Close ListeningAs of June 1, 2007, this page will no longer be updated. Please visit our new site to access newly added programs. Conversations and readings with poets and artists, produced in cooperation with PennSound. Host Charles Bernstein is the author of Shadowtime (Green Integer, 2005), With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), Republics of Reality: Poems 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), and My Way: Speeches and Poems (Chicago, 1999). He is Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. |
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Edition #34: Norman Fischer Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast May 14, 2007 Norman Fischer discusses Opening to You: Zen Inspired Translations of the Psalms, the relation of Zen to poetry, and anxiety and art-making. Fischer is the author of I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse Press, 2005) and Slowly But Dearly (Chax, 2004). He lives in Sausalito, California. |
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Edition #33: Norman Fischer Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast April 23, 2007 Norman Fischer reads from several of his poetry collections, including Turn Left in Order to Go Right, Success, Slowly but Dearly, and I Was Blown Back. Fischer is a poet, Zen priest and teacher of Jewish and Buddhist spiritual practices. He is also the founder of everydayzen.org. |
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Edition #32: Alan Davies Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast April 9, 2007 Davies discusses poetry, language, truth, and perception. His books of poetry include Name and Mneumontechnics. Visit the Alan Davies author page, (under construction as of April 2007).. |
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Edition #31: Alan Davies Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast March 26, 2007 Alan Davies reads from Book 2 and Book 3 / Bad Dad. Davies is a poet living in New York. His books include RAVE, Signage, and Active 24 Hours. Writing Life is forthcoming from O Books. |
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Edition #30: Ann Lauterbach Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast February 19, 2007 Ann Lauterbach in conversation with Charles Bernstein. Lauterbach talks about sound, performance, and folk music and goes on to engage the difficult relation of gender and authority. She also discusses Missing Ages, a poem she read on Edition 29. Lauterbach is Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature and Director of the graduate writing program at Bard College. Her most recent books are Hum (New York: Penguin, 2005) and The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience (New York: Viking, 2005). In 2001, Penguin published If In Time: Selected Poems 1975-2000. |
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Edition #29: Ann Lauterbach Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast February 6, 2007 Ann Lauterbach reads from two recent collection of poetry If In Time: Selected Poems 1975-2000 (New York, Penguin, 2001) and Hum (New York: Penguin, 2005). Lautebach is Ruth and David E. Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature and Director of Bard's graduate writing program. She is also the author of The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience (New York: Viking, 2005). |
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Edition #28: Richard Tuttle Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast January 22, 2007 Richard Tuttle in conversation with Charles Bernstein. Tuttle talks about sound and color and the radio, about being at a loss for words, explains why beauty and the imagination have no place in art, and discusses "quietude" in American art. Richard Tuttle has been showing his painting, sculptures, books and other works of art over the past forty years. His visionary approach has defied critical categorization and genre boundaries. Tuttle's recent retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art originated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is represented in New York by the Sperone-Westwater Gallery. |
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Edition #27: Richard Tuttle Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast December 11, 2006 Richard Tuttle reads two texts, Close to Art and Differentials and Service and then discusses his writing and books with Charles Bernstein. Richard Tuttle has been showing his painting, sculptures, books and other works of art over the past forty years. His visionary approach has defied critical categorization and genre boundaries. Tuttle's recent retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art originated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is represented in New York by the Sperone-Westwater Gallery. |
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Edition #26: Mimi Gross Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast November 27, 2006 Charles Bernstein and Mimi Gross discuss the art of making portraits, the dimensionality of painting, the relation of drawing to painting and the relation of drawing to writing, and Gross' experiences making art at Ground Zero in September 2001, resulting in Granary Books' Some of These Daze. Mimi Gross is a painter who lives in New York. Her drawings, paintings, installations and public art have been show throughout the city, including at the Salander-O'Reilly gallery. |
