Kathy Acker: SUNY-Buffalo Talk and Creeley Interview, 1979

Today we're highlighting a fascinating meeting of two seemingly incongruous minds: on December 12–13, 1979, Kathy Acker was a guest of Robert Creeley's at SUNY-Buffalo. Over those two days she read from her own work, delivered a talk on French novelists, and was interviewed by Creeley. Both events have been segmented, and are available on our Kathy Acker author page.

After introductory comments by Creeley, Acker begins with "Tangier," a long chapter (the recording is forty-six minutes long) from Blood and Guts in High School about meeting Jean Genet in Tangiers. She and Creeley then talk briefly about Erica Jong before the first day's event ends. 

The second day begins with Acker offering introductory comments on the pair of French novelists "whose work I'm absolutely fascinated with" that she'll be discussing in this session: Pierre Guyotat and Laure (the pen name of Colette Peignot). "You can't get these books in this country. Don't even try," Acker warns, however she explains that "I wanted to present what I'm doing with their work to you" — even though her translations are rough first drafts and "my French is very bad," ("I knew it enough to know I didn't know it," she later tells the audience) — because of how captivated she became with these authors on a recent trip to France. Specifically, this interest ties into language: both her experience of their language and mediation inherent to encountering a foreign language of which one only has a basic knowledge, but also concerns that have followed her for much longer: "It seemed to me that more and more — I've lived in New York for the last seven years — [that] language is almost impossible now. It's as if ... to have a language, to be able to really speak to someone, seems to be almost like total freedom, in my mind."

She then reads brief translations from each author's work: an excerpt from Guyotat's novel, Eden, Eden, Eden, followed by a piece by Laure about her childhood.  A half-hour lecture on the two authors comes next, with a discussion session of about the same length wrapping up the event. That conversation has been segmented into five thematic parts: "on self-expression," "on self-reflection," "on subjectivity and perception," "on the writer's perspective," and "on the divided self." You can listen in by clicking here. 

'Getting It Together: A Film on Larry Eigner, Poet' (1973)

Today we are very proud to highlight Leonard Henny's groundbreaking 1973 film, Getting It Together: A Film on Larry Eigner, Poet, which George Hart — co-editor with Eigner biographer Jennifer Bartlett of Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner — called an "astounding document of disability history." Our own Charles Bernstein shared Hart's "Context for Getting It Together: A Film on Larry Eigner, Poet" through his Jacket2 commentary series, a valuable resource for understanding the complex history surrounding the film's creation. The brief essay draws heavily upon Hart and Bartlett's research into Eigner's correspondence for their "two books, my ecocritical reading of Eigner and her bio," however as he notes, "we have only begun to understand the intersection of disability, ecology, poetics, Jewishness, place, and community contained in Eigner's life and writing."

Eigner's "active social life in Swampscott, in the 1960s and early 1970s" frequently centered upon Frank Minelli's Parnassus Bookshop in nearby Marblehead, where he gave readings and attended workshops, so it was a natural choice for Henny to film Eigner there over the course of two days on March 19-20, 1971. Hart notes that "Eigner was resistant to the idea of being featured as a poet with disabilities because he had already seen a film on the Irish writer Christy Brown (whom Eigner once exchanged letters with)," however he eventually came around:

Eigner was willing to do it, as long as he was not the "star," and as long as he could get to "as much relevance as possible." Eigner had no control over the aesthetics of the film (the time lapse flowers, musicbox, and doll indicate that); the narration includes inaccurate information (some of which was corrected by Eigner in annotations on the transcription made by Jack Foley); some of the subtitles are inaccurate or incomplete. But in the documentary sections that capture him reading, talking with his friends, sitting in his wheelchair, and so on, we can see Eigner asserting his will to make what choices he was able to. He didn't want to feature disability; he wanted to talk about ecological issues: pollution, food shortages, overconsumption, overpopulation.

Allen Ginsberg lends a hand, providing both voiceover narration and performing Eigner's work, due to the poet's challenges communicating verbally. We're presenting this rare and fascinating document in two formats: the film in its entirety, and a leaner cut that eliminates the more whimsical touches to focus solely on Eigner's poetry. Choose from either by clicking here to visit PennSound's Larry Eigner author page.

