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
Geomantic riposte: 'The Book of Marvels'
The idea of a ‘Geomantic Riposte’, a response that attempts to transplant the energy of one poem into another, is not out of keeping with poetry that abounds like so many persistent verbal ‘forms’ (small depressions of our prairie jackrabbits) and even defiant forbs across the vast and diverse landscape in Canada. This ‘Idea of North’, to use Glenn Gould’s term, is not just about the tonic of performance or the stern dominant of major city centres. Even at remote interstices, the conversation is always continuing, sometimes in a communal sense and other times in the manner of a furtive sonata or partita about to be launched into space. Geomantic Ripostes is therefore a glimpse through a window on the very liminal of a poet’s life, one that is made up of murmurs, music, silences, sudden yips, rests, and occasional fermatas. As such, this series is a curation of thirty six poetry books published in Canada, along with more than a bit of interior talk they have brought about.