Edmond Jabès on PennSound

Today we dig deep into the archive for a remarkable document that only some of our listeners will be able to enjoy fully. We created our Edmond Jabès author page back in February 2017 to house one recording: a 1974 documentary on the Egypt-born French author made by Jean-Pierre Prevost.

Originally broadcast on French television, the film features Jabès in conversation with Claude Royet-Journoud and Lars Fredrikson. As our own Charles Bernstein noted at the time of its addition, the film had gone unseen for more than four decades. It's presented as it originally aired, i.e. in French and without subtitles, so if you are a native speaker or your quarantine hobby was trying to work on bettering your rusty high school French, you're in luck. In any case, this film is too important a document not to share with our listeners. Click here to start watching.

Remembering Kerouac on the 55th Anniversary of His Death

Fifty-five years ago on this day, Beat Generation legend Jack Kerouac finally succumbed to the slow alcoholic suicide that had occupied much of his last decade. While we don't have permission from the Kerouac estate to share recordings of the poet's work — multiple albums, including collaborations with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, along with polymath Steve Allen, are widely available — we do have a few noteworthy recordings of others reading him within our archives.

Perhaps the most exciting recent addition to the site is Vivien Bittencourt and Vincent Katz's short film documenting a 1988 tribute reading of Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, which took place at the Knitting Factory. This stunning half-hour video includes live performances by Barbara Barg, Charles Bernstein, Lee Ann Brown, Maggie Dubris, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Hell, Bob Holman, Lita Hornick, Vicki Hudspith, Vincent Katz, Rochelle Kraut, Gerard Malanga, Judith Malina, Eileen Myles, Simon Pettet, Hanon Reznikov, Bob Rosenthal, Jerome Rothenberg, Tom Savage, Elio Schneeman, Michael Scholnick, Carl Solomon, Steven Taylor, David Trinidad, Lewis Warsh, Hal Willner, and Nina Zivancevic, while Mark Ettinger, Dennis Mitcheltree, Charlie Morrow, and Samir Safwat, among others, providing live, improvised accompaniment. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure also appear in brief interview segments. You can watch here.

Then we have another old favorite from the archives: Clark Coolidge and Michael Gizzi reading Kerouac's iconic spontaneous prose piece, "Old Angel Midnight," taken from a 1994 recording session at the West Stockbridge, MA home studio of Steve Schwartz. Coolidge is, of course, well-known for, as Al FilreisAl Filreis phrases it, "his advocacy for Kerouac as properly belonging to the field of experimental poetry and poetics." Here's how he lays out his sense of what he refers to as Kerouac's "babble flow":

[S]ound is movement. It interests me that the words "momentary" and "moments" come from the same Latin: "moveo, to move. Every statement exists in time and vanishes in time, like in alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy's famous statement about music: "When you hear music, after it's over it's gone in the air, you can never capture it again." That has gradually become more of a positive value to me, because one of the great things about the moment is that if you were there in that moment, you received that moment and there's an intensity to a moment that can never be gone back to that is somehow more memorable. Like they used to say, "Was you there, Charlie?" 

Kerouac said, "Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time." And I can’t resist putting next to that my favorite statement by Maurice Blanchot: "One can only write if one arrives at the instant towards which one can only move through space opened up by the movement of writing." And that’s not a paradox.

Here's how Kerouac himself described the project (which famously appeared in the premier issue of Big Table, along with excerpts from William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch — content liberated from the suppressed Winter 1958 issue of The Chicago Review): 

"Old Angel Midnight" is only the beginning of a lifelong work in multilingual sound, representing the haddalada-babra of babbling world tongues coming in thru my window at midnight no matter where I live or what I'm doing, in Mexico, Morocco, New York, India or Pakistan, in Spanish, French, Aztec, Gaelic, Keltic, Kurd or Dravidian, the sounds of people yakking and of myself yakking among, ending finally in great intuitions of the sounds of tongues throughout the entire universe in all directions in and out forever. And it is the only book I've ever written in which I allow myself the right to say anything I want, absolutely and positively anything, since that's what you hear coming in that window... God in his Infinity wouldn't have had a world otherwise — Amen."

