Daphne Marlatt reads "Steveston, BC," May 2021

Here's a new addition to our PennSound author page for Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt: a short recording of her reading "Steveston, BC" from her landmark volume Steveston. Captured as part of a virtual reading on May 27th of this year, this single MP3 runs for just over five minutes.

If you'd like to hear more from Steveston — which Douglas Barbour hails as "a carefully documented and deeply personal overview of the town in history" — we recently added the 2008 album Like Light off Water: Passages from Steveston, which presents passages from Marlatt's book with musical embellishments written and performed by Minden and Carla Hallett. 

These recordings and more can be found on our Daphne Marlatt author page, along with a wonderful 2017 Close Listening program with Charles Bernstein and two concurrent Philadelphia readings, and a pair of recordings from the Kootenay School of Writing made in 2007 and 1985. Click here to start listening.

Kristin Prevallet and Steven Brent, "What She Said" (2018)

Here's a fascinating performance from Kristin Prevallet to bring this week to a close: 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.

Derek Beaulieu: Many New Recordings Added

Back in February we announced a newly-created author page for Canadian poet and publisher Derek Beaulieu, who you might know as founder of both housepress and no press, or in his current role as the Director of Literary Arts at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. We had a modest set of recordings to start with — a pair of readings at our own Kelly Writers House (from 2011 and 2020) along with a 2012 Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club — as well as hopes to expand that in the near future. With thanks from Derek, we've done just that. 

Take a spin by our Beaulieu author page today and you'll find fifteen new recordings, most videos, going as far back as 2008. That includes readings, performances, interviews, and more from throughout Canada and the UK. From plein air recitations in a public park to university seminar rooms, award show stages, and the claustrophobia of pandemic-era Zoom readings, this much-augmented collection provides listeners with an excellent opportunity to witness Beaulieu's aesthetics expand and develop over more than a dozen years. Click here to start browsing all the exciting new additions to PennSound's Derek Beaulieu author page.

Cliff Fyman: 'Taxi Night' Launch Reading, 2021

Here's a new video addition to our Singles Database: a launch reading for Cliff Fyman's collection, Taxi Night, which was published by Long News Books in April of this year. This hour-long event — hosted by Long News publisher Barbara Henning — featured sets by Kim Lyons, Peter Bushyeager, and Ron Kolm in addition to Fyman.

Bushyeager and Kolm were among those offering back-cover blurbs for Taxi Night, with the former opining that:

There's no better place to view the human condition than the driver's seat of a New York City cab. Just ask poet Cliff Fyman, who has transformed his stint behind the wheel into Taxi Night, a touching, sometimes mind blowing work. Through lovingly handled "found" material; curious diction; and acute, sometimes deadpan observation, Fyman gives the reader all the drama, humor and pathos that comes from a steady stream of humanity in the backseat. He has an excellent ear for everyday speech and the sharp editing skills of a top-notch documentarian. Read Taxi Night slowly or breathlessly. Read it all the way through or read it in bits. Either way, you're in for a great ride.

Kolm offers more concise praise: "Dude, they are pure gold! They capture the upper class in unguarded moments. Yr bits are the highlight of my day!" 

You can start watching this exciting reading by clicking here.

Lorenzo Thomas, "Ego Trip" (1976)

We close out this week in energetic fashion with an old favorite track from Lorenzo Thomas that A.L. Nielsen was kind enough to share with us back in 2016. "Ego Trip" features Thomas performing with the Texas State University Jazz Ensemble and was originally released on the album 3rd Ward Vibration Society (shown at right) on the SUM Concerts label in 1976. Lanny Steele is the composer for the track, which rubs shoulders with a cover of Carole King's "Jazzman" and the amazingly-titled suite, "Registration '74. The Worst I've Ever Endured / The Girl on the Steps / Drop and Add."

Internet commenter John Atlas provides a little context for the recording: "The TSU Jazz Ensemble was directed by Lanny Steele, who also founded and directed a nonprofit called Sum Arts. During the 70's and 80's, Sum Arts produced shows by, among others, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, The World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, The Leroy Jenkins Octet, Old and New Dreams, and a host of notable poets. In the process he exhausted an inheritance from his parents, and more."

Thomas' solo voice starts us off riffing on "Stormy Monday"'s litany of days — "Every dog has his day. / Monday is my day / even if it is blue. / Come trifling Tuesday / that's my day too ..." — and is soon joined by congas and funky wah-wah guitars, then a defiant bassline, Rhodes piano, and a fuzzed out lead, before the full ensemble kicks in as Thomas' final syllable echoes out ("I ... I ... I ... I ..."). After a series of solos and some stop-start time changes Thomas returns over the band — "Let me testify! / Every day his his dog, / but I'm tired! / I want the sun shine just over me. / I want the wind blow just over me. / I want your policemen to be just to me." — which leads into the track's closing section.

