Most of the readings here are connected to two series: "Walking the Dog" programs coordinated and recorded by Robert Creeley until 1990; "Wednesdays@4 Plus" programs (1990-2003) coordinated and recorded by Charles Bernstein (working with Susan Howe, Raymond Federman, Dennis Tedlock, Robert Bertholf, and Creeley). While the Poetics Program as such didn't begin unitl Fall 1991, we include on this page readings beginning 50 years ago in Buffalo, associated with the State University of New York's English Department.
[Originally published in Current Musicology's recent issue on “experimental writing about music.”]
PREFACE
This set of poems grew out of my experiences of listening and finding myself inside nigunim(pl; singular nigun or nign), Chassidic chants — mystical, usually wordless songs used as accompaniment for rituals — weddings, prayers, candle-lightings — collective beckoning of transcendence. The nigun experience is fraught with what Amiri Baraka called, referring to blues, the “re/feeling” — proximity and shape of personal history of encounters with unfathomable.
The alternative space Ballroom Projects is located in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, near where I live. Once a third floor ballroom that would have hosted family banquets in this working class area, it was later colonized by punks who put on hardcore shows. You have to walk up three flights of steep steps to reach its tall, cavernous space, which is surrounded on three sides by a mezzanine built out with bedrooms. Lovely banks of tall windows face south. It’s on Archer Street, backed up against Interstate 55, which one never ceases to hear through the cold, brown brick walls. It’s now informally linked to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; students and graduates of SAIC, where I teach, run it as a live-in project space. Robert Fitterman read there this spring, with Josef Kaplan, Holly Melgard, and Joey Yearous-Algozin. I read there one night in 2012. But it wasn’t a poetry reading. I was at one of many fascinating exhibits the space has hosted over recent years. And I was reading silently to myself, page by page from a stack of 8 ½ x 11 sheets set on the floor, one stack among several, something about or repeatedly extolling “true exposure.”
Jennifer Scappettone, from Dame Quickly (Litmus Press, 2009), 101 pp., 15.00 —Superficially, Scappettone’s first book of poetry and art resembles Stephanie Young’s Picture Palace enough—texts abutted by images near the end of each book—that I once had them paired for a course that, unfortunately, never materialized. I wanted to explore and exploit the formal, and thus significant, differences between them.
Fifty years of Buffalo poetics readings on PennSound
We've been working on this page for a decade, but now near complete -- 150 readings and events at Buffalo, from 1963 to 2003.
Most of the readings here are connected to two series: "Walking the Dog" programs coordinated and recorded by Robert Creeley until 1990; "Wednesdays@4 Plus" programs (1990-2003) coordinated and recorded by Charles Bernstein (working with Susan Howe, Raymond Federman, Dennis Tedlock, Robert Bertholf, and Creeley). While the Poetics Program as such didn't begin unitl Fall 1991, we include on this page readings beginning 50 years ago in Buffalo, associated with the State University of New York's English Department.
Jake Marmer: Nigun poems & poetics
[Originally published in Current Musicology's recent issue on “experimental writing about music.”]
PREFACE
This set of poems grew out of my experiences of listening and finding myself inside nigunim(pl; singular nigun or nign), Chassidic chants — mystical, usually wordless songs used as accompaniment for rituals — weddings, prayers, candle-lightings — collective beckoning of transcendence. The nigun experience is fraught with what Amiri Baraka called, referring to blues, the “re/feeling” — proximity and shape of personal history of encounters with unfathomable.
Witness Julietta Cheung
What gets in, what gets out
The alternative space Ballroom Projects is located in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, near where I live. Once a third floor ballroom that would have hosted family banquets in this working class area, it was later colonized by punks who put on hardcore shows. You have to walk up three flights of steep steps to reach its tall, cavernous space, which is surrounded on three sides by a mezzanine built out with bedrooms. Lovely banks of tall windows face south. It’s on Archer Street, backed up against Interstate 55, which one never ceases to hear through the cold, brown brick walls. It’s now informally linked to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; students and graduates of SAIC, where I teach, run it as a live-in project space. Robert Fitterman read there this spring, with Josef Kaplan, Holly Melgard, and Joey Yearous-Algozin. I read there one night in 2012. But it wasn’t a poetry reading. I was at one of many fascinating exhibits the space has hosted over recent years. And I was reading silently to myself, page by page from a stack of 8 ½ x 11 sheets set on the floor, one stack among several, something about or repeatedly extolling “true exposure.”
Ed Baker: Three excerpts from 'Stone Girl E-Pic' with comment
[1]
Goodbye to 'Miss Otis Regrets' and all that
Scappettone's view of the rooms
Jennifer Scappettone, from Dame Quickly (Litmus Press, 2009), 101 pp., 15.00 —Superficially, Scappettone’s first book of poetry and art resembles Stephanie Young’s Picture Palace enough—texts abutted by images near the end of each book—that I once had them paired for a course that, unfortunately, never materialized. I wanted to explore and exploit the formal, and thus significant, differences between them.