Rodney Koeneke

Pieces of Bruce

'Bruce Boone Dismembered'

Dancing maenad on ancient greek pottery, Python the painter, c. 330–320 BCE. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

I wouldn’t want anyone’s heart to stop beating except that for the first time this might unite us — Bruce Boone[1]

Davy Knittle with Rodney Koeneke

PennSound podcast #69

Photo of Davy Knittle (left) by Kelly Writers House staff; photo of Rodney Koeneke (right) by Anna Daedalus.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

In September 2018 Davy Knittle hosted poet Rodney Koeneke in the Wexler Studio to discuss his book, Body & Glass (Wave Books, 2018). Their conversation touches on Koeneke’s writing process and use of pronouns as a “distancing technique,” the role of poetry — particularly experimental forms — in America today, and how joy might emerge from work about loss. The two also examine the traditions that poetry assembles for itself, drawing comparisons between modernists like Joyce and contemporary poets. 

The posthumous now

On Hillary Gravendyk's 'The Soluble Hour'

Photo of Gravendyk (right) courtesy of Benjamin Burrill.

How do we read the work of poets who die young? Recent books by Joan Murray and Max Ritvo have me thinking about the question with a special intensity. Ritvo died of Ewing’s sarcoma in 2016 at just twenty-five, with two posthumous volumes — The Final Voicemails: Poems and Letters from Max — published last year. Murray, who won the Yale Younger Poets award, died at nearly the same age, in 1942; Drafts, Fragments, and Poems: The Complete Poetry has just been painstakingly edited by Farnoosh Fathi and published by NYRB Poets.

How do we read the work of poets who die young? Recent books by Joan Murray and Max Ritvo have me thinking about the question with a special intensity.

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
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