This week saw an exciting new addition to our PEPC Library, Poets on Stage: The Some Symposium on Poetry Readings, edited by Alan Ziegler and originally co-issued by the journal Some (as its ninth issue) and and its book publishing arm Release Press in 1978. The volume's origins are explained in an introductory note by Ziegler:
One night the three editors of Some were discussing possibilities for forthcoming issues. One of the editors didn't have his mind in the sessions; he was thinking about a poetry reading he was to give the next day. He had given readings before but hadn't thought much about them. But now, as he drifted away from the work at hand, he thought about the fact that the next afternoon he would be reading his poems to an audience. Some of his poems would reveal to strangers and friends alike things he had not told anyone. (Of course, these secrets would be presented on a "wall of literature," and he could remain behind that wall). There was also material that was mostly incarnated from the imagination — images that had emerged excitedly yet silently onto the page. How comfortable would they be wearing sound?
These musings interested him, and since the major criterion for Some is interesting material (and he was feeling guilty about not contributing to the meeting), he suggested: why not an issue of Some devoted to poetry readings? The meeting was transformed into a tentative discussion of the new project.
What emerged from that suggestion is a trailblazing document in the field of poetry in performance that draws its responses from fascinating cross-section of the contemporary poetry world, with contributions from (in order of appearance) Alan Dugan, Jack Anderson, Colette Inez, John Love, Stephen Stepanchev, Marge Piercy, David lgnatow, Janet Sternburg, June Fortess, Mark Weiss, Phillip Lopate, Joe Brainard, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Haseloff, John Wieners, Gerard Malanga, Audre Lorde, Virginia R. Terris, Hugh Seidman, Paul Hannigan, Terry Stokes, Armand Schwerner, Rochelle Ratner, Denise Levertov, David Meltzer, Margaret Atwood, Dick Gallup, Anne Waldman, and James Dickey.
The responses, as you might imagine, are as diverse as the authors interviewed. Dugan offers this practical advice: "The first time I recited, at a college, I had forgotten how over-heated academic interiors can be and sweated because I was wearing a jacket and was too nervous to take it off, and therefore performed badly. The students and teachers were good to me, saying, roughly, 'Well, it's over, it's your first time, you'll do better next time,' which I did." Brainard's handwritten response, "On Reading," starts by observing "Both my aim and my desire is to please." Malanga shares that "I know I've made people feel I'm having just as good a time reading as they are listening, because of the response I've received at the end of the reading. I include the audience in what I'm feeling in every instant in my poems when I read aloud. I've attended readings by many poets who literally drove their work into the ground and knew it, too, although they probably didn't mean to. The worst feeling in the world is when you and your audience both know you're bad. When an audience loves you, there is no greater exhilaration." Finally, Audre Lorde confesses that "I find [readings] both leech-like & rewarding, alternately and together, so approach them always with great excitement & terror."
You can read and/or download Poets on Stage: The Some Symposium on Poetry Readings in PDF format by clicking here.
