PoemTalk #188: on Ted Pearson's 'Catenary Odes'

Yesterday we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which addresses Ted Pearson's 1987 book-length poem Catenary Odes (O Books). Joining host Al Filreis for this program was a formidable panel that included (from left to right) Rachel Blau DuPlessis, William Fuller, and Bruce Andrews.

Writing about this new episode on Jacket2, Filreis offers his perspectives on how one might choose to frame the book, as well as info on the excerpts under discussion: "The poem, or perhaps it is a series of couplet-length poems, covers 44 pages in print; the PoemTalk group discussed the first 11 pages, approximately 40 lines." He also offers some information regarding the recording under discussion, which comes "from an audiotaping of a reading given in the Segue Series at the Ear Inn in New York on December 4, 1993. That day Pearson read the entire poem and we highly recommend it the experience of hearing the entire work." He continues, "Note that the tape as it came to us needed volume-boosting and was marred (or enhanced, depending on your point of view), by the ambient sounds of the Ear Inn — so for our podcasting purposes we have cleaned up the audio somewhat but have not altered the original digital dubbing available at PennSound."

You can listen to this latest program and learn 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.

Charles Reznikoff, "Day of Atonement"

On March 27, 1975 Charles Reznikoff was a guest on Susan Howe's WBAI/Pacifica radio program — the first of three sessions he'd record over the course of six months that year. After Howe's biographical introduction, Reznikoff begins his set with "Samuel" from "A Fifth Group of Verse." Next he asks his host, "may I read a group of verse about two or three holidays, which, though Jewish, are often mentioned in current newspapers?" He then reads from "Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays," starting with "Hanukkah," then "New Year's," before coming to the poem that, appropriately enough, we are highlighting this evening, "Day of Atonement" (listen here: MP3).

"Yom Kippur has always been rich terrain for Jewish writers," an unattributed 2002 article in The Washington Post observes, "but secular modern and contemporary American Jewish poets have given the subject a particular metaphorical resonance. They seize upon the holiday as an opportunity to meditate about forgiveness and unrepentance, or about the rival claims of solitude and community, or about the nature of suffering and affliction." Reznikoff's "Day of Atonement" is hailed as one of the author's "own short list of good contemporary Yom Kippur poems" alongside work by Adrienne Rich, Robert Mezey, Robin Becker, and Jacqueline Osherow.

Yom Kippur had greater significance for the poet, however, than its religious symbolism. Reznikoff's Poetry Foundation bio (written by Milton Hindus) recalls a history of "violent and traumatic incidents" that marked his upbringing in Brooklyn, including one incident that "took place at the conclusion of the evening prayers on the Day of Atonement, when his grandfather and his uncle were unexpectedly late in returning from the synagogue in Brownsville to which they had walked." An anxious Charles went looking for them, only to find "his grandfather coming down the street alone, tears streaming down his face, unable to answer 'where's uncle?' And his uncle appeared 'without his new hat and the blood running down his face.'" Hindus fills in the details: "As they were passing a bar a little boy, encouraged by a gang of young ruffians, had brandished a stick at them. The uncle had taken the stick away, and some of the gang jumped the old man and sent him sprawling in the gutter."

"There can be no doubt," he concludes, "that his direct and indirect observation of violence (and his sense of its perpetual immediacy) as a Jewish child in a hostile urban neighborhood lies behind the lifelong concern in much of his work with the continual possibility, potential, and actuality of violence between human beings." And yet, in the face of this threat, Reznikoff is able to find grace in "Day of Atonement": "All wickedness shall go in smoke. / It must, it must!," he vows. "The just shall see and be glad. / The sentence is sweet and sustaining; / for we, I suppose, are the just; / and we, the remaining." Let us hope that that might be true.

Lila Zemborain Reads from Her 9/11 Poem, 'Rasgado/Torn'

Today we mark the anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks by revisiting Argentinian poet and critic Lila Zemborain's 2021 reading of selections from Rasgado/Torn (Buenos Aires: Tse-Tse, 2006), her poetic diary written one year after 9/11. As this predated our Zemborain author page, Charles Bernstein first shared the video in a Jacket2 commentary post.

