[{"id":"1292","cataloger_name":["Bindu,Reddy"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Dorothy Livesay at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 14 January 1972\n"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"DORTHY LIVESAY POETRY (1 OF 2) 3 3/4 IPS 1/2 TR. (COPY)\" written on the back of the tape's box. DORTHY LIVESAY refers to Dorothy Livesay. DORTHY is mispelled. \"D. LIVESAY I086-11-032.1\" written on on the spine of the tape's box. \"D. LIVESAY 1/2 1-72-012-5\" and \"reel 1 I086-11-032.1\" written on stickers on the reel. \"D. LIVESAY 1/2 I086-11-032.1\" written on the front of the tape's box. \"Reel 1: Contents.- Edmonton Street.-The operation-The women syndrome.-Other.-Bartok and the geranium.-Later day Eve.\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box\n\n\"DORTHY LIVESAY POETRY (2 OF 2) 3 3/4 IPS 1/2 TR. (COPY)\" written on the back of the tape's box. DORTHY LIVESAY refers to Dorothy Livesay. DORTHY is mispelled. \"D. LIVESAY I086-11-032.2\" written on on the spine of the tape's box. \"I086-11-032.2\" written on sticker on the reel. \"2/2 D. LIVESAY 1/2 1-72-012-5\" written on the front of the tape's box. \"Reel 2: Contents.-Day and night.-Lorea.-Weapons.-Alienation.-Climax.-Blindness.-Song for Solomon.-Poem.-Four Songs.-The taming.-Give us our trespasses.-The notations of love.-Moving out.- At dawn.\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 6"],"item_identifiers":["[I086-11-032.1, I086-11-032.2]"],"creator_names":["Livesay, Dorothy"],"creator_names_search":["Livesay, Dorothy"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/116854541\",\"name\":\"Livesay, Dorothy\",\"dates\":\"1909-1996\",\"notes\":\"Poet Dorothy Livesay was born in Winnipeg in 1909, and moved to Toronto in 1920, when her father managed the Canadian Press. In the fall of 1926 she started studying at Trinity College, University of Toronto, where she was influenced by ideas of socialism and women’s rights. She published her first collection of poetry, Green pitcher (Macmillan, 1928) when she was only eighteen. Livesay then went to the south of France to study for one year, and after her graduation in 1931 (B.A.) she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where she received a Diplôme d'études supérieures, in 1932. Influenced and affected by the Depression, she began studies at University of Toronto’s School of Social Work, joining the Communist Party. The same year, 1932, she published her second book, Signpost (Macmillan). She then moved to Montreal from 1933-1934, and to Englewood, New Jersey from 1934-1935, working with the unemployed as a social worker. During this time she also wrote for the Marxist news magazine New Frontier, Canadian Poetry Magazine and The Canadian Forum. Dorothy Livesay’s political poetry includes Day and Night (Ryerson Press, 1944) and Poems for the People (Ryerson Press, 1947), both of which won the Governor General’s Award. Married in 1937 to Duncan Macnair, Livesay raised two children in Vancouver. In 1960, when her husband had died and her children began their own lives, Dorothy Livesay moved to Zambia, where she taught English for UNESCO for three years. Returning to Vancouver, she earned a M.E.D. (1966) from University of British Columbia. She became involved in the Vancouver poetry scene and she experienced a change of style and content in her writing. She published The Unquiet Bed, illustrated by Roy Kiyooka (Ryerson Press, 1967), and Plainsongs (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1971), which both focused on aspects of femaleness. Livesay founded an important poetry magazine CV/II in 1975 and edited the anthology, Forty Women Poets of Canada in 1971 (Ingluvin Press). Dorothy Livesay also published several long poems, The Documentaries (Ryerson Press, 1968), Nine Poems of Farewell (Black Moss Press, 1973), The Raw Edges: Voices From Our Time (Turnstone Press, 1981), Phases of Love (Coach House Press, 1983), Feeling Worlds (Goose Lane/Fiddlehead,1984) and The Self-completing Tree (Porcepic Press, 1986). She also wrote several works of prose, including A Winnipeg Childhood (Peguis, 1973) and Beginnings (Newpress, 1988). She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1987 and was the writer-in-residence and professor of English at many Canadian Universities. Livesay died in 1996.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1972],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1972 1 14\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\\n\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Dorothy Livesay reads poems from numerous sources, including Signpost (Macmillan, 1932), Day and Night (Ryerson Press, 1944), New Poems (Emblem Press, 1955), The Selected Poems 1926-1956 (Ryerson Press, 1957), The Unquiet Bed (Ryerson, 1967), Forty Women Poets of Canada (Ingluvin Publications, 1971), and Plainsongs (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1971)."],"contents":["dorothy_livesay_i086-11-032-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n \nIntroducer\n00:00:02\nI was going to talk on about Dorothy Livesay's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1250325] distinguished career, as a poet, and a critic and a teacher, but after what she told me tonight, I'm not sure if distinguished is exactly the right word, she says that at the age of nineteen, she snubbed the Prince of Wales [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q590227]. Nevertheless, two books should be mentioned, her selected and uncollected poems to appear this September and a book which was called 39 Women Poets which has gained another poet and another title at the last moment and as 40 Women Poets of Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] is now on sale outside, as you may have seen as you came in. Back in 1965, I guess it was, Wynne Francis managed to catch Dorothy Livesay as she was passing through Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], and Dorothy gave a really private reading in Wynne's office. Ever since then, we have been trying to convince her to come back and read to us all in the series. I'm extremely happy this year that we have been successful and that I can present to you Dorothy Livesay.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:01:58\nI think I might get hung up on this, I had quite a disastrous time getting here. I arrived with a new poem of seven, whose title is \"Disasters of the Sun\", and my first disaster was on the train, sitting on top of my glasses, which are now somewhat myopic, and second disaster going to Sherbrooke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q139473], the bus rolled right into an oil tanker, which somehow or other didn't blow up, but gashed my thumb, and at Bishop's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551383] I had only begun to read when a fire alarm started [laughter], and rang for ten minutes before they silenced it. So I have a feeling that somehow or other, there are more disasters ahead tonight. However, I'm supposed to read a while and then call an intermission I think. Mostly I like to sort of go back over the years and trace the different things, especially love poems from early times on, but I'm going to skip about a bit. Recently in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] I edited the fourth issue of a quarterly magazine, White Pelican. Which Sheila Watson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7493167] edits but she gave this particular issue to me, and I chose the theme of North. Feeling perhaps that we are still trying to find our identity, whether we're English Canadians or French Canadians, and that perhaps the north has some element of it in it which helps us to find that. I discovered though, in collecting material, stories, poems, plays about the north, that it was the Native Indian people who have a different view altogether of the north than we do. At the same time, you find many young Canadian poets identifying with Native culture, and almost feeling that they must become Native, and become Indian to be real, to know who they are. I wrote at the beginning of this issue this little note I'll just read. “North is from wherever you are looking.” It's starting...[laughter]. “For those living below the 49th parallel, Canada itself is North. In a sense, we're all here as explorers without a home. Our great guilt at having ousted the Native peoples from their land is now seeking expression in an attempt to re-create the Indian and Eskimo past, and every month brings forth books of poetry, fiction and history which seek to come to terms with pre-history, with myth, or with the way the Inuit live in harmony with nature. In ironic contrast, the Native artists and writers are expressing their concern, not with their past, but with possible ways of accommodation to the present, the white man's world. Thus, the three British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974] Indian poets here represented, Skyros Bruce, Gordy Williams and Eleanor Crow are bitter, ironic and contemporary. Not for them the nostalgic recreation of the Indian myth, or even  not for them the vigorous folk humor of life in the north which you find in [unintelligible] and in later writers.” While I think it's worthwhile thinking about that because you do have a lot of young poets now seeping themselves in Indian or Eskimo culture, and feeling as if they must become that in order to be themselves. None of us can quite escape from this, and I have a poem or two that I'll begin with, which I suppose are my expression of coming to terms with the North, or the somewhat southernly north, Edmonton. I'll begin with a kind of collage poem where I put bits of history, bits of visual imagery and bits of surrealism together, called \"Edmonton Sweet\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:06:56\nReads \"Edmonton Sweet\" [from Plainsongs].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:10:19\nQuite a different poem about going North is called \"The Operation\", and that is the poem which is in this anthology, just out today, 40 Women Poets. I didn't intend to put myself in, but the other editors suggested it was the only 'done' thing to put one or two poems of my own in it. So here's the one called \"The Operation\". It's a kind of three-way poem where the woman is addressing the doctor and her lover, alternately, and then perhaps herself.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:11:10\nReads \"The Operation\" [from Plainsongs and collected in 40 Women Poets] .\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:15:36\nSince this anthology will probably be called a women's lib., even though it isn't, because none of the poets in it are consciously trying to be anything but their individual selves, nonetheless, I think there are poems by every woman which do express that individual point of view, that differentness, I have never been able, though perhaps I was a women's lib. creature in the thirties, I have never been able to feel that men and women are the same, and so I have poems, right through the years which illustrate that point of view. Here's a very recent one called \"The Woman Syndrome\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:16:26\nReads \"The Woman Syndrome\" [published later in Archive For Our Times].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:17:05\nAnd a much earlier poem, written when I had a family and young children and I suppose frustrated and not getting out into the world. It's called \"Other\", it's in The Selected Poems of 1957.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:17:34\nReads \"Other\" from Selected Poems, 1926-1956.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:19:11\nAnd in a different vein altogether, the poem I suppose that's been the most anthologized of any of mine, which to me is a rather traditional way I suppose of seeing the male and female element. It's called \"Bartok and the Geranium\". The poem simply began because I was teaching an evening class of housewives the art of creative writing, and I gave them an assignment to write an imagistic or perhaps haiku-type poem, when they got home, to look at two objects, utterly different and disparate, and just see they could link these objects in a tension which would create a poem. Well the next day, I had sent the children to school after lunch and was sitting in the dining room listening to a CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] concert, and heard music that I hadn't heard before at all, a violin concerto it seemed to be, and in the window as I was listening was this red geranium. So I thought to myself, well I've given my class an assignment, I wonder if I could do the same thing. And at the end of the concert they announced that it was Bela Bartok [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83326], violin concerto. So suddenly, the two elements, the music and the geranium, did seem to link in my mind and immediately I wrote the poem which I think I've never revised. I'll tell you afterwards about what some of the professors have said about the meaning of the poem.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:21:00\nReads \"Bartok and Geranium\" [from New Poems].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:22:10\nWell, a few years later, Dr. Roy Daniels was giving a course in Canadian Literature, which I was a member, and one day he asked me if I would not come to class, so I divined he was going to deal with my poems, and I asked a fellow student to please take notes. So this was one of the poems he dealt with, and he informed the class that this poem represented the conflict between nature and art. While at first I was a bit dumbfounded, you know now about how the whole thing began and then what I felt about the he and she of it. But perhaps upon meditation, that this could be another meaning in the poem which I as poet, wasn't aware of but which was still perhaps there. But still another example of the different interpretations which people take to themselves and perhaps get great pleasure from, was, happened in U.N.B. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1112515] when Fred Cogswell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5494855] put this poem on a sight examination for a first year Canadian lit. class, and one of the students who I'm afraid failed his year, wrote on the paper, and on seeing this poem decided that it was written by a man, and he said it was about this guy Bartok who walked along the street and saw a whore leaning out of the window. Well on the same, and finally, this last one on the same kind of he and she of it, a poem written about a year ago, right out of a dream, I mean I dreamed this poem. It's called \"Latter Day Eve\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:24:18\nReads \"Latter Day Eve\" [from Plainsongs].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:25:34\nWell I'd like to jump back a bit, quite a long way back now, not to lyrical poems, which were the ones I really started out doing, but two poems from the thirties...\n\nEND\n00:25:51\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed between tapes].\n\ndorothy_livesay_i086-11-032-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nDorothy Livesay\n00:00:00\n...Polish immigrant who came back to the same house to pick up his belongings, and not knowing what was happening, entered the house, and police shot him in the back and killed him. This happened in Montreal in 1934 or 5. So out of all those experiences, through the thirties, and out of another year I had in New Jersey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1408], living amongst the Negro, very, very discriminated against people in Englewood [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q986210], New Jersey. I, my whole poetry changed from being lyrical and personal to being social and yet I always, never felt it was something outside myself because I felt very powerfully the identification to what was happening to people. I returned from New Jersey about '36 and I wrote this poem which E.J. Pratt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3045744] published in the first issue of the Canadian Poetry Magazine in ‘36. I guess I wrote it in about 1935. In it, there are various themes, the whole poem seemed to start from Cole Porter's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q215120] lines, the song we were all singing then, \"Night and Day\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1477068]. “Night and day, you are the one…” And then also there's a theme from Lennon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1203], who said \"In order to make two steps forward you may have to go one step back\". And this poem reverses that idea, in looking at industrial capitalist society. The other theme is that of the Negro and that of his exploitation and also of his release in song, and in Negro spiritual, because I did know them very well that year.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:02:16\nReads \"Day and Night\" from Day and Night.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:07:57\nI might read one more poem from that period, \"Lorca\", and then perhaps you'd like a break. This is a little later, of course, this is about 1937-8, when the Spanish Civil War [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10859] was raging and haunted us very much in this country, many friends we knew joined the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1668887], and went to fight for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29]. At that time, we believed that the Spanish Court, Garcia Lorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41408], had been killed by Franco's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29179] men. I believe that, well in fact, Jack Spicer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3805658] taught me that there's another version of his killing, that of a love triangle, but it didn't matter, the point was that many poets were fighting for Spain, and many were killed. So I'll just read \"Lorca\" if I can find it. Yes.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:09:15\nReads \"Lorca\" [from Day and Night].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:11:29\nI'll pause now for a break. \n\nUnknown\n00:11:32\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nDorothy Livesay\n00:11:33\nAnd though I don't want to appear to suit every taste, quite a lot of my poetry has been personal love poetry, beginning with the earliest days, my teenage, and I thought I would read a few very early love poems and then you could, you might be interested to compare them with those written within the last five or six years. These were from a book published in 1932, Signpost. And you'll notice that they're pretty well structured, and in a sense quite conventional, but perhaps they have a kind of feeling in them. \"Weapons\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:12:25\nReads \"Weapons\" from Signpost.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:12:54\nReads \"Alienation\" [from Signpost].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:13:26\nReads \"Climax\" [from Signpost].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:13:47\nReads \"Blindness\" [from Signpost].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:14:11\nAnd a very short lyric, \"Song for Solomon\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:14:17\nReads \"Song for Solomon\" [from Signpost].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:14:36\nAnd now, recent poems from the 1967 book, The Unquiet Bed. I'll read a little ballad that is the title poem, which one of my students set to music at one point. \"The Unquiet Bed\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:14:56\nReads \"The Unquiet Bed\" from The Unquiet Bed.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:15:25\nAnd \"Four Songs\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:15:32\nReads \"Four Songs\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:16:41\nAnd a poem which certainly wouldn't be acceptable to women's lib., yet it's an experience probably all women have had. It's called \"The Taming\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:16:52\nReads \"The Taming\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:17:34\nAnd \"The Touching\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:17:39\nReads \"The Touching\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:18:49\nAnd a little poem called \"Give Us Our Trespasses\", which was an attempt to do what Jack Spicer had advised us at some of his sessions, to completely wipe out all sensation, all the senses and see what happened when the words came out of this void, out of this [unintelligible] and I did one poem about dreams dedicated to him, and then a little later, this other one came. One would listen in the dark for the words, but not expecting or unexpecting, you understand, but they would certainly arrive and I would turn on the light and write them down. And then turn off the light, turn to sleep again, but again, more words came, and so this series has about seven of these little interludes in it.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:19:52\nReads \"And Give Us Our Trespasses\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:21:08\nAnd two more from that book, one has five sections--six sections in it, it's called \"The Notations of Love\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:21:22\nReads \"The Notations of Love\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:23:27\nAnd a last one from there, \"Moving Out\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:23:33\nReads \"Moving Out\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:24:07\nWell, I have a few more recent poems, dealing a little differently perhaps with love. This is in the little book Plainsongs, which is still in print. \"At Dawn\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:24:30\nReads \"At Dawn\" from Plainsongs.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:24:58\nAnd \"Dream\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:25:03\nReads \"Dream\" [from Plainsongs].\n  \nDorothy Livesay\n00:25:30\nAnd this one \"The Uninvited\", the river in this is the St. John [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q607546] in New Brunswick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1965] and it's a theme that reoccurs a lot, whether one is a man or a woman, the feeling that even though one is walking with one's loved one, there is another lover who one also remembers, or who perhaps is coming, one fears.\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:26:09\nReads \"The Uninvited\" [from Plainsongs].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:27:08\nAnd perhaps just this last one, \"Another Journey\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:27:17\nReads \"Another Journey\" [from Plainsongs].\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:28:08\nI'd like to read a poem about the West Coast. It was written summer before last, in Victoria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2132], where one was, I suppose, feeling one's age, and yet observing the eternal pattern of the young. And perhaps relating it to our own history in this country. It's a more, I suppose, didactic poem. \"The Artefacts, West Coast\".\n \nDorothy Livesay\n00:28:51\nReads \"The Artefacts, West Coast\" [from Plainsongs; cut off].\n \nEND\n00:32:14\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nForty Women Poets of Canada was published the same year, 1971, as was an extended and revised edition of Plainsongs.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nDorothy Livesay has contributed considerably to the cannon of Canadian poetry, writing about national issues and extending the Canadian long poem. Her anthology, Forty Women Poets of Canada (1971) promoted other Canadian women and their work. Livesay’s writing was published by Canadian publishing houses, and she contributed to and edited Canadian journals and magazines of poetry and criticism. Wynne Francis, who was a professor at Sir George Williams University, met Livesay in 1965.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>CD>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “Livesay, Dorothy”. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Benson, Eugene and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-x2/oclc/40224711&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary. Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/dorothy-livesay-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"“Georgian Happenings”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 11 January 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gnarowski, Michael. “Livesay, Dorothy”. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Hamilton, Ian (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/archive-for-our-times-previously-uncollected-and-unpublished-poems-of-dorothy-livesay/oclc/409003526&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy and Dean J. Irvine. Archive for our Times: Previously Uncollected and Unpublished Poems of Dorothy Livesay. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-of-dorothy-livesay-1926-1956/oclc/867932457&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy. The Selected Poems, 1926-1956. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1957. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/40-women-poets-of-canada/oclc/855266796&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy and Seymour Mayne. Forty Women Poets of Canada. Montreal : Ingluvin Publications, 1971.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/day-and-night-poems/oclc/729783190?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy. Day and Night. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1944. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-poems/oclc/933132856&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy. New Poems. Toronto: Emblem Books, 1955. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/signpost/oclc/317413427&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy. Signpost. Toronto: Macmillan, 1932. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/unquiet-bed/oclc/493383805&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy. The Unquiet Bed. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/plainsongs/oclc/1015379630&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Livesay, Dorothy. Plainsongs. Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1971.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/dorothy-livesay-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Stromberg, Paula. “The Gentle Poetry of Dorothy Livesay”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 25 January 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-history/oclc/990614829&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Strong-Boag, Veronica. “Livesay, Dorothy”. The Oxford Companion to Canadian History.        Hallowell, Gerald (ed). 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This happened in Montreal in 1934 or 5. So out of all those experiences, through the thirties, and out of another year I had in New Jersey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1408], living amongst the Negro, very, very discriminated against people in Englewood [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q986210], New Jersey. I, my whole poetry changed from being lyrical and personal to being social and yet I always, never felt it was something outside myself because I felt very powerfully the identification to what was happening to people. I returned from New Jersey about '36 and I wrote this poem which E.J. Pratt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3045744] published in the first issue of the Canadian Poetry Magazine in ‘36. I guess I wrote it in about 1935. In it, there are various themes, the whole poem seemed to start from Cole Porter's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q215120] lines, the song we were all singing then, \\\"Night and Day\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1477068]. “Night and day, you are the one…” And then also there's a theme from Lennon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1203], who said \\\"In order to make two steps forward you may have to go one step back\\\". And this poem reverses that idea, in looking at industrial capitalist society. The other theme is that of the Negro and that of his exploitation and also of his release in song, and in Negro spiritual, because I did know them very well that year.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:02:16\\nReads \\\"Day and Night\\\" from Day and Night.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:07:57\\nI might read one more poem from that period, \\\"Lorca\\\", and then perhaps you'd like a break. This is a little later, of course, this is about 1937-8, when the Spanish Civil War [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10859] was raging and haunted us very much in this country, many friends we knew joined the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1668887], and went to fight for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29]. At that time, we believed that the Spanish Court, Garcia Lorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41408], had been killed by Franco's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29179] men. I believe that, well in fact, Jack Spicer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3805658] taught me that there's another version of his killing, that of a love triangle, but it didn't matter, the point was that many poets were fighting for Spain, and many were killed. So I'll just read \\\"Lorca\\\" if I can find it. Yes.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:09:15\\nReads \\\"Lorca\\\" [from Day and Night].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:11:29\\nI'll pause now for a break. \\n\\nUnknown\\n00:11:32\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:11:33\\nAnd though I don't want to appear to suit every taste, quite a lot of my poetry has been personal love poetry, beginning with the earliest days, my teenage, and I thought I would read a few very early love poems and then you could, you might be interested to compare them with those written within the last five or six years. These were from a book published in 1932, Signpost. And you'll notice that they're pretty well structured, and in a sense quite conventional, but perhaps they have a kind of feeling in them. \\\"Weapons\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:12:25\\nReads \\\"Weapons\\\" from Signpost.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:12:54\\nReads \\\"Alienation\\\" [from Signpost].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:13:26\\nReads \\\"Climax\\\" [from Signpost].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:13:47\\nReads \\\"Blindness\\\" [from Signpost].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:14:11\\nAnd a very short lyric, \\\"Song for Solomon\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:14:17\\nReads \\\"Song for Solomon\\\" [from Signpost].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:14:36\\nAnd now, recent poems from the 1967 book, The Unquiet Bed. I'll read a little ballad that is the title poem, which one of my students set to music at one point. \\\"The Unquiet Bed\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:14:56\\nReads \\\"The Unquiet Bed\\\" from The Unquiet Bed.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:15:25\\nAnd \\\"Four Songs\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:15:32\\nReads \\\"Four Songs\\\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:16:41\\nAnd a poem which certainly wouldn't be acceptable to women's lib., yet it's an experience probably all women have had. It's called \\\"The Taming\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:16:52\\nReads \\\"The Taming\\\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:17:34\\nAnd \\\"The Touching\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:17:39\\nReads \\\"The Touching\\\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:18:49\\nAnd a little poem called \\\"Give Us Our Trespasses\\\", which was an attempt to do what Jack Spicer had advised us at some of his sessions, to completely wipe out all sensation, all the senses and see what happened when the words came out of this void, out of this [unintelligible] and I did one poem about dreams dedicated to him, and then a little later, this other one came. One would listen in the dark for the words, but not expecting or unexpecting, you understand, but they would certainly arrive and I would turn on the light and write them down. And then turn off the light, turn to sleep again, but again, more words came, and so this series has about seven of these little interludes in it.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:19:52\\nReads \\\"And Give Us Our Trespasses\\\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:21:08\\nAnd two more from that book, one has five sections--six sections in it, it's called \\\"The Notations of Love\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:21:22\\nReads \\\"The Notations of Love\\\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:23:27\\nAnd a last one from there, \\\"Moving Out\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:23:33\\nReads \\\"Moving Out\\\" [from The Unquiet Bed].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:24:07\\nWell, I have a few more recent poems, dealing a little differently perhaps with love. This is in the little book Plainsongs, which is still in print. \\\"At Dawn\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:24:30\\nReads \\\"At Dawn\\\" from Plainsongs.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:24:58\\nAnd \\\"Dream\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:25:03\\nReads \\\"Dream\\\" [from Plainsongs].\\n  \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:25:30\\nAnd this one \\\"The Uninvited\\\", the river in this is the St. John [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q607546] in New Brunswick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1965] and it's a theme that reoccurs a lot, whether one is a man or a woman, the feeling that even though one is walking with one's loved one, there is another lover who one also remembers, or who perhaps is coming, one fears.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:26:09\\nReads \\\"The Uninvited\\\" [from Plainsongs].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:27:08\\nAnd perhaps just this last one, \\\"Another Journey\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:27:17\\nReads \\\"Another Journey\\\" [from Plainsongs].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:28:08\\nI'd like to read a poem about the West Coast. It was written summer before last, in Victoria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2132], where one was, I suppose, feeling one's age, and yet observing the eternal pattern of the young. And perhaps relating it to our own history in this country. It's a more, I suppose, didactic poem. \\\"The Artefacts, West Coast\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:28:51\\nReads \\\"The Artefacts, West Coast\\\" [from Plainsongs; cut off].\\n \\nEND\\n00:32:14\\n\",\"notes\":\"Dorothy Livesay reads poems from numerous sources, including Signpost (Macmillan, 1932), Day and Night (Ryerson Press, 1944), New Poems (Emblem Press, 1955), The Selected Poems 1926-1956 (Ryerson Press, 1957), The Unquiet Bed (Ryerson, 1967), Forty Women Poets of Canada (Ingluvin Publications, 1971), and Plainsongs (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1971).\\n\\n00:02- Unknown male introduces Dorothy Livesay [INDEX: Prince of Wales, Forty Women Poets, Wynne Francis, Montreal]\\n01:58- Dorothy Livesay introduces reading and “Edmonton Sweet” [INDEX: new poem:        “Disasters of the Sun”, love poems, Edmonton, White Pelican Magazine edited by Sheila Watson, Dorothy Guest edited “North” edition: contains three B.C. Native poets: Skyros Bruce, Gordy Williams, Eleanor Crow, Canadian Identity and Native American Identity, young poets searching for it]\\n06:56- Reads “Edmonton Sweet”\\n10:19- Introduces “The Operation” [INDEX:  40 Women Poets: Anthology edited by Dorothy Livesay]\\n11:10- Reads “The Operation”\\n15:36- Introduces “The Woman Syndrome” [INDEX: Women’s Liberation Movement]\\n16:26- Reads “The Woman Syndrome”\\n17:05- Introduces “Other” [INDEX: from The Selected Poems of 1957]\\n17:34- Reads “Other”\\n19:110 Introduces “Bartok and Geranium” [INDEX:  teaching creative writing to housewives, CBC radio- Violin concerto by Bela Bartok, most anthologized poem: “Bartok and Geranium”]\\n21:00- Reads “Bartok and Geranium”\\n22:10- Continues to explain “Bartok and Geranium”, also introduces “Latter Day    \\tEve” [INDEX: Dr. Roy Daniels, teaching Canadian Literature, Interpretations of her      \\tpoetry, University of New Brunswick, Professor Fred Cogswell]\\n24:18- Reads “Latter Day Eve”\\n25:34- Introduces “Day and Night” [INDEX: Day and Night, 1934/5 Montreal: shooting of a Polish man in his own home, Englewood, New Jersey, Discrimination against African \\tAmericans, E.J. Pratt’s first issue of Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1936, Cole Porter’s   song “Night and Day”, John Lennon quote: “In order to make two steps forward, you   \\tmay have to go one step back”, Negro spiritual songs]\\n28:07- Reads “Day and Night”\\n33:48- Introduces “Lorca” [INDEX: Spanish Civil War: Lorca and Franco, and the poets that were soldiers for Lorca, Jack Spicer, MacKenzie-Papineau Batallion]\\n35:06- Reads “Lorca”\\n37:20- Introduces “Weapons” [INDEX: Love poetry, 1932 Songpost by Dorothy Livesay]\\n38:16- Reads “Weapons”\\n38:45- Reads “An Alienation”\\n39:17- Reads “Climax”\\n39:38- Reads “Blindness”\\n40:02- Reads “Song for Solomon”\\n40:27- Introduces “The Unquiet Bed” [INDEX: 1967 The Unquiet Bed by Dorothy Livesay]\\n40:47- Reads “The Unquiet Bed”\\n41:16- Reads “Four Songs”\\n42:32- Introduces “The Taming”\\n42:43- Reads “The Taming”\\n43:25- Reads “The Touching”\\n44:40- Introduces “Give Us Our Trespasses” [INDEX: Jack Spicer]\\n45:43- Reads “Give Us Our Trespasses”\\n46:59- Introduces “The Notations of Love”\\n47:13- Reads “The Notations of Love”\\n49:18- Reads “Moving Out”\\n49:58- Introduces “At Dawn” [INDEX: 1968 Plainsongs by Dorothy Livesay]\\n50:21- Reads “At Dawn”\\n50:49- Reads “Dream”\\n51:21- Introduces “The Uninvited” [INDEX: St John River, New Brunswick]\\n52:00- Reads \\\"The Uninvited\\\".\\n52:59- Reads “Another Journey”\\n53:08- Introduces “The Artifacts, West Coast” [INDEX: West Coast, Victoria]\\n54:42- Reads “The Artifacts, West Coast”\\n58:05.94- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/dorothy-livesay-at-sgwu-1971/#2\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/dorothy_livesay_i086-11-032-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"dorothy_livesay_i086-11-032-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:25:51\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"62.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"dorothy_livesay_i086-11-032-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:00:02\\nI was going to talk on about Dorothy Livesay's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1250325] distinguished career, as a poet, and a critic and a teacher, but after what she told me tonight, I'm not sure if distinguished is exactly the right word, she says that at the age of nineteen, she snubbed the Prince of Wales [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q590227]. Nevertheless, two books should be mentioned, her selected and uncollected poems to appear this September and a book which was called 39 Women Poets which has gained another poet and another title at the last moment and as 40 Women Poets of Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] is now on sale outside, as you may have seen as you came in. Back in 1965, I guess it was, Wynne Francis managed to catch Dorothy Livesay as she was passing through Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], and Dorothy gave a really private reading in Wynne's office. Ever since then, we have been trying to convince her to come back and read to us all in the series. I'm extremely happy this year that we have been successful and that I can present to you Dorothy Livesay.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:01:58\\nI think I might get hung up on this, I had quite a disastrous time getting here. I arrived with a new poem of seven, whose title is \\\"Disasters of the Sun\\\", and my first disaster was on the train, sitting on top of my glasses, which are now somewhat myopic, and second disaster going to Sherbrooke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q139473], the bus rolled right into an oil tanker, which somehow or other didn't blow up, but gashed my thumb, and at Bishop's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551383] I had only begun to read when a fire alarm started [laughter], and rang for ten minutes before they silenced it. So I have a feeling that somehow or other, there are more disasters ahead tonight. However, I'm supposed to read a while and then call an intermission I think. Mostly I like to sort of go back over the years and trace the different things, especially love poems from early times on, but I'm going to skip about a bit. Recently in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] I edited the fourth issue of a quarterly magazine, White Pelican. Which Sheila Watson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7493167] edits but she gave this particular issue to me, and I chose the theme of North. Feeling perhaps that we are still trying to find our identity, whether we're English Canadians or French Canadians, and that perhaps the north has some element of it in it which helps us to find that. I discovered though, in collecting material, stories, poems, plays about the north, that it was the Native Indian people who have a different view altogether of the north than we do. At the same time, you find many young Canadian poets identifying with Native culture, and almost feeling that they must become Native, and become Indian to be real, to know who they are. I wrote at the beginning of this issue this little note I'll just read. “North is from wherever you are looking.” It's starting...