PoemTalk at the Writers House

Pattie McCarthy, Sophia DuRose, and Elizabeth Willis join Al Filreis in the Wexler Studio at Kelly Writers House to discuss Willis's "To Be Longing" and "Motion Pictures" from Liontaming in America.

Claire Marie Stancek, Sarah Riggs, and Laynie Browne join Al Filreis in the Wexler Studio at Kelly Writers House to discuss Etel Adnan's "Return from London."

Sarah Riggs, Laynie Browne, and Lee Ann Brown join Al Filreis at the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation in New York City for a discussion of two poems by Stacy Doris: "Menage a trois" and "Month of Valentines."

Ernest Hilbet, Guy D'Annolfo, and Larry Robin join Al Filreis in the Writers House's Wexler Studio for a discussion of three poems by Thomas Devaney from Getting to Philadelphia (Hanging Loose Press, 2019): "The Blue Stoop," "Oregon Avenue," and "A Week in the Childhood of W.C. Fields."

Charles Bernstein, Ariel Resnikoff, and Nicole Peyrafitte join Al Filreis for a special live taping in the Writers House's Arts Cafe to discuss two poems by recently departed poets Pierre Joris ("The word, the mawqif") and Jerome Rothenberg ("A letter to Paul Celan, in memory").

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss three poems from George Quasha's Hearing Other, the latest in his extensive Preverbs series: "Mind-degradable theory," "Verb at first sight," and "(Dis)play."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems by Ed Roberson: "The Motorcycle Crossing" and "To See the Earth Before the End of the World."

The group convenes for a special live PoemTalk discussion of Muriel Rukeyser's "Waking This Morning."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss three poems from Sadie Dupuis's "Cry Perfume."

The group convenes for a special live session on the late Tyrone Williams's "Charon on the Potomac."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Rae Armantrout's "Further Thought" and "Here I Go."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Lewis Warsh's "Polar Night."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss June Jordan's "Financial Planning" and "Song of the Law Abiding Citizen."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Horace Gregory's "Chorus for Survival" nos. 5 and 11.

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two versions of Callie Gardener's "Culture Warrior."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss a six-page section from Harryette Mullen's Open Leaves, called "Chasing Dirt."

The group gathers in the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems from Trish Salah's Lyric Sexology Volume 1.

The group gathers in the Writers House's Arts Cafe for a special live taping to discuss two poems by Evie Shockley.

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems by Edward Denby: "Subway" and "Ciampino envoi."

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss three poems from Larry Price's 1/0.

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss four of Marjorie Welish's "Textiles."

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Hart Crane's "The Harbor Dawn," as performed by Tennessee Williams.

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss "The Austrian Maiden" and "Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo" by Richard Padgett.

The PoemTalk team travels to Scotland for a discussion at the Fruitmarket Arts Center in Edinburgh on two poems by Veronica Forrest-Thomson.

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Ariana Raines's "To the Reader," from A Sand Book (Tin House, 2019).

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two poems by Owen Dodson: "For Billie Holiday" and "Sorrow Is The Only Faithful One."

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two Kenward Elmslie pieces, "Core Bonus" and "One Night Stand."

The group gathers for a live session in the Kelly Writers House's Arts Cafe to discuss the eponymous piece from Aldon Nielson's book Tray (Make Now Press, 2017).

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Gregory Corso's 1969 performance of "Vision of Rotterdam."

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss Ted Pearson's 1987 book-length poem, Catenary Odes.

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss two "Love Poems" by Mina Loy, from a recording and interview with Paul Blackburn and Robert Von Dias in 1965.

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.

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)."

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss John Giorno's 1977 poem, "Everyone is a complete disappointment."

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio to discuss an excerpt from Dodie Bellamy's Vomit Journal.

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."

The group gathers at the Writers House to discuss Hoa Nguyen's "Long Light," collected in Red Juice: Poems, 1998-2008 (Wave Books, 2014).

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).

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?'"

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).

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).

The group gathers at the Writers House's Wexler Studio for a fresh take on John Ashbery's iconic "Some Trees."

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."

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).

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)."

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.”

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 military invasion into Ukraine, listeners will have to reckon for themselves the many places in our conversation when we would no doubt have commented on the war (continuing at the time of the podcast’s release) and on the role of the avant-garde Russian American poet in relation to Russian cultures historical and contemporary.

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 listen to three poems, forming a small sampler of the Letters, helped us understand and, through this hour-long chat, to convey the project’s quality as overall a series of variations; each thus is an instance of ways of thinking about poems’ social efficacy.

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. These preverbs were recorded by Chris Funkhouser on December 27, 2017.

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.