This footage was shot at a reading in New York City on August 25, 2021 presented by Rebel Road. Zemborain is accompanied by Lorenzo Bueno, her son and also  translator (with Rosa Alcala) of Rasgado/Torn. You can watch their performance below.

Poet and critic Lila Zemborain (Argentina) is the Director of Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU. She is the author of several poetry collections: Abrete sésamo debajo agua (1993); Usted (1998); Guardianes del secreto (2002), translated into English as Guardians of the Secret (2009/2015); Malvas orquídeas del mar (2004), translated into English as Mauve Sea-orchids (2007); Rasgado (2006), translated into French as Déchiré (2013); El rumor de los bordes (2011); Diario de la hamaca paraguaya (2014); Materia blanda (2014); and the chapbooks Ardores (1989) and Pampa (2001).

Larry Eigner: Sacred Materials

It was a big deal back in 2011 when the legendary Bay Area-documentarian Kush shared footage online for very first time, and we were proud to be the venue to share it. Presented under the title Larry Eigner: Sacred Materials, this trio of videos include nearly two hours of footage from the end of Eigner's life, including his last public reading on November 17, 1995, and two videos shot on February 6, 1996, which document his burial and his work environs.

A vital part of San Francisco's poetry scene since the 1970s, Kush is the proprietor of the renowned Cloud House Poetry Archives, which "is distinguished from any other by the comprehensive depth of its audiovisual collection and the high fidelity of its field recordings. It is a week-by-week, month-by-month, and decade-by-decade living record of the avant-garde practice of poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area. It represents entire communities of poets and affiliated artists that we identify as the 'poet genome' of Northern California/Pacific Rim."

We are grateful to Kush for his ongoing generosity in sharing these and many other films through the PennSound archives. To watch Larry Eigner: Sacred Materials, click here.

Happy Birthday to John Cage

September 5th is the birthday of John Cage, a singular talent who made world-changing contributions to the world of poetry as well as music. To mark the date, we've assembled a group of Cage-related recordings from the PennSound archives for your listening pleasure. It includes everything from Cage's own writings, poetry and performance inspired by Cage, excerpts from conversations and interviews in which poets discuss Cage's influence on their work, and even full-length lectures by noted Cage scholars:

Jerry Rothenberg reads Cage's "Lecture on Nothing" (2:10): MP3

Marjorie Perloff's talk, "Watchman, Spy and Dead Man: Frank O' Hara, Jasper Johns, and John Cage in the Sixties" (1:01:24): MP3

Perloff discusses "The Poetics of Indeterminacy" and John Cage (15:02): MP3

Chris Funkhouser discusses John Cage and Jackson Mac Low's poetry (1:28): MP3

Bruce Andrews discusses John Cage (1:47): MP3

Joan Retallack's lecture, "John Cage's Anarchic Harmony: A Poethical Wager" (55:16): MP3

Danny Snelson discusses Cage's Cartridge Music (5:21): MP3

Anne Waldman reads from "Pieces of an Hour (Dear John Cage...)" (5:45): MP3

Jackson Mac Low and Ann Tardos perform "Phoneme Dance; in Memoriam John Cage" (5:05): MP3

Mac Low reads "Phoeneme Dance for John Cage" (5:11): MP3

Mac Low reads six poems written for the occasion of Cage's 79th birthday:

• "A Breather" (1:21): MP3
• "Intention Disappears" (1:47): MP3
• "Rebus Effort Remove Government" (2:32): MP3
• "They Didn't Whir He Gave No Advice" (3:03): MP3
• "This Occasion" (1:34): MP3
• "He Never Relaxed for a Moment" (1:12): MP3

Mac Low reads "Rebus Effort Remove Government" in a later session (2:32): MP3

Mac Low discusses the influence of Cage's chance-composed music and Buddhism (5:50): MP3

