[{"id":"1267","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":["John Logan at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 26 January 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JOHN LOGAN I006/SR163\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-163\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Logan, John"],"creator_names_search":["Logan, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/85933786\",\"name\":\"Logan, John\",\"dates\":\"1923-1987\",\"notes\":\"Poet John Logan was born in Red Oak, Iowa. Logan earned a B.Sc. in zoology at Coe College and earned an M.A. in English at the University of Iowa. Later he pursued more graduate work at Georgetown University and at the University of Notre Dame. He taught English at St. John’s College in Maryland and at the University of Notre Dame, finally settling in as a professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo. He married, and fathered nine children but divorced later on in his life. His first of fourteen publications was Cycle for Mother Cabrini (Grove Press), published in 1955. Two collections followed, Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press) in 1960 and Spring of the Thief: Poems 1960-1962 (Knopf) in 1963. In 1969, Logan published a selection of his poems written since 1963 in The Zig-Zag Walk: Poems 1963-1968 (E.P. Dutton), and in 1973 The Anonymous Lover: New Poems (Liveright) came out. The bridge of change: poems, 1974-1980 (BOA Editions) was published in 1981, along with Only the dreamer can change the dream (Ecco Press, 1981), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize the following year. Logan’s prose was collected in A Bullet for the Ear: Interviews, Essays and Reviews (Ann Arbor, 1983) edited by A. Poulin, Jr. Logan received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Wayne State University’s Miles Modern Poetry Prize. He was the poetry editor of The Nation and Critic, and founded Choice magazine. John Logan died in 1987, and his poetry was published posthumously in The Collected Poems (BOA Editions) in 1989.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"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\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 1 26\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny (Supplemental material)\",\"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 Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["John Logan reads from Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1960) and The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968 (Dutton, 1969)."],"contents":["john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3\n\nJohn Logan\n00:00:00\nReads “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot” [recording begins abruptly].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:03:37\nNow, can you see over there? I'm still concerned about the situation of the lights. Light's one of the big problems in poetry. [Audience laughter]. This is \"Two Preludes for La Push\", and it’s dedicated to Michael Ross [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21280686]. It was written when I was teaching [Wetky's (?)] courses a couple of years ago in Seattle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5083] for a couple of quarters. The physical beauty of the North West got me very involved and I wrote a number of poems about it, of which this was the first. La Push [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q554902], Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1223] is a city on the coast--city, no it's a hamlet on the coast, very poverty stricken Indian populated, really a ruined community with dead cars lying around and houses falling apart, but in the summer many people come there because of its superb beauty. I found that I couldn't write about the Indian community, I wrote rather about the sea and myself.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:05:38\nReads \"Two Preludes for La Push\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:07:48\nI'm sorry it bothers me when people come in late, I'm temperamental about that, you'll just have to excuse me. It's not that they're late, you know, it has no respect for the poem, they could wait until it's over. I'll go back to the second part.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:08:13\nResumes reading \"Two Preludes for La Push\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:10:57\nThis is another poem about a superb place in the North West called Deception Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1181773], which is a pass really--a water pass between islands, Deception Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49636439] is the name of the poem which the poem takes its name.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:11:39\nReads \"The Pass\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:13:32\nI lived on a houseboat for a while, in Seattle, which I certainly think that everybody who considers going to Seattle ought to do. In fact, I was living on a houseboat when the tidal wave struck in the spring of that year. That is a marvelous thrill, it woke me up. I became friends with ducks there, I was living alone, and the poem is partly about that. \"Three Moves in Six Months\". You'll have to forgive me, I don't have this poem with me, I wanted to remember it, I'll see if I can.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:14:29\nReads \"Three Moves\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:15:45\nI'm sorry, I can't remember this poem now. I'll try it again in the second half of the program, I'm screwing it up. [Audience laughter]. I'll read you another poem, I'll try that one later. This is called \"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\". There are two epigraphs, one from a student of mine who said  \"I care more about strawberries than about death\", and one from Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483], who wrote \"Heir, es ist zeit\".\n \nJohn Logan\n00:16:43\nReads \"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:22:27\nI'll read one more poem then would like to take a break, and begin again. It's called \"Love Poem\". I said that as though it didn't matter that it's called that. It does.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:23:17\nReads \"Love Poem\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n\nAudience \n00:25:35 \nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n00:25:49\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nUnknown\n00:25:50\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nJohn Logan\n00:26:27\nI was just asked to read another, earlier poem, which I'm glad to do. Why not? I still like this poem. Then I'll come back and read some more recent things. Did we decide we'll try this without the lamp at all? I think we did, because it seems to get in the way of people. I think that people are more important than I am. Is that worse? Probably if you can't see me it should be marvelous. It’s called \"A Trip to Four or Five Towns\" and I dedicated it to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850], simply because he liked it. There's a reference toward the end of the poem to a visit to William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106], and there's also a reference to a story about e.e. cummings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703], told by Charles Norman in his biography of cummings about a long night spent at [Archebold (?)] and [unintelligible] with them living in France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], cummings was working for the New York Herald Tribune [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q532494], I think, perhaps another New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] paper, there aren't that many. But on the way back from the party, cummings had the urge to take a leak, and so he did so, but it was Champs-Élysées [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q550] or some extraordinary [audience laughter] place like that and the cops saw him. They brought him to jail, and they said, 'You piss on Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90]' [audience laughter]. He said, 'No ,it's not the point, I just had to take a leak', but they kept him there the whole night and when he finally got back to his office in the morning they had signs posted up around, which said--and I don't read French, I'm sorry because I know that many of you know French--but it was something like this, “[unintelligible] pisseur Americain”, which I guess translated \"Let the American pisser go\". [Audience laughter]. This was \"A Trip to Four or Five Towns”.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:29:01\nReads \"A Trip to Four of Five Towns\" [from Ghosts of the Heart]..\n \nJohn Logan\n00:38:34\nI realize reading the poem now how dated it is with the reference to the capital of [Viscount(?)] claim, which sold out some time ago to I don't know, somebody that sold out to somebody else. Williams by the way, did not read his Sixteen new poems, he had them, but he couldn't read them because he'd had a stroke and had never heard them. I visited him with Galway Kinnell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2425705], and he asked us to read the poems, and we did. But I thought that, you know, one of the great things about poetry is that you can make it the way that it should be, so I had him read the poems. This is \"Big Sur: Partington Cove\". I went with a couple of students to, well we were in the Big Sur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q859413], and this is a very hidden place, Partington Cove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21551591]. A marvelous place, accessible only by a tunnel shored up by ancient timbers, I feel I am sort of repeating the poem by telling you this, but there is such a cove, and you can only reach it through a tunnel, it's very beautiful. Smugglers used the cove and a cave nearby to hide booze during the prohibition, it was used for other purposes before and since, and there are--well why not? [Audience laughter]. But you can't get there at all now, I tried to revisit when I was back there last spring, but it's all roped off. And even the one time I did get to go there, there was a sign that was supposed to scare you away. The, one of the motivating things behind the poem was my understanding for the first time of what happens in some paintings that a friend of mine Jim Johnson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100239918] does, where he uses combinations of landscape and the human body. He will have for example, mountains coming off an arm, and the figure of a clown. I had an experience which this poem talks about that made me see for the first time the kind of rapport between body and landscape. It was important to me, and part of what happens to the poem.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:41:54\nReads \"Big Sur: Partington Cove\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:50:45\nReads \"Three Moves\" [in full, published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n\nAudience\n00:53:56 \nApplause. \n\nJohn Logan\n00:53:56\nI'm glad I finally read a poem you liked. [Laughter]. I'll read two more, they're both new, one is fairly long and one is fairly short. This one is called “Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)”. It's based on an experience of being in jail along the Erie Canal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459578]. The name of the town is Herkimer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3134036], New York [audience laughter] and I guess I won't go into the background of it, it's not that interesting. But it was written there. Not long ago.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:55:00\nReads \"Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n01:02:31\nAnd finally, read \"The Search\". Which is my most recent poem. If you knew how few poems there have been lately, that would mean more but...\n \nJohn Logan\n01:03:03\nReads \"The Search\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n\nAudience \n01:07:31\nApplause.\n\nJohn Logan\n01:07:48\nThank you [audience applause continues throughout].\n\nIntroducer\n01:08:04\nThanks very much John [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6245151], just several announcements before we go. Fred Cogswell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5494855], who is visiting us this year, has been invited by the Sir George Williams Student Literary Society to read his poetry, next Friday evening, in the students' lounge on the sixth floor. Jorge Luis Borges [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q909], the distinguished--[audience laughter] you're not making it easier--the distinguished author will be coming here, to Sir George Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342], on Thursday February the 29th and I think I have this right. He's changed the title of his talk, it will be \"Beginnings of English Poetry\". Our next reading, John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356] and Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], two weeks from...\n\nUnknown\n01:09:05\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nUnknown\n01:09:06\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \n\nEND\n01:09:14\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, John Logan was an English Professor at State University New York in Buffalo. He was working on The Zig-Zag Walk: Poems 1963-1968, which was published in 1969.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nJohn Logan’s direct connection to Montreal or Sir George Williams University is unknown at this point. Logan was, however, an important and influential American poet and professor at State University of New York.\\n\",\"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>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-logan-at-sgwu-1968/\",\"citation\":\"Charny, Marty. “Georgiantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 26 January 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghosts-of-the-heart/oclc/328409781?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Logan, John. Ghosts of the Heart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/zig-zag-walk/oclc/251231523?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Logan, John. The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968. New York: Dutton, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Logan, John\\\". 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-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Butscher, Edward. \\\"Logan, John\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/286\",\"citation\":\"“John Logan”. Poets.org: Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. The Academy of American Poets, 2009.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548833304576,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163 back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163 front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - 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_0163_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163 side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:09:14\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"166.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"John Logan\\n00:00:00\\nReads “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot” [recording begins abruptly].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:03:37\\nNow, can you see over there? I'm still concerned about the situation of the lights. Light's one of the big problems in poetry. [Audience laughter]. This is \\\"Two Preludes for La Push\\\", and it’s dedicated to Michael Ross [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21280686]. It was written when I was teaching [Wetky's (?)] courses a couple of years ago in Seattle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5083] for a couple of quarters. The physical beauty of the North West got me very involved and I wrote a number of poems about it, of which this was the first. La Push [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q554902], Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1223] is a city on the coast--city, no it's a hamlet on the coast, very poverty stricken Indian populated, really a ruined community with dead cars lying around and houses falling apart, but in the summer many people come there because of its superb beauty. I found that I couldn't write about the Indian community, I wrote rather about the sea and myself.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:05:38\\nReads \\\"Two Preludes for La Push\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:07:48\\nI'm sorry it bothers me when people come in late, I'm temperamental about that, you'll just have to excuse me. It's not that they're late, you know, it has no respect for the poem, they could wait until it's over. I'll go back to the second part.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:08:13\\nResumes reading \\\"Two Preludes for La Push\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:10:57\\nThis is another poem about a superb place in the North West called Deception Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1181773], which is a pass really--a water pass between islands, Deception Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49636439] is the name of the poem which the poem takes its name.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:11:39\\nReads \\\"The Pass\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:13:32\\nI lived on a houseboat for a while, in Seattle, which I certainly think that everybody who considers going to Seattle ought to do. In fact, I was living on a houseboat when the tidal wave struck in the spring of that year. That is a marvelous thrill, it woke me up. I became friends with ducks there, I was living alone, and the poem is partly about that. \\\"Three Moves in Six Months\\\". You'll have to forgive me, I don't have this poem with me, I wanted to remember it, I'll see if I can.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:14:29\\nReads \\\"Three Moves\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:15:45\\nI'm sorry, I can't remember this poem now. I'll try it again in the second half of the program, I'm screwing it up. [Audience laughter]. I'll read you another poem, I'll try that one later. This is called \\\"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\\\". There are two epigraphs, one from a student of mine who said  \\\"I care more about strawberries than about death\\\", and one from Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483], who wrote \\\"Heir, es ist zeit\\\".\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:16:43\\nReads \\\"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:22:27\\nI'll read one more poem then would like to take a break, and begin again. It's called \\\"Love Poem\\\". I said that as though it didn't matter that it's called that. It does.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:23:17\\nReads \\\"Love Poem\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n\\nAudience \\n00:25:35 \\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:25:49\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:25:50\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nJohn Logan\\n00:26:27\\nI was just asked to read another, earlier poem, which I'm glad to do. Why not? I still like this poem. Then I'll come back and read some more recent things. Did we decide we'll try this without the lamp at all? I think we did, because it seems to get in the way of people. I think that people are more important than I am. Is that worse? Probably if you can't see me it should be marvelous. It’s called \\\"A Trip to Four or Five Towns\\\" and I dedicated it to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850], simply because he liked it. There's a reference toward the end of the poem to a visit to William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106], and there's also a reference to a story about e.e. cummings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703], told by Charles Norman in his biography of cummings about a long night spent at [Archebold (?)] and [unintelligible] with them living in France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], cummings was working for the New York Herald Tribune [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q532494], I think, perhaps another New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] paper, there aren't that many. But on the way back from the party, cummings had the urge to take a leak, and so he did so, but it was Champs-Élysées [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q550] or some extraordinary [audience laughter] place like that and the cops saw him. They brought him to jail, and they said, 'You piss on Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90]' [audience laughter]. He said, 'No ,it's not the point, I just had to take a leak', but they kept him there the whole night and when he finally got back to his office in the morning they had signs posted up around, which said--and I don't read French, I'm sorry because I know that many of you know French--but it was something like this, “[unintelligible] pisseur Americain”, which I guess translated \\\"Let the American pisser go\\\". [Audience laughter]. This was \\\"A Trip to Four or Five Towns”.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:29:01\\nReads \\\"A Trip to Four of Five Towns\\\" [from Ghosts of the Heart]..\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:38:34\\nI realize reading the poem now how dated it is with the reference to the capital of [Viscount(?)] claim, which sold out some time ago to I don't know, somebody that sold out to somebody else. Williams by the way, did not read his Sixteen new poems, he had them, but he couldn't read them because he'd had a stroke and had never heard them. I visited him with Galway Kinnell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2425705], and he asked us to read the poems, and we did. But I thought that, you know, one of the great things about poetry is that you can make it the way that it should be, so I had him read the poems. This is \\\"Big Sur: Partington Cove\\\". I went with a couple of students to, well we were in the Big Sur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q859413], and this is a very hidden place, Partington Cove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21551591]. A marvelous place, accessible only by a tunnel shored up by ancient timbers, I feel I am sort of repeating the poem by telling you this, but there is such a cove, and you can only reach it through a tunnel, it's very beautiful. Smugglers used the cove and a cave nearby to hide booze during the prohibition, it was used for other purposes before and since, and there are--well why not? [Audience laughter]. But you can't get there at all now, I tried to revisit when I was back there last spring, but it's all roped off. And even the one time I did get to go there, there was a sign that was supposed to scare you away. The, one of the motivating things behind the poem was my understanding for the first time of what happens in some paintings that a friend of mine Jim Johnson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100239918] does, where he uses combinations of landscape and the human body. He will have for example, mountains coming off an arm, and the figure of a clown. I had an experience which this poem talks about that made me see for the first time the kind of rapport between body and landscape. It was important to me, and part of what happens to the poem.