Episode 186 - The dots move out
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss a version of Tina Darragh's "Wire Boxes" performed at the Line Reading Series in New York in February of 2001.
Jul 28, 2023•57 min
PoemTalk at the Writers House
PoemTalk at the Writers House, hosted by Al Filreis and based at Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia. PoemTalk is a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and Jacket2.org.
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Episodes
Episode 185 - Don't refuse to breathe
The team hits the road and lands in Los Angeles at the home of Marjorie Perloff, where the group gathers to discuss two well-known poems by Frank O'Hara: "Poem" or "Lana Turner Has Collapsed!" and "Song (Is it Dirty)."
Jun 28, 2023•52 min
Episode 184 - The whole world smiles
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss John Giorno's 1977 poem, "Everyone is a complete disappointment."
May 22, 2023•52 min
Episode 183 - Present plans succeed
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss an excerpt from Dodie Bellamy's Vomit Journal.
Apr 12, 2023•55 min
Episode 182 - Woot of the century
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems from Douglas Kearney's SHO (Wave Books, 2021): "Welter" and "Static."
Mar 16, 2023•52 min
Episode 181 - Rhetorical happenings
The group gathers at the Writers House to discuss Hoa Nguyen's "Long Light," collected in Red Juice: Poems, 1998-2008 (Wave Books, 2014).
Feb 23, 2023•46 min
Episode 180 - Nothing made of ink
The group travels to the Poetry Foundation in Chicago to discuss seven short poems from Lisa Fishman's Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition (Wave Books, 2020).
Jan 11, 2023•55 min
Episode 179 - Untranslatable
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems by Armand Schwarner: "Tablet XXV" and "'daddy, can you staple these two stars together to make an airplane?'"
Dec 20, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Episode 178 - Downgraded to scribble
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Matvei Yankelevich's book of poems (or book-length poem), Dead Winter (Fonograph, 2022).
Nov 24, 2022•54 min
Episode 177 - Paw mouthings
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems by Maggie O'Sullivan, "To our Own Day" and "Hill Figures," from In the House of the Shaman (Reality Street, 1993).
Oct 30, 2022•56 min
Episode 176 - Touch, love, then explain
The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio for a fresh take on John Ashbery's iconic "Some Trees."
Sep 27, 2022•58 min
Episode 175 - Composition of life, as life
The group travels to Bard College in the Hudson Valley to discuss the two opening paragraph's from Joan Retallack's essay "The Poethical Wager."
Aug 26, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Episode 174 - Girls in the supply chain
The group gathers at the Kelly Writers House to discuss four poems from Sawako Nakayasu's Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From (Wave Books, 2020).
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Episode 173 - When a name falls from a face (Divya Victor, 'Curb')
In this episode, the group gathers to discuss a selection of poems from Divya Victor's book Curb (Nightboat Books, 2021): three poems from the titular "Curb" series in the middle of the book ("Curb" 3, 4, and 5) and another poem, "Frequency (Alka’s Testimony)."
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Episode 172 - Trance of language (Harryette Mullen, 'Sleeping with the Dictionary' and 'Dim Lady')
In this episode, we talk about two prose poems in Harryette Mullen’s collection Sleeping with the Dictionary, published by California in 2002. The poems are “Dim Lady” and the title poem, “Sleeping with the Dictionary.”
May 23, 2022•52 min
Episode 171 - Teach us love (Eugene Ostashevsky, 'Language' and 'The Anatomy of Monotony')
In this episode, our discussion takes us to the great Ostashevskyan topics — knowledge otherwise somehow alienated; language that embodies or transliterates a kind of violence; the (sound) differences between knowing and saying no (and similarities); his sincere (and doubtless Russian Absurdist-influenced) plea to “teach us love / teach us love / teach us love / teach us love” even though “We are wholly unfamiliar with it.” Because the episode was recorded before the February 24, 2022, Russian m...
Apr 21, 2022•58 min
Episode 170 - Better to lose and win (Diane di Prima's 'Revolutionary Letters')
In this episode, the group discusses three poems from Diane di Prima's 'Revolutionary Letters' project: #16 (“We are eating up the planet”), #19 (“If what you want is jobs”), and #27 (“How much can we afford to lose before we win”). The project’s goals and modes of address shifted over time. Any single letter-poem, read separately from the others, might seem definitive — tonally evincing ideological as well as poetic choices having been made with apparent finality. Our decision to read and liste...