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Edition #25: Robert Grenier Interview, Pt. 2 - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast November 13, 2006 Robert Grenier in conversation with Charles Bernstein. In the second of two shows, Grenier reads from and discusses Sentences, the full text of which is available online via Grenier's EPC page. Grenier lives in a sometime ecstatic state, but sometimes not, in Bolinas, California where he extends the tradition of the pastoral poem in ways entirely his own. One of the most influential poets of his generation, Grenier has, over the past forty years, pushed poetry into constantly new frontiers of practice and utterance. |
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Edition #24: Robert Grenier Interview, Pt. 1 - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast October 30, 2006 Robert Grenier in conversation with Charles Bernstein. Grenier discusses his development as a poet, his breaking away from conventional book publications, his movement toward handwritten "drawn" poems, and his relation to Larry Eigner. Grenier is poet who lives in Bolinas, California. His works include Sentences, A Day at the Beach, and Phantom Anthems. Over the past decade, Grenier has created handwritten poems that cross the upper limit of inscription to be both writing and drawing. |
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Edition #23: Richard Foreman Reading Plays - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast October 2, 2006 Richard Foreman reads selections from four of his plays: Bad Boy Nietzsche, Pearls for Pigs (from Paradise Hotel and Other Plays (Overlook Press, 2001), Wake Up, Mr. Sleepy, Your Unconscious Mind Is Dead, and Permanent Brain Damage, from Paradise Hotel. Richard Foreman has written, directed and designed over fifty of his plays both in New York City and abroad, mostly through his own Ontological Hysteric Theater. Five of his plays have received OBIE awards as best play of the year and he has received five other OBIEs for directing and for "sustained achievement." His most recent productions are ZOMBOID! and The Gods Are Pounding My Head! AKA Lumberjack Messiah. (29 minutes) |
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Edition #22: Richard Foreman Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast September 4, 2006 Richard Foreman in conversation with Charles Bernstein on art's elitism and his relation to popular culture; on "ideas" versus "reality," and on his theater as a form of "mental gymnastics." Foreman is the director of the Ontological Hysteric Theater, where he has been producing and directing his own plays for almost forty years. Foreman's books include Paradise Hotel and Other Plays, from Overlook Press, 2001; No-Body (A Novel) (Overlook Press, 1996); My Head Was a Sledgehammer: Six Plays (Overlook Press, 1995), and Unbalancing Acts: Foundations for a Theatre (Pantheon Press, 1992). His poetry collection SLICE is available at ubu.com. |
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Edition #21: Richard Foreman Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 21, 2006 Richard Foreman reads from two works of prose: "Some Notes on My Next Project - Zomboid" and excerpts from No-Body: a novel in parts (Overlook Press, 1996). Richard Foreman has written, directed and designed over fifty of his plays both in New York City and abroad, mostly through his own Ontological Hysteric Theater. Five of his plays have received OBIE awards as best play of the year and he has received five other OBIEs for directing and for "sustained achievement." His most recent productions are ZOMBOID! and The Gods Are Pounding My Head! AKA Lumberjack Messiah. (29 minutes) |
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Edition #20: Rae Armantrout Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 7, 2006 Rae Armantrout in conversation with Charles Bernstein on on the truth in poetry, on religion, on living in Southern California, and on the nature of lyric poetry. She also discusses a couple of the poems read on Edition 19. Armantrout's books of poetry include Extremities (The Figures, 1978), Necromance (Sun And Moon, 1991), Made To Seem (Sun And Moon, 1995), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2001) and Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2003). A prose memoir, True, was published by Atelos in 1998. Armantrout is a professor of English at the University of California, San Diego. |
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Edition #19: Rae Armantrout Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast July 31, 2006 Rae Armantrout reads a selection of her poems, early and late. Rae Armantrout's books of poetry include Extremities (The Figures, 1978), Necromance (Sun And Moon, 1991), Made To Seem (Sun And Moon, 1995), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2001) and Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2003). A prose memoir, True, was published by Atelos in 1998. Armantrout is a professor of English at the University of California, San Diego. Hear an interview with Armantrout, where she discusses some of the poems read here, in Close Listening: Edition 20. |
