Close Listening

'And whoever picks it up grabs the magic'

Will Alexander on Close Listening, October 19, 2016

Photo of Will Alexander by Kelly Writers House staff, 2016.

Editorial note: Charles Bernstein and Will Alexander had a conversation about Alexander’s work for Clocktower Radio’s Close Listening at PennSound’s Carroll Garden Studios in Brooklyn, New York, on October 19, 2016. Some of the topics they touched on include: Alexander’s works, philosophy, connections and citations and references and sources, mythology, genre, aural properties of writing and performance, jazz, drawing and sketching, identity and politics of writing, location, and the writer’s mindset. 

Amit Chaudhuri in conversation with Charles Bernstein

McNally-Jackson books, NY, Sept. 6, 2022

photo: Susan Bee / PennSound

My conversation with Amit Chaudhuri at the South Street Seaport McNally-Jackson took place on September 6, 2022, celebrating the release of Sojourn from New York Review Books. We also discussed his 2021 book with NYRB, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music. 

LINEbreak is 25

In 1995, Martin Spinelli and I did a series of thirty-minute radio conversations and readings with poets and writers. It was one of the first programs to be distributed nationally by satellite to public radio stations, so a precursor to podcasts. I went on to a make a related series of programs, Close Listening. All are available free to stream or download on PennSound. All in all, there have been conversations and readings by 133 poets, writers, and artists.     

'The performance of freedom'

Close Listening with Tonya Foster and Charles Bernstein

Photo by Al Filreis.

Editorial note: The following conversation is from Close Listening, a program hosted by Charles Bernstein and produced by Clocktower Radio, in collaboration with PennSound, on June 18, 2013, at Studio 215 in New York. It was transcribed by Mariah Macias and subsequently edited for publication. The conversation, between Charles Bernstein and Tonya Foster, discusses Foster’s then-forthcoming poetry collection, Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna*, 2015), as well as topics surrounding Foster’s writing process and African American poetry communities such as Umbra and Cave Canem.

Editorial note: The following conversation is from Close Listening, a program hosted by Charles Bernstein and produced by Clocktower Radio, in collaboration with PennSound, on June 18, 2013, at Studio 215 in New York. It was transcribed by Mariah Macias and subsequently edited for publication. The conversation, between Charles Bernstein and Tonya Foster, discusses Foster’s then-forthcoming poetry collection, A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna*, 2015), as well as topics surrounding Foster’s writing process and African American poetry communities such as Umbra and Cave Canem.

Allen Fisher on Close Listening

photo ©2019 Charles Bernstein

I recorded a Close Listening program with Allen Fisher on November 29, 2019, in London. We talked about the relation of decoherence and entanglement, both key terms for Fisher's collage aesthetic. Along the way, we addresses a constellation of topics, including source texts, pattern recognition, the political allegory of poetic space, performance,  and the relation of Fisher's painting to his poetry. 

(33:36): MP3

Close Listening with Claude Royet-Journoud

© 2008 Charles Bernstein

I recorded this Close Listening conversation with Claude Royet-Journoud in Paris on November 24, 2019. We talked about his early years in London, his editing of Siècle à mains, meeting Anne-Marie Albiach, his extraordinary poetry interview program for France Culture, as well as his trips to the United States. 

Kit Robinson on Close Listening

Robinson and Uche Nduka at Unnameable Books

Kit Robinson in conversation with me on Close Listening, recorded on October 6, 2019: MP3

We talk about Robinson's early Dolch Stanzas and its vocabulary, based on a  list of the most frequently used words English, his use of short lines, changes in his more recent, "late" work, his connection to Tom Raworth, and the relation of his day jobs to his work as a musician and poet. 

Dubravka Djurić on Close Listening

Photo by Susan Bee, Belgrade, 2019.

Dubravka Djurić talks with me on Close Listening, recorded in Belgrade on July 26, 2019:

Conversation with Dubravka Djurić (44:53): MP3

This is the second of two shows. The first, a poetry reading by Djurić, was recorded on April 29, 2007, and is available at her PennSound page.

Michael Palmer on Close Listening

Close Listening conversation with Charles Bernstein at the Kelly Writers House, March 13, 2018

Harold Schimmel on Close Listening

Photo: Charles Bernstein / PennSound, 2017

Harold Schimmel reading his poetry in Hebrew and English (27:05): MP3; Schimmel in conversation with Charles Bernstein (46:15): MP3.

Harold Schimmel was born in 1935 in Bayonne, New Jersey, and attended Cornell University before immigrating to Israel in 1962, where he started to write in his adopted language, Hebrew. He lives in Jerusalem. Schimmel has translated Hebrew poets Uri Zvi Greenberg, Avot Yeshurun, and Yehuda Amichai. His first book, First Poems, came out in 1962 in English. He has many books in Hebrew and two in English translation: From Island to Island (Selected Poems) and Qasida (essay).

Harold Schimmel reading his poetry in Hebrew and English (27:05): MP3
Harold Schimmel in conversation with Charles Bernstein (46:15): MP3

Harold Schimmel was born in 1935 in Bayonne, New Jersey, and attended Cornell University before immigrating to Israel in 1962, where he started to write in his adopted language, Hebrew. He lives in Jerusalem. Schimmel has translated Hebrew poets Uri Zvi Greenberg, Avot Yeshurun, and Yehuda Amichai. His first book, First Poems, came out in 1962 in English. He has many books in Hebrew and two in English translation: From Island to Island (Selected Poems) and Qasida (essay), both from Ibis in 1997 and both translated by Peter Cole.

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