PoemTalk #167: on Myung Mi Kim's "And Sing We"

We close out this week and the year as a whole with the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, its 167th in total, which was released last week. For this program, host Al Filreis was joined by a panel consisting of (from left to right) erica kaufman, Jack Giesking, and Jonathan Dick to discuss Myung Mi Kim's "And Sing We," the opening poem from her 1991 Kelsey Street Press release, Under Flag.

"In this poem, memory is presence rather than absence. It is constructed partly of a series of childhood recollections, some more explicit than others," Filreis states in his Jacket2 blog post announcing the new episode. "We seem to see an immigrant family's kitchen scene. Then there's the school performance led by the first grade teacher, with its officially optimistic and aurally as well as thematically allegiant 'Um-pah, um-pah sensibility.'" He continues, "The proem's title has already conveyed the national anthem, and other idioms suggest the Pledge of Allegiance (as well as the book's titular idea with its strong preposition 'under'), and so 'um-pah, um-pah' strikes us as so insistently regular as to be threatening, ominous. Sousa-like insistence upon celebration," before concluding "But the writing of the poem, with its discordant and post-traumatic haltings and its scene-switching, resists the forceful, socializing sounds to be learned in and from US culture." 

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. You can browse the full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, by clicking here.

Yusef Komunyakaa on PennSound

Today we're taking a closer look at PennSound's author page for Yusef Komunyakaa, which was created not long after our official launch in 2005. While it houses a modest set of recordings, it nevertheless has many of this much-anthologized poet's most iconic work.

The heart of our Komunyakaa page is a March 1998 reading at our own Kelly Writers House. This  segmented recording consists of twenty-four in total, including favorite poems like "Facing It," "The Smokehouse," "Ode to the Maggot," "The God of Land Mines," "You and I Are Disappearing," and "Ode to a Drum," along with "Rhythm Method," "Letter to Bob Kaufman," "Camouflage in the Chimera," "We Never Know," and "Thanks," which has been a cherished part of PennSound's "Poems of Thanks and Thanksgiving" playlist for more than a decade. There's also a July 1999 appearance with Deborah Garrison on BBC Radio 3's Contemporary American Poetry Program, and the single poem "Slam, Dunk & Hook," published as part of the 2005 anthology Rattapallax.

We're grateful and proud to have Yusef Komunyakaa as part of the diverse array of voices found within PennSound's vast archives. You can listen to all of the poems mentioned above my clicking here.

Haroldo de Campos on PennSound

Today we're highlighting our author page for poesia concreta pioneer, Haroldo de Campos, which is anchored by a 2002 video from the Guggenheim Museum celebrating his life and work. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Brazil: Body and Soul, this January 12, 2002 event featured both performances and discussion of de Campos' work by a wide variety of poets, translators and critics.

The video begins with introductory comments by Pablo Helguera and organizer Sergio Bessa, who are followed by a staging of de Campos' 1950 poem/play "Auto do Possesso (Act of the Possessed)," translated by Odile Cisneros and directed by Cynthia Croot. Craig Dworkin is next, reading his translation of "Signantia quasi coelum / signância quase céu," follwed by a brief set by Cisneros, who reads her translations. The performances conclude with Marjorie Perloff and Charles Bernstein reading Bessa's translation of "Finismundo," after which Perloff and Bernstein take part in a panel discussion moderated by Bessa.

Next, from 2005's Rattapallax we have a single track, "Calcas Cor de Abobora." Finally, we have a 2017 video of our own Charles Bernstein performing at New York's Hauser and Wirth Gallery with Sergio Bessa on September 28, 2017. This event, co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and held in conjunction with an exhibit by Mira Schendel at the gallery, included Bessa speaking about de Campos and Bernstein reading his translations of Drummond, Cabral, Cruz e Sousa, Leminksi, and Bonvicino.

On our Haroldo de Campos author page, you'll also find a link to Bernstein's 2003 essay "De Campos Thou Art Translated (Knot)", first published in the Poetry Society of America's Crosscurrents.

John Richetti reads "A Visit from St. Nicholas"

As we close out the year, we have one more gift to pass along to our listeners from our friend John Richetti: a recording of Clement Clarke Moore's beloved Christmas poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," made specially last December to be added to his growing anthology, "119 Favorite Poems, Good for Memorizing."

More frequently known by its opening phrase, "'Twas the night before Christmas ...," "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was first published in Troy, New York's Sentinel on this day in 1823 with no attribution. It became wildly popular, reprinted far and wide, and its author — a professor of literature and divinity at New York City's General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, who initially sought to downplay his connection to the poem — would finally be credited in 1837, with Moore including it in a collection of his verse in 1844.

Click here to listen to Richetti's performance of the poem. You can read along on the Poetry Foundation's copy of the poem here. Many more recordings made by Richetti form the backbone of our PennSound Classics page, which is organized by author name. To start browsing, click here.