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Edition #18: Mei-mei Berssennbrugge Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast July 3, 2006 Mei-mei Berssenbrugge in conversation with Charles Bernstein on landscape, perception, the body-in-pain, and the vocation of the poet. She also discusses several of the poems read on Edition 17. Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing in 1947 and grew up in Massachusetts. Among her books are The Heat Bird, Empathy, Sphericity, and Four Year Old Girl. A new book, I Love Artists: New Selected and Poems, is just out from University of California Press. Her collaborations include books with artists Richard Tuttle and Kiki Smith. (28.5 minutes) |
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Edition #17: Mei-mei Berssennbrugge Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast June 26, 2006 Mei-mei Berssenbrugge reads from her new collection, I Love Artists: New Selected and Poems, from University of California Press. Hear an interview with Berssenbrugge, where she discusses some of the poems read here, in Edition 18. Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and grew up in Massachusetts. Among her books are The Heat Bird, Empathy, Sphericity and Four Year Old Girl. Her collaborations include books with artists Richard Tuttle and Kiki Smith. (29 minutes) |
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Edition #16: Thomas McEvilley Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast June 12, 2006 Thomas McEvilley in conversation with Charles Bernstein on cultural exchanges between ancient India and classical Greece; on anti-art, postmodernism, and aesthetics; on how he became an art critic; and on the new critical writing program at the School for Visual Arts. McEvilley's most recent book is The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism. His other books include The Shape of Ancient Thought, Art and Discontent, Art and Otherness, The Exile's Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era, and a poem/novel, North of Yesterday. |
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Edition #15: Thomas McEvilley Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast June 5, 2006 Thomas McEvilley reads Homer, Sappho, and Aeschylus in Greek, with translation and commentary. McEvilley is the Director of the new Art Criticism and Writing Program at The School for Visual Arts in New York. His most recent book is The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism. His other books include The Shape of Ancient Thought, Art and Discontent, Art and Otherness, The Exile's Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era, and a poem/novel, North of Yesterday. (24.5 minutes) |
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Edition #14: Drew Milne Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast May 22, 2006 Drew Milne discusses the ideological and political dimensions of poetry: Can poetry offer a social critique? What is relation of poetry to the local and national interest (including his own native Scotland)? How does tradition figure for contemporary poetry? Milne is the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama and Poetry, University of Cambridge, England. Recent publications include The Damage: New and Selected Poems (2001) and Go Figure (2003), both from Salt Publishing. He is also the editor of the anthology Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists (Blackwell, 2003), and, with Terry Eagleton, Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Blackwell1996) Hear a poetry reading by Milne, including some of the material discussed here, in Edition 13. |
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Edition #13: Drew Milne Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast May 15, 2006 Drew Milne reads his recent poetry. Milne is the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama and Poetry, University of Cambridge, England. Recent publications include The Damage: New and Selected Poems (2001) and Go Figure (2003), both from Salt Publishing. He is also the editor of the anthology Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists (Blackwell, 2003), and, with Terry Eagleton, Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Blackwell1996). Hear an interview with Milne, where he discusses some of the poems read here, in Edition 14. |
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Edition #12: Redell Olsen Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast May 1, 2006 Poet Redell Olsen speaks with Charles Bernstein about teaching poetry, about the site-specific and performance dimensions of her work, and about contemporary British poetry. For more on her work and background, and to hear a reading by Olsen, see Edition 11. (27 minutes) |
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Edition #11: Redell Olsen Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast April 17, 2006 London-based poet Redell Olsen reads a selection of poems from Secure Portable Space (Reality Studios, 2004). Olsen teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London and is the managing editor of HOW(ever), the journal of contemporary innovative and modernist writing by women. Her other books include Book of the Fur (Cambridge, Rem Press, 2000). Hear an interview with Olsen, including a discussion of some of the poems read, in Edition 12. (28 minutes) |
