PoemTalk #208: on Tyrone Williams' "Charon on the Potomac"

Today we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, a discussion of the late Tyrone Williams' "Charon on the Potomac." For this program, host Al Filreis was joined by (from left) Simone White, Erica Hunt, Aldon Nielsen.

As Filreis explains in his program notes at Jacket2, this was a very special episode: "For years a group of us convened annually at the Writers House to talk about a poet we admired. Our group always included the late Tyrone Williams. On the occasion of this special episode of PoemTalk, we re-convened once more, although this time, sadly, without Tyrone as part of the conversation." However, Filreis is quick to correct himself, "Well, Tyrone's poetic genius was of course present." The recording under discussion comes from a 2017 reading at our own Kelly Writers House, and fittingly, the panelists sat on the same Arts Cafe stage for this hour-long live recording session.

You can listen to this latest program, listen to and read and the poem, watch the raw feed of the session, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #207: on Two by Rae Armantrout

Yesterday we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on two poems from Rae Armantrout's collection Go Figure: "Here I Go" and "Further Thought." Joining host Al Filreis for this program are Julia Bloch and Laynie Browne, along with Armantrout herself.

As Filreis notes in his program notes at Jacket2, Armantrout was visiting UPenn to take part in an interactive ModPo webcast and to give a poetry reading in addition to recording this podcast session. "Rae’s PennSound author page didn’t yet have any recordings of performances of poems from this new book," he notes, "so we asked the poet to read them during the podcast session."

You can listen to this latest program, listen to and read and the poem, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #206: on Lewis Warsh's "Polar Night"

Yesterday saw the release of the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on Lewis Warsh's poem "Polar Night," taken from a 2008 reading as part of the Chapter and Verse series at at Chapterhouse Café in Philadelphia. Joining host Al Filreis for this program are (from left to right) Anselm Berrigan, Kate Colby, and Laynie Browne.

Filreis begins his program notes at Jacket2, by discussing the provenance of both the poem and its recording: "The poem was published in the poetry collection Alien Abduction in 2015. (This was his first book of poems since Inseparable of 2008, so we assume 'Polar Night' was written around then but not in time to be included in the 2008 book.)" He then frames the program through that collection, noting "Our discussion of the poem aligns well with a comment made by Dorothea Lasky about Alien Abduction as a whole: 'Warsh listens closely to everything, and in this book we find the mix of everything that makes up life... In it too we find a life that is always strange because it is living and constantly changing.'" 

You can listen to this latest program, listen to and read and the poem, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #205: on Two by June Jordan

Today we releasee the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on two poems by June Jordan — "Financial Planning" and "Song of the Law Abiding Citizen" — that were filmed by Bob Holman as "Poetry Spots" for WNYC-TV.  Joining host Al Filreis for this program are Holman, Herman Beavers, and Christy Davids.

As Filreis explains in his program notes at Jacket2,  Holman's short films "aired on WNYC-TV as 'non-commercial commercials' from 1987 through 1993" with the Jordan clips first broadcast on April 26, 1989. Filreis goes on to quote an interview with Holman describing the spirit of the endeavor: " “I love poetry, I love its variety. I love people who say that's not a poem, because when that's not a poem, you get to talk about what a poem is. And who dares define that?”

You can listen to this latest program; watch, listen to, and read Jordan's two poems; 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #204: on Horace Gregory's 'Chorus for Survival'

Earlier this week we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on two poems from Horace Gregory's 1935 collection, Chorus for Survival, specifically numbers five and eleven. Joining host Al Filreis for this program are Christos Kalli, Jon Hoel, and Henry Steinberg.

As Filreis explains in his program notes at Jacket2, Gregory was a "once hugely famous and now mostly forgotten communist and communist-affiliated poet who thrived for decades but most notably in the 1930s." He also provides the provenance for the recordings under discussion, which were made at the Harvard Vocarium in 1944, as part of a set of six titles.

You can listen to this latest program, read the fifth poem in the series, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #203: on Callie Gardner's "Culture Warrior"

Today we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which addresses a poem by the late Callie Gardner — "or rather two versions of a poem," as host Al Filreis tells us. For this program, Filreis was joined by a panel comprised of Laynie Browne, Julia Bloch, and Iain Morrison.