Ron Silliman on John Cage's influence (2:57): MP3

M.C. Richards reads "For John Cage on His 75th Birthday" (4:06): MP3

Clark Coolidge reads "For John Cage" (23:08): MP3  

Coolidge discusses Cage and his work (4:18): MP3

and finally, don't miss PoemTalk #135, which addresses Cage's "Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake"

Steve McCaffery, "Wot We Wokkers Want" b/w "One Step to the Next"

Perhaps the most fitting recording in our archive for celebrating Labor Day (here in the US at least) is Steve McCaffery's "Wot We Wokkers Want" b/w "One Step to the Next," This album was released on LP and cassette in 1980 by the Underwhich Audio Collective, a small Canadian independent label (based in Toronto, Ontario and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) that also issued small run releases (usually about 100 copies) by the likes of Owen Sound, the Four Horsemen, Paul Dutton, Bob Cobbing, Susan Frykberg, Larry Wendt, and DUCT, among others.

Better known by its full title, The Kommunist Manifesto or Wot We Wukkerz Want Bi Charley Marx un Fred Engels, the leadoff track is McCaffery's translation of The Communist Manifesto into the dialect of West Riding of Yorkshire, or, as he puts it, "Redacted un traduced intuht’ dialect uht’ west riding er Yorkshuh bi Steve McCaffery, eh son of that shire. Transcribed in Calgary 25 November to 3 December 1977 un dedicated entirely to Messoors Robert Filliou and George Brecht uv wooz original idea this is a reullizayshun." You can read the piece in its entirety here as part of the PECP Library. Side A also includes "Mid●night Peace" ("a nostalgic translation of the Dadaphony of hell") and "A Hundred And One Zero S One Ng," which is McCaffery's translation of Brecht's translation of the closing section of Robert Filliou's 14 Chansons et Charade.

Side B starts with "One Step Next to the Next," co-created with Clive Robertson, which centers around turntable manipulations of a National Geographic flexi-disc on the Apollo space flights. The closing track, Emes¹ in which "a phrase is intercepted, reversed, synthesized, and obsessively repeated as a stolen micro-unit." As the liner notes explain, "it represents McCaffery's first theft from himself." Listen in to all of these tracks here.

Introducing the 2024 Kelly Writers House Fellows

Earlier this week we announced the trio of authors that will be joining us this spring semester for the annual Kelly Writers House Fellows program. While there's much more info to follow in the coming weeks and months, we wanted to share the amazing line-up as soon as possible.

After co-organizing the Fellows seminar last spring with Al Filreis, this year Simone White will teach the course — in which 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 — on her own. Current UPenn undergrads interested in joining the class should contact KWH Fellows Coordinator Sophia DuRose at sdurose@writing.upenn.edu. In conjunction with the class the public will be able to take part in (either in person or from afar) the traditional Monday evening reading and Tuesday morning interview/conversation with each guest. Limited in-person seating for each event can be reserved by writing to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu.

Our full slate of 2023 Kelly Writers House Fellows will include:

Jamaica Kincaid: February 26-27  

Harryette Mullen: April 1-2

Maggie Nelson: April 29-30

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 past 23 years, you can do so here.

Edmond Jabès on PennSound

Today we plunge into the depths of our archives for a remarkable document that only some of our listeners will be able to enjoy fully. We created our Edmond Jabès author page back in February 2017 to house one recording: a 1974 documentary on the Egypt-born French author made by Jean-Pierre Prevost.

Originally broadcast on French television, the film features Jabès in conversation with Claude Royet-Journoud and Lars Fredrikson. As our own Charles Bernstein noted at the time of its addition, the film had gone unseen for more than four decades. It's presented as it originally aired, i.e. in French and without subtitles, so if you are a native speaker or your quarantine hobby was trying to work on bettering your rusty high school French, you're in luck. In any case, this film is too important a document not to share with our listeners. Click here to start watching.