William Carlos Williams wrote in his introduction to The Wedge (1944) that “[a] poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words”; or “poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.”[1] A poet and physician, Williams is most known for plums, the everyday, and minimalistic, rhythmic meter and lineation.
At PennSound we have now segmented — divided a recording into titled poem-length segments — a reading given by Adrienne Rich in 1973. The segmentation was done by PennSound staffer Hannah Judd.
Introduction (3:18): MP3 Burning Oneself In (1:28): MP3 On violence (2:58): MP3 Didactic Poem (1:38): MP3 In the Evening (0:55): MP3 I Dream I’m the Death of Orpheus (1:28): MP3 Unwritten Novel (2:43): MP3 The Fourth Month of the Landscape Architect (2:30): MP3 Waking in the Dark (4:26): MP3 Incipience (2:10): MP3 The Stranger (1:33): MP3 Merced (3:13): MP3 A Primary Ground (2:33): MP3 Translations (1:55): MP3 The Phenomenology of Anger (7:11): MP3 Diving Into the Wreck (4:04): MP3
One thing I really admire about women is that we’re able to put up with a lot of shit while still smiling. That takes a lot of discipline and strength. But we all have our limits, and sometimes we have to learn how to tell the shit to fuck off. Tillie Olsen’s 1978 book on Silences keeps coming up in conversation lately. The chapters explore various kinds of silences in literature, with references to Rebecca Harding Davis, Thomas Hardy, Willa Cather, Jean Toomer, Charles Baudelaire. Olsen’s book argues how a writer’s circumstances, as produced by society’s delineations of race, class and gender, can stifle creative expression.
One thing I really admire about women is that we’re able to put up with a lot of shit while still smiling. That takes a lot of discipline and strength. But we all have our limits, and sometimes we have to learn how to tell the shit to fuck off.
Tillie Olsen’s 1978 book on Silences keeps coming up in conversation lately. The chapters explore various kinds of silences in literature, with references to Rebecca Harding Davis, Thomas Hardy, Willa Cather, Jean Toomer, Charles Baudelaire. Olsen’s book argues how a writer’s circumstances, as produced by society’s delineations of race, class and gender, can stifle creative expression. Silences is best-known for its attention to gender. A consecutive sequence of chapters bear the titles: “The Damnation of Women,” “The Angel in the House,” “Freeing the Essential Angel,” and “Wives Mothers Enablers.”
Are you a mother? Do you know a mother? Are you the child of a mother? Then you should probably read this book.
When Adrienne Rich wrote the poem "Wait" she and many Americans and others were awaiting the start of what seemed an inevitable war in Iraq, in March 2003. The PoemTalk crew - Jessica Lowenthal, Linh Dinh, Randall Couch and your convener-host Al Filreis - couldn't wait (as it were) to get going on this terrestrial poem. Is it a personal is political poem? The soldier, after all, looks at his or her wedding ring and thinks about why s/he wasn't told...but not told what? Is it a make love, not war poem? Is it a political poem at all? The Iraqi desert is "no place for the little lyric." The gang variously wonders if the poem had something large to contend about lyric's talent for reminding us of reasons why war is inhuman? Randall thinks it isn't much of a war (or antiwar) poem; its strengths diminish as it gets more clearly into its political subject; in the end it closes off "with a click." Linh prefers a less formalistic approach. Jessica and Al riff on the 1930s-style "hobos in a breadline" genre: its reputation for conservative form carrying radical content. Is this a formally conservative poem? If so, there's an irony, for sure. The PoemTalkers can only agree that such a question is open, making the poem all the more interesting (and in that sense it's a meta-poem, a poem about the problems of political poems).
Wait
In paradise every the desert wind is rising third thought in hell there are no thoughts is of earth sand screams against your government issued tent hell's noise in your nostrils crawl into your ear-shell wrap yourself in no-thought wait no place for the little lyric wedding-ring glint the reason why on earth they never told you
PennSound's collection of Rich recordings offers downloadable mp3's of three reading, including her 2005 performance at the Kelly Writers House, where she read a bit from The School among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004, including "Wait". She also gave a 32-second introduction to our poem.
PoemTalk #2 was recorded in Studio 111 at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, produced by Al Filreis and Mark Lindsay. Steve McLaughlin was our sound editor and we had help from that talented soundhead, Curtis Fox. We're grateful to Adrienne Rich who agreed, when she visited in '05, to recite "Wait," a favorite of the Writers House-affiliated students.
Surely one of the highlights of my involvement with the Writers House Fellows program — which has brought three eminent writers to the cottage at 3805 Locust Walk each year since 1999 — was the visit in April 2005 of Adrienne Rich. She gave a wonderful reading and we had a terrific interview-style conversation the next morning.
PennSound's collection of 
A poem as a machine?
William Carlos Williams wrote in his introduction to The Wedge (1944) that “[a] poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words”; or “poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.”[1] A poet and physician, Williams is most known for plums, the everyday, and minimalistic, rhythmic meter and lineation.