Ron Padgett, "Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo" & "The Austrian Maiden"
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Al Filreis brought together James Berger and Richard Deming (who traveled together from Yale) and Sophia DuRose to talk about two poems by Ron Padgett. The poems are “The Austrian Maiden” and “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo.” Our recording of “The Austrian Maiden” comes from a February 26, 2003, reading Padgett gave at the Kelly Writers House; the poem had just recently been published in Padgett’s book You Never Know (2002). The recording of “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo” — a poem published in Great Balls of Fire (1969) — was performed at a November 20, 1979, reading given at a location that is now (sadly) unknown. That reading in its entirety is available at Padgett’s PennSound page; the recording comes to us courtesy of the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
April 17, 2024
First reading of Basil Bunting's performance of Thomas Wyatt's 'Blame not my lute' (4)
Jeroen van den Heuvel
The first time I listen to Basil Bunting perform Thomas Wyatt’s “Blame not my lute,” I am unable to follow it. The sixteenth-century English certainly does not help. I hear the word “desart“ and don’t know what it means. I hear the word “change” that is familiar to me but it is used in a way that I am not accustomed to. I listen to it a few more times. The repetition radiates a kind of pleasure. But why should I, in 2017, bother to listen to one dead guy reciting a poem four decades ago that another dead guy wrote five centuries ago?
With Jeroen van den Heuvel’s short essay responding to the experience of hearing Basil Bunting’s performance of Thomas Wyatt’s “Blame not my lute,” the three coeditors of the “First Readings” series offer the fourth of five takes on this cover. The recording is linked here and is also available at PennSound’s Bunting