Ron Padgett, "Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo" & "The Austrian Maiden"
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Al Filreis brought together James Berger and Richard Deming (who traveled together from Yale) and Sophia DuRose to talk about two poems by Ron Padgett. The poems are “The Austrian Maiden” and “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo.” Our recording of “The Austrian Maiden” comes from a February 26, 2003, reading Padgett gave at the Kelly Writers House; the poem had just recently been published in Padgett’s book You Never Know (2002). The recording of “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo” — a poem published in Great Balls of Fire (1969) — was performed at a November 20, 1979, reading given at a location that is now (sadly) unknown. That reading in its entirety is available at Padgett’s PennSound page; the recording comes to us courtesy of the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
April 17, 2024
Poetry Octathlon Rules Laid Bare
by Mike Freakman
London, Aug. 10 (AHP2 News Service) –– The Interlocal Poetry Olympics Committee (IPOC) announced today the eagerly anticipated rules for the first Poetry Octathlon Event (POE), which will be played at the Fall 2012 Olympics in Rangoon. Salvage Holding, Olympic Poetry Commissioner (OPC), said that those wishing to enter the qualifying trials should submit their entries on-line at http://where-the-sun-don’t-shine-&-the-moon’s-just-another-word-for-fading-memory.com. All fully completed entries will be compensated with a check for $100, paid for by the universal poetry tax (UPT).
“The Octathlon must be performed at a single sitting, with one hour devoted to each plank, for an overall 8-hour time limit,” Holding explained. Since this will be a Massive On-line Poetry Event (MOPE), time constraints will be self-governing. Rollweck: the Watch-that-Comes-with-a-Kimmelweck bun® is an official sponsor of IPOC and many MOPE competitors will be using Rollweck® stopwatches. A stopwatch is an increasingly necessary tool for contemporary on-the-go poets who use timed sequences as prosodic devices. “The Rollweck® Olympics Poetry Initiative (ROPI) is an international philanthropic program,” Holding explained, “created to assist average, disappointed poets to become somebodies instead of the nobodies that they are, let’s face it.”