Brian Kim Stefans

Visit Brian Kim Stefans online.

By this author

PhillyTalks #7: Brian Kim Stefans and Fred Wah

Recently in Jacket2

Will Alexander: absentia like a pre-atomic sigil

"Compound Hibernation"

Al Filreis

photo of Will Alexander courtesy of Skylight Press

In March 17, 2007, reading in the Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, Will Alexander read four poems: “Exercise is Particle Neutrino,” “Coping Prana,” “Compound Hibernation,” and “Above the Human Nerve Domain.” An audio recording of the complete reading (17:59) is available on Will Alexander’s PennSound author page, as are segmented audio for each poem. Here I’m pleased to feature “Compound Hibernation” [MP3; 2:22]. The text of the poem was published in Zen Monster.

May 23, 2013

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

A gumbo of mumbo jumbo or a sub-rumba via Christopher Columbo

The visual creole of John M. Bennett

Gary Barwin

1. "All human cultures are creole," John M. Bennett writes. Our language and our world view are hybrid, influenced by and adapting influences from the global village and our post-global home. They are inevitably syncretic and creole.

Absolutely. But Bennett’s use of the term ‘creole’ brings to mind the other meaning of creole. Creole as in the ‘creolisation’ of languages. How the language of a colonizing or dominant culture devolves into a pidgin and then develops into a creole, a rich communication tool with its own grammar, form and traditions, though often with a vocabulary based on the dominant language. So: Haitian Creole and its relationship to French.

May 22, 2013