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:41:54\\nReads \\\"Big Sur: Partington Cove\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:50:45\\nReads \\\"Three Moves\\\" [in full, published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:53:56 \\nApplause. \\n\\nJohn Logan\\n00:53:56\\nI'm glad I finally read a poem you liked. [Laughter]. I'll read two more, they're both new, one is fairly long and one is fairly short. This one is called “Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)”. It's based on an experience of being in jail along the Erie Canal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459578]. The name of the town is Herkimer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3134036], New York [audience laughter] and I guess I won't go into the background of it, it's not that interesting. But it was written there. Not long ago.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:55:00\\nReads \\\"Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n01:02:31\\nAnd finally, read \\\"The Search\\\". Which is my most recent poem. If you knew how few poems there have been lately, that would mean more but...\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n01:03:03\\nReads \\\"The Search\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n\\nAudience \\n01:07:31\\nApplause.\\n\\nJohn Logan\\n01:07:48\\nThank you [audience applause continues throughout].\\n\\nIntroducer\\n01:08:04\\nThanks very much John [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6245151], just several announcements before we go. Fred Cogswell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5494855], who is visiting us this year, has been invited by the Sir George Williams Student Literary Society to read his poetry, next Friday evening, in the students' lounge on the sixth floor. Jorge Luis Borges [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q909], the distinguished--[audience laughter] you're not making it easier--the distinguished author will be coming here, to Sir George Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342], on Thursday February the 29th and I think I have this right. He's changed the title of his talk, it will be \\\"Beginnings of English Poetry\\\". Our next reading, John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356] and Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], two weeks from...\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:09:05\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:09:06\\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \\n\\nEND\\n01:09:14\\n\",\"notes\":\"John Logan reads from Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1960) and The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968 (Dutton, 1969).\\n\\n00:00- Begins mid-sentence “...sperm in the womb quickens to a man...” from “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot”\\n03:37- John Logan introduces “Two Preludes for La Push” [INDEX: Michael Ross, teaching Wetky’s class [?], North West, Seattle, La Push Washington, Indian]\\n05:38- Reads “Two Preludes for La Push”\\n10:57- Introduces “The Pass” [INDEX: Deception Pass, North West]\\n11:39- Reads “The Pass”\\n13:32- Introduces “Three Moves” [partial reading] [INDEX: houseboat, ducks, Seattle]\\n14:29- Reads “Three Moves”\\n15:45- Introduces “Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings (1896-1962)” [INDEX: explains epigraphs]\\n16:43- Reads “Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings (1896-1962)”\\n22:27- Introduces “Love Poem”\\n23:17- Reads “Love Poem”\\n25:52- Introduces “A Trip to Four or Five Towns” [INDEX: James Wright, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Charles Norman, Archebold [?], France, New York Herald        Tribune, Champs Elysees]\\n29:01- Reads “A Trip to Four or Five Towns”\\n38:34- Explains “A Trip to Four or Five Towns”, introduces “Big Sur, Partington Cove” [INDEX: Capital of Viscount, William Carlos Williams, Galway Kinnell,Partington Cove, prohibition, artist Jim Johnson, relationship between body and landscape]\\n41:54- Reads “Big Sur, Partington Cove”.\\n50:45.20- END OF RECORDING\\n\\n00:00- John Logan reads “Three Moves” in full.\\n03:10- Introduces “Lines on Locks, or Jail on the Erie Canal” [INDEX: Herkimer, New      York]\\n04:14- Reads “Lines on Locks, or Jail on the Erie Canal”\\n11:46- Introduces “The Search”\\n12:18- Reads “The Search”\\n17:19- Unknown male announces next readings [INDEX: Fred Cogswell, Sir George Williams Student Literary Society, Jorge Luis Borges, John Newlove, Joe Rosenblatt]\\n18:29.44- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-logan-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.5454967},{"id":"1268","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"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":["Joe Rosenblatt and John Newlove at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 9 February 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JOE RESENBLATT I006/SR138\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. JOE RESENBLATT refers to Joe Rosenblatt. RESENBLATT is mispelled. \"I006-11-138\" written on sticker on the reel.\n\n\"JOHN NEWLOVE I006/S2143\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. I006-11-143 written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-138, I006-11-143]"],"creator_names":["Rosenblatt, Joseph","Newlove, John"],"creator_names_search":["Rosenblatt, Joseph","Newlove, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/69752567\",\"name\":\"Rosenblatt, Joseph\",\"dates\":\"1933-\",\"notes\":\"Poet and artist Joe (Joseph) Rosenblatt was born in Toronto in 1933, where he attended Central Technical School, which he left in grade ten. After a decade of traveling across Canada, working labour jobs with the CPR, Rosenblatt published his first collection of poetry through a small press, called The voyage of the mood (Heinrich Heine Press, 1963). He received a Canada Council grant in 1963 to write and draw, and published The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966), which established Rosenblatt as a serious poet. Rosenblatt then began editing Jewish Dialog, a literary magazine, in 1969, which he continued until 1983. He then published The winter of the lunar moth (House of Anansi, 1968), a collection of drawings Greenbaum (Coach House Press, 1971), Bumblebee dithyramb (Press Porcepic, 1972), Dream craters (Press Porcepic, 1974), Virgins and vampires (McClelland and Stewart, 1975) and Top Soil (Press Porcepic, 1976) which won a Governor General’s Award. Rosenblatt continued to publish collections of drawings and poetry collections, including Doctor Anacoda’s solar fan club (Press Porcepic, 1978), Loosely tied hands: an experiment in punk (Black Moss Press, 1978), The sleeping lady (Exile Editions, 1979), Brides of the stream (Oolichan Books, 1983), a reconsidered history of Marxist government Beds and consenting dreamers (Oolichan Books, 1994) and The Joe Rosenblatt Reader (Exile Editions, 1995). Rosenblatt received the B.C. Book Prize in 1986 for Poetry Hotel (1986). Rosenblatt held several positions as writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario (1979-1980), as Visiting Lecturer at University of Victoria (1980-81), the Associate editor of the Malahat Review (1980-1982), the writer in residence at the Saskatoon Public Library (1985-86) and at the University of Rome and University of Bologna (1987). Rosenblatt also served as a literary consultant for Porcupine's Quill, Blackfish Press, McClelland and Stewart, the Canada Council and Oolichan Books. His collected works can be found in The voluptuous gardener: the collected art and writing of Joe Rosenblatt, 1973-1996 (Beach Holme Publishers, 1996). Rosenblatt lived in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, and during that time, also published Parrot fever (Exile Editions, 2002), The lunatic muse (Exile, 2007) and Dog (Mansfield Press, 2008). Rosenblatt died in 2019 after finishing work on Bite Me! Musings on Monsters and Mayhem (The Porcupine's Quill, 2019).\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/92277383\",\"name\":\"Newlove, John\",\"dates\":\"1938-2003\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet John Newlove was born on June 13, 1938 in Regina, and was raised in Kamsack, Saskatchewan. He graduated from Kamsack College in 1956, and completed one year at the University of Saskatoon before touring and working in many cities across Canada. Newlove has worked as a school teacher in Birtle, Manitoba, as a social worker in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, at a radio station in Weyburn and in Regina, and as a clerk at the University of British Columbia bookstore. His first book of poetry is titled Grave Sirs (Robert Reid & Takao Tanabe, Vancouver, 1962), and is followed by Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle, 1963), Moving in Alone (Contact Press, 1965), What They Say (Weed/Flower, 1967), Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart, 1968), The Cave (McClelland & Stewart, 1970), and Lies (McClelland & Stewart, 1972), which won a Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Newlove also worked as a writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library, the University of Toronto, at Montreal’s Loyola College, and as an editor with McClelland & Stewart Publishing in Toronto between 1970 and 1974. Newlove then edited the McClelland & Stewart anthology Canadian Poetry: the modern era (1977), and published his own poetry in The fat man: selected poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977), The green plain (Oolichan Books, 1981), The night the dog smiled (ECW Press, 1986) and Apology for absence: Selected poems 1962-1992 (Porcupine’s Quill, 1993). Newlove taught writing at the David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, B.C. and as an editor for the Federal Commission of Official Languages in Ottawa. Newlove won the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild Founders Award in 1984 and the Literary Press Group Award in 1986. Known and celebrated for bringing the Canadian Prairie into Canadian Literature, John Newlove died suddenly at the age of 65 on December 23, 2003.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"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\":\"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\":\"\"}]"],"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\":\"1968 2 9\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny (Supplemental material)\",\"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 Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Joe Rosenblatt reads from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968)] and The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966) and a few poems from unknown sources. John Newlove reads from Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart, 1968), What They Say (Weed/Flower, 1967), Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle Press, 1963) and poems later published in The Cave (McClelland & Stewart, 1970). Most of these poems have been collected in The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977)."],"contents":["joe_rosenblatt_i006-11-138.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nGood evening. Hello, Mr. Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. [Audience laughter]. Well, welcome to the sixth reading of our second series of evenings with Canadian and American poets. Tonight we have Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], and John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356], formerly of Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], now residing in Nova Scotia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1952]. Joe Rosenblatt will begin the reading, there will be an intermission, and John Newlove will follow. I'm going to quote largely from the copy in Joe Rosenblatt's book, The LSD Leacock, for I hope servient biographical information. It goes like this, he was born in Toronto on December the 26th, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. He says that he has suffocated in Toronto ever since then. He attended the Central Technical School [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5061898] and dropped out in Grade 10, he has worked as a grave-digger, plumber's helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope. He has attended the Provincial Institute of Trades where he acquired a diploma as a welder fitter, his favourite writers are Ambrose Biers, William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513], Emily Dickinson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441], and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027], and his favourite dream, is Cyclops turning up at a [nigh-bank (?)]. [Audience laughter]. His previous book of poems, which was probably printed in nineteen hundred and sixty-three, is called Voyage of the Mood. Joe Rosenblatt.\n \nAudience\n00:02:27\nApplause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:02:36\nWasn't that [unintelligible]. I'm just going to read, start off with a series of poems I had written about my uncle, who was a fishmonger. He had a habit of phyxiating and murdering fish, and slicing them, and slicing them, and...well, I'll start. This is called \"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:03:11\nReads \"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n\nAudience\n00:06:10\nApplause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:06:16\n\"Ichthycide\". Another poem about my uncle. It's funny, really. [Audience laughter].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:06:29\nReads \"Ichthycide\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nAudience\n00:08:05\nLaughter and applause .\n\nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:08:13\nThis is called \"A Shell Game\". Has to do with my uncle. [Audience laughter]. It's about his funeral.  Joke.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:08:27\nReads \"A Shell Game [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:09:42\nI wrote all kinds of poems. I was in Vancouver and I came across the god-awful logic of the zoo. It kinda scared the hell out of me. It was a bat. I've never seen a bat before. Met people who were bats. But this was the real McCoy, it was a fruit bat and it was hanging upside-down, you know, that's the way they live and they fornicate that way too, apparently, upside-down. So I wrote about bats. I have some more fish poems but I get tired of that after a while, you start hating it. And we'll begin with \"Bats\". While it's true the bat is a mammal, not a bird, there's all types of kinds of mythology based on prejudice about bats and which I've tried to embody in these poems. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:10:47\nReads \"Bats\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:11:32\nOutside of the bat poem there came a group of sound poetry. Because I tried to get the feeling of the bat in the air, you know the image of the bat and the way it, and the movements of the bat. And this is called \"The Fruit Bat\". First encounter with a bat.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:11:56\nReads \"The Fruit Bat\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:13:16\nThis is better. This is “The Bat Cage”.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:13:19\nReads “The Bat Cage” [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:14:39\nOh we're like bats to people. We used to have, I used to, when I was a kid I went to school and we had a music teacher who was a bit of a nut. She used to rap kids across the knuckles, you know, just to hear them singing. [Audience laughter]. I may have called her Mrs. Love, I can't recall, the trauma was too great. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:15:02\nReads “The Vampire” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nAudience\n00:15:48\nLaughter and applause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:15:55\n\"The Zombie\". Just whistle when you get tired of these bat poems. Do anything you wanna do. \"The Zombie\". By the way, bats are supposed to be unkosher according to Leviticus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41490]. It says all fowl that creep going upon all fours shall be an abomination unto you. But in other countries they're great appetizers, the fruit bat especially, and I have an interesting poem, not right now though. \"The Zombie\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:16:26\nReads \"The Zombie\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:17:59\nI'll read one more bat poem, it's the sound thing, an experimental thing which I later developed...too many of these bats here. I wrote a Christmas poem on bats, too. Maybe I should read it. Dedicated to somebody. I'll read the sound poem. It's more important. \"The Butterfly Bat\". There is a butterfly bat. Hm, found in the Orient, a very beautiful bat, orange apparently, very beautiful though. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:18:43\nReads \"The Butterfly Bat\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:20:02\nReads \"Orpheus in Stanley Park\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:20:50\n\"Sex and Death\". This poem's for a friend of mine. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:20:54\nReads \"Sex and Death\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:21:48\nI should read the egg poems, because I don't think many of you have heard them, and I'll do that. You'd probably like them better than the bats. More meaningful. This is called \"Egg Sonata\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:22:20\nReads \"Egg Sonata\" [from The LSD Leacock].\n \nAudience\n00:23:38\nLaughter and applause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:23:44\nReads [\"Let the egg live\" (?)].\n \nUnknown\n00:24:56\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:24:59\nReads \"It's in the egg, in the little round egg\" [from The LSD Leacock].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:26:57\nOne more egg poem. [Audience laughter and applause]. This is a prose poem. It's called \"The Easter I got for Passover\". [Audience laughter]. It has to do with an argument, whether the body of Christ did not go to heaven, the moderator of the United Church of Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q198745] said yesterday, Right Reverend Ernest Marshall Howes told a press conference that he does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus but does believe in a spiritual resurrection. That's from the Globe and Mail [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43148750], 23rd of April, '65.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:27:46\nReads \"The Easter I got for Passover\" [from The LSD Leacock].\n \nAudience\n00:30:02\nApplause. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:30:10\nDo you want to read, John? Where is he? [Audience laughter]. Do you want me to come here? Yeah, okay. I'm getting down to my dirty poems, what am I going to do? I wrote a whole bunch of pornographic poetry, right. I'll read that for the end when the time's up. I wrote a poem to Che Guevara [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5809], if I can find the thing now, because I really muddled everything up here, oh here it is. It's called \"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:30:52\nReads \"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:31:42\nA poem about a critic, “Fable”.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:31:47\nReads “Fable” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].  \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:32:37\nI wrote another one about a critic, a friend of mine. It's called \"The Crab Louse\". I'll read it. [Audience laughter]. I think some of you may recognize him. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:32:47\nReads \"The Crab Louse\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:33:25\nReads \"The Fire Bug Poet\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:34:29\n\"How Mice Make Love,\" how'd this get in here? \"How Mice Make Love\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:34:36\nReads \"How Mice Make Love\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:35:29\n\"The Electric Rose\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:35:34\nReads \"The Electric Rose\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nAudience\n00:37:13\nApplause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:37:17\nShould I read on? Well this is a poem called \"Itch\". It's about that cat who, you know, in the world of the dead. And as usual I mucked up all the mythology, but it was too late to change the poem. So I said, what the hell. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:37:44\nReads \"Itch\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:41:51\nThere's a loathsome typographical error in here. That's what happens.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:41:56\nResumes reading \"Itch\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:43:20\n[Unintelligible] a more cheerful poem, if I can find one here. How about \"Cricket Love\"? I'll read one very early poem I wrote, \"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\". \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:43:39\nReads \"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:44:21\nThank you. \n \nAudience\n00:44:22\nApplause.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:44:35\nThere'll be a fifteen minute inter- [cut off abruptly]. \n \nEND\n00:44:37\n\n\njohn_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nWell, it gives me a very special kind of pleasure to introduce John Newlove. An old and dear friend. We met in the fall of '61 in Vancouver, and both of us had come from Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1989] to Vancouver. I think that some of John's most memorable early poems have to do with the fact of Saskatchewan.  