Ron Padgett, "Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo" & "The Austrian Maiden"
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Al Filreis brought together James Berger and Richard Deming (who traveled together from Yale) and Sophia DuRose to talk about two poems by Ron Padgett. The poems are “The Austrian Maiden” and “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo.” Our recording of “The Austrian Maiden” comes from a February 26, 2003, reading Padgett gave at the Kelly Writers House; the poem had just recently been published in Padgett’s book You Never Know (2002). The recording of “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo” — a poem published in Great Balls of Fire (1969) — was performed at a November 20, 1979, reading given at a location that is now (sadly) unknown. That reading in its entirety is available at Padgett’s PennSound page; the recording comes to us courtesy of the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
April 17, 2024
1960, self-satisfaction and dread
I'm increasingly interested in the year 1960, and am toying with the idea of writing at length about it — the year generally (if such a thing is possible) and the year in American poetry & poetics more specifically. Certainly a turning-point year in the larger context, and probably in the latter somewhat more narrow context as well. Take a look at my 1960 blog.
I'm intrigued by the photo here. It's a shot of someone's father, a man named Phil — or "papa" according to the scant explanation I found randomly on someone's blog. The man's expression is, to me at least, completely ambivalent. It says self-satisfaction and it says major dread, both somehow. (Dread in the limit of the smile, the way the tie is tied or, rather, the posture of the neck, and in the way the left hand is tucked under the right in the pose.) The inscription on the back reads: Pop Je ne sais pas l’annee. The photo was taken February 1960, as marked.