Articles - January 2013

P. Inman and Dan Farrell, PhillyTalks

Dan Farrell (left), P. Inman (right)

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Amaris Cuchanski hosts the twenty-second podcast in the PennSound Podcasts series. This includes a brief introduction, followed by a 21-minute excerpt from the conversation between P. Inman and Dan Farrell that took place at the Kelly Writers House on November 29, 1999, the 14th PhillyTalks event curated by Louis Cabri and technically produced by Aaron Levy. Click here for the entire recording, including links to audio segmented by poem; you'll also find a link to a PDF copy of the program that had been distributed by Cabri before the event.

Kyger and Creeley

Talking casually with Greg Hewlett, 1972

PennSound podcast number 21 features a 17-minute excerpt from a one-hour-and-23-minute recording of a conversation among Greg Hewlett, Robert Creeley and Joanne Kyger in June of 1972. The whole discussion — and links to segments by topic — are available at PennSound’s Joanne Kyger page. Your host is Amaris Cuchanski. The other twenty PennSound podcasts are available here.

I can't get started (PoemTalk #61)

Bill Berkson, 'Signature Song'

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Marci Nelligan, David Kaufmann, and Thomas Devaney joined Al Filreis to discuss what David thinks might well be one of Bill Berkson’s own signature songs; during our discussion, David opines that Berkson’s poem “Signature Song” is the best of the poet’s “fact poems.” Marci and Tom certainly did not disagree with that judgment. Its diction and tone are mostly that of familiar factistic subgenres: the liner note, the encylopedia entry, etc. Finally, of course, it’s more than merely encyclopedic, for it wanders around both historical and personal connections and interleavings, and concludes with a quiet but still jarring judgment of the “odd” work of writing through these associations in and out of the extremity of political situations they somewhat ignore and somewhat express.

Two very different Cageans

Jena Osman and Kenneth Goldsmith in conversation

Jena Osman, John Cage, and Kenneth Goldsmith

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On December 9, 2004, Al Filreis brought together two very different Cageans — Jena Osman and Kenneth Goldsmith — for a conversation with the students of his Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course. This was the first time that Osman and Goldsmith were recorded together, for beyond their shared interests in John Cage’s aesthetic and documentary poetics, they are very different poets. Osman is known for her disruptive, experimental poetics — collaging and intervening in existing texts — while Goldsmith’s works are defined by their uncreativity, where the texts are presented whole.