Al Filreis brought together Hoa Nguyen, Maya Pindyck, and Laynie Browne to talk about two of the poems (#1 and #4) in Mina Loy’s “Love Songs” series, which she published in 1915 in the first issue of Others magazine not long before her arrival onto the New York modernist scene the next year. A bit more than a half century later, Loy would die at the age of 83 in 1966; in 1965 the poet Paul Blackburn, who loved nothing more than to tape recordings of poets reading and conversing — along with Robert Vas Dias — turned the mic on and interviewed Loy at her home in Aspen, Colorado, and asked her to read poems and offer spontaneous commentary. The poems included all thirteen of the “Love Songs.” This remarkable one-hour-and-36-minute reading/conversation is available – both as a single recording and segmented recordings by poem and interview topic – at PennSound’s must-hear Loy page.
Al Filreis convened Joan Retallack, erica kaufman, and Simone White to talk about Tina Darragh’s “Wire Boxes.” Tina performed a version of this piece at a reading hosted by the Line Reading Series in New York in February 2001. Our colleague Kendall Owens transcribed the audio of that performance, and Joan then helped revise and format the transcription in part by consulting the second half of the poem as it has appeared in Tina Darragh’s book My Hands to Mutant Solidarities (published by Dry Imager Press in 2020). Given the dates of the wire service stories Tina cites and the reference to the Seattle WTO protests of 1999, we choose to date the composition of the first part of the poem to that year. The second half of our poem had already appeared in the 1989 book Against the Odds under the title “Letter Boxes,” and we acknowledge erica kaufman’s efforts to locate and share that version.
The PoemTalk team went on the road again — to Los Angeles, California, and convened at the Pacific Palisades home of Marjorie Perloff, who for the third time in PoemTalk history generously agreed to host. Along with audio maestro Chris Martin and videographer-director Zach Carduner — who recording this episode for both audio and video playback — Al Filreis was joined by Robert von Hallberg, Charles Altieri, and by our host Marjorie Perloff.
Al Filreis brought together Michelle Taransky, Brooke O’Harra, and Christopher Funkhouser to talk about a piece created, performed, and recorded by John Giorno, titled “Everyone is a complete disappointment.” It was included on the album John Giorno and Anne Waldman: A Kulchur Selection, released in 1977 from the Giorno Poetry Systems label. Among the album’s cuts are two Giorno pieces and four by Anne Waldman (famously among the latter: “Fast Speaking Woman” and “White Eyes”). “Everyone Is a Complete Disappointment” was recorded on May 1, 1977, at ZBS Media.
Murat Nemet-Nejat, Henry Steinberg, and Chantine Akiyama Poh joined Al Filreis in our Wexler Studio to discuss a published excerpt of dated sections or entries from Dodie Bellamy’s Vomit Journal. The text as published can be consulted here. In part because of time constraints, we listened to and discussed most although not all of these sections. Our recording came directly from Dodie — who graciously agreed to record a reading for us (it is now linked in our Bellamy PennSound page).