Anne-Marie Albiach Reads 'État,' 2007

We wrap up this week this week by highlighting a recently-added recording of Anne-Marie Albiach reading her first book, État, in its entirety at Hotel de Ville in Neuilly, France. This segmented set, which includes twenty-four tracks in total, was recorded by Walter Feldmann on October 10, 2007. Those looking to explore État will benefit from checking out the EPC digital edition of Keith Waldrop's excellent 1989 translation, originally published by Awede Press.

On PennSound's author page for Albiach, there are a number of home recording sessions, including a 1993 recording of « H II » linéaires and a 2005 recordings of ETAT and UNE GÉOMÉTRIE (triptych), along with a 2000 reading as part of the Paris-based Steel Bar reading series, and shorter recordings made for Grey Suit and Kenning. We're also proud to be able to present a trio of broadcasts from France Culture Radio (from 1978, 2003, and 2004) as well as a 2015 tribute to the poet and translator held at the IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine) in Paris.

Charles Bernstein's 2012 Jacket2 commentary post marking the poet's passing includes this appraisal of her talents, written on the occasion of her volume, Figured Image: "Anne-Marie Albiach's words are never alone on the page, having each other for company, just as they find here ideal companionship in Keith Waldrop’s translation. In Figurations de l’Image, Albiach pursues her rigorous investigation into the possibilities of measure, the perceptible, luminescence, vulnerability, memory, contour, ardor, breath, oscillation, remonstration, trajectory, disparity, abstraction, antecedence, disparity, refraction, trace, tapestry, rehearsal, reverberation, and the irreparable. In these poems, the figures refute image as they bank, relapse, surge, palsy, recollect. Albiach scores space to twine time, abjures rhyme to make blank shimmer in the mark." You can read more of Bernstein's remembrance here, and browse our Anne-Marie Albiach author page here.

Revisiting the EPC@20 Celebration

Today we're revisiting EPC@20, the two-day celebration of two decades of the Electronic Poetry Center, which was held at SUNY-Buffalo in the fall of 2014 to celebrate the archive's twentieth anniversary. EPC@20 featured readings, talks, and performances by poets who've had a close affiliation with the site over its lifespan. 

The proceedings on Thursday, September 11th  began with an afternoon session that included talks by Steve McCaffery, Danny Snelson, Laura Shackelford, cris cheek, Elizabeth Willis, and Loss Pequeño Glazier. Evening performances followed in two sets: the first featuring Tammy McGovern, Snelson, and Wooden Cities with Ethan Hayden; the second with Joan Retallack, cheek, and Tony Conrad.

Friday, September 12th began with afternoon readings and talks by Myung Mi Kim, Retallack, Charles Bernstein, and a panel talk featuring Bernstein, Glazier, Jack Krick, Shackelford, and Snelson. The celebration concluded with evening performances from Glazier, Willis, and Bernstein.

Video and audio recordings of the proceedings are available here. The program for the celebration can be found here.

From the Floating World: A Memorial Tribute to Jerome Rothenberg

We're excited to start off this new week with a newly posted recording of "From the Floating World: A Memorial Tribute to Jerome Rothenberg," which was held at New York's Milton Resnick - Pat Passloff Foundation on June 24th of this year.

Our own Charles Bernstein served as emcee for the memorial, which started off with a welcome from Alex Paul Chapin and Geoffrey Dorfman. Pierre Joris offered a eulogy and Charlie Morrow said the Kaddish, while Bruce Andrews, Susan Bee, Lee Ann Brown, Steve Clay, Michael Heller, Bob Holman, Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, Nicole Peyrafitte, and Cecilia Vicuña shared remembrances and read favorite poems from Rothenberg. 

Both audio and streaming video of the event, running over one hundred minutes, is available now on PennSound's Jerry Rothenberg author page, were you'll also find well over 350 individual tracks taken from dozens of events spanning more than half a century. These include readings, interviews, panel discussions and talks, albums, performances, podcasts, films, and more. and don't forget about our Rothenberg holdings at Jacket2, where we were honored to host Jerry's commentary series, "Poems and Poetics," since our launch, and our Reissues section archives complete runs of the groundbreaking journals Alcheringa (1970–1980, co-edited with Dennis Tedlock) and New Wilderness Letter (1977–1984).

Revamped Resources for Helen and Pat Adam's 'San Francisco's Burning'

Today we're proud to highlight several changes to our author page for poet and playwright Helen Adam, which bring together resources related to her magnum opus, San Francisco's Burning, a lyric drama co-written with her sister Pat.

