Off the Record

Steve Evans – “On Coteries, Infrastructure, and Gossip” (12’14”). A contribution to the first panel of the first week of the 2010 Naropa Summer Writing Program, which was chaired by Anne Waldman and featured Joanne Kyger, David Trinidad, and Jennifer Scappettone. My extemporaneous remarks focus on the way that sound recordings function as an often unrecognized form of “publication,” with special reference to the various manifestations of group identity—and the “gossip” that inevitably accompanies it—to be found in three important archives of recorded poetry: the Paul Blackburn tapes at UCSD’s Archive for New Poetry, Andrew Kenower’s website A Voice Box, and Naropa’s own audio archive.