Stephen Collis, "Yes I Do Want to Punch / fascists in the face"
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Al Filreis convened Pattie McCarthy, Kate Colby, and Lily Applebaum to talk about a poem by Stephen Collis that appeared in his book, A History of the Theories of Rain, published by Talonbooks in Vancouver in 2021. The poem is titled “Yes I Do Want to Punch” — and perhaps should be called “Yes I Do Want to Punch / fascists in the face,” proceeding to its key first line. Our recording of Collis performing the poem comes from a video he made just for PoemTalk, and it is available on his PennSound page.
October 18, 2021
First reading of Basil Bunting's performance of Thomas Wyatt's 'Blame not my lute' (2)
Stefanie Sobelle
Sitting down to write my first “reading” of Basil Bunting’s 1977 performance of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s sixteenth-century poem “Blame Not My Lute,” I realize that I rarely read firstly anymore, properly speaking. That is, if I know I will be writing about a text of any kind, I research it before beginning. Were I to be writing an interpretation of the Bunting, for example, I would spend some time perusing relevant scholarship.