Filreis further explains the complex lineage of the poem(s) under discussion in his program notes on Jacket2: "One version, titled 'when will my love return from the culture war?,' is six quatrains long. A second, for which we have a recorded performance, is four quatrains; there's a variation on thinking about the second that invites us to call it a sonnet." He continues, "Callie added a version — organized in the quatrains — to their blog on May 1, 2020. On November 19, 2020, Callie read the shorter version of the poem as part of a live-streamed remote (lockdown-era) reading given by eight poets," and this is the source of the performance featured on the show.

You can listen to this latest program, read the texts discussed, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #202: On Harryette Mullen's "Chasing Dirt"

Yesterday saw the debut of the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which addreses "Chasing Dirt" from Harryette Mullen's latest, 2023's Open Leaves / poems from earth. Host Al Filreis was lucky to be joined for this program by Mullen herself, along with Laynie Brown and Simone White.

This section of Open Leaves — published by London's Black Sunflowers Poetry Press — includes "two epigraphs, a prose-poem paragraph, a mixed media artwork titled Silent Talks by Tiffanie Delune, and a sequence of three-line poems across four pages of four poems each." In his program notes at Jacket2 Filreis also notes that "Since PennSound’s Harryette Mullen author page did not yet include a recording of Harryette performing poems from Open Leaves, we asked her to read 'Chasing Dirt' at the start of the recorded session."

You can listen to this latest program, read the poems discussed, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #201: on Two by Trish Salah

Earlier this week we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on a pair of poems by Arab Canadian poet Trish Salah — "Interlude 4: The Voice" and "Detoured Come Tomorrow" — both of which can be found in Salah's 2017 Metonymy Press collection, Lyric Sexology Volume 1. The panel convened by host Al Filreis for this program consisted of Kay Gabriel, Syd Zolf, Levi Bentley (shown below, from left to right).

As Filreis notes in his announcement of the new episode on Jacket2, "Our recordings of Trish Salah performing these poems comes from an interview conducted by Christy Davids in the same Wexler Studio February 10, 2017" You'll find the complete results of that session, which was published as PennSound Podcast #57, on Salah's PennSound author page, along with a small but potent selection of readings, talks, and panel discussions going back to 2009.

You can listen to this latest program, read the poems discussed, 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 two hundred episodes, by clicking here.

PoemTalk #200: on Two by Evie Shockley

Today we are proud to release a landmark 200th episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which has come a long way since its debut way back in 2007.

There are a number of things that make this episode special, starting with the panelists — host Al Filreis, plus William J. (Billy Joe) Harris, Tyrone Williams, and Aldon Nielsen, who have "been convening nearly every year (minus two pandemic years) for a long while, each time inviting a poet the group admired to join us." This time around, they invited Evie Shockley to be their guest, and as Filreis bittersweetly notes in his write-up of the new episode, "This gathering will be the penultimate session. Not long after these people spent a day and night at the Writers House — sharing meals, recording an interview in the studio, holding impromptu seminars — our friend Tyrone Williams passed away." He continues, "The episode, now released to keep in sequence for the 200th, serves as a memorializing of sorts. It was the last of Tyrone’s many, many visits to the Writers House. Penultimate, because — the group will gather again one last time not long after this episode is published, to record a PoemTalk on Tyrone's poem 'Charon on the Potomac,'" which will be followed by "a poetry reading in his memory" at the Writers House.

Returning to the present episode, which discusses two poems by Shockley — "My last modernist poem, #4 (or, re-re-birth of a nation)" from The New Black  and "studies in antebellum literature (or, topsy-turvy)" from Semi-automatic — Filreis fondly recalls that it was recorded live in front of an audience in the Writers House's Arts Café, and that while recordings of both poems were already archived on Shockley's PennSound author page, the poet kindly performed both live as part of the session. 

You can listen to this latest program, read the poems discussed, watched unedited footage of the entire proceedings, 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.

PoemTalk #199: on Two by Edwin Denby

Today we released the newest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, its 199th in total. For this program, which explores a pair of poems by Edwin Denby — "The Subway" and "Ciampino: Envoi" —  host Al Filreis was joined by a panel that included (from left to right) Thomas Devaney, JS Wu, and Vincent Katz.

Filreis' brief write-up of the new episode notes that both poems can be found in Random House's Edwin Denby: the Complete Poems (edited by Ron Padgett), and offers the provenance of the tracks under consideration, which "were recorded and edited by Jacob Burckhardt between the years 1976 and 1983, on a CD originally issued on disc in 2004." He also points out that "'Ciampino: Envoi' in fact recalls Jacob as a young child in Rome and New York."

You can listen to this latest program, read the poems discussed, 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.

