PennSound Daily

With the Labor Day holiday marking the unofficial end of the summer and the start of the academic year, we imagine that many of our listeners might be coming back to PennSound after a few months of rest and relaxation, therefore before we resume our regular announcements of new additions to the site, we're taking this week to catch up on materials added during the summer months. Today, we start with a recap of June on PennSound Daily.

June began with us paying tribute to Andrei Voznesensky and Peter Orlovsky, and before the month came to a close, we'd also mark the passing of Peter Seaton. In addition to a new author page for Susan Schultz, we also unveiled new recordings from C.S. Giscombe, Patrick Durgin, Raymond Federman and Segue Series sets by Jean Day and Andrew Levy, along with Charles Bernstein and Norman Fischer in conversation on the topic "Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture" and new videos from Leslie Scalapino and Rachel Zolf. PoemTalk #33 was released, featuring Al Filreis, Nada Gordon, Kenneth Goldsmith and Steve McLaughlin discussing Sharon Mesmer's "I Accidentally Ate Some Chicken . . .," and UPenn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing announced that Marcella Durand would be their 2010-2011 Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice.

You can read more about all of these recordings by following the links above, and scan through June's announcements (along with every other month since September 2007) on our PennSound Daily archive page. To make sure that you get the latest updates delivered automatically, click here to subscribe to the PennSound Daily newsfeed.

For our last post before the holiday weekend, we're very proud to announce five newly-segmented recordings from Leslie Scalapino — a project undertaken by our intern-extraordinaire, Jeff Boruszak, who noticed the dearth of individual tracks available on our Scalapino author page and wanted to do something about it.

The readings begin with Scalapino's December 13, 1986 reading at the Ear Inn as part of the Segue Series, and also include her 1991 reading at Reed College, her November 13, 2007 appearance at the Kelly Writers House, and two 2008 readings: a May 3rd appearance at Tucson's The Drawing Studio and her December 6th Segue Series set at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Taken together, these five readings serve as a respectable cross-section of the late poet's writing life, with excerpts from her debut collection, Considering how exaggerated music is and her epic serial poem, Way, as well as later works such as Day Ocean State of Stars' Night's "DeLay Rose" and "'Can't' is 'Night,'" and Floats Horse-Floats or Horse-Flows, among others. Follow the links above to be taken directly to individual readings, or to browse PennSound's Leslie Scalapino author page, click here.

In a blog post today, PennSound co-director, Al Filreis highlighted one of the latest additions to our archives — a just-segmented radio appearance by Cole Swensen from this past January:

Cole Swensen was a guest on Leonard Schwartz's radio program, "Cross-Cultural Poetics," back in January. Thanks to Henry Steinberg, now PennSound offers a segmented recording of the reading and discussion. Swensen offers a reading of "A Garden Is a Start" and then takes a few minutes to talk about the style of that poem. She reads "If a Garden of Numbers" but we are also treated to her discussion of the geometry of Le Notre gardens, of gardens taking dominion over nature, of fountains as a public commodity. (The readings were from her recent book, Ours.) It's all here — available as of just yesterday. By the way, I'm happy to say that Leonard Schwartz will be here at the Writers House this fall (9/23/10) — and also a guest on PoemTalk.

This latest recording is one of many from 1993 to the present that you can listen to on Swensen's PennSound author page, including two readings from Boulder's Left Hand Reading Series and a 2007 appearance as part of UC Berkeley's Holloway Series.