It's perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the place does continue to haunt him, and hopefully that the exorcism is not complete and that we may get some more Saskatchewan poems. Subsequently, and this is still in Vancouver, we shared a studio, or rather, he shared my studio [audience laughter], for a period of little over a year. Now during this time, we played marathon games of chess, ate several hundred dozens of chocolate-coated Long Johns, scribbled poems, dribbled paint, drank cheap red wine...and read through at least a dozen five-foot shelves of great and lesser works of literature, not to mention the confusion of mice, drunken poets, women, painters, and assorted kooks who kept visiting us. Now, it was during this period that his first book, called Grave Sirs was printed, and I have in italics here \"more or less.\" If you want to know the history of that book, you can ask John. I think there must be fifty odd copies that are still unbound someplace. This was printed by Robert Reed. It was followed by a second, called Elephants, Mothers, and Others, done by Tak Tanabe, again in Vancouver, and subsequent to that, it was rumored that Robert Columbo had discovered John Newlove for Canadian poetry [audience laughter], when he collected some of his works together in an anthology called Poetry '64. Now. Following this, of course, Contact Press bought out his book, Moving in Alone, which was perhaps the book that brought him his first large-scale critical attention. Meanwhile, of course, I'd come here, and some time afterwards I received a book, a wee book, called...let's see. [Audience laughter]. Can't read my own printing here. What They Say. Yes, What They Say is a wee book of poems, it's made up of the rejects from his manuscript that he submitted to McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. McClelland and Stewart is to bring out his next book of poems called Black Night Window, when they get around to doing it. The manuscript has been in their hands for over twenty-four months. There has been much other activity which include three, two years and a third one coming up as poet in residence at Deep Springs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5250324] in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. I want to conclude this little preamble by saying that at the time that John moved out of our studio, I took over this room that he slept in and wrote poetry in. The mattress in this room was about sixteen inches from the floor, and on two sides, on the wall, there was copious scribbling.  Most of it were quotations from Heraclitus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41155] that he was reading at that time.\n \nAudience\n00:04:43\nApplause.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:04:51\nThey weren't quotations from whoever, whatever Greek name that was you just made up, [audience laughter], they were from Herodotus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26825]. And, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] might have mentioned that, while I suppose technically you could say I was sharing the studio, I was paying half the rent.  Almost half the rent. I was paying some rent. [Audience laughter]. And he never mentioned who won most of the chess games. I write a lot of...who's throwing things at me?  You didn't win any chess games. [Audience laughter]. And you weren't paying any rent, either. I write a lot of poems about dreams, one night I woke up with a dream about an Australian chief and I managed to write down most of it. It's called \"The Almost King\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:05:42\nReads \"The Almost King\" [audience laughter throughout].\n\nJohn Newlove\n00:08:32\nWell, when you have dreams like that, you don't really have much chance. I've a number of short poems, I'm told it's not good to give them at poetry readings because people don't listen fast enough or something. But. [Laughter]. This...Yes, that ashtray is stolen from the faculty club, George, and your wife stole it. [Audience laughter]. This one is called \"The Candle\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:09:07\nReads \"The Candle\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:09:19\nAgain a dream. This poem, misprinted in the Malahat Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567225], is one that I most like. It's called \"The Engine and the Sea\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:09:32\nReads \"The Engine and the Sea\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:11:26\nLove poems about sleep. And about dreams. This one is called \"Before Sleep\". I used to have a great deal of trouble going to sleep because I was afraid I would have nightmares.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:11:44\nReads \"Before Sleep\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:12:53\nAnd again another one about dreams, this one called \"The Dream Man”. Dreamed I once wrote a dream about somebody else's dream, but that's not fair, dreams are copyright. This was my own. [Audience laughter].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:13:09\nReads \"The Dream Man\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:14:35\nAccording to the rules, you're supposed to say things in between poems, but I can't really ever think of anything appropriate to say in between them, so. I used to have some nice Ed Sullivan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83807] routines, but I've forgotten them. This poem is called \"Burn\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:14:52\nReads \"Burn\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:15:16\nAnd this one, an old one, again fairly short. It's called \"No Song\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:15:25\nReads \"No Song\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:15:47\nI have a poem I wrote for and about a friend, but after the poem was finished as you may see, I showed it to him but I didn't tell him it was about him. He said it was a very good poem and very accurate, and so on. But he didn't know it was about himself. It's called, \"What do you want, what do you want?\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:16:06\nReads \"What do you want, what do you want?\" [from Black Night Window and later published in The Fat Man; audience laughter and applause throughout].\n  \nJohn Newlove\n00:17:01\nAfter he said it was such an accurate poem, I couldn't tell him it was about him. This one's called \"Strand by Strand\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:17:14\nReads \"Strand by Strand\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:17:56\nThis is the first time I've kept to a list of...because usually I decide that I don't want to read a particular poem and I get all confused, but I'm very pleased with myself when I keep right to the schedule. Everything organized, everything complete. This short poem in five naturally short pieces is called \"One Day\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:18:23\nReads \"One Day\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:18:55\nCharles Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124735] died in about 1953, he was an Englishman, originally Cockney. He wrote a number of what I think are very good poems, a number of detective novels, some theological deputation, I guess would be the right word. One of his detective novels is about finding the holy grail. It's called War in Heaven and it's out in Faber Paperback, go and buy it, it's really nice. This poem is for and from and about Charles Williams.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:19:35\nReads “For and From Charles Williams” [from What They Say].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:20:04\nNow my list has gone to pot, because I've got a poem down in a magazine that I didn't bring. So. One day some years ago, I was hitchhiking out to British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]. I got to a place called Golden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1020179], B.C. and I had to go up the Big Bend Highway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30253222], this would be before the Rogers Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q383051] was open. And I got a ride about thirty miles in on what I didn't know was an illegally-present logging truck, because the Big Bend Highway was not open to traffic for three more days. So I sat three days on the Big Bend Highway. This poem roughly...well, it's called \"Solitaire\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:20:47\nReads \"Solitaire\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:21:22\nThis short one called \"El Paso\" because El Paso was the place where it happens. It was ninety degrees outside in El Paso [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16562], and with the air conditioning, which I couldn't turn off, it was about thirty below. And I couldn't sleep, I had to get up in the middle of the night and get dressed and get under the blankets, and I caught terrible cold in that motel. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:21:41\nReads \"El Paso\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:21:56\nSince I've been out of Nova Scotia, I've written a couple of poems about or around Nova Scotia. The main thing I can't seem to get in a poem just yet is the difference between the Pacific Ocean [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98], in Vancouver, and the Atlantic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97]. There seems a tremendous difference that I can feel but that I can't seem yet to grasp in the fact. This poem is called \"God Bless You\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:22:24\nReads \"God Bless You\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nAudience\n00:22:43\nLaughter.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:22:47\nThe next piece is on the back of my list. I think this is about the only other ethnic Nova Scotia-type poem that I've got, but I was only there for about six months and I can't quite put out a book yet. This is called \"By the Grey Atlantic\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:23:04\nReads \"By the Grey Atlantic\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:23:31\nI think I'll read quickly a number of poems from this book. I'm anxious not to keep you too long, if anybody feels like walking out, I won't really be insulted if you'll [unintelligible]. These are all quite simple so I might as well just give the title in my school-class fashion and then go on to read them. This is called \"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\". I might see first that Veregin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7921203] is a town in Saskatchewan named after a leader of the Doukhobors [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5302215], they first came to that area after Peter the Lordly Verigin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4107818] [unintelligible] his palace, which is really just a gigantic farmhouse, it's outside the town. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:24:19\nReads \"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:25:04\nThis one, about a pregnant girl, it's called \"On Her Long Bed of Night”.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:25:09\nReads \"On Her Long Bed of Night\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:26:12\nSo, this one's about my father. Drowning kittens, in a lot of houses in Saskatchewan you keep a rain barrel on a corner of the house underneath a spout to get the fresh rainwater for washing and so on.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:26:27\nReads “My Daddy Drowned” [from Elephants, Mothers and Others and later published in The Fat Man].\n \nAudience\n00:27:09.11\nLaughter and applause.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:27:18\nThis one is called \"Half in Love\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:27:22\nReads \"Half in Love\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:02\nThis one is called \"Sister Cowen\". She used to run a mission in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096], and she had very good stew. She was a very violent woman. On Christmas Eve she used to give all the bums fifty cents, but she gave a particularly long sermon on Christmas Eve. She was very down on booze.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:25\nReads \"Sister Cowen\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:40\nLaughter.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:49\nThis one is set in Vancouver outside Roy Kiyooka's studio. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:58\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:29:30\nThe name of this book is Elephants, Mothers, and Others. I've read poems about others and one about my mother, and this is the elephant’s poem. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:29:41\nReads “Elephants” from Elephants, Mothers, and Others [and published later in The Fat Man; audience laughter throughout].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:30:01\nI think I've gone on too long, there is a longish poem called \"The Fat Man\", which I want to read, so I'll skip the rest of the stuff I thought I was going to read and just do this one.\n \nAnnotation\n00:30:18\nReads \"The Fat Man\" [published later in The Fat Man].\n \nAudience\n00:34:47\nApplause.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:34:48\nIt's not finished, you see, it's not...[Audience laughter].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:34:52\nResumes reading \"The Fat Man\" [published later in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:36:33\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:36:35\nApplause.\n \nEND\n00:36:55\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, Rosenblatt published his third collection of poetry, The winter of the lunar moth (House of Anansi).\\n\\n In 1968, Newlove published Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart) and 3 Poems (Western P). The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977) collects poems written during this time.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nRosenblatt was an influential and up-and-coming Canadian poet in the mid 60’s and while there is no direct connection to Sir George Williams University, he was friends with and known by many in poetry circles.\\n\\nAs illustrated in the introduction to this reading, John Newlove was close friends with Roy Kiyooka (Professor at Sir George Williams and Reading Series Committee member) when they both lived in Vancouver. Newlove was also an important Canadian and Prairie poet.\",\"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>2 CDs> 2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Besner, Neil. \\\"Rosenblatt, Joe (Joseph)\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/988192362&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George (ed). “John Newlove”. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology.         Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-newlove-at-sgwu-1968/\",\"citation\":\"Charny, Marty. “Georgantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 9 February 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960-ii-our-nature-our-voices/oclc/878901819&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “Joe Rosenblatt”. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960-ii-our-nature-our-voices/oclc/878901819&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “John Newlove”. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Rosenblatt, Joe\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson 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 (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary. \\\"Newlove, John\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/newlove_john.html\",\"citation\":\"“John Newlove (1938-)”. One Zero Zero: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Press 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, York University. \"},{\"url\":\"https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/rosenblatt/index.htm\",\"citation\":\"“Joe Rosenblatt: Biography”. Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2000. \"},{\"url\":\"https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/newlove/index.htm\",\"citation\":\"“John Newlove: Biography”. Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2000.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/42678409&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). “Joe Rosenblatt”. Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal, Quebec: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/42678409&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). “John Newlove”. Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal:         McClelland & Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/apology-for-absence-selected-poems-1962-1992/oclc/751573535&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992. Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 1993.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-night-window/oclc/253373347&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. Black Night Window. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/cave/oclc/556837824&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. The Cave. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fat-man-selected-poems-1962-1972/oclc/299451378&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/what-they-say/oclc/433815288&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. What They Say. Ontario: Weed/Flower Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=1871\",\"citation\":\"“Newlove, John”. ABC BookWorld, Simon Fraser University Library. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lsd-leacock-a-new-volume-of-poetry-by-joe-rosenblatt-with-20-drawings-by-r-daigneault-published-by-the-coach-house-press/oclc/1007418956&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rosenblatt, Joe. The LSD Leacock. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lunatic-muse/oclc/1150303654&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rosenblatt, Joe. The Lunatic Muse. Holstein, Ontario: Exile Editions, 2007.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/winter-of-the-luna-moth/oclc/557044236&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rosenblatt, Joe. Winter of the Luna Moth. Toronto: Anansi Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. The Gazette. 14 September 1967, page 15. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Whalen, Terry. “Newlove, John (1938-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson & L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548835401728,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/john_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"john_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:36:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"88.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"john_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nWell, it gives me a very special kind of pleasure to introduce John Newlove. An old and dear friend. We met in the fall of '61 in Vancouver, and both of us had come from Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1989] to Vancouver. I think that some of John's most memorable early poems have to do with the fact of Saskatchewan.  It's perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the place does continue to haunt him, and hopefully that the exorcism is not complete and that we may get some more Saskatchewan poems. Subsequently, and this is still in Vancouver, we shared a studio, or rather, he shared my studio [audience laughter], for a period of little over a year. Now during this time, we played marathon games of chess, ate several hundred dozens of chocolate-coated Long Johns, scribbled poems, dribbled paint, drank cheap red wine...and read through at least a dozen five-foot shelves of great and lesser works of literature, not to mention the confusion of mice, drunken poets, women, painters, and assorted kooks who kept visiting us. Now, it was during this period that his first book, called Grave Sirs was printed, and I have in italics here \\\"more or less.\\\" If you want to know the history of that book, you can ask John. I think there must be fifty odd copies that are still unbound someplace. This was printed by Robert Reed. It was followed by a second, called Elephants, Mothers, and Others, done by Tak Tanabe, again in Vancouver, and subsequent to that, it was rumored that Robert Columbo had discovered John Newlove for Canadian poetry [audience laughter], when he collected some of his works together in an anthology called Poetry '64. Now. Following this, of course, Contact Press bought out his book, Moving in Alone, which was perhaps the book that brought him his first large-scale critical attention. Meanwhile, of course, I'd come here, and some time afterwards I received a book, a wee book, called...let's see. [Audience laughter]. Can't read my own printing here. What They Say. Yes, What They Say is a wee book of poems, it's made up of the rejects from his manuscript that he submitted to McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. McClelland and Stewart is to bring out his next book of poems called Black Night Window, when they get around to doing it. The manuscript has been in their hands for over twenty-four months. There has been much other activity which include three, two years and a third one coming up as poet in residence at Deep Springs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5250324] in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. I want to conclude this little preamble by saying that at the time that John moved out of our studio, I took over this room that he slept in and wrote poetry in. The mattress in this room was about sixteen inches from the floor, and on two sides, on the wall, there was copious scribbling.  Most of it were quotations from Heraclitus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41155] that he was reading at that time.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:04:43\\nApplause.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:04:51\\nThey weren't quotations from whoever, whatever Greek name that was you just made up, [audience laughter], they were from Herodotus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26825]. And, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] might have mentioned that, while I suppose technically you could say I was sharing the studio, I was paying half the rent.  