the public’s attention may have shifted in recent years, the artist notes that her work has held to the same themes for more than half a century, going back to a certain January day in 1966, when she was 17. She vividly recalls standing on the beach in Concón, Chile, not far from her hometown, Santiago, and in the shadow of an oil refinery that had been built on an ancient Andean ritual site. 

She suddenly became aware of how every object and action in the universe was connected. She picked up a stick, turned it vertically and stuck it in the sand. It was that moment, she said, when her art began. 

"When I look at these little things, I immediately see in them what they want to be, what they can be," Ms. Vicuña said. "I see this potentiality of place, of balance, of asymmetry. This is what moves me."

Whether you're new to Vicuña or an old fan, it's a wonderful time to take in the many varied materials available on her PennSound author page. There you'll find more than two dozen complete readings, talks, and interviews, from as early as 1994 up to last year. Given the visual impact of Vicuña's work, it's fitting that many of these recordings include video components. Taken together, they serve as a document of her varying modes and aesthetic evolution over a long and fruitful career. I've only had the pleasure of seeing Vicuña perform once — her 2008 Writers Without Borders event at our own Kelly Writers House — and more than a decade later I'm still struck by the profound bodily sense of calm and connectedness that she elicited that evening. If you've never had a chance to witness this artist first-hand, then here's a wonderful chance to see if you might have a similar experience, albeit vicariously. Click here to start browsing.

Congratulations to National Book Award Winner Arthur Sze

We send our heartiest congratulations to Arthur Sze, whose Sight Lines was recently awarded the National Book Award for Poetry, beating out stiff competition that included Jericho Brown's The Tradition, Toi Derricotte's I: New and Selected Poems, Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic, and Carmen Giménez Smith's Be Recorder. Mark Wunderlich presented the award to Sze at the ceremony late last month. Here's what he had to say:

The great wit Max Beerbohm wrote that the most difficult thing about being a poet was deciding what to do with the other twenty-three and a half hours of the day. But I can tell you that the greatest difficulty poets face is having to withstand the pointless public and private arguments about poetry's relevance to our culture. Writing poetry is an essential human activity — like dancing, or making music — and as long as the moon rises in the night sky, or people love each other, or break each other's hearts — poetry will matter. Having read a large cross section of it this past year, I can tell you that poetry is essential to our national character, and in our country — with its fractiousness, its vulgarity and cupidity — we are also a nation capable of great sensitivity, refinement, and generosity of spirit, and those best qualities are possessed by our nation's poets who show us what we all might be capable of feeling and knowing and saying. America is a nation of great poets, and it is important for us to see them as the treasure that they are. 

We're proud to count Sze as part of our archive, with a modest collection of recordings available on his PennSound author page. They include two appearances on Leonard Schwartz's Cross Cultural Poetics program in 2004 and 2010. In the earlier program, Sze read from The Redshifting Web as well as his volume of Chinese translations, The Silk Dragon, while in the latter, he shared work from his anthology Chinese Writers on Writing. These two shows bookend a 2006 visit to our own Kelly Writers House, where Sze also read from The Redshifting Web along with his later book, Quipu. You can listen to all of the aforementioned recordings by clicking here.