Mar 14, 2022•55 min
Episode 169 - Far in toward the far end (Two poems from George Quasha's “preverbs”)
Al Filreis convenes Charles Bernstein, Anthony Elms, and Laynie Browne to talk about two poems by George Quasha. The book, published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2020, titled Not Even Rabbits Go Down This Hole, consists of eight gatherings of preverbs; our two poems, coming from the final section — which bears the name of the book — are “self fast” (numbered 12) and “that music razors through” (numbered 13). The recordings we use in this episode can be found on PennSound’s extensive Quasha author page. ...
Feb 11, 2022•53 min
Episode 168 - Hot and cold (Jayne Cortez, 'She Got He Got')
Today we are releasing episode #168 of PoemTalk, in which Amber Rose Johnson, Daniel Bergmann, and Yolanda Wisher meet up at the Kelly Writers House to talk with Al Filreis about Jayne Cortez's "She Got He Got". This poem/performance piece is comprised of a “She” half and an “He” half, she giving variations of hot, while he instantiates variations of cold.
Jan 14, 2022•55 min
Episode 167 - Must it ring true (Myung Mi Kim, 'And Sing We')
Today we are releasing episode #167 of PoemTalk, in which Jack Giesking, Jonathan Dick, and erica kaufman meet up at the Kelly Writers House to talk with Al Filreis about Myung Mi Kim's "And Sing We" from Under Flag.
Dec 22, 2021•55 min
Episode 166 - Coup created by our thoughts
Today's episode dives into Cecilia Vicuña's 'Colliding and not colliding at the same time'. The performance begins as the audience, having been encouraged to ask questions about an art video that had just been screened, went momentarily silent. No questions were being asked, so Vicuña began improvisationally to fill the room with words and sounds, exploring a convergence or collision of topics: the then-recent election of Donald Trump, the “millionaires’ coup” in Brazil, the “mystery of what is ...
Nov 24, 2021•53 min
Episode 165 - Punch fascists
Today, we talk about a poem by Stephen Collis that appeared in his book, A History of the Theories of Rain, published by Talonbooks in Vancouver in 2021. The poem is titled “Yes I Do Want to Punch” — and perhaps should be called “Yes I Do Want to Punch / fascists in the face,” proceeding to its key first line. The eco-poetic turn — an urgent one, although it can also be read as casual, even patient — from the power of a counter-violent radical reaction to a sweet comic catalogue of warblers occu...
Oct 18, 2021•42 min
Episode 164 - As words label space
This episode discusses a three-page section of Leslie Scalapino’s “‘Can’t’ is ‘Night’” — the passage having been chosen by the poet for It’s Go in Horizontal: Selected Poems, 1974-2006. Close listening and close reading: surely some manner of these, both, are required by every Leslie Scalapino work. The PoemTalk group sought to respect this in the very way in which they moved through the poem’s nonsequential parts and themes and offering of language problems. The poem is utterly political and su...
Sep 27, 2021•48 min
Episode 163 - Perilous bodies
This episode features a poem by Daphne Marlatt called “Steveston, B.C.” We were joined by Davy Knittle, Jane Robbins Mize, and Karis Shearer. The poem is in a sense — although not quite exactly — the title poem in a much-admired book published in 1974.
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Episode 162 - In my rotting place
This episode presents a remarkable — freewheeling, energetic, yet comprehensive — discussion of a remarkable artist, Tuli Kupferberg. We considered two works by Tuli: “Morning, Morning,” among the most famous songs performed by The Fugs; and one of Tuli’s spoken-word pieces or “pop poems,” titled “No Deposit, No Return.”
Jul 26, 2021•58 min
Episode 161 - This unwitting monument
The group convenes over Zoom to discuss Sarah Dowling's Entering Sappho (Coach House, 2020).
Jun 14, 2021•53 min
Episode 160 - Biologically speaking
The group convenes over Zoom to discuss two well-known sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay, "I Shall Forget You Presently" and "Love Is Not All." (Coach House, 2020).
May 14, 2021•51 min
Episode 110 - To rearrange the world
Stephen Ratcliffe, Joanne Kyger and Julia Bloch join Al Filreis in Bolinas, California to discuss Philip Whalen's "Life at Bolinas. The Last of California".
Feb 24, 2017•45 min
Episode 109 - I mean only means
Siobhan Phillips, Emily Harnett, and Joseph Massey join Al Filreis to discuss Kate Colby's "I Mean"
Feb 02, 2017•37 min
Episode 108 - But too beautiful
Camara Brown, Edwin Torres, and Brooke O’Harra join Al Filreis to discuss Tracie Morris's "Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful"
Jan 03, 2017•41 min
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