Anya Lewin: 'How to Be European,' 2007

We're taking another deep dive into the PennSound archives today to rediscover Anya Lewin's short film How to Be European, which we added to the site in 2011.

Created during a three-month residency at InterSpace in Sofia, Bulgaria (as part of 2007's At Home in Europe Project, which also included artists' residencies in Norway, Latvia, and the UK), How to Be European was inspired by Lewin's lessons in Bulgarian with Boris Angelov. "The lessons question who learns and who teaches and whether European identity exists for anyone but Americans?," she explains. "The work uses a mixed methodology of pre-written Socratic dialogues, bad acting, experimental visual techniques, educational television, obscure references and poetic news reading and covers concepts such as time, language, economics, flow and mobility, dog watching, and cultural presentation."

Lewin then considers the broader implications of these ideas: "Imagine a school where one learns how to be European in a changing Europe. Migration flows from East to West to East again. The EU is growing, yet doesn't include every 'European' country. It is getting more and more complicated to understand what European is and most importantly how to act European? In 1974 the sociologist Erving Goffman published his book Frame Analysis, which examined the way behaviour changes depending on the context. In a classroom we know how to act as teacher and student; can we extend this idea to Europe? When countries enter the frame of the EU do they become European?"

You can watch How to Be European on Lewin's PennSound author page, where you'll also find a number of supplemental links, including her homepage, where more of her work is on display.

PoemTalk #174: on Sawako Nakayasu's 'Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From'

Yesterday we launched episode #174 in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which tackles four poems from Sawako Nakayasu's 2020 collection Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From (Wave Books): "Girl A's Peanuts and Girl D's Mouthful," "Gun," "Girl in a Field of Flowers," and "Ten Girls in a Bag of Potato Chips." These titles were chosen by host Al Filreis and panelist Caroline Bergvall — "who was then completing her residence as a Kelly Writers House Fellow" — while Henry Steinberg and Bethany Swann round out the guests for this program.

In his Jacket2 blog post announcing the new episode Filreis notes that "Ten Girls in a Bag of Potato Chips" was presented in Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From in "a French translation by Geneve Chao and a Japanese translation by Miwako Ozawa." These translations are available in the PDFs of each poem that accompany the program as well as in the recordings themselves, which "were made by Sawako Nakayasu just for PoemTalk, for which we are grateful."

You can listen to this latest program and read more about the show here. PoemTalk is a joint production of PennSound and the Poetry Foundation, aided by the generous support of Nathan and Elizabeth Leight. Browse the full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, by clicking here.

On the Anniversary of Frank O'Hara's Passing

Today marks the 56th anniversary of a tragic event that greatly shaped the course of 20th century American poetry: Frank O'Hara's death after being run over by a dune buggy on Fire Island. It's hard to imagine what wondrous work might have emerged had he been allowed to live as full a lifespan as his friends and compatriots, though as key New York School scholar Andrew Epstein points out in a fascinating piece published on the Poetry Foundation website, that "strange as it may seem now, O'Hara was better known at the time of his death for his work in the art world than as a writer." Nonetheless, as a core figure around whom the New York School's first and second generations buzzed, as well as a lifeline to other vital writers and artists in the city, O'Hara's death created a void that never could be filled.

Though we don't have the honor of being able to present O'Hara audio on our site (you can find some audio the website set up by the O'Hara estate), we are proud to be able to present video footage of the "Frank O'Hara / Ed Sanders" episode from Richard O. Moore's groundbreaking 1966 NET series USA: Poetry, and our archive is also home to a number of fascinating recordings relating to the poet's life and work. Chief among these is an April 5, 2011 discussion of O'Hara between Ron Padgett and John Ashbery, recorded as part of Harvard's Oral History Initiative, which is presented as both audio and video. Likewise, on our Marjorie Perloff author page, you'll find two radio appearances — the first part of a 2009 Close Listening broadcast, the second from a 1991 episode of A.L. Nielsen's Incognito Lounge — in which she discusses O'Hara's poetry, along with her 1999 Kelly Writers House talk, "Watchman, Spy and Dead Man: Frank O'Hara, Jasper Johns, and John Cage in the Sixties." Listeners will also be interested in a two-part tribute at the St. Mark's Poetry Project honoring the 10th anniversary of O'Hara's passing (MP3 / MP3) featuring Joe LeSeuer, Patsy Southgate, Jane Freilicher (reading James Schuyler), Anne Waldman as MC, Kenneth Koch (reading "Awake in Spain"), Carter Ratcliffe, Tony Towle, Patsy Southgate, David Shapiro, and Peter Schjedahl. The 2010 Poetry in 1960: a Symposium event curated by Al Filreis at our own Kelly Writers House features both Mel Nichols and Rachel Blau DuPlessis discussing books by O'Hara, and finally, you can hear Lytle Shaw discuss his book Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of Coterie on episode #119 of Cross Cultural Poetics.