[laughter]. “For those living below the 49th parallel, Canada itself is North. In a sense, we're all here as explorers without a home. Our great guilt at having ousted the Native peoples from their land is now seeking expression in an attempt to re-create the Indian and Eskimo past, and every month brings forth books of poetry, fiction and history which seek to come to terms with pre-history, with myth, or with the way the Inuit live in harmony with nature. In ironic contrast, the Native artists and writers are expressing their concern, not with their past, but with possible ways of accommodation to the present, the white man's world. Thus, the three British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974] Indian poets here represented, Skyros Bruce, Gordy Williams and Eleanor Crow are bitter, ironic and contemporary. Not for them the nostalgic recreation of the Indian myth, or even  not for them the vigorous folk humor of life in the north which you find in [unintelligible] and in later writers.” While I think it's worthwhile thinking about that because you do have a lot of young poets now seeping themselves in Indian or Eskimo culture, and feeling as if they must become that in order to be themselves. None of us can quite escape from this, and I have a poem or two that I'll begin with, which I suppose are my expression of coming to terms with the North, or the somewhat southernly north, Edmonton. I'll begin with a kind of collage poem where I put bits of history, bits of visual imagery and bits of surrealism together, called \\\"Edmonton Sweet\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:06:56\\nReads \\\"Edmonton Sweet\\\" [from Plainsongs].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:10:19\\nQuite a different poem about going North is called \\\"The Operation\\\", and that is the poem which is in this anthology, just out today, 40 Women Poets. I didn't intend to put myself in, but the other editors suggested it was the only 'done' thing to put one or two poems of my own in it. So here's the one called \\\"The Operation\\\". It's a kind of three-way poem where the woman is addressing the doctor and her lover, alternately, and then perhaps herself.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:11:10\\nReads \\\"The Operation\\\" [from Plainsongs and collected in 40 Women Poets] .\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:15:36\\nSince this anthology will probably be called a women's lib., even though it isn't, because none of the poets in it are consciously trying to be anything but their individual selves, nonetheless, I think there are poems by every woman which do express that individual point of view, that differentness, I have never been able, though perhaps I was a women's lib. creature in the thirties, I have never been able to feel that men and women are the same, and so I have poems, right through the years which illustrate that point of view. Here's a very recent one called \\\"The Woman Syndrome\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:16:26\\nReads \\\"The Woman Syndrome\\\" [published later in Archive For Our Times].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:17:05\\nAnd a much earlier poem, written when I had a family and young children and I suppose frustrated and not getting out into the world. It's called \\\"Other\\\", it's in The Selected Poems of 1957.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:17:34\\nReads \\\"Other\\\" from Selected Poems, 1926-1956.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:19:11\\nAnd in a different vein altogether, the poem I suppose that's been the most anthologized of any of mine, which to me is a rather traditional way I suppose of seeing the male and female element. It's called \\\"Bartok and the Geranium\\\". The poem simply began because I was teaching an evening class of housewives the art of creative writing, and I gave them an assignment to write an imagistic or perhaps haiku-type poem, when they got home, to look at two objects, utterly different and disparate, and just see they could link these objects in a tension which would create a poem. Well the next day, I had sent the children to school after lunch and was sitting in the dining room listening to a CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] concert, and heard music that I hadn't heard before at all, a violin concerto it seemed to be, and in the window as I was listening was this red geranium. So I thought to myself, well I've given my class an assignment, I wonder if I could do the same thing. And at the end of the concert they announced that it was Bela Bartok [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83326], violin concerto. So suddenly, the two elements, the music and the geranium, did seem to link in my mind and immediately I wrote the poem which I think I've never revised. I'll tell you afterwards about what some of the professors have said about the meaning of the poem.\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:21:00\\nReads \\\"Bartok and Geranium\\\" [from New Poems].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:22:10\\nWell, a few years later, Dr. Roy Daniels was giving a course in Canadian Literature, which I was a member, and one day he asked me if I would not come to class, so I divined he was going to deal with my poems, and I asked a fellow student to please take notes. So this was one of the poems he dealt with, and he informed the class that this poem represented the conflict between nature and art. While at first I was a bit dumbfounded, you know now about how the whole thing began and then what I felt about the he and she of it. But perhaps upon meditation, that this could be another meaning in the poem which I as poet, wasn't aware of but which was still perhaps there. But still another example of the different interpretations which people take to themselves and perhaps get great pleasure from, was, happened in U.N.B. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1112515] when Fred Cogswell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5494855] put this poem on a sight examination for a first year Canadian lit. class, and one of the students who I'm afraid failed his year, wrote on the paper, and on seeing this poem decided that it was written by a man, and he said it was about this guy Bartok who walked along the street and saw a whore leaning out of the window. Well on the same, and finally, this last one on the same kind of he and she of it, a poem written about a year ago, right out of a dream, I mean I dreamed this poem. It's called \\\"Latter Day Eve\\\".\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:24:18\\nReads \\\"Latter Day Eve\\\" [from Plainsongs].\\n \\nDorothy Livesay\\n00:25:34\\nWell I'd like to jump back a bit, quite a long way back now, not to lyrical poems, which were the ones I really started out doing, but two poems from the thirties...\\n\\nEND\\n00:25:51\\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed between tapes].\",\"notes\":\"Dorothy Livesay reads poems from numerous sources, including Signpost (Macmillan, 1932), Day and Night (Ryerson Press, 1944), New Poems (Emblem Press, 1955), The Selected Poems 1926-1956 (Ryerson Press, 1957), The Unquiet Bed (Ryerson, 1967), Forty Women Poets of Canada (Ingluvin Publications, 1971), and Plainsongs (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1971).\\n\\n00:02- Unknown male introduces Dorothy Livesay [INDEX: Prince of Wales, Forty Women Poets, Wynne Francis, Montreal]\\n01:58- Dorothy Livesay introduces reading and “Edmonton Sweet” [INDEX: new poem:        “Disasters of the Sun”, love poems, Edmonton, White Pelican Magazine edited by Sheila Watson, Dorothy Guest edited “North” edition: contains three B.C. Native poets: Skyros Bruce, Gordy Williams, Eleanor Crow, Canadian Identity and Native American Identity, young poets searching for it]\\n06:56- Reads “Edmonton Sweet”\\n10:19- Introduces “The Operation” [INDEX:  40 Women Poets: Anthology edited by Dorothy Livesay]\\n11:10- Reads “The Operation”\\n15:36- Introduces “The Woman Syndrome” [INDEX: Women’s Liberation Movement]\\n16:26- Reads “The Woman Syndrome”\\n17:05- Introduces “Other” [INDEX: from The Selected Poems of 1957]\\n17:34- Reads “Other”\\n19:110 Introduces “Bartok and Geranium” [INDEX:  teaching creative writing to housewives, CBC radio- Violin concerto by Bela Bartok, most anthologized poem: “Bartok and Geranium”]\\n21:00- Reads “Bartok and Geranium”\\n22:10- Continues to explain “Bartok and Geranium”, also introduces “Latter Day    \\tEve” [INDEX: Dr. Roy Daniels, teaching Canadian Literature, Interpretations of her      \\tpoetry, University of New Brunswick, Professor Fred Cogswell]\\n24:18- Reads “Latter Day Eve”\\n25:34- Introduces “Day and Night” [INDEX: Day and Night, 1934/5 Montreal: shooting of a Polish man in his own home, Englewood, New Jersey, Discrimination against African \\tAmericans, E.J. Pratt’s first issue of Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1936, Cole Porter’s   song “Night and Day”, John Lennon quote: “In order to make two steps forward, you   \\tmay have to go one step back”, Negro spiritual songs]\\n28:07- Reads “Day and Night”\\n33:48- Introduces “Lorca” [INDEX: Spanish Civil War: Lorca and Franco, and the poets that were soldiers for Lorca, Jack Spicer, MacKenzie-Papineau Batallion]\\n35:06- Reads “Lorca”\\n37:20- Introduces “Weapons” [INDEX: Love poetry, 1932 Songpost by Dorothy Livesay]\\n38:16- Reads “Weapons”\\n38:45- Reads “An Alienation”\\n39:17- Reads “Climax”\\n39:38- Reads “Blindness”\\n40:02- Reads “Song for Solomon”\\n40:27- Introduces “The Unquiet Bed” [INDEX: 1967 The Unquiet Bed by Dorothy Livesay]\\n40:47- Reads “The Unquiet Bed”\\n41:16- Reads “Four Songs”\\n42:32- Introduces “The Taming”\\n42:43- Reads “The Taming”\\n43:25- Reads “The Touching”\\n44:40- Introduces “Give Us Our Trespasses” [INDEX: Jack Spicer]\\n45:43- Reads “Give Us Our Trespasses”\\n46:59- Introduces “The Notations of Love”\\n47:13- Reads “The Notations of Love”\\n49:18- Reads “Moving Out”\\n49:58- Introduces “At Dawn” [INDEX: 1968 Plainsongs by Dorothy Livesay]\\n50:21- Reads “At Dawn”\\n50:49- Reads “Dream”\\n51:21- Introduces “The Uninvited” [INDEX: St John River, New Brunswick]\\n52:00- Reads \\\"The Uninvited\\\".\\n52:59- Reads “Another Journey”\\n53:08- Introduces “The Artifacts, West Coast” [INDEX: West Coast, Victoria]\\n54:42- Reads “The Artifacts, West Coast”\\n58:05.94- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/dorothy-livesay-at-sgwu-1971/#1\"}]"],"score":1.7444024},{"id":"1295","cataloger_name":["Bindu,Reddy"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Gary Snyder at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 5 November 1971\n"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"POETRY READING GARY SNYDER #1 I006-11-106.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-106.1\" written on sticker on the reel\n\n\"POETRY READING GARY SNYDER #2 I006-11-106.2\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-106.2\" written on sticker on the reel\n\n\"POETRY READING GARY SNYDER #3 I006-11-106.3\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"POETRY READING GARY SNYDER I006-11-106.3\" written on sticker on the reel\n\n\"POETRY READING GARY SNYDER #4 I006-11-106.4\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"POETRY READING GARY SNYDER I006-11-106.4\" written on sticker on the reel\n"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 6"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-106.1, I006-11-106.2, I006-11-106.3, I006-11-106.4]"],"creator_names":["Snyder, Gary"],"creator_names_search":["Snyder, Gary"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/68944804\",\"name\":\"Snyder, Gary\",\"dates\":\"1930-\",\"notes\":\"American poet and nature activist Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco on May 8, 1930. He spent most of his early life exploring the wilderness and cultures along the Pacific Coast around his parent’s dairy farm in Washington State. In 1942, his family moved to Portland, Oregon and in 1947 he enrolled in Reed College to study literature and anthropology. His senior thesis was later published in 1978 and called He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth (Grey Fox Press). Snyder then worked various jobs with the U.S. Forest Service and Park Service, with timber companies on Native American Reservations, and Snyder even climbed aboard a ship traveling to South America. In 1951, Snyder completed his bachelor’s degree and went to Indiana University to study linguistics, which only lasted one semester, after which, he traveled to San Francisco. Snyder met and lived with the poet Philip Whalen before entering into the University of California, Berkley in 1952 to begin graduate studies in East Asian languages. The poetry scene in San Francisco (San Francisco Renaissance) had begun to take shape and on October 7, 1955, Snyder read with Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth and Philip Whalen at the famous “Six Poets at the Six Gallery”, a reading which launched the ‘Beat’ movement. In 1956, Snyder began formal Buddhist training in Kyoto, Japan, and traveled back and forth from the U.S. several times during the next decade, studying Buddhism and writing poetry. Snyder’s first collection of poetry was Riprap (Four Seasons Foundation, 1959), which was followed the next year by Myths and Texts (Totem Press, 1960), Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers without End (1965), Cold Mountain Poems (Four Seasons, 1965), The Back Country (New Directions, 1968), a collection of essays Earth House Hold (New Directions, 1969), Regarding Wave (Windhover Press, 1969), Manzanita (Four Seasons Foundation, 1972), The Fudo Trilogy (Shaman Drum, 1973) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974). With an increase in popularity, Snyder became a spokesman for environmental issues and served on the Board for the California Arts Council between 1974 and 1979. He began local projects and schools, including the North San Juan School House and the Ring-of-Bone Zendo Buddhist community centre. Snyder then published a series of essays and prose in The Old Ways (City Lights Books, 1977), The Real Work: Interviews and Talks, 1964-1979 (New Directions, 1980), and an account of his travels with poets Joanne Kyger and Allen Ginsberg Passage through India (1983), and a return to poetry with Axe Handles (North Point Press, 1983), and Left Out in the Rain (North Point Press, 1986). Snyder then began teaching at the University of California, Davis, in both the English and Nature and Culture Departments. More recently, he has published essays and poetry in No Nature: New and Selected Poems (Pantheon Books, 1992), a completed version of a long poem previously published Mountains and Rivers without End (Counterpoint, 1996) which won the Bollingen Prize. His collected poetry can be found in The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry and Translations 1952-1998 (Counterpoint, 1999) and The High Sierra of California: Poems and Journals of Gary Snyder (Quail Press, 2000). Snyder retired from teaching in 2002, but has continued advocating for environmental issues and writing poetry, publishing Danger on Peaks (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004), Back on the Fire: Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007).\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Sommer, Richard"],"contributors_names_search":["Sommer, Richard"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84036163\",\"name\":\"Sommer, Richard\",\"dates\":\"1934-2012\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Sommer, Richard"],"Series_organizer_name":["Sommer, Richard"],"Production_Date":[1971],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue","Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio","Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo","Stereo","Stereo","Stereo"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1971 11 5\",\"type\":\"Production Date\",\"notes\":\"Date apecified in written announcements\\n\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Gary Snyder reads poems later collected in Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974), originally published in a limited edition book called Manzanita (Four Seasons Press, 1972). He also reads one poem from Regarding Wave (Fulcrum Press, 1971), one poem from Coyote’s Journal #9 (1971), one poem from The Fudo Trilogy (Shaman Drum, 1973), and several from Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint) only published in 1997, as well as other poems from unknown sources. "],"contents":["gary_snyder_i006-11-106-1.mp3 [File 1 of 4]\n\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:00:00\nProbably some of us are here in order to look at or touch the Gary Snyder [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q315963] who actually went and did all those semi-mythological things, who has climbed mountains and traveled in India with Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711], who provided Kerouac [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160534] with a book character, who has lived in or on the edges of several different kinds of wilderness, who has lived in the precincts of Japanese Buddhist monasteries, who has fought, I think has fought hard, to keep other cultures than ours, and other kinds of life than human life, from obliteration. And who has written poems out of the consciousness of these things. For myself, Gary Snyder hasn't made poems so much as he has provided me with windows made out of words. These are windows that have had a way of, themselves disappearing, leaving me usually standing where I think I want to be, out in the open world. So, I came here, I've come here, to meet whoever it is that makes so many good windows. I'll let you discover for yourselves how much this window-maker is what a windowmaker should be, himself, just open and clear. I'd like to present Gary Snyder.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:02:58\nI forgot one more thing I wanted to have out here. Good evening. I'm going to read in two sets this evening, with a little intermission. And first of all, I'm not going to read any poems tonight from my published books, because those poems are available and what is interesting to me is always what I'm doing, where I'm moving. So I'm going to read from a cycle of short poems, moderately short poems, which I call \"Charms\", and\nthen there'll be a break, and then I'm going to read recent sections that I've been working on from a long poem in progress called \"Mountains and Rivers Without End\". I came back to the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] from Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17] with my wife and children about three years ago now, and went as rapidly as possible to settle in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26777], on the north slope of the south fork of the Yuba river [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181973] at three-thousand foot elevation. And I've been living there for almost two years now. I'm saying this by way of introduction to this first cycle of poems called \"Charms\". I was brought up on a farm, and all of my ancestors that I know of, for the last few generations on both sides, were rural people, or miners, miners in Colorado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1261], Leadville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q286702], places like that. And it amazes me in a mysterious way how to get back to doing what my father was doing when I was a little boy, and what, and which I remember as a little boy, and to get back to doing what my grandfather was doing, which is to say--again, looking at the fences, looking at the stumps, looking at the house, looking at the well, looking at the spring and saying, how are we going to do it--touches me more deeply than I can possibly explain. And at the same time, being confronted again with these choices, which are the choices of the American frontier, and also the choices of medieval Europeans, and neolithic Mediterranean people, and neolithic Japanese people, and neolithic Chinese people. With what I've come to understand, a little more now, about history, anthropology, and biology, I feel an extraordinary responsibility to understand why I make the choices I make, in such matters as, where does one break the ground and locate a garden, or which trees does one select to fall. In other words, I find myself again in that position of entering virgin land, and this time, I want to understand, in the process of making my own choices, I want to understand why we did it wrong, every time before, and hope to get some insights in how one goes about doing it right, this time. In moving toward that understanding, in making the choices that I have to make, about how we are going to live, in the semi-wilderness and true wilderness of the Sierra Nevada, my teachers have to be scientific foresters, biologists and ecologists on the one hand, and the American Indians on the other. There are no other teachers available for these choices.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:08:02\nAnd so these poems, in the cycle called \"Charms\", reflect those debts and reflect the search for that knowledge, insofar as I've gotten into it up to this point. It starts with a little chant, called \"Grace for Love\". Before we...grace, in the sense of the grace that we say before meals. Which is, grace is gratitude, an expression of gratitude for a meal. And the gratitude that we say at my rancheria is a kind of a rough translation from a Japanese Buddhist grace which goes like this in English: \"We venerate the three treasures and are thankful for this meal, the work of other people, and the suffering of other forms of life.\" The need for grace, for love, is something I became aware of when I realized that there was a level of validity in the Catholic Church's objection to contraceptive devices, insofar as love, like food, is a sacrament, and that there is level in which the act of love should inevitably be connected with the consciousness of its role in moving the seed, in transmitting the energy of the knowledge of the biomass, as transmitted down through time. But I felt that the church is far too simple-minded in assuming that the energy aroused in the sacrament of love, in the direction of fertility, has to mean literally that the people who are acting that sacrament out have to necessarily procreate their own kind. And so we came to this, I and several other people, came to this, as what primitive people would call the transferral of merit, or species-increase ritual. In other words, we make love with gratitude to other beings, and wish to transfer our fertility from the human race to the vanishing species.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:11:09\nPerforms \"Grace for Love\".\n\nGary Snyder\n00:14:20\nReads \"A Curse on the Man In the Pentagon, Washington\".\n\nGary Snyder\n00:16:37\nThat's from a Cheyenne ghost dance song, that little last chorus.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:16:43\nReads \"I went into the Maverick Bar\" [published later  in Turtle Island].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:18:25\nThe Navajo word \"Anasazi\" means \"the ancient ones.\" It's the name that the Navajo gave to the people who lived in the canyons and cliffs of Chaco Canyon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49786970] and Canyon De Chelly [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41679118] and Mesa Verde [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6821095] and many other sites. Probably the people were the ancestors of the present Pueblo people, living there probably up until the twelfth century, till the great drought of the thirteenth century. The people who more than any others, to judge from what the Pueblo people are still able to transmit today, the people who more than any others have achieved what could truly be called \"civilization\" on this continent, and whose lore embodies perhaps two millennia of deep experience. I wrote this at Canyon De Chelly.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:19:52\nReads “Anasazi” [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:21:11\nThe Canyon De Chelly, which will come up in another poem I'm going to read later today, and in fact, all over the West, all over the Great Basin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q966943], and in other parts of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49] too, notably on the granite outcroppings on th]e northern shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], for example, are designs pecked into the rocks, petroglyphs. Anthropologists, Americanists, whatever you call 'em, haven't had much time to study those petroglyphs yet, because they've been engaged through all the years of this century in a hasty, half-successful salvage operation. Salvaging the remnants of this or that dying culture, recording and taping the last words of a dying language, and they've had no time to give to studying these older things that they know are there, such as the petroglyphs. But the petroglyphs have a repeated vocabulary of motifs which are found in patterns distributed all over North America, and particularly in the West. One of the most widespread is a hand, that someone has put on a cliff or a boulder face, apparently outlined, and then filled it in with red, hematite, or a red hand. That red hand often is lacking a finger, or lacking a finger-joint. This would not be notable in itself if it weren't that in the caves of southern France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142] and northern Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], there are dated, back as far as 40,000 years, the same red hands, with missing fingers and missing finger-joints are found. This is only one of a number of things which are found all the way. And so this next poem, \"The Way West Underground\", is one of a number of poems, and this is perhaps the most intellectual of them, in which I'm trying to trace out how you get back to make the line of connection between what I know the American knows, what I am beginning to know the American Indian knew, and what I am beginning to know our prehistoric ancestors knew, which was not a different knowledge. And the question of why our prehistoric ancestors lost it is another question. Actually the main impetus of this poem deals with the bears, because there's an international mystery religion called the Bear Cult, that runs all the way from Finland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33] to Utah [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q829], across Siberia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5428], and it shares the mysterious central theme, which is a girl who marries a bear. I've written several poems about that girl. And about the bears. And so this is coming in on that from another angle.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:25:12\nReads \"The Way West Underground\" [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nEND\n00:26:55\n\n\ngary_snyder_i006-11-106-2.mp3 [File 2 of 4]\n\nGary Snyder\n00:00:00\n--which is a way Finnish men sing folk songs together.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:00:05\nResumes reading of \"The Way West Underground\".\n\nUnknown\n00:02:20\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:02:21\nSo I had to trace back again in my mind, with my eyes, with my observation: of course, the plants produce seeds, the birds feed on the seeds, and so forth. Small members of the food chain. The ocean is similar but in a different set of relationships. We live on an exuberance of sexuality. We eat the reproductive organs of grasses: wheat, rice. Because herring or cod have millions of eggs that hatch into millions of almost-microscopic fry, the food chains of the ocean are made possible.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:03:16 \nReads \"The Song of the Taste\" from Regarding Wave.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:04:51\nI read that because it goes so nicely with this other poem, called \"Song to the Raw Material\". I really think a lot about these things these days because I've put myself deliberately in the position of having to know where my food comes from, and it's no longer a question of, like do I eat natural foods or supermarket foods, or do I eat meat or am I a vegetarian, it's more sophisticated than that, it's a lot more subtle than that. Like literally, where did it come from. And by what means can I have a sense of responsibility and gratitude to what it is that I'm eating and in what sense can I repay that world, whichever world it is, that I am feeding off of. Well of course one way you can repay it is by being a willing, and gracious, member of the food chain yourself. Now we are rather large animals, which means that we are rather high in the food chain. But nonetheless, quite edible. And it would be a great honour, really, to be eaten by a large, rare predator, and I can't think of any way I'd rather finish my days than to give myself to a grizzly bear, if I could, you know, choose when. [Laughter]. Like get all my affairs in order first. I'm not ready yet! Or at least, go back, as large creatures often do, go back into the cycle of feeding smaller creatures. But you can see the basic biological ignorance of this society, the ignorance of what systems really are, what basic systems are, and what our responsibilities to our membership in basic systems is, by the fact that they either burn people up or they fill them full of chemicals which make them not tasty, and lock them in bronze caskets, and so forth. The only people in the world who are righteous about this particular question seem to be the Tibetans and the Parsis, I mean, really righteous about it. The Tibetans and the Parsis have an old tradition, which is mentioned, it's so old that it's mentioned by Herodotus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11925546], in talking about a group of people called the Magi, in Persia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q794], that is to say they expose their dead in elevated places and feed them to the vultures. That's one very elegant way, actually, to deal with it. The Eskimo, an Eskimo shaman whose name I forget, is reputed to have said, \"We live dangerous lives, because our food consists entirely of souls\". “Song to the Raw Material”.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:08:12\nReads \"Song of the Raw Material\".\n\nGary Snyder\n00:09:12\nReads \"Steak\" [published later in Turtle Island; audience laughter and applause throughout].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:10:53\nI saw that in Lethbridge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270887], Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]. [Audience laughter]. The creation mythology of Japan, called the kojiki, is very long, and very complicated. I tried to boil it down to some kind of a formula I could understand, at least boil down the first hundred pages of it, so I wrote this--it's about how the world is created according to the Japanese creation mythology. I think. I think that's what it is.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:11:28\nReads \"No matter, never mind\" [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nAudience\n00:12:14\nLaughter and applause.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:12:24\nIt's funny how the language is smarter than we are, [audience laughter] yeah. Like we can get hung up on mind/matter dualism, but the language won't accept it. It says the same thing two ways. \"The Bath\". Where we live we don't have any electricity or propane, and so we do everything with wood, including heating our bath, which we found the best wood-fired bathing system was a Finnish-type sauna, and...so this poem, you know just to set the scene, it's a somewhat longer poem, this poem is a sauna, with a wood-burning stove that also heats a tank of water on the side, and with a bench that you sit up on and a lower place that you can get down on and wash with. You can get these wood-fired sauna-stoves from some Finnish outfit in Michigan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1166]. The only place in the United States that I have been able to locate that makes sauna stoves that fire wood. I highly recommend them. The personae in this are my wife, my three-year old son, my three-and a-half year old son, my two-year-old son.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:14:00\nReads \"The Bath\" [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:19:31\nSome friends said to us, when we moved up to the backcountry, ah, you're just getting away from your responsibilities. You're evading the struggle. So I wrote this little poem as a, kind of a light answer to that. It's called \"Front Lines\".\n\nGary Snyder\n00:19:59\nReads \"Front Lines\" [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:21:36\nThat poem is not an exaggeration of what we're doing. We are, like, where I am and a number of other people I know around this continent, have their backs up against the wilderness, so to speak, and they're not going to let this thing go past them. If they can help it, or as you say, over my dead body. The California Indians used to set control burns, as distinct from wildfires, forestry terms, which contributed to the maintenance of what you might call a climax timber stand, keeping the undergrowth burnt out, keeping an annual deer-forage coming in, and protecting the large timber, as it were, from destructive forest fires, because whenever a forest fire--which is very common in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99], it's an annual event--whenever forest fires go through, went through the forests when they were in that condition, it simply went through taking the ground cover off, but couldn't get hot enough or high enough to kill the large trees. With the advent of logging, mining, and the Manzanita brush that follows on that, the whole flora of California changed radically. All of the flora of California changed. What happened was that the woods got very brushy, and then the early forestry practices which were, of course, to put forest fires out whenever they came on them, in some ways contributed to the increasingly dangerous situation of dense brush, logging slash laying around, second-growth trees not really very large yet, and a situation where every brush fire that went through killed absolutely everything grew up. And that's the state of the state now, to a large extent, although there are some hip foresters now who are back into control burns as best as they can. This poem is called \"Control Burn\" and it only starts from what I'm just talking about, taking that as an image.\n\nGary Snyder\n00:24:00\nReads \"Control Burn\" [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nGary Snyder\n00:25:37\nReads \"The Great Mother\" [published later in Turtle Island].\n\nEND\n00:26:55\n\n\ngary_snyder_i006-11-106-3.mp3 [File 3 of 4]\n\nGary Snyder\n00:00:00\nEverything in this next poem is all true. Almost everything.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:00:17\nReads \"The Call of the Wild\", Part I [published later in Turtle Island]. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:00:32\nReads \"The Call of the Wild\", Part II [published later in Turtle Island]. \n \nAnnotation\n00:01:52.06\nReads \"The Call of the Wild,\" Part III [published later in Turtle Island]. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:04:11\nReads \"Source\" [published later in Turtle Island]. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:05:40\nIn the poem \"Charms\", which is dedicated to Michael McClure [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1390054], who has more than any other living poet, or person even that I know, has gone farther than anyone else, I think, into becoming one with, in understanding, in penetrating, in perceiving the consciousness of other beings.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:06:15\nReads \"Charms\" [published later in Turtle Island]. \n \nAudience\n00:07:45\nApplause. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:08:01\nI want to read one little poem that kind of, that I just wrote on the plane the other day.  Flying in here yesterday I wrote this. And then we'll take a break. But this belongs, really, with these poems. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:08:15\nReads \"How did a great red-tailed Hawk come to lie on the shoulder of Interstate 5\" [published later in Turtle Island]. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:10:05\nOkay, let's take a break.  \n\nAudience\n00:10:07\nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n00:10:17\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:10:29\nDo you remember getting tiny toys for your children from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]? There was a small book that I saw in the States, folded out in a certain, section-by-section, parts of the earth kinda, growing larger and larger and larger...\n \nGary Snyder\n00:10:46\nI haven't seen it.\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:10:48\nNo, I guess...it's sort of, um, anti-war toys.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:10:51\nSounds nice. Yeah. Some place in San Francisco you can get it?\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:10:56\nUm, I don't know, it was from a certain, a certain group of people, and I don't remember their names. It was beautiful. Nice gift to give little kids.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:07\nI shall watch for it when I go there again. Thank you. \n \nAudience Member 1\n00:11:13\nOkay. You bet. [Inaudible]\n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:14\nOkay. [Laughter].\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:11:19\nMan you're incredible. You're so good. I really dig your stuff.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:26\n[Laughter]. Thank you.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:11:26\nI really dig it, will you come for a drink with me later? With me and my friends?\n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:31\nI gotta go some place later.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:11:33\nYou sure? \n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:34\nYeah. I mean, like I...they got something set up for me. \n \nAudience Member 2\n00:11:38\nI don't, I don't know, I really dig that, I really dig that [inaudible] I just came in, I thought your stuff was so incredible...Your stuff, the way you bring it across to people!\n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:51\nWell, that's what I try to do.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:11:54\nHave you written a book?\n \nGary Snyder\n00:11:54\nI've written a lot of books. [Laughter].\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:11:58\nNo no no, no really, no really, I don't know too much about...Gary Snyder, you know?\n \nGary Snyder\n00:12:04\nWell, you'd probably find, I don't know, because I'm coming here, because of my being here now, they've probably got some of my books in the bookstore, if you want to go look. [Laughter].\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:12:13\nSee I'm writing this play right now, you know? I'm trying to express myself and it's really...it's really strange [Cut off abruptly].\n \nUnknown\n00:12:27\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nGary Snyder\n00:12:28\nWell, there has been a great deal of opposition to nuclear energy, and nuclear power-generating stations, in the United States so effective in some areas that a lot of generating plants have been blocked or slowed down in their construction. And I think that the United States government is about to launch on an enormous effort to calm the public and to lull it into accepting massive developments of nuclear energy generating centres, fast-breeder and later, perhaps, fusion. Now I myself would have no objection to such a thing if I could be convinced that it was safe, both in the long term and the short term, and although it might be conceivably safe in the short term, I can see no way in which it would be safe in the long run, because nuclear wastes accumulated over, say, several centuries, as they might be, or more, in increasing quantities around the globe, are going to out eventually, and even though you can say, well, we're putting it off for five hundred thousand years, five hundred thousand years is not a very long time.  