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
Graça Capinha on Régis Bonvicino's New Utopia
“what to tongues is denied”
a nova utopia [the new utopia]
by Régis Bonvicino (S.Paulo: Quatro Cantos, 2022)
Ezra Pound's name was the first to echo as soon as I started reading this book. Not because of his political options, since the new utopia is at the antipodes of Poundian fascism, but because this is the kind of poetry that the American poet wanted for his modern epic: a poetry that is "hard and dry". And, indeed, later in the book, in a poem about the emerging fascisms of the present day, Pound and his work are the object of reflection by Régis Bonvicino, the Brazilian author of the new utopia. Ironically, instead of the Poundian "make it new", the poem carries the title "Make it old" (101-104).