Amit Chaudhuri in conversation with Charles Bernstein

McNally-Jackson books, NY, Sept. 6, 2022

photo: Susan Bee / PennSound

My conversation with Amit Chaudhuri at the South Street Seaport McNally-Jackson took place on September 6, 2022, celebrating the release of Sojourn from New York Review Books. We also discussed his 2021 book with NYRB, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music. 

What I wrote about Chaudhuri's poetry collection Sweet Shop (Salt, 2018) also applied to Soujourn: Chaudhuri’s experiments in poetic alchemy are disarmingly wry, turning sweet nothings into ontological reflections and wistful elegiacs. These odes to the pleasures of faltu —the unnecessary — are pungent, chewy, and succulent.

Here is the PennSound recording of the event, part of the Close Listening series. 

1. Introduction/welcome by Ryan Cook (2:36): mp3
2. Chaudhuri reads from Sojourn (13:05): mp3
3. Conversation with Charles Bernstein (46:39): mp3
4. Audience q & a (8:32): mp3
FULL event: (1:11:42) mp3

Recommended: Amit Chaudhuri's Literary Activism web site.