Beyond that we have a number of poetic tributes, including Anne Waldman's "A Phonecall from Frank O'Hara" (MP3) and two poems from fervent O'Hara acolyte Ted Berrigan: "Frank O'Hara" (MP3) and "Frank O'Hara's Question from 'Writers and Issues' by John Ashbery" (MP3). There's also Ashbery's "Street Musicians" (MP3; which Epstein argues "can be read as a subtle elegy for O'Hara"). Finally, though we don't have a copy of it in our archives, we can't overlook Allen Ginsberg's paean to the fallen poet, "City Midnight Junk Strains."

Talking About David Antin, 2018

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We wrap up this week by highlighting another wonderful poetry-centric program hosted by New York's Artists Space. This time around we're remembering "Talking About David Antin," which featured Eleanor Antin, Charles Bernstein, Julien Bismuth, and Ellen Zweig, and which took place at the site on March 27, 2018.

Artists Space Director Jay Sanders provided introductory comments for the two-hour event, which featured individual talks by the aforementioned friends and colleagues, followed by a half-hour collaborative Q&A session.  As the venue's blurb for the event notes, "David Antin's influential work as a poet and artist led him to develop the hybridized format of 'talk poems' in the 1970s, whereby he would compose literary texts in an improvised, conversational manner in a public setting." Those assembled offer up "performances and interventions" that pay tribute to his prodigious, "multidimensional literary and artistic output."

You can enjoy video and audio versions of this event on PennSound's David Antin author page, which is home to forty years' worth of recordings highlighting his formidable talents, which are sorely missed.

I See Words: The Life and Work of Hannah Weiner, 2022

Today we're highlighting a very exciting event that recently took place at New York Artists Space, honoring the life and work of Hannah Weiner. 

Billed as I See Words: The Life and Work of Hannah Weiner, the June 18th event was described thusly: "In conjunction with the exhibition Attention Line, Artists Space and Zoeglossia present an afternoon celebration of Hannah Weiner's work and life. The event will include a multi-voice reading of Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal as well as a panel of thinkers and artists who were close to Weiner's visionary poetry practice."

Introduced by curator Jennifer Bartlett, the day started with screening of Hannah Weiner: A Film by Phill Niblock, 1974, recently revised to add closed captioning. That was followed by an ensemble reading from Clairvoyant Journal by Darcie Dennigan, Farnoosh Fathi, and James Sherry. Next up there was a panel discussion moderated by Lee Ann Brown with Susan Bee, Judith Goldman, Declan Gould, and Phill Niblock, before Charles Bernstein (Weiner's literary executor) brought the event to an end with closing remarks.

You can view a video recording of the complete proceedings on PennSound's Hannah Weiner author page, which is also home to a startling array of readings, performances, interviews, and more from the first stirrings of the poet's career in the late 1960s right up to her premature death in 1997, as well as a number of posthumous tributes. Click here to start exploring.

Two David Bromige Tribute Readings, 2018

We're starting this week off with a pair of 2018 events — one held in Philadelphia, the other in Vancouver, BC — honoring the late David Bromige and celebrating the then-recent publication of if wants to be the same as is: The Essential David Bromige.

The first of these two readings was held at our own Kelly Writers House on September 25th of that year, and featured an astounding line-up of friends, fans, and colleagues of the late poet, including Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Steve Dolph, Ryan Eckes, George Economou, Eli Goldblatt, Tom Mandel, Chris McCreary, Jason Mitchell, Bob Perelman, Frank Sherlock, and Orchid Tierney. That seventy-five minute event is available in both MP3 and streaming video formats.

