Articles - February 2013

Howe interviews Bernstein and Andrews in 1979

from left: Susan Howe, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein

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On March 14, 1979, Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein visited the studios of WBAI in New York and were interviewed by Susan Howe, host then of the Pacifica Radio Poetry Show. This installment in the PennSound podcast series, introduced again by Amaris Cuchanski and based on editing done by Nick DeFina, features an excerpt from that interview focusing on a discussion of opaque as distinct from transparent language and of language’s materiality.

From the voice to the book

Jerome Rothenberg, 2010 Threads Talk Series presentation

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Jerome Rothenberg on May 7, 2010, presenting at the Threads Talk Series (curated by Steve Clay and Kyle Schlesinger), mapped branches of book culture that are typically kept apart. Rothenberg reviews the differences between — and the need to bring together — speech and writing and printing, and he uses this summary as a way of freshly re-defining ethnopoetics.  The title of the talk from which this podcast-length (18 mins.) excerpt is taken: “From the Voice to the Book, from the Book to the Voice: a Dialectic.”

PoemTalk in 'Open Culture'

We at PoemTalk were pleased to see the series featured in the current issue of Open Culture.

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Burning Deck Press

An anthology of readings by eight poets at the 2001 event

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Amaris Cuchanski introduces the newest PennSound podcast in the series, now numbering 23 episodes. Nick DeFina created this 20-minute audio selection from the five-volume set of recordings made at Brown University at the May 2001 celebration of (then) forty years of Burning Deck Press publishing of books, chapbooks and pamphlets, by, of course, Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop.

A space only you can build (PoemTalk #62)

Charles Alexander, 'Near or Random Acts'

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Charles Alexander joined others in Philadelphia in the early autumn of 2001 to celebrate Gil Ott, poet and maker of many important books of poems through his Singing Horse Press. Alexander, whose Chax Press owes a good deal to Ott’s work and persevering spirit, simply had to be there, notwithstanding the hassle of cross-country air travel during those early post-9/11 days. He arrived a day or two early and gave a pre-celebration reading at the Writers House, trying out some very new poems that seemed, in part, inspired by responses to the September 11 attacks.