About eight weeks after the September 11 attacks, the Writers House and Rosenbach Library collaborated on an event held at the Writers House featuring, of all things, the modern American poet Marianne Moore. Moore's 9/11, if you can imagine that. Well, it turned out well, I think.
Back in December of '04 I was finishing up another semester teaching English 88, my course on modern and contemporary American poetry. In the final "chapter" of the course I ended by having the students read two contemporary poets — Jena Osman and Kenneth Goldsmith. Then, as it happened, both of these people were in the Writers House at the same time, so I asked my students to come back to the House for a special evening session, and we spent an hour or so talking with Jena and Kenny. We recorded it, and you can find mp3's and a summary of the discussion here.
It will help to know that the person being discussed in the middle of the excerpt is Jackson Mac Low. He gets named after a while but at first it might not be clear. The session took place on the very day that Mac Low died.
Marianne Moore's 9/11
'Finding the Words'
About eight weeks after the September 11 attacks, the Writers House and Rosenbach Library collaborated on an event held at the Writers House featuring, of all things, the modern American poet Marianne Moore. Moore's 9/11, if you can imagine that. Well, it turned out well, I think.