Almost half the rent. I was paying some rent. [Audience laughter]. And he never mentioned who won most of the chess games. I write a lot of...who's throwing things at me?  You didn't win any chess games. [Audience laughter]. And you weren't paying any rent, either. I write a lot of poems about dreams, one night I woke up with a dream about an Australian chief and I managed to write down most of it. It's called \\\"The Almost King\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:05:42\\nReads \\\"The Almost King\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nJohn Newlove\\n00:08:32\\nWell, when you have dreams like that, you don't really have much chance. I've a number of short poems, I'm told it's not good to give them at poetry readings because people don't listen fast enough or something. But. [Laughter]. This...Yes, that ashtray is stolen from the faculty club, George, and your wife stole it. [Audience laughter]. This one is called \\\"The Candle\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:09:07\\nReads \\\"The Candle\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:09:19\\nAgain a dream. This poem, misprinted in the Malahat Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567225], is one that I most like. It's called \\\"The Engine and the Sea\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:09:32\\nReads \\\"The Engine and the Sea\\\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:11:26\\nLove poems about sleep. And about dreams. This one is called \\\"Before Sleep\\\". I used to have a great deal of trouble going to sleep because I was afraid I would have nightmares.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:11:44\\nReads \\\"Before Sleep\\\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:12:53\\nAnd again another one about dreams, this one called \\\"The Dream Man”. Dreamed I once wrote a dream about somebody else's dream, but that's not fair, dreams are copyright. This was my own. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:13:09\\nReads \\\"The Dream Man\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:14:35\\nAccording to the rules, you're supposed to say things in between poems, but I can't really ever think of anything appropriate to say in between them, so. I used to have some nice Ed Sullivan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83807] routines, but I've forgotten them. This poem is called \\\"Burn\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:14:52\\nReads \\\"Burn\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:15:16\\nAnd this one, an old one, again fairly short. It's called \\\"No Song\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:15:25\\nReads \\\"No Song\\\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:15:47\\nI have a poem I wrote for and about a friend, but after the poem was finished as you may see, I showed it to him but I didn't tell him it was about him. He said it was a very good poem and very accurate, and so on. But he didn't know it was about himself. It's called, \\\"What do you want, what do you want?\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:16:06\\nReads \\\"What do you want, what do you want?\\\" [from Black Night Window and later published in The Fat Man; audience laughter and applause throughout].\\n  \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:17:01\\nAfter he said it was such an accurate poem, I couldn't tell him it was about him. This one's called \\\"Strand by Strand\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:17:14\\nReads \\\"Strand by Strand\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:17:56\\nThis is the first time I've kept to a list of...because usually I decide that I don't want to read a particular poem and I get all confused, but I'm very pleased with myself when I keep right to the schedule. Everything organized, everything complete. This short poem in five naturally short pieces is called \\\"One Day\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:18:23\\nReads \\\"One Day\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:18:55\\nCharles Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124735] died in about 1953, he was an Englishman, originally Cockney. He wrote a number of what I think are very good poems, a number of detective novels, some theological deputation, I guess would be the right word. One of his detective novels is about finding the holy grail. It's called War in Heaven and it's out in Faber Paperback, go and buy it, it's really nice. This poem is for and from and about Charles Williams.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:19:35\\nReads “For and From Charles Williams” [from What They Say].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:20:04\\nNow my list has gone to pot, because I've got a poem down in a magazine that I didn't bring. So. One day some years ago, I was hitchhiking out to British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]. I got to a place called Golden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1020179], B.C. and I had to go up the Big Bend Highway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30253222], this would be before the Rogers Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q383051] was open. And I got a ride about thirty miles in on what I didn't know was an illegally-present logging truck, because the Big Bend Highway was not open to traffic for three more days. So I sat three days on the Big Bend Highway. This poem roughly...well, it's called \\\"Solitaire\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:20:47\\nReads \\\"Solitaire\\\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:21:22\\nThis short one called \\\"El Paso\\\" because El Paso was the place where it happens. It was ninety degrees outside in El Paso [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16562], and with the air conditioning, which I couldn't turn off, it was about thirty below. And I couldn't sleep, I had to get up in the middle of the night and get dressed and get under the blankets, and I caught terrible cold in that motel. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:21:41\\nReads \\\"El Paso\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:21:56\\nSince I've been out of Nova Scotia, I've written a couple of poems about or around Nova Scotia. The main thing I can't seem to get in a poem just yet is the difference between the Pacific Ocean [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98], in Vancouver, and the Atlantic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97]. There seems a tremendous difference that I can feel but that I can't seem yet to grasp in the fact. This poem is called \\\"God Bless You\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:22:24\\nReads \\\"God Bless You\\\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:22:43\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:22:47\\nThe next piece is on the back of my list. I think this is about the only other ethnic Nova Scotia-type poem that I've got, but I was only there for about six months and I can't quite put out a book yet. This is called \\\"By the Grey Atlantic\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:23:04\\nReads \\\"By the Grey Atlantic\\\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:23:31\\nI think I'll read quickly a number of poems from this book. I'm anxious not to keep you too long, if anybody feels like walking out, I won't really be insulted if you'll [unintelligible]. These are all quite simple so I might as well just give the title in my school-class fashion and then go on to read them. This is called \\\"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\\\". I might see first that Veregin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7921203] is a town in Saskatchewan named after a leader of the Doukhobors [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5302215], they first came to that area after Peter the Lordly Verigin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4107818] [unintelligible] his palace, which is really just a gigantic farmhouse, it's outside the town. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:24:19\\nReads \\\"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:25:04\\nThis one, about a pregnant girl, it's called \\\"On Her Long Bed of Night”.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:25:09\\nReads \\\"On Her Long Bed of Night\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:26:12\\nSo, this one's about my father. Drowning kittens, in a lot of houses in Saskatchewan you keep a rain barrel on a corner of the house underneath a spout to get the fresh rainwater for washing and so on.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:26:27\\nReads “My Daddy Drowned” [from Elephants, Mothers and Others and later published in The Fat Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:27:09.11\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:27:18\\nThis one is called \\\"Half in Love\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:27:22\\nReads \\\"Half in Love\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:02\\nThis one is called \\\"Sister Cowen\\\". She used to run a mission in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096], and she had very good stew. She was a very violent woman. On Christmas Eve she used to give all the bums fifty cents, but she gave a particularly long sermon on Christmas Eve. She was very down on booze.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:25\\nReads \\\"Sister Cowen\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:40\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:49\\nThis one is set in Vancouver outside Roy Kiyooka's studio. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:58\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:29:30\\nThe name of this book is Elephants, Mothers, and Others. I've read poems about others and one about my mother, and this is the elephant’s poem. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:29:41\\nReads “Elephants” from Elephants, Mothers, and Others [and published later in The Fat Man; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:30:01\\nI think I've gone on too long, there is a longish poem called \\\"The Fat Man\\\", which I want to read, so I'll skip the rest of the stuff I thought I was going to read and just do this one.\\n \\nAnnotation\\n00:30:18\\nReads \\\"The Fat Man\\\" [published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:34:47\\nApplause.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:34:48\\nIt's not finished, you see, it's not...[Audience laughter].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:34:52\\nResumes reading \\\"The Fat Man\\\" [published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:36:33\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:36:35\\nApplause.\\n \\nEND\\n00:36:55\\n\",\"notes\":\"John Newlove reads from Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart, 1968), What They Say (Weed/Flower, 1967), Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle Press, 1963) and poems later published in The Cave (McClelland & Stewart, 1970). Most of these poems have been collected in The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977).\\n\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces John Newlove. [INDEX: friend, fall of 1961, Vancouver,        Saskatchewan, early poems, studio, chess, Long Johns, paint, wine, literature, mice,     drunken poets, women, Grave Sirs published in this period, Robert Reed, Elephants,      Mothers and Others, Tak Tanabe, Robert Columbo discovered John Newlove, Canadian        poetry, Poetry ’64, Contact Press, Moving in Alone, critical attention, What They Say \\t(Weed/Flower, 1967), rejected manuscripts submitted to McClelland and Stewart, new   book Black Night Window, manuscript, poet in residence at Deep Springs in California,    Heraclitus.]\\n04:51- John Newlove responds to Kiyooka’s introduction, and introduces “The Almost King”. [INDEX: Herodotus, studio, Roy Kiyooka, rent, chess games, poems about dreams, Australian chief; from unknown source.]\\n05:42- Reads “The Almost King”.\\n08:32- Introduces “The Candle”. [INDEX: drams, short poems, poetry readings, listening, ashtray, faculty club, George (Bowering), Angela (Bowering); from unknown source.]\\n09:07- Reads “The Candle”.\\n09:19- Introduces “The Engine in the Sea”. [INDEX: dream, misprinted in the Malahat Review, favourite poem, supposed to be ‘and the Sea’; first printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n09:32- Reads “The Engine and the Sea”.\\n11:26- Introduces “Before Sleep”. [INDEX: love poems about sleep, dreams, problems sleeping, nightmares; first printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n11:44- Reads “Before Sleep”.\\n12:53- Introduces “The Dream Man”. [INDEX: dreams, dream about someone else’s dream, copyright; from unknown source.]\\n13:09- Reads “The Dream Man”.\\n14:35- Introduces “Burn”. [INDEX: reading ‘rules’, extra-poetic speech, Ed Sullivan routines; from unknown source.]\\n14:52- Reads “Burn”.\\n15:16- Introduces “No Song”. [INDEX: old poem, short poem; published first in Black Night Window (McClelland and Stewart, 1968), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n15:25- Reads “No Song”.\\n15:47- Introduces “What do you want?” [INDEX: wrote for and about a friend; originally    printed in Black Night Window (McClelland and Stewart, 1968), collected in The Fat       Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n16:06- Reads “What do you want?”.\\n17:01- Introduces “Strand by Strand”. [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n17:14- Reads “Strand by Strand”.\\n17:56- Introduces “One Day”. [INDEX: list of poems to read, poem in five short parts; from unknown source.]\\n18:23- Reads “One Day”.\\n18:55- Introduces first line “For and From Charles Williams”. [INDEX: Charles Williams   \\tdeath in 1953, Englishman, Cockney, detective novels, poems, theological disputation,   holy grail, War in Heaven Faber Paperback; published in What they Say (Weed/flower     Press, 1967).]\\n19:35- Reads first line “For and From Charles Williams”.\\n20:04- Introduces “Solitaire”. [INDEX: list, magazine, hitchhiking in British Columbia, Golden, B.C, Big Bend Highway, Rogers Pass, ride, illegally-present logging truck; originally printed in Black Night Window (McClelland and Stewart, 1968), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n20:47- Reads “Solitaire”.\\n21:22- Introduces “El Paso”. [INDEX: ninety degrees, air conditioning, thirty below, sleep, cold, motel; from unknown source.]\\n21:41- Reads “El Paso”.\\n21:56- Introduces “God Bless You”. [INDEX: Nova Scotia, poem, difference between Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, Vancouver; later printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n22:24- Reads “God Bless You”.\\n22:47- Introduces “By the Grey Atlantic”. [INDEX: list, Nova-Scotia-type poem, six months, unfinished book; later printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n23:04- Reads “By the Grey Atlantic”.\\n23:31- Introduces “The Photograph my Mother Keeps”. [INDEX: reading poems from book (unknown), title, school-class fashion, Verrigan, Saskatchewan, named after the leader of the Doukhabors, Peter the Lordly Verrigan, farmhouse; from unknown source.]\\n24:19- Reads “The Photograph my Mother Keeps”.\\n25:04- Introduces “On Her Long Bed of Night”. [INDEX: pregnant girl; from unknown        source.]\\n25:09- Reads “On Her Long Bed of Night”.\\n26:12- Introduces “My Daddy Drowned”. [INDEX: father, kittens, houses in Saskatchewan, rain barrel, house, fresh rainwater; published Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle, 1963), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n26:27- Reads “My Daddy Drowned”.\\n27:18- Reads “Half in Love”.\\n28:02- Introduces “Sister Cowen”. [INDEX: Sister Cowen, mission in Edmonton, stew, violent woman, Christmas eve, homeless men, fifty cents, alcohol, sermon; from unknown source.]\\n28:27- Reads “Sister Cowen”.\\n28:49- Introduces first line “The obnoxiously-generated neon suspense...”. [INDEX: Roy        Kiyooka’s studio; from unknown source.]\\n28:58- Reads first line “The obnoxiously-generated neon suspense...”.\\n29:30- Introduces first line “Elephants ”. [INDEX: from Elephants, Mothers and Others        (Periwinkle, 1963) later collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977),       \\tmother, others, elephant poem.]\\n29:41- Reads first line “Elephants”.\\n30:01- Introduces “The Fat Man”. [INDEX: reading too long, long poem; from The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n30:18- Reads “The Fat Man”.\\n00:36:55.23- END OF RECORDING\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"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://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0143_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Newlove Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0143_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Newlove Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0143_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Newlove Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0143_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Newlove Tape Box - 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_0138_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0138_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joe Rosenblatt Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0138_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0138_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joe Rosenblatt Tape Box - 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_0138_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0138_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joe Rosenblatt Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0138_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0138_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joe Rosenblatt Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/joe_rosenblatt_i006-11-138.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"joe_rosenblatt_i006-11-138.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:44:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"107.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"joe_rosenblatt_i006-11-138.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nGood evening. Hello, Mr. Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. [Audience laughter]. Well, welcome to the sixth reading of our second series of evenings with Canadian and American poets. Tonight we have Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], and John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356], formerly of Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], now residing in Nova Scotia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1952]. Joe Rosenblatt will begin the reading, there will be an intermission, and John Newlove will follow. I'm going to quote largely from the copy in Joe Rosenblatt's book, The LSD Leacock, for I hope servient biographical information. It goes like this, he was born in Toronto on December the 26th, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. He says that he has suffocated in Toronto ever since then. He attended the Central Technical School [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5061898] and dropped out in Grade 10, he has worked as a grave-digger, plumber's helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope. He has attended the Provincial Institute of Trades where he acquired a diploma as a welder fitter, his favourite writers are Ambrose Biers, William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513], Emily Dickinson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441], and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027], and his favourite dream, is Cyclops turning up at a [nigh-bank (?)]. [Audience laughter]. His previous book of poems, which was probably printed in nineteen hundred and sixty-three, is called Voyage of the Mood. Joe Rosenblatt.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:27\\nApplause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:02:36\\nWasn't that [unintelligible]. I'm just going to read, start off with a series of poems I had written about my uncle, who was a fishmonger. He had a habit of phyxiating and murdering fish, and slicing them, and slicing them, and...well, I'll start. This is called \\\"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:03:11\\nReads \\\"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:06:10\\nApplause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:06:16\\n\\\"Ichthycide\\\". Another poem about my uncle. It's funny, really. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:06:29\\nReads \\\"Ichthycide\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:08:05\\nLaughter and applause .\\n\\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:08:13\\nThis is called \\\"A Shell Game\\\". Has to do with my uncle. [Audience laughter]. It's about his funeral.  Joke.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:08:27\\nReads \\\"A Shell Game [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:09:42\\nI wrote all kinds of poems. I was in Vancouver and I came across the god-awful logic of the zoo. It kinda scared the hell out of me. It was a bat. I've never seen a bat before. Met people who were bats. But this was the real McCoy, it was a fruit bat and it was hanging upside-down, you know, that's the way they live and they fornicate that way too, apparently, upside-down. So I wrote about bats. I have some more fish poems but I get tired of that after a while, you start hating it. And we'll begin with \\\"Bats\\\". While it's true the bat is a mammal, not a bird, there's all types of kinds of mythology based on prejudice about bats and which I've tried to embody in these poems. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:10:47\\nReads \\\"Bats\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:11:32\\nOutside of the bat poem there came a group of sound poetry. Because I tried to get the feeling of the bat in the air, you know the image of the bat and the way it, and the movements of the bat. And this is called \\\"The Fruit Bat\\\". First encounter with a bat.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:11:56\\nReads \\\"The Fruit Bat\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:13:16\\nThis is better. This is “The Bat Cage”.