And if we are feeding a wasteful, industrial, technological, consumer society for a few more centuries, buying it a few more centuries of life, at the expense of all future biological health on the planet, it's obviously not worth it. The Amchitka test, which is possibly interested in such things as what uses very large explosions would have in releasing oil from oil-bearing shale or something like that, I think the U.S. administration is going ahead with this test in the face of all this criticism, deliberately, as a deliberate and very intelligent gamble. The chances are that nothing will happen. When nothing happens, then they will be able to say, \"All you people were hysterical. You see?  Nothing happened\".  And that will buy them a lot of time and a lot of credibility to proceed strongly and forcibly with more nuclear testing and more nuclear power generation development. And the conservationists, perhaps, have in a way, played into their hands, by making such a big issue out of it, so that they will be left holding an empty bag if nothing happens. If something does happen, then the administration can say, \"You're right, we were wrong\", and Nixon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9588] perhaps forfeits the next election. That's all. Okay. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:15:25.61\n\"Mountains and Rivers Without End\" is a poem that I've been working on, it's a long poem, a long series of interconnected long poems that I've been working on for some years. I'm going to read several sections from that tonight. Including one or two that are very recent, in fact these are all pretty recent. \"Mountains and Rivers without End\". The title of the poem comes from a Yuan Dynasty [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7313] Chinese scroll, that unfolds sideways and is thirty-five feet long. By way of introduction, a little poem called \"The Rabbit\". There are many sections to this, I'm only going to read [counts under breath.]..six tonight.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:16:27\nReads \"The Rabbit\" [published later in Mountains and Rivers Without End].\n \nGary Snyder\n00:18:04\n\"The California Water Plan\". The state of California at the moment is engaged in a large, incredibly wasteful, incredibly stupid, illegal, even by their own terms, water plan project, which if they're lucky, will salinate the Sacramento Valley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1686914] and make agriculture permanently impossible. I was up in the Minarets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2412852] in the Sierra last summer, thinking about the California Water Plan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28228216], and I perceived something of what the true California Water Plan was. So I wrote this down. It refers to an obscure little Buddhist god called Fudo, or Achala [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q337624], who is my particular guardian, my personal guardian and my personal teacher, and, so I use, I refer to him, in several poems. The other two poems in which I refer to him actually are a piece called \"Smokey the Bear Sutra\", and another piece called \"Spell Against Demons\". This is the final, actually, this is the third and final poem in the trilogy of Fudo poems. Also. But you'll find all about Fudo in this poem, it'll drive you crazy.    \n \nGary Snyder\n00:19:48\nReads \"The California Water Plan\" [later published in The Fudo Trilogy].\n \nGary Snyder\n00:25:34\n\"Kumarajiva's Mother\". Now, the rest of these poems that I'm going to read this evening are cutting back and forth between ancient India [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q668] and ancient North America. I--living as I do and where I have lived all my life, we face the Pacific [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98]. And, the American Indian came from Asia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48], or vice versa, the Asians came from North America. I mean I know a Shoshone who says that. He says, \"We've always been here, those Asians came from here\". [Laughter].  \"What do you mean we came from someplace else, that's some white anthropologist theory\". [Laughter]. \"Kumarajiva's Mother.\" Kumarajiva [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q335293] was a great Buddhist monk-scholar-translator, who was kidnapped by the Chinese from Central Asia, by force, and carried off to China [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q148] where he was made to translate Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese, and he stayed there the rest of his life, with a crew of about eighty Chinese assistants, day and night, translating sutras. He did a lot of translation. He also got in trouble, because he liked girls, and on one occasion, because he actually had mistresses apparently, he ate a bowl of needles, like you sew with needles, in front of an assembly of all the monks and assistants in Peking [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q956], or no it wasn't Peking in those days, it was Chang'an [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6501000], all of the monks and assistants in the capital, Chang'an, and then he said, \"When you boys can eat needles, you can have girlfriends too\". [Audience laughter]. But this poem is about his mother. [Audience laughter]. And I really, I mean I could explain to you why I wrote this poem but it isn't really worth explaining, I'll just read it. It has to do partly with the fact that my mother has freckles. And I was trying to figure out at this time, when I wrote this, I was trying to figure out whatever happened to women in Buddhism? Like something happened to 'em. They got lost. For a long time, anyway.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:28:22\nReads \"Kumarajiva's Mother\".\n \nEND\n00:30:59\n\n\ngary_snyder_i006-11-106-4.mp3 [File 4 of 4]\n \nGary Snyder\n00:00:00\n...alone in the 8th century, and studied at an enormous Buddhist, Mahayana university called Nalanda [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q216243], for fifteen years, and then walked back to China, with a fraying pack full of books, which he translated for the next twenty years after he got back to China. He brought the school of Buddhism, which is called the school of Mind Only, and the school of Emptiness. That's one aspect of this next poem. Another aspect is a little petroglyph, American Indian petroglyph figure, called the hump-backed flute player, a little stick figure playing the flute, with a pack on his back, walking. He was found pecked on the rocks from Sonora [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46422], Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] up into the Great Basin, and about which almost nothing is known. The Ghost Dance, which was a Messianic Indian religion, started by a Paiute named Wovoka https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q558420], which asserted that perhaps by magic the white man could be swept away from North America and the game would return.  And finally, the oldest living beings are the bristle-coned pine, who live in the White Mountains [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1556007], at an elevation of nine thousand feet in eastern California, the oldest of which is something like four thousand five hundred years old. So this poem is called \"The Humpbacked Flute Player\".\n \nGary Snyder\n00:01:59\nReads \"The Humpbacked Flute Player\" from Coyote’s Journal #9 [and published later in Mountains and Rivers Without End]. \n \nGary Snyder\n00:08:36\nI'm going to finish with one more poem called \"Down\". These poems are not in the order that they're going to be, but they're in a convenient order for the moment.\n \nGary Snyder\n00:09:05\nReads \"Down\".\n \nAudience\n00:11:48\nApplause.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:12:18\nI can't thank you for that. I don't know any way. Charles Simic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q722555] will be reading on November 19th. Thank you. \n\nAudience\n00:12:40 \nApplause.\n\nEND\n00:12:45\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1971, Gary Snyder published The back country (New Directions Press) and First time round (Roaring Fork Press), the first edition of Manzanita (Kent State University), Swimming naked in the Yuba River (Maidu Press), Anasazi (Yes! Press), Regarding Wave: Poems (Fulcrum Press) contributed to Sky, sea, birds, trees, earth, house, beasts, flowers (Unicorn Press) with Kenneth Rexroth, to Coyote’s journal: #9 (Book People) with Albert Glover, James Coller and Allen Ginsberg, and to Six poems/seven prints (Kent State University) with Alex Gildzen, John Ashbery, James Bertolino, Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov and Steven Osterlund.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nIt is not clear what Gary Snyder’s connection to Sir George Williams University or Montreal was, but he no doubt had an influential role in the shaping of American poetry, specifically in the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat movement. The series tried to include poets from all types of poetry backgrounds and from both Canada and the U.S.; Snyder was an important American poet at this time.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"4 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>4 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Boxer, Avi; Bryan McCarthy and Graham Seal. “Letters: re: Reverend Richard J. Sommer”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 12 November 1971, page 4. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Boxer, Avi; Bryan McCarthy and Graham Seal. “Letters: Get Your Shit Together...”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 19 November 1971, page 4. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"DiFranco, Aaron K. \\\"Snyder, Gary\\\". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (ed). Oxford University Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Maxwell, Glyn. \\\"Snyder, Gary\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Morrissey, Stephen. “Letters: Inexcusable Ignorance”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 26 November 1971, page 4. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Pearson, Allen. “Letters: The Second Coming?”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 12 November 1971, page 4. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fudo-trilogy/oclc/622284906&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Snyder, Gary. The Fudo Trilogy. Berkley, California: Shaman Drum, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6925688\",\"citation\":\"Snyder, Gary. Mountains and Rivers Without End. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/regarding-wave-gary-snyder/oclc/463402884&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Snyder, Gary. Regarding Wave. New York: New Directions Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/six-sections-from-mountains-and-rivers-without-end/oclc/295205&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Snyder, Gary. Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End. San Francisco: Four Seasons Press, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/concise-oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/1146399202&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Snyder, Gary\\\". The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed). Oxford University Press, 1986. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Snyder, Gary [Sherman]\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press, 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Snyder, Gary. Turtle Island. New York: New Directions Press, 1969.\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548937113600,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/I0006_11_0106-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0106-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Gary Snyder Tape Box 1 - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0106-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0106-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Gary Snyder Tape Box 1 - 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Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/I0006_11_0106-4_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0106-4_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Gary Snyder Tape Box 4 - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/gary_snyder_i006-11-106-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:26:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"64.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-1.mp3 [File 1 of 4]\\n\\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:00:00\\nProbably some of us are here in order to look at or touch the Gary Snyder [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q315963] who actually went and did all those semi-mythological things, who has climbed mountains and traveled in India with Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711], who provided Kerouac [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160534] with a book character, who has lived in or on the edges of several different kinds of wilderness, who has lived in the precincts of Japanese Buddhist monasteries, who has fought, I think has fought hard, to keep other cultures than ours, and other kinds of life than human life, from obliteration. And who has written poems out of the consciousness of these things. For myself, Gary Snyder hasn't made poems so much as he has provided me with windows made out of words. These are windows that have had a way of, themselves disappearing, leaving me usually standing where I think I want to be, out in the open world. So, I came here, I've come here, to meet whoever it is that makes so many good windows. I'll let you discover for yourselves how much this window-maker is what a windowmaker should be, himself, just open and clear. I'd like to present Gary Snyder.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:02:58\\nI forgot one more thing I wanted to have out here. Good evening. I'm going to read in two sets this evening, with a little intermission. And first of all, I'm not going to read any poems tonight from my published books, because those poems are available and what is interesting to me is always what I'm doing, where I'm moving. So I'm going to read from a cycle of short poems, moderately short poems, which I call \\\"Charms\\\", and\\nthen there'll be a break, and then I'm going to read recent sections that I've been working on from a long poem in progress called \\\"Mountains and Rivers Without End\\\". I came back to the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] from Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17] with my wife and children about three years ago now, and went as rapidly as possible to settle in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26777], on the north slope of the south fork of the Yuba river [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181973] at three-thousand foot elevation. And I've been living there for almost two years now. I'm saying this by way of introduction to this first cycle of poems called \\\"Charms\\\". I was brought up on a farm, and all of my ancestors that I know of, for the last few generations on both sides, were rural people, or miners, miners in Colorado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1261], Leadville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q286702], places like that. And it amazes me in a mysterious way how to get back to doing what my father was doing when I was a little boy, and what, and which I remember as a little boy, and to get back to doing what my grandfather was doing, which is to say--again, looking at the fences, looking at the stumps, looking at the house, looking at the well, looking at the spring and saying, how are we going to do it--touches me more deeply than I can possibly explain. And at the same time, being confronted again with these choices, which are the choices of the American frontier, and also the choices of medieval Europeans, and neolithic Mediterranean people, and neolithic Japanese people, and neolithic Chinese people. With what I've come to understand, a little more now, about history, anthropology, and biology, I feel an extraordinary responsibility to understand why I make the choices I make, in such matters as, where does one break the ground and locate a garden, or which trees does one select to fall. In other words, I find myself again in that position of entering virgin land, and this time, I want to understand, in the process of making my own choices, I want to understand why we did it wrong, every time before, and hope to get some insights in how one goes about doing it right, this time. In moving toward that understanding, in making the choices that I have to make, about how we are going to live, in the semi-wilderness and true wilderness of the Sierra Nevada, my teachers have to be scientific foresters, biologists and ecologists on the one hand, and the American Indians on the other. There are no other teachers available for these choices.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:08:02\\nAnd so these poems, in the cycle called \\\"Charms\\\", reflect those debts and reflect the search for that knowledge, insofar as I've gotten into it up to this point. It starts with a little chant, called \\\"Grace for Love\\\". Before we...grace, in the sense of the grace that we say before meals. Which is, grace is gratitude, an expression of gratitude for a meal. And the gratitude that we say at my rancheria is a kind of a rough translation from a Japanese Buddhist grace which goes like this in English: \\\"We venerate the three treasures and are thankful for this meal, the work of other people, and the suffering of other forms of life.\\\" The need for grace, for love, is something I became aware of when I realized that there was a level of validity in the Catholic Church's objection to contraceptive devices, insofar as love, like food, is a sacrament, and that there is level in which the act of love should inevitably be connected with the consciousness of its role in moving the seed, in transmitting the energy of the knowledge of the biomass, as transmitted down through time. But I felt that the church is far too simple-minded in assuming that the energy aroused in the sacrament of love, in the direction of fertility, has to mean literally that the people who are acting that sacrament out have to necessarily procreate their own kind. And so we came to this, I and several other people, came to this, as what primitive people would call the transferral of merit, or species-increase ritual. In other words, we make love with gratitude to other beings, and wish to transfer our fertility from the human race to the vanishing species.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:09\\nPerforms \\\"Grace for Love\\\".\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:14:20\\nReads \\\"A Curse on the Man In the Pentagon, Washington\\\".\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:16:37\\nThat's from a Cheyenne ghost dance song, that little last chorus.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:16:43\\nReads \\\"I went into the Maverick Bar\\\" [published later  in Turtle Island].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:18:25\\nThe Navajo word \\\"Anasazi\\\" means \\\"the ancient ones.\\\" It's the name that the Navajo gave to the people who lived in the canyons and cliffs of Chaco Canyon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49786970] and Canyon De Chelly [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41679118] and Mesa Verde [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6821095] and many other sites. Probably the people were the ancestors of the present Pueblo people, living there probably up until the twelfth century, till the great drought of the thirteenth century. The people who more than any others, to judge from what the Pueblo people are still able to transmit today, the people who more than any others have achieved what could truly be called \\\"civilization\\\" on this continent, and whose lore embodies perhaps two millennia of deep experience. I wrote this at Canyon De Chelly.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:19:52\\nReads “Anasazi” [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:21:11\\nThe Canyon De Chelly, which will come up in another poem I'm going to read later today, and in fact, all over the West, all over the Great Basin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q966943], and in other parts of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49] too, notably on the granite outcroppings on th]e northern shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], for example, are designs pecked into the rocks, petroglyphs. Anthropologists, Americanists, whatever you call 'em, haven't had much time to study those petroglyphs yet, because they've been engaged through all the years of this century in a hasty, half-successful salvage operation. Salvaging the remnants of this or that dying culture, recording and taping the last words of a dying language, and they've had no time to give to studying these older things that they know are there, such as the petroglyphs. But the petroglyphs have a repeated vocabulary of motifs which are found in patterns distributed all over North America, and particularly in the West. One of the most widespread is a hand, that someone has put on a cliff or a boulder face, apparently outlined, and then filled it in with red, hematite, or a red hand. That red hand often is lacking a finger, or lacking a finger-joint. This would not be notable in itself if it weren't that in the caves of southern France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142] and northern Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], there are dated, back as far as 40,000 years, the same red hands, with missing fingers and missing finger-joints are found. This is only one of a number of things which are found all the way. And so this next poem, \\\"The Way West Underground\\\", is one of a number of poems, and this is perhaps the most intellectual of them, in which I'm trying to trace out how you get back to make the line of connection between what I know the American knows, what I am beginning to know the American Indian knew, and what I am beginning to know our prehistoric ancestors knew, which was not a different knowledge. And the question of why our prehistoric ancestors lost it is another question. Actually the main impetus of this poem deals with the bears, because there's an international mystery religion called the Bear Cult, that runs all the way from Finland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33] to Utah [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q829], across Siberia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5428], and it shares the mysterious central theme, which is a girl who marries a bear. I've written several poems about that girl. And about the bears. And so this is coming in on that from another angle.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:25:12\\nReads \\\"The Way West Underground\\\" [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nEND\\n00:26:55\\n\",\"notes\":\"Gary Snyder reads poems later collected in Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974), originally published in a limited edition book called Manzanita (Four Seasons Press, 1972). He also reads one poem from Regarding Wave (Fulcrum Press, 1971), one poem from Coyote’s Journal #9 (1971), one poem from The Fudo Trilogy (Shaman Drum, 1973), and several from Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint) only published in 1997, as well as other poems from unknown sources. \\n\\nI006-11-106=AC.1\\n00:17- Introducer (Perhaps Richard Sommer) introduces Gary Snyder. [INDEX: semi mythological things, climbed mountains and traveled to India with Allen Ginsberg, Jack\\nKerouac’s book character, wilderness, living in precincts of Japanese Buddhist\\nmonasteries, keeping cultures from obliteration, poems out of the consciousness,\\nwindows, open world, window-maker].\\n02:58- Gary Snyder introduces the reading, and poetry cycle “Charms” and long poem\\n“Mountains and Rivers Without End”. [INDEX: reading in two sets, all poems read\\nare unpublished, long poem in-progress “Mountains and Rivers Without End”, returning\\nfrom Japan to the U.S. three years prior, wife and children, settling in the foothills of the\\nSierra Nevada, north slope of the south fork of the Yuba river, three-thousand foot\\nelevation, origins on a farm, miners in Leadville, Colorado, how to get back to father’s\\noccupation, childhood, grandfather, fences, as a child in nature, spring (river), American\\nfrontier, medieval Europeans, neolithic Mediterranean people, neolithic Japanese people, neolithic Chinese people, history, anthropology, biology, responsibility of humans’ place on earth, choices we make in terms of nature, scientific foresters, ecologists, American Indians (as teachers)].\\n08:02- Introduces poetry cycle “Charms”, and “Grace for Love”. [INDEX: debts, search for knowledge, grace (gratitude for meal), rancheria, Japanese Buddhist grace, love, level of validity in the Catholic Church’s objection to contraception, food, sacrament, act of love, transference of ‘seed’ or knowledge, transferral of merit, species-increase ritual; from unknown source].\\n11:09- Chants “Grace for Love”.\\n14:20- Reads “A Curse on the Man in the Pentagon, Washington”. [INDEX: from unknown source].\\n16:37- Explains last chorus of “A Curse on the Man in the Pentagon, Washington”.\\n16:43- Reads “I went into the Maverick Bar”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island].\\n18:25- Introduces “Anasazi”. [INDEX: means ‘ancient ones’ in Navajo, name of people living in Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly, ancestors of present Pueblo people, 12th century, the great drought of the 13th century, civilization, two millennia of ‘deep experience’, written at Canyon de Chelly; from Turtle Island]\\n19:52- Reads “Anasazi”.\\n21:11- Introduces “The Way West Underground”. [INDEX: Canyon de Chelly, West and Great Basin, granite outcroppings of the northern shores of Lake Superior, petroglyphs,\\nAnthropologists, salvaging remnants of dying cultures, vocabulary of motifs, hand\\npetroglyph, caves of southern France and northern Spain, 40,000 years ago, intellectual\\npoem, tracing out lines of connections between Americans, American Indians, prehistoric ancestors, main impetus of the poem is an international mystery religion called the Bear Cult, runs from Finland to Utah, Siberia, central theme: girl who marries a bear; from Turtle Island].\\n25:12- Reads “The Way West Underground”.\\n26:55- Interjects comment about poem. [INDEX: Finnish men singing folk songs].\\n[*note: cut or edit made in transcript, time elapsed unknown*]\\n29:16- Snyder is talking (not sure if it’s about the poem). [INDEX: observation, plants, seeds, birds, small members of food chain, ocean, exuberance of sexuality, reproductive organs of grasses, wheat, rice, herring, cod, millions of eggs, food chain of the ocean].\\n30:11- Reads “The Song of the Taste”. [INDEX: from Regarding Wave].\\n31:46- Introduces “Song for the Raw Material”. [INDEX: food, natural vs. supermarket foods, vegetarian vs. carnivore, being part of the food chain, being eaten by a bear, biological ignorance of society, basic systems, chemicals, Tibetans and Parsis, Herodotus, Maghi in Persia, feeding dead to the vultures, Eskimo shaman quote].\\n35:07- Reads “Song of the Raw Material”. [INDEX: perhaps “Song to the Raw Material”,\\nunknown source].\\n36:07- Reads “Steak”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island].\\n37:48- Introduces “No matter, never mind”. [INDEX: Lethbridge, Alberta, creation mythology of Japan (koji-ki); from Turtle Island].\\n38:23- Reads “No matter, never mind”.\\n39:19- Introduces “The Bath”. [INDEX: no electricity (wood heating), Finnish sauna, poem as a sauna, Michigan, personae in the poem are his wife, three sons; from Turtle Island].\\n40:55- Reads “The Bath”.\\n46:26- Introduces “Front Lines”. [INDEX: evading the struggle; from Turtle Island].\\n46:54- Reads “Front Lines”.\\n48:31- Explains parts of “Front Lines”, introduces “Control Burn”. [INDEX: wilderness,\\nCalifornia ‘Indians’, control burns, forest fires in California, logging, mining, Manzanita\\nbrush, flora changing; from Turtle Island].\\n50:55- Reads “Control Burn”.\\n52:32- Reads “The Great Mother”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island].\\n\\nFIRST CD (I006-11-106=AC.1)\\nPoem Read:\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\tTime Stamp\\tDuration (mins):\\n\\n“Grace for Love”  \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:11:09   \\t03:10\\n“A Curse on the Man in the Pentagon…” \\t00:14:20        02:17\\n“I went into the Maverick Bar…”  \\t\\t\\t00:16:23        01:42\\n“Anasazi”  \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:19:52        02:17\\n“The Way West Underground”  \\t\\t\\t00:25:12        04:01\\n“The Song of the Taste”  \\t\\t\\t\\t00:30:11        01:35\\n“Song for the Raw Material”  \\t\\t\\t00:35:07        00:58\\n“Steak”  \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:36:07        01:41\\n“No Matter, Never Mind”   \\t\\t\\t\\t00:38:23        00:46\\n“The Bath” \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:40:55        05:29\\n“Front Lines” \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:46:54        01:36\\n“Control Burn” \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:50:55        01:37\\n“The Great Mother”  \\t\\t\\t\\t00:52:32        00:42\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/gary_snyder_i006-11-106-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:26:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"63.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-2.mp3 [File 2 of 4]\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:00:00\\n--which is a way Finnish men sing folk songs together.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:00:05\\nResumes reading of \\\"The Way West Underground\\\".\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:02:20\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:02:21\\nSo I had to trace back again in my mind, with my eyes, with my observation: of course, the plants produce seeds, the birds feed on the seeds, and so forth. Small members of the food chain. The ocean is similar but in a different set of relationships. We live on an exuberance of sexuality. We eat the reproductive organs of grasses: wheat, rice. Because herring or cod have millions of eggs that hatch into millions of almost-microscopic fry, the food chains of the ocean are made possible.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:03:16 \\nReads \\\"The Song of the Taste\\\" from Regarding Wave.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:04:51\\nI read that because it goes so nicely with this other poem, called \\\"Song to the Raw Material\\\". I really think a lot about these things these days because I've put myself deliberately in the position of having to know where my food comes from, and it's no longer a question of, like do I eat natural foods or supermarket foods, or do I eat meat or am I a vegetarian, it's more sophisticated than that, it's a lot more subtle than that. Like literally, where did it come from. And by what means can I have a sense of responsibility and gratitude to what it is that I'm eating and in what sense can I repay that world, whichever world it is, that I am feeding off of. Well of course one way you can repay it is by being a willing, and gracious, member of the food chain yourself. Now we are rather large animals, which means that we are rather high in the food chain. But nonetheless, quite edible. And it would be a great honour, really, to be eaten by a large, rare predator, and I can't think of any way I'd rather finish my days than to give myself to a grizzly bear, if I could, you know, choose when. [Laughter]. Like get all my affairs in order first. I'm not ready yet! Or at least, go back, as large creatures often do, go back into the cycle of feeding smaller creatures. But you can see the basic biological ignorance of this society, the ignorance of what systems really are, what basic systems are, and what our responsibilities to our membership in basic systems is, by the fact that they either burn people up or they fill them full of chemicals which make them not tasty, and lock them in bronze caskets, and so forth. The only people in the world who are righteous about this particular question seem to be the Tibetans and the Parsis, I mean, really righteous about it. The Tibetans and the Parsis have an old tradition, which is mentioned, it's so old that it's mentioned by Herodotus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11925546], in talking about a group of people called the Magi, in Persia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q794], that is to say they expose their dead in elevated places and feed them to the vultures. That's one very elegant way, actually, to deal with it. The Eskimo, an Eskimo shaman whose name I forget, is reputed to have said, \\\"We live dangerous lives, because our food consists entirely of souls\\\". “Song to the Raw Material”.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:08:12\\nReads \\\"Song of the Raw Material\\\".\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:09:12\\nReads \\\"Steak\\\" [published later in Turtle Island; audience laughter and applause throughout].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:10:53\\nI saw that in Lethbridge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270887], Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]. [Audience laughter]. The creation mythology of Japan, called the kojiki, is very long, and very complicated. I tried to boil it down to some kind of a formula I could understand, at least boil down the first hundred pages of it, so I wrote this--it's about how the world is created according to the Japanese creation mythology. I think. I think that's what it is.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:28\\nReads \\\"No matter, never mind\\\" [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:12:14\\nLaughter and applause.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:12:24\\nIt's funny how the language is smarter than we are, [audience laughter] yeah. Like we can get hung up on mind/matter dualism, but the language won't accept it. It says the same thing two ways. \\\"The Bath\\\". Where we live we don't have any electricity or propane, and so we do everything with wood, including heating our bath, which we found the best wood-fired bathing system was a Finnish-type sauna, and...so this poem, you know just to set the scene, it's a somewhat longer poem, this poem is a sauna, with a wood-burning stove that also heats a tank of water on the side, and with a bench that you sit up on and a lower place that you can get down on and wash with. You can get these wood-fired sauna-stoves from some Finnish outfit in Michigan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1166]. The only place in the United States that I have been able to locate that makes sauna stoves that fire wood. I highly recommend them. The personae in this are my wife, my three-year old son, my three-and a-half year old son, my two-year-old son.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:14:00\\nReads \\\"The Bath\\\" [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:19:31\\nSome friends said to us, when we moved up to the backcountry, ah, you're just getting away from your responsibilities. You're evading the struggle. So I wrote this little poem as a, kind of a light answer to that. It's called \\\"Front Lines\\\".\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:19:59\\nReads \\\"Front Lines\\\" [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:21:36\\nThat poem is not an exaggeration of what we're doing. We are, like, where I am and a number of other people I know around this continent, have their backs up against the wilderness, so to speak, and they're not going to let this thing go past them. If they can help it, or as you say, over my dead body. The California Indians used to set control burns, as distinct from wildfires, forestry terms, which contributed to the maintenance of what you might call a climax timber stand, keeping the undergrowth burnt out, keeping an annual deer-forage coming in, and protecting the large timber, as it were, from destructive forest fires, because whenever a forest fire--which is very common in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99], it's an annual event--whenever forest fires go through, went through the forests when they were in that condition, it simply went through taking the ground cover off, but couldn't get hot enough or high enough to kill the large trees. With the advent of logging, mining, and the Manzanita brush that follows on that, the whole flora of California changed radically. All of the flora of California changed. What happened was that the woods got very brushy, and then the early forestry practices which were, of course, to put forest fires out whenever they came on them, in some ways contributed to the increasingly dangerous situation of dense brush, logging slash laying around, second-growth trees not really very large yet, and a situation where every brush fire that went through killed absolutely everything grew up. And that's the state of the state now, to a large extent, although there are some hip foresters now who are back into control burns as best as they can. This poem is called \\\"Control Burn\\\" and it only starts from what I'm just talking about, taking that as an image.\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:24:00\\nReads \\\"Control Burn\\\" [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:25:37\\nReads \\\"The Great Mother\\\" [published later in Turtle Island].\\n\\nEND\\n00:26:55\\n\",\"notes\":\"Gary Snyder reads poems later collected in Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974), originally published in a limited edition book called Manzanita (Four Seasons Press, 1972). He also reads one poem from Regarding Wave (Fulcrum Press, 1971), one poem from Coyote’s Journal #9 (1971), one poem from The Fudo Trilogy (Shaman Drum, 1973), and several from Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint) only published in 1997, as well as other poems from unknown sources. \\n\\nI006-11-106=AC.1\\n00:17- Introducer (Perhaps Richard Sommer) introduces Gary Snyder. [INDEX: semi mythological things, climbed mountains and traveled to India with Allen Ginsberg, Jack\\nKerouac’s book character, wilderness, living in precincts of Japanese Buddhist\\nmonasteries, keeping cultures from obliteration, poems out of the consciousness,\\nwindows, open world, window-maker].\\n02:58- Gary Snyder introduces the reading, and poetry cycle “Charms” and long poem\\n“Mountains and Rivers Without End”. [INDEX: reading in two sets, all poems read\\nare unpublished, long poem in-progress “Mountains and Rivers Without End”, returning\\nfrom Japan to the U.S. three years prior, wife and children, settling in the foothills of the\\nSierra Nevada, north slope of the south fork of the Yuba river, three-thousand foot\\nelevation, origins on a farm, miners in Leadville, Colorado, how to get back to father’s\\noccupation, childhood, grandfather, fences, as a child in nature, spring (river), American\\nfrontier, medieval Europeans, neolithic Mediterranean people, neolithic Japanese people, neolithic Chinese people, history, anthropology, biology, responsibility of humans’ place on earth, choices we make in terms of nature, scientific foresters, ecologists, American Indians (as teachers)].\\n08:02- Introduces poetry cycle “Charms”, and “Grace for Love”. [INDEX: debts, search for knowledge, grace (gratitude for meal), rancheria, Japanese Buddhist grace, love, level of validity in the Catholic Church’s objection to contraception, food, sacrament, act of love, transference of ‘seed’ or knowledge, transferral of merit, species-increase ritual; from unknown source].\\n11:09- Chants “Grace for Love”.\\n14:20- Reads “A Curse on the Man in the Pentagon, Washington”. [INDEX: from unknown source].\\n16:37- Explains last chorus of “A Curse on the Man in the Pentagon, Washington”.\\n16:43- Reads “I went into the Maverick Bar”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island].\\n18:25- Introduces “Anasazi”. [INDEX: means ‘ancient ones’ in Navajo, name of people living in Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly, ancestors of present Pueblo people, 12th century, the great drought of the 13th century, civilization, two millennia of ‘deep experience’, written at Canyon de Chelly; from Turtle Island]\\n19:52- Reads “Anasazi”.\\n21:11- Introduces “The Way West Underground”. [INDEX: Canyon de Chelly, West and Great Basin, granite outcroppings of the northern shores of Lake Superior, petroglyphs,\\nAnthropologists, salvaging remnants of dying cultures, vocabulary of motifs, hand\\npetroglyph, caves of southern France and northern Spain, 40,000 years ago, intellectual\\npoem, tracing out lines of connections between Americans, American Indians, prehistoric ancestors, main impetus of the poem is an international mystery religion called the Bear Cult, runs from Finland to Utah, Siberia, central theme: girl who marries a bear; from Turtle Island].\\n25:12- Reads “The Way West Underground”.\\n26:55- Interjects comment about poem. [INDEX: Finnish men singing folk songs].