200! This is the 200th monthly episode of PoemTalk. To mark the occasion, we celebrated Evie Shockley with a day of events and recordings and conversation and it was all informally dubbed “Evie Day.” Before a live audience in the Arts Café of KWH we talk about two of Evie’s poems: “My last modernist poem, #4 (or, re-re-birth of a nation)” from The New Black; and “studies in antebellum literature (or, topsy-turvy)” from Semi-automatic. Evie’s expansive PennSound page happens to include recordings of her performing both of these poems, but since we were feeling the honor of having Evie there with us in person, we asked her if she wouldn’t mind reading these poems. She did, and you'll be hearing them as part of the PoemTalk discussion after the introductions. It was the annual gathering of a group that had been meeting for some years: Aldon Nielsen, William J. Harris, and the late and much-missed Tyrone Williams.
October 11, 2024
The first definition of poetry
On Simon Smith's 'Navy'
Poet Simon Smith is in the midst of a remarkable proliferation, with book following quickly upon book. He has recently published a selected volume — More Flowers Than You Could Possibly Carry (Shearsman 2016) — and, the same year, the book Navy (vErIsImIlItUdE). The selected brings together poetry from five previous collections, as well as a number of uncollected poems; editor Barry Schwabsky associates Smith’s work with “the New York School’s love of speed, wit, and variousness of tone,” which is true, although this only tells half the story.
Poet Simon Smith is in the midst of a remarkable proliferation, with book following quickly upon book. He has recently published a selected volume — More Flowers Than You Could Possibly Carry (Shearsman 2016) — and, the same year, the book Navy (vErIsImIlItUdE). The selected brings together poetry from five previous collections, as well as a number of uncollected poems; editor Barry Schwabsky associates Smith’s work with “the New York School’s love of speed, wit, and variousness of tone,” which is true, although this only tells half the story.