Then we have video from an October 12th launch party for the new Bromige collection, which was held at the People's Co-op Bookstore in Vancouver. That event featured readings from Bob Perelman, Meredith Quartermain, George Bowering, Anakana Schojfield, Peter Quartermain, Fred Wah, Paul Debarros, Clint Burnham, Mackenzie Ground, and Chris and Joni Bromige. We've provided an embedded and segmented YouTube playlist for these recordings.

You'll find both of these events on PennSound's David Bromige author page, along with a 2009 tribute to the poet produced by Katherine Hastings of KRCB-FM in Rohnert Park, CA, and a vast array of recordings from 1998 as far back as 1964. Click here to start exploring.

Erica Hunt Reads with (and without) Marty Ehrlich, 2022

We're closing this week out with a rousing recent performance by poet Erica Hunt, which took place at an outdoor reading in Brooklyn on June 16th of this year. Our own Charles Bernstein was on the scene and captured two brief videos for PennSound. 

First up is a five-minute clip of "Natural Mathematics," with supple clarinet accompaniment from avant-garde woodwind doubler Marty Ehrlich, a frequent collaborator of Hunt's. That's followed by a short two-minute clip of Hunt reading excerpts from the "Veronica" series on her own. 

These two latest videos are wonderful additions to PennSound's Erica Hunt author page, which effectively traces her writing life from its beginning to the present. It starts with the 1983 short film, Evidence, directed by Phill Niblock and continues through the publication of her first collection, Local History, in 1993, all the way up to the 2021 celebration of her latest volume, Jump the Clock. Over that forty year span you'll find numerous readings as well as interviews, talks, and podcast appearances. Click here to start exploring.

Naomi Replansky on PennSound

While we don't keep official stats, I'm willing to say that the oldest living poet in the PennSound archives is Naomi Replansky, who at the venerable age of 104 is still giving readings and making headlines.

PennSound's Replansky author page is a true labor of love, inaugurated in 2015 when the late Richard Swigg (editor of our author page for Charles Tomlinson and a great friend of our site) sent along a pair of readings with the emphatic suggestion that the poet and translator, whose life in writing was then approaching 80 years, most certainly belonged as part of our archive. Those first two recordings — one session recorded for Lilith in 2009, the other a 2012 reading at Poets House in 2012 — were eventually joined by three more: a 2015 session capturing 37 poems from her Collected Poems and two sets also recorded in 2015 at the home of Marcia Eckert and Tom Haller. The first of which consists of 16 titles from her Collected Poems, while the other is comprised of favorite poems by other poets, including Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five," William Blake's "The Sick Rose," Emily Dickinson's "After Great Pain," Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar," Gerard Manley Hopkins' "I Wake and feel the Fell of Dark," Stevie Smith's "Not Waving but Drowning," and Paul Celan's "Death Fugue." 

Replansky's author page grew again in 2016 thanks to PennSound co-founders Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, who first visited the poet at her New York City home in April of that year to record a special episode of Bernstein's Close Listening program. Here's how he described their conversation at the time: "Naomi Replansky discusses hearing Gertrude Stein as a teenager, her friendship with Bertolt Brecht, the tension between her Communist affiliations and her poetry, her early publication and subsequent review in Poetry magazine, her life as a poet on the margins of the poetry world, and her reaction to the changes she has seen living 98 years." Replansky would return the favor in November of that year by traveling to our own Kelly Writers House for a reading. Beyond the aforementioned recordings, Replansky's author page also includes a 2017 of the poet reading work by her friend Grace Paley at Brooklyn's Books Are Magic, along with PoemTalk #111, wherein Bernstein, Filreis, Ron Silliman, and Rachel Zolf discuss two early poems, "In Syrup, In Syrup" and "Ring Song." To start exploring, click here.

In Memoriam: Noah Eli Gordon (1975–2022)

We start this week off with the unfathomably tragic news that the poet Noah Eli Gordon has passed away at the age of 47. As talented as he was prolific, his formidable body of work shows us a poet engaged in an ever-evolving process that constantly pushed the form forward. At the same time, Gordon was one of our contemporary era's great boosters which certainly described his work as an editor/publisher for Letter Machine Editions, Subito Press, and The Volta, but also extended into his relationships with students at the University of Colorado at Boulder and his many friends in the world of poetry. 