You can listen to Coolidge and Gizzi's rendition of this classic here, and might also want to check out PoemTalk #124, wherein Coolidge and Filreis, along with J.C. Cloutier and Michelle Taransky, discuss their recording of the poem.

In Memoriam: James M. Cory (1953–2024)

Sadly, we bring this week to a close with news of another member of our poetic community lost: James L. Cory, a pioneering queer author known to many in Philadelphia and beyond, passed away after a heroic battle with cancer on Saturday, October 12th. 

Cory's good friend (and longtime Electronic Poetry Center managing editor) Jack Krick broke the news, and offered this remembrance: "He was an inventive, reflective, and earnest poet and writer, one whose work was often comic, but sublimely so. He was an inveterate reader and collector of books, a studied and discriminating listener to both jazz and classical music, and a sterling friend. I will miss him very much, as, I'm certain, so will his many, many friends and admirers." Cory offered up this beguiling autobiography in the collaborative online anthology Elective Affinities that bears witness to his diverse passions and influences, as well as his character:

Born 1953 in Oklahoma, grew up in NYC suburb (of Connecticut) and a few years in the Midwest. My father sold carpet and made a science of non-communication. Seven brothers and sisters, most of them difficult. Learned about modernist poetry and how to read same when a house painter came down off his ladder one afternoon and explicated a Wallace Stevens poem in the anthology I was reading, circa age 14. Studied European history at Penn State. Wrote poetry beginning late teens. Active in radical politics. The most interesting person I’ve met was a threadbare and anonymous gentleman who one afternoon in the late 80s appeared to give me an impromptu, room-by-room tour of the Art Institute of Chicago, then the architectural treasures of the Loop, full of ingenious explanations and insights, before vanishing around a corner. I believe this was Louis Sullivan’s ghost. Recently I stopped watching television.

While we don't have a proper PennSound author page for Cory, we wanted to highlight two recordings from him that you can find in our archives. First, from 2003's landmark The Philly Sound: New Poetry Weekend you can hear Cory's contributions to the opening event, the "9x9 Panel," hosted by CA Conrad, which featured Cory along with Jim Behrle, Edmund Berrigan, hassen, Sofia Memon, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Deborah Richards, Molly Russakoff, and Prageeta Sharma. Next, there's Cory's brief set from a 2007 launch event for EOAGH issue #3 ("Queering Language") at Philly's legendary Robin's Books, which includes the poems "Chat," "He," and "Memory at 53." 

We send our condolences to Cory's family and friends, in Philadelphia and worldwide, and mourn his passing.

Lorenzo Thomas, "Ego Trip," 1976

If you need a little energy boost to get you through this week, allow us to humbly offer up a raucous collaboration from the late, great Lorenzo Thomas. "Ego Trip" features Thomas performing with the Texas State University Jazz Ensemble and was originally released on the album 3rd Ward Vibration Society (shown at right) on the SUM Concerts label in 1976. Lanny Steele is the composer for the track, which rubs shoulders with a cover of Carole King's "Jazzman" and the amazingly-titled suite, "Registration '74. The Worst I've Ever Endured / The Girl on the Steps / Drop and Add."

Internet commenter John Atlas provides a little context for the recording: "The TSU Jazz Ensemble was directed by Lanny Steele, who also founded and directed a nonprofit called Sum Arts. During the 70's and 80's, Sum Arts produced shows by, among others, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, The World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, The Leroy Jenkins Octet, Old and New Dreams, and a host of notable poets. In the process he exhausted an inheritance from his parents, and more."

Thomas' solo voice starts us off riffing on "Stormy Monday"'s litany of days — "Every dog has his day. / Monday is my day / even if it is blue. / Come trifling Tuesday / that's my day too ..." — and is soon joined by congas and funky wah-wah guitars, then a defiant bassline, Rhodes piano, and a fuzzed out lead, before the full ensemble kicks in as Thomas' final syllable echoes out ("I ... I ... I ... I ..."). After a series of solos and some stop-start time changes Thomas returns over the band — "Let me testify! / Every day his his dog, / but I'm tired! / I want the sun shine just over me. / I want the wind blow just over me. / I want your policemen to be just to me." — which leads into the track's closing section.