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Edition #10: Pierre Joris Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 22, 2005 Pierre Joris in conversation with Charles Bernstein on nomadic poetics, translation, writing in the "other" tongue, international poetics, and Abdelwahab Meddeb's The Malady of Islam. Joris is the author of A Nomad Poetics, a collection of essays and Poasis, a collection of his poems, both from Wesleyan. He is also the translator of Paul Celan and Pablo Picasso, and editor, with Jerome Rothenberg, of Poems for the Millennium – the major anthology of innovative world poetry. Hear Joris read his work in Edition #9. |
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Edition #9: Pierre Joris Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 22, 2005 Pierre Joris reads recent poems. Joris is the author of A Nomad Poetics, a collection of essays and Poasis, a collection of his poems, both from Wesleyan. He is also the translator of Paul Celan and Pablo Picasso, and editor, with Jerome Rothenberg, of Poems for the Millennium – the major anthology of innovative world poetry. See also the Bernstein WPS1 interview in Edition #10. |
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Edition #8: Erica Hunt Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 8, 2005 Erica Hunt in conversation with Charles Bernstein on how poetry can (and can't) fix a broken world, on poetry as social and community praxis, on identity poetics, and on jazz. Hunt has published three collections of poems – Local History, Arcade, and Piece Logic. She is also the president of the Twentieth-First Century Foundation, a foundation that supports black community change. Hear Hunt read her work in Edition #7. |
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Edition #7: Erica Hunt Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 8, 2005 Erica Hunt performs some of her recent poetry. Hunt has published three collections of poems – Local History, Arcade, and Piece Logic. Her essay, Notes for an Oppositional Poetics in host Charles Bernstein's The Politics of Poetic Form, is a highly regarded work. Hear also the interview in Edition #8. |
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Edition #6: Ted Greenwald - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast August 1, 2005 New York native Ted Greenwald reads some of his best-known poems from Common Sense along with new works. Greenwald is the author, most recently, of The Up and Up, from Atelos Press. His many other books of poems include Word of Mouth, You Bet!, Common Sense, and Jumping the Line. |
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Edition #5: Nick Piombino Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast July 25, 2005 Nick Piombino in conversation with Charles Bernstein on blogging, on the poet's career, on competition and hierarchy, and on appreciating art through the temporary suspension of judgment. Nick Piombino is the author of Poems, Boundary of Blur, Theoretical Objects, Light Street, and Hegelian Honeymoon. A practicing psychoanalyst, Piombino's blog, Fait Accompli, can be accessed at nickpiombino.blogspot.com. He lives in Brooklyn. |
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Edition #4: Tan Lin Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast July 11, 2005 Poet Tan Lin in an ambient conversation with Charles Bernstein about originality, boredom, appropriation, performance, art, teaching, T.S. Eliot, his Chinese parents, and his infant baby. |
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Edition #3: Tan Lin Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast July 4, 2005 Tan Lin gives an ambient reading of his recent work Controlled Vocabularies: sit back, relax, breathe deeply. Lin is the author of Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe, published by Sun & Moon in 1996 and BlipSoak, published last year by Atelos Press. Lin's installations and performances have been presented in galleries and poetry spaces in New York and around the country. He teaches English at New Jersey City State University. Lin lives in Manhattan, in the shadow of Pennsylvania Station. |
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Edition #2: Tracie Morris Interview - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast June 20, 2005 Tracie Morris in conversation with Charles Bernstein on the genesis of her sound poetry, on the status of the performed poem on the politics of poetic form, on her start as a slam poet, on Brooklyn, and on living performatively (with a shout out to J. L. Austin). Hear Morris read her work in Edition #1. |
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Edition #1: Tracie Morris Reading - listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast June 20, 2005 Tracie Morris reads recent work and performs several sound poems. Morris is one of the preeminent performance poets in the U.S. She is the author of Intermission and has give performances throughout the US and in Europe and Africa. Morris, who lives in Brooklyn, is completing a doctorate in the Performance Studies program at NYU. Over the past several years she has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, SUNY-Purchase, Naropa, Queen College, and the Center for Worker Education. She is a Fellow at Cave Canem, the national organization supporting African-American poetry. In the Fall, Morris will be teaching at Eastern Michigan University. See also the Bernstein WPS1 interview in Edition #2. |
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