Close Listening with Wystan Curnow
Poet, art critic, and curator Wystan Curnow, who was named after W. H. Auden, was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1939. He pursued his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to the southern hemisphere to teach at the University of Auckland, though his creative travels have included visiting professorships in New York and California. Curnow’s multigeneric poetry of spatial, cultural, and historical multiplicity can be found in such collections as Back in the USA (Black Light Press, 1989), Cancer Daybook (Vanguard Xpress, 1989), and Modern Colours (Jack Books, 2005).
Editorial note: Poet, art critic, and curator Wystan Curnow, who was named after W. H. Auden, was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1939. He pursued his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to the southern hemisphere to teach at the University of Auckland, though his creative travels have included visiting professorships in New York and California. Curnow’s multigeneric poetry of spatial, cultural, and historical multiplicity can be found in such collections as Back in the USA (Black Light Press, 1989), Cancer Daybook (Vanguard Xpress, 1989), and Modern Colours (Jack Books, 2005). This April 7, 2009, conversation with Charles Bernstein was the second of two episodes in Bernstein’s renowned radio program, Close Listening. You can listen to both programs here. This conversation was transcribed by Michael Nardone and edited by Katie L. Price. — Kenna O’Rourke
Gerrit Lansing reads selections from his collected poems, The Heavenly Tree / Northern Earth (North Atlantic, 2009)
Vulgar Beauty: Bill Berkson on Close Listening
Bill Berkson in conversation with Charles Bernstein on Close Listening (36:56): MP3
Berkson in conversation with Bernstein undergraduate seminar (34:49): MP3
February 10, 2014, University of Pennsylvania; recorded and edited by Bernstein. Bill Berkson discusses unprincipled poetry, vulgar beauty, the poetics of surface, the emergence of the New American Poetry, the trap of being too serious, and the possibilities of the unexpected.