Is That Too Much To Ask?

Bobbie Louise Hawkins – “As a writer, on paper…” (4’04”). Recorded on June 15, 2010 at the Naropa Performing Arts Center, where Hawkins read with Thalia Field, Ross Gay, Joanne Kyger, and Linh Dinh as part of a Summer Writing Program Faculty Reading. Much more Hawkins, including readings, talks, and panel presentations, at the invaluable Naropa Poetics Audio Archive. Her most recent books are Absolutely Eden and Bijoux. “When you put the importance in the answer and hand it over to someone else, you get stuck with somebody else’s answer.”

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.

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Wieners

Prynne

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.

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.

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.

This Job Will Not Wait

Alli Warren – The Poet Must Be a Professional… (1’38”). Recorded July 16, 2009 and archived on A Voice Box. • Warren’s blog, The Ingredient. Her chapbook, Cousins. The reading series she curates with Brandon Brown at 21 Grand, recently recognized as a “Best of the Bay” type thing. • Nice to see A Voice Box picked up for syndication, as it were, on PennSound.

The Erosion of Sound

Rob Halpern – “And in all these faces…” (0’42”) from Music for Porn (Factory School, forthcoming). Full track (7’12). Recorded March 3, 2007 as part of the Segue Series at the Bower Poetry Club and archived on PennSound. • An appreciation of Disaster Suites by Brandon Brown.

Fluted Throats

Elizabeth Marie Young – The Shiftless Art of Watching Dead Things Rising at the Louvre (2’21”). Recorded April 6, 2007 at Pegasus Books and archived on A Voice Box, where the full thirteen minute set also includes “Life Lessons Gleaned from a Grammar of Attic Inscriptions,” “Watching the Ruler Thrown Triumphantly Atop His House of Fame,” and “Instructions for Inhabiting a Miniature World.” Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize is Young’s first book, just out from Fence.

Like Tiresias

George Stanley – Veracruz (2’10” with intoduction). Text courtesy of Woodland Pattern. Recorded to audiocassette at the St. Marks Poetry Project in 2000; digitized and put on-line by Eric Baus in May 2007. A highly distorted recording, made at the Kelly Writers House in October 2003, is available on PennSound. A Tall, Serious Girl (Qua, 2003) at SPD, on Goodreads, on LibraryThing. Beverly Dahlen’s notes on reading Vancouver (New Star, 2007) on Jacket 37.