Segue Series

Rodney Koeneke's 2004 Segue reading

Thanks to the efforts of PennSound staffer Luisa Healey, we are now making available segmented (poem-by-poem) recordings of Rodney Koeneke’s Segue Series reading, given at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City on November 6, 2004. 

  1. Introduction (5:27): MP3
  2. Opening Remarks (3:35): MP3
  3. #16 “Excavate the Mexican game-show host …” from Rouge State (1:45): MP3
  4. #17 “Eric the red on kickapoo juice …” from Rouge State (1:17): MP3
  5. #2 “Caravansaries cavorting invite too-hot desires … from Rouge State (2:37): MP3
  6. How to find safe passage …” from Rouge State (2:08): MP3
  7. “Space then is time …” from Rouge State (1:32): MP3
  8. Save it for the Clam from On the Clamways (1:54): MP3
  9. Houston, We Have a Clam Problem from On the Clamways (0:31): MP3

Poetry and architecture

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

In a Segue Series event at the Bowery Poetry Club hosted and curated by Trace Peterson, Robert Kocik, Benjamin Aranda, and Vito Acconci each speak for about twenty-six minutes about relations between poetry and architecture. The event took place on April 25, 2009. Both audio and video recordings of each talk are available on PennSound.

Segue @ Zinc Bar / NY Fall 2013 calendar

this just in from James Sherry ––
Since 1978 our iconic series, started by Ted Greenwald and Charles Bernstein, has presented innovative writers from around the world. Do come to the Zinc Bar Saturdays from 4:30-6:30 starting October 5, 2013. We look forward to hosting the best new writers and to seeing you there.

curators - genji amino and daisy atterbury oct-nov - judah rubin and shiv kotecha dec-jan

[See early Ear Inn fliers, the fist site of Segue series, and listen to the recordings from the series at PennSound]

Guest writer: Rob Fitterman

When I sent him interview questions on Josef Kaplan's Intros, he sent me back a little piece of his own

A WORD OR TWO ON JOSEF KAPLAN’S EXTRAORDINARY INTRODUCTIONS TO SEGUE SERIES POETRY READINGS 
by Robert Fitterman

In David Joselit’s new critical book, After Art, he adopts the term “image fundamentalism” to describe a relationship to art that aims to be rooted to a “specific place.” He writes: “Religious fundamentalism is defined by adherence to doctrine, as laid down in sacred texts. Image fundamentalism asserts that a visual artifact belong exclusively to a specific site (its place of origin).” What, then, would literary fundamentalism look like? My point here is that Kaplan’s introductions are unchained to their origins, and, as such, they are the polar opposites of literary fundamentalism. Following Joselit’s premise, Kaplan lets the work of the writer he is about to introduce dictate a slippery procession, where the reader gets to traverse the unknown (and in this case the reader is the presenter).  In exchange for a tired list of accomplishments, publications, and insights, Kaplan aims for another possibility: one reader’s world intersecting one writer’s world. Of course it is the seriousness, hilarity, courage, and thoughtfulness that makes us, the audience, interested in the performance of this intersection... an intersection, by the way, that overlaps the actual author’s work by as little as, say, 10%. But it doesn’t matter: this isn’t about being respectful or authentic or informative (can we say Google at home?), this is about actually caring enough to take the work—and a reader’s response to the work — somewhere else, not rooted to the original meaning or author’s intention or biography, but elsewhere.

The Introductions of Josef Kaplan

If you haven't attended the December-January Segue events these past two years, you have missed something. Josef Kaplan's introductions. Most weeks, as they unfold, you can observe something come over the room. Some weeks it's like a wave of something between shock and glee. Other weeks it's just lots of audience reaction, hysterical laughter, conversations erupting, the occasional person turning away in discomfort. These introductions have been described as uproarious, sweet, insulting, naive, hilarious, and courageous. Many seem to agree he's exploding the form.

Rumor has it Ugly Duckling is planning to make a chapbook of a select few. 

When asked if anything seemed special about what's happening here, James Sherry, who has been steering Segue for over thirty years, says, "Josef breaks the tradition of laudatory introductions with confrontational framing such as saying that he doesn’t understand the poet’s work." Sherry points to Kaplan's Michael Gottlieb intro, describing it as, "psychological rhetoric layered on satiric imitation creating an uproarious surface" that "exposed Michael’s social critique as a personal complaint." But what's equally extraordinary is how funny and loving it all seemed when it was happening. Michael laughed harder than anyone. Steve Zultanski, Segue co-curator with Kaplan for two years, described it as, "confusing and borderline insulting, but in the sweetest way."

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