Al Filreis | Jacket2

Tom Leonard does the revolt of Islam in different voices, 1978

Al Filreis

In 1978, Tom Leonard recorded “Three Texts for Tape” at his home in Glasgow using his Teac A-3340S tape recorder. One of these three “texts for tape” was a performance piece, a chanting of another poet’s verses — a multiple reading of a half canto of Percy Shelley’s “The Revolt of Islam” in many voices. Here is that recording (with thanks to the Archive of the Now): MP3 (4:37).

May 22, 2013

Managing language in the digital age, digitally

Al Filreis

Goldsmith’s book Uncreative Writing presented in its digital entirety simultaneously forwards and backwards, by Mab MacMoragh: [VIDEO]

May 16, 2013

Kimberly Lyons looks for Mina Loy

Al Filreis

In May of 1992, Kimberly Lyons gave a Segue Series reading at the Ear Inn in New York. As of today (thanks to PennSound’s Anna Zalakostas) this reading by Lyons, and several others, have been segmented. Among the poems Lyons read at the Ear Inn in ’92: “Looking for Mina Loy” [MP3].

May 15, 2013

Robert Browning as performed by Aaron Kramer

Al Filreis

To help celebrate the 150th birthday of Robert Browning, poet Aaron Kramer went into the studios of WNYC in New York on May 3, 1962, and performed three of Browning’s poems — and offered commentary on each.

introduction (1:16): MP3
comment on “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” (1:32): MP3 [text]
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” (16:24): MP3
comment on “Andrea del Sarto” (1:52): MP3 [text]
“Andrea del Sarto” (18:25): MP3
comment on “Abt Vogler” (1:30): MP3 [text]
“Abt Vogler” (10:50): MP3
closing remarks (1:15): MP3

Kramer got a copy of the program from WNYC and kept it; after his death, Laura Kramer, the poet’s daughter, found the tape and generously permitted PennSound to make it available, along with a great many other readings now featured on PennSound’s Kramer page.

May 7, 2013

DiPalma reads from "Further Apocrypha"

Al Filreis

This is a four-minute excerpt from a reading given by Ray DiPalma at the Kelly Writers House on April 2, 2012. The full recording is available here: [VIDEO]. An audio recording of the reading (segmented by poem) is also available at PennSound. In this excerpt he reads several sections from a book called Further Apocrypha, which was published in a strictly limited edition by Pie in the Sky Press. It is one of the most beautiful books I have seen (I saw it only briefly when DiPalma visited KWH last year). To see photographs of the book, go here. The YouTube excerpt was edited for PennSound by Allison Harris.

May 3, 2013

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ELECTRONIC PEDAGOGY: Magazine story published in 2001 about my use of e-media in teaching. "Postmodern poets focused on the process of their poetry, rather than on what the words in their poems actually said. The purpose was to make poetry and language new again. There's no better way to describe Filreis' teaching style. He uses technology to free class time for discussion, which to Filreis is more important than the course material itself. The point is to develop his students' ability to think critically, not to have memorized every last fact about Gertrude Stein. And yet, he said, through that active engagement with the material, students end up remembering more of the content."

Click on the image.

ASHBERY PERFORMS STEVENS: In October of 1989, John Ashbery went to St. John's the Divine Cathedral in New York to be part of the induction of Wallace Stevens at the Poets' Corner. There was a vespers service and Ashbery read six sections of Stevens's "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven." Imagine that--that poem read at a vespers service! Anyway, I certainly don't know of another recording of Ashbery performing Stevens. Stevens was a fairly bad reader of his own poems. Ashbery is deemed by many to be an indifferent reader of his poems. (I don't agree, but understand the point.) But here, reading Stevens, Ashbery is marvelous. Here is a 7-minute recording of sections 3, 5, 12, 17, 18 and 30 of the Stevens poem that comes closest to real serial writing (seriality at the level of the section, anyway).

THE (ANTI)MODERN PRESIDENT. After looking at an abstract mural at the U.N. then President-elect Eisenhower said, "To be modern you don't have to be nuts."

THE END OF THE LECTURE & PLANNING TO STAY. As often as I can, I call for the end of the lecture as we know it. I'm pretty serious about this - not often exaggerating on the point. Click here for one of many forays into the topic. Once you're there, click on the "end of the lecture" tag for still more. My thoughts on institutional politics and the arts were presented in a manifesto called "Planning to Stay" (published as a pamphlet by No Press); the text of that talk is available here.

KELLY WRITERS HOUSEPhiladelphia's PBS affiliate, WHYY-12, produces a TV show that in each episode features four centers for the arts and creativity in the Philadelphia region. For its winter 2010-11 program, the show devoted 15 minutes to the Kelly Writers House in a segment called "The Creative Campus." To watch the video, click on the image above.

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HOLOCAUSTI dislike Spielberg's Schindler's List intensely. It's a film, I think, that is very friendly toward sovereignty. For more on this minority view, click on the image above. I teach a course at Penn on representations of the Holocaust in literature and film every other fall semester.

In 2003 I founded and continue to direct the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. CPCW brings together all of the university's writing programs and projects: Critical Writing, Creative Writing, the Kelly Writers House, PennSound, RealArts@PENN, the Chinese/American Poetry Association, Writers Without Borders, Creative Ventures, Jacket2, and more. For information and links to each of these projects, click on the logo above.