We've long been proud to host Charles Ruas's production of the radio play for the Audio Experimental Theatre, which was first broadcast on New York City's WBAI FM on July 17th, 1977. In addition to the two Adam sisters, the radio play's cast also included Marilyn Hacker, Robert Hershon, and Barbara Wise in major roles. Those recordings have long been augmented by Kristin Prevallet's "Notes on San Francisco's Burning" taken from her excellent A Helen Adam Reader (2007), which features some charming anecdotes about the drama's production, including this recollection from musical director Rob Wynne regarding the "structured chaos" of the recording process: "It took a few months to pull it all together, often ending up after a session at Helen & Pat's apartment, surrounded by her collection of agates and stones, in which she saw images and stories. She always served celery filled with peanut butter, a bizarre but oddly delicious combination."

That latter staging is now paired with another: a 1962 recording adapted from a 1961 production directed by Kermit Sheets for the San Francisco Playhouse, which features the drama's original electronic soundtrack, composed by Warner Jepson. Jepson, a wizard on the difficult-to-master Buchla synthesizer and a prominent figure in San Francisco's avant garde music scene, was kind enough to share these original recordings with us prior to his death in 2011. While we've only posted the production itself on Adam's page, there's also a link to additional photographs, press clippings, and other ephemera from the production on Jepson's PennSound author page. Finally, we've also added a link to Norman MacAffee's "Sixteen Drawings for Helen Adam's San Francisco's Burning" at Jacket2, which we mentioned in last week's tribute to the late artist. 

Taken together, these provide listeners the potential to truly immerse themselves in the Adam sisters' iconic and iconoclastic oddball drama. You can find all of the aforementioned resources, as well as more work from the poet on PennSound's Helen Adam author page.

Piotr Gwiazda reads Grzegorz Wróblewski's 'Dear Beloved Humans,' 2024

We start this new week off with a new video of Piotr Gwiazda (shown at right) reading from Grzegorz Wroblewski's 2023 collection Dear Beloved Humans: Selected Poems (Lavender Ink/Diálogos), which he also translated.

Speaking of Wróblewski's collection, Wayne Miller notes that "The amazingly compressed poems in Dear Beloved Humans are constantly banging themselves against this world that makes no sense, but that most of us have nevertheless simply accepted, and Wróblewski has taken on the poetic task of jarring us into a renewed apprehension of the world's terrible, hilarious absurdity." In this brief clip, streamed on February 7th of this year, Gwiazda reads two poems from the volume in both Polish and English translation: an early untitled poem and a more recent piece entitled "Waterloo."

On PennSound's Grzegorz Wroklewski author page you'll find this new video plus recordings from  the 27th annual marathon reading at Woodland Pattern, a clip of five poems by Wroblewski, translated by Gwiazda and read by Marcus Slease, which had originally appeared as part of Marit MacArthur and Kacper Bartczak's 2015 Jacket2 feature "(Polish) Poetry after Różewicz," and a number of additional one-off collaborative tracks and readings recorded in Denmark, Sweden, and the UK between 2012 and 2016. Click here to start listening.

M.C. Richards on PennSound

We might all aspire to lead lives as rich as that of M.C. Richards, the poet, potter, and translator whose eighty-five years included a stint teaching at the fabled Black Mountain College (where she also participated in the first happening), an early experiment in communal living at Stony Point's "the Land" (along with John Cage, David Tudor and others), and friendships with Jackson Mac Low, Charles Olson, Paul Williams, Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kline. Her vivacity undimmed by the passage of time, she devoted her later years to working with the developmentally disabled at the Camphill Village in Kimberton, PA.

On PennSound's M.C. Richards author page you'll find a 1997 recording made at Indre Studios in Philadelphia, which comes to us courtesy of a close friend, Jasper Brinton, who provided us with a little background to the session. "She made this tape essentially under some strain: she did not live to see it published to any degree; but understood its importance for her legacy," he notes. "The quality of the recording is excellent. Her voice strong. Earlier in 1991 Station Hill Press published Imagine Inventing Yellow: New and Collected Poems of M.C. Richards. The tape includes a few of these poems but also later work she saw fit to preserve."

We're very glad to be a part of that preservation process. You can listen to the seventy-five minute recording, consisting of nearly two dozen poems — including "March," "Strawberry," "Imagine Inventing Yellow," "Morning Prayer," "How to Rake Water," "Sweet Corn," and "For John Cage on His 75th Birthday" — along with plentiful fascinating asides and remarks by the author, by clicking here.

