The Signature Wobble

Bob Perelman – Revenge of the Bathwater (5’39”). Recorded on October 18, 2006 in the UMaine New Writing Series. Event report here. Alternative takes: October 2003 (3’21”), January 2004 (4’45”), January 2006 (5’51”). All on Perelman’s PennSound page. • David Kaufmann’s review of Iflife (Roof, 2006); Ron Silliman’s take. Jennifer Moxley included the poem, heard when still in manuscript in May 2003, in her Attention Span list for that year.

Artificial Paradise

John Wieners – Cocaine (0’58”). Recorded on reel-to-reel tape by Robert Creeley in Berkeley sometime after June 1965 and archived on PennSound (see “Part 2” of the “Reading of Various Works at Berkeley,” which begins with poems “from the original manuscript of The Hotel Wentley Poems“). • Earlier this summer, I featured Jeremy Prynne’s reading of this poem, which I include for comparison below. • Update: the audio file has now been segmented and labeled, here.

*

Wieners

Prynne

A Public Quality

George Oppen – Ballad (1’18”), from Of Being Numerous. Text, courtesy Languagehat. About Swan’s Island. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, writing about “Ballad” for Big Bridge. More of DuPlessis’s dialog with Oppen, as presented at Eric Baus’s To The Sound. • One of the tracks on a tape from Robert Creeley’s archive (4’16”), newly available on PennSound. The tape opens with Oppen’s remarks, clearly in medias res, on Paris and an unnamed reviewer who inspired his “Epigram: I have been insulted in St. Peter’s” (New Collected Poems 297). He then reads (at 0’48”) “Ballad” (NCP 207-08) and (at 2’25”) “Power, the Enchanted World” (NCP 204-06).

When Will She Finish Her Necklace?

Kim Rosenfield – from Chapter Six (3’44”) of re:evolution (Les Figues, 2008). Recorded October 7, 2006 as part of the Segue Series at the Bower Poetry Club and archived (38’00) on PennSound. Nada Gordon’s photos of the gig. Dirk Rowntree’s reading report. Robin Tremblay-McGaw’s report on Rosenfield’s reading with Kaia Sand and Yedda Morrison at SPT in February 2009.

Attention Span 2009 Contributors

Fifty-six poets and critics have contributed to Attention Span 2009, which will begin appearing here in early September. The contributors are (in order received): Leonard Schwartz, Bill Berkson, Meredith Quartermain, Allyssa Wolf, Cedar Sigo, Rae Armantrout, Elizabeth Treadwell, Jessica Smith, Stephen Cope, G.C. Waldrep, Brandon Brown, Philip Metres, Michael Scharf, Stan Apps, Charles Alexander, Don Share, Joel Bettridge, John Palattella, Suzanne Stein, Patrick Pritchett, Thomas Devaney, Pam Brown, Keith Tuma, Daniel Bouchard, Rodney Koeneke, CA Conrad, Joshua Edwards, Chris Hosea, Elizabeth Robinson, David Dowker, Eileen Myles, Gina Myers, Joanna Fuhrman, Scott Thurston, Alli Warren, K. Silem Mohammad, Jennifer Scappettone, Andrew Epstein, David Buuck, Kevin Killian, Melanie Neilson, James Wagner, Josef Kaplan, Tim Conley, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, CE Putnam, Craig Dworkin, Joseph Mosconi, Omar Berrada, Sawako Nakayasu, Kit Robinson, Michael S. Hennessey, John Latta, Ben Friedlander, Barbara Jane Reyes, Juliana Spahr, and Tim Peterson.

Just Arrived

Robert Duncan – Enthralled (3’27”). Recorded in Buffalo in 1982 and archived on PennSound. The text via Google books. Ground Work II: After the War, from New Directions.• Duncan according to Wikipedia, Modern American Poetry, and Poets.Org. The companion site to Lisa Jarnot’s on-going biographical work on Duncan, excerpted on-line at Harp & Altar, Drunken Boat, and Jacket.

Stoned and Inconsolable

Anne Boyer – Brute (0’35”). Text at slow-to-load MiPOesias Magazine (scroll down). Boyer’s blog, odali$qued. Her Coffee House book Romance of Happy Workers. On Women of the Web, back in 2007. And on Delirious Hem, just this May. Abraham Lincoln, the mag she edits with K. Silem Mohammad.

Unimpeachable

Michael S. Hennessey – Everyone and Anyone (1’13”). Recorded by phone on April 26, 2009 for Leonard Schwartz’s Cross-Cultural Poetics program on KAOS-FM in Olympia, Washington (scroll down to show #191). This poem (1’18) was also part of Hennessey’s set at the Cincinnati Public Library on April 7, 2009, which is archived on his PennSound page. Hennessey is managing editor at PennSound as well as the pen behind PennSound Daily.

Attention Span 2009 – Deadline Approaching

Warm thanks to Leonard Schwartz, Bill Berkson, Meredith Quartermain, Allyssa Wolf, Cedar Sigo, Rae Armantrout, Elizabeth Treadwell, Jessica Smith, Stephen Cope, G.C. Waldrep, Brandon Brown, Philip Metres, Michael Scharf, Stan Apps, Charles Alexander, Don Share, Joel Bettridge, John Palattella, Suzanne Stein, Patrick Pritchett, Thomas Devaney, Pam Brown, Keith Tuma, Daniel Bouchard, Rodney Koeneke, CA Conrad, Joshua Edwards, Chris Hosea, Elizabeth Robinson, David Dowker, Eileen Miles, Gina Myers, Joanna Fuhrman, Scott Thurston, and Alli Warren—all of whom have already kicked in contributions for the 2009 installment of Attention Span, the deadline for which is August 15, 2009.

If you’re interested in participating, drop me at line at steve dot evans at thirdfactory dot net and I’ll send along the simple guidelines.

By Terror Armed

Marie Buck – The Beheading Game (0’55”). Broadcast on Kareem Estefan’s Ceptuetics program on WNYU on February 6, 2008 and archived on PennSound. Diana Hamilton’s review of Buck’s chapbook Life & Style (Patrick Lovelace Editions, 2009, available for download at Beard of Bees) at Sustainable Aircraft. Website for the little magazine Buck edits with Brad Fliss, Model Homes. Buck’s contribution to Attention Span 2008.