Ron Padgett, "Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo" & "The Austrian Maiden"
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Al Filreis brought together James Berger and Richard Deming (who traveled together from Yale) and Sophia DuRose to talk about two poems by Ron Padgett. The poems are “The Austrian Maiden” and “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo.” Our recording of “The Austrian Maiden” comes from a February 26, 2003, reading Padgett gave at the Kelly Writers House; the poem had just recently been published in Padgett’s book You Never Know (2002). The recording of “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo” — a poem published in Great Balls of Fire (1969) — was performed at a November 20, 1979, reading given at a location that is now (sadly) unknown. That reading in its entirety is available at Padgett’s PennSound page; the recording comes to us courtesy of the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
April 17, 2024
'A willow tree among the streams'
Gary Snyder in Honolulu, March 2000 / March 2012
“I did it, first of all.” That was Gary Snyder's response to our distinguished visiting writer, Shawna Yang Ryan, when she asked him where he got the idea for the poem he’d just read. The poem was “Changing Diapers." As she said, diaper poems are not what one expects from Snyder. Or perhaps this one is, given the sharp contrast between the father changing his son's diapers and the violent, nay imperial, context of the background, a poster of Geronimo holding a Sharp's repeating rifle. The poem goes like this:
Changing Diapers
How intelligent he looks!
on his back
both feet caught in my one hand
his glance set sideways,
on a giant poster of Geronimo
with a Sharp's repeating rifle by his knee.
I open, wipe, he doesn't even notice
nor do I.
Baby legs and knees
toes like little peas
little wrinkles, good-to-eat,
eyes bright, shiny ears
chest swelling drawing air,
No trouble, friend,
you and me and Geronimo
are men.