I only had the pleasure of meeting Noah twice but on both occasions he was so kind and welcoming you felt like you knew him forever. Certainly, he's the sort of person we needed more, not less of in this world. Did I mention that he was an amazing painter too? I eagerly awaited seeing each new canvas on Facebook. It was wonderful to see someone already so skilled as an author switch media and make new discoveries. I'm sorry. I know I'm rambling. It's just very hard to imagine this world without Noah Eli Gordon in it.

Our PennSound author page for Gordon is far too small for a poet with such prodigious output, but there are still some great readings there, from a home recording session of The Frequencies (engineered by Eric Baus) to sets at the St. Mark's Poetry Project, Boulder's Left Hand Reading Series, Chicago's Discrete Series, our own Emergency Series at KWH, Woodland Pattern, Denver's the Tattered Cover, the Dikeou Gallery, and the Bowery Poetry Club. Click here to start exploring.

Motion of Light: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany's Performative Poetics

Today we're highlighting "The Motion of Light," a day-long celebration of "Samuel R. Delany's Performative Poetics," which took place back in 2014 at our own Kelly Writers House.

One clear highlight of the day's proceedings is Charles Bernstein's Close Listening conversation with Delany, recorded live on stage at KWH. Here's how Bernstein described their conversation in his write-up of the program for Jacket2:

Samuel R. Delany talks with Charles Bernstein about genres, sex, and dyslexia in this wide-ranging conversation with the polymathic author. Delany addresses the role of fantasy and the bounds of imagination in his works and rebuts assumptions about the nature of genre writing.

Samuel R. Delany, Chip Delany to his friends, is an American author, professor, and literary critic. His work includes fiction, memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. Since January 2001, he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. For a short time before that he was a core faculty member of the UB Poetics Program.

In addition to Bernstein's public conversation with Delany, the day's festivities were documented and broken up into three large videos. In the first video, organizers Tracie Morris and Bernstein offer an introduction, which is followed by a screening and discussion of Fred Barney Taylor's film The Polymath, and talks by Kenneth James, Terry Rowden, and Ira Livingston. Video two starts with a talk by Morris, followed by Fred Moten's keynote address, and concludes with toasts by Frank Sherlock, Jena Osman, and Sarah Micklem, along with (via Morris) John Keene and Anne Waldman. Finally, the third video features the session for Bernstein's Close Listening program, and Delany's reading.

You'll find all of these recordings on PennSound's Samuel R. Delaney author page, which is also home to a pair of readings from the SUNY-Buffalo, a 2007 Kelly Writers House celebration of Hart Crane, and a recording of Delaney's 1967 radio drama, The Star-Pit, not to mention his appearance as a 2016 Kelly Writers House Fellow.

Jake Marmer Interviews Jerry Rothenberg and David Antin, 2015

Today we're highlighting a formidable meeting of the minds that took places back in 2015, when Jake Marmer interviewed two poetic titans: Jerome Rothenberg and David Antin. Recorded in San Diego on December 23, 2015, this sprawling interview runs more than ninety-minutes and has recently been broken up into fifteen discrete tracks by topic or theme.

In a 2016 Jacket2 commentary post, Al Filreis reprinted Marmer's introduction to the interview, which there was dubbed "Imagining a Poetry That We Might Find: Conversation with Jerome Rothenberg and David Antin." A few paragraphs in, he offers a simple summation of his intentions: "Rothenberg and Antin have been friends for nearly sixty-five years, and for the past decades have been living within a short drive from one another. It is clear that this friendship has been formative for both poets. I wanted to experience what the discourse between the two of them might be like. I also wanted to understand the source of mutual concern, given how vastly different – one might be compelled to say, incompatible – their poetry is."

