Working with our PennSound audio files, Jhave Johnston has created a prototype mashup machine that enables on overlay of poets’ sounds, with an option to turn on WEAVE, which senses silence (e.g. between lines or stanzas in a performance) and automatically intercuts from one short file segment to another, creating a flow of shifting voices. “I always figured,” says Charles Bernstein, my co-director at PennSound, “that once we had a substantial archive of sound files, the next phase would be for people to use them in novel ways.” “Reminds me,” says Michael S. Hennessey, PennSound’s editor, “of one of my favorite things to do with the site before we switched to the current streaming codec, which doesn't allow for simultaneous play: pull up a few author pages — best of all Christian Bök — and start layering tracks over his cyborg opera beatboxing.” Jhave adds: “My motivation for building it is similar to Michael's: a joy in listening to things overlap.”
clockwise from top left: Erica Hunt, David Bromige, Bruce Andrews, Laynie Browne, Brian Ang, Kathy Acker, Alice Notley, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian.
We at PennSound have been especially busy in the past few months. Today seemed like the right day to take a look back to our recent acquisitions. So on the front page of Jacket2, in the PennSound box, we published a list of, and links to, these new recordings. You can also have a look at the list here.
Today the Pennsylvania Gazette arts blog features PennSound Radio. The piece includes a daily program schedule and a link to the smartphone application that makes listening convenient.
Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of PennSound Radio, a 24-hour stream of readings and conversations from the PennSound poetry archive. Our daily schedule includes rebroadcasts of such series as Live at the Writers House, Charles Bernstein's Close Listening, and Leonard Schwartz's Cross-Cultural Poetics, as well as a curated selection of our favorite performances. You can play PennSound Radio through iTunes on your computer, or by installing the free TuneIn app on your iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android device. Listen at work! At home! At the gym! While rebuilding a transmission! And while you're at it, follow us on Twitter (@PennSoundRadio) to keep up with all of our new programs and special features.
Australian poet John Kinsella. Photo by Andrew De La Rue.
PennSound’s new John Kinsella page features three recordings. One is a reading he gave at Buffalo in September of 1996, introduced by Susan Schultz (5:11): MP3 .
Here are poems Kinsella read:
Warhol at Wheatlands (2:53): MP3 Bluff Knoll Sublimity (2:54): MP3 Aspects of the Pagan (4:43): MP3 Editing (0:51): MP3 Disclaimers (2:19): MP3 Echidna (2:45): MP3 from “Syzygy” (4:57): MP3 Skeleton weed / generative grammar (3:35): MP3
He also took a moment to comment on the tradition of classical poetry in Australia and the slaughter of aboriginal peoples (1:05): MP3. The complete reading (26:19): MP3 is of course available also, but note that the recording cuts off at 26:19.
We at PennSound are grateful to Jeff Davis for helping us make this recording available from the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, with permission from the Creeley family. The recording was made apparently in the late 1960s. It is available on PennSound's growing Robert Creeley page.
What brought you to Black Mountain? (1:17): MP3 In what capacity were you there? (2:32): MP3 What were your first impressions? (5:43): MP3 Did they subsequently change? (3:22): MP3 Who among the faculty or students impressed you? (2:17): MP3 Is it accurate to refer to a Black Mountain school of poetry? (8:44): MP3 What were BMC's particular strong and weak points? (4:55): MP3 Anything about the school's tone or procedures you wish were otherwise? (2:32): MP3 What satisfactions and tensions resulted from living at such close quarters?(5:07): MP3 What accounts for perennial faculty splits at BMC? (3:34): MP3 Did good relations exist between the college and the community? (9:40): MP3 Why did the college finally close? (1:07): MP3 How would you evaluate BMC's influence on your artistic growth? (11:16): MP3
We are pleased to publish Robert Zaller’s summary of Stanley Burnshaw’s life and work to mark the occasion of PennSound’s acquisition of two recordings of Burnshaw — one a talk, the other a 1963 reading. Zaller is a poet, critic, historian and activist, and serves as the executor of the Burnshaw Estate. Years ago I interviewed Burnshaw with Harvey Teres and spoke with him about his affiliation with radical writers in the 1930s and his encounter (by way of a negative review of Ideas of Order) with Wallace Stevens; we add my note (and a link to the PDF of the interview transcript) to this little Burnshaw feature.
Recently a new author page was created at PennSound for poet, editor, critic, translator, and environmentalist Stanley Burnshaw. The recordings were made available through an arrangement with the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Library, at Yale University - with special support from Nancy Kuhl. We are also greateful for permission to make these recordings available given by Robert Zaller as Executor of the Estate of Stanley Burnshaw.
Today we at PennSound have segmented Vanessa Place's Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. The reading took place on March 27, 2010. Here are the two pieces she read that day:
Jhave Johnston's PennSound mashup with WEAVE
Working with our PennSound audio files, Jhave Johnston has created a prototype mashup machine that enables on overlay of poets’ sounds, with an option to turn on WEAVE, which senses silence (e.g. between lines or stanzas in a performance) and automatically intercuts from one short file segment to another, creating a flow of shifting voices. “I always figured,” says Charles Bernstein, my co-director at PennSound, “that once we had a substantial archive of sound files, the next phase would be for people to use them in novel ways.” “Reminds me,” says Michael S. Hennessey, PennSound’s editor, “of one of my favorite things to do with the site before we switched to the current streaming codec, which doesn't allow for simultaneous play: pull up a few author pages — best of all Christian Bök — and start layering tracks over his cyborg opera beatboxing.” Jhave adds: “My motivation for building it is similar to Michael's: a joy in listening to things overlap.”