Charles Ruas

Today we're happy to announce a new home for Charles Ruas's radio programming from the 70s, 80s, and 00s. Dazzling in both scope and selection, this collection at launch features hundreds of recordings with more to come soon—and although there are simply too many highlights to list them all here without inadvertently reproducing the entire Ruas page, here nevertheless are a few:

• Readings by Pablo Neruda (92nd St Y, 1966) and Jorge Luis Borges (92nd St Y, 1976);
• Readings and interviews with Allen Ginsberg including 6 lectures at Naropa in 1975;
• Two recordings featuring Buckminster Fuller;
• A two-part Eileen Myles feature on their 2011 work Inferno (A Poet's Novel);
• A 1972 interview on "The Female Angst" featuring Sally Davis, Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, and Dory Previn, with musical performances by the latter;
• A two-part conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman;
• And a wide-ranging two-part roundtable featuring Anne Waldman, Laura Flanders, and Carol Brightman, centered on the theme of "general protest."

Charles Ruas's collection is so delightfully eclectic that any poetry or literature aficianado will find something there to satisfy their curiosity (I personally found a 1976 interview with Dr. Han Suyin on contemporaneous cultural differences between the U.S. and China, the mixed legacy of Mao Zedong, and the ramifications of the Cultural Revolution, to be fascinating).

The collection is still under construction and over time will see more additions and improvements, but for now there's plenty to get started with, and it's all available at the new Charles Ruas Author Page.

PennSound Rewind Episodes 1–8

Michael S. Hennessey's new, retrospective podcast fittingly named PennSound Rewind now has a dedicated page here at PennSound. Rewind, comprising eight episodes to date, is a deep dive into PennSound's diverse catalog, sometimes highlighting specific authors like John Ashbery and Harryette Mullen, and sometimes themes like baseball or poets who passed in 2016.

The series' newest episode takes a look at radio and radio-adjacent transmissions of Black authors and performers covering a six decade span, starting in 1967 with a production of Samuel R. Delaney's The Star-Pit on New York's WBAI and rounding out with a 2018 episode of Charles Bernstein's Close Listening featuring Douglas Kearney—all, of course, available at PennSound.

Rewind Episode 8 ("In Memory of Radio," from an Amiri Baraka poem) is more than just a celebration of Black authors or radio, however; it's also a demonstration of the valuable kinds of programming that get lost when funding to the institutions that produce it is suddenly cut for political reasons. As Hennessey narrates in the episode's opening:

The democratic nature of radio, especially on the left of the dial, is the heart of its power. It’s also what makes it so dangerous, and why it’s long been a target of censorship and threats of defunding.

Of course, in classic form-matches-function fashion, "In Memory of Radio" is itself an example of all of the above: of Black author focused programming in an over-the-airwaves format, and of the kind of valuable content hosted by publicly funded distribution platforms like PennSound. Just as importantly, though, it's a good listen—and you can check it out along with the rest of the series at our new PennSound Rewind page and at Jacket2.org.

Four new events from Kelly Writers House

Video recordings of four events from the Spring 2025 semester at Kelly Writers House have landed here at PennSound, representing a range of styles and genres.

1. Figure and Trade: A poetics book launch with Julia Bloch and Sarah Dowling

February saw a celebration of in the form of a dual book launch featuring two new critical poetic titles: Julia Bloch's Lyric Trade: Reading the Subject in the Postwar Long Poem (University of Iowa Press) and Sarah Dowling's Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form (Northwestern University Press).

The recording is available on both Julia Bloch and Sarah Dowling's author pages, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

2. A celebration of the life and work of Lyn Hejinian

In March the creaky chairs and wooden pews of the Arts Café hosted a different kind of celebration: a memorial for the late and beloved Lyn Hejinian. The event, hosted in tandem by Julia Bloch and Laynie Browne, featured readings and talks by seven poets: Charles Bernstein, Laynie Browne, Pattie McCarthy, Jena Osman, Ron Silliman, Claire Marie Stancek, and Syd Zolf.

Find a recording of the whole event at Lyn Hejinian's author page, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

3. Brave Testimony: M. Nzadi Keita

To kick off April, Penn's Center for Africana Studies hosted Philadelphia native (and self-proclaimed member of the "Germantown Poetry Mafia") M. Nzadi Keita, who read from her newest book, Migration Letters: Poems.

Find a recording of this event at PennSound's dedicated Brave Testimony series page, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

4. Emma Copley Eisenberg: reading and conversation

To round out the semester, Michelle Taransky's But Company Reading Series (formerly known as "Whenever We Feel Like It") featured Emma Compley Eisenberg, co-founder of Philadelphia's Blue Stoop poetry community and author of the forthcoming collection of short stories, Fat Swim (Penguin Random House).

Find a recording of this event at PennSound's dedicated But Company series page, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.