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:13:19\\nReads “The Bat Cage” [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:14:39\\nOh we're like bats to people. We used to have, I used to, when I was a kid I went to school and we had a music teacher who was a bit of a nut. She used to rap kids across the knuckles, you know, just to hear them singing. [Audience laughter]. I may have called her Mrs. Love, I can't recall, the trauma was too great. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:15:02\\nReads “The Vampire” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:15:48\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:15:55\\n\\\"The Zombie\\\". Just whistle when you get tired of these bat poems. Do anything you wanna do. \\\"The Zombie\\\". By the way, bats are supposed to be unkosher according to Leviticus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41490]. It says all fowl that creep going upon all fours shall be an abomination unto you. But in other countries they're great appetizers, the fruit bat especially, and I have an interesting poem, not right now though. \\\"The Zombie\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:16:26\\nReads \\\"The Zombie\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:17:59\\nI'll read one more bat poem, it's the sound thing, an experimental thing which I later developed...too many of these bats here. I wrote a Christmas poem on bats, too. Maybe I should read it. Dedicated to somebody. I'll read the sound poem. It's more important. \\\"The Butterfly Bat\\\". There is a butterfly bat. Hm, found in the Orient, a very beautiful bat, orange apparently, very beautiful though. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:18:43\\nReads \\\"The Butterfly Bat\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:20:02\\nReads \\\"Orpheus in Stanley Park\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:20:50\\n\\\"Sex and Death\\\". This poem's for a friend of mine. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:20:54\\nReads \\\"Sex and Death\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:21:48\\nI should read the egg poems, because I don't think many of you have heard them, and I'll do that. You'd probably like them better than the bats. More meaningful. This is called \\\"Egg Sonata\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:22:20\\nReads \\\"Egg Sonata\\\" [from The LSD Leacock].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:23:38\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:23:44\\nReads [\\\"Let the egg live\\\" (?)].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:24:56\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:24:59\\nReads \\\"It's in the egg, in the little round egg\\\" [from The LSD Leacock].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:26:57\\nOne more egg poem. [Audience laughter and applause]. This is a prose poem. It's called \\\"The Easter I got for Passover\\\". [Audience laughter]. It has to do with an argument, whether the body of Christ did not go to heaven, the moderator of the United Church of Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q198745] said yesterday, Right Reverend Ernest Marshall Howes told a press conference that he does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus but does believe in a spiritual resurrection. That's from the Globe and Mail [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43148750], 23rd of April, '65.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:27:46\\nReads \\\"The Easter I got for Passover\\\" [from The LSD Leacock].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:30:02\\nApplause. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:30:10\\nDo you want to read, John? Where is he? [Audience laughter]. Do you want me to come here? Yeah, okay. I'm getting down to my dirty poems, what am I going to do? I wrote a whole bunch of pornographic poetry, right. I'll read that for the end when the time's up. I wrote a poem to Che Guevara [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5809], if I can find the thing now, because I really muddled everything up here, oh here it is. It's called \\\"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:30:52\\nReads \\\"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:31:42\\nA poem about a critic, “Fable”.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:31:47\\nReads “Fable” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].  \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:32:37\\nI wrote another one about a critic, a friend of mine. It's called \\\"The Crab Louse\\\". I'll read it. [Audience laughter]. I think some of you may recognize him. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:32:47\\nReads \\\"The Crab Louse\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:33:25\\nReads \\\"The Fire Bug Poet\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:34:29\\n\\\"How Mice Make Love,\\\" how'd this get in here? \\\"How Mice Make Love\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:34:36\\nReads \\\"How Mice Make Love\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:35:29\\n\\\"The Electric Rose\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:35:34\\nReads \\\"The Electric Rose\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:37:13\\nApplause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:37:17\\nShould I read on? Well this is a poem called \\\"Itch\\\". It's about that cat who, you know, in the world of the dead. And as usual I mucked up all the mythology, but it was too late to change the poem. So I said, what the hell. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:37:44\\nReads \\\"Itch\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:41:51\\nThere's a loathsome typographical error in here. That's what happens.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:41:56\\nResumes reading \\\"Itch\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:43:20\\n[Unintelligible] a more cheerful poem, if I can find one here. How about \\\"Cricket Love\\\"? I'll read one very early poem I wrote, \\\"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\\\". \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:43:39\\nReads \\\"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:44:21\\nThank you. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:44:22\\nApplause.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:44:35\\nThere'll be a fifteen minute inter- [cut off abruptly]. \\n \\nEND\\n00:44:37\\n\",\"notes\":\"Joe Rosenblatt reads from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968)] and The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966) and a few poems from unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Joe Rosenblatt. [INDEX: George Bowering, sixth reading, second series, Canadian and American poets, Toronto, John Newlove of Vancouver/Nova Scotia, Joe Rosenblatt as first reader, The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966), biographical information, born in Toronto Dec. 26, 1933, Central Technical School, dropped out in grade 10, grave-digger, plumber’s helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope, Provincial Institute of Trades, diploma as a welder fitter, Ambrose Biers, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, A.M. Klein, dream of cyclops turned up at nigh-bank [?], previous book of poems Voyage of the Mood (Heinrich Heine Press, 1963).]\\n02:36- Joe Rosenblatt introduces “Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green” [INDEX series of poems about his uncle, fishmonger, fish, slicing \\tfish; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n03:11- Reads “Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green”.\\n06:16- Introduces “Ichthycide”. [INDEX: poem about uncle, funny; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n06:29- Reads “Ichthycide”\\n08:13- Introduces “A Shell Game” [INDEX: uncle, funeral, joke; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n08:27- Reads “A Shell Game”.\\n09:42- Introduces “Bats”. [INDEX: all kinds of poems, Vancouver, zoo, scared, bat, fruit bat, fornicate, fish poems, mammal, bird, mythology, prejudice about bats; most likely from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n10:47- Reads “Bats”.\\n11:32- Introduces “The Fruit Bat”. [INDEX: bat poem, group of sound poetry, feeling of the bat, first encounter; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n11:56- Reads “The Fruit Bat”.\\n13:16- Introduces “The Bat Cage”. [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n13:19- Reads “The Bat Cage”.\\n14:39- Introduces “The Vampire”. [INDEX: bats, people, kid, school, music teacher,  \\ttrauma; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n15:02- Reads “The Vampire”.\\n15:55- Introduces “The Zombie”. [INDEX: bat poem, unkosher, Levictis, fowl, appetizers; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n16:26- Reads “The Zombie”.\\n17:59- Introduces “The Butterfly Bat”. [INDEX: bat poem, experimental, Christmas poem, dedication, sound poem, Orient, orange bat; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n18:43- Reads “The Butterfly Bat”.\\n20:02- Reads “Orpheus in Stanley Park”. [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n20:50- Introduces “Sex and Death”. [INDEX: for a friend; from Winter of the Luna Moth       (Anansi, 1968).]\\n20:54- Reads “Sex and Death”.\\n21:48- Introduces “Egg Sonata”. [INDEX: egg poem, meaning; from The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966).]\\n22:20- Reads “Egg Sonata”.\\n23:44- Reads unknown poem, first line “Let the egg live...”. [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n24:59- Reads “It’s in the egg, the little round egg” [INDEX: from The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966).]\\n27:08- Introduces “The Easter I got for Passover”. [INDEX: prose poem, argument, the body of Christ, moderator of the United Church of Canada, Right Reverend Earnest Marshall Hows, press conference, disbelief in the physical resurrection of Jesus, spiritual resurrection, Globe and Mail, April 23, 1965; from The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966).]\\n27:46- Reads “The Easter I got for Passover”.\\n30:02- Introduces “The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara” [INDEX: John Newlove, dirty poems, pornographic poems, Che Guevara; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).] \\n30:52- Reads “The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara”.\\n31:42- Introduces “Fable” [INDEX: critic, fable; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n31:47- Reads “Fable”.\\n32:37- Introduces “The Crab Louse”. [INDEX: critic, friend; from unknown source]\\n32:47- Reads “The Crab Louse”.\\n33:25- Reads “The Fire Bug Poet”. [INDEX: from unknown source\\n34:29- Introduces “How Mice Make Love”. [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n34:36- Reads “How Mice Make Love”.\\n35:29- Reads “The Electric Rose” [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press,      1968).]\\n37:17- Introduces “Itch”. [INDEX: Cat, world of the dead, mythology from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n37:44- Reads “Itch”. [INDEX: interrupts poem with admission of a typographical error]\\n43:20- Introduces “Better She Dressed in a Black Garment”. [INDEX: early poem, “Cricket Love”; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n43:39- Reads “Better She Dressed in a Black Garment”.\\n44:35- Introducer (Roy Kiyooka) introduces 15 minute intermission.\\n44:37.30- END OF RECORDING.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/joe-rosenblatt-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.5454967},{"id":"1270","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":["Joseph Langland at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 8 March 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JOSEPH LANGLAND I006/SR126\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-126\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Langland, Jospeh"],"creator_names_search":["Langland, Jospeh"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/92023235\",\"name\":\"Langland, Jospeh\",\"dates\":\"1917-2007\",\"notes\":\"American poet Joseph Langland was born on February 16, 1917, in Spring Grove, Minnesota. He grew up on his family’s farm in Iowa, which had been in his family since 1877. He attended Santa Ana College of California, then the University of Iowa, from which he received his Bachelor’s degree in 1940. A year later, the University of Iowa also awarded him his Master’s degree. Langland taught English during 1941 and 1942 at Dana College in Nebraska. Langland enlisted in the U.S. Infantry from 1942-1946, where he served in Europe during the Second World War. On his trips back to the U.S., Langland married Judith Gail Wood, and had three children. After the war, he served with the Military Government in Bavaria, going on to liberate the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald. By the time Langland left the military in 1946, he had risen to the position of Captain. Langland self-published his first collection of poetry, For Harold  in 1945 while still in Germany. He then taught at the University of Iowa from 1946-1948, at the University of Wyoming from 1948-1959, then to the University of Massachusets, Amherst from 1959-1979 as a Professor Emeritus and as the founder and Director of the Masters of Fine Arts writing program from 1964-1970 and from 1978-1979. Langland published more collections of poetry, including The Green Town (Scribner Press, 1956), The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963), An Interview and Fourteen Poems (GOB Press, 1973), The Sacrifice Poems (1975), co-edited The Short Story (Macmillan, 1956), and Poet’s Choice with Paul Engel (Dial Press, 1962), co-translated Poetry From the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973). Langland was awarded many honours, including the Ford Fellowship in Humanities in 1953 from the Harvard-Columbia Universities, the Amy Lowell Fellowship in Poetry in 1966, the Melville Can Prize for Poetry from the Poetry Society of America in 1964, an honorary doctorate from Luther College in 1974, and the Living Art Treasure in Literature from the New England Arts Biennial in 1985. He also traveled to guest lecture at the University of Washington, The University of British Columbia and at San Francisco State University. His last publications include Any Body’s Song (Doubleday, 1980), A Dream of Love (Pleiades Press, 1986), Twelve Preludes and Postludes (Adastra Press, 1988) and Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press,1991). Joseph Langland died at 90 years old on April 9, 2007.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"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\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"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\":\"1968 3 8\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"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 Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Joseph Langland reads from The Green Town (Scribner, 1956) and The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963), as well as poems published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973), Any Body’s Song (Doubleday, 1980), and Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991)."],"contents":["joseph_langland_i006-11-126.mp3\n\nUnknown\n00:00:00\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nUnknown\n00:00:03\n[Cut or edit made in tape, Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nIntroducer\n00:00:06\nThis evening, Joseph Langland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6284810]reads. Mr. Langland was born in Spring Grove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203865], Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527], and attended the public schools of Minnesota and Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1546], attended the State University of Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q182973]. He has taught at the University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], the University of Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q219563], the San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] Poetry Center, and so forth. He has been a professor of English at the University of Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1326975], and he is presently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1061122]. And he has been associated with the Massachusetts Review as a member of its editorial board. His publications: For Harold, a collection of memorial poems for a younger brother killed in World War II [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362] and published in Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] in 1945, The Green Town, which was published in 1956 by Scribner’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q845617] and nominated for the National Book Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572316] in Poetry in 1957, and The Wheel of Summer published in 1963 by Dial Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5270470], and winner of the Melville Kane Poetry Award. He has also published two anthologies, Poet's Choice, co-edited with Paul Engle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7150503], published in 1952, and The Short Story, published in 1956 and co-edited with James B. Hall [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q95328740], published by Macmillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217]. He has forthcoming a volume, a small volume called Adlai Stevenson, which is to be published in Iowa City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q487977] by the Stonewall Press, and is, will contain one long memorial poem and two lyrics. And also a larger volume, to appear perhaps next year, called Songs and Half-Songs. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and have appeared in such journals as Poetry Chicago, Hudson Review, Chicago Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5095765], Paris Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3988628], London Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2154323], Nation, and so forth. He has written lyrics for songs by Morton Gould [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1352656], Phillip Esantzen, Elliot Schwartz, and also lyrics and music for folk songs. He has been recorded by FolkWays [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1435522], Scholastic Records, reading eight of his poems, and he has held a number of grants. In 1953-54 he was, he held a Ford Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, in 1955 and 56, an Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, and in 1966, or last year, rather, a National Council of Arts Grant in Poetry, and in this period, he gave a series of readings at universities throughout Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], in Glasgow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4093], London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], Sussex [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23346], Munich [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1726], Oslo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q585], and University College in Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1068258]. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Joseph Langland. \n \nAudience\n00:03:03\nApplause. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:03:19\nSo much of that sounds irrelevant. So I will begin by reading a poem which was really written in answer to a critic. I've written two poems in answers to critics. And this is one of them. I call it \"Desperate Equations\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:03:47\nReads \"Desperate Equations\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:04:33\nThen I would like to go to, from that to a newer poem, one which I call \"Natures\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:04:44\nReads \"Natures\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:06:54\nAnd I'd like to just simply move from that to a poem which is called, \"Dandelion\". It's a poem that, well, the daughter of a famous poet likes it very much, and she recently said so, and so consequently I'm very fond of it at the moment. I think this is a kind of procedure among artists. They tend to like very much, at least for a little while, something that someone else likes. It's a poem which I say partially for my wife, it's a poem of affection, but I wouldn't just simply say \"for\" my wife, it's for all of you, too. \"Dandelion\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:07:40\nReads \"Dandelion\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:09:26\nI visited once a grotto in the southern coast of Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], the Amalfi [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80563] grotto, and it's typical of a whole series of such places. It's completely enclosed. You enter it...well actually, I was there a year ago, and it's a little disappointing, because, to sort of accommodate the tourist trade, they've blown out a little section of the wall, and they've hung a flapping canvas cloth over it. But eleven years ago this wasn't so, and you descend in an elevator into this inner room, and it's an absolutely magic place, it's explained to you, for instance, that about sixteen feet under the level of the sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38882], there's a large hole in the cave, and the sunlight, particularly in the morning, you come there about 11 in the morning, it's a good time, the sun filters down these sixteen feet and through this huge hole and then comes up inside the cafe. And the effect of this is absolutely eerie because it's completely enclosed, it's like darkness, but you get in there, and you adjust, and everything is just luminous with light, water, everything. You pick up, and you dip your hands in water and pick them up, you know, drops of water fall from your fingers from the orb-blades that splash, the orb is simply just a whole splash of light that goes up, like that. It's magic, see. And I want to believe in the magic, but in this sense I want to believe in this way in poetry. We shouldn't, I think, just simply deceive ourselves, but....so we can talk about what is, but somehow it's a responsibility to do a little bit more than what is, and so I've written this poem, and of course it's about the Amalfi Grotto, it's about our own behaviour, an attitude toward many things, and it's also, for me, a poem about poetry. \"The Amalfi Grotto\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:11:38\nReads \"The Amalfi Grotto\" [from The Wheel of Summer; later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:12:53\nI would go from that to a poem for my brother. I call the poem \"War\". This was a brother who was killed in the Philippines [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928] in World War II. I was in Europe at the time. I wrote thirty poems, at least, for him, following this. And finally I wrote this poem. This was...about eleven years afterwards when I got to this poem. And with this poem I knew I was, I was through writing those poems. It's also a poem that's had a very curious history. The history of poems is something that's difficult to predict. I was in Germany at the time, I suppose the next German soldier I met I would have shot. But this poem has been seen, or was seen a few years ago by a former infantry officer in the German Army, who at that moment was a captive at Stalingrad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q914]. He's come into the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] now and teaches music in an American university, not the one I'm in. And so he set it to music. And so it's a strange irony. I started the whole sequence, see, but, see art pays no attention to that kind of enmity whatsoever. And so it's been set to music by a former infantry officer in the German army. Also, just this past week, actually two days ago, I got a notice it's been published in a Japanese anthology, and it's been translated into Italian, and so all the axis powers have translated it, and then somehow, I don't, still don't know how, it found its way after the Hungarian Revolution [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164348] into Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781] in '56, and got translated there, I understand a very poor translation into Hungarian, but nevertheless it's happened. This is just part of its history. And other things have been happening to it strangely like this. I just mention this because, see, at a certain point the thing is out of your control completely, and you sort of are, I feel a bit humbled by what happens to them, and the uses that people put these things to. I wrote poems in all sorts of forms for my brother, and I finally, there're some subjects...well, I'd heard William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] give a reading at the Lexington Y in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] in 1954, and so I said, okay, I was still dealing with the same poem, and I was in an apartment up in 96th Street, and it was a very foggy night coming home, and I heard all these great foghorns coming off over the lower bay, over Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] and so forth. And I wrote another poem, \"A Seachange for Harold\", which I'm not going to read, except just the beginning.