You can listen to this smoldering track on PennSound's Lorenzo Thomas author page along with a slew of readings and talks from 1978 up until just a few years before his death in 2005.

PoemTalk #161: on Sarah Dowling's 'Entering Sappho'

Today we release episode #161 in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which is centered on Sarah Dowling's Entering Sappho (Coach House Books, 2020). For this program, host Al Filreis for is joined by a panel including Larissa Lai, Maxe Crandall, and Julia Bloch.

Filreis starts off his PoemTalk blog post announcing the new episode by establishing the concept behind Entering Sappho, "a book in which an abandoned town named for the classical lesbian leads to vexing questions of history, settlement, translation, violence, 'impossible geographies' [to borrow a term from Juliana Spahr], the idea of the 'unwitting monument,' and the abusive economics of the so-called company town." He also details specific sections of the book discussed by the panelists and provides links to videos Dowling was kind enough to make of her reading those excerpts.

You can learn more about this latest program, watch Dowling's videos reading from the work, 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.

New at PennSound: Neeli Cherkovski

We've just created a new PennSound author page for San Francisco-based poet Neeli Cherkovski. With a vintage hometown reading and a number of more recent video offerings, listeners will get a good introduction to this author's long and fruitful career.

First up, we have a 1980 set at Caffe Malvina in North Beach, which consists of eleven titles in total, including "The Length," "East Hollywood," "Lost Canyon," "Conspiracy," "The Knowing Without Name," "Guadalupe," "The Northe Cascades," "Windows," and "1967." That's followed by a 2009 interview of Cherkovski for the Georgia State University Library, a 2011 reading at Litquake XII, a 2012 reading from the San Francisco International Poetry Festival, and a 2013 reading at Adobe Books. Jumping forward to 2018, we have Cherkovski's contribution to the event "Imagination of American Poets" at the San Francisco Public Library, as well as a conversation between Clark Coolidge and Cherkovski recorded in Petaluma by Kyle Harvey. A 2020 recording of "I Want to Be a Dead Poet" brings our collection to a close.

You can listen to any and all of the aforementioned recordings on our brand new Neeli Cherkovski author page. Click here to start browsing.

Happy Birthday to William Butler Yeats

June 13th is the 165th birthday of William Butler Yeats, a true titan of Irish literature, which makes it an excellent occasion to revisit the recordings housed on his PennSound author page.

First and foremost, there are eight tracks of the poet himself, taken from various sources and recorded between 1931 and 1937. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is best represented here, with three separate renditions (from 1932, 1936, and 1937) plus a brief track of Yeats discussing the poem in 1932. Other tracks include two stanzas from "Coole and Ballylee," "The Fiddler of Dooney," and "The Song of the Old Mother," plus a six-and-a-half minute track from 1936 in which Yeats discusses modern poetry.

You'll also find three readings by John Trimmer — of "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Leda and the Swan," and "Sailing to Byzantium" — as well as excerpts from a pair of titles read by Naomi Replansky, along with an extensive survey of Yeats poetry read by UPenn professor emeritus John Richetti. This Wexler Studio session from 2017 includes forty-two titles in total, among them "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "September 1913," "Easter 1916," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," and "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop," along with many more. Finally, you'll find a link to PoemTalk Podcast #66 from 2013, in which Taije Silverman, Max McKenna, and John Timpane joined Al Filreis to discuss "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."

Ariel Resnikoff: 'Unnatural Bird Migrator' Canada Launch Now Segmented

Back in February we used this space to highlight two newly-added recordings of launch events for Ariel Resnikoff's debut poetry collection, Unnatural Bird Migrator, which had taken place over the previous few months. Today we're announcing that segmented audio from the latter of these two events is now available for your listening pleasure.

Hosted by Stephen Ross of Concordia University's Center for Expanded Poetics, this January 12, 2021 celebration was introduced and moderated by Charles Bernstein with an opening performance by Adeena Karasick. Running ninety-minutes, the launch event recording has been broken into twenty-six individual MP3 files, including separate tracks for each of Karasick's opening pieces, Bernstein's two introductory statements, Resnikoff's individual poems (which are also organized by their section within the book), and finally even the Q&A session has been broken into discrete tracks featuring questions and comments by the likes of Divya Victor, Norman Finkelstein, Pierre Joris, and Adam Sax, along with the participants. 

Click here to listen in on PennSound's Ariel Resnikoff author page, which is also home to a wide array of readings, podcasts, interviews, and more from 2015 to the present. You can learn more about Unnatural Bird Migrator, and read its back-cover blurbs by clicking here.

New at PennSound: Bob Kaufman

Recent years have brought a heightened critical focus to the groundbreaking work of poet Bob Kaufman, and rightly so — a quintessential San Francisco poet of the post-war period, Kaufman served as a vital bridge between jazz poetry's development during the Harlem Renaissance and its ongoing evolution during the Beat era on both coasts, and was an innovator in the surrealist tradition, as well as co-founder of the germinal journal Beatitude. For those reasons and more, we are very excited to announce the launch of PennSound's new Bob Kaufman author page.