Appropriately enough, the discussion starts with the two poets talking about how they first met. This segues into more foundational information on each, including how each got started in writing and when they first encountered avant-garde poetry. Rothenberg and Antin also discuss translation and their initial inspirations before moving into questions of recognizing poetry and poetry in performance. They then talk about Rothenberg's "COKBOY," which spurs them to consider both the past in poetry as well as the poetic imagination. Antin then addresses the concept of "dissemblage," central to his own poetics, which was inspired in part by Rothenberg's work as both a poet and anthologist, and this leads into a discussion of how to remove the self from poetry and shadow cast by Cage upon their practice. Questions of retrospection lead into the last phase of the interview, with a brief stop for critiques of Harold Bloom before closing with a very apropos topic: poetry and friendship.

If you're familiar with both of these iconic and iconoclastic poets, then you know that you don't want to miss this illuminating conversation between them. Click here to start listening.

Barbara Henning Reads from 'Ferne, a Detroit Story' in Detroit, 2022

We recently showcased a launch event for Barbara Henning's latest, Ferne, a Detroit Story from back in March, and today we're back with another recent reading from the same book, this time taking place (fittingly enough) at Detroit's Pages Bookshop this past June 14th.

John Hartigan, Jr. has hailed Ferne, a Detroit Story as "a time capsule of mid-century Detroit, a city poised to explode." He continues, "Its sounds, scents, and sights spill forth, as vividly experienced by a vibrant young woman whose life would end too soon. Ferne joyously curates her own life; that’s the heart of this book. But we also encounter her through the fervent eyes of her daughter, poet and novelist Barbara Henning, who lyrically fills in and fleshes out the social contours and details of the ghostly presence that haunts these pages." He concludes, "Through her daughter's skilled hands, Ferne comes to life again on these pages, bringing with her glimpses of the city she loved so deeply."

Likewise, Anne Waldman calls Henning "an indomitable writer, thinker, traveler and a stalwart weaver of the threads through the heart centers and margins of her own existence." To Waldman, Ferne is "a daughter's complicated love story of a mother and a city and a time before we knew more than we thought to know," "[a] poignant tribute of what haunts the premises in all the fractures and layers in the souls of America," and "[a] brilliant—and in a strange way—a most timely intervention."

You can sample Ferne yourself by tuning in to this event on our Barbara Henning author page.

Robert and Bobbie Creeley Perform "Listen" (1972)

Our PennSound author page for Robert Creeley (edited by Steve McLaughlin) can be daunting for listeners to navigate, given that it has well over a thousand individual files spanning a half-century. Today we're highlighting one of the more interesting tracks you'll find there: Listen, a radio play performed by the poet and his then-wife, Bobbie Creeley. Originally broadcast by West Germany's Westdeutscher Rundfunk on December 1, 1971 (in a translation by Klaus Reichert), it was later released by Black Sparrow in 1972, both in book and cassette formats, the latter serving as the source for PennSound's recording.

In text-form, Listen is comprised of an extended back-and-forth between two narrators: a HE and a SHE. While listeners are likely to read the dialogue through the frame of the Creeleys' marriage — and here their words embody a broad range of nupital emotions, from acrimony to romance, new love and old love — the two occupy a number of varied discursive relationships, from mother to child, suitor to quarry, interrogator to interrogator, writer to actress. In his essay, "Meaning: I Hear You" (linked on Creeley's page), Kyle Schlesinger notes, "it quickly becomes evident that this conversation can't converge. It isn't quite like two ships passing in the night, but more like a submarine passing below the Mayflower; two vessels vacillating between irreconcilable pasts. Where the constitution of one was once affirmed by its ability to address the other, they now share shards of a language they can never reinhabit together." This disjointed effect is augmented by HE's extended meta-notations on the performance at hand — some of the radio play's most enjoyable moments — which range from suggestions as to sound effects to be (but not to be) added later, to questions (posed to the audience-as-producer) regarding how much of a given song should be shared with the listeners (another delight: Bob Creeley's tender and vulnerable croon).

Schlesinger concludes his essay by noting, "It is here, in the atmosphere of Listen that the reader watches it all through a transparent revolving door; "listening out" for the signal, "listening in" on another conversation as it continues to turn. Tune in. Turn on. You hear." This eliptical effect is one of the radio play's most lasting sensations — in the abrupt aftermath of Creeley's final words, listeners will most certainly want to push "play" again to take another spin. Click here to start listening.