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
Circling an absent centre: The poetics of Joanna Margaret Paul
Cy Mathews
In 1978, Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–2003) published Imogen, a limited-edition book of poems dealing with the death of her infant daughter. Despite winning the Pen Best First Book of Poetry award, it received little critical attention. Only one brief review appeared in Landfall written by the then rising-star poet Brian Turner. Turner, while impressed with the book’s typographical layout — Paul was already an established visual artist — wrote of how he was “left drained” by its emotional intensity. The book, he concluded, was more of “an experience than a poem”: there just wasn’t “enough poetry” in it.
In 1978, Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–2003) published Imogen, a limited-edition book of poems dealing with the death of her infant daughter. Despite winning the Pen Best First Book of Poetry award, it received little critical attention. Only one brief review appeared in Landfall written by the then rising-star poet Brian Turner. Turner, while impressed with the book’s typographical layout — Paul was already an established visual artist — wrote of how he was “left drained” by its emotional intensity.