In Memoriam: Tyrone Williams (1954–2024)

We at Jacket2 regretfully share the news that beloved poet and critic Tyrone Williams passed away on Monday, March 11, at the age of 70. The author of numerous books, including c.c. (2002), On Spec (2008), The Hero Project of the Century (2009), Adventures of Pi (2011), Howell (2011), As Iz (2018), and washpark (with Pat Clifford, 2021), Williams had recently joined the SUNY-Buffalo faculty as David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters after a long teaching career at Xavier University in Cincinnati. 

We at Jacket2 regretfully share the news that beloved poet and critic Tyrone Williams passed away on Monday, March 11, at the age of 70.

Lyn Hejinian (1941–2024): An obituary by Lytle Shaw

article
Photo by Gloria Graham.

Lyn Hejinian, American poet and essayist, died on Saturday, February 24. Born Carolyn Frances Hall on May 17, 1941, and raised in Berkeley and later Cambridge, Massachusetts, she graduated from Harvard University in 1963.

Lyn Hejinian, American poet and essayist, died on Saturday, February 24. Born Carolyn Frances Hall on May 17, 1941, and raised in Berkeley and later Cambridge, Massachusetts, she graduated from Harvard University in 1963. Her children, Paull and Anna, were born while she was married to the physician John Hejinian.

Larry Price

PennSound Podcast #78

In this episode, poet Larry Price joins Al Filreis and William Fuller for an interview in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House to discuss his new book 1/0 (“one over zero”), as well as some of his earlier work.

Voices of my desert

An introduction to the Vox Audio collection at PennSound

Acequia Booksellers in New Mexico
Acequia Booksellers in New Mexico

Vox Audio was initiated in 2001 to promote several poets to a possible community interested in such work. The CDs were distributed largely by mail, free of charge. As the name implies, Vox also reflects a regard for voice in poetry – that is, for the kinds of involvement not available from the page, like intonation or subtleties of sound and rhythm that require voicing. 

Vox Audio was initiated in 2001 to promote several poets to a possible community interested in such work. The CDs were distributed largely by mail, free of charge. As the name implies, Vox also reflects a regard for voice in poetry – that is, for the kinds of involvement not available from the page, like intonation or subtleties of sound and rhythm that require voicing. This interest grew from the work of Pound, H.D., and Williams, especially from Williams’ concern with a speech-based poetic and emphasis on contact and locale, what might now be termed context, the dialogic.

The colors of death (PoemTalk #193)

Ariana Reines, "To the Reader"

From left: Pattie McCarthy, Eric Shoemaker, Michelle Taransky

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Al Filreis brought together Michelle Taransky, Pattie McCarthy, and Robert Eric Shoemaker, who had traveled from Chicago to join us — to talk about a poem by Ariana Reines, “To the Reader.” The poem was included in Reines’s A Sand Book (Tin House, 2019). Eric and Al co-curated the selection, in part because of Eric's work with magical poetics. Our recording of Reines performing this poem dates from 2020 and was hosted by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The audio we hear toward the beginning of the episode is extracted from a video that is available on YouTube and Vimeo, produced by Christian Lund, with sound editing by Tomás Guiñazú. Click HERE to read a text of the poem (scanned from A Sand Book).

Mud and the poetics of art history

Lytle Shaw's 'New Grounds for Dutch Landscape'

Jan van Goyen, Landscape with Two Oaks, 1641, Rijksmuseum.  Photo by the author.
Jan van Goyen, Landscape with Two Oaks, 1641, Rijksmuseum. Photo by the author.

What, then, would a "poetics" of art writing look like, one which is responsible to the facts of the matter, yet still laying the field open for extravagations and speculations? 

New Grounds for Dutch Landscape
Lytle Shaw
OEI editör, 2021, 304 pages, $19.95, ISBN 9789188829085

Evie Shockley

PennSound Podcast #77

Evie Shockley reading at the Kelly Writers House

In this PennSound podcast, poet Evie Shockley sits down in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House for an interview about her work with Al Filreis, Tyrone Williams, Aldon Nielson, and William J. Harris. 

Secure that delicate passage

On Hajar Hussaini's "Disbound"

Before the first poem of Afghan poet Hajar Hussaini’s debut collection Disbound, Hussaini already resists the limits of the book’s form, positioning her text in a conflict between sequence and chaos, what is threaded together and what imminently, and presently, comes apart.

Disbound
Hajar Hussaini

University of Iowa Press, 2022, 77 pages, $19.95, ISBN 9781609388676

James Berger, "Naive and Sentimental Poetics"

Excerpt from a new book in draft

James Berger

James Berger, whose books include The Disarticulate: Language, Disability, and the Narratives of Modernity, Under the Impression, The Obvious Poems and the Worthless Poems, and The OBU Manifestos, is writing a new book to be titled "Naive and Sentimental Poetics." I've happily prevailed upon Jim to share with Jacket2 readers an excerpt from this new work in draft.