\\n[*note: cut or edit made in transcript, time elapsed unknown*]\\n29:16- Snyder is talking (not sure if it’s about the poem). [INDEX: observation, plants, seeds, birds, small members of food chain, ocean, exuberance of sexuality, reproductive organs of grasses, wheat, rice, herring, cod, millions of eggs, food chain of the ocean].\\n30:11- Reads “The Song of the Taste”. [INDEX: from Regarding Wave].\\n31:46- Introduces “Song for the Raw Material”. [INDEX: food, natural vs. supermarket foods, vegetarian vs. carnivore, being part of the food chain, being eaten by a bear, biological ignorance of society, basic systems, chemicals, Tibetans and Parsis, Herodotus, Maghi in Persia, feeding dead to the vultures, Eskimo shaman quote].\\n35:07- Reads “Song of the Raw Material”. [INDEX: perhaps “Song to the Raw Material”,\\nunknown source].\\n36:07- Reads “Steak”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island].\\n37:48- Introduces “No matter, never mind”. [INDEX: Lethbridge, Alberta, creation mythology of Japan (koji-ki); from Turtle Island].\\n38:23- Reads “No matter, never mind”.\\n39:19- Introduces “The Bath”. [INDEX: no electricity (wood heating), Finnish sauna, poem as a sauna, Michigan, personae in the poem are his wife, three sons; from Turtle Island].\\n40:55- Reads “The Bath”.\\n46:26- Introduces “Front Lines”. [INDEX: evading the struggle; from Turtle Island].\\n46:54- Reads “Front Lines”.\\n48:31- Explains parts of “Front Lines”, introduces “Control Burn”. [INDEX: wilderness,\\nCalifornia ‘Indians’, control burns, forest fires in California, logging, mining, Manzanita\\nbrush, flora changing; from Turtle Island].\\n50:55- Reads “Control Burn”.\\n52:32- Reads “The Great Mother”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island].\\n\\nFIRST CD (I006-11-106=AC.1)\\nPoem Read:\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\tTime Stamp\\tDuration (mins):\\n\\n“Grace for Love”  \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:11:09   \\t03:10\\n“A Curse on the Man in the Pentagon…” \\t00:14:20        02:17\\n“I went into the Maverick Bar…”  \\t\\t\\t00:16:23        01:42\\n“Anasazi”  \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:19:52        02:17\\n“The Way West Underground”  \\t\\t\\t00:25:12        04:01\\n“The Song of the Taste”  \\t\\t\\t\\t00:30:11        01:35\\n“Song for the Raw Material”  \\t\\t\\t00:35:07        00:58\\n“Steak”  \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:36:07        01:41\\n“No Matter, Never Mind”   \\t\\t\\t\\t00:38:23        00:46\\n“The Bath” \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:40:55        05:29\\n“Front Lines” \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:46:54        01:36\\n“Control Burn” \\t\\t\\t\\t\\t00:50:55        01:37\\n“The Great Mother”  \\t\\t\\t\\t00:52:32        00:42\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#2\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/gary_snyder_i006-11-106-3.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:30:59\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"74.4 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-3.mp3 [File 3 of 4]\\n\\nGary Snyder\\n00:00:00\\nEverything in this next poem is all true. Almost everything.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:00:17\\nReads \\\"The Call of the Wild\\\", Part I [published later in Turtle Island]. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:00:32\\nReads \\\"The Call of the Wild\\\", Part II [published later in Turtle Island]. \\n \\nAnnotation\\n00:01:52.06\\nReads \\\"The Call of the Wild,\\\" Part III [published later in Turtle Island]. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:04:11\\nReads \\\"Source\\\" [published later in Turtle Island]. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:05:40\\nIn the poem \\\"Charms\\\", which is dedicated to Michael McClure [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1390054], who has more than any other living poet, or person even that I know, has gone farther than anyone else, I think, into becoming one with, in understanding, in penetrating, in perceiving the consciousness of other beings.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:06:15\\nReads \\\"Charms\\\" [published later in Turtle Island]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:07:45\\nApplause. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:08:01\\nI want to read one little poem that kind of, that I just wrote on the plane the other day.  Flying in here yesterday I wrote this. And then we'll take a break. But this belongs, really, with these poems. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:08:15\\nReads \\\"How did a great red-tailed Hawk come to lie on the shoulder of Interstate 5\\\" [published later in Turtle Island]. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:10:05\\nOkay, let's take a break.  \\n\\nAudience\\n00:10:07\\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:10:17\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:10:29\\nDo you remember getting tiny toys for your children from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]? There was a small book that I saw in the States, folded out in a certain, section-by-section, parts of the earth kinda, growing larger and larger and larger...\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:10:46\\nI haven't seen it.\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:10:48\\nNo, I guess...it's sort of, um, anti-war toys.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:10:51\\nSounds nice. Yeah. Some place in San Francisco you can get it?\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:10:56\\nUm, I don't know, it was from a certain, a certain group of people, and I don't remember their names. It was beautiful. Nice gift to give little kids.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:07\\nI shall watch for it when I go there again. Thank you. \\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:11:13\\nOkay. You bet. [Inaudible]\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:14\\nOkay. [Laughter].\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:11:19\\nMan you're incredible. You're so good. I really dig your stuff.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:26\\n[Laughter]. Thank you.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:11:26\\nI really dig it, will you come for a drink with me later? With me and my friends?\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:31\\nI gotta go some place later.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:11:33\\nYou sure? \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:34\\nYeah. I mean, like I...they got something set up for me. \\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:11:38\\nI don't, I don't know, I really dig that, I really dig that [inaudible] I just came in, I thought your stuff was so incredible...Your stuff, the way you bring it across to people!\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:51\\nWell, that's what I try to do.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:11:54\\nHave you written a book?\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:11:54\\nI've written a lot of books. [Laughter].\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:11:58\\nNo no no, no really, no really, I don't know too much about...Gary Snyder, you know?\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:12:04\\nWell, you'd probably find, I don't know, because I'm coming here, because of my being here now, they've probably got some of my books in the bookstore, if you want to go look. [Laughter].\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:12:13\\nSee I'm writing this play right now, you know? I'm trying to express myself and it's really...it's really strange [Cut off abruptly].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:12:27\\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:12:28\\nWell, there has been a great deal of opposition to nuclear energy, and nuclear power-generating stations, in the United States so effective in some areas that a lot of generating plants have been blocked or slowed down in their construction. And I think that the United States government is about to launch on an enormous effort to calm the public and to lull it into accepting massive developments of nuclear energy generating centres, fast-breeder and later, perhaps, fusion. Now I myself would have no objection to such a thing if I could be convinced that it was safe, both in the long term and the short term, and although it might be conceivably safe in the short term, I can see no way in which it would be safe in the long run, because nuclear wastes accumulated over, say, several centuries, as they might be, or more, in increasing quantities around the globe, are going to out eventually, and even though you can say, well, we're putting it off for five hundred thousand years, five hundred thousand years is not a very long time.  And if we are feeding a wasteful, industrial, technological, consumer society for a few more centuries, buying it a few more centuries of life, at the expense of all future biological health on the planet, it's obviously not worth it. The Amchitka test, which is possibly interested in such things as what uses very large explosions would have in releasing oil from oil-bearing shale or something like that, I think the U.S. administration is going ahead with this test in the face of all this criticism, deliberately, as a deliberate and very intelligent gamble. The chances are that nothing will happen. When nothing happens, then they will be able to say, \\\"All you people were hysterical. You see?  Nothing happened\\\".  And that will buy them a lot of time and a lot of credibility to proceed strongly and forcibly with more nuclear testing and more nuclear power generation development. And the conservationists, perhaps, have in a way, played into their hands, by making such a big issue out of it, so that they will be left holding an empty bag if nothing happens. If something does happen, then the administration can say, \\\"You're right, we were wrong\\\", and Nixon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9588] perhaps forfeits the next election. That's all. Okay. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:15:25.61\\n\\\"Mountains and Rivers Without End\\\" is a poem that I've been working on, it's a long poem, a long series of interconnected long poems that I've been working on for some years. I'm going to read several sections from that tonight. Including one or two that are very recent, in fact these are all pretty recent. \\\"Mountains and Rivers without End\\\". The title of the poem comes from a Yuan Dynasty [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7313] Chinese scroll, that unfolds sideways and is thirty-five feet long. By way of introduction, a little poem called \\\"The Rabbit\\\". There are many sections to this, I'm only going to read [counts under breath.]..six tonight.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:16:27\\nReads \\\"The Rabbit\\\" [published later in Mountains and Rivers Without End].\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:18:04\\n\\\"The California Water Plan\\\". The state of California at the moment is engaged in a large, incredibly wasteful, incredibly stupid, illegal, even by their own terms, water plan project, which if they're lucky, will salinate the Sacramento Valley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1686914] and make agriculture permanently impossible. I was up in the Minarets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2412852] in the Sierra last summer, thinking about the California Water Plan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28228216], and I perceived something of what the true California Water Plan was. So I wrote this down. It refers to an obscure little Buddhist god called Fudo, or Achala [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q337624], who is my particular guardian, my personal guardian and my personal teacher, and, so I use, I refer to him, in several poems. The other two poems in which I refer to him actually are a piece called \\\"Smokey the Bear Sutra\\\", and another piece called \\\"Spell Against Demons\\\". This is the final, actually, this is the third and final poem in the trilogy of Fudo poems. Also. But you'll find all about Fudo in this poem, it'll drive you crazy.    \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:19:48\\nReads \\\"The California Water Plan\\\" [later published in The Fudo Trilogy].\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:25:34\\n\\\"Kumarajiva's Mother\\\". Now, the rest of these poems that I'm going to read this evening are cutting back and forth between ancient India [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q668] and ancient North America. I--living as I do and where I have lived all my life, we face the Pacific [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98]. And, the American Indian came from Asia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48], or vice versa, the Asians came from North America. I mean I know a Shoshone who says that. He says, \\\"We've always been here, those Asians came from here\\\". [Laughter].  \\\"What do you mean we came from someplace else, that's some white anthropologist theory\\\". [Laughter]. \\\"Kumarajiva's Mother.\\\" Kumarajiva [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q335293] was a great Buddhist monk-scholar-translator, who was kidnapped by the Chinese from Central Asia, by force, and carried off to China [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q148] where he was made to translate Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese, and he stayed there the rest of his life, with a crew of about eighty Chinese assistants, day and night, translating sutras. He did a lot of translation. He also got in trouble, because he liked girls, and on one occasion, because he actually had mistresses apparently, he ate a bowl of needles, like you sew with needles, in front of an assembly of all the monks and assistants in Peking [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q956], or no it wasn't Peking in those days, it was Chang'an [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6501000], all of the monks and assistants in the capital, Chang'an, and then he said, \\\"When you boys can eat needles, you can have girlfriends too\\\". [Audience laughter]. But this poem is about his mother. [Audience laughter]. And I really, I mean I could explain to you why I wrote this poem but it isn't really worth explaining, I'll just read it. It has to do partly with the fact that my mother has freckles. And I was trying to figure out at this time, when I wrote this, I was trying to figure out whatever happened to women in Buddhism? Like something happened to 'em. They got lost. For a long time, anyway.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:28:22\\nReads \\\"Kumarajiva's Mother\\\".\\n \\nEND\\n00:30:59\\n\",\"notes\":\"I006-11-106=AC.2\\n00:02- Gary Snyder introduces “The Call of the Wild”. [INDEX: true; from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974).]\\n00:17- Reads “The Call of the Wild”, Part I.\\n00:32- Reads “The Call of the Wild”, Part II.\\n01:52- Reads “The Call of the Wild”, Part III.\\n04:11- Reads “Source”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974).]\\n05:40- Introduces “Charms”. [INDEX: dedicated to Michael McClure, consciousness of other beings; from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974).]\\n06:15- Reads “Charms”.\\n08:01- Introduces “The Dead by the Side of the Road” [INDEX: wrote on the plane the        previous day; from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974)]\\n08:15- Reads “The Dead by the Side of the Road”.\\n09:55- Break is taken, audience member #1 asks question. [INDEX: suggests small anti-war children’s toys.]\\n11:26- Audience member #2 asks question (part is cut). [INDEX: books, bookstore, writing play]\\n12:21- Gary Snyder speaks about opposition to nuclear energy. [INDEX: nuclear energy, nuclear power-generating stations, U.S. government, energy generating centres, industrial technological consumer society, expense on the future biological health of the planet, Amchitka test, oil-bearing shale, conservationists, Nixon, election.]\\n15:25- Introduces “Mountains and Rivers Without End” and “The Rabbit”. [INDEX: long \\tpoem, inter-connected long poems, reading several sections from it, title from Yuan     \\tDynasty Chinese scroll, little poem called “The Rabbit”, many sections- only reading 6;   \\tperhaps published as “Jackrabbit”, published much later in Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint, 1997).]\\n16:27- Reads “The Rabbit”.\\n18:04- Introduces “The California Water Plan”. [INDEX: state of California, water plan      project, salinate the Sacramento Valley and make the Sacramento Valley agriculturally  \\tdead, Minarets in the Sierra, Buddhist god called Fudo or Achala, personal guardian or    teacher, other two poems that reference Buddhist god: “Smokey the Bear Sutra” and “Spell Against Demons”, third poem in trilogy of Fudo poems; from The Fudo Trilogy      \\t(Shaman Drum, 1973).]\\n19:48- Reads “The California Water Plan”.\\n25:34- Introduces “Kumarajiva’s Mother”. [INDEX: rest of poems read are from ancient India and ancient North America, Pacific Ocean, American Indians from Asia or vice versa, Shoshone, white anthropologist theory, Kumarajiva was Buddhist monk-scholar-  \\ttranslator, Central Asia, China, translated Sanskrit Buddhist texts to Chinese, translating sutras, Peking (or Chang’an), Snyder’s mother, women in Buddhism; from unknown         source.]\\n28:22- Reads “Kumarajiva’s Mother”.\\n30:59- CUT made in tape, Snyder begins mid-sentence, introduces “The Humpbacked Flute Player”. [INDEX: 8th century, Mahayana university called NAllenda, China, Buddhism, school of the Mind Only, the school of Emptiness, two aspects of the poem, American Indian petroglyph figure of a hump-backed flute player, Sonora, Mexico, Great Basin, The Ghost Dance (Messianic Indian Religion started by a Paiute named Wovoka), oldest living beings are the bristle-coned pine, White Mountains, California; published in Coyote’s Journal 9 (1971) and in Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint, 1997).]\\n32:59- Reads “The Humpbacked Flute Player”.\\n39:36- Introduces “Down”. [INDEX: ordering of poems; from unknown source.]\\n40:05- Reads “Down”.\\n43:18- Introducer Richard Sommer thanks Gary Snyder, announces Charles Simic’s     \\treading. [INDEX: Charles Simic, November 19th, 1971.]\\n \\nSECOND CD (I006-11-106=AC.2) \\nPoems Read                                   \\t\\t\\t\\tTime Stamp:  Duration:\\n“The Call of the Wild” – Part I                                          \\t00:00:17      \\t00:16\\n“The Call of the Wild” – Part II                                         \\t00:00:32      \\t01:17\\n“The Call of the Wild” – Part III                                        \\t00:01:52      \\t02:15\\n“Source”                                                                             \\t00:04:11      \\t01:27\\n“Charms”                                                                            \\t00:06:15      \\t01:29\\n“The Dead by the Side of the Road”                                  \\t00:08:15      \\t01:40\\n“The Rabbit”                                                                       \\t00:16:27      \\t01:35\\n“The California Water Plan”                                  \\t        \\t00:19:48      \\t05:45\\n“Kumurajiva’s Mother”      \\t                                            \\t00:28:22      \\t02:36\\n“The Hump-Backed Flute Player”                                     \\t00:32:59      \\t06:34\\n“Down”                                                                               \\t00:40:05      \\t02:42\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#3\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/gary_snyder_i006-11-106-4.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-4.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:12:45\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"30.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"gary_snyder_i006-11-106-4.mp3 [File 4 of 4]\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:00:00\\n...alone in the 8th century, and studied at an enormous Buddhist, Mahayana university called Nalanda [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q216243], for fifteen years, and then walked back to China, with a fraying pack full of books, which he translated for the next twenty years after he got back to China. He brought the school of Buddhism, which is called the school of Mind Only, and the school of Emptiness. That's one aspect of this next poem. Another aspect is a little petroglyph, American Indian petroglyph figure, called the hump-backed flute player, a little stick figure playing the flute, with a pack on his back, walking. He was found pecked on the rocks from Sonora [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46422], Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] up into the Great Basin, and about which almost nothing is known. The Ghost Dance, which was a Messianic Indian religion, started by a Paiute named Wovoka https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q558420], which asserted that perhaps by magic the white man could be swept away from North America and the game would return.  And finally, the oldest living beings are the bristle-coned pine, who live in the White Mountains [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1556007], at an elevation of nine thousand feet in eastern California, the oldest of which is something like four thousand five hundred years old. So this poem is called \\\"The Humpbacked Flute Player\\\".\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:01:59\\nReads \\\"The Humpbacked Flute Player\\\" from Coyote’s Journal #9 [and published later in Mountains and Rivers Without End]. \\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:08:36\\nI'm going to finish with one more poem called \\\"Down\\\". These poems are not in the order that they're going to be, but they're in a convenient order for the moment.\\n \\nGary Snyder\\n00:09:05\\nReads \\\"Down\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:11:48\\nApplause.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:12:18\\nI can't thank you for that. I don't know any way. Charles Simic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q722555] will be reading on November 19th. Thank you. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:12:40 \\nApplause.\\n\\nEND\\n00:12:45\\n\",\"notes\":\"I006-11-106=AC.2\\n00:02- Gary Snyder introduces “The Call of the Wild”. [INDEX: true; from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974).]\\n00:17- Reads “The Call of the Wild”, Part I.\\n00:32- Reads “The Call of the Wild”, Part II.\\n01:52- Reads “The Call of the Wild”, Part III.\\n04:11- Reads “Source”. [INDEX: from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974).]\\n05:40- Introduces “Charms”. [INDEX: dedicated to Michael McClure, consciousness of other beings; from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974).]\\n06:15- Reads “Charms”.\\n08:01- Introduces “The Dead by the Side of the Road” [INDEX: wrote on the plane the        previous day; from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974)]\\n08:15- Reads “The Dead by the Side of the Road”.\\n09:55- Break is taken, audience member #1 asks question. [INDEX: suggests small anti-war children’s toys.]\\n11:26- Audience member #2 asks question (part is cut). [INDEX: books, bookstore, writing play]\\n12:21- Gary Snyder speaks about opposition to nuclear energy. [INDEX: nuclear energy, nuclear power-generating stations, U.S. government, energy generating centres, industrial technological consumer society, expense on the future biological health of the planet, Amchitka test, oil-bearing shale, conservationists, Nixon, election.]\\n15:25- Introduces “Mountains and Rivers Without End” and “The Rabbit”. [INDEX: long \\tpoem, inter-connected long poems, reading several sections from it, title from Yuan     \\tDynasty Chinese scroll, little poem called “The Rabbit”, many sections- only reading 6;   \\tperhaps published as “Jackrabbit”, published much later in Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint, 1997).]\\n16:27- Reads “The Rabbit”.\\n18:04- Introduces “The California Water Plan”. [INDEX: state of California, water plan      project, salinate the Sacramento Valley and make the Sacramento Valley agriculturally  \\tdead, Minarets in the Sierra, Buddhist god called Fudo or Achala, personal guardian or    teacher, other two poems that reference Buddhist god: “Smokey the Bear Sutra” and “Spell Against Demons”, third poem in trilogy of Fudo poems; from The Fudo Trilogy      \\t(Shaman Drum, 1973).]\\n19:48- Reads “The California Water Plan”.\\n25:34- Introduces “Kumarajiva’s Mother”. [INDEX: rest of poems read are from ancient India and ancient North America, Pacific Ocean, American Indians from Asia or vice versa, Shoshone, white anthropologist theory, Kumarajiva was Buddhist monk-scholar-  \\ttranslator, Central Asia, China, translated Sanskrit Buddhist texts to Chinese, translating sutras, Peking (or Chang’an), Snyder’s mother, women in Buddhism; from unknown         source.]\\n28:22- Reads “Kumarajiva’s Mother”.\\n30:59- CUT made in tape, Snyder begins mid-sentence, introduces “The Humpbacked Flute Player”. [INDEX: 8th century, Mahayana university called NAllenda, China, Buddhism, school of the Mind Only, the school of Emptiness, two aspects of the poem, American Indian petroglyph figure of a hump-backed flute player, Sonora, Mexico, Great Basin, The Ghost Dance (Messianic Indian Religion started by a Paiute named Wovoka), oldest living beings are the bristle-coned pine, White Mountains, California; published in Coyote’s Journal 9 (1971) and in Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint, 1997).]\\n32:59- Reads “The Humpbacked Flute Player”.\\n39:36- Introduces “Down”. [INDEX: ordering of poems; from unknown source.]\\n40:05- Reads “Down”.\\n43:18- Introducer Richard Sommer thanks Gary Snyder, announces Charles Simic’s     \\treading. [INDEX: Charles Simic, November 19th, 1971.]\\n \\nSECOND CD (I006-11-106=AC.2) \\nPoems Read                                   \\t\\t\\t\\tTime Stamp:  Duration:\\n“The Call of the Wild” – Part I                                          \\t00:00:17      \\t00:16\\n“The Call of the Wild” – Part II                                         \\t00:00:32      \\t01:17\\n“The Call of the Wild” – Part III                                        \\t00:01:52      \\t02:15\\n“Source”                                                                             \\t00:04:11      \\t01:27\\n“Charms”                                                                            \\t00:06:15      \\t01:29\\n“The Dead by the Side of the Road”                                  \\t00:08:15      \\t01:40\\n“The Rabbit”                                                                       \\t00:16:27      \\t01:35\\n“The California Water Plan”                                  \\t        \\t00:19:48      \\t05:45\\n“Kumurajiva’s Mother”      \\t                                            \\t00:28:22      \\t02:36\\n“The Hump-Backed Flute Player”                                     \\t00:32:59      \\t06:34\\n“Down”                                                                               \\t00:40:05      \\t02:42\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#4\"}]"],"score":1.7444024},{"id":"1297","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Charles Simic at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 19 November 1971"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"POETRY READING CHARLES SIMAC #1 I006/SR115.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. CHARLES SIMAC refers to Charles Simic. SIMAC is misspelled. |I006-11-115.1\" written on sticker on the reel.\n\n\"POETRY READING CHARLES SIMAC #2 I006/SR115.2\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. CHARLES SIMAC refers to Charles Simic. SIMAC is misspelled. \"I006-11-115.2\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 6"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-115.1, I006-11-115.2]"],"creator_names":["Simic, Charles"],"creator_names_search":["Simic, Charles"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/22044\",\"name\":\"Simic, Charles\",\"dates\":\" 1938-\",\"notes\":\"Poet, essayist and teacher Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on May 9, 1938 to Serbian parents. During his childhood, Simic witnessed both the military occupation by the Nazis during the Second World War, and then by the Soviet Union. His family left Yugoslavia for Paris in 1953, and then to Chicago in 1954. His first poem was published in the Chicago Review in 1959 when Simic was 19 years old. In 1961, Simic was enlisted in the US Army, and served until 1963 when he moved to New York City and enrolled in New York University. Simic met his future wife, designer Helene Dubin, with whom he had two children. Upon graduation with a B.A. in Russian in 1966, he worked as an editorial assistant for Aperture, a photography magazine. Simic’s first collection of poems, What the Grass Says (Kayak) was published in 1967 and was followed in 1969 with Somewhere Among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes (Kayak), and a number of anthologies, including Young American Poets (Follett Publishing Co, 1968), Contemporary American Poets (World Publishing Company, 1969), and Major Young American Poets (World Publishing Co, 1971). In 1970, Simic began teaching English at the University of California at Hayward, and earned a PEN International Award for his translation of Fire Gardens (New Rivers Press), written by Ivan V. Lalic. At that time, Simic also published an anthology of translations Four Modern Yugoslav Poets: Ivan V. Lalic, Branko Miljkovic, Milorad Pavic, Ljubomir Simovic, translations of Vasko Popa’s The Little Box (Charioteer Press, 1970) and his own collection of poetry, Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971). Simic then received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, published White (New Rivers Press, 1972) and took a position of associate professor at the University of New Hampshire in 1973, which he would hold for over thirty years. A wildly prolific writer, Simic published poetry, translations and non-fiction, including Charon’s Cosmology (G. Braziller, 1977) which won the National Book Award, School for Dark Thoughts (Banyan Press, 1978), Classic Ballroom Dances (G. Braziller, 1980) which won both the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award and the Di Castagnola Award, Austerities (G. Braziller, 1982), Weather Forecast for Utopia and Vicinity (Station Hill Press, 1983), Unending Blues (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), Brooms: Selected Poems (Edge, 1978), Selected Poems 1963-1983 (G. Braziller, 1985), The World Doesn’t End (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989) which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990, The Book of Gods and Devils (Harcourt Brace, 1990) and Hotel Insomnia (Harcourt, 1992). The 1990s saw Simic publishing numerous translations from Yugoslavian poets. Collections of Simic’s essays and memoirs include The Unemployed Fortune-Teller (Michigan Press, 1994), Orphan Factory (University of Michigan, 1997), Walking the Black Cat (Harcourt Brace & Co, 1996) and his more recent poetry collection The Voice at 3:00 am: Selected Late and New Poems (A.W. Ellsworth, 2003). In 2007, Simic was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate. Simic resides in Strafford, New Hampshire.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1971],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1971 11 19\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified by Richard Somner in I006-11-106.4\",\"source\":\"Previous recording \"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Charles Simic reads mostly from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971) as well as  a selection of, at the time, new and unpublished poems from a notebook that would later be published in Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (G. Braziller, 1974) and Selected Early Poems (G. Braziller, 1999)."],"contents":["charles_simic_i006-11-115-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nIntroducer\n00:00:05\nA short quotation which appears in the Contributors' Notes to Paul Carroll's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15459057] anthology The Young American Poets. Quote: “As far back as I can remember there was a kind of dumbness within me, a need that sought expression. How it eventually materialized in the act of writing a poem belongs to a biography which I have only been able to recount in a few successful poems. As for the finished product, the poem, my need requires it to be of, as Whitman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81438] said, the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, and further, if they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing. On a subjective level, I write to give being to that vibration which is my life, and to survive in a hard time”. Charles Simic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q722555].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:00:57\nThank you. Is this mic also for the audience or just for the tape? Oh it is, okay. I'll be reading mostly from my third book, including also some more recent poems. And I'll start off with a very recent poem which is called \"Breasts\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:02:07\nReads \"Breasts\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:05:05\nThis is not from the book. A series of poems really dealing with inanimate objects. And the first poem in the series is called \"Table\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:05:27\nReads \"Table\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:06:55\nReads \"Stone\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:08:14\nThere's a poem about a fork, and also a poem about a spoon and knife, and I'll read \"The Fork\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:08:26\nReads \"The Fork\" Dismantling the Silence.\n\nCharles Simic\n00:09:12\nReads \"My Shoes\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:10:42\nThe last one of these has not been included in the book. I only discovered it about a year ago, in a notebook, but it was written around the same time, and I've sort of been fooling around with it. It's called \"Brooms\".  There's five parts. I'll just make a little pause within each part.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:11:13\nReads \"Brooms\", Part I [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:11:43\nReads \"Brooms\", Part II [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:12:41\nReads \"Brooms\", Part III [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:13:24\nReads \"Brooms\", Part IV [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:14:06\nReads \"Brooms\", Part V [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:14:55\nI'll read you the last poem of, in the book of this particular series, which really has nothing to do with objects, but it's a poem in which I imagine what would happen if someone really penetrated one of these inanimate objects, like his pores, kind of a Christopher Columbus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7322] of entering an ashtray or something. It's called \"Explorers\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:15:33\nReads \"Explorers\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:17:13\nLet's see. This is, this is called \"The Inner Man\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:17:40\nReads \"The Inner Man\" from  Dismantling the Silence.\n\nCharles Simic\n00:19:06\nThis poem, this next poem is called \"The Animals\". I wrote it in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], after living in New York City for about five-six years, and lamenting the pastoral quality of my first book, and my inability to return to that kind of nature poetry. I realized that I hadn't seen a tree or an animal in about three or four years, and yet at the same time writing, you know, occasionally about some cows, or, you know, and I was saying, what are these animals, you know, these shadowy animals. Anyway, here's the poem. \"The Animals\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:19:46\nReads \"The Animals\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:21:07\nLet's see. Sort of change to some different kinds of poems. Here's a poem about Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297]. Going back to Chicago. And, to see my mother. And...it's all there anyway. Hopefully. There's seven parts.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:22:03\nReads \"Chicago\", Part I.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:22:43\nReads \"Chicago\", Part II.\n\nCharles Simic\n00:23:17\nReads \"Chicago\", Part III.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:23:57\nReads \"Chicago\", Part IV.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:24:35\nReads \"Chicago\", Part V.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:25:06\nReads \"Chicago\", Part VI.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:25:33\nReads \"Chicago\", Part VII.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:26:39\nLet's see. I can't find it. Maybe it's not written yet. Oh here it is, yeah. \n \nCharles Simic\n00:27:01\nReads \"Tapestry\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:28:15\nThis is a very different kind of poem. The material for the the poem is, are, cliches, working with, with awful cliches, things which were totally beaten to death and, you know, can't be used anymore. Or proverbs, popular wisdom, and I'm twisting it all around, trying to reverse the kind of universe that is implied by, by let's say proverbs, if you get up in the morning and such and such a thing happens. There is something very deterministic about it, and to reverse that, to give it a little fresh air, I'll turn it around. And so I have a sequence of six poems which are entirely made up of these things, and they're called, the common title is \"Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites\", and the...why the Hittites [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5406]...why not? [Laughter]. Hittites were simply something that I had not the slightest idea about and I sort of saw ourselves one day becoming the Hittites, you know, somebody sitting one day in some future century and, our century being, sort of the Hittites, you know. And so there are six poems, and, I guess that's about all to be said.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:29:58\nReads \"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\", Part I [published later in Selected Early Poems].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:31:21\nReads \"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\", Part II [published later in Selected Early Poems].\n \nUnknown\n00:32:09\nSilence [pause].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:33:20\nReads \"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\", Part III [published later in Selected Early Poems].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:34:20\nReads \"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\", Part IV [ [published later in Selected Early Poems; includes extra stanzas not included in the published version of the poem].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:35:12\nReads \"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\", Part V [published later in Selected Early Poems].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:36:14\nReads \"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\", Part VI [published later in Selected Early Poems].\n\nCharles Simic\n00:36:23\nDo you, we need a break? Should we take a break? Huh? No, yes. No. Take a break. Yeah, let's take a ten-minute break.  \n\nAudience\n00:36:30\nApplause [cut off].\n \nEND\n00:36:39\n\n\ncharles_simic_i006-11-115-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nCharles Simic\n00:00:00\nI was asking [Ksemi Rothers (?)] about, you know, who are my great grand-uncles, and great-grandfathers and so on, and I found out that they all were killed or disappeared in some completely forgotten nineteenth-century Balkan wars which no one knows anymore the cause or the reason or why they were started. And so this poem kind of happened out of that. It's called \"Marching\". \n \nCharles Simic \n00:00:47\nReads \"Marching\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:03:28\nThis is a kind of a, you could say that it's sort of an elegy for my father, in seven parts.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:03:47\nReads “George Simic” [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:07:44\nThis is a love poem. I have a series of love poems in the new book but this is one of them. And I might use the title of this poem as the title of the new book. The title is \"Return to a place lit by a glass of milk\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:08:08\nReads \"Return to a place lit by a glass of milk\" [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\n \nCharles Simic\n00:09:20\nI want to read a couple more poems now. \"Dismantling the Silence\".\n \nCharles Simicn\n00:09:54\nReads \"Dismantling the Silence\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:11:17\nThe last poem in this book is called \"Errata\" for the good reason that after I finished the book I felt again, you know, a sense of frustration. I didn't say everything. And so each of the lines in this particular poem are really, refer to actual lines in the book. I'm kind of correcting myself. \"Errata\".