PennSound Daily

Thanks to the efforts of the one-and-only Raymond Foye, we're very excited to announce a new author page for legendary Beat bard Gregory Corso. Hailed by confrere Allen Ginsberg as "a poet's Poet, his verse pure velvet, close to John Keats for our time, exquisitely delicate in manners of the Muse," who "has been and always will be a popular poet, awakener of youth, puzzlement & pleasure for sophisticated elder bibliophiles." He continues, judging Corso as "'Immortal' as immortal is, Captain Poetry exampling revolution of Spirit, his 'poetry the opposite of hypocrisy,' a longer, laughably unlaurelled by native prizes, divine Poet Maudit, rascal poet Villonesque and Rimbaudian whose wild fame's extended for decades around the world from France to China, World poet."

While there will be more recordings to come in the future, we launch our Corso author page with five complete readings plus an undated individual track ("Police") taken from the St. Mark's Poetry Project. The earliest of these recordings is a 1971 event at Duke University, followed by a 1985 reading as part of the "Art of Poetry" series at the San Francisco Art Institute, a 1991 reading at Brooklyn College, and a 1993 reading at Rutgers. There's also a rollicking New York City reading by Corso along with Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, and John Wieners from 1992.

Again, we express our gratitude to Raymond Foye for his help in securing these recordings and permission to post them. We look forward to more wonderful Corso content in time.

Today brings the sad news that Larry Fagin — a New York School mainstay and editor of Adventures in Poetry and Sal Mimeo — passed away after a long battle with cancer at the age of 79 on May 27th.

Kyle Schlesinger penned a lovely tribute on the Cuneiform Press website, where he details the start of their two-decade friendship: "Larry was the first real poet I ever met. I must have been 19 or so. It was a memorable spring day on the Lower East Side, kids zipping around Tompkins Square Park, birds, and the smell of soft earth was in the air. My friend Luisa Giugliano had hired Larry as a private tutor, as so many poets of our generation had. Larry taught out of his living room, providing long lists of paintings to look at, books to read, movies to watch. We met outside his apartment on East 12th Street between First and Avenue A. He looked so cool with his elbow propped on the building, holding his breezy hair in his hand, and spoke enthusiastically about something called the 'internet' where you could buy any record you wanted."

He continues, describing a recording that you can hear on Fagin's PennSound author page: "We read together just once, at the Bowery Poetry Club just before Christmas in 2008. Larry thought it would be fun to do the shortest reading ever, so we agreed to each keep our sets to ten minutes or less. The audience was a little bewildered, but it was a sweet and modestly refreshing occasion in its own way." In addition to that Segue Series reading, you'll also find an undated recording from the St. Mark's Poetry Project and a 1974 reading in Bolinas, plus a link to video from a 2014 event from Dia's Readings in Contemporary Poetry series.

Those looking to learn more about him might start with Chadwick Moore's 2011 New York Times profile. We send our condolences to Fagin's friends, family, colleagues, and students.

One of our latest series pages is for "Poetry in Conversation," hosted at the Centre for Stories in Northbridge, Western Australia, the aim of which is "to tell good stories in the hope of strengthening connections between people and encouraging a more inclusive and informed community."

The series' host is Robert Wood, who's also curated some terrific Oceania-centric critical work for Jacket2. We're able to present five events in total that took place between February and May of this year, which includes four solo conversations with Sampurna Chattarji, Siobhan Hodge, Jeremy Balius, and James Quinton, and a Westerly Reading event showcasing the work of Amy Hilhorst, Chris Arnold, and Wood himself.

For those interested in more Australian PennSound content, don't forget to check out our Australian Poets audio anthology (curated by Pam Brown in conjunction with the Jacket2 feature, "Fifty-One Contemporary Poets from Australia") and our series page for the School of Life: Melbourne reading series (also curated by Wood).