Welcoming Winter with Bernadette Mayer

At 10:58AM EST, we officially make the transition from autumn into winter, and the day that lies ahead of us will be the year's darkest. 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-third 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. 

While celebrating Mayer and Midwinter Day today is an annual PennSound tradition, it takes on special significance after yet another challenging pandemic year. 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. 

"Poetry Is for Breathing," 2019

Organized by Orchid Tierney,  "Poetry Is for Breathing: A Reading Against Islamophobia" took place at our own Kelly Writers House on April 17, 2019, with sets by Aditya Bahl (poet, translator, and a current Johns Hopkins Ph.D. candidate), Husnaa Hashim (2017-2018 Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia), and Fatemeh Shams (shown at right, a poet and UPenn professor of Persian literature). 

The announcement for this event situates it as a direct response to both recent tragedy and and long-simmering prejudices: "On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist murdered fifty people at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Please join us for a special lunchtime poetry reading in support of the survivors and victims of this terrorist attack. Invited poets will read their works, and we encourage the audience to share their thoughts as we collectively examine the intersections of white supremacy in Christchurch and Philadelphia."

You can experience this very special reading via streaming video or MP3 format by clicking here. More recordings by both Tierney and Shams are available on their respective PennSound author pages.

Congrats to MLA Scaglione Translation Prize Winners, incl. Nakayasu

Last week saw announcements of this year's MLA prizes handed out, including one for PennSound poet Sawako Nakayasu. Along with Jack Jung, Don Mee Choi, and Joyelle McSweeney, Nakayasu was awarded the 2021 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work for their work on Yi Sang: Selected Works (Wave Books, 2020). The committee's citation begins "Yi Sang was a bilingual (Korean and Japanese) avant-garde poet who died in obscurity, at twenty-seven, in 1937. His writing combines fable, fantasy, satire, parody, Dadaism, concrete poetry, and quasi-translation and presents a steep challenge to translation." It continues: 

But Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi, and Joyelle McSweeney — themselves experienced practitioners of experimental poetry — took the job to heart and have recreated in English Yi Sang's terse, polyglot, self-undermining, dreamlike parables and essays, first published in Korean and Japanese and then subjected to the hazards of war and neglect. With its evocation of alien typographies, its professed decadence, and its indifference to hierarchy, Yi Sang's writing fits on neither side of the colonial relationship that defined Korea and Japan. The elegant format and plural translating voices make this book a suitable monument to this intriguing figure.

We send our heartiest congratulations to all four translators, including Nakayasu, and we welcome you to check out her PennSound author page, which includes readings and interviews, including a 2007 Cross Cultural Poetics appearance that highlights her work as a translator. 

Ted Enslin: 2000 Recording Newly Segmented

We recently segmented Ted Enslin's February 16, 2000 reading at the University of Maine. This forty-five minute set included twenty-three titles in total, including "A Little Night Music," "Tangeré," "Apple Tree Study," "To See One Thing Among the Shapes," "Sound Pattern," "Uprooting," "Botany," "Not Yet, Not So," "Benediction," "Variations on a Thing," "Forgotten Seed," "How Should We Listen," "The Road Around Jenkins," and "Sea Change." Click here to start listening.

On PennSound's Ted Enslin author page you'll find a total of ten readings from the late poet, starting with a 1985 reading at the legendary Woodland Pattern bookstore and ending with a 2009 set as part of Jonathan Skinner's Steel Bar series at Bates College. In-between there are sets from the Wendell's in New York City, Granary Books, Bowling Green State University, a radio appearance from WMCS Malchias and more. Click here to start browsing.

Happy Birthday to Emily Dickinson

Today would have been the 190th 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.

Remembering Jackson Mac Low

Today is the 17th anniversary of the passing of polymath poet Jackson Mac Low, which is a wonderful reason as any to revisit some of the many recordings housed on his PennSound author page.

There you'll find a wide array of audio and video spanning four decades, from the 1970s up till just a few months before his death in December 2004. In addition to numerous readings — including seven Segue Series sets, recordings from the St. Mark's Poetry Project, the Living Theater, the Line Reading Series, PhillyTalks, the Radio Reading Project, the Orono 40s conference, the Sound & Syntax International Festival of Sound Poetry, and more — along with talks from the St. Mark's Talks series, SUNY-Buffalo, the New Langton Arts Center, and LINEbreak, videos from Public Access Poetry and Mac Low's 75th birthday festschrift, and numerous complete album releases (often with Anne Tardos). A few recent additions include his 1975 reading at Naropa University and  a 1978 video of Jackson Mac Low and Tom Leonard reading at the Sound and Syntax International Festival of Sound Poetry.

