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From "Down To Write You This Poem Sat" at the Oakville Gallery

Contemporary
  1. Charles Bernstein, "Phone Poem" (2011) (1:30): MP3
  2. Caroline Bergvall, "Love song: 'The Not Tale (funeral)' from Shorter Caucer Tales (2006): MP3
  3. Christian Bôk, excerpt from Eunoia, from Chapter "I" for Dick Higgins (2009) (1:38):  MP3
  4. Tonya Foster, Nocturne II (0:40) (2010) MP3
  5. Ted Greenwald, "The Pears are the Pears" (2005) (0:29): MP3
  6. Susan Howe, Thorow, III (3:13) (1998):  MP3
  7. Tan Lin, "¼ : 1 foot" (2005) (1:16): MP3
  8. Steve McCaffery, "Cappuccino" (1995) (2:35): MP3
  9. Tracie Morris, From "Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful" (2002) (3:40): MP3
  10. Julie Patton, "Scribbling thru the Times" (2016) (5:12): MP3
  11. Tom Raworth, "Errory" (c. 1975) (2:08): MP3
  12. Jerome Rothenberg, from "The First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell: 4-Voice Version" (c. 1975) (3:30): MP3
  13. Cecilia Vicuna, "When This Language Disappeared" (2009) (1:30): MP3
Historical
  1. Guillaume Apollinaire, "Le Pont Mirabeau" (1913) (1:14): MP3
  2. Amiri Baraka, "Black Dada Nihilismus" (1964) (4:02):  MP3
  3. Louise Bennett, "Colonization in Reverse" (1983) (1:09): MP3
  4. Sterling Brown, "Old Lem " (c. 1950s) (2:06):  MP3
  5. John Clare, "Vowelless Letter" (1849) performed by Charles Bernstein (2:54): MP3
  6. Velimir Khlebnikov, "Incantation by Laughter" (1910), tr. and performed by Bernstein (:28)  MP3
  7. Harry Partch, from Barstow (part 1), performed by Bernstein (1968) (1:11): MP3
  8. Leslie Scalapino, "Can’t’ is ‘Night’" (2007) (3:19): MP3
  9. Kurt Schwitters, "Ur Sonata: Largo" performed by Ernst Scwhitter (1922-1932) ( (3:12): MP3
  10. Gertrude Stein, If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1934-35) (3:42): MP3
  11. William Carlos Willliams, "The Defective Record" (1942) (0:28): MP3
  12. Hannah Weiner, from Clairvoyant Journal, performed by Weiner, Sharon Mattlin & Rochelle Kraut (2001) (6:12): MP3

Selected by Charles Bernstein (read more about his choices here)

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A New S Press Addition: Ernst Jandl, 'Aus der Fremde' (1980)

Posted 8/21/2020

We've been ecstatic to see such positive responses to our recent announcement of PennSound's S Press Collection page and we intend to periodically dip back into the archive to highlight certain recordings of note. Today, however, we're happy to announce a new addition to that page from Austrian author, translator, sound poet, and concrete poet Ernst Jandl.

Originally released in 1980 as #52 in the series, Jandl's Aus der Fremde ("From Abroad," sometimes translated as "From Foreign Lands") was reissued as S Press tape #86. Subtitled "A spoken opera in 7 scenes," Aus der Fremde was later staged with three actors' voices as a radio play by Westdeutscher Rundfunk / Hessischer Rundfunk (also later released on CD by Gertraud Scholz Verlag). This S Press version appears to be an artist's study of sorts for that later production, recorded during the latter half of 1978 as Jandl worked through the material, and therefore there are variations in the text from the final version and the fidelity is not studio quality. The piece is divided into two parts, seemingly determined by the technical limitations of the medium: the first side runs for 59 minutes while the second is just shy of 43. Click here to listen.

Jandl's 13 Radiophone Texts, recorded at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1966, was released in 1977 as S Press tape #50. While we currently do not have permission to present that recording, we have provided a link to UbuWeb where the curious can listen in. Click here to start browsing our S Press Collection page from the top.



Adrienne Rich: Three New Recordings

Posted 8/19/2020

We recently added a trio of new recordings to PennSound's Adrienne Rich author page that come from various points through her writing life. Particularly with the new academic year starting, this is a great time for readers and teachers alike to check out the formidable collection of recordings we have to share from one of the most iconic poets of our time.

First, we have Rich's April 30, 1972 appearance on New York's WBAI-FM. Interestingly, given that this reading takes between two of her best-known collections — 1971's The Will to Change and 1973's National Book Award-winning Diving Into the Wreck — Rich has chosen to read from two earlier collections: Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law (1963) and Necessities of Life (1966). Given Rich's radicalization and embrace of her queer identity as the 60s progressed, these earlier poems, written between 1954 and 1965, are dramatically different in both form and content than the work Rich was presently engaged in.

Jumping forward to 1977, we have Rich's contributions to A Sign / I Was Not Alone, an LP released by Out & Out Books that also featured readings by Honor Moore, Audre Lorde, and Joan Larkin. Rich's nine-minute set closes out the album's B-side and features three poems: "The Mirror in Which Two Are Seen As One," "Power," and "Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev." We've also provided a link to Queer Music Heritage where you can read the album's liner notes and listen to the other poets who took part as well. 

Finally, from November 30, 1993, we have "An Evening with Adrienne Rich: City Arts and Lectures," an event that took place in San Francisco. Here, Rich reads work that would later be published in What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. The recording starts in the middle of "How Does a Poet Put Bread on the Table?" and continues with an excerpt from "The Muralist," then "A Leak In History" and "Tourism and Promised Lands," before concluding with that book's final section, "What If?"

You can click on the links above to be taken to each recording, or click here to start browsing PennSound's Adrienne Rich author page from the top.




City Planning Poetics 8: Urban Ruins, with Stonecipher and Biddle, 2019

Posted 8/17/2020

One of the most exciting ongoing series taking place at our Kelly Writers House is "City Planning Poetics," which has been organized and hosted by Davy Knittle since 2016. Twice a year, Knittle holds events "that invite one or more poets and one or more planners, designers, planning historians or others working in the field of city planning to discuss a particular topic central to their work, to ask each other questions, and to read from their current projects." The latest installation in the series, focusing on "Urban Ruins," took place on October 7th of last year, with panelists Donna Stonecipher and Daniel R. Biddle.

Stonecipher is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Transaction Histories (2018), which was cited by The New York Times as one of the 10 best poetry books of 2018. She has published one book of criticism, Prose Poetry and the City (2018). Her poems have been published in many journals, including The Paris Review, and have been translated into eight languages. She lives in Berlin. Biddle, a former politics editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has worked as a journalist for four decades. His Inquirer stories on the courts won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. As an editor he helped direct Inquirer investigative projects, regional news coverage, and reporting on elections. 

You can stream video and download audio of their discussion here here. Previous events in the series, which started in the winter of 2016, include "What Is a Map? What Does a Map Do?" (with Jena Osman and Amy Hillier), "What Are the Tools That Shape the Built Environment? Where Did They Come From? How Have They Been Used?" (with Francesca Ammon and Jason Mitchell), "Queer Placemaking" (with Max J. Andruck and Rachel Levitsky), "Urban Memory" (with Simone White and Randall Mason), "Queer City" (with Jen Jack Gieseking and Erica Kaufman), "Urban Revitalization" (with Brian Goldstein and Douglas Kearney), and "Carceral Justice" (with Emily Abendroth and Nina Johnson). You can watch or listen to those events here.



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