You can listen to this smoldering track on PennSound's Lorenzo Thomas author page along with a slew of readings and talks from 1978 up until just a few years before his death in 2005.

Celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with "North of Invention'

Today our neighbors to the north celebrate their Thanksgiving Day, and we can't think of a better way to mark the occasion than revisiting the marvelous North of Invention: A Canadian Poetry Festival, which was co-organized by Sarah Dowling and Charles Bernstein, at the Kelly Writers House. Extensive audio and video documentation from the multi-day event is available on PennSound's homepage for the event. Here's a description of the festival's aims, taken from its event page on the KWH website:

North of Invention presents 10 Canadian poets working at the cutting edge of contemporary poetic practice, bringing them first to the Kelly Writers House, then to Poets House in New York City for two days of readings, presentations and discussion in each location. Celebrating the breadth and complexity of poetic experimentation in Canada, North of Invention features emerging and established poets working across multiple traditions, and represents nearly fifty years of experimental writing. North of Invention aims to initiate a new dialogue in North American poetics, addressing the hotly debated areas of "innovation" and "conceptual writing," the history of sound poetry and contemporary performance, multilingualism and translation, and connections to activism.

Poets involved in the festival include Lisa Robertson, M. NourbeSe Philip, Stephen Collis, Christian Bök, Nicole Brossard, Adeena Karasick, a.rawlings, Jeff Derksen Fred Wah and Jordan Scott, and the full schedule includes both readings and presentations from all participants. You can start exploring this wonderful resource by clicking here. A companion feature of the same name, edited by Dowling, was published by Jacket2 in 2013, and is likewise well worth your time.

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.

Charles Reznikoff, "Day of Atonement"

On March 27, 1975 Charles Reznikoff was a guest on Susan Howe's WBAI/Pacifica radio program — the first of three sessions he'd record over the course of six months that year. After Howe's biographical introduction, Reznikoff begins his set with "Samuel" from "A Fifth Group of Verse." Next he asks his host, "may I read a group of verse about two or three holidays, which, though Jewish, are often mentioned in current newspapers?" He then reads from "Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays," starting with "Hanukkah," then "New Year's," before coming to the poem that, appropriately enough, we are highlighting this evening, "Day of Atonement" (listen here: MP3).

"Yom Kippur has always been rich terrain for Jewish writers," an unattributed 2002 article in The Washington Post observes, "but secular modern and contemporary American Jewish poets have given the subject a particular metaphorical resonance. They seize upon the holiday as an opportunity to meditate about forgiveness and unrepentance, or about the rival claims of solitude and community, or about the nature of suffering and affliction." Reznikoff's "Day of Atonement" is hailed as one of the author's "own short list of good contemporary Yom Kippur poems" alongside work by Adrienne Rich, Robert Mezey, Robin Becker, and Jacqueline Osherow.

Yom Kippur had greater significance for the poet, however, than its religious symbolism. Reznikoff's Poetry Foundation bio (written by Milton Hindus) recalls a history of "violent and traumatic incidents" that marked his upbringing in Brooklyn, including one incident that "took place at the conclusion of the evening prayers on the Day of Atonement, when his grandfather and his uncle were unexpectedly late in returning from the synagogue in Brownsville to which they had walked." An anxious Charles went looking for them, only to find "his grandfather coming down the street alone, tears streaming down his face, unable to answer 'where's uncle?' And his uncle appeared 'without his new hat and the blood running down his face.'" Hindus fills in the details: "As they were passing a bar a little boy, encouraged by a gang of young ruffians, had brandished a stick at them. The uncle had taken the stick away, and some of the gang jumped the old man and sent him sprawling in the gutter."

"There can be no doubt," he concludes, "that his direct and indirect observation of violence (and his sense of its perpetual immediacy) as a Jewish child in a hostile urban neighborhood lies behind the lifelong concern in much of his work with the continual possibility, potential, and actuality of violence between human beings." And yet, in the face of this threat, Reznikoff is able to find grace in "Day of Atonement": "All wickedness shall go in smoke. / It must, it must!," he vows. "The just shall see and be glad. / The sentence is sweet and sustaining; / for we, I suppose, are the just; / and we, the remaining." Let us hope that that might be true.