If this embarrassment of riches seems a little overwhelming, or if you're new to Mac Low's prodigious career, it might be helpful to start with the 2008 book launch event for Thing of Beauty: New and Selected Works, which features Tardos, Charles Bernstein, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Drew Gardner, Joan Retallack, Chris Mason, or PoemTalk #46 on Mac Low's "Words nd Ends from Ez."

Join Us for a Live PoemTalk Taping on Wednesday 12/8

We'd like to extend an invitation to anyone in the Philadelphia area to join us this Wednesday afternoon for a live, in-person recording session for an upcoming PoemTalk podcast. This episode will focus on two poems, or "pre-verbs," by poet George Quasha, and will feature a panel including Anthony Elms, Charles Bernstein, and Laynie Browne in addition to host Al Filreis.

We will be recording the episode in the Kelly Writers House's Arts Cafe beginning at 4 PM. If you's like to attend, please email Al at afilreis@writing.upenn.edu. We hope to see you there!

John Richetti Reads Love Poems, 2021

While Valentine's Day is more than three months away we're here to help you pitch a little woo with a new collection of love poetry recorded by our dear friend John Richetti. This latest body of work is a passive collaboration of sorts, with Richetti's selections taken from Jon Stallworthy's 1973 anthology, A Book of Love Poetry, which he recently revisited. Here's his full introduction to these new recordings:

Love has always been a recurring theme in poetic expression over the centuries. The speaker is almost always a man addressing a woman to praise her beauty or to declare his desire for her or even to berate her for refusing his advances, and often enough warning her that her beauty won’t last. Love, of course, is a vague notion. The word can signify sexual desire or something less intense such as fondness and fellow-feeling for friends and relatives or indeed for the rest of the world, fellow humans and animals. I have been browsing lately in an anthology, A Book of Love Poetry, edited by Jon Stallworthy (Oxford University Press, 1973), and I have encountered many familiar poems and also many I did not know, including about a dozen by women. So here in this section I have chosen to record a number of love poems, including many that most readers like me will not be familiar with. As Stallworthy remarks in his introduction, “there are almost as many definitions of love as there are poets,” and in “a high proportion of cases, what they have to say is said better, more freshly, than anything on any other subject.”

Richetti's selections are generous, to say the least, with a whopping seventy tracks spanning several centuries. Iconic names like Tennyson, Marvell, Rossetti, Marlowe, Poe, Pound, Donne, Berryman, Swift, Byron, Neruda, Frost, Shakespeare, Auden, Whitman, and Yeats, among many others. Particularly as the semester is winding down for many of us, it's a great time to relax and immerse ourselves in some classic literature. Click here to start browsing this new, impressive body of material.

Tomorrow at KWH: A Celebration of Al Filreis' '1960'

We invite you to join us tomorrow night, December 2nd, at 6:00 PM EST for a live-streamed celebration of our own Al Filreis' newest book, 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern. This special event will be co-hosted by Charles Bernstein and Laynie Browne and can be watched here. Here's the full announcement:

We're delighted to invite you to join us Thursday, December 2, at 6:00 PM (ET), to celebrate the release of the newest book by Kelly Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis, 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern. In his latest work, Filreis recasts 1960 as a turning point to offer a groundbreaking account of postwar culture. He examines an eclectic group of artistic, literary, and intellectual figures who strove to create a new language to reckon with the trauma of World War II and to imagine a new world. Laynie Browne and Charles Bernstein will lead a conversation with Filreis on his writing and process. We hope to see you there! Registration is required to attend this event in person. Please fill out the PennOpen Pass daily symptom checker the day of the event and be ready to display your Green Pass.

In addition, here is a sampling of some advance praise that 1960 has garnered:

Tightly focused on work done within the year of its title, 1960 offers a compelling account of how artists processing the memory of mass trauma in World War II turned to innovation and reinvention as a means of recovery. Al Filreis has managed a rare accomplishment―writing a profound work of historical analysis that has deep implications for ideas shaping our lives today. — Johanna Drucker, author of Iliazd: Meta-Biography of a Modernist

1960 offers a provocative and vivid intellectual history from a literary perspective. Reading works as diverse as John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things and Jackson Mac Low’s aleatory poetry as part of the belated processing of World War II traumas, it asks us to reconsider the origins, references, and trajectories of the postwar avant-gardes. — Craig Dworkin, author of Dictionary Poetics: Toward a Radical Lexicography

This brilliantly syncretic book confronts the repression of World War II in American culture, circa 1960. Filreis thinks through a constellation of songs, literature, poetry, and films, each pierced by the war. His linked essays show how great art is not only ethically necessary but also a source of endless pleasure. 1960 is a tour de force of critical intelligence. — Charles Bernstein, author of Pitch of Poetry

We hope you'll join us for this very special event.