In Memoriam: Norman MacAfee

We start this week off with the tragic news that poet, visual artist, translator, and librettist Norman MacAfee passed away on July 2nd after a brief illness. While we do not have a PennSound author page for MacAfee, his "Sixteen Drawings for Helen Adam's San Francisco's Burning" (published by Jacket2 in 2013) is a marvelous complement to the 1977 radio play staging of the drama by Charles Ruas and the Audio-Experimental Theatre, which you'll find on PennSound's Helen Adam author page. 

MacAfee starts off his introductory notes to the gallery by explaining how he first made Adam's acquaintance: "My first poet friend in New York was William Leo Coakley. He and his lover, the actor and writer Robin Prising, lived on the Upper West Side, and they introduced me to Helen Adam in the early 1980s. I spent several jolly Victorian Christmas dinners at Robin and Willie's, with Helen and her sister, Pat, and others of the hosts' friends." He then goes on to explain how these remarkable drawings came to be, explaining, "One evening in the fall of 1983, Helen, Bob Holman, and I read our poems at a reading organized by Chris Kadison at No Se No Cafe on the Lower East Side. Over the next months Bob, Helen, and I began planning a production of San Francisco's Burning." He continues, "Helen gave us photocopies of the libretto manuscript and score. One afternoon in March of 1984, I made twenty color production drawings and planned more. Around the same time Bob directed a video of Helen, in costume as the Worm Queen, singing songs from the piece. We asked the composer Raphael Mostel to be music director, and he made an audiotape of himself singing and playing the openings of each of the opera's songs." While the production never came to pass, we are still left with MacAfee's stylish and charming artwork, which he was kind enough to share with Jacket2. 

You'll find that piece here, and MacAfee's Jacket2 contributor page also includes links to two earlier publications in Jacket Magazine. We send our condolences to MacAfee's spouse, Miguel Cervantes-Cervantes, and his friends and family at this time.

'How to Be European' by Anya Lewin (2007)

We'll wrap up the week with another offering from PennSound Cinema in honor of today's auspicious news from across the pond: How to Be European, by Anya Lewin.

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.

Rudy Burckhardt: Two Short Films Featuring Kenneth Koch

Today we're revisiting two remarkable films by Rudy Burckhardt, featuring his New York School compatriot Kenneth Koch that you can see on our PennSound Cinema  page for filmmaker and photographer.

The earlier of the two, The Apple (1967), features a lyric and spoken interlude written by Koch, which was set to music by Tony Ackerman and Brad Burg, and sung by Kim Brody. In stop-motion and live action, it traces the sprawling adventures of its titular fruit. Running just one minute and fifty-four seconds, the film is nevertheless the subject of a marvelous essay by Daniel Kane — "Whimsy, the Avant-Garde and Rudy Burckhardt's and Kenneth Koch's The Apple" — in which he praises it for "the ways in which ideas of temporality, spontaneity, childishness, and parody are expressed within this tiny little film work," thus "revealing the latent and hilarious power of the whimsical affect."

The latter film, On Aesthetics (1999) has a sense of finality about it, coming during Burckhardt's last year and not long before Koch developed leukemia that would ultimately take his life in 2002. Running nine minutes and taking its name from the last poem in Koch's 1994 collection One Train, On Aesthetics — charmingly presented by "KoBu Productions" — features the poet's voice-over reciting the various micropoems contained under that title, from "Aesthetics of the Man in the Moon" and "Aesthetics of Creating Light" to "Aesthetics of Being with Child" and "Aesthetics of Echo," while Burckhardt's camera eye finds appropriate accompanying images, whether literary or abstract.

We're grateful to be able to share this work with our listeners, along with two other Burckhardt films: — The Automotive Story (1954) and Central Park in the Dark (1985) — which you can find here. Our Kenneth Koch author page also houses these films, along with a 1998 reading at our own Kelly Writers House and a few brief recordings from the St. Mark's Poetry Project.

Introducing the 2025 Kelly Writers House Fellows

This weekend we announced the trio of authors that will be joining us next 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.

The program works in coordination with an undergrad 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. 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 2025 Kelly Writers House Fellows will include:

Patti Smith: February 24–25  

Carmen Machado: March 31–April 1

Alice Notley: April 28-29

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 25 years, you can do so here.