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:16:22\nReads the beginning of \"A Seachange: For Harold\" [fromThe Green Town and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:16:40\nWell that's, I wrote that thing first, and then I came back to this other poem, in which I just said, okay I'll put it down the way it was, but there's some subjects that by their very nature you can't do much about. Except, of course, the whole dry feeling associated with it led me to all kinds of selections. If there seem to be an excess of family in the poem, I just simply say I am one of nine children. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:17:15\nReads \"War\" [from The Green Town and later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:18:43\nI would go from that to some poems I'm trying to write now. Some of these poems are songs, and I've been writing music for them, also, but, and this is such a song. I call it \"A Hard Song to Sing\", and it's really about the contemporary condition of war and civil rights problems which threaten to just overwhelm the United States. And almost the entire poem is monosyllabic, but it just seemed like it had to be that way. So. I...and actually, the tune that goes with this thing is...well, I know for instance that I could come in right on pitch on it. I once fell in love with--I don't have absolute pitch, but I fell in love with a song by Edward Grieg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80621], and all I have to do is remember this song and I can always begin singing in A flat. But, it's, sometimes I think that maybe this is what I mean by being so right with your subject that you finally say the right thing about it. Somehow the resonance, just the resonance of the idea set up in my body brings me in on pitch, see. Well, I'll just read it. \"The clear, cold night\"...oh I'll sing, I'll sing the one stanza. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:20:24\nSings the beginning of \"A Hard Song to Sing\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:20:42.79\nAnd it repeats itself in various ways, the melody varies. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:20:47\nReads \"A Hard Song to Sing\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:21:48\nI...when I spent some time in Europe, among other people I met Ralph Ellison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q299965]. And he and his wife, Fanny, and my wife, Judy, and I, we spent several very fine noons on a beach of a small Italian fishing town, and ever since then I've been trying to write a poem for him. He's been relatively silent, at least, he's not taken a very aggressive role in the whole civil rights movement, although he has published significant essays in that whole thing. Many of you will know his great novel The Invisible Man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1784288]. And I've written a poem, I call it \"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\", I'm reading it, I have to send it to him. I have not sent it out to be published anywhere, either. You probably do know he used to be a jazz player, he played the trumpet, he was a photographer and so forth and he did live in some sort of cellar that he had brilliantly lit for a while, but in The Invisible Man there are aspects of this kind of background, too. So I just wanted to address--I started writing him a letter. And then I got interested in writing in the letter and quit the letter and wrote the poem instead, but that's the way it'd be. It was \"Dear Ralph\", you know but just, now the poem begins, \"Ralph...\"\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:23:16\nReads \"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\" [published later in The Massachusetts Review vol. 40, n.4].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:27:02\nWell, I will move from that to a poem on Thoreau [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131149]. Actually, I'm doing a whole book of these things. But one...actually, the first time I ever went to Walden Pond [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2023853], things turned out like an art farm. There were certain people there, and I met people in certain sequences, and of course I've told all sorts of people that, when they write poetry, you know, just to say that this is the way it happened, or this is the way it was, you know, that's no guarantee that it will be art at all. But in this case, something else had happened, see, Thoreau himself plays influence and just simply organized, you know, a hundred years later, certain people who would be there. And this happened just this way, and so I, almost to defend myself against all the things I'd ever said to people, I called the poem, \"How It, So Help Me, Was\". And that's the title of the poem. I end with a, the blue-grey twilight, because it was 1963, and it was, or '62 when I went there, and it was, you know, a hundred years after the war between the North and the South in the United States, the blue and the grey. And I felt that whole shadow, and even, in a curious way, it's on the west end of the pond, actually, I'd gone swimming in it, it's illegal, but then the shadow was coming off the hill and it was just sort of beginning to cover, to cover me, and it was a blue-grey shadow, you see, I'm not making that up. And, but...I suppose that's a kind of selection you take out of what is made available to you at a certain point. So \"How It, So Help me, Was\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:29:04\nReads \"How It, So Help Me, Was\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and published later as “Walden” in Any Body’s Song].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:29:29\nThat's a little poem he's written that's on the hearth there, about the smoke rising.\n\nJoseph Langland\n00:30:04\nResumes reading “How it, So Help Me, Was”. \n\nJoseph Langland\n00:32:10\nI know at a time like this I keep thinking all the time in poetry, you know, what does it mean in poetry to somehow keep alive, or...to keep the whole body open, and I wanted to write a poem about that. I call this one \"Still to be Man\". Because sort of in an animal way, we have to be able to continue to take in all sorts of things. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:32:44\nReads \"Still to be Man\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:32:51\nI can remember when I was, the morning I was trying to write this poem because I was home alone, I stepped out the kitchen door and as I stepped out I felt I didn't even have to land on the earth itself, I would just step out into the air. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:33:04\nResumes reading \"Still to be Man\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:34:10\nLast year, I spent, with my family, a half a year in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q220], and I got acquainted with a certain kind of syndrome among some of the Roman women. They sort of get trapped, in a society which seems free and easy and open, there's an extreme conservatism. For instance, I know, well, a person who teaches art in an American university, he and his wife were adopting some children in Italy a few years ago, and he could not have children and she could. It was proved by tests in this country, and they went to adopt two children in Italy. But you cannot adopt children in Italy on this basis because by law, no man in Italy can be sterile. [Audience laughter]. And this is a law. And so they had to go to Naples [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2634] and be tested all over again, officially, by a doctor in Naples, and a lawyer had to follow this, and they discovered after the tests that she was sterile and she was not [audience laughter], and they got this all certified and they adopted the children and they now have them and are living happily with them. But there's some, there's another side to this coin, too. And so, we lived next to a high school called the church, or the school of the Adorazione, and I'd see this women, you know, they're so beautiful when they're young, and then when they get married they start dressing in black and start cooking spaghetti and having children, and something awful happens, and then their husbands lose interest in them and then they have to find other lovers and then, you know, it's an awful thing. [Audience laughter]. It's \"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:36:12\nReads \"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:37:24\nWell then, another kind of thing that happens in our society, I think it happens to many people, I've been writing a series of half-songs. I call them half-songs, they're at half-pitch, half-singing pitch, where we talk and we don't talk together. You know, we say something and someone answers and it goes, you know, we keep going past each other. And so I've written a poem that, it has two separate parts, both parts rhyme all the way but you won't hear this at all, I was talking about that with the class here, today, it may be aesthetically valid for myself alone. And it's one, it's called \"Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song\", and the first part is called \"He and Her\". You see, \"he\" is the noun and \"her\" is the object. And the next part is called, \"She and Him\". \"She\" is the noun and \"him\" is the object. And they're talking. Or, we're talking about them. And so, in a sense they should be printed facing each other on the page, and I can't read them together, so I have to read first \"He and Her\", then I might, they talk back and forth to each other all the way through the poem. \"He and Her.\"\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:38:44\nReads \"Not Quite a Conversation: He and Her\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:39:40\nAnd the other, \"She and Him\". As I say, it rhymes all the way, and triad by triad it answers. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:39:47\nReads \"Not Quite a Conversation: She and Him\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:40:59\nI guess we take a break in the program. \n \nUnknown\n00:41:05\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nUnknown\n00:41:24\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].  \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:41:25\nAnd, I will read just one or two of these. And once again, I make no particular claim as to the validity of this, and probably in the long run it’s not even a fruitful thing. All my grandparents were born in Norway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20], my name is Langeland. You know, they dropped the 'e' and called it Langland. And I have been back there a couple of times, I might go again this summer and work with a Norwegian poet, Paul Brekke, and maybe another one, on some translations from the Norwegian  I don't know much Norwegian, he knows a lot of English. [Audience laughter]. But when I was going through there a year ago, I got two, two poems. First this one, \"Singing in Late Summer\". When my father died they played a folk song, \"Den store hvide Flok\", \"The Great White Host\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10468796], at his funeral. And I'd sort of shipped my children off to jobs, I had, you know, I had a fourteen-year-old boy working on a ranch in Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1214], and a twelve-year-old son working on a farm in Iowa, and a daughter who'd gone off to work in-- who was what, fifteen, sixteen, to a hotel in Switzerland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39], and my wife was in Provincetown [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49154], painting [audience laughter], and I was at home writing. Which is what I wanted to do all the time, in any case. \"Singing in Late Summer\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:43:03\nReads \"Singing in Late Summer\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:44:17\nAnd then, traveling through Norway, all these rivers, you know, they just...they're tumbling all over, rushing everywhere, and falling off the tops of mountains, you know, it just seemed endless, going from Oslo to Bergen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26793] and Trondheim [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25804] and down to Oslo and so forth. Or down to the Island of Store [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1636366] along the west coast of Norway. And so, I was thinking of a phrase I'd heard an old, an older woman in my own area say about the younger generation. She would always say, \"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\". And so I saw these rivers, and every time I saw them I kept saying, \"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\". [Laughter]. And so then I started thinking of all of these Norwegian immigrants that just came, you know, more of them over here than there are over there...and...so I, it's about the rivers, it's called \"Norwegian Rivers\", and it's about the people, the younger people, and it's about the immigrants, and the older immigrants, everything like that, I guess.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:45:22\nReads \"Norwegian Rivers\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and collected later in Any Body’s Song and in Selected Poems].\n\nJoseph Langland\n00:48:08\nWell, there's several like that. But I want to do some other things, so I'll just leave them alone. I'm...you know, I'm translating from the Russian, and no pretense about it, I have two great friends, Thomas Axel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23565070], who was press agent for Imre Nagy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q177917] for eleven days, before, at the time of the Hungarian Revolution, and then he escaped to Austria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40]. He teaches at my university, he's a very fine poet, he used to be a director of theatre in Budapest, of the State Theatre. And then Laszlo Ticosz, he teaches in the German-Russian department at the university. They both, for years, have been collecting from the underground poems by relatively unknown poets, student poets and so forth, from Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159], and they have a magnificent collection of these things. They give me, absolutely literal cribbed translations, and then I work with them, and there're some magnificent things coming, and I'm as certain as I stand here that the moment these things are sent into a publisher, not because of what I'm doing, but because of the nature of the thing, that it'll be just snapped up. This is relative, totally fresh new material, no one else has it, they have, through their own channels in the underground, they are being fed this. And so I find it very exciting, and as I said to someone today, I have to sort of take it through my own experience, which included...I won't say poverty, that's not the right word, but absolutely no money, not poverty because we could milk the cow and, you know, raise the garden vegetables and shear our sheep and make our own blankets and, you know, we had food, clothing, and shelter. And then the war in Europe, and I was in well, concentration camps, I wasn't in them, but I was, at Nordhausen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7033], I sort of participated in the burial of five thousand people in one day in open trenches, and was with a headquarters unit a few days after and captured Buchenwald [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152802], and it...I won't say it's these things that pulled together, I was in Weimar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3955] when it was turned over to the Russians, I remember going out of there, you know, it was half the German population in their carts going toward Eisenach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7070], to the west, and the Russian cavalry coming in, meeting it from the east...lots of things, but so that's simply what this material comes through, and so I have some sympathy for it. This is a poem \"Drowning\", by a person named Sergei Chudakov [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4517600]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:51:23\nReads \"Drowning\" by Sergei Chudakov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:51:31\nSee, in the original it says, \"bright as a house\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:51:36\nResumes reading \"Drowning\" by Sergei Chudakov.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:06\nThis is \"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\" by Joseph Brodsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:12\nReads \"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\" by Joseph Brodsky.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:32\nSee the poem says, \"lie musicians, lawyers, businessmen, and revolutionaries\". I'm very certain in this case that, you know, I felt great when I thought of saying it in this other way. Makes it better. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:47\nResumes reading \"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\" by Joseph Brodsky.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:54:03\nFor instance, the original translation was that this whole thing is \"one hour by foot FROM the nearest bus stop\" And as far as I'm concerned, saying \"to\" is apt, a crucial difference, \"and the crooked faces of the plywood\", see, \"are one hour by foot TO the nearest bus stop\". Wanted the whole sense that they might all get up and walk and haunt us, see, coming the other way. Here's a poem about conditions by Artyemy Mikhailov. These names may be just be relatively anonymous, although some of them are among the friends that have been defending Sinyavsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q468267] and Daniel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q435770]. His idea about conditions. And it was a pretty rigid, stiff poem and I had to try to get movement in it and so forth. And it's whole, if, if you've, if your dearest friend has not been trapped and dragged to a camp, if, if, if, the entire way through.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:55:01\nReads “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikahilov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:56:07\nHere once again, there's so many of these, I just, here's one in the older style but it's one that's full of an elegant, lyric despair, \"Now that I know\", by Vladimir Kovshin.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:56:21\nReads \"Now that I Know\" by Vladimir Kovshin [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:57:01\nThis is a poem called \"After the War\" by Gleb Garbovsky. I just completed this this previous weekend, these I'm reading from now. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:57:11\nReads \"After the War\" by Gleb Garbovsky [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:58:54\nIncidentally, I used the phrase \"called back\" because that's on Emily Dickinson's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441]  tomb in Amherst [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49164], Massachusetts. Just an example of how you get your own little allegiance and locality into something else. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:59:08\nResumes reading \"After the War\" by Gleb Garbovsky.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:59:27\nHere's one, \"Keeping up with the Humanskys\". It's a poem about keeping up with the Joneses. [Audience laughter]. I had a lieutenant in the army who said his name was Humansky, and he said his, that man, I'll never forget it because he said that means \"son of the fields\" but I've been called worse names. I remember him saying that [audience laughter]. And so I...Son of the fields, I thought, that's great, you know, I was looking for a Russian name that would be like the Joneses, only this is like the serfs, son of the fields, of the soil. Couldn't be better. \"Keeping up with the Humanskys\". So, see, that's my good luck out of a little piece of experience that came to me when I needed it. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:00:06\nReads \"Keeping up with the Humanskys\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:01:33\nThen there's one about a march from Russia to Siberia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5428]. And, \"Etape\". There's no title in the original, there's a footnote, which was, these were sent to Axel and Ticosz from Russia, this poem. Neither the name nor the fate of its author is known. The phrase \"Marching in Etape\" originates from the nineteenth century. One stretch of the Long March from Russia to Siberia was called Etape, and it was in a ballad stanza form, so that's the way I did it. It's...little old style, but.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:02:07\nReads \"Etape\" by an unknown author.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:03:57\nThen \"The Garbage Collector,\" a poem that...\n \nUnknown\n01:04:03\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nJoseph Langland\n01:04:04\nReads \"The Garbage Collector” [begins abruptly; audience laughter throughout].\n \nAudience\n01:04:27\nLaughter.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:04:30\nI'm very proud of that too, because you know in the old Renaissance things there's always these, an infinitely wise Christ Child, you know, at the mother's breast but his eyes are looking out elsewhere, and he's pointing like this, you know, and it's, so I thought, you know, that's not quite the translation but it's mine [audience laughter]. \n\nJoseph Langland\n01:04:46\nResumes reading “The Garbage Collector”.\n\nJoseph Langland\n01:05:32\nWell, these are, you know, poems out of new, unknown--\n \nUnknown\n01:05:36\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:05:37\nI've sort of been threatening to sing something, and the trouble is, I'm...as I...I wouldn't play the piano if there were one here, and I don't play the guitar, and if I play this thing, it's locked stuff, I'm tied to it, and, I haven't played this tape that's accompanying me, you know, for at least three weeks, and I haven't sung a note since I left Amherst, except the notes I sang here, so, that's all right. These are songs of all sorts. So this is my accompaniment. I hope it works, if it doesn't I'll just stop it. \n \nUnknown\n01:06:17\nAmbient Sound [music; recorded track]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:06:22\nListen here, just a song called \"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:06:37\nPerforms \"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\" [published later in Any Body’s Song] accompanied by recorded track.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:08:02\nThis next is a song called \"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\". Sometimes I wonder, just trying to remember it here, whether I'm supposed to start singing now, and I'll get to the end of the song and I won't have accompaniment for the last dance. [Audience laughter].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:08:31\nPerforms \"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\" accompanied by recorded track [published later as \"Song At Evening” in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems] \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:10:23\nThis is a song called \"Jump on my Back\". It's about Iowa and Wyoming. But since Wyoming didn't work, I had to say Idaho [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1221]. [Audience laughter].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:10:45\nPerforms \"Jump on my Back\" accompanied by recorded track.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:11:25\nThis next one is called \"A Hiroshima Lullaby\". There's an infinitely sad story. In Hiroshima [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34664] when the bomb fell, in 1945, there was a little girl, Sadako Sasaki [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q231997], two years old, some of you may know of her. She was a mile and a half from the centre of the blast and apparently unharmed. She was a very gay and popular girl, and her classmates loved her. And she was in the sixth grade or the equivalent, age twelve, in Hiroshima, Hiroshima, however you pronounce it.  And she developed leukemia, which is of course, as many of you know, a latent effect of many people exposed to radiation, so she was, after all, a victim. And she, well she finally became so ill she had to go to the hospital. And her friends came to visit her. And among other things, they told her, and that she knew, that there's an old Japanese legend about herons. I've been writing poem about herons and cranes and I have some in my book, one on a sandhill crane, and I told some people today that I'm going to the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145] in June to speak in their summer Academy of the Arts, and I heard of a person who works in wildlife out in Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824], and so because of the poem about the crane he's invited me to visit his wildlife refuge, about two or three hours east of Eugene [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q171224], where he has a refuge among other things for sandhill cranes, you know these water birds are simple. And so I'm going to visit him. I look forward to it. Not because of a poem, see, it's nice. And so, Sadako Sasaki in the hospital, she heard that if you fold a thousand paper cranes in this Japanese folding technique, this will protect your health and save you. So she started folding them. And the tale has two sides. She reached 964 and she died. Her classmates were so, at the centre so involved they completed the thousand, they formed them in a chain. They went around gathering the equivalent of pennies, around Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and when they got enough they asked a sculptor from Tokyo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1490] to make a statue of this girl, and so he made a statue showing...you'll surely see pictures of this if you haven't. It's a young, twelve year-old girl, you know, still with a girl's body, she's standing up like this....and she stands in the Peace Park in Hiroshima now. And over her, made out of gold, the folded crane. And so, I wanted to write a poem for her. And so just using the fifth in the bass, and then using the five notes, black keys, I wrote a little ballad and I'll probably sing one stanza maybe, and then read the rest. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:15:03\nPerforms the beginning of \"A Hiroshima Lullaby\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:15:38\nReads the continuation of “A Hiroshima Lullaby\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:16:49\nI wanted to write a civil rights song, something that you could march to in Madison Square Garden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q186125]. And that's, you know, it's a marching song. That's like that. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:17:15\nPerforms unnamed song accompanied by recorded track. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:18:00\nStops recorded track. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:18:00\nWell, there are a lot more of these songs and I'm just going to stop the tape at this time because...I haven't even begun reading you my favourite poems, [audience laughter], and I know it's about to end but maybe, maybe I can read for fifteen minutes or so. If you have to go, just get up and go. But. When I was in Italy in 1954, I read in Marcus Cunliffe's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6758114] The Literature of the United States, \"New York is the intellectual centre of the United States.\"  That made my blood boil [audience laughter] because it's a marketplace, so I just simply took his own book, The Literature of the United States, took all his authors, and lined them up, and all the places where they were born, where they grew up, and where they wrote from, and sent them the chart, which proves, out of his own book, that in literature, creative ideas, there have been three great centres and then two subordinate ones. New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389], the Midwest, and the South, and then as subordinate ones, they're the West Coast, and then the mid-Atlantic, New York area. That's in literature [audience laughter]. And we got in an argument...the result of it all was that I invited him to come and teach at my university [audience laughter]. So he came and he gave an address, and in one of his speeches he said, “Americans are overly given to haruspication and scrying” [audience laughter]. Well, you know, when someone comes out of England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and says, gives, delivers a lecture to an American audience and says that, among other things you have to look up the words. [Audience laughter]. And, so...so I looked them up and I discovered \"haruspication\", the Haruspects were Roman and Etruscan pagan priests who examined the entrails of sacrificial animals [audience laughter] to predict natural phenomena and the future. So I started thinking about that. I grew up on a general farm, we had about a hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, a hundred head of cattle, twenty milk cows, a thousand chickens, about one hundred turkeys, twelve goats, you know [audience laughter], anywhere from twenty to fifty cats, and all sorts of wild animals, and I had seen bulls gored to death, I had seen flocks of sheep driven over limestone cliffs by dogs, I'd seen hawks that'd ripped little lambs and chickens, I'd seen skunks that had eaten them up, I'd butchered all of these things, I'd castrated, you know, I myself have castrated maybe three thousand pigs, and [laughter]..and...so, I thought okay. In fact, some of you may know that \"The Wheel of Summer\", the title poem, is about the castration of one hundred pigs, by three teenage boys [audience laughter], and as I was introduced in England once, he said it's probably the most distinguished poem in English about the castration of a hundred pigs. [Audience laughter]. But I started thinking about all of this and I thought, well, okay, I have a philosophy of life too, and it's been based with the whole business of producing food for you. You know, that's the end of it, the end of it all. And I participated in an awful lot of killing and...routine, it’s a way of life. And you know, if you eat meat, well you too. So I said, well okay, I've been haruspicating for a long time. And I gradually went up from age six to age eighteen, and meantime I achieved some kind of maturity, and I'm going to write my own poems. So I wrote all these poems, and the titles are, you know, like \"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\", \"Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\", but I'm going to read you the ultimate titles, which aren't in the book. Just running from age six on up to age eighteen, or when we got all old enough and we all went off to the war, as the last poem said.  But these say, you know, that's what these poems are really about.  \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:22:38\n\"The Clarity of Innocence: Sacrifice of a Trout\". “The Loss of Early Innocence: Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\". \"The Plunder of Idealism: Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\". \"The Sickle among the Flowers\"...I quit making the equation...\"The Sickle Among the Flowers\". \"The Decline of Heroic Voices\"--that's the goring to death of a bull. \"The Suffocations of Love\"--that's the killing a pet chick by over-affection. \"The Attritions of Man\". \"The Unhousing of Beneficent God\". \"The Seeming, the Necessary and Beneficial Perversions of Love\"--that's my sacrifice of a gunny sack of cats. \"The Subtleties of Violent Revenge: Sacrifice of an old Sow\". \"The Sweet Solace of Evil\". \"The Absurdities of Fact\". \"The Pitfalls of Group Action: Sacrifice of a Flock of Sheep\"--they ran over this cliff, twelve of them died at once, and people say you shouldn't write villanelles, but that's the way sheep act, so I wrote a villanelle, you know, they repeat. \"The Catechism of Human Culpability\"--that's Eric, a suicide of a man. \"The Oddities of Affection\". \"The Sacred Violence of Purity\". \"The Bounties of Natural Law\". \"The Winter of the Cold War: Sacrifice of a Grey Wolf\". \"The Decline of Natural Instincts: Sacrifice of Three Wild Geese\". \"The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas\"--that's a sacrifice of a red squirrel. \"A Dream of the Ultimate Holocaust: Sacrifice of a Hill of Ants\" and \"The Warfare of the Sensuous Past: Sacrifice of My Aunt Marie\".  And then it all culminates in the longer narrative poem, \"The Wheel of Summer\". Which is just simply coming to maturity as a man. Well I'll, I'll read a few of these. \"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\" has no music, but I oftentimes start singing when I'm reading it, but I'm not going to now, I've done that. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:24:43\n\"Suddenly\"--this is six years old, you know.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:24:46\nReads \"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:25:42\nI'll skip the lamb and read the owl. I wanted to just talk--\"We strung our wind-up rooster dead on a post\"--see, it can't be any flatter than that. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:25:52\nReads \"Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:27:39\nI'll read the one of the neighbors. No one can live on a, in a farm area without seeing over a period of years, people lose fingers, toes, arms, legs, in various ways. It's...I was on a reading tour, actually, when Kennedy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9696] was killed. And I was actually in an auditorium about to start reading these poems, when it was cancelled, because of the announced death of the president. I couldn't have read them, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I was just sitting there, and five minutes from starting time. But this is \"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:28:20\nReads \"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:28:39\nThat was my brother.\n\nJoseph Langland\n01:28:42\nResumes reading “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:31:02\n\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\". I read it in New York City, I didn't know that the officers of the Society for the Friends of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were sitting in the audience. After I went back to Amherst I got a letter from them, saying that every year there are twenty-five million unwanted pets born in the United States [audience laughter] and we secure funds to get the females spayed and the males castrated, and your poem, \"The Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\" is perfect for our purposes for our annual appeal, and, could we...[audience laughter.]..could we use it, please. I thought, my God, you know, I just, I read this poem, like all of these things out of a great affection, and this is the thing, you'll have to forgive me but this is what occurred to me, you know. I just had this great affectionate conception of the whole thing, and now they wanted to turn it into a kind of contraceptive. [Audience laughter]. And...and then I thought, well, okay, what can I do at this point? And so, showing this charming little picture, you know, it's a dog, and a little puppy dog [audience laughter], little kitten and laying their heads against each other and saying \"Annual Appeal\" and on the back of it was my \"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\" and...I, you know, when I travel around the United States even now, I often like wonder in what town did I do in this poor little male cat or this female, you know, cooperating in one way or another, it's like, you know, I have to refuse to pay your taxes...you don't know what you're maiming at a certain point. But that's an example. I wanted to start from the most ordinary thing and see how I could carry it, and this is the \"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:33:13\nReads \"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:36:23\nOne hard poem about the old sow, which is, says something about this world. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:36:31\nReads \"Sacrifice of an Old Sow\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:37:48\nWell that's the way we do it. Then one, pretty hard poem, too, it's about Eric, but it's really about us, and then I'll read the squirrel poem, and then leave these alone. That...okay, actually this, I had in mind an uncle, a favourite uncle. Very talented, frustrated.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:38:19\nReads [\"The Sacrifice of Eric” from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:41:09\nAlright, and then the squirrel. Actually, I...last week, I had a letter from some fellow in Kansas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1558], I never, of course I don't know him at all. He wants to set the thing to music, I don't know what he's going to do with it, but...he plays the guitar, and so I said, fine. And just about anybody who gets caught in a rut...I must say that after this I'm going to read one little ballad on Adlai Stevenson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q311719], but...\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:41:47\nReads [\"The Sacrifice of a Red Squirrel\" from The Wheel of Summer]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:44:25\nLittle ballad for Stevenson, and I don't have it with me, but I know it. The state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1204] is the oak, the cardinal, and the violet. That's green, red, and violet. It struck me, that's half a rainbow. That seemed like Adlai Stevens' life. A great theoretical life, unfinished, has to be completed by someone else. I asked, what's the other half, they're yellow, orange, and blue, and his home at Libertyville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1787181], Illinois, you can't improve on that for the title, \"Libertyville\", it has a river the Des Plaines River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8637], that's before it enters the Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] drainage system, it's a nice blue stream out of the Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1537] woods, that's blue, the sky is blue, the light by day is orange, and by night yellow. That's the full rainbow. \"There's a fountain in the wood\"...It's called \"Libertyville\" and past that, a little epigraph about the state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois, and I wanted to, for the schoolchildren of Illinois...\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:45:27\nReads \"Libertyville\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nAudience\n01:47:02\nApplause.\n \nEND\n01:47:35\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nJoseph Langland was a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and had founded the Masters of Fine Arts writing program during the 1960’s.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nConnections between Joseph Langland and Sir George Williams University or Montreal are unknown, however Langland had taught at the University of British Columbia, and played an important role in the founding of the Master of Fine Arts writing program at the University of Massachusetts.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, intro and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GYIuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AqAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2474,42252&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Joseph Langland To Read At Next SG Poetry Night”.  Montreal: The Gazette. 1 March 1968, page 8. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/any-bodys-song/oclc/1148022872&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. Any Body’s Song. New York: Doubleday, 1980. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/green-town-poems/oclc/74670391&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph, The Green Town. New York: Scribner, 1956.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poetry-from-the-russian-underground-a-bilingual-anthology/oclc/568758531&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. Poetry from the Russian Underground. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/wheel-of-summer/oclc/2693715&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. The Wheel of Summer. New York: Dial Press, 1963. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/27191429&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. Selected Poems. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25091591\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. “For Ralph Ellison: Then and Now”. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter, 1999/2000), pp. 614-416.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25086942\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. “How It, so Help Me, Was”. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 4, No. 1, (Autumn, 1962), pp. 53-54. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25088573\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. “Norwegian Rivers”. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1975), pp. 567-568.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/joseph-langland-at-sgwu-1968/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry at S.G.W.U”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 February 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Joseph Langland: Poet, Teacher, Friend”. Luther College Archives: Biography. Iowa, 2010. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548850081792,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - 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_0126_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/joseph_langland_i006-11-126.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"joseph_langland_i006-11-126.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:47:35\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"258.