\n \nCharles Simic\n00:11:53\nReads \"Errata\" from Dismantling the Silence.\n \nCharles Simic\n00:13:20\nThank you.  \n\nAudience\n00:13:23\nApplause.\n \nIntroducer\n00:13:35\nThe next reading will be on January 14th. Dorothy Livesay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1250325] will read that night.\n \nEND\n00:13:44\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1971, Simic was teaching at the University of California at Hayward, and had published his third book, Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAny specific connections Simic had with Montreal or Sir George Williams University are unknown at this point, but Simic was an important and influential figure in American poetry, which no doubt had an impact on Canadian writers.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones \\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>CD>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/young-american-poets/oclc/1071394844&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Carroll, Paul. The Young American Poets. Chicago: Big Table Publishing, 1970. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hart, Henry. \\\"Simic, Charles\\\". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (ed). Oxford University Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=H0EjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=36EFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6219,3330526&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“General: Poetry Reading”. The Gazette. 19 November 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/concise-oxford-companion-to-english-literature/oclc/869601178&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Simic, Charles\\\". The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer (eds). Oxford University Press, 2007. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/750769493&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Simic, Charles\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press, 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-english-literature/oclc/937869384&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Simic, Charles”. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Dinah Birch (ed). Oxford University Press, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dismantling-the-silence/oclc/1154942465&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Simic, Charles. Dismantling the Silence. New York: Braziller, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/return-to-a-place-lit-by-a-glass-of-milk/oclc/1154834086&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Simic, Charles. Return to a place lit by a glass of milk. New York: Braziller, 1974.  \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/charles-simic-selected-early-poems/oclc/1101269207&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Simic, Charles. Selected Early Poems. New York: Braziller, 1999. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Simic, Charles, 1938-”. Literature Online Bibliography. Cambridge, UK: Proquest LLC, 2008.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548945502208,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0115-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0115-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Charles Simic Tape Box 1 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0115-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0115-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Charles Simic Tape Box 1 - 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Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/charles_simic_i006-11-115-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"charles_simic_i006-11-115-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:36:39\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"88 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"charles_simic_i006-11-115-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nIntroducer\\n00:00:05\\nA short quotation which appears in the Contributors' Notes to Paul Carroll's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15459057] anthology The Young American Poets. Quote: “As far back as I can remember there was a kind of dumbness within me, a need that sought expression. How it eventually materialized in the act of writing a poem belongs to a biography which I have only been able to recount in a few successful poems. As for the finished product, the poem, my need requires it to be of, as Whitman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81438] said, the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, and further, if they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing. On a subjective level, I write to give being to that vibration which is my life, and to survive in a hard time”. Charles Simic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q722555].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:00:57\\nThank you. Is this mic also for the audience or just for the tape? Oh it is, okay. I'll be reading mostly from my third book, including also some more recent poems. And I'll start off with a very recent poem which is called \\\"Breasts\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:02:07\\nReads \\\"Breasts\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:05:05\\nThis is not from the book. A series of poems really dealing with inanimate objects. And the first poem in the series is called \\\"Table\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:05:27\\nReads \\\"Table\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:06:55\\nReads \\\"Stone\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:08:14\\nThere's a poem about a fork, and also a poem about a spoon and knife, and I'll read \\\"The Fork\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:08:26\\nReads \\\"The Fork\\\" Dismantling the Silence.\\n\\nCharles Simic\\n00:09:12\\nReads \\\"My Shoes\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:10:42\\nThe last one of these has not been included in the book. I only discovered it about a year ago, in a notebook, but it was written around the same time, and I've sort of been fooling around with it. It's called \\\"Brooms\\\".  There's five parts. I'll just make a little pause within each part.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:11:13\\nReads \\\"Brooms\\\", Part I [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:11:43\\nReads \\\"Brooms\\\", Part II [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:12:41\\nReads \\\"Brooms\\\", Part III [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:13:24\\nReads \\\"Brooms\\\", Part IV [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:14:06\\nReads \\\"Brooms\\\", Part V [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:14:55\\nI'll read you the last poem of, in the book of this particular series, which really has nothing to do with objects, but it's a poem in which I imagine what would happen if someone really penetrated one of these inanimate objects, like his pores, kind of a Christopher Columbus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7322] of entering an ashtray or something. It's called \\\"Explorers\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:15:33\\nReads \\\"Explorers\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:17:13\\nLet's see. This is, this is called \\\"The Inner Man\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:17:40\\nReads \\\"The Inner Man\\\" from  Dismantling the Silence.\\n\\nCharles Simic\\n00:19:06\\nThis poem, this next poem is called \\\"The Animals\\\". I wrote it in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], after living in New York City for about five-six years, and lamenting the pastoral quality of my first book, and my inability to return to that kind of nature poetry. I realized that I hadn't seen a tree or an animal in about three or four years, and yet at the same time writing, you know, occasionally about some cows, or, you know, and I was saying, what are these animals, you know, these shadowy animals. Anyway, here's the poem. \\\"The Animals\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:19:46\\nReads \\\"The Animals\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:21:07\\nLet's see. Sort of change to some different kinds of poems. Here's a poem about Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297]. Going back to Chicago. And, to see my mother. And...it's all there anyway. Hopefully. There's seven parts.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:22:03\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part I.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:22:43\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part II.\\n\\nCharles Simic\\n00:23:17\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part III.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:23:57\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part IV.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:24:35\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part V.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:25:06\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part VI.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:25:33\\nReads \\\"Chicago\\\", Part VII.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:26:39\\nLet's see. I can't find it. Maybe it's not written yet. Oh here it is, yeah. \\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:27:01\\nReads \\\"Tapestry\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:28:15\\nThis is a very different kind of poem. The material for the the poem is, are, cliches, working with, with awful cliches, things which were totally beaten to death and, you know, can't be used anymore. Or proverbs, popular wisdom, and I'm twisting it all around, trying to reverse the kind of universe that is implied by, by let's say proverbs, if you get up in the morning and such and such a thing happens. There is something very deterministic about it, and to reverse that, to give it a little fresh air, I'll turn it around. And so I have a sequence of six poems which are entirely made up of these things, and they're called, the common title is \\\"Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", and the...why the Hittites [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5406]...why not? [Laughter]. Hittites were simply something that I had not the slightest idea about and I sort of saw ourselves one day becoming the Hittites, you know, somebody sitting one day in some future century and, our century being, sort of the Hittites, you know. And so there are six poems, and, I guess that's about all to be said.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:29:58\\nReads \\\"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", Part I [published later in Selected Early Poems].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:31:21\\nReads \\\"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", Part II [published later in Selected Early Poems].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:32:09\\nSilence [pause].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:33:20\\nReads \\\"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", Part III [published later in Selected Early Poems].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:34:20\\nReads \\\"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", Part IV [ [published later in Selected Early Poems; includes extra stanzas not included in the published version of the poem].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:35:12\\nReads \\\"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", Part V [published later in Selected Early Poems].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:36:14\\nReads \\\"Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites\\\", Part VI [published later in Selected Early Poems].\\n\\nCharles Simic\\n00:36:23\\nDo you, we need a break? Should we take a break? Huh? No, yes. No. Take a break. Yeah, let's take a ten-minute break.  \\n\\nAudience\\n00:36:30\\nApplause [cut off].\\n \\nEND\\n00:36:39\\n\",\"notes\":\"Charles Simic reads mostly from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971) as well as  a selection of, at the time, new and unpublished poems from a notebook that would later be published in Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (G. Braziller, 1974) and Selected Early Poems (G. Braziller, 1999). \\n\\n00:00- Unknown introducer introduces Charles Simic. [INDEX: quotation from the Contributor's notes to Paul Carroll’s anthology, The Young American Poets, Walt Whitman.]\\n00:57- Charles Simic introduces reading, and “Breasts”. [INDEX: reading from his third book (Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)), as well as recent poems; this poem        published in 1974 in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk (G. Braziller, 1974).]      \\n02:07- Reads “Breasts”.\\n05:05- Introduces “Table”. [INDEX: not from the book Dismantling the Silence, dealing with inanimate objects.]\\n05:27- Reads “Table”.\\n06:55- Reads “Stone”. [INDEX: from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n08:14- Introduces “The Fork”. [INDEX: poem about a spoon and a knife]\\n08:26- Reads “The Fork”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n09:12- Reads “My Shoes”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n10:42- Introduces “Brooms”, parts I-V. [INDEX: written in a notebook, not included in   published book with others; published in 1974 in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk \\t(G. Braziller, 1974).]\\n11:13- Reads “Brooms” Part I.\\n11:43- Reads “Brooms” Part II.\\n12:41- Reads “Brooms” Part III.\\n13:24- Reads “Brooms” Part IV.\\n14:06- Reads “Brooms” Part V.\\n14:55- Introduces “Explorers” [INDEX: last poem in book of particular series, Christopher Columbus entering an ashtray.] \\n15:33- Reads “Explorers”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n17:13- Reads “The Inner Man”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n19:06- Introduces “The Animals”. [INDEX: written in NYC, pastoral quality of first book,     inability to return to nature poetry, pastoral animals.]\\n19:46- Reads “The Animals”. [INDEX: in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).]\\n21:07- Introduces “Chicago”, parts I-VII. [INDEX: about going back to Chicago, Simic’s      mother, perhaps not in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).]\\n22:03- Reads “Chicago” Part I.\\n22:43- Reads “Chicago” Part II.\\n23:17- Reads “Chicago” Part III.\\n23:57- Reads “Chicago” Part IV.\\n24:35- Reads “Chicago” Part V.\\n25:06- Reads “Chicago” Part VI.\\n25:33- Reads “Chicago” Part VII.\\n27:01- Reads “Tapestry”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n28:15- Introduces “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites”, Parts I-VI. [INDEX: writing with cliches, proverbs, popular wisdom to twist them around, Hittites.]\\n29:58- Reads “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites” Part I.\\n31:21- Reads “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites” Part II.\\n33:20- Reading interrupted by pause, either Part II is continued or part III begins. [INDEX: discrepancies between published versions and the reading are noted here.]\\n34:20- Reads “Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites” Part IV.\\n35:12- Reads “Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites” Part V.\\n36:14- Reads “Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites” Part VI.\\n36:39- Introduces “Marching”. [INDEX: Ksemi Rothers, Simic’s ancestors, Balkan wars, most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).]\\n37:27- Reads “Marching”.\\n40:08- Introduces “Elegy for my father” [INDEX: elegy for Simic’s father, seven parts; published in 1974 as “George Simic” in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk (G.   \\tBraziller, 1974).]\\n40:27- Reads “Elegy for my father”.\\n44:24- Introduces “Return to a place lit by a glass of milk”. [INDEX: love poem, might use title for title of new book.]\\n44:47- Reads “Return to a place lit by a glass of milk”. [INDEX: published in 1974 in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk (G. Braziller, 1974)]\\n46:34- Reads “Dismantling the Silence”. [INDEX: from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n47:57- Introduces “Errata”. [INDEX: after finishing a book felt a sense of frustration of not being able to say everything, each line refers to actual lines in the book.]\\n48:33- Reads “Errata”.\\n50:15- Unknown speaker announces next reading [Dorothy Livesay on January 14.]\\n50:24.10- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-simic-at-sgwu-1971/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/charles_simic_i006-11-115-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"charles_simic_i006-11-115-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:13:44\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"33 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"charles_simic_i006-11-115-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nCharles Simic\\n00:00:00\\nI was asking [Ksemi Rothers (?)] about, you know, who are my great grand-uncles, and great-grandfathers and so on, and I found out that they all were killed or disappeared in some completely forgotten nineteenth-century Balkan wars which no one knows anymore the cause or the reason or why they were started. And so this poem kind of happened out of that. It's called \\\"Marching\\\". \\n \\nCharles Simic \\n00:00:47\\nReads \\\"Marching\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:03:28\\nThis is a kind of a, you could say that it's sort of an elegy for my father, in seven parts.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:03:47\\nReads “George Simic” [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:07:44\\nThis is a love poem. I have a series of love poems in the new book but this is one of them. And I might use the title of this poem as the title of the new book. The title is \\\"Return to a place lit by a glass of milk\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:08:08\\nReads \\\"Return to a place lit by a glass of milk\\\" [published later in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk].\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:09:20\\nI want to read a couple more poems now. \\\"Dismantling the Silence\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simicn\\n00:09:54\\nReads \\\"Dismantling the Silence\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:11:17\\nThe last poem in this book is called \\\"Errata\\\" for the good reason that after I finished the book I felt again, you know, a sense of frustration. I didn't say everything. And so each of the lines in this particular poem are really, refer to actual lines in the book. I'm kind of correcting myself. \\\"Errata\\\".\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:11:53\\nReads \\\"Errata\\\" from Dismantling the Silence.\\n \\nCharles Simic\\n00:13:20\\nThank you.  \\n\\nAudience\\n00:13:23\\nApplause.\\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:13:35\\nThe next reading will be on January 14th. Dorothy Livesay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1250325] will read that night.\\n \\nEND\\n00:13:44\\n\",\"notes\":\"Charles Simic reads mostly from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971) as well as  a selection of, at the time, new and unpublished poems from a notebook that would later be published in Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (G. Braziller, 1974) and Selected Early Poems (G. Braziller, 1999). \\n\\n00:00- Unknown introducer introduces Charles Simic. [INDEX: quotation from the Contributor's notes to Paul Carroll’s anthology, The Young American Poets, Walt Whitman.]\\n00:57- Charles Simic introduces reading, and “Breasts”. [INDEX: reading from his third book (Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)), as well as recent poems; this poem        published in 1974 in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk (G. Braziller, 1974).]      \\n02:07- Reads “Breasts”.\\n05:05- Introduces “Table”. [INDEX: not from the book Dismantling the Silence, dealing with inanimate objects.]\\n05:27- Reads “Table”.\\n06:55- Reads “Stone”. [INDEX: from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n08:14- Introduces “The Fork”. [INDEX: poem about a spoon and a knife]\\n08:26- Reads “The Fork”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n09:12- Reads “My Shoes”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n10:42- Introduces “Brooms”, parts I-V. [INDEX: written in a notebook, not included in   published book with others; published in 1974 in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk \\t(G. Braziller, 1974).]\\n11:13- Reads “Brooms” Part I.\\n11:43- Reads “Brooms” Part II.\\n12:41- Reads “Brooms” Part III.\\n13:24- Reads “Brooms” Part IV.\\n14:06- Reads “Brooms” Part V.\\n14:55- Introduces “Explorers” [INDEX: last poem in book of particular series, Christopher Columbus entering an ashtray.] \\n15:33- Reads “Explorers”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n17:13- Reads “The Inner Man”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n19:06- Introduces “The Animals”. [INDEX: written in NYC, pastoral quality of first book,     inability to return to nature poetry, pastoral animals.]\\n19:46- Reads “The Animals”. [INDEX: in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).]\\n21:07- Introduces “Chicago”, parts I-VII. [INDEX: about going back to Chicago, Simic’s      mother, perhaps not in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).]\\n22:03- Reads “Chicago” Part I.\\n22:43- Reads “Chicago” Part II.\\n23:17- Reads “Chicago” Part III.\\n23:57- Reads “Chicago” Part IV.\\n24:35- Reads “Chicago” Part V.\\n25:06- Reads “Chicago” Part VI.\\n25:33- Reads “Chicago” Part VII.\\n27:01- Reads “Tapestry”. [INDEX: most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n28:15- Introduces “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites”, Parts I-VI. [INDEX: writing with cliches, proverbs, popular wisdom to twist them around, Hittites.]\\n29:58- Reads “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites” Part I.\\n31:21- Reads “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites” Part II.\\n33:20- Reading interrupted by pause, either Part II is continued or part III begins. [INDEX: discrepancies between published versions and the reading are noted here.]\\n34:20- Reads “Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites” Part IV.\\n35:12- Reads “Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites” Part V.\\n36:14- Reads “Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites” Part VI.\\n36:39- Introduces “Marching”. [INDEX: Ksemi Rothers, Simic’s ancestors, Balkan wars, most likely in Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971).]\\n37:27- Reads “Marching”.\\n40:08- Introduces “Elegy for my father” [INDEX: elegy for Simic’s father, seven parts; published in 1974 as “George Simic” in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk (G.   \\tBraziller, 1974).]\\n40:27- Reads “Elegy for my father”.\\n44:24- Introduces “Return to a place lit by a glass of milk”. [INDEX: love poem, might use title for title of new book.]\\n44:47- Reads “Return to a place lit by a glass of milk”. [INDEX: published in 1974 in Return to a place lit by a glass of milk (G. Braziller, 1974)]\\n46:34- Reads “Dismantling the Silence”. [INDEX: from Dismantling the Silence (G. Braziller, 1971)]\\n47:57- Introduces “Errata”. [INDEX: after finishing a book felt a sense of frustration of not being able to say everything, each line refers to actual lines in the book.]\\n48:33- Reads “Errata”.\\n50:15- Unknown speaker announces next reading [Dorothy Livesay on January 14.]\\n50:24.10- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-simic-at-sgwu-1971/#2\"}]"],"score":1.7444024},{"id":"1298","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Maxine Gadd and Andreas Schroeder at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 February 1972"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"SCHROEDER & GADD 1/4 I006-11-109.1\" written on the spine of the tape's box. SCHROEDER & GADD refers to Andreas Schroeder and Maxine Gadd. \"I006-11-109.1\" written on sticker on the reel. \"POETRY 6 TAPE #1 OF 4 SCHROEDER & GADD 2-72-012-6 3 3/4 ips MASTER\" written on the front of the tape's box.\n\n\"SCHROEDER & GADD 2/4 I006-11-109.2\" written on the spine of the tape's box. SCHROEDER & GADD refers to Andreas Schroeder and Maxine Gadd. \"I006-11-109.2\" written on sticker on the reel. \"POETRY 6 TAPE #2 OF 4 SCHROEDER & GADD 2-72-012-6 3 3/4 ips MASTER #2\" written on the front of the tape's box.\n\n'SCHROEDER & GADD 3/4 I006-11-109.3\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. SCHROEDER & GADD refers to Andreas Schroeder and Maxine Gadd. \"I006-11-109.3\" written on sticker on the reel. \"POETRY 6 TAPE #3 OF 4 SCHROEDER & GADD 2-72-012-6 3 3/4 ips MASTER #3\" written on the front of the tape's box.\n\n\"SCHROEDER & GADD 4/4 I006-11-109.4\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. SCHROEDER & GADD refers to Andreas Schroeder and Maxine Gadd. \"I006-11-109.4\" written on sticker on the reel. \"POETRY 6 TAPE #4 OF 4 SCHROEDER & GADD 2-72-012-6 3 3/4 ips MASTER #4\" written on the front of the tape's box."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 6"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-109.1, I006-11-109.2, I006-11-109.3, I006-11-109.4]"],"creator_names":["Gadd, Maxine","Schroeder, Andreas"],"creator_names_search":["Gadd, Maxine","Schroeder, Andreas"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/75225856\",\"name\":\"Gadd, Maxine\",\"dates\":\"1940-\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet Maxine Gadd was born in London, England in 1940, but moved to the West Coast as a young child in 1946. Gadd attended the University of British Columbia and published her poetry with the UBC journal The Raven. Gadd was married and had a baby by the time she graduated with her B.A. She spent some time in California with her child, then she returned to Vancouver. Gadd reunited with the poetry scene and met bill bissett. Her first collection of poetry, Guns of the West was published by bill bissett’s blewointment press in 1967, and was followed by Practical Knowledge (Intermedia, 1969). Gadd was a founding member of Vancouver’s Intermedia as well as being involved with the Poetry Front. She then published a series of chapbooks, hochelaga (blewointment press, 1970), air two (Air Press, 1971), Westerns (Air Press, 1975), and Fire in the Cove (mother tongue Press, 2001). Gadd lived in a commune on Galiano Island until 1984, when she moved back to Vancouver and was associated with the Kootenay School of Writing. In 1982, Daphne Marlatt and Ingrid Klassen published through Coach House Press Gadd’s Lost language: selected poems. Most recently, Gadd published Backup to Babylon: poems, 1972-1987 (New Star Books, 2006), which was nominated by the BC Book Prize and Subway Under Byzantium: Poems, 1988-1996 (New Star Books, 2008). An excerpt from “Mazine Meets Proteus in Gastown” from Backup to Babylon was part of Vancouver’s ‘Poetry in Transit’ project in 2007, and was shown on Vancouver busses.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/57773869\",\"name\":\"Schroeder, Andreas\",\"dates\":\"1946-\",\"notes\":\"Andreas Schroeder was born in 1946 in Hoheneggelsen, Germany before his family immigrated to Canada in 1951. Schroeder grew up on a farm in the Fraser Valley in B.C., until he was fifteen when his family moved to Vancouver. He enrolled in the University of British Columbia’s creative writing program where he studied under Michael Bullock and J. Michael Yates and received his B.A. in 1969. He founded and edited The Journal of Contemporary Literature in Translation (1968-80) and worked as a columnist for the Vancouver Province (1968-73). Schroeder’s first collections of poetry were The ozone minotaur (Sono Nis Press, 1969) and File of uncertainties (Sono Nis Press, 1971), a collection of concrete poetry UNIverse (MassAge Press, 1971) and a collection of short stories, The late man (Sono Nis Press, 1972). Schroeder completed his M.A. in 1972 from the University of British Columbia, and began teaching creative writing at the University of Victoria from 1974-1975. Schroeder was the chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada between 1976-1977. His most popular book was Shaking it rough (Doubleday, 1976), and he has published over twenty books in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, radio drama, journalism, translation and criticism. Schroeder then taught at the University of British Columbia (1985-7) and at Simon Fraser University (1989-90), publishing The Mennonites: a pictorial history of their lives in Canada (Douglas & McIntyre, 1990), Carved from wood: Mission, B.C. 1891-1992 (Mission Foundation, 1991) and Scams, scandals and scullduggery (M & S, 1996). Schroeder worked as the “resident crookologist” or “resident Scam-meister” on the CBC Radio show Basic Black, which produced a few collections of history’s greatest scams, including a children’s book, Scams! (Annick Press, 2004). His most recent publication is Renovating Heaven (Ooolichan, 2008), and he continues to teach and write in B.C.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Sommer, Richard"],"contributors_names_search":["Sommer, Richard"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Sommer, Richard\",\"dates\":\"1934-2012\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Sommer, Richard"],"Series_organizer_name":["Sommer, Richard"],"Performance_Date":[1972],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"Master\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue","Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio","Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono","Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1972 2 18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Maxine Gadd reads several poems that were later collected in Lost Language (Coach House Press, 1982), one poem from air two (Air, 1971), but it is likely that many other poems went unpublished. Andreas Schroeder reads from The Late Man (SonoNis Press, 1971), The Ozone Minotaur (SoNoNis Press, 1969) and File of Uncertainties (SoNoNis Press, 1971)."],"contents":["maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-1.mp3 [File 1 of 4]\n \nRichard (Dick)  Sommer\n00:00:00\nI'd like to introduce you to two poets who are Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] friends of mine. Their poetry is quite different, as you'll discover. But from my own point of view, they...I owe both of them a debt that is similar in both cases though neither probably knows it. They've made me, in their own ways, rethink my own feelings about  what ought to constitute poetry and poems. And in the case of Maxine Gadd, this thinking went into a review which was then sent to the Firepoint which then folded. So you may never see that. And in the case of Andy Schroeder [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4755619], found its way into a long tape harangue between the two of us on the subject of form in poetry. Which I think is now in the Sir George Williams Library [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5159005], where any of you can endure it if you wish to. At any rate, the first of these poets to read will be Maxine Gadd. There will be a fifteen minute break, and then Andreas Schroeder will read. Maxine. \n \nAudience\n00:01:32\nApplause. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:02:01\nYou're plugged in. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:02:03\nOh boy. Can you hear me? I don't know how much projection to do. I don't know how much to talk about the poetry. My connection is very loose to the mainstream I guess, because, I don't know, I'm just not socially related to what's going on maybe in the poetry reading. I guess my identifications with words are somewhat with a West Coast hippie trip. And between the country and the city, the first feeling being, you know, the desire for purity, you know when you're seventeen or eighteen years old and you've figured the country life is it. And later coming to realize the necessity of the communal life and the city. So I think that's a task I'm going to try to set myself right here. I...this...I'm going to read first of all the second \"well\" poem, which I did, experienced in the country, living in the country. I remember the first \"well\" poem, I don't remember where it's gone, because it didn't get published. I disregarded its importance, you know. I tended to take the judgment of editors, and you know, people that set themselves up as authorities, and that's why I'm here, you know. I've kept close enough to them, I guess. I remember the first one went something like, \"Wanting pure water I went to the well/too wonderful\"...and there was something about the oracle as the bucket clacked. This is the “Second Well Poem”. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:03:57\nReads \"Second Well Poem\" [published later as “Well poem” in Lost Language].\n\nMaxine Gadd\n00:04:41\nWhich is about where I feel right now. But that's about where my connection to poetry is right now. I wonder if that...I wonder if that one's around. I don't think it is. I guess I'll just take it as it comes. There's some scheme in this. I guess, I got published by a cat, by bill bissett [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4911496] you might have heard, who did the thing, did the guru thing, the super-energy thing of getting a lot of work done, and getting a lot of people's work out, and a lot of his work out, a lot of it was real shit but he got it out, you know, and some of it worked and some of it didn't, but there was so much of it, you know...I'd like to have had that confidence, you know, I guess almost, most people write poetry, they've got it all in their trunk, you know, they don't get it out. But I guess that's what it takes. This is from one of his first, really cheap magazines. He put, he...it's typed, you know. Pretty good typing. His typing got worse, I get very angry, he makes lots of mistakes. But he did a lot of drawings and things, if anybody wants to look at it, you know.  I mean, he did it minimum, you know, he was living really poor. And a lot of people still read his stuff, so, I mean, to me he was a folk poet in that sense, a lot of people still read his stuff because he got the stuff out cheap, you know. \"Trip\".\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:06:05\nReads \"Trip\".\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:07:47\nI'm going to go over there. This one is to a poet who is in the, is in another world, okay? He looks like a silver lizard, and he's very beautiful, and he knows all about the Greek trip, and Eleusis, which is one's talking about in the first poem, okay, the oracles from under the ground, that belief you must start out with. It's called...and it's admiration, as well as a bit of terror.\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:08:22\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:10:19\nLeary, I should have mentioned, was Timothy Leary. Oh, I should have explained that before, yeah. Oh yeah, this is where I met...now I don't like it okay? And it's probably not a good poem. But that's, that's...you know, that's...the kind of art form I'd like to have seen as a collective art form, was what I yearned and hoped for. Poetry is what people write in rooms alone, and I don't like...I don't, you know, that's what I was stuck with. And I worked for a while with a group in Vancouver called, named, we called it \"Intermedia\". And I had the experience of working with a group, at one point there were five of us poets, you know, or what we called poets. And we'd go around to various places, we went to Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] one time, and we tried things, we tried chanting and wailing, like, was it...who was that crazy old lady. Sitwell, Edith Sitwell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q259921], remember her? And if you ever heard the sort of sing, the song, sing sing she used to do, you know, we tried that. And it really worked, you know, but you'd go around and you'd say, \"Do you dig the poems?\" and they'd say, \"I can't hear them, but we really like your voice.\" You know. [Audience laughter]. So, you know, left that, you got an ache in the gut or something.   \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:11:37\nReads \"Ratio\".\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:12:48\nI don't like it. I don't want to be there. Here's one from last year. I got into printing stuff myself, you know, and I do that--I wish, oh, you can't see it, can you? It was mimeograph, it was real cheap, you know? And you could take images, you could take newspaper articles, you could take scraps of anything you saw that you dug, you know, put 'em together, and to me that was a, that was a form of concrete poetry. Can't, of course, I don't know, you couldn't really say that one or any number of them. This one is half-said, okay. Behind it I put a map, I found a map of B.C. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]and Minster Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21906024] was a map, was an island I found once when I was working on a ship as a mess girl, on a freighter. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:13:46\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:15:33\nAnd where that ended up was just over the name Bella Coola [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q815765], which is sort of where they do, can fish. There's no escape, though, you know? And...so then I want to read about Kitsilano [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4179275], where most of...I happened, you know, I grew up. Kitsilano's a sort of slum district of Vancouver. And it's disintegrating, and you probably all experienced this, you know, being city people, you know, they're bulldozing the places, there's no more cheap places to live, and so your friends, you know, you can't live there anymore, your friends can't live there anymore, so whatever you had, which was sometimes very heavy, you know, community's really beautiful, you know? I used to go over and play music with my friends. We had to move out, you know, because the city's being destroyed, and only the people who are well-to-do, who have some sort of stake in the city, you know, who are supporting the structure can stay. And this poem is about somebody who I met one day on the street, you know, and her story, she's sort of sick, just on the street, everything's falling to pieces. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:16:55\nReads “bee-people on 4th avenue” [published later in Lost Language].\n\nMaxine Gadd\n00:18:32\nWho's singing out there? But here, on the next street, you know, I ran into a friend of mine. Her name's Martina. And, you know, we're about the same age, and we've been through a lot of things, and, we've been through some bad things, you know, lots of rejections and refusal, no, there's no food now, you can't have any, go away, you know, fighting over somebody or other. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:18:58\nReads “4th ave” [published later in Lost Language].\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:20:49\nUs old ladies. Okay, but that's not entirely true. I got involved into all that magic stuff, you know, the Sufis, and into politics, and like this summer I hope I'm going to start some sort of woman's centre, back where I live, you know. \n \nEND\n00:21:09\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed before start of next recording].\n\nmaxine_gadd_i006-11-109-2.mp3 [File 2 of 4]\n\nMaxine Gadd\n00:00:00\nReads unnamed poem [recording begins abruptly].\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:02:20\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:11:10\nThis is the thing that the guy that held onto the raft for fourteen days knew. This is what Armstrong [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1615], Collins [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q104859] and Reilley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739214] out there, those astronauts, this is what they saved up for. It had to be good. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:11:29\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:23:31\nThat's the end of that one. \n \nAudience\n00:23:33\nApplause.\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:23:40\nI think I made enough noise for a while, huh? My voice is getting sort of sore, or, you know, like that was a trip, so. I got a lot of poems, but...Did you feel like reading now or should we have a break or what? Do you think...do you think we should read some more or what? I got...You want to read some more? \n \nUnknown\n00:23:59\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:24:03\nDo you want to read some more? \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:24:04\nI don't know. I've not nothing in particular form, just bits, that's the problem. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:24:12\nYou can't do the one on the Goat-god....\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:24:13\nOkay, I'll do the Goat-god. Well okay, do you want to try improvising to a trip that's here? I'll let you read it. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:24:22\nSeriously, I'll do that? \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:24:23\nYeah. It's just going to be some sounds. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:24:24\nOkay. I don't know if I can…[unintelligible].\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:24:27\nI gotta find it first. What's that? Are we on? Oh, sorry. God. \n \nUnknown\n00:24:38\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:24:39\nWhat? The flute? I think it's over there. For fun...the same message...I'm asking...Richard's going to make some noise with my flute. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:24:55\nI'll make some noise if you'll give me a microphone. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:24:57\nOkay. Which one do you want? Let's share it. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:25:01\nGive me the [unintelligible].\n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:25:02\nIt goes with the poem. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:25:05\nWhen'd you do that? \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:25:06\nWhat?\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:25:07\nThis, this knot. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:25:08\nI tied myself into it. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:25:11\nOh, here we go. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:25:12\nI don't even know if I can find it. All these little pieces, pieces, pieces. Oh, here it is. Now how it goes, you have to keep quiet until...let's see now. He's never done this before.  \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:25:40\nWhat did, yeah, what do you want me to do with it? \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:25:42\nOkay, this is called \"Shore Animals\" and it's a speech piece with flute, and the flute has to listen. It can speak too. [Laughter]. You have to listen to it. You never heard it\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:25:57\nI think it's learning how to speak. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:26:01\nIt's called \"Shore Animals,\" it's a speech piece with flute. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:26:07\nReads \"Shore Animals\" accompanied by Richard Sommer on flute.\n \nAudience\n00:30:13\nAudience.\n\nMaxine Gadd\n00:30:15\nMaybe I'll try to try that one…[audience applause continues throughout].\n\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:30:24\nI'll give you your microphone back. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:30:25\nYes. How many minutes we got? \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:30:29\nI don't know. [Unintelligible]. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:30:35\nOkay, I'm going to read, I'm going to do, this one's totally mindless, okay? It's dedicated to my friend Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756] who used to like to do those trips. And you can go to sleep or something, because that's what I want you to do. \n \nMaxine Gadd\n00:30:51\nReads \"Cantaloup, 29 cents\".\n \nAudience\n00:38:33\nApplause. \n \nEND\n00:38:37\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed before start of next recording].\n\nandreas_schroeder_i006-11-109-3.mp3 [File 3 of 4]\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:00:01\nOkay, we won't be using a flute this time, I think it's a bass trombone but I'm not sure.  It'll be up to Andy. I'd like to introduce to you Andy Schroeder.\n \nAudience\n00:00:15\nApplause.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:00:40\nRight. Normally they hang you after a reading. Jesus. I'm going to read from, oh, just kind of a merry jaunt through various books. I think what I'll do is I'll read some of the, some poetry first, and then I'll slip over into fiction. I've just, two days ago, published a book called The Late Man of short fictions and extended prose poems and so on. The work that I've done is gone cyclic in terms of form. I started out with prose poems and went into much more of a linear poetry, and then went back to a fiction which was kind of a half prose poem, half short story, half God knows, film script. And right now I'm working hard at both styles. First book I published was called The Ozone Minotaur, and it was more surreal than anything I'm doing now. I really get very excited about illusions, and I guess that's probably what most of my work is all about. At first I was very interested in surreal illusions; now I'm very interested in real illusions, and I'm not sure there's any difference. Here's a prose poem from way back called \"Introduction\".\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:02:10\nReads \"Introduction\" from The Ozone Minotaur.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:03:15\nAfter I found out that you couldn't live by writing poetry, I took a job with CPAir [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q986941]. That doesn't really sound like a very logical progression, but anyway, it was a teletype machine that they put me on, I think I lasted about four days, but I got a poem out of it, and it's entitled \"Cables\".\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:03:35\nReads \"Cables\" [from The Ozone Minotaur].\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:05:29\nThis next book, File of Uncertainties, I supposed was kind of created when I woke up one morning and was overwhelmed with my own ignorance, so I decided to write a book about it. [Audience laughter]. And then I figured the best way to do it was to go up north and I did that, and I spent a winter up in Alaska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q797]. And that was where I really got into this illusion thing, because, you know, all the different, very very strange things that happen there, like white-outs, which you probably are familiar with here, as well, where a man suddenly loses all sense of up and down and forward and backward. They have better ones than that, though. They have, until the snowmobile rolls around, when people used to mush with dogs, they'd continually have this happening: a man would set off from one village for another, with his dogs, and he'd be perfectly well-dressed and perfectly well-fed, and apparently perfectly sane, and the dogs would arrive, and the sled would arrive but the man wouldn't, and they possibly found him and possibly not. But no one could ever understand what would make a man suddenly step off his sleigh and walk off in an entirely different direction to die. When he certainly didn't have it on his list of things to do when he left. They still haven't figured that out. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that man's body is made up of such an incredible percentage of water, and very strange things happen to water up there. [Audience laughter]. Anyway, I almost got caught by an avalanche, so I thought I'd check into it and I'd find out what you do if you do get caught by one, cause I figured by that time that survival was probably a good thing. So, they said, one of the things you do is, if you get caught by an avalanche, you make swimming motions with your hands. I guess the idea is that kind of tends to keep you close to the surface, which is a good place to be. Now...[audience laughter] the lovely illusion part, which really intrigued me, was that a man can survive under the snow up to a depth of approximately six feet, but only for a certain period of time, and apparently the closer you are to the surface, the better your chances are, and the way they dig for, well, it's not necessarily logical up there, at least it didn't seem like it, but the way they dig for a man like this is they use sounding rods, and these are very sensitive rods, like, almost like tuning forks, and they walk along, in a very definite rhythm, it's almost like a musical score, and they ram these poles in, one foot deep, about a foot at a time, and attempt to hit somebody that's buried underneath it. And then they go back again and they do it at two feet, and then at three feet and four feet to six feet, they don't go any deeper. Now the peculiar part of it is that they of course can't hear anyone, but the poor bugger that's under the snow can hear very, very clearly. And, you know, and he'll hear people saying, like I wonder where, I think there's a place he might be, and he'll be shouting in there, saying, \"I'm here,\" you know, \"I'm here!\" and they can't hear him, and it's really quite terrifying. Sound only travels one way through an avalanche, I don't...[Audience laughter]. Anyway, I'll, let me read some poems about it, I'll...File of Uncertainties was written in a very short time and mostly about the same thing, and you'll find recurring images all the way through, stylistic things that are similar all the way through, and the poems, because they match together fairly tightly, I didn't even bother naming them, I just numbered them, because they're all part of the same sequence. This is number four. \n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:09:27\nReads \"File of Uncertainties: #4\" from File of Uncertainties.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:10:25\nReads \"File of Uncertainties: #3\" from File of Uncertainties.\n\nAndreas Schroeder\n00:12:13\nReads \"File of Uncertainties: #5\" from File of Uncertainties.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:12:54\nReads \"File of Uncertainties: #8\" from File of Uncertainties.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:13:50\nI took up sky-diving after I came back and, because...yeah, believe it or not, it had very similar illusions going for it again. When...it's much like the white-out. When you jump off an aircraft, and it banks away, generally to your left, then you suddenly lose all points of reference. And because the earth below you is much too far away to really mean anything, and your parachute is still on your back, in other words not opened, so you can't, you haven't got anything above you either, you suddenly get hit with this incredibly stony silence, and absolutely nothing happens. I mean, you don't fall, you're not moving, you're not even really thinking because it's so suddenly quiet. It seems like everything just freezes. And in fact you're falling at about three hundred feet a second, but you have no sense of it whatsoever. And you just stand there in the sky, and kind of look around, and nothing is going on. Which is why you're not supposed to be stoned when you skydive because, [audience laughter] sometimes people tend to forget, you know. So I wrote a poem about it, and, actually it's not...well anything. It's “#9”, is what it is. \n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:15:18\nReads \"#9\" [from File of Uncertainties].\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:17:31\nAlright, here's another poem from the north--\"#12\".\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:17:38\nReads \"# 12\".\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:18:29\nI think I'll just let that go for a minute there and go into some prose and then I'll just read some unpublished poems. This first story that I'm going to read is entitled \"The Tree\", and I wrote it after I met a very lovely old man down in Australia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q408]. Very old. He was an aborigine, and we tried to communicate; he didn't know my language and I didn't know his, which is maybe why we got along so well, but anyway, I built a story up on him. This was on a coral island...of course all islands down there are coral islands. \n \nAnnotationAndreas Schroeder\n00:19:19\nReads \"The Tree\" [from The Late Man].\n \nAudience\n00:25:45\nApplause.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:25:54\nHere's another short one, entitled \"The Pub\", sort of a frenzied affair. They don't--it's sort of illegal to have fights in pubs, and in Vancouver I was the very happy observer of one, finally. Pub fights have sort of a beautiful ritualistic thing as long as you're not involved, like if you're just kind of watching, and the Cecil Hotel staged one one night and after that I wrote this, although it has nothing to do with that. \n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:26:23\nReads \"The Pub\" [from The Late Man].\n \nAudience\n00:31:28\nApplause.\n \nEND\n00:31:32\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed before start of next recording].\n\nandreas_schroeder_i006-11-109-4.mp3 [File 4 of 4]\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:00:00\nReads [“The Theft” from The Late Man]. \n \nAudience\n00:05:03\nApplause.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:05:09\nRight, just one more. This one is, is quite different. Quite different. In fact, if there is such a thing as a manifesto, I guess that's what it is. Or let's say it's a map or something about roughly where I'm at. It's called \"The Cage\".\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:05:32\nReads \"The Cage\" [from The Late Man]. \n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:15:11\nThat's all. \n \nAudience\n00:15:12\nApplause.\n \nAndreas Schroeder\n00:15:19\nI don't know how to get that off. \n \nEND\n00:15:24"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nMaxine Gadd had published air two the previous year (1971), and was living in a commune on Galiano Island. Backup to Babylon: poems 1972-1987 collects poems Gadd wrote in 1972.\\n\\nIn 1972, Schroeder had just finished publishing The late man and File of Uncertainties, was editing The Journal of Contemporary Literature in Translation, writing for the Vancouver Province, and was completing his M.A. from UBC.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nWhile shying away from mainstream poetic circles and public life, Gadd’s work and life has been deeply rooted in Canadian artistic discourse, creating a community and social activism. A Vancouver poet, Gadd was associated with other writers like Gerry Gilbert, Roy Kiyooka, bill bissett, and Daphne Marlatt. She met George Bowering, David Bromige and Lionel Kearns in Earle Birney’s UBC creative writing classes in the early 60’s.\\n\\nAlso a Vancouver writer, Schroeder has contributed over a dozen publications to Canadian literature, in poetry, prose, non-fiction, fiction, young adult non-fiction as well as contributing to CBC radio shows and Vancouver newspapers. A professor in Creative Non-fiction at the University of British Columbia, Schroeder has also represented writers in political positions and unions.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"4 reel-to-reel tapes>4 CDs>4 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://www.thinkcity.ca/node/133\",\"citation\":\"“Andreas Schroeder”. Story Tellers. Think City: Ideas for the 21st Century Vancouver. Think City Society, Vancouver, B.C. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.annickpress.com/Contributors/S/Schroeder-Andreas\",\"citation\":\"“Andreas Schroder”. Authors. Annick Press: Excellence & Innovation in Children’s Literature. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.writersunion.ca/member/andreas-schroeder\",\"citation\":\"“Andreas Schroeder”. Members’ Pages. The Writers’ Union of Canada.  2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Schroeder, Andreas\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/air-two/oclc/53868052&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gadd, Maxine. air two. Vancouver: Air, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lost-language-selected-poems/oclc/8919395&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gadd, Maxine. Lost Language: Selected Poems. Daphne Marlatt and Ingrid Klassen (eds). Toronto: Coach House Press, 1982. \"},{\"url\":\"http://intermedia.vancouverartinthesixties.com/voices/012\",\"citation\":\"“Intermedia”. The Intermedia Catalogue. The Michael de Courcy Archive, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/gadd_maxine.html\",\"citation\":\"(Maxine Gadd) “Maxine Gadd”. One Zero Zero: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Presses 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art: York University, Toronto, 1997.  \"},{\"url\":\"http:// www.newstarbooks.com/author.php?author_id=3119\",\"citation\":\"“Maxine Gadd”. New Star Books website. Vancouver, British Columbia. \"},{\"url\":\"http://12or20questions.blogspot.com/2008/01/12-or-20-questions-with-maxine-gadd.html\",\"citation\":\"McLennan, Rob. “12 or 20 Questions: with Maxine Gadd”. Rob McLennan’s Blog. January 11, 2008.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.vancouverartinthesixties.com/people/31\",\"citation\":\"“People: Maxine Gadd”. Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties. Digital Archive of Artwork, Ephemera and Film.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ozone-minotaur/oclc/806554234&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Schroeder, Andreas. The Ozone Minotaur. Vancouver: Sono Nis Press, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/file-of-uncertainties-poems/oclc/421970309&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Schroeder, Andreas. File of Uncertainties: Poems. Vancouver: Sono Nis Press, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/late-man/oclc/654160621&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Schroeder, Andreas. The Late Man. Vancouver: Sono Nis Press, 1972. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548949696512,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\" https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0109-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0109-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Gadd and Schroeder Tape Box 1 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/I0006_11_0109-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0109-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Gadd and Schroeder Tape Box 1 - 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Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/andreas_schroeder_1_i006-11-109-3.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"andreas_schroeder_i006-11-109-3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:31:32\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"75.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"andreas_schroeder_i006-11-109-3.mp3 [File 3 of 4]\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:00:01\\nOkay, we won't be using a flute this time, I think it's a bass trombone but I'm not sure.  It'll be up to Andy. I'd like to introduce to you Andy Schroeder.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:00:15\\nApplause.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:00:40\\nRight. Normally they hang you after a reading. Jesus. I'm going to read from, oh, just kind of a merry jaunt through various books. I think what I'll do is I'll read some of the, some poetry first, and then I'll slip over into fiction. I've just, two days ago, published a book called The Late Man of short fictions and extended prose poems and so on. The work that I've done is gone cyclic in terms of form. I started out with prose poems and went into much more of a linear poetry, and then went back to a fiction which was kind of a half prose poem, half short story, half God knows, film script. And right now I'm working hard at both styles. First book I published was called The Ozone Minotaur, and it was more surreal than anything I'm doing now. I really get very excited about illusions, and I guess that's probably what most of my work is all about. At first I was very interested in surreal illusions; now I'm very interested in real illusions, and I'm not sure there's any difference. Here's a prose poem from way back called \\\"Introduction\\\".\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:02:10\\nReads \\\"Introduction\\\" from The Ozone Minotaur.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:03:15\\nAfter I found out that you couldn't live by writing poetry, I took a job with CPAir [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q986941]. That doesn't really sound like a very logical progression, but anyway, it was a teletype machine that they put me on, I think I lasted about four days, but I got a poem out of it, and it's entitled \\\"Cables\\\".\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:03:35\\nReads \\\"Cables\\\" [from The Ozone Minotaur].\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:05:29\\nThis next book, File of Uncertainties, I supposed was kind of created when I woke up one morning and was overwhelmed with my own ignorance, so I decided to write a book about it. [Audience laughter]. And then I figured the best way to do it was to go up north and I did that, and I spent a winter up in Alaska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q797]. And that was where I really got into this illusion thing, because, you know, all the different, very very strange things that happen there, like white-outs, which you probably are familiar with here, as well, where a man suddenly loses all sense of up and down and forward and backward. They have better ones than that, though. They have, until the snowmobile rolls around, when people used to mush with dogs, they'd continually have this happening: a man would set off from one village for another, with his dogs, and he'd be perfectly well-dressed and perfectly well-fed, and apparently perfectly sane, and the dogs would arrive, and the sled would arrive but the man wouldn't, and they possibly found him and possibly not. But no one could ever understand what would make a man suddenly step off his sleigh and walk off in an entirely different direction to die. When he certainly didn't have it on his list of things to do when he left. They still haven't figured that out. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that man's body is made up of such an incredible percentage of water, and very strange things happen to water up there. [Audience laughter]. Anyway, I almost got caught by an avalanche, so I thought I'd check into it and I'd find out what you do if you do get caught by one, cause I figured by that time that survival was probably a good thing. So, they said, one of the things you do is, if you get caught by an avalanche, you make swimming motions with your hands. I guess the idea is that kind of tends to keep you close to the surface, which is a good place to be. Now...[audience laughter] the lovely illusion part, which really intrigued me, was that a man can survive under the snow up to a depth of approximately six feet, but only for a certain period of time, and apparently the closer you are to the surface, the better your chances are, and the way they dig for, well, it's not necessarily logical up there, at least it didn't seem like it, but the way they dig for a man like this is they use sounding rods, and these are very sensitive rods, like, almost like tuning forks, and they walk along, in a very definite rhythm, it's almost like a musical score, and they ram these poles in, one foot deep, about a foot at a time, and attempt to hit somebody that's buried underneath it. And then they go back again and they do it at two feet, and then at three feet and four feet to six feet, they don't go any deeper. Now the peculiar part of it is that they of course can't hear anyone, but the poor bugger that's under the snow can hear very, very clearly. And, you know, and he'll hear people saying, like I wonder where, I think there's a place he might be, and he'll be shouting in there, saying, \\\"I'm here,\\\" you know, \\\"I'm here!\\\" and they can't hear him, and it's really quite terrifying. Sound only travels one way through an avalanche, I don't...[Audience laughter]. Anyway, I'll, let me read some poems about it, I'll...File of Uncertainties was written in a very short time and mostly about the same thing, and you'll find recurring images all the way through, stylistic things that are similar all the way through, and the poems, because they match together fairly tightly, I didn't even bother naming them, I just numbered them, because they're all part of the same sequence. This is number four. \\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:09:27\\nReads \\\"File of Uncertainties: #4\\\" from File of Uncertainties.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:10:25\\nReads \\\"File of Uncertainties: #3\\\" from File of Uncertainties.\\n\\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:12:13\\nReads \\\"File of Uncertainties: #5\\\" from File of Uncertainties.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:12:54\\nReads \\\"File of Uncertainties: #8\\\" from File of Uncertainties.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:13:50\\nI took up sky-diving after I came back and, because...yeah, believe it or not, it had very similar illusions going for it again. When...it's much like the white-out. When you jump off an aircraft, and it banks away, generally to your left, then you suddenly lose all points of reference. And because the earth below you is much too far away to really mean anything, and your parachute is still on your back, in other words not opened, so you can't, you haven't got anything above you either, you suddenly get hit with this incredibly stony silence, and absolutely nothing happens. I mean, you don't fall, you're not moving, you're not even really thinking because it's so suddenly quiet. It seems like everything just freezes. And in fact you're falling at about three hundred feet a second, but you have no sense of it whatsoever. And you just stand there in the sky, and kind of look around, and nothing is going on. Which is why you're not supposed to be stoned when you skydive because, [audience laughter] sometimes people tend to forget, you know. So I wrote a poem about it, and, actually it's not...well anything. It's “#9”, is what it is. \\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:15:18\\nReads \\\"#9\\\" [from File of Uncertainties].\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:17:31\\nAlright, here's another poem from the north--\\\"#12\\\".\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:17:38\\nReads \\\"# 12\\\".\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:18:29\\nI think I'll just let that go for a minute there and go into some prose and then I'll just read some unpublished poems. This first story that I'm going to read is entitled \\\"The Tree\\\", and I wrote it after I met a very lovely old man down in Australia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q408]. Very old. He was an aborigine, and we tried to communicate; he didn't know my language and I didn't know his, which is maybe why we got along so well, but anyway, I built a story up on him. This was on a coral island...of course all islands down there are coral islands. \\n \\nAnnotationAndreas Schroeder\\n00:19:19\\nReads \\\"The Tree\\\" [from The Late Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:25:45\\nApplause.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:25:54\\nHere's another short one, entitled \\\"The Pub\\\", sort of a frenzied affair. They don't--it's sort of illegal to have fights in pubs, and in Vancouver I was the very happy observer of one, finally. Pub fights have sort of a beautiful ritualistic thing as long as you're not involved, like if you're just kind of watching, and the Cecil Hotel staged one one night and after that I wrote this, although it has nothing to do with that. \\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:26:23\\nReads \\\"The Pub\\\" [from The Late Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:31:28\\nApplause.\\n \\nEND\\n00:31:32\\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed before start of next recording].\",\"notes\":\"Andreas Schroeder reads from The Late Man (SonoNis Press, 1971), The Ozone Minotaur (SoNoNis Press, 1969) and File of Uncertainties (SoNoNis Press, 1971).\\n\\n00:01- Introducer (George Bowering?) introduces Andreas Schroeder. (As Andy).\\n00:40- Andreas Schroeder introduces reading and “Introduction”. [INDEX: The Late Man, prose poetry, form, short fiction, linear poetry, film script (genres melding together), first book The Ozone Minotaur, surreal illusions; from The Ozone Minotaur (SoNoNis Press, 1969).]\\n02:10- Reads “Introduction”.\\n03:15- Introduces “Cables”. [INDEX: CPAir job, teletype machine; from The Ozone Minotaur (SoNoNis Press, 1969).]\\n03:35- Reads “Cables”.\\n05:29- Introduces “File of Uncertainties: IV” and his next book, File of Uncertainties    (SoNoNis Press, 1971). [INDEX: creation of File of Uncertainties, ignorance, spent a      \\twinter in Alaska, illusions, avalanche, survival of man in an avalanche, sounding rods; from File of Uncertainties, (SoNoNis Press, 1971).]\\n09:27- Reads “File of Uncertainties: IV”.\\n10:25- Reads “File of Uncertainties: III”.\\n12:13- Reads “File of Uncertainties: V”.\\n12:54- Reads “File of Uncertainties: VIII”.\\n13:50- Introduces “Number IX”. [INDEX: Sky-diving experiences.]\\n15:18- Reads “Number IX”.\\n17:42- Introduces “Number XII”. [INDEX: poem from the North.]\\n17:38- Reads “Number XII”.\\n18:29- Introduces “The Tree”. [INDEX: prose, Australia, aborigine, coral island; from The Late Man (SoNoNis Press, 1971).]\\n19:19- Reads “The Tree”.\\n25:54- Introduces “The Pub”. [INDEX: Vancouver: illegal pub fights, Cecil Hotel; from The Late Man (SoNoNis Press, 1971).]\\n26:23- Reads “The Pub”.\\n31:32.07- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/andreas-schroeder-at-sgwu-1972/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/andreas_schroeder_2_i006-11-109-4.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"andreas_schroeder_i006-11-109-4.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:15:24\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"37 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"andreas_schroeder_i006-11-109-4.mp3 [File 4 of 4]\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:00:00\\nReads [“The Theft” from The Late Man]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:05:03\\nApplause.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:05:09\\nRight, just one more. This one is, is quite different. Quite different. In fact, if there is such a thing as a manifesto, I guess that's what it is. Or let's say it's a map or something about roughly where I'm at. It's called \\\"The Cage\\\".\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:05:32\\nReads \\\"The Cage\\\" [from The Late Man]. \\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:15:11\\nThat's all. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:15:12\\nApplause.\\n \\nAndreas Schroeder\\n00:15:19\\nI don't know how to get that off. \\n \\nEND\\n00:15:24\",\"notes\":\"Andreas Schroeder reads from The Late Man (SonoNis Press, 1971), The Ozone Minotaur (SoNoNis Press, 1969) and File of Uncertainties (SoNoNis Press, 1971).\\n\\n00:00- Recording begins suddenly with Andreas Schroeder, potential first line “The living room was littered with papers, pens, bottles...” (short story).    \\n05:09- Introduces “The Cage”. [INDEX: manifesto, map.]\\n05:32- Reads “The Cage”.\\n15:24.10- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/andreas-schroeder-at-sgwu-1972/#2\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:38:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"92.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-2.mp3 [File 2 of 4]\\n\\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:00:00\\nReads unnamed poem [recording begins abruptly].\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:02:20\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:11:10\\nThis is the thing that the guy that held onto the raft for fourteen days knew. This is what Armstrong [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1615], Collins [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q104859] and Reilley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739214] out there, those astronauts, this is what they saved up for. It had to be good. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:11:29\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:23:31\\nThat's the end of that one. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:23:33\\nApplause.\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:23:40\\nI think I made enough noise for a while, huh? My voice is getting sort of sore, or, you know, like that was a trip, so. I got a lot of poems, but...Did you feel like reading now or should we have a break or what? Do you think...do you think we should read some more or what? I got...You want to read some more? \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:23:59\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:24:03\\nDo you want to read some more? \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:24:04\\nI don't know. I've not nothing in particular form, just bits, that's the problem. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:24:12\\nYou can't do the one on the Goat-god....\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:24:13\\nOkay, I'll do the Goat-god. Well okay, do you want to try improvising to a trip that's here? I'll let you read it. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:24:22\\nSeriously, I'll do that? \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:24:23\\nYeah. It's just going to be some sounds. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:24:24\\nOkay. I don't know if I can…[unintelligible].\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:24:27\\nI gotta find it first. What's that? Are we on? Oh, sorry. God. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:24:38\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:24:39\\nWhat? The flute? I think it's over there. For fun...the same message...I'm asking...Richard's going to make some noise with my flute. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:24:55\\nI'll make some noise if you'll give me a microphone. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:24:57\\nOkay. Which one do you want? Let's share it. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:25:01\\nGive me the [unintelligible].\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:25:02\\nIt goes with the poem. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:25:05\\nWhen'd you do that? \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:25:06\\nWhat?\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:25:07\\nThis, this knot. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:25:08\\nI tied myself into it. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:25:11\\nOh, here we go. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:25:12\\nI don't even know if I can find it. All these little pieces, pieces, pieces. Oh, here it is. Now how it goes, you have to keep quiet until...let's see now. He's never done this before.  \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:25:40\\nWhat did, yeah, what do you want me to do with it? \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:25:42\\nOkay, this is called \\\"Shore Animals\\\" and it's a speech piece with flute, and the flute has to listen. It can speak too. [Laughter]. You have to listen to it. You never heard it\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:25:57\\nI think it's learning how to speak. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:26:01\\nIt's called \\\"Shore Animals,\\\" it's a speech piece with flute. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:26:07\\nReads \\\"Shore Animals\\\" accompanied by Richard Sommer on flute.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:30:13\\nAudience.\\n\\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:30:15\\nMaybe I'll try to try that one…[audience applause continues throughout].\\n\\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:30:24\\nI'll give you your microphone back. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:30:25\\nYes. How many minutes we got? \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:30:29\\nI don't know. [Unintelligible]. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:30:35\\nOkay, I'm going to read, I'm going to do, this one's totally mindless, okay? It's dedicated to my friend Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756] who used to like to do those trips. And you can go to sleep or something, because that's what I want you to do. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:30:51\\nReads \\\"Cantaloup, 29 cents\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:38:33\\nApplause. \\n \\nEND\\n00:38:37\\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed before start of next recording].\",\"notes\":\"Maxine Gadd reads several poems that were later collected in Lost Language (Coach House Press, 1982), one poem from air two (Air, 1971), but it is likely that many other poems went unpublished.\\n\\n00:00- Maxine Gadd reads, recording starts immediately, possible first line “Big there lady all come together...” [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n02:20- Potential first line or continuation of last poem: “I promised to Hackett, though the        memory’s gone, of all I thought worthy to tell you, the person”.\\n02:29- Reads unknown poem, first line “The glistening tower in the ozone...”\\n11:10- Introduces unknown poem, first line “I am obedient to every sign...” [INDEX:    Armstrong, Collins, Riley, astronauts; from unknown source.]\\n11:29- Reads first line “I am obedient to every sign...”\\n15:48- Continues with “At this point there’s a maniac treading the stairs above my head...”\\n19:49- Continues with “No burn- the doctor promised this won’t hurt...”\\n24:12- Richard (Sommer?) asks for poem to be read, they sort out a collaboration with Richard and a flute [INDEX: God-goat poem, improvisation: music and poetry]\\n25:42- Gadd introduces “Shore Animals” [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n26:07- Reads “Shore Animals”, flute played by Richard\\n30:13- Sorting out of microphones, etc.\\n30:35- Introduces “Cantaloup, 29 cents” [INDEX: Gerry Gilbert; from unknown source]\\n30:51- Reads “Cantaloup, 29 cents”\\n38:37.60- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/maxine-gadd-at-sgwu-1972/#2\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:21:09\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"50.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"maxine_gadd_i006-11-109-1.mp3 [File 1 of 4]\\n \\nRichard (Dick)  Sommer\\n00:00:00\\nI'd like to introduce you to two poets who are Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] friends of mine. Their poetry is quite different, as you'll discover. But from my own point of view, they...I owe both of them a debt that is similar in both cases though neither probably knows it. They've made me, in their own ways, rethink my own feelings about  what ought to constitute poetry and poems. And in the case of Maxine Gadd, this thinking went into a review which was then sent to the Firepoint which then folded. So you may never see that. And in the case of Andy Schroeder [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4755619], found its way into a long tape harangue between the two of us on the subject of form in poetry. Which I think is now in the Sir George Williams Library [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5159005], where any of you can endure it if you wish to. At any rate, the first of these poets to read will be Maxine Gadd. There will be a fifteen minute break, and then Andreas Schroeder will read. Maxine. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:01:32\\nApplause. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:02:01\\nYou're plugged in. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:02:03\\nOh boy. Can you hear me? I don't know how much projection to do. I don't know how much to talk about the poetry. My connection is very loose to the mainstream I guess, because, I don't know, I'm just not socially related to what's going on maybe in the poetry reading. I guess my identifications with words are somewhat with a West Coast hippie trip. And between the country and the city, the first feeling being, you know, the desire for purity, you know when you're seventeen or eighteen years old and you've figured the country life is it. And later coming to realize the necessity of the communal life and the city. So I think that's a task I'm going to try to set myself right here. I...this...I'm going to read first of all the second \\\"well\\\" poem, which I did, experienced in the country, living in the country. I remember the first \\\"well\\\" poem, I don't remember where it's gone, because it didn't get published. I disregarded its importance, you know. I tended to take the judgment of editors, and you know, people that set themselves up as authorities, and that's why I'm here, you know. I've kept close enough to them, I guess. I remember the first one went something like, \\\"Wanting pure water I went to the well/too wonderful\\\"...and there was something about the oracle as the bucket clacked. This is the “Second Well Poem”. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:03:57\\nReads \\\"Second Well Poem\\\" [published later as “Well poem” in Lost Language].