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.