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.
Al Filreis convened Thomas Devaney, JS Wu, and Vincent Katz (visiting from New York) to talk about two poems by Edwin Denby. The two poems are “The Subway” and “Ciampino: Envoi.” They can be found in Edwin Denby: the Complete Poems, published by Random House and edited by Ron Padgett. You can hear Denby performing these poems in audio recordings archived at his PennSound page. These poems and a selection of others were recorded and edited by Jacob Burckhardt between the years 1976 and 1983, on a CD originally issued on disc in 2004.
Al Filreis convened Larry Price, William Fuller (traveling from Chicago), and Sophia DuRose to talk about three new poems by Larry Price. Bill Fuller selected for us three prose-poem sections or pages from Larry's new book titled 1/0. Larry’s PennSound page at the time of our conversation did not yet include recordings of this new writing, so we asked Larry to perform these poems toward the start of the episode. Earlier on the day of the session Larry spent time in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House recording more poems from 1/0 and other selections from his previous books.
From left: Michelle Taransky, Sally Van Doren, Christy Davids
Al Filreis convened Michelle Taransky, Christy Davids, and Sally Van Doren. Sally traveled to be with us for the day: she gave a an evening reading of mostly her new poems, paired with a reading by Michelle; and she spent more time in our studio in an interview with Al about her new poems. For the PoemTalk episode — we discussed a series of numbered poems by Marjorie Welish, going under the title “Begetting Textile.”
Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué and Jonathan Dick joined Al Filreis to discuss Hart Crane’s “The Harbor Dawn.” It's the third poem-section of The Bridge, Crane’s 15-canto poem. Crane began composing The Bridge in 1923 and it was published by Black Sun Press in 1930. We don’t alas have a recording of Crane reading this poem; nor do any recordings of Crane survive. But PennSound’s Hart Crane author page includes two of Crane’s poems as performed by Tennessee Williams! So before our discussion began, we listened to Williams's transatlantic/southern American inflection.
