An introduction to new recordings of classic poetry at PennSound

New recordings of 16th–20th century poems read by Toni Bowers — including poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Katherine Phillips, Charlotte Mew, and others — can be found HERE at PennSound. Bowers provided the following introduction to accompany the new recordings.
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PennSound — one of the University of Pennsylvania’s most important ongoing projects — started as an arm of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, so it is no surprise that it should predominately feature the work of living authors. But early on, the project’s founders, Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, recognized that poetry from the past can present unique interpretive challenges to readers, and that PennSound listeners could also benefit from the guidance of experts when it comes to reading early poetry. PennSound Classics emerged, and now constitutes a rich resource, free to all, for anyone who wants to hear authoritative recordings of poetry published before the mid-twentieth century.
I came along late enough in this history that I first encountered PennSound Classics when it already included a significant number of important early titles. I noticed, though, a comparative underrepresentation of the work of poets who identified as women. The dearth was readily explained: early women’s writing, and especially their poetry, tended until very recently to be neglected on college syllabi, in anthologies, and in scholarship. As a result, serious readers have had little opportunity to encounter the work of extraordinary poets like Katherine Phillips, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Mew.
It occurred to me that I was in a position to do something constructive about this regrettable situation. So, with considerable trepidation, I decided to volunteer to read some early women’s poetry for PennSound Classics. The worst that could happen, I reasoned, was that the administrators at KWH could disagree with my sense that crucial poetic imaginations were missing, and say No.
Instead, my proposal was welcomed warmly by PennSound’s Managing Editor, Zach Carduner, and Magda Andrews-Hoke, Coordinator of Digital Projects at the Writers House and the Managing Editor of the magazine you’re reading now, Jacket2. Reminding myself to be careful what I wished for, I now realized that it had fallen to me to determine a reading list and to build my skills in oral reading. I read hundreds of poems, many but not all of which I had taught in classes at Penn. I listened to recordings of great readers of poetry like John Richetti (featured on PennSound Classics), John Gielgud, and James Mason — and learned how few women have been recorded reading poetry. And I practiced for many hours on each poem I considered recording. My goal was to produce interpretive readings that would provide adequate introductions to works I revere and was honored to share.
For their part, Zach and Magda did much more than merely welcome my efforts. They brought professionalism and good humor to all our work together, as well as a range of digital skills that I’ll never have. They knew how to turn my readings on a series of summer afternoons, in the small recording studio at the Writers House, into eminently listenable digital productions.
I hope that readers of these paragraphs will link to the recordings on PennSound Classics, now including my own, and be enchanted by the work of poets who despite disadvantages, discouragements, and exclusions, left us poems of immeasurable thoughtfulness, skill, and beauty.
The specific poems included in my own readings are necessarily an idiosyncratic group. After many second and third thoughts concerning what to select and what to leave out, I recorded poems that seemed to me just too important not to be part of so influential a digital list as PennSound Classics, as well as some that have become indispensable to me personally and that I wanted to share with others. Both of these seem to me to be valid justifications for including particular titles, but not for pretending that those titles constitute an exhaustive or representative set. I know that many more poems, by being included, could serve PennSound’s linked purposes of pedagogy and pleasure.
So, I hope that listeners will drop me notes at tbowers@upenn.edu, and suggest expansions to the list. I should be honored to continue reading for PennSound — and not only poems by writers identified as women, either, since the categories “male” and “female” are too narrow to encompass all varieties of human identity and experience. Now that there has been some rebalancing of the Classics list in traditional gendered terms, I am eager to record according to less narrow rubrics.