LISTEN  TO THE SHOW

This episode of PoemTalk brought together Hannah Albertine, Sadie Dupuis, and Dorothea Lasky to talk about three poems in Sadie’s book Cry Perfume. We took advantage of Sadie’s presence in the very studio where we make our poetry recordings and asked her to perform the poems as part of our conversation about them. The book can be acquired HERE. 

This was one of those PoemTalk episodes where the four people in the room knew each other well in various contexts and relational vectors, so — you will notice almost immediately: it gets particularly digressive and almost riotously friendly — all to the better, we feel. Thus during editing Al and Zach decided in favor of leaving in all the deviations, parentheses, detours, and periphrasis. The mode befits Sadie’s verse and, especially, her critique of commodified versions of media from which a poem (or at least these poems) can be exceptions and alternatives. Fuck no to all that, she says — and the PoemTalkers agree.

For years a group of us convened annually at the Writers House to talk about a poet we admired. Our group always included the late Tyrone Williams. (Here is a link to one of our previous gatherings.) On the occasion of this special episode of PoemTalk, we re-convened once more, although this time, sadly, without Tyrone as part of the conversation. Well, Tyrone’s poetic genius was of course present: Aldon Nielsen, Erica Hunt, Simone White, and Al Filreis viewed a video recording of a Kelly Writers House reading in which Tyrone performed his poem “Charon on the Potomac.” And then, before a live audience, we filmed our hour-long journey into and across this poem.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

During a visit to the Writers House during which she joined an interactive ModPo webcast and gave a poetry reading, Rae Armantrout also joined Al Filreis, Laynie Browne, and Julie Bloch in our Wexler Studio to record an episode of PoemTalk. We talked about two poems in Rae’s book Go Figure. The poems are “Here I Go” and “Further Thought.” Rae’s PennSound author page didn’t yet have any recordings of performances of poems from this new book, so we asked the poet to read them during the podcast session.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

For this episode of PoemTalk, Al Filreis convened Anselm Berrigan, Kate Colby, and Laynie Browne to talk about a poem by Lewis Warsh, “Polar Night.” The recording of this poem available at Warsh’s PennSound page was made at a reading at Chapterhouse Café in Philadelphia in 2008. The recording was made by Jack Krick. The poem was published in the poetry collection Alien Abduction in 2015. (This was his first book of poems since Inseparable of 2008, so we assume “Polar Night” was written around then but not in time to be included in the 2008 book.) We make the text of the poem available here below; click anywhere on the image to see a clearer copy.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Al Filreis convened Bob Holman, Christy Davids, and Herman Beavers to talk about two poems by the late June Jordan. The two poems are “Financial Planning” and “Song of the Law Abiding Citizen,” and the easiest place to find the texts of these poems is Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), with its foreword by Adrienne Rich. Our recordings of Jordan’s performance of these poems comes from the “Poetry Spots” series which was created by our Bob Holman and aired on WNYC-TV as “non-commercial commercials” from 1987 through 1993. The original air date of the two June Jordan segments was April 26, 1989. For PoemTalk we play audio-only versions (this and this) but we want to urge our listeners to watch copies of the old videos available through YouTube. HERE is June performing “Financial Planning.” And HERE is the spot in which she presents her “Song of the Law Abiding Citizen.”