Curated by Raymond Foye — who co-edited 2019's Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman from City Lights with Neeli Cherkovski and Tate Swindell — our Kaufman page is anchored by Bob Kaufman, poet: the life and times of an African-American man, a stunning 1992 audio documentary written and produced by David Henderson, which comes to us courtesy of Naropa University Audio Archive, Henderson, and Cherkovski. Extensive timetables have also been generated for both one-hour installments, providing details on the various speakers, topics discussed, etc. Individual poems read by Kaufman have also been broken out into their own MP3 files.

Additionally, we're proud to be able to share a twenty-one minute recording made by A. L. Nielsen, for which we have no details regarding date or location, and a brief recording of Kaufman reading the poem "Suicide," which comes to us courtesy of Will Combs. We look forward to adding more Kaufman materials over time, but were too excited to share these astounding recordings with our listeners. Click here to start browsing.

Announcing the 2022 Kelly Writers House Fellows

While we're all still percolating with excitement from this year's fantastic slate of Kelly Writers House Fellows, any withdrawal symptoms you might be experiencing can easily be remedied with today's exciting news of next year's trio of Fellows. KWH Faculty Director Al Filreis recently shared preliminary information on who'll be joining us in the spring of 2022:

Dear friends and colleagues:

I am excited to announce next year's Kelly Writers House Fellows. More information about their visits to the Writers House in winter/spring 2022 will come later, but in the meantime if one or more of these Fellows especially interest you please do not hesitate to write us to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu and reserve a seat at our programs. We host a 6:30 PM reading on the Monday evenings and an interview/conversation on the Tuesday mornings starting with brunch at 10 AM.

• novelist/essayist Amitav Ghosh: February 21-22
• poet/text and sound-art performer Caroline Bergvall: March 28-29
• memoirist/sports commentator, and NY Times columnist, Doug Glanville: April 25-26

These events are entirely open to the public, although seating is limited. In addition, in an undergraduate seminar, the "Kelly Writers House Fellows Seminar," twenty or so students will read the work of each Fellow and then meet privately with them during that week's three-hour class session. If you are a current Penn student and are interested in being a member of the seminar, contact me at afilreis@writing.upenn.edu.

For more about Writers House Fellows, including the 22-year history of video recordings of Fellows' visits, please visit this site.

Best wishes to all,

Of course, we'll keep our readers posted with more info as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you'd like to spend a little time some of the wonderful visitors we've had over the years, you can do so here.

In Memoriam: Friedericke Mayröcker (1924–2021)

We regrettably close this week out with another remembrance, for multi-modal Austrian author Friederike Mayröcker — hailed in her New York Times obituary as a "Grande Dame in German Literature" — who passed away today in Vienna at the age of ninety-six. 

While A. J. Goldman's article begins by ranking Mayröcker as "among the most influential and decorated German-language poets of the postwar period," it quickly amends that to note that "[t]hough acclaimed as a poet, Ms. Mayröcker ranged far more widely, producing an immense body of work that encompassed nearly every literary genre: novels, memoirs, children's books, drama and radio plays as well as poetry," along with the lamentable fact that "[o]nly a handful of her works have been translated into English." Thankfully, that includes The Communicating Vessels, released this spring by A Public Space Books, a much-anticipated document of her mourning process for her lifelong partner and collaborator, Ernst Jandl, which will now also serve to shape her many fans mourning for Mayröcker herself.

Mayröcker released the cassette Pick me up on my wing. Poems, prose, statements in 1980, and while publishers restrictions prevent us from sharing the audio on our S Press Collection page, you can still browse the liner notes here. PennSound offers our sincere condolences to Mayröcker's family and many admirers worldwide.

In Memoriam: Michael Waltuch (1949–2021)

We've recently received word that Michael Waltuch — poet and publisher behind Whale Cloth Press — has passed away at the age of seventy-one.

While we don't have a proper author page for Waltuch, we have two wonderful recordings from the early days of Language-oriented poetry that demonstrate his place within that scene. First, from January 5, 1979, we have Waltuch's half-hour appearance on KPFA-FM's radio program, In the American Tree: New Writing by Poets, hosted by Alan Bernheimer. Waltuch also makes a key appearance in this sprawling, two-hour conversation on Robert Grenier's work from 1964 into the 1970s with Al Filreis, Charles Bernstein, and Waltuch. This discussion — recorded  in New York City on March 19, 2010 — follows up on an October 2009 Kelly Writers House conversation on Grenier's work from 1959–1964 that featured Filreis, Ron Silliman, and Bob Perelman. at the Kelly Writers House, October 27, 2009. You can hear both conversations by clicking here. We send our sincere condolences to Waltuch's family, friends, and his fans.