Close Listening

‘And whoever picks it up grabs the magic’

Will Alexander on Close Listening, October 19, 2016

Photo of Will Alexander by Kelly Writers House staff, 2016.

Editorial note: Charles Bernstein and Will Alexander had a conversation about Alexander’s work for Clocktower Radio’s Close Listening at PennSound’s Carroll Garden Studios in Brooklyn, New York, on October 19, 2016. Some of the topics they touched on include: Alexander’s works, philosophy, connections and citations and references and sources, mythology, genre, aural properties of writing and performance, jazz, drawing and sketching, identity and politics of writing, location, and the writer’s mindset. 

LINEbreak is 25

In 1995, Martin Spinelli and I did a series of thirty-minute radio conversations and readings with poets and writers. It was one of the first programs to be distributed nationally by satellite to public radio stations, so a precursor to podcasts. I went on to a make a related series of programs, Close Listening. All are available free to stream or download on PennSound. All in all, there have been conversations and readings by 133 poets, writers, and artists.     

‘The performance of freedom’

Close Listening with Tonya Foster and Charles Bernstein

Photo by Al Filreis.

Editorial note: The following conversation is from Close Listening, a program hosted by Charles Bernstein and produced by Clocktower Radio, in collaboration with PennSound, on June 18, 2013, at Studio 215 in New York. It was transcribed by Mariah Macias and subsequently edited for publication.

Allen Fisher on Close Listening

photo ©2019 Charles Bernstein

I recorded a Close Listening program with Allen Fisher on November 29, 2019, in London. We talked about the relation of decoherence and entanglement, both key terms for Fisher's collage aesthetic. Along the way, we addresses a constellation of topics, including source texts, pattern recognition, the political allegory of poetic space, performance,  and the relation of Fisher's painting to his poetry. 

(33:36): MP3

Kit Robinson on Close Listening

Robinson and Uche Nduka at Unnameable Books

Kit Robinson in conversation with me on Close Listening, recorded on October 6, 2019: MP3

We talk about Robinson's early Dolch Stanzas and its vocabulary, based on a  list of the most frequently used words English, his use of short lines, changes in his more recent, "late" work, his connection to Tom Raworth, and the relation of his day jobs to his work as a musician and poet.