Ted Pearson, "Catenary Odes"
from left: Rachel Blau DuPlessis, William Fuller, Bruce Andrews
Al Filreis hosted Rachel Blau DuPlessis, William Fuller, and Bruce Andrews in the Wexler Studio of the Kelly Writers House for a conversation about Ted Pearson's book-length poem Catenary Odes. The book was first published by O Books in 1987. The poem, or perhaps it is a series of couplet-length poems, covers 44 pages in print; the PoemTalk group discussed the first 11 pages, approximately 40 lines. Our section ends with “the body electric in a brownout / the western mind in a jar.” The recording we play in this episode comes from Pearson’s PennSound page, from an audiotaping of a reading given in the Segue Series at the Ear Inn in New York on December 4, 1993.
September 26, 2023
Baking with Emily Dickinson
An interview with Houghton librarians Christine Jacobson and Emily Walhout on your virtual birthday party
Some of the readers included the poet and performer Tracie Morris, the television showrunner and creator of Apple TV’s Dickinson, Alena Smith, NPR’s Nikki Silva, cocreator of “The Kitchen Sisters,” Rachel Syme of the New Yorker, poet and Shayla Lawson, the young poet and model Amanda Gorman, and more exciting artists and writers. We were able to watch a preview of Dickinson with Alena’s reading.