\\n\\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:04:41\\nWhich is about where I feel right now. But that's about where my connection to poetry is right now. I wonder if that...I wonder if that one's around. I don't think it is. I guess I'll just take it as it comes. There's some scheme in this. I guess, I got published by a cat, by bill bissett [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4911496] you might have heard, who did the thing, did the guru thing, the super-energy thing of getting a lot of work done, and getting a lot of people's work out, and a lot of his work out, a lot of it was real shit but he got it out, you know, and some of it worked and some of it didn't, but there was so much of it, you know...I'd like to have had that confidence, you know, I guess almost, most people write poetry, they've got it all in their trunk, you know, they don't get it out. But I guess that's what it takes. This is from one of his first, really cheap magazines. He put, he...it's typed, you know. Pretty good typing. His typing got worse, I get very angry, he makes lots of mistakes. But he did a lot of drawings and things, if anybody wants to look at it, you know.  I mean, he did it minimum, you know, he was living really poor. And a lot of people still read his stuff, so, I mean, to me he was a folk poet in that sense, a lot of people still read his stuff because he got the stuff out cheap, you know. \\\"Trip\\\".\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:06:05\\nReads \\\"Trip\\\".\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:07:47\\nI'm going to go over there. This one is to a poet who is in the, is in another world, okay? He looks like a silver lizard, and he's very beautiful, and he knows all about the Greek trip, and Eleusis, which is one's talking about in the first poem, okay, the oracles from under the ground, that belief you must start out with. It's called...and it's admiration, as well as a bit of terror.\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:08:22\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:10:19\\nLeary, I should have mentioned, was Timothy Leary. Oh, I should have explained that before, yeah. Oh yeah, this is where I met...now I don't like it okay? And it's probably not a good poem. But that's, that's...you know, that's...the kind of art form I'd like to have seen as a collective art form, was what I yearned and hoped for. Poetry is what people write in rooms alone, and I don't like...I don't, you know, that's what I was stuck with. And I worked for a while with a group in Vancouver called, named, we called it \\\"Intermedia\\\". And I had the experience of working with a group, at one point there were five of us poets, you know, or what we called poets. And we'd go around to various places, we went to Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] one time, and we tried things, we tried chanting and wailing, like, was it...who was that crazy old lady. Sitwell, Edith Sitwell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q259921], remember her? And if you ever heard the sort of sing, the song, sing sing she used to do, you know, we tried that. And it really worked, you know, but you'd go around and you'd say, \\\"Do you dig the poems?\\\" and they'd say, \\\"I can't hear them, but we really like your voice.\\\" You know. [Audience laughter]. So, you know, left that, you got an ache in the gut or something.   \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:11:37\\nReads \\\"Ratio\\\".\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:12:48\\nI don't like it. I don't want to be there. Here's one from last year. I got into printing stuff myself, you know, and I do that--I wish, oh, you can't see it, can you? It was mimeograph, it was real cheap, you know? And you could take images, you could take newspaper articles, you could take scraps of anything you saw that you dug, you know, put 'em together, and to me that was a, that was a form of concrete poetry. Can't, of course, I don't know, you couldn't really say that one or any number of them. This one is half-said, okay. Behind it I put a map, I found a map of B.C. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]and Minster Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21906024] was a map, was an island I found once when I was working on a ship as a mess girl, on a freighter. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:13:46\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:15:33\\nAnd where that ended up was just over the name Bella Coola [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q815765], which is sort of where they do, can fish. There's no escape, though, you know? And...so then I want to read about Kitsilano [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4179275], where most of...I happened, you know, I grew up. Kitsilano's a sort of slum district of Vancouver. And it's disintegrating, and you probably all experienced this, you know, being city people, you know, they're bulldozing the places, there's no more cheap places to live, and so your friends, you know, you can't live there anymore, your friends can't live there anymore, so whatever you had, which was sometimes very heavy, you know, community's really beautiful, you know? I used to go over and play music with my friends. We had to move out, you know, because the city's being destroyed, and only the people who are well-to-do, who have some sort of stake in the city, you know, who are supporting the structure can stay. And this poem is about somebody who I met one day on the street, you know, and her story, she's sort of sick, just on the street, everything's falling to pieces. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:16:55\\nReads “bee-people on 4th avenue” [published later in Lost Language].\\n\\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:18:32\\nWho's singing out there? But here, on the next street, you know, I ran into a friend of mine. Her name's Martina. And, you know, we're about the same age, and we've been through a lot of things, and, we've been through some bad things, you know, lots of rejections and refusal, no, there's no food now, you can't have any, go away, you know, fighting over somebody or other. \\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:18:58\\nReads “4th ave” [published later in Lost Language].\\n \\nMaxine Gadd\\n00:20:49\\nUs old ladies. Okay, but that's not entirely true. I got involved into all that magic stuff, you know, the Sufis, and into politics, and like this summer I hope I'm going to start some sort of woman's centre, back where I live, you know. \\n \\nEND\\n00:21:09\\n[Unknown amount of time elapsed before start of next recording].\",\"notes\":\"Maxine Gadd reads several poems that were later collected in Lost Language (Coach House Press, 1982), one poem from air two (Air, 1971), but it is likely that many other poems went unpublished. \\n\\n00:00- Unknown Introducer (George Bowering?) introduces Andreas Schroeder and Maxine Gadd [INDEX: Vancouver poets, Firepoint magazine, tape interview between Schroeder and Introducer found in the Sir George Williams Library (not there anymore).]\\n02:03- Maxine Gadd introduces “The Second Well Poem”.  [INDEX: mainstream poetry, poetry scene (being outside of), country vs. city life, role of editors; perhaps published as “Well Poem” in Lost Language (1982).]\\n03:57- Reads “The Second Well Poem”.\\n04:41- Introduces “Trip”. [INDEX: Gadd’s connection to poetry, bill bissett publishing her    book, publishing poetry; from unknown source.]\\n06:05- Reads “Trip”.\\n07:47- Introduces unknown poem, first line “Robin has the horse in hand...”. [INDEX: Greek trip, Eleusis, oracles; from unknown source.]\\n08:22- Reads unknown poem, first line “Robin has the horse in hand...”.\\n10:19- Introduces “Ratio”. [INDEX: explains “Leary” from previous poem is Timothy Leary, \\tcollective art forms, working with Intermedia in Vancouver, poetry group traveled to Edmonton, Edith Sitwell.]\\n11:37- Reads “Ratio”.\\n12:48- Introduces unknown poem, first line “Heading up to Minster Island”. [INDEX: self        publishing poems, collages, form of concrete poetry, map of B.C., worked as a mess girl on a freighter.]\\n13:46- Reads unknown poem, first line “Heading up to Minster Island”.\\n15:33- Introduces “bee-people on 4th avenue”. [INDEX: Bella Coola, fishing, Kitsilano where she grew up, poverty and destruction of Vancouver; from Lost Language]\\n16:55- Reads “bee-people on 4th avenue”. \\n18:32- Introduces “4th ave.” [INDEX: friend of Gadd’s named Martina; from air two and Lost Language.]\\n18:58- Reads “4th ave.”\\n20:49- Begins to introduce another poem, unknown. [INDEX: Sufism, politics, hopes to start a  women’s centre.]\\n21:09.94- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/maxine-gadd-at-sgwu-1972/#1\"}]"],"score":1.7444024},{"id":"1299","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Christopher Levenson at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 10 March 1972 "],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"CHRIS LEVINSON TAPE #1 OF 2 MASTER I006-11-104.1\" written on the spine of the tape's box. CHRIS LEVINSON refers to Chris Levenson. LEVINSON is misspelled. \"I006-11-104.1\" written on sticker on the reel. \"CHRIS LEVENSON TAPE #1 OF 2 MASTER 3-72--012-7 3 3/4 ips 1/2 track I006/SR104.1\" written on the front of the tape's box.\n\n\"CHRIS LEVINSON TAPE #2 OF 2 MASTER I006-11-104.2\" written on the spine of the tape's box. CHRIS LEVINSON refers to Chris Levenson. LEVINSON is misspelled. \"I006-11-104.2\" written on sticker on the reel. \"CHRIS LEVENSON TAPE #2 OF 2 MASTER 3-72--012-7 3 3/4 ips 1/2 track I006/SR104.2\" written on the front of the tape's box."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 6"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-104.1, I006-11-104.2]"],"creator_names":["Levenson, Christopher"],"creator_names_search":["Levenson, Christopher"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/33620164\",\"name\":\"Levenson, Christopher\",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"Poet, editor and translator Christopher Levenson was born in London, England in 1934. He studied at Cambridge University, the University of Bristol and at the University of Iowa, where he received his Master’s degree in 1970. Levenson edited Poetry from Cambridge (Fortune Press) in 1958 and was a contributor to New Poets, 1959: Iain Chrichton Smith, Karen Gershon, Christopher Levenson (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1959) for which he won an Eric Gregory Award in 1960. His first book of poetry, Cairns, was published in 1969 in England by Chatto & Windus Press, followed by Stills in 1972, published by the same press. Levenson emigrated to Canada in 1968 and taught Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Carleton University until 1999, becoming an Adjunct Professor. He then published Into the Open (Golden Dog Press, 1977) and The Journey Back (Sesame Press, 1978) which won the Archibald Lampman Award. Levenson has spent much time living in the Netherlands and in Germany, and translated both Seeking Hearts Solace (Aliquando Press, 1981) and Light of the World (Netherlandic Press, 1982). Arc Magazine was founded in 1978 with Michael Gnarowski, and Levenson served as main editor until 1988. In 1981, Levenson founded the Arc Reading Series in Ottawa, which ran for ten years. Levenson then published Arriving at night (Mosaic Press, 1986), Half Truths (Wolsak & Wynn, 1990) and Duplicities: New and Selected Poems (Mosaic Press, 1993). Levenson co-founded and served as series editor of the Harbinger Poetry Series at Carleton University Press from 1994-1999, and was a Reviews Editor for Literary Review of Canada in 1997 and English Studies in Canada from 1998-2002.  After retiring from Carleton University in 1999, he has taught at the University of St Petersburg, Russia (2002) and Kohinoor Business School in Indian (2004-2005). His most recent publications include The Bridge (Buschek Books, 2000) and Local Time (StoneFlower Press, 2006).\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Production_Date":[1972],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"Master\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"Master\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1972 3 10\",\"type\":\"Production Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Christopher Levenson reads from Cairns (Chatto and Windus, 1969) and Stills (Chatto and Windus, 1972), as well as poems published later in books like Into the Open (Golden Dog Press, 1977) and The Journey Back (Sesame Press, 1978)."],"contents":["chris_levenson_i006-11-104-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nIntroducer\n00:00:00\nAbout seven years ago, our lives intersected for about two years at the University of Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q182973], where Christopher [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5112730], along with two or three other poets suddenly arrived, in that middle state [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1546?wprov=srpw1_0] in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30?wprov=srpw1_0], with not just English accents, but a whole body of literatures and languages behind them. Christopher was not just in the poetry workshop, but was doing a lot of translations from German and Dutch, writing his own poetry, was a kind of formidable character with these obscure languages, at least obscure to me at the time. He has since come on, after doing his Ph.D. at Carleton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1041737] where he is an Assistant Professor of English. His third book of poems, Stills, is being published in the next few weeks by Chatto and Windus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3666843], and should be looked for at your bookstores. He's asked for it to come but it hasn't arrived yet. So without any further delay, Christopher Levenson. \n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:01:54\nGood evening. Trying to decide what I'm going to read this evening, presents the same sort of problems that it always does, when one's being asked to divide oneself up into certain sections, decide which poems you like best, and you know, you love them all, and don't want to make any choices. And to find some headings, some pigeonholes. Well, I'm not very good at this, but I'll start off with a few poems about the United States, about Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16?wprov=srpw1_0], starting off with places, and then move on to some slightly more personal ones, before the interval. Alright, the first poem I want to read is called \"Modus Vivendi\", which, it sounds a bit affected, having a foreign language titles, but I felt this said a little bit more than simply 'way of life' because ‘modus vivendi’ implies something very transitory, and that was one of the aspects of my first impressions at least of American life, that struck me very forcibly, this really came out of my very first day in the States, traveling from New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] to Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297?wprov=srpw1_0] by train.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:03:42\nReads \"Modus Vivendi\" [from Cairns].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:05:20\nThen, a poem that will be in stills called \"Metropolis\". Well I think this is self-explanatory, and in fact one of reasons why I like reading aloud, is because a fair number of my poems are self-explanatory and don't have to say too much about them. So I won't. \"Metropolis\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:05:49\nReads \"Metropolis\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:06:57\nThat, I suppose, really brands me as--emotionally speaking, as a European, because it's different here in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340]. I've not been to Quebec [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2145] yet, it's different in one or two places, but on the whole, you know, I find myself looking in vain for this sense of a centre. Now, a poem that I wrote not too long ago in Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930]. Called \"Office\", it's a shorter one. Sort this out a bit. Last time I gave a reading, somebody knocked water all over it. Here we go.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:07:54\nReads \"Office\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:08:15\nAnd then one which is my main claim so far, I suppose, to writing a Canadian poem, \"Horse Sleigh\", certainly it's not one that I could have written anywhere else. One of the kids is at nursery school and they take them out each winter on a horse sleigh ride, and I went along. So, of course, it's not really about a horse sleigh.  One word- half way through, the word 'revenants' these are ghosts that come back to their own--literally, their old haunts. And can't seem to keep away from the place. \"Horse Sleigh\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:09:07\nReads \"Horse Sleigh\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:09:57\nThen, another poem, based pretty obviously I think on personal experience, in the States. It's called \"A Bad Trip\", not mine, somebody else's, but this would be, this I felt was sort of enough to keep me off it. Anyway, \"A Bad Trip\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:10:34\nReads \"A Bad Trip\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:12:26\nThen, one which came a long, long time after I was actually told of this incident by my wife in fact, and it must be something like 1956, actually it happened, a carnival referred to is a German carnival, and I guess things have changed quite a bit since then. \"Song of the Unmarried Mother\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:13:00\nReads \"Song of the Unmarried Mother\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:14:28\nThen maybe have a little bit of pseudo light relief before we go on. \"Ballad of the Psycho-Analyst\". Which is another, sort of relic, but again not a personal one, this started off as a fine number of my poems do from things people say to me. The first two lines here, \"They took me across the river, they laid me up the hill\", were almost exactly what somebody said. And I took it from there. Alright, \"The Ballad of the Psycho-Analyst\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:15:07\nReads \"The Ballad of the Psycho-Analyst\" [from Cairns].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:16:54\nAnd, I'll read a couple more, sort of more personal ones, I guess. Well, this isn't really, this poem called \"Old Friend\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:17:16\nReads \"Old Friend\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:19:11\nAnd, \"Maps\". I've always been fascinated by maps and I find looking through my poems, certain images keep on recurring. One of them is that of maps, another one, as maybe you'll see later, is of stones, [unintelligible] and so on. And what I'm referring to in the first section here are these old maps where great chunks have come true and not known and so they just put in a zephyr, a wind, you know, or a dragon, or a dolphin or something like that to  make up for their ignorance. \"Maps\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:19:58\nReads \"Maps\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:21:29\nThen, a thing in this first part, I'll just read. One found poem, and then two excerpts from a sort of longer work in process. The found poem, I dedicate to Howard and [Marty (?)] Fink because that's where I found it. It's called the \"Bowfoot Scale\". The beaufort scale is simply an explanation in terms of miles per hour, I've left that column out, and in terms of symptoms so to speak of these words that you hear on the weather reports, calm, slight breeze and so forth. \"Beaufort Scale\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:22:21\nReads \"Beaufort Scale\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:23:31\n[Laughter]. I dare say it's a found poem. It's not really mine. I get a lot of fun out of finding poems. Now these next two excerpts are from a poem which is tentatively entitled, \"Hopkins in Piccadilly\", it won't be called that in the end, it's just, it started off thinking what Gerard Manley Hopkins [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313693] would think of contemporary London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], but it soon left that idea behind and what it's going to be now is a poem in several sections about various aspects of London. Trying to use as many words in my poems that I don't normally use in poems, you know, or that one does not normally see used in poems, and so a lot of, words which are not normally part of my poetic vocabulary. I'm not trying to be arch or archaic or anything like that, simply to expand my vocabulary and, hope to, therefore, I can say new things. Now the two that I've got semi finished, or at least enough to read, one's called \"Charing Cross Road\", if you know London, England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21], you'll know that this is the road in which you find both some very good book shops and a lot of very sleazy so called hygienic stores, and it's this aspect I'm concentrating on there, and then the second one is on Hyde Park [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123738], with the idea of the public speakers and the orators. \"Charing Cross Road\" then.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:25:25\nReads \"Charing Cross Road\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:26:34\nThat's as far as I've got with that bit so far. The next one, \"Hyde Park\", the Hyde Park Speaker's Corner [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q510323] is what I'm thinking of particularly.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:26:47\nReads \"Hyde Park\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:28:41\nIt's not really supposed to follow quite on from that, but a little bit later. \"But still at least we have our language...\"\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:28:48\nResumes reading “Hyde Park”.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:29:08\nThat's as far as I've got with that section too for the moment. And I believe the custom is, sometimes, at least, here to have a sort of five or ten minute break and then we will have about another twenty minutes afterwards, if that's alright with you.\n\nUnknown\n00:30:22\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nChristopher Levenson\n00:30:23\nI'll read a few so called political poems, they're not really political in the normal sense, not sort of party political or anything like that, simply concerned about relationships between people in the community or sort of national attitudes, that sort of thing, more than specific political issues. Although this first one that I'm going to read, \"Terrorist\", comes, I think, fairly obviously from a particular situation, with which you here are particularly well acquainted. I was thinking, particularly of the FLQ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1129564] crisis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27702], but it could apply to any terrorist.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:31:31\nReads \"Terrorist\" [published later in The Journey Back].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:32:35\nI suppose if I have a recurring theme in these quasi-political poems, it is that, the tyranny of the ideal if you like, the way in which we force things to become what we want them to become. Force ourselves to see things so that they fit into our pre-selected beliefs. Alright, a rather different sort of poem called \"The Facts of Life\".  This too will be in the book.\n\nChristopher Levenson\n00:33:13\nReads \"The Facts of Life\" [from Stills].\n \nEND\n00:35:25\n\n\nchris_levenson_i006-11-104-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] \n\nChristopher Levenson\n00:00:00\nResumes reading \"The Facts of Life\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:00:59\nAnd another poem that comes from the same sort of period, as I said, I like finding poems, and this one I found in the window of a pharmacy, this time they had notices saying 'watch for these danger signs', they were danger signs of cancer, and I call this little poem, which is, as I say, a political poem, so I won't explain the metaphor any further, \"Introduction to Cancer Diagnosis\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:01:32\nReads \"Introduction to Cancer Diagnosis\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:02:17\nAnother poem, \"Epitaph for a Killer\", I think you will probably remember the incident this starts from. Charles Whitman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q453209] going up the University library tower [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28403236] in Austin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16559], Texas and just picking a few people off with his telescopic lens gun. And the thing that struck me when I read these reports, as it so often happened with Richard Speck [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q944350] and all those other sort of, mass killers, that people said, 'oh, but he was such a nice boy, such an ordinary boy' you know, 'such a decent lad'. You know, how could anyone so ordinary, you know if he had long hair, or if he'd been a hippie, we would have expected it. But you know, because they didn't go 'round the little- labels on them, they were expected to have conformed completely, and of course they didn't. \"Epitaph for a Killer\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:03:32\nReads \"Epitaph for a Killer\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:04:49\nI always forget until I finish reading that poem that that last line is not self-explanatory. It's a disease--I think it's called Sickle disease--Pardon? [audience member addresses Levenson]. Sickle Cell Disease [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q185034], okay. Which apparently affects mainly African Negroes, and this is some sort of deficiency in the blood quite simply, but something which is totally inexplicable in the genes anyway. Alright, another, one more sort of pseudo or quasi political poem, this one is called \"Boreland Burlap\". Again, I don't know if you know exactly what I am referring to, but I think the poem explains it sufficiently, the way you get trees transplanted whole nowadays.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:06:05\nReads \"Boreland Burlap\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:07:05\nAnd now, a section of poems, well, I've put ironically, self-ironically, \"The Solution\" I mean, having presented some political problems--of course, there are no solutions. What I've tried to do in some of the poems I'm going to read now is simply to capture certain textures, or to suggest certain qualities that I admire, or certain aspects of character. The first, well I think probably the only rock poem I'm going to read this evening, called \"Fossil\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:07:57\nReads \"Fossil\" [from Cairns].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:08:50\nThen, a short little poem called \"Moss\", I've got to find it. Well, come back to that in a minute as they say on CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761]. Oh here we are, I think, no. Yes, there we are, \"Moss\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:09:22\nReads \"Moss\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:09:44\nAnd now, \"Skyscraper\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:09:54\nReads \"Skyscraper\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:10:22\n\"Mediation on Trees\". This too, part of it is found, so to speak, found of all places, in 'Life’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463198]. The magazine 'Life', an article about a Japanese wood carver, and I'll try to indicate by the tone of my voice, which are the quotations, the rest of it's me of course. \"Meditation on Trees\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:11:03\nReads \"Meditation on Trees\" [published later in The Journey Back].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:12:57\nI just realized, I mentioned to one or two people that I was going to read a poem called \"Ottawa\" and I haven't read it, so I'll slip it in now.\n\nChristopher Levenson\n00:13:07\nReads \"Ottawa\".\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:13:41\nAnother poem called \"The Face of Holland\", again concerned with certain characteristics, here I'm trying to identify national characteristics and the various sort of puns, hereto--I think the only thing I need to explain perhaps are the polders of course the land that originally reclaimed by the sea and now enclosed by dykes. I think the rest of it's self-explanatory.\n\nChristopher Levenson\n00:14:19\nReads \"The Face of Holland\" [published later in The Journey Back].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:15:47\nI think I'll read three more poems if you bear with me, these come under the general heading of 'Art', really the relationship of art to life, though this first one is at least, would-be light poem, called \"The Quartet\", to Carleton, where I teach now. We have a series of concerts in the winter, and most of them are pretty good but one particular one wasn't and it set me thinking about the whole marvelous artificiality of chamber music in a way.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:16:37\nReads \"The Quartet\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:18:14\nThen, a poem called \"Watch the Birdie\" which is about the cost of art in human terms. If you know what a sea urchin is like in its natural and in its final state, final [unintelligible] state, it'll help. You know they're all, like, sort of hedgehogs or porcupines and you have to scrape all the spines off and then gauge the insides out, but that's described in lurid detail.\n\nChristopher Levenson\n00:19:02\nReads \"Watch the Birdie\" [from Stills].\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:20:18\nThat sounds a bit pretentious, I'm afraid, those last four words in Latin, but it means \"you also\", or \"you likewise\", and I know gulls' cries don't really sound like that but, that seemed to me the briefest most concise way of making that point at the end of the poem. Finally, a poem which attempts to link love and art. Called \"Bathysphere\", or rather the kind of knowledge involved in both.\n \nChristopher Levenson\n00:21:11\nReads \"Bathysphere\" [published later in Into The Open].\n \nEND\n00:22:51\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Local connections: \\n\\nAccording to the transcript, Levenson and Fink met at the University of Iowa. Since moving to Canada, Levenson’s primary focus has been on the promotion and study of Canadian literature, and he has served on many editorial boards and organized reading series to strengthen the Canadian literary community.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Sarah MacDonell & Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>CD>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://www.writersunion.ca/ww_profile.asp?mem=1141&L=\",\"citation\":\"“Christopher Levenson”. The Writer’s Union of Canada, Members’ Pages. September 16, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/christopher-levenson-at-sgwu-1972/#2\",\"citation\":\"“Georgian Happenings”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 10 March 1972.\\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/cairns/oclc/729779089&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Levenson, Christopher. Cairns. London: Chatto and Windus, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/into-the-open-poems/oclc/3794830&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Levenson, Christopher. Into the Open. Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 1977. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/stills/oclc/484767872&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Levenson, Christopher. Stills. London: Chatto and Windus, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/journey-back-and-other-poems/oclc/722588448&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Levenson, Christopher. The Journey Back. Windsor: Sesame Press, 1978. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/levenson-christopher-b-1934/oclc/4811302892&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stevens, Peter. \\\"Levenson, Christopher\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Christopher Levenson.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online; Detroit: Gale, 2001. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548953890816,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0104-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0104-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Christopher Levenson Tape Box 1 - 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Christopher was not just in the poetry workshop, but was doing a lot of translations from German and Dutch, writing his own poetry, was a kind of formidable character with these obscure languages, at least obscure to me at the time. He has since come on, after doing his Ph.D. at Carleton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1041737] where he is an Assistant Professor of English. His third book of poems, Stills, is being published in the next few weeks by Chatto and Windus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3666843], and should be looked for at your bookstores. He's asked for it to come but it hasn't arrived yet. So without any further delay, Christopher Levenson. \\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:01:54\\nGood evening. Trying to decide what I'm going to read this evening, presents the same sort of problems that it always does, when one's being asked to divide oneself up into certain sections, decide which poems you like best, and you know, you love them all, and don't want to make any choices. And to find some headings, some pigeonholes. Well, I'm not very good at this, but I'll start off with a few poems about the United States, about Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16?wprov=srpw1_0], starting off with places, and then move on to some slightly more personal ones, before the interval. Alright, the first poem I want to read is called \\\"Modus Vivendi\\\", which, it sounds a bit affected, having a foreign language titles, but I felt this said a little bit more than simply 'way of life' because ‘modus vivendi’ implies something very transitory, and that was one of the aspects of my first impressions at least of American life, that struck me very forcibly, this really came out of my very first day in the States, traveling from New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] to Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297?wprov=srpw1_0] by train.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:03:42\\nReads \\\"Modus Vivendi\\\" [from Cairns].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:05:20\\nThen, a poem that will be in stills called \\\"Metropolis\\\". Well I think this is self-explanatory, and in fact one of reasons why I like reading aloud, is because a fair number of my poems are self-explanatory and don't have to say too much about them. So I won't. \\\"Metropolis\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:05:49\\nReads \\\"Metropolis\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:06:57\\nThat, I suppose, really brands me as--emotionally speaking, as a European, because it's different here in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340]. I've not been to Quebec [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2145] yet, it's different in one or two places, but on the whole, you know, I find myself looking in vain for this sense of a centre. Now, a poem that I wrote not too long ago in Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930]. Called \\\"Office\\\", it's a shorter one. Sort this out a bit. Last time I gave a reading, somebody knocked water all over it. Here we go.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:07:54\\nReads \\\"Office\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:08:15\\nAnd then one which is my main claim so far, I suppose, to writing a Canadian poem, \\\"Horse Sleigh\\\", certainly it's not one that I could have written anywhere else. One of the kids is at nursery school and they take them out each winter on a horse sleigh ride, and I went along. So, of course, it's not really about a horse sleigh.  One word- half way through, the word 'revenants' these are ghosts that come back to their own--literally, their old haunts. And can't seem to keep away from the place. \\\"Horse Sleigh\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:09:07\\nReads \\\"Horse Sleigh\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:09:57\\nThen, another poem, based pretty obviously I think on personal experience, in the States. It's called \\\"A Bad Trip\\\", not mine, somebody else's, but this would be, this I felt was sort of enough to keep me off it. Anyway, \\\"A Bad Trip\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:10:34\\nReads \\\"A Bad Trip\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:12:26\\nThen, one which came a long, long time after I was actually told of this incident by my wife in fact, and it must be something like 1956, actually it happened, a carnival referred to is a German carnival, and I guess things have changed quite a bit since then. \\\"Song of the Unmarried Mother\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:13:00\\nReads \\\"Song of the Unmarried Mother\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:14:28\\nThen maybe have a little bit of pseudo light relief before we go on. \\\"Ballad of the Psycho-Analyst\\\". Which is another, sort of relic, but again not a personal one, this started off as a fine number of my poems do from things people say to me. The first two lines here, \\\"They took me across the river, they laid me up the hill\\\", were almost exactly what somebody said. And I took it from there. Alright, \\\"The Ballad of the Psycho-Analyst\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:15:07\\nReads \\\"The Ballad of the Psycho-Analyst\\\" [from Cairns].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:16:54\\nAnd, I'll read a couple more, sort of more personal ones, I guess. Well, this isn't really, this poem called \\\"Old Friend\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:17:16\\nReads \\\"Old Friend\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:19:11\\nAnd, \\\"Maps\\\". I've always been fascinated by maps and I find looking through my poems, certain images keep on recurring. One of them is that of maps, another one, as maybe you'll see later, is of stones, [unintelligible] and so on. And what I'm referring to in the first section here are these old maps where great chunks have come true and not known and so they just put in a zephyr, a wind, you know, or a dragon, or a dolphin or something like that to  make up for their ignorance. \\\"Maps\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:19:58\\nReads \\\"Maps\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:21:29\\nThen, a thing in this first part, I'll just read. One found poem, and then two excerpts from a sort of longer work in process. The found poem, I dedicate to Howard and [Marty (?)] Fink because that's where I found it. It's called the \\\"Bowfoot Scale\\\". The beaufort scale is simply an explanation in terms of miles per hour, I've left that column out, and in terms of symptoms so to speak of these words that you hear on the weather reports, calm, slight breeze and so forth. \\\"Beaufort Scale\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:22:21\\nReads \\\"Beaufort Scale\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:23:31\\n[Laughter]. I dare say it's a found poem. It's not really mine. I get a lot of fun out of finding poems. Now these next two excerpts are from a poem which is tentatively entitled, \\\"Hopkins in Piccadilly\\\", it won't be called that in the end, it's just, it started off thinking what Gerard Manley Hopkins [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313693] would think of contemporary London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], but it soon left that idea behind and what it's going to be now is a poem in several sections about various aspects of London. Trying to use as many words in my poems that I don't normally use in poems, you know, or that one does not normally see used in poems, and so a lot of, words which are not normally part of my poetic vocabulary. I'm not trying to be arch or archaic or anything like that, simply to expand my vocabulary and, hope to, therefore, I can say new things. Now the two that I've got semi finished, or at least enough to read, one's called \\\"Charing Cross Road\\\", if you know London, England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21], you'll know that this is the road in which you find both some very good book shops and a lot of very sleazy so called hygienic stores, and it's this aspect I'm concentrating on there, and then the second one is on Hyde Park [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123738], with the idea of the public speakers and the orators. \\\"Charing Cross Road\\\" then.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:25:25\\nReads \\\"Charing Cross Road\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:26:34\\nThat's as far as I've got with that bit so far. The next one, \\\"Hyde Park\\\", the Hyde Park Speaker's Corner [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q510323] is what I'm thinking of particularly.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:26:47\\nReads \\\"Hyde Park\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:28:41\\nIt's not really supposed to follow quite on from that, but a little bit later. \\\"But still at least we have our language...