This brief essay, introducing Drafts, was published in its unrevised version in 2017 in a single issue of Thresholds, a prototype journal put out in 2017, that now several years later will publish regularly. I have altered this essay for Jacket2, making some cuts and updates. Here I included a brief consideration of the DuPlessis PennSound Archive in order to celebrate both the 2024 completion of my recording of all the Drafts and the imminent publication of Drafts in 2025 by Coffee House Press.
This brief essay, introducing Drafts, was published in its unrevised version in 2017 in a single issue of Thresholds, a prototype journal put out in 2017, that now several years later will publish regularly. I have altered this essay for Jacket2, making some cuts and updates.
Excerpt from cover page of Robert Duncan’s application to Black Mountain College, August 30, 1939. Image courtesy of State of North Carolina Western Regional Archives.
In the late summer of 1939, Robert Duncan (then still using the name Robert Symmes) requested application blanks from Black Mountain College (BMC). Duncan had already finished two years at the University of California, Berkeley, but his plans to continue his undergraduate studies were vague.
Lyn Hejinian, American poet and essayist, died on Saturday, February 24. Born Carolyn Frances Hall on May 17, 1941, and raised in Berkeley and later Cambridge, Massachusetts, she graduated from Harvard University in 1963.
Lyn Hejinian, American poet and essayist, died on Saturday, February 24. Born Carolyn Frances Hall on May 17, 1941, and raised in Berkeley and later Cambridge, Massachusetts, she graduated from Harvard University in 1963. Her children, Paull and Anna, were born while she was married to the physician John Hejinian.
Although broken up by punctuation and performance, Price’s sentences are robustly syntactical — they are faithful to and fanciful with English syntax, and yet they rarely quite “make sense.”
On December 12, 2023, Larry Price visited the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House to record a series of his poems for the PennSound audio archive. This complete recording session, as well as excerpted recordings of each individual poem, can be found HERE at PennSound.
Vox Audio was initiated in 2001 to promote several poets to a possible community interested in such work. The CDs were distributed largely by mail, free of charge. As the name implies, Vox also reflects a regard for voice in poetry – that is, for the kinds of involvement not available from the page, like intonation or subtleties of sound and rhythm that require voicing.
Vox Audio was initiated in 2001 to promote several poets to a possible community interested in such work. The CDs were distributed largely by mail, free of charge. As the name implies, Vox also reflects a regard for voice in poetry – that is, for the kinds of involvement not available from the page, like intonation or subtleties of sound and rhythm that require voicing. This interest grew from the work of Pound, H.D., and Williams, especially from Williams’ concern with a speech-based poetic and emphasis on contact and locale, what might now be termed context, the dialogic.
