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Douglas Messerli


Photo: © 2007 Bernstein/PennSound

Close Listening with Charles Bernstein, January 21, 2008

Program 1 — Complete Reading (27:57): MP3

  1. "Dinner on the Lawn" (1:22) : MP3
  2. "Chairs for Everyone" (1:38) : MP3
  3. "This that & then" (0:28) : MP3
  4. "Life at the Pleiades" (0:36) : MP3
  5. "Actually Swallowed" (0:49) : MP3
  6. "Harrowing" (0:34) : MP3
  7. "Causes of the Crack Up" (0:36) : MP3
  8. "An Essay on Concrete" (1:04) : MP3
  9. "Going to Sea" (1:21) : MP3
  10. "On the Line" (0:35) : MP3
  11. "From Hear to Air" (1:02) : MP3
  12. "Scared Cows" (0:57) : MP3
  13. "Summer" (0:52) : MP3
  14. "Aller et Retour" (0:28) : MP3
  15. "Narrativity" (1:30) : MP3
  16. "Air/Error: A Dialogue" (2:09) : MP3
  17. "August" (0:41) : MP3
  18. "Ground" (0:59) : MP3
  19. "Suppositions" (1:15) : MP3
  20. "Storm" (2:08) : MP3
  21. "I've Been" (1:19) : MP3
  22. "The World" (1:46) : MP3
  23. "Space (2) : MP3" (0:46) : MP3
  24. "West" (1:08) : MP3
Program 2 — Interview (27:55): MP3

Program 3 — Reading & Interview (26:54): MP3

Heavy Sonnets:

  1. "The Aim" (0:28) : MP3
  2. "The Supposition" (0:31) : MP3
  3. "The Illusion" (0:25) : MP3
  4. "The Preparation" (0:30) : MP3
  5. "Flying Dutchman" (1:03) : MP3
  6. "March Streams Exist, If Streams Exist" (2:09) : MP3
  7. "The Secret Saint" (2:12) : MP3

Interview with WritersCast, February 21, 2015

From Charles Bernstein's Portraits Series: Douglas & the Big Apple (First Bite), December 10, 2006

Watch on Media.sas

Douglas Messerli
Douglas grew up in Iowa, where New York was as close as his Broadway musical LPs, which he collected even though he didn’t have a record player. Sun & Moon, and now Green Integer, sales reps meetings bring him to town a couple of times a year. Very often he stays at my mother’s apartment. Those trips always give us a chance to spend an evening together, where we talk of publishing, poetry, theater, but mostly the foibles of our legion of mutual friends, and our own foibles too. We end up laughing, even at the saddest things.
(mp4, 1 min., 16 sec., 5.1 mb)


MLA Offsite Series Reading at the Four Seasons Hotel, Washington D.C., December 27, 1996

  1. First Words (3:20): MP3
  2. Aesthetics (0:41): MP3
  3. Never Having to Been Where the Sun Rose (1:18): MP3

Wednesdays at 4Plus, University at Buffalo, February 15, 1995

  • Introduction (4:43): MP3
  • Complete Reading (36:09): MP3

Segue Series Reading at the Ear Inn, New York, December 9, 1995

  • Complete Reading (45:44): MP3

Incognito Lounge: Symposium on Surrealism, Santa Monica, CA, August 19, 1994

Organized by Messerli, with Will Alexander, David Antin, and Jerome Rothenberg

  • Part one (51:37): MP3
  • Part two (36:30): MP3

Reading from Along Without: a fiction in film for poetry, Poetry Project, NY, 1993

  • Complete recording (20:31)(starts late): MP3

Segue Series Reading at the Ear Inn, New York, January 18, 1992

  • Complete Reading (24:15): MP3

Segue Series reading at The Ear Inn, New York, September 29, 1990

  • Complete recording (27:18): MP3

Clarence Major and Douglas Messerli for the Poetry Project, St. Mark's Church, New York, November 9, 1988

Recorded on audiocassette. Recording hosted by the Library of Congress

  1. Side A (44:57): link

Segue Series Reading at the Ear Inn, New York, January 11, 1985

  • Complete Reading (31:36): MP3

Residencies for Writers Workshop, Lecture and Discussion, May 8, 1980

  • Part 1 (56:00): MP3
  • Part 2 (55:21): MP3
  • Part 3 (45:00): MP3

Recordings from the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn, March 17, 1979

  1. "Dialogue of the Two Great Systems" (collaboration with Marianne Glass) (3:10) : MP3
  2. Epigram by Gertrude Stein (0:16) : MP3
  3. "I'd to Me" (with multiple voices, probably Diane Ward and Charles Bernstein) (1:20) : MP3
  4. Untitled ("The initial process to speak in...") (0:54) : MP3
  5. Untitled ("That the word take convincing...") (0:42) : MP3
  6. Untitled ("Is to know to put...") (0:52) : MP3
  7. "To M" (0:48) : MP3
  8. "The Tides" (2:26) : MP3
  9. "Overture" (0:55) : MP3
  10. "Dinner on the Lawn" (1:34) : MP3
  11. "The Bride" (1:00) : MP3
  12. "Nervousness" (0:36) : MP3
  13. "Akimbo" (0:32) : MP3
  14. "Worm" (0:36) : MP3
  15. "Solstice" (0:32) : MP3
  16. "Leaving the House" (0:55) : MP3
  17. "The Villainy of Claire Boothe Luce" (1:45) : MP3
  18. "Encore" (0:56) : MP3
  19. "Ah Fragonard" (1:18) : MP3
  20. "Space" (0:43) : MP3
  21. "Poem" (1:04) : MP3

Complete Reading (22:41): MP3

Special thanks to Danny Snelson for his help in segmenting this reading.

Douglas Messerli on PennSound Daily


These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. Close Listening © 2008 by Charles Bernstein and Douglas Messerli. Other material ©2015 by Douglas Messerli. Used with permission of Douglas Messerli. Distributed by PennSound.