\\\"\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:28:48\\nResumes reading “Hyde Park”.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:29:08\\nThat's as far as I've got with that section too for the moment. And I believe the custom is, sometimes, at least, here to have a sort of five or ten minute break and then we will have about another twenty minutes afterwards, if that's alright with you.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:30:22\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:30:23\\nI'll read a few so called political poems, they're not really political in the normal sense, not sort of party political or anything like that, simply concerned about relationships between people in the community or sort of national attitudes, that sort of thing, more than specific political issues. Although this first one that I'm going to read, \\\"Terrorist\\\", comes, I think, fairly obviously from a particular situation, with which you here are particularly well acquainted. I was thinking, particularly of the FLQ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1129564] crisis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27702], but it could apply to any terrorist.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:31:31\\nReads \\\"Terrorist\\\" [published later in The Journey Back].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:32:35\\nI suppose if I have a recurring theme in these quasi-political poems, it is that, the tyranny of the ideal if you like, the way in which we force things to become what we want them to become. Force ourselves to see things so that they fit into our pre-selected beliefs. Alright, a rather different sort of poem called \\\"The Facts of Life\\\".  This too will be in the book.\\n\\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:33:13\\nReads \\\"The Facts of Life\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nEND\\n00:35:25\\n\",\"notes\":\"Christopher Levenson reads from Cairns (Chatto and Windus, 1969) and Stills (Chatto and Windus, 1972), as well as poems published later in books like Into the Open (Golden Dog Press, 1977) and The Journey Back (Sesame Press, 1978).\\n\\n00:00- Unknown male Introduces Christopher Levenson [INDEX: University of Iowa, United  \\tStates, translations from German and Dutch, Ph.D., Carleton University- Assistant       \\tProfessor of English, Stills published by Chatto and Windus]\\n01:54- Christopher introduces “Modus Vivendi” [INDEX: selecting poems for reading, poems   about United States and Canada, traveling from New York to Chicago by train]\\n03:42- Reads “Modus Vivendi”.\\n05:20- Introduces “Metropolis” [INDEX: process of reading out loud]\\n05:49- Reads “Metropolis”\\n06:57- Introduces “Office” [INDEX: European sentimentality, Montreal, Ottawa]\\n07:54- Reads “Office”\\n08:15- Introduces “Horse Sleigh” [INDEX: 'Canadian poem']\\n09:07- Reads “Horse Sleigh”\\n09:57- Introduces “A Bad Trip”\\n10:34- Reads “A Bad Trip”\\n12:26- Introduces “Song of the Unmarried Mother” [INDEX: German Carnival]\\n13:00- Reads “Song of the Unmarried Mother”\\n14:28- Introduces “The Ballad of the Psychoanalyst”\\n15:07- Reads “The Ballad of the Psychoanalyst”\\n16:54- Introduces “Old Friend”\\n17:16- Reads “Old Friend”\\n19:11- Introduces “Maps” [INDEX: images in his poetry: maps and stones]\\n19:58- Reads “Maps”\\n21:29- Introduces “Bowfoot Scale” [INDEX: found poem, Howard and Marty Fink [?], weather reports]\\n22:21- Reads “Bowfoot Scale”\\n23:31- Introduces “Charing Cross Road” [excerpts from “Hopkins in Piccadilly”] [INDEX:   \\tGerald Manley Hopkins, London, poetic vocabulary]\\n25:25- Reads “Charing Cross Road”\\n26:34- Introduces “Hyde Park” [also excerpt from “Hopkins in Piccadilly”]\\n26:47- Reads “Hyde Park”\\n29:08- Calls a break\\n30:33- Resumes from break, introduces “Terrorist” [INDEX: ‘Political poems’, FLQ crisis]\\n31:31- Reads “Terrorist”\\n32:35- Introduces “The Facts of Life” [INDEX: quasi-political poems, tyranny of the ideal]\\n33:13- Reads “The Facts of Life”\\n35:25.57- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/christopher-levenson-at-sgwu-1972/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/chris_levenson_i006-11-104-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"chris_levenson_i006-11-104-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:22:51\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"54.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"chris_levenson_i006-11-104-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] \\n\\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:00:00\\nResumes reading \\\"The Facts of Life\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:00:59\\nAnd another poem that comes from the same sort of period, as I said, I like finding poems, and this one I found in the window of a pharmacy, this time they had notices saying 'watch for these danger signs', they were danger signs of cancer, and I call this little poem, which is, as I say, a political poem, so I won't explain the metaphor any further, \\\"Introduction to Cancer Diagnosis\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:01:32\\nReads \\\"Introduction to Cancer Diagnosis\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:02:17\\nAnother poem, \\\"Epitaph for a Killer\\\", I think you will probably remember the incident this starts from. Charles Whitman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q453209] going up the University library tower [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28403236] in Austin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16559], Texas and just picking a few people off with his telescopic lens gun. And the thing that struck me when I read these reports, as it so often happened with Richard Speck [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q944350] and all those other sort of, mass killers, that people said, 'oh, but he was such a nice boy, such an ordinary boy' you know, 'such a decent lad'. You know, how could anyone so ordinary, you know if he had long hair, or if he'd been a hippie, we would have expected it. But you know, because they didn't go 'round the little- labels on them, they were expected to have conformed completely, and of course they didn't. \\\"Epitaph for a Killer\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:03:32\\nReads \\\"Epitaph for a Killer\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:04:49\\nI always forget until I finish reading that poem that that last line is not self-explanatory. It's a disease--I think it's called Sickle disease--Pardon? [audience member addresses Levenson]. Sickle Cell Disease [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q185034], okay. Which apparently affects mainly African Negroes, and this is some sort of deficiency in the blood quite simply, but something which is totally inexplicable in the genes anyway. Alright, another, one more sort of pseudo or quasi political poem, this one is called \\\"Boreland Burlap\\\". Again, I don't know if you know exactly what I am referring to, but I think the poem explains it sufficiently, the way you get trees transplanted whole nowadays.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:06:05\\nReads \\\"Boreland Burlap\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:07:05\\nAnd now, a section of poems, well, I've put ironically, self-ironically, \\\"The Solution\\\" I mean, having presented some political problems--of course, there are no solutions. What I've tried to do in some of the poems I'm going to read now is simply to capture certain textures, or to suggest certain qualities that I admire, or certain aspects of character. The first, well I think probably the only rock poem I'm going to read this evening, called \\\"Fossil\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:07:57\\nReads \\\"Fossil\\\" [from Cairns].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:08:50\\nThen, a short little poem called \\\"Moss\\\", I've got to find it. Well, come back to that in a minute as they say on CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761]. Oh here we are, I think, no. Yes, there we are, \\\"Moss\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:09:22\\nReads \\\"Moss\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:09:44\\nAnd now, \\\"Skyscraper\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:09:54\\nReads \\\"Skyscraper\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:10:22\\n\\\"Mediation on Trees\\\". This too, part of it is found, so to speak, found of all places, in 'Life’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463198]. The magazine 'Life', an article about a Japanese wood carver, and I'll try to indicate by the tone of my voice, which are the quotations, the rest of it's me of course. \\\"Meditation on Trees\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:11:03\\nReads \\\"Meditation on Trees\\\" [published later in The Journey Back].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:12:57\\nI just realized, I mentioned to one or two people that I was going to read a poem called \\\"Ottawa\\\" and I haven't read it, so I'll slip it in now.\\n\\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:13:07\\nReads \\\"Ottawa\\\".\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:13:41\\nAnother poem called \\\"The Face of Holland\\\", again concerned with certain characteristics, here I'm trying to identify national characteristics and the various sort of puns, hereto--I think the only thing I need to explain perhaps are the polders of course the land that originally reclaimed by the sea and now enclosed by dykes. I think the rest of it's self-explanatory.\\n\\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:14:19\\nReads \\\"The Face of Holland\\\" [published later in The Journey Back].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:15:47\\nI think I'll read three more poems if you bear with me, these come under the general heading of 'Art', really the relationship of art to life, though this first one is at least, would-be light poem, called \\\"The Quartet\\\", to Carleton, where I teach now. We have a series of concerts in the winter, and most of them are pretty good but one particular one wasn't and it set me thinking about the whole marvelous artificiality of chamber music in a way.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:16:37\\nReads \\\"The Quartet\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:18:14\\nThen, a poem called \\\"Watch the Birdie\\\" which is about the cost of art in human terms. If you know what a sea urchin is like in its natural and in its final state, final [unintelligible] state, it'll help. You know they're all, like, sort of hedgehogs or porcupines and you have to scrape all the spines off and then gauge the insides out, but that's described in lurid detail.\\n\\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:19:02\\nReads \\\"Watch the Birdie\\\" [from Stills].\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:20:18\\nThat sounds a bit pretentious, I'm afraid, those last four words in Latin, but it means \\\"you also\\\", or \\\"you likewise\\\", and I know gulls' cries don't really sound like that but, that seemed to me the briefest most concise way of making that point at the end of the poem. Finally, a poem which attempts to link love and art. Called \\\"Bathysphere\\\", or rather the kind of knowledge involved in both.\\n \\nChristopher Levenson\\n00:21:11\\nReads \\\"Bathysphere\\\" [published later in Into The Open].\\n \\nEND\\n00:22:51\\n\",\"notes\":\"Christopher Levenson reads from Cairns (Chatto and Windus, 1969) and Stills (Chatto and Windus, 1972), as well as poems published later in books like Into the Open (Golden Dog Press, 1977) and The Journey Back (Sesame Press, 1978).\\n \\n00:00- [Recording starts mid-sentence] Reads “Notes for Foreign Students”.\\n00:59- Introduces “Introduction to Cancer Diagnosis” [INDEX: found poems, ‘political poem’]\\n01:32- Reads “Introduction to Cancer Diagnosis”\\n02:17- Introduces “Epitaph for a Killer” [INDEX: Charles Whitman, Austin Texas, Richard  \\tSpeck, people’s impressions of serial killers]\\n03:32- Reads “Epitaph for a Killer”\\n04:49- Explains last line of “Epitaph for a Killer”, introduces “Boreland Burlap” [INDEX: \\tSickle Cell disease, transplantation of trees]\\n06:05- Reads “Boreland Burlap”\\n07:05- Introduces section of poems called “The Solution” and “Fossil”\\n07:57- Reads “Fossil”\\n08:50- Introduces “Moss” [INDEX: CBC]\\n09:22- Reads “Moss”\\n09:44- Reads “Skyscraper”\\n10:22- Introduces “Meditation on Trees” [INDEX: found poem, Life Magazine, article on a   \\tJapanese wood carver]\\n11:03- Reads “Meditation on Trees”\\n12:57- Introduces “Ottawa”\\n13:07- Reads “Ottawa”\\n13:41- Introduces “The Face of Holland” [INDEX: national characteristics, Dutch Polders]\\n14:19- Reads “The Face of Holland”\\n15:47- Introduces “The Quartet” [INDEX: ‘Art’, Carleton University’s series of concerts in   \\twinter, chamber music]\\n16:37- Reads “The Quartet”\\n18:14- Introduces “Watch the Birdie” [INDEX: cost of art in human terms, sea urchin,   hedgehogs, porcupines]\\n19:02- Reads “Watch the Birdie”\\n20:18- Explains last line of “Watch the Birdie”, introduces “Bathysphere” [INDEX: Latin         \\tdefinition, linking love and art]\\n21:11- Reads “Bathysphere”\\n22:51.34- END OF RECORDING\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/christopher-levenson-at-sgwu-1972/#2\"}]"],"score":1.7444024},{"id":"1300","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":[" L.E. Sissman at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 7 April 1972"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"TAPE #1 OF 1 L.E. SISSMAN MASTER I006/SR110\" written on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-110\" written on sticker on the reel. \"L.E. SISSMAN APRIL 6/72 TAPE #1 OF 1 4-72--012-8 MASTER 3 3/4 ips 1/2 track\" written on the front of the tape's box"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 6"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Sissman, Louis Edward"],"creator_names_search":["Sissman, Louis Edward"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/65248808\",\"name\":\"Sissman, Louis Edward\",\"dates\":\"1928-1976 \",\"notes\":\"Born on New Year’s Day of 1928, poet Louis Edward (L.E.) Sissman grew up in Detroit, Michigan. At the age of thirteen, Sissman won the National Spelling Bee in Washington and was aired on national radio as a Quiz Kid. He entered Harvard at the young age of sixteen in 1944. In 1946, however, he was dismissed, got a job as a stack boy in the Boston Public Library, and began writing poetry. Sissman and a few of his classmates founded a literary magazine, Halcyon, which only ran for two issues, but nevertheless received contributions from e.e. cummings and Wallace Stevens. Sissman was readmitted to Harvard in 1948 and received Harvard’s Garrison Poetry Prize. He graduated cum laude in 1949, elected class poet. He then moved to New York and worked as a copy editor, until returning to Boston in 1952. By this time, he had stopped writing poetry. Sissman worked as an aide to John F. Kennedy’s first Senate campaign as well as various smaller jobs. In 1956 he was hired as a copywriter for the advertising firm of Kenyon and Eckhardt. By 1969, he was the vice president and creative director of the same firm. In 1963, he started to write poetry again. Sissman was diagnosed with the then-incurable Hodgkin’s disease in 1965, encouraging him to write more and more verse. He was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in 1968, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1969. Sissman published his first book of poetry in 1968, Dying: An Introduction (Little, Brown and Company), and Pursuit of Honor in 1971 (Little, Brown and Company). He began writing reviews for the New Yorker, and in 1975 Innocent Bystander: The Scene from the 70’s was published (Vanguard Press). L.E. Sissman wrote up until his death in 1976. His unpublished poems were collected with previously published poems in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman (Little, Brown and Company) in 1978.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"contributors_names_search":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Hoffman, Stanton\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"Series_organizer_name":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"Performance_Date":[1972],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"Master\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"01:30:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1972 4 7\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the front of the tape's box and in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Georgian Happenings\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["L.E. Sissman reads from his first three books, Dying: An Introduction (Little, Brown 1968), Scattered Returns (Little, Brown 1969), and Pursuit of Honor (Little, Brown 1971), as well as poems that were new at the time and published posthumously in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman (Little, Brown 1978)."],"contents":["le_sissman_i006-11-110.mp3\n\nStanton Hoffman\n00:00:00\nL.E. Sissman's three books of poems are Dying: An Introduction, Scattered Returns and Pursuit of Honor. The poet James Atlas made the following observation about Scattered Returns that it \"engages a voice so casual, so tuneless that the depression which pervades each page is in danger of being overlooked. Not the shrill agony of despair, but the flat surfaces of the unfulfilled or what characterizes his diction\". But also I'd like to take a line from a Sissman poem out of context, \"evidently, even desperation leads a charmed life\". Ladies and gentleman, L.E. Sissman.\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:00:45\nThank you. Well let me begin by refuting one of those statements that Stanley just made, Stanton, I'm sorry, just made. I was not a singing vacuum cleaner salesman, that was a canard that was incorporated into my vita by my publisher, who misread a biographical note I wrote. I once worked for a vacuum cleaner company that made its salesmen sing pep songs before they went out to tackle the ladies in the neighbourhood, so we'd get up in the morning and sing all these ridiculous songs and then go out and try to sell vacuum cleaners but the two were not really related, it was just hyping oneself up for the gritty day of trying to sell these poor ladies on a vacuum cleaner. Now I've seen you've kindly reproduced, and incidentally you've been most kind here in Montreal, I've been received royally, more so than any place I've been lately to read poetry and I greatly appreciated, I feel it's kind of a homecoming since my mother is a Canadian, from Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], not Quebec [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q176], but I've been in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34] many times before and I'm very fond of this city and if I finally lose patience with the U. S. and A. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] as Walt Kelly [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q933892] says in Pogo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2100584] I'll migrate up here, I feel it an eminently sensible thing to do. So it's nice to have a pleasant reception here. And since you've kindly reproduced one of the poems from a group called \"Mouth Organ Tunes: the American Lost-and-Found\" on your mimeographed sheet, I thought I'd start off by reading that poem. I'm going to say a few words at the risk of being dull about what each one of these poems I'm going to read is for, what I meant it to mean. This particular one is talking about the well, kind of what James Atlas was talking about in his comment on my second book, this is in my third book, the terminal flatness and greyness of American life, United States life, and the attempts to alleviate this barrenness by all sorts of temporizing accommodations, going to Howard Johnson's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5919997] on a Sunday, or having a kinky party in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] to show off one's new paintings or celebrating the death of a genuine antique American and New Englander and looking at the house that he lived in and so on. Anyway the tune is called, the poem is called \"Mouth Organ Tunes\", and I use the mouth organ as an instrument here to suggest the, well the mouth organ is something that can be played in a band, but is better not, it's a very solitary instrument and to me it always conveys the loneliness of an individual against insurmountable odds. The poem is called \"Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found\" and the first section is called, as promised, \"In a Ho-Jo's by the River\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:04:20\nReads \"Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found, part 1: In a Ho-Jo's by the River\" from Pursuit of Honor. \n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:10:02\nLet me contrast that with a poem about Middle America in the best sense. The old Middle America of people who knew their own way and found their own way in the land, and lost their own way in recent years because of encroachments on the land. The poem is called \"The Big Rock Candy Mountain\" and it's dedicated to the memory of my half-brother, Winfield Shannon, itinerant farm worker, 1909-1969. And it has an epigraph by Basil Bunting [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2886803] which goes \"a mason times his mallet to a lark's twitter, ‘til the stone spells the name, naming none, a man abolished\".\n\nL.E. Sissman\n00:11:04\nReads \"The Big Rock Candy Mountain\",  parts 1-5 [from Pursuit of Honor].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:21:25\nLet me change to a slightly lighter vein, and read a poem that is a joke, essentially. It's called \"The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.\" It's about a man I once roomed with in college, who was an Audobonophile, or whatever the word is, a bird nut and has since become a bird expert. Anyway, this is how the poem goes, it's called \"The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:22:05\nReads \"The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:22:55\nThat is also a description I should say, of the Least Bittern. This is another poem about being in college...good lord, twenty seven years ago, I can't believe this, 1945, yeah that is damn near twenty seven years ago. It's called \"A College Room, Lowell R-34\", a building at Harvard [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13371], 1945.\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:23:26\nReads \"A College Room, Lowell R-34, 1945\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:25:12\nAnd there's a footnote to this poem, dedicated to the maid, good lord, this is a long time ago, we had maids in those rooms. It was a very capable lady named Mrs. Circassian. And it's called \"Footnote, Mrs. Circassian\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:25:28\nReads \"Footnote, Mrs. Circassian\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\n\nAudience\n00:26:07\nLaughter.\n\nL.E. Sissman\n00:26:10\nThank you, she was a very nice lady, and deserved a much less ironic tribute than that, she was a home away from home herself. Let's see now, I've got all sorts of possible choices here. Why don't I read a poem about a shattering experience I had which I think maybe all of you may have had at one time or another, going back to a place where you had lived as a kid, and finding how puny it was and how destroyed it was by the passage of time. This is a poem about a place in Detroit where I had lived in the 30's and went back to in 1964 when the poem was written. It's called \"East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:27:03\nReads \"East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:29:30\nAnd finally, one more poem from this rue, if I can find it, called \"The Museum of Comparative Zoology\" and it is about indeed falling in love with an old beat up museum of Comparative Zoology, and finding one's place in the philia.\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:29:56\nReads \"The Museum of Comparative Zoology\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:32:19\nLet me get onto a poem that is now again a little bit more serious, although not ultimately so, I hope. It's about being very sick at the hospital and knowing one is in good hands. It's called \"A Deathplace\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:32:41\nReads \"A Death Place\" [from Scattered Returns].\n \nUnknown\n00:35:27\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nL.E. Sissman\n00:35:28\nReads “Small Space” [from Scattered Returns].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:36:12\nNot entirely and seriously...I think this might be time to call a five minute break during which I will smoke a cigarette and get my wind back and then we will proceed. Ok? \n[Audience applause]. Thank you. I won't take all this junk off, if I do I'll be in serious trouble.\n\nUnknown\n00:36:46\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:36:48\nThis is a poem about the same thing the last poem was about, called \"Getting On\", and I'll read only one part of it since that's all I've written so far. It's called \"Grave Expectations\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:37:04\nReads \"Getting On: Grave Expectations\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:39:15\nAnd this is a poem that is sort of mysterious and I'm not sure that I understand it either but I'll read it, called, if I can find the end of it, yeah. \"On Meeting No One in New York\". This is about doing a very daring thing in middle age, not taking a girl up on it. \"On Meeting No One in New York\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:39:45\nReads \"The Mid-Forties: On Meeting No One in New York\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:41:46\nAnd finally, not finally, there are two more I think. One is a true story, the other is a dream, but they are both nice to end on April 7th, even though there still may be snow on the ground, with a note of spring. This really happened to a friend of mine in Berlin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64] in 1945 in April, and it's called \"A Comedy in Ruins\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:42:24\nReads \"A Comedy in Ruins\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:45:39\nAnd finally, an all nice sweet, pleasant poem, except for the passage of time which none of us can do anything about, based on a dream. It's called \"Cockaigne: A Dream\".\n \nL.E. Sissman\n00:45:56\nReads \"Cockaigne: A Dream\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\n\nL.E. Sissman\n00:50:38\nThank you.\n\nAudience\n00:50:39\nApplause [cut off].\n\nEND\n00:50:52\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nSissman’s second book of verse, Pursuit of Honor was published in 1971; he was writing reviews for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nNo direct connections known between L.E. Sissman and Sir George Williams University, however Sissman was an important and influential poet in the 1960’s and 1970’s.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/l-e-sissman-at-sgwu-1972-stanton-hoffman/\",\"citation\":\"“Georgian Happenings”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 14 January 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/american-poets-since-world-war-ii/oclc/489670821&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mann, James. “L(ouis) E(dward) Sissman”. American Poets Since World War II. Donald J. Greiner (ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol 5. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dying-an-introduction/oclc/741688820&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Sissman, L.E.. Dying: An Introduction. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/hello-darkness-the-collected-poems-of-lf-sissman/oclc/468986004&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Sissman, L.E.. Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman, Peter Davison (ed.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/pursuit-of-honor-poems/oclc/136810&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Sissman, L.E.. Pursuit of Honor. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/scattered-returns-poems/oclc/59073716&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Sissman, L.E.. Scattered Returns. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Symons, Julian. \\\"Sissman, L(ouis) E(dward)\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“L.E. Sissman”. Poets of Cambridge, U.S.A.. Harvard Square Library, 2006.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry 6: Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Fifth Reading, L.E. Sissman”. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 1972. Found in “The Stephen Morrissey Papers, 1963 - 1998”, McGill McLennan Library, Special Collections and Rare Books, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548958085120,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0110_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0110_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"L.E. 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But also I'd like to take a line from a Sissman poem out of context, \\\"evidently, even desperation leads a charmed life\\\". Ladies and gentleman, L.E. Sissman.\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:00:45\\nThank you. Well let me begin by refuting one of those statements that Stanley just made, Stanton, I'm sorry, just made. I was not a singing vacuum cleaner salesman, that was a canard that was incorporated into my vita by my publisher, who misread a biographical note I wrote. I once worked for a vacuum cleaner company that made its salesmen sing pep songs before they went out to tackle the ladies in the neighbourhood, so we'd get up in the morning and sing all these ridiculous songs and then go out and try to sell vacuum cleaners but the two were not really related, it was just hyping oneself up for the gritty day of trying to sell these poor ladies on a vacuum cleaner. Now I've seen you've kindly reproduced, and incidentally you've been most kind here in Montreal, I've been received royally, more so than any place I've been lately to read poetry and I greatly appreciated, I feel it's kind of a homecoming since my mother is a Canadian, from Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], not Quebec [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q176], but I've been in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34] many times before and I'm very fond of this city and if I finally lose patience with the U. S. and A. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] as Walt Kelly [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q933892] says in Pogo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2100584] I'll migrate up here, I feel it an eminently sensible thing to do. So it's nice to have a pleasant reception here. And since you've kindly reproduced one of the poems from a group called \\\"Mouth Organ Tunes: the American Lost-and-Found\\\" on your mimeographed sheet, I thought I'd start off by reading that poem. I'm going to say a few words at the risk of being dull about what each one of these poems I'm going to read is for, what I meant it to mean. This particular one is talking about the well, kind of what James Atlas was talking about in his comment on my second book, this is in my third book, the terminal flatness and greyness of American life, United States life, and the attempts to alleviate this barrenness by all sorts of temporizing accommodations, going to Howard Johnson's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5919997] on a Sunday, or having a kinky party in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] to show off one's new paintings or celebrating the death of a genuine antique American and New Englander and looking at the house that he lived in and so on. Anyway the tune is called, the poem is called \\\"Mouth Organ Tunes\\\", and I use the mouth organ as an instrument here to suggest the, well the mouth organ is something that can be played in a band, but is better not, it's a very solitary instrument and to me it always conveys the loneliness of an individual against insurmountable odds. The poem is called \\\"Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found\\\" and the first section is called, as promised, \\\"In a Ho-Jo's by the River\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:04:20\\nReads \\\"Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found, part 1: In a Ho-Jo's by the River\\\" from Pursuit of Honor. \\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:10:02\\nLet me contrast that with a poem about Middle America in the best sense. The old Middle America of people who knew their own way and found their own way in the land, and lost their own way in recent years because of encroachments on the land. The poem is called \\\"The Big Rock Candy Mountain\\\" and it's dedicated to the memory of my half-brother, Winfield Shannon, itinerant farm worker, 1909-1969. And it has an epigraph by Basil Bunting [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2886803] which goes \\\"a mason times his mallet to a lark's twitter, ‘til the stone spells the name, naming none, a man abolished\\\".\\n\\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:11:04\\nReads \\\"The Big Rock Candy Mountain\\\",  parts 1-5 [from Pursuit of Honor].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:21:25\\nLet me change to a slightly lighter vein, and read a poem that is a joke, essentially. It's called \\\"The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.\\\" It's about a man I once roomed with in college, who was an Audobonophile, or whatever the word is, a bird nut and has since become a bird expert. Anyway, this is how the poem goes, it's called \\\"The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:22:05\\nReads \\\"The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.\\\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:22:55\\nThat is also a description I should say, of the Least Bittern. This is another poem about being in college...good lord, twenty seven years ago, I can't believe this, 1945, yeah that is damn near twenty seven years ago. It's called \\\"A College Room, Lowell R-34\\\", a building at Harvard [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13371], 1945.\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:23:26\\nReads \\\"A College Room, Lowell R-34, 1945\\\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:25:12\\nAnd there's a footnote to this poem, dedicated to the maid, good lord, this is a long time ago, we had maids in those rooms. It was a very capable lady named Mrs. Circassian. And it's called \\\"Footnote, Mrs. Circassian\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:25:28\\nReads \\\"Footnote, Mrs. Circassian\\\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:26:07\\nLaughter.\\n\\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:26:10\\nThank you, she was a very nice lady, and deserved a much less ironic tribute than that, she was a home away from home herself. Let's see now, I've got all sorts of possible choices here. Why don't I read a poem about a shattering experience I had which I think maybe all of you may have had at one time or another, going back to a place where you had lived as a kid, and finding how puny it was and how destroyed it was by the passage of time. This is a poem about a place in Detroit where I had lived in the 30's and went back to in 1964 when the poem was written. It's called \\\"East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:27:03\\nReads \\\"East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25\\\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:29:30\\nAnd finally, one more poem from this rue, if I can find it, called \\\"The Museum of Comparative Zoology\\\" and it is about indeed falling in love with an old beat up museum of Comparative Zoology, and finding one's place in the philia.\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:29:56\\nReads \\\"The Museum of Comparative Zoology\\\" [from Dying: An Introduction].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:32:19\\nLet me get onto a poem that is now again a little bit more serious, although not ultimately so, I hope. It's about being very sick at the hospital and knowing one is in good hands. It's called \\\"A Deathplace\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:32:41\\nReads \\\"A Death Place\\\" [from Scattered Returns].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:35:27\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:35:28\\nReads “Small Space” [from Scattered Returns].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:36:12\\nNot entirely and seriously...I think this might be time to call a five minute break during which I will smoke a cigarette and get my wind back and then we will proceed. Ok? \\n[Audience applause]. Thank you. I won't take all this junk off, if I do I'll be in serious trouble.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:36:46\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:36:48\\nThis is a poem about the same thing the last poem was about, called \\\"Getting On\\\", and I'll read only one part of it since that's all I've written so far. It's called \\\"Grave Expectations\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:37:04\\nReads \\\"Getting On: Grave Expectations\\\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:39:15\\nAnd this is a poem that is sort of mysterious and I'm not sure that I understand it either but I'll read it, called, if I can find the end of it, yeah. \\\"On Meeting No One in New York\\\". This is about doing a very daring thing in middle age, not taking a girl up on it. \\\"On Meeting No One in New York\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:39:45\\nReads \\\"The Mid-Forties: On Meeting No One in New York\\\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:41:46\\nAnd finally, not finally, there are two more I think. One is a true story, the other is a dream, but they are both nice to end on April 7th, even though there still may be snow on the ground, with a note of spring. This really happened to a friend of mine in Berlin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64] in 1945 in April, and it's called \\\"A Comedy in Ruins\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:42:24\\nReads \\\"A Comedy in Ruins\\\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:45:39\\nAnd finally, an all nice sweet, pleasant poem, except for the passage of time which none of us can do anything about, based on a dream. It's called \\\"Cockaigne: A Dream\\\".\\n \\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:45:56\\nReads \\\"Cockaigne: A Dream\\\" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].\\n\\nL.E. Sissman\\n00:50:38\\nThank you.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:50:39\\nApplause [cut off].\\n\\nEND\\n00:50:52\\n\",\"notes\":\"L.E. Sissman reads from his first three books, Dying: An Introduction (Little, Brown 1968), Scattered Returns (Little, Brown 1969), and Pursuit of Honor (Little, Brown 1971), as well as poems that were new at the time and published posthumously in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman (Little, Brown 1978).\\n\\n00:00- Introduction by Stanton Hoffman [INDEX: Dying: An Introduction, Scattered Ruins,Pursuit of Honor, Poet James Atlas]\\n00:45- Introduction by L.E. Sissman of “In A Ho-Jo’s by the River” [INDEX: Sissman’s      mother from Ontario, Walt Kelly: Pogo, “Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost and     Found”, American Life, Howard Johnson Restaurant and Hotel Chain]\\n04:20- Reads “In A Ho-Jo’s by the River”\\n10:02- Introduces “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” [INDEX: Middle America, Winfield     Shannon: Itinerant farm worker, Poet Basil Bunting]\\n11:04- Reads “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”\\n21:25- Introduces “The Bird-man of Cambridge, Mass.” [INDEX: Bird life, Cambridge      Massachusetts]\\n22:05- Reads “The Bird-man of Cambridge, Mass.”\\n22:55- Introduces “A College Room, Lowell R-34” [INDEX: Least Bittern Bird, Harvard 1945]\\n23:26- Reads “A College Room, Lowell R-34”\\n25:12- Introduces “Footnote, Mrs. Circassian”\\n25:28- Reads “Footnote, Mrs. Circassian”\\n26:10- Introduces “East Congress and McDougal Streets, Detroit, May 25”[INDEX: Detroit in 1920’s and 1930’s]\\n29:30- Reads “East Congress and McDougal Streets, Detroit, May 25”\\n29:30- Introduces “The Museum of Comparative Zoology” [INDEX: Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard]\\n29:56- Reads “The Museum of Comparative Zoology”\\n32:19- Introduces “A Death Place”\\n32:41- Reads “A Death Place”\\n35:28- Reads “Small Space”\\n36:48- Introduces “Grave Expectations”\\n37:04- Reads “Grave Expectations”\\n39:15- Introduces “On Meeting No One in New York”\\n39:45- Reads “On Meeting No One in New York”\\n41:46- Introduces “A Comedy in Ruins” [Berlin, 1945]\\n42:24- Reads “A Comedy in Ruins”\\n45:39- Introduces “Cockaigne: A Dream”\\n45:56- Reads “Cockaigne: A Dream”\\n50:52.51- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/l-e-sissman-at-sgwu-1972-stanton-hoffman/\"}]"],"score":1.7444024}]