Tyrone Williams, “Charon on the Potomac”
For years a group of us convened annually at the Writers House to talk about a poet we admired. Our group always included the late Tyrone Williams. (Here is a link to one of our previous gatherings.) On 
the occasion of this special episode of PoemTalk, we re-convened once more, although this time, sadly, without Tyrone as part of the conversation. Well, Tyrone’s poetic genius was of course present: Aldon Nielsen, Erica Hunt, Simone White, and Al Filreis viewed a video recording of a Kelly Writers House reading in which Tyrone performed his poem “Charon on the Potomac.” And then, before a live audience, we filmed our hour-long journey into and across this poem. It appears in the book As Iz (published by Omnidawn in 2018). Tyrone’s extensive PennSound page includes a February 7, 2017, reading he gave here at the Kelly Writers House, a memorable session co-introduced by me and Charles Bernstein. Tyrone that night read a number of poems from the then-unpublished As Iz, including our poem.
Here is a link to the text of the poem. Here is an audio recording of Tyrone’s performance of it. And here is the entire video recording of that 2017 KWH reading.
To watch the unedited recording of the livestream, click anywhere in the screenshot below:
Here are some videos from the Writers House archive:
[] Tyrone Williams participates in a reading in honor of Aldon Nielsen: LINK
[] Tyrone Williams participates in a live PoemTalk session on a poem by Erica Hunt: LINK
[] A “ModPo Minute” on Ted Joans featuring Tyrone Wililams: LINK
[] Tyrone Williams participates in a live PoemTalk session on Amiri Baraka: LINK