PoemTalk #198: on Three Poems from Larry Price's '1/0'

This week saw the release of the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on "three prose-poem sections or pages" from Larry Price's newest book, 1/0. This program breaks somewhat with PoemTalk convention in that the author is part of the discussion, alongside host Al Filreis, William Fuller (who chose the poems that were considered), and Sophia DuRose.

Filreis' brief write-up of the new episode notes that "Larry's PennSound page at the time of our conversation did not yet include recordings of this new writing, so we asked Larry to perform these poems toward the start of the episode. Earlier on the day of the session Larry spent time in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House recording more poems from 1/0 and other selections from his previous books." He also gives a preview of the next program's subject and guests, but we won't spoil that here.

You can listen to this latest program, read the poems discussed, 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.

PoemTalk #197: on Marjorie Welish's "Begetting Textile"

Today we release the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series — a very impressive #197 — which focuses on Marjorie Welish's "Begetting Textile" sequence from 2004's Word Group (specifically poems 1, 2, 10,  and 13). Host Al Filreis was joined by Michelle Taransky, Sally Van Doren, and Christy Davids (shown from left to right) for this program. 

Filreis offers this lyrical take on the poems' impact in his write-up of the new episode: "The poems are texts in the sense of text inside the term textile. They are barely raveled. Phrase do and don't knit. A sweater is put on and overcomes mimesis. Fragmentation, the group agrees, is not the vibe — that’s too definitely indefinite." He continues, "Welish deploys phrasings on the page that convey the unraveling of work (and the meaning of work, especially women's work) rather than  fractioning, shattering, and atomizing," before asserting, "There is a wholeness to the untangling."

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.

PoemTalk #196: on Hart Crane's "The Harbor Dawn"

Today we release the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on "The Harbor Dawn," the third section of Hart Crane's The Bridge, which was begun in 1923 and published in 1930. For this 196th program, host Al Filreis was joined by just two interlocutors: Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué and Jonathan Dick.

Filreis starts his write-up of the new episode by explaining the source of the recording under discussion: "We don't alas have a recording of Crane reading this poem; nor do any recordings of Crane survive. But PennSound's Hart Crane author page includes two of Crane's poems as performed by Tennessee Williams! So before our discussion began, we listened to Williams's transatlantic/southern American inflection." He continues, "Crane the Ohioan who spent a good deal of time around working-class New Yorkers, would not have sounded this way. Yet listen and get a sense of how our talk was perhaps affected by Williams's performance. Nonetheless we heard in Crane's poem major traces of Whitman, Eliot, O'Hara, Schuyler, the Romantics (that window casement...), Samuel R. Delany, even Jack Kerouac."

You can listen to this latest program, read "The Harbor Dawn," 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.

PoemTalk #195: Two by Ron Padgett

Today we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series (that's #195 for those counting) which addresses a pair of poems by legendary poet, translator, editor, and pedagogue Ron Padgett: "The Austrian Maiden" and "Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo." For this program, host Al Filreis convened a panel that included Yale colleagues James Berger and Richard Deming, along with Sophia DuRose.

Filreis offers some provenance for the two recordings under discussion in his write-up of this new episode on Jacket2. " Published a year earlier in You Never Know, "The Austrian Maiden"  is taken from a February 26, 2003 reading Padgett gave at our own Kelly Writers House, and "had just recently been published in Padgett's book You Never Know (2002)." He continues: "The recording of 'Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo' — a poem published in Great Balls of Fire (1969) — was performed at a November 20, 1979, reading given at a location that is now (sadly) unknown," and notes that "the recording comes to us courtesy of the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library."

You can listen to this latest program, read both poems in their entirety, 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.

PoemTalk #194: Two by Veronica Forrest-Thomson

Earlier this week, we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series — a special program recorded abroad at the Fruitmarket Arts Center in Edinburgh, Scotland — which focuses on two poems from Veronica Forrest-Thomson, "S/Z" and "Lemon and Rosemary." For this program, host Al Filreis was joined by a super-sized panel including host and co-organizer Iain Morrison, Laynie Browne, Lee Ann Brown, and Anthony Capildeo. 

After thanking Browne ("who chose the poems and curated this episode"), Filreis' write-up of this new episode on Jacket2, offers some provenance for the recordings under discussion here: "The audio you'll hear toward the beginning is from a recording made at the important Cambridge Poetry Festival of April 1975; we note that Forrest-Thomson's performance there preceded her death by just a few weeks." He continues, "If you follow the reading of 'Lemon and Rosemary' along with the final published text you'll notice that there are significant differences between that and the version she read at the festival." He concludes with thanks for Dr. Gareth Farmer and Forrest-Thomson's estate for permission to use these recordings.

