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
Los talones de la libertad
'Reciprocate life's manifold generosity by living long, subverting to the end.'
...even when we believe we have freedom to use whatever words we wish to use, that we have the entire lexicon of English, at least those of us who are Anglophone, at our disposal, and are able to express ourselves in whatever ways we wish to (all of us who live in the so-called liberal democracies, that is), much of the language we work with is already preselected and limited, by fashion, by cultural norms—by systems that shape us such as gender and race—by what’s acceptable. By order, logic, and rationality. (M. NourbeSe Philip, from Zong!)