Pennsound Podcasts

In Episode 15 of PennSound podcasts, Dan Saxon joins Al Filreis at the Kelly Writers House for a conversation in June 2009. The two discuss Le Metro, a gathering place for Lower East Side poets and artists, and Saxon's magazine All Poets Welcome.

In Episode 14 of PennSound podcasts, Tony Green joins Al Filreis at the Kelly Writers House for a conversation about his poem tubes. The two discuss his connection to poet Robert Creeley, Green's art background, and digital poetic communities.

In Episode 13 of PennSound podcasts, Jennifer Scappettone joins Al Filreis at the Kelly Writers House for a conversation about her critical study on Venice, Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice. The two discuss the alternative readings of modernism and Venice as an archive for a new epic.

In Episode 12 of PennSound podcasts, on November 20, 2008, Darren Wershler-Henry visited the Kelly Writers House for the opening of a collaborative student art installation at the Kelly Writers House based on his book The Tapeworm Foundry: And or the Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination. This PennSound podcast features Wershler-Henry's discussion with Al Filreis, Kenny Goldsmith, and Kelly Writers House Art curator Kaegan Sparks.

In Episode 11 of PennSound podcasts, on April 19, 2005, Al Filreis interviewed and moderated questions for Adrienne Rich at the Kelly Writers House. This PennSound podcast features a twenty-two-minute excerpt of their conversation.

Episode 10 of PennSound podcasts features a 15-minute excerpt from a longer phone conversation between Al Filreis and Richard Sieburth conducted not long after Sieburth completed his editing of the collected recordings of Ezra Pound for PennSound. Sieburth's complete work, as well as his essay guide for listeners, is available on the Ezra Pound PennSound page.

In Episode 09 of PennSound podcasts, on April 11, 2000, Al Filreis interviewed and moderated questions for Robert Creeley at the Kelly Writers House. This PennSound podcast features a twenty-minute excerpt of their conversation.

In Episode 08 of PennSound podcasts, on December 9, 2004, Al Filreis brought together two very different Cageans — Jena Osman and Kenneth Goldsmith — for a conversation with the students of his Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course. First, we hear from Goldsmith, explaining the hubbub that resulted when his book Soliloquoy was first introduced. Soliloquoy is an unedited document of every word Goldsmith spoke during one week in 1996 (he wore a hidden, voice-activated tape recorder and transcribed the results). In the discussion that follows, Osman and Goldsmith hash out the political nature of language ("Language is just charged matter," Goldsmith says), the presence of choice and intervention in the work of Cage and Jackson Mac Low, the inability of poetics to be truly uncreative, and the power of form and structure in poetry.

In Episode 07 of PennSound podcasts, Al Filreis discusses Donald Hall, a 2007 Kelly Writers House Fellow, who has written poems and prose about death, human mortality, and nature's stasis. He reads a few of Hall's poems, and recordings of Hall reading his own work are featured.

As Al Filreis explains in the 2007 Episode 06 of Pennsound podcasts, PennSound is an archive for those seeking to make aesthetic connections between different poetic trends: a site of convergence for the reader (in this case, listener) and the poetic tradition. This makes PennSound a particularly useful resource for teachers who are looking to demonstrate to their students the relationships between contemporary poetry and earlier poetic movements.

In Episode 05 of PennSound podcasts, an excerpt of a conversation with Steve Evans about recorded poetry is featured. This discussion refers to the sheer quantity of poetic voices now widely available in such recordings, a few of which -- including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, William S. Burroughs, and Bob Cobbing -- are played before this discussion.

In Episode 04 of PennSound podcasts — which also features an excerpt from the Flarf Poetry Festival — Al Filreis relates the origin story of the Flarf movement. Stephen McLaughlin, then an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, introduced the Flarf Poetry Festival. This podcast features McLaughlin's introduction and readings by Gary Sullivan, Rod Smith, Sharon Mesmer, and Mel Nichols.

In Episode 03 of PennSound podcasts, for the Winter/Spring of 2006, Tom Devaney selected recordings from the PennSound archives to be featured in this episode. Featured poems include Jennifer Moxley's "On This Side Nothing," C.K. Williams's "Oh," Bob Holeman's "Praise Poem: Elizabeth Murray," John Yau's "Peter Lorre Reminisces about Being a Sidekick," and Thomas Devaney's "Trying to Live As If It Were Morning."

In Episode 02 of PennSound podcasts, Al Filreis introduces recordings from the PennSound archive of Jena Osman reading and discussing her work. The recordings include Jena Osman reading "Dropping Leaflets" at a 2001 Kelly Writers House event, a 2004 discussion between Kenneth Goldsmith and Osman about contemporary poetics and "Dropping Leaflets," a brief excerpt from a 1995 Charles Bernstein interview with Osman, and Osman's recitation of her piece "The March."

In Episode 01 of PennSound podcasts, Al Filreis introduces recordings from the PennSound archive of Jerome Rothenberg reading various poems and works. The recorded readings include "A Paradise of Poets," an excerpt from The Lorca Variations, John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing," and selections from Esther K. Comes to America.