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.

PennSound Rewind #2: Two of a Kind

Today we’re proud to close out Pride Month with the latest episode in the PennSound Rewind podcast series, “Two of a Kind,” which offers up a lesson in grieving and acceptance from Allen and Louis Ginsberg.

Even casual readers will be familiar with “Kaddish,” in which Ginsberg memorializes his mother Naomi, attempting to contextualize her debilitating mental illness within a newsreel of early 20th century history. We pick up the story two decades later, as Ginsberg now begins to document the decline of his father Louis in one, or eventually, two poems with the same name: “Don’t Grow Old,” the latter with the title in quotation marks. Here, the approach is likewise fragmented, but rather than reflecting the entropy of his life with Naomi, there is a unity of sorts in Ginsberg’s use of montage, allowing individual scenes, reckonings, and bits of wisdom from his father’s decline to resonate in brief poetic vignettes.

The first “Don’t Grow Old,” written around the time of Louis’ death, appeared in the collection Mind Breaths in 1978; the latter can be found in 1982’s Plutonian Ode. However the two works were envisioned by Ginsberg as one complete poem, as evidenced by a number of recordings made by Robert Creeley at the time of the second poem’s composition and the broader recorded history contained on Ginsberg’s PennSound author page. As we explore “Don’t Grow Old” (and “‘Don’t Grow Old’”), we’ll witness Ginsberg come to terms with his father through his decline, then see how latter poem reframes that experience through Louis’ reciprocal acceptance of his son’s queer identity, offering up potent lessons in mourning, as well as an important statement regarding homodomesticity and intergenerational reconciliation.

Produced by PennSound (and Jacket2) editor Michael Hennessey, PennSound Rewind, a new podcast series produced aims to tell the tales hiding among our 50,000+ recordings and “to look back and pinpoint some of the people, recordings, and moments — both big and small — that made PennSound what it is today,” guided by the notion that “an archive is a story that unfolds in real time.” Click here to check out the complete series and stay tuned for new episodes every month or so.

Introducing PennSound Rewind, a New Podcast Series

Today we are proud to launch PennSound Rewind, a new podcast series produced by PennSound (and Jacket2) editor Michael Hennessey. 

Guided by the notion that “an archive is a story that unfolds in real time,” PennSound Rewind aims to tell the tales hiding among our 50,000+ recordings and “to look back and pinpoint some of the people, recordings, and moments — both big and small — that made PennSound what it is today.”

The first episode, “Ashbery Week, 2007,” takes us way back to October of that year when “PennSound had only just started to resemble the site it is today,” as Hennessey tells us in his introductory note: “The PoemTalk team was preparing their first episodes in anticipation of launching that December and PennSound Daily had just started as well. In our first full week of posts we had something well worth celebrating: the addition of John Ashbery to our roster of poets.” The program goes on to explore the many positive effects that Ashbery and David Kermani’s enthusiastic support had for the site in our fledgling days, not just in helping us assemble an encyclopedic collection of Ashberiana (there are now nearly a thousand individual files on our Ashbery page), but also how “the presence of one of the most venerated names in contemporary poetry opened doors for us” by making other poets eager to be part of the project. We revisit all of that week’s PennSound Daily posts, highlighting recordings from the four different events announced, with Ashbery reading titles including “The Cathedral Is,” “Haunted Landscape,” “Redeemed Area,” “Crossroads in the Past,” “A Worldly Country,” “A Kind of Chill,” and “They Dream Only of America.”

Click here to listen to our premier episode, and if you'd like to read more about John and David’s early support for our site, click here.