Carla Harryman

When poems change

Piotr Gwiazda

Carla Harryman’s Artifact of Hope (Kenning Editions, 2017) is a creative/critical encounter with the work of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch. Through a variety of forms — daydreams, letters, meditations, quotations, classroom assignments, and even a conference paper — she engages with Bloch’s key concept of “hope.” These too are transpositions, insofar as they expand the meaning of translation beyond issues of linguistic or cultural equivalence. Bloch devoted his life to the study of utopia. In his three-volume magnum opus Das Prinzip Hoffnug, published in West Germany in the late 1950s and in the US (translation by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight) in 1986, he linked the intellectual emotion of hope to the human desire for a better life.

Carla Harryman’s Artifact of Hope (Kenning Editions, 2017) is a creative/critical encounter with the work of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch. Through a variety of forms — daydreams, letters, meditations, quotations, classroom assignments, and even a conference paper — she engages with Bloch’s key concept of “hope.” These too are transpositions, insofar as they expand the meaning of translation beyond issues of linguistic or cultural equivalence.

Plus this

Additions, updates, & singles

Eric Baus
Image by Noah Saterstrom

I want to backtrack a bit and link to some recordings related to earlier commentaries. Rather than update the older posts, I’ll periodically add new tracks to expand previous playlists. I’ll also make some new unthemed playlists of singles segmented from longer recordings that I came across while browsing PennSound’s reading series pages.

Additions and updates:

Listen to Prageeta Sharma read an epistolary excerpt from her book Bliss to Fill recorded at the Belladonna Series in 2000. Read about and hear other recordings related to letters in an earlier post, Dear Pennsound.

Listen to Sina Queryas read Numb is more natural, from her book Lemon Hound, at a 2006 Belladonna Series reading. Hear the entire reading. Read about and hear other recordings related to questions in the post, What is a question?

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