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
Notes towards an assessment: The phenomenon of Rewi Alley, people's warrior
Bruce Harding
The New Zealander Rewi Alley (1897–1987)[1] was raised in a progressive home imbued with a range of ideals (educational, suffragist, and in favor of Henry George-style land reform) during the late Victorian period of colonial settlement by English migrants. This vibrant and highly energized (and energizing) young man had a mixed rural and urban upbringing during the light-leftist Liberal Government of Premier Richard Seddon, and his urban secondary school (Christchurch Boys’ High School) was then a site of Anglophile and imperialistic views as well as an elite “prep” school for Canterbury College. It is no surprise, therefore, that Rewi and his elder brother (Eric) volunteered to serve in the slaughter of the Great War, Eric dying at the Somme (1916) and Rewi badly wounded after acts of great valor near Cambrai-Baupame in late 1918.
The New Zealander Rewi Alley (1897–1987)[1] was raised in a progressive home imbued with a range of ideals (educational, suffragist, and in favor of Henry George-style land reform) during the late Victorian period of colonial settlement by English migrants.