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.

PoemTalk #193: on "To the Reader" by Ariana Reines

Yesterday we announced the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which addresses Ariana Reines' poem "To the Reader," from her 2019 Tin House collection, A Sand House. For this program,  host Al Filreis was joined at the Kelly Writers House by a panel that included (from left to right) Pattie McCarthy, Eric Shoemaker, and Michelle Taransky.

Filreis offers this encapsulation of the discussion's evolution in his write-up of this new episode on Jacket2, noting, "The group began with an improvised list of topics this poem urges us to confront." "One topic (taken up toward the end of the discussion)," he continues, "is the trope of the unsayable. The speaker has 'seen things no one can explain' — has had an experience but the poem will defer or show itself incapable of describing it. Then there's the problem of conscious and unconscious literariness: that which isn't explainable ... is a knowledge 'for which no lineage / Credentialed me.'" "Such arising from nowhere frees her to pass in and out of the living world," Filreis concludes.

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.

PoemTalk #192: Two by Owen Dodson

Last night, we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on two titles by Owen Dodson, a prominent poet, novelist, and playwright of the generation of Black authors that followed in the footsteps of the Harlem Renaissance. Together with host Al Filreis, panelists Herman Beavers, Tracie Morris, and Amber Rose Johnson discuss Dodson's "Sorrow Is the Only Faithful One" and an elegaic sonnet "For Billie Holiday — Finally, Lady, You are Gone From Us."

Filreis starts off his write-up of this new episode on Jacket2 noting that "our recordings of these poems come from the Library of Congress, where on December 13, 1960, Dodson entered the Recording Laboratory there to perform a selection of his verse." He also quotes Dodson's recollection of meeting Holiday as a young man from Hilton Als' book The Women: 

Chile, I met Billie Holiday through my boyfriend, Karl Priebe, in the forties. She was appearing in a club in New York, on Fifty-second Street. I came up from Washington [where he was on the faculty at Howard University] to see Karl. He was working, and he suggested I come along to meet her. Chile, she was in this awful dressing room, smaller than my bathroom. She called me "Teach." Her dress was hiked up around her waist. She was fanning her pussy with a fan. She said, looking straight at me, fanning her pussy: "Teach, it's so goddamn hot in here" (p. 137).

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.

PoemTalk #191: on Two by Kenward Elmslie

Yesterday, we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, which focuses on two pieces — one poem ("Core Bonus") and one song ("One Night Stand") — by the multifariously talented Kenward Elmslie. A panel that included (from left to right) Henry Steinberg, Simone White, and Wayne Koestenbaum joined host Al Filreis for this program.

Filreis starts off his write-up of this new episode on Jacket2, with some fascinating backround information on the titles being discussed as well as the recordings: "As of the recording we had not located published/in-print version of 'Core Bonus' but Elsmlie's PennSound page includes a record of it. 'One Night Stand' was included in Routine Disruptions: Selected Poems and Lyrics (Coffee House Press, 1998)." He continues,"'Core Bonus' was performed during a Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York on April 7, 2007. 'One Night Stand' was sung by Elmslie at the Kelly Writers House on November 12, 2003, for an event titled 'Snippets: A Gathering of Songs, Visual Collaborations, and Poems.'"

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.

PoemTalk #190: on Aldon Nielsen's "Tray"

We just released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series, and it's a rare one in which the poet under discussion is part of the panel. At right, you'll see the knock-out trio of Aldon Nielen, Tyrone Williams, and William J. Harris assembled by host Al Filreis to discuss Nielsen's "Tray," from his collection of the same name. Not quit as rare for PoemTalk, but still quite special: this episode was also recorded life in front of an audience at the Kelly Writers Houses' Arts Café.

In his write-up of this new episode on Jacket2, Filreis explains the overall structure of the poem as well as the specific sections covered in this show: "There are 29 sections in the poem; the group discussed the first 6. In the book titled Tray, published by Make Now Press in 2017, the title poem takes up the first 37 pages; the sections we discussed run to page 14." He also notes that, "Usually, of course, we play an audio recording of the poem from we're about to discuss as archived in PennSound, but on this day, because we had the honor of Aldon's presence we asked him to perform those sections."

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.

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.