Commentaries - March 2017

'Language as a net of reality'

Rob Allan

Poetry Reading, Poet of Port Chalmers, 2006.

‘The poetry of tomorrow will be finely articulated fact.’ — W.B. Yeats

In memoriam: Richard Swigg (1938–2017)

Richard Swigg in Krakow, 2015.

This weekend we were contacted by Richard Swigg’s daughter, Virginia, who shared the very sad news that her father had passed away a few days earlier after suffering a stroke. PennSound codirector Charles Bernstein has penned a tribute to Swigg for Jacket2, which begins to encapsulate what his herculean efforts meant to us. “Richard Swigg was a great friend of PennSound, editing our extensive sound recording collections of WilliamsBuntingTomlinsonOppen, and Replanksky. His work was thorough, with the aim of archiving all the audio recordings of these poets.”

This weekend we were contacted by Richard Swigg’s daughter, Virginia, who shared the very sad news that her father had passed away a few days earlier after suffering a stroke. PennSound codirector Charles Bernstein has penned a tribute to Swigg for Jacket2, which begins to encapsulate what his herculean efforts meant to us:

Mauricio Montiel Figueiras: from “The Man in Tweed: The City,” a Twitter-constructed Novel in Progress (with a follow-up note on the process)

Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine

 

On the other side of the street, as if it were on the other side of the ocean, there is a sign: “Café.” The man in tweed waits for the light to change.

 

While he crosses the street, the man in tweed remembers the first time he drank coffee. Another time, another world: a smell of jungle in the steam.

Susan Bee in conversation with Phong Bui

Photo: Nathlie Provosty

On March 25, 2017, Phong Bui interviewed Susan Bee at “POW!,” Bee’s show of new paintings at A.I.R. gallery (Brooklyn), which is on until April 16. 

Richard Swigg (1938-2017)

Richard Swigg was a great friend of PennSound, editing our extensive sound recording collections of Williams, Bunting, Tomlinson, Oppen, and Replansky. His work was thorough, with the aim of archiving all the audio recordings of these poets. He was tireless in his efforts — he spent decades assembling the recordings — and worked with us in securing permission to make these recordings available on PennSound.