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Unknown\\n00:00:00\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:00:03\\n[Cut or edit made in tape, Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:00:06\\nThis evening, Joseph Langland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6284810]reads. Mr. Langland was born in Spring Grove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203865], Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527], and attended the public schools of Minnesota and Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1546], attended the State University of Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q182973]. He has taught at the University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], the University of Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q219563], the San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] Poetry Center, and so forth. He has been a professor of English at the University of Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1326975], and he is presently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1061122]. And he has been associated with the Massachusetts Review as a member of its editorial board. His publications: For Harold, a collection of memorial poems for a younger brother killed in World War II [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362] and published in Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] in 1945, The Green Town, which was published in 1956 by Scribner’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q845617] and nominated for the National Book Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572316] in Poetry in 1957, and The Wheel of Summer published in 1963 by Dial Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5270470], and winner of the Melville Kane Poetry Award. He has also published two anthologies, Poet's Choice, co-edited with Paul Engle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7150503], published in 1952, and The Short Story, published in 1956 and co-edited with James B. Hall [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q95328740], published by Macmillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217]. He has forthcoming a volume, a small volume called Adlai Stevenson, which is to be published in Iowa City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q487977] by the Stonewall Press, and is, will contain one long memorial poem and two lyrics. And also a larger volume, to appear perhaps next year, called Songs and Half-Songs. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and have appeared in such journals as Poetry Chicago, Hudson Review, Chicago Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5095765], Paris Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3988628], London Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2154323], Nation, and so forth. He has written lyrics for songs by Morton Gould [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1352656], Phillip Esantzen, Elliot Schwartz, and also lyrics and music for folk songs. He has been recorded by FolkWays [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1435522], Scholastic Records, reading eight of his poems, and he has held a number of grants. In 1953-54 he was, he held a Ford Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, in 1955 and 56, an Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, and in 1966, or last year, rather, a National Council of Arts Grant in Poetry, and in this period, he gave a series of readings at universities throughout Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], in Glasgow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4093], London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], Sussex [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23346], Munich [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1726], Oslo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q585], and University College in Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1068258]. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Joseph Langland. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:03:03\\nApplause. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:03:19\\nSo much of that sounds irrelevant. So I will begin by reading a poem which was really written in answer to a critic. I've written two poems in answers to critics. And this is one of them. I call it \\\"Desperate Equations\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:03:47\\nReads \\\"Desperate Equations\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:04:33\\nThen I would like to go to, from that to a newer poem, one which I call \\\"Natures\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:04:44\\nReads \\\"Natures\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:06:54\\nAnd I'd like to just simply move from that to a poem which is called, \\\"Dandelion\\\". It's a poem that, well, the daughter of a famous poet likes it very much, and she recently said so, and so consequently I'm very fond of it at the moment. I think this is a kind of procedure among artists. They tend to like very much, at least for a little while, something that someone else likes. It's a poem which I say partially for my wife, it's a poem of affection, but I wouldn't just simply say \\\"for\\\" my wife, it's for all of you, too. \\\"Dandelion\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:07:40\\nReads \\\"Dandelion\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:09:26\\nI visited once a grotto in the southern coast of Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], the Amalfi [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80563] grotto, and it's typical of a whole series of such places. It's completely enclosed. You enter it...well actually, I was there a year ago, and it's a little disappointing, because, to sort of accommodate the tourist trade, they've blown out a little section of the wall, and they've hung a flapping canvas cloth over it. But eleven years ago this wasn't so, and you descend in an elevator into this inner room, and it's an absolutely magic place, it's explained to you, for instance, that about sixteen feet under the level of the sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38882], there's a large hole in the cave, and the sunlight, particularly in the morning, you come there about 11 in the morning, it's a good time, the sun filters down these sixteen feet and through this huge hole and then comes up inside the cafe. And the effect of this is absolutely eerie because it's completely enclosed, it's like darkness, but you get in there, and you adjust, and everything is just luminous with light, water, everything. You pick up, and you dip your hands in water and pick them up, you know, drops of water fall from your fingers from the orb-blades that splash, the orb is simply just a whole splash of light that goes up, like that. It's magic, see. And I want to believe in the magic, but in this sense I want to believe in this way in poetry. We shouldn't, I think, just simply deceive ourselves, but....so we can talk about what is, but somehow it's a responsibility to do a little bit more than what is, and so I've written this poem, and of course it's about the Amalfi Grotto, it's about our own behaviour, an attitude toward many things, and it's also, for me, a poem about poetry. \\\"The Amalfi Grotto\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:11:38\\nReads \\\"The Amalfi Grotto\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer; later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:12:53\\nI would go from that to a poem for my brother. I call the poem \\\"War\\\". This was a brother who was killed in the Philippines [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928] in World War II. I was in Europe at the time. I wrote thirty poems, at least, for him, following this. And finally I wrote this poem. This was...about eleven years afterwards when I got to this poem. And with this poem I knew I was, I was through writing those poems. It's also a poem that's had a very curious history. The history of poems is something that's difficult to predict. I was in Germany at the time, I suppose the next German soldier I met I would have shot. But this poem has been seen, or was seen a few years ago by a former infantry officer in the German Army, who at that moment was a captive at Stalingrad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q914]. He's come into the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] now and teaches music in an American university, not the one I'm in. And so he set it to music. And so it's a strange irony. I started the whole sequence, see, but, see art pays no attention to that kind of enmity whatsoever. And so it's been set to music by a former infantry officer in the German army. Also, just this past week, actually two days ago, I got a notice it's been published in a Japanese anthology, and it's been translated into Italian, and so all the axis powers have translated it, and then somehow, I don't, still don't know how, it found its way after the Hungarian Revolution [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164348] into Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781] in '56, and got translated there, I understand a very poor translation into Hungarian, but nevertheless it's happened. This is just part of its history. And other things have been happening to it strangely like this. I just mention this because, see, at a certain point the thing is out of your control completely, and you sort of are, I feel a bit humbled by what happens to them, and the uses that people put these things to. I wrote poems in all sorts of forms for my brother, and I finally, there're some subjects...well, I'd heard William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] give a reading at the Lexington Y in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] in 1954, and so I said, okay, I was still dealing with the same poem, and I was in an apartment up in 96th Street, and it was a very foggy night coming home, and I heard all these great foghorns coming off over the lower bay, over Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] and so forth. And I wrote another poem, \\\"A Seachange for Harold\\\", which I'm not going to read, except just the beginning.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:16:22\\nReads the beginning of \\\"A Seachange: For Harold\\\" [fromThe Green Town and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:16:40\\nWell that's, I wrote that thing first, and then I came back to this other poem, in which I just said, okay I'll put it down the way it was, but there's some subjects that by their very nature you can't do much about. Except, of course, the whole dry feeling associated with it led me to all kinds of selections. If there seem to be an excess of family in the poem, I just simply say I am one of nine children. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:17:15\\nReads \\\"War\\\" [from The Green Town and later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:18:43\\nI would go from that to some poems I'm trying to write now. Some of these poems are songs, and I've been writing music for them, also, but, and this is such a song. I call it \\\"A Hard Song to Sing\\\", and it's really about the contemporary condition of war and civil rights problems which threaten to just overwhelm the United States. And almost the entire poem is monosyllabic, but it just seemed like it had to be that way. So. I...and actually, the tune that goes with this thing is...well, I know for instance that I could come in right on pitch on it. I once fell in love with--I don't have absolute pitch, but I fell in love with a song by Edward Grieg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80621], and all I have to do is remember this song and I can always begin singing in A flat. But, it's, sometimes I think that maybe this is what I mean by being so right with your subject that you finally say the right thing about it. Somehow the resonance, just the resonance of the idea set up in my body brings me in on pitch, see. Well, I'll just read it. \\\"The clear, cold night\\\"...oh I'll sing, I'll sing the one stanza. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:20:24\\nSings the beginning of \\\"A Hard Song to Sing\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:20:42.79\\nAnd it repeats itself in various ways, the melody varies. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:20:47\\nReads \\\"A Hard Song to Sing\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:21:48\\nI...when I spent some time in Europe, among other people I met Ralph Ellison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q299965]. And he and his wife, Fanny, and my wife, Judy, and I, we spent several very fine noons on a beach of a small Italian fishing town, and ever since then I've been trying to write a poem for him. He's been relatively silent, at least, he's not taken a very aggressive role in the whole civil rights movement, although he has published significant essays in that whole thing. Many of you will know his great novel The Invisible Man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1784288]. And I've written a poem, I call it \\\"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\\\", I'm reading it, I have to send it to him. I have not sent it out to be published anywhere, either. You probably do know he used to be a jazz player, he played the trumpet, he was a photographer and so forth and he did live in some sort of cellar that he had brilliantly lit for a while, but in The Invisible Man there are aspects of this kind of background, too. So I just wanted to address--I started writing him a letter. And then I got interested in writing in the letter and quit the letter and wrote the poem instead, but that's the way it'd be. It was \\\"Dear Ralph\\\", you know but just, now the poem begins, \\\"Ralph...\\\"\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:23:16\\nReads \\\"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\\\" [published later in The Massachusetts Review vol. 40, n.4].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:27:02\\nWell, I will move from that to a poem on Thoreau [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131149]. Actually, I'm doing a whole book of these things. But one...actually, the first time I ever went to Walden Pond [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2023853], things turned out like an art farm. There were certain people there, and I met people in certain sequences, and of course I've told all sorts of people that, when they write poetry, you know, just to say that this is the way it happened, or this is the way it was, you know, that's no guarantee that it will be art at all. But in this case, something else had happened, see, Thoreau himself plays influence and just simply organized, you know, a hundred years later, certain people who would be there. And this happened just this way, and so I, almost to defend myself against all the things I'd ever said to people, I called the poem, \\\"How It, So Help Me, Was\\\". And that's the title of the poem. I end with a, the blue-grey twilight, because it was 1963, and it was, or '62 when I went there, and it was, you know, a hundred years after the war between the North and the South in the United States, the blue and the grey. And I felt that whole shadow, and even, in a curious way, it's on the west end of the pond, actually, I'd gone swimming in it, it's illegal, but then the shadow was coming off the hill and it was just sort of beginning to cover, to cover me, and it was a blue-grey shadow, you see, I'm not making that up. And, but...I suppose that's a kind of selection you take out of what is made available to you at a certain point. So \\\"How It, So Help me, Was\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:29:04\\nReads \\\"How It, So Help Me, Was\\\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and published later as “Walden” in Any Body’s Song].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:29:29\\nThat's a little poem he's written that's on the hearth there, about the smoke rising.\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n00:30:04\\nResumes reading “How it, So Help Me, Was”. \\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n00:32:10\\nI know at a time like this I keep thinking all the time in poetry, you know, what does it mean in poetry to somehow keep alive, or...to keep the whole body open, and I wanted to write a poem about that. I call this one \\\"Still to be Man\\\". Because sort of in an animal way, we have to be able to continue to take in all sorts of things. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:32:44\\nReads \\\"Still to be Man\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:32:51\\nI can remember when I was, the morning I was trying to write this poem because I was home alone, I stepped out the kitchen door and as I stepped out I felt I didn't even have to land on the earth itself, I would just step out into the air. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:33:04\\nResumes reading \\\"Still to be Man\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:34:10\\nLast year, I spent, with my family, a half a year in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q220], and I got acquainted with a certain kind of syndrome among some of the Roman women. They sort of get trapped, in a society which seems free and easy and open, there's an extreme conservatism. For instance, I know, well, a person who teaches art in an American university, he and his wife were adopting some children in Italy a few years ago, and he could not have children and she could. It was proved by tests in this country, and they went to adopt two children in Italy. But you cannot adopt children in Italy on this basis because by law, no man in Italy can be sterile. [Audience laughter]. And this is a law. And so they had to go to Naples [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2634] and be tested all over again, officially, by a doctor in Naples, and a lawyer had to follow this, and they discovered after the tests that she was sterile and she was not [audience laughter], and they got this all certified and they adopted the children and they now have them and are living happily with them. But there's some, there's another side to this coin, too. And so, we lived next to a high school called the church, or the school of the Adorazione, and I'd see this women, you know, they're so beautiful when they're young, and then when they get married they start dressing in black and start cooking spaghetti and having children, and something awful happens, and then their husbands lose interest in them and then they have to find other lovers and then, you know, it's an awful thing. [Audience laughter]. It's \\\"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:36:12\\nReads \\\"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:37:24\\nWell then, another kind of thing that happens in our society, I think it happens to many people, I've been writing a series of half-songs. I call them half-songs, they're at half-pitch, half-singing pitch, where we talk and we don't talk together. You know, we say something and someone answers and it goes, you know, we keep going past each other. And so I've written a poem that, it has two separate parts, both parts rhyme all the way but you won't hear this at all, I was talking about that with the class here, today, it may be aesthetically valid for myself alone. And it's one, it's called \\\"Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song\\\", and the first part is called \\\"He and Her\\\". You see, \\\"he\\\" is the noun and \\\"her\\\" is the object. And the next part is called, \\\"She and Him\\\". \\\"She\\\" is the noun and \\\"him\\\" is the object. And they're talking. Or, we're talking about them. And so, in a sense they should be printed facing each other on the page, and I can't read them together, so I have to read first \\\"He and Her\\\", then I might, they talk back and forth to each other all the way through the poem. \\\"He and Her.\\\"\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:38:44\\nReads \\\"Not Quite a Conversation: He and Her\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:39:40\\nAnd the other, \\\"She and Him\\\". As I say, it rhymes all the way, and triad by triad it answers. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:39:47\\nReads \\\"Not Quite a Conversation: She and Him\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:40:59\\nI guess we take a break in the program. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:41:05\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:41:24\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].  \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:41:25\\nAnd, I will read just one or two of these. And once again, I make no particular claim as to the validity of this, and probably in the long run it’s not even a fruitful thing. All my grandparents were born in Norway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20], my name is Langeland. You know, they dropped the 'e' and called it Langland. And I have been back there a couple of times, I might go again this summer and work with a Norwegian poet, Paul Brekke, and maybe another one, on some translations from the Norwegian  I don't know much Norwegian, he knows a lot of English. [Audience laughter]. But when I was going through there a year ago, I got two, two poems. First this one, \\\"Singing in Late Summer\\\". When my father died they played a folk song, \\\"Den store hvide Flok\\\", \\\"The Great White Host\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10468796], at his funeral. And I'd sort of shipped my children off to jobs, I had, you know, I had a fourteen-year-old boy working on a ranch in Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1214], and a twelve-year-old son working on a farm in Iowa, and a daughter who'd gone off to work in-- who was what, fifteen, sixteen, to a hotel in Switzerland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39], and my wife was in Provincetown [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49154], painting [audience laughter], and I was at home writing. Which is what I wanted to do all the time, in any case. \\\"Singing in Late Summer\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:43:03\\nReads \\\"Singing in Late Summer\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:44:17\\nAnd then, traveling through Norway, all these rivers, you know, they just...they're tumbling all over, rushing everywhere, and falling off the tops of mountains, you know, it just seemed endless, going from Oslo to Bergen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26793] and Trondheim [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25804] and down to Oslo and so forth. Or down to the Island of Store [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1636366] along the west coast of Norway. And so, I was thinking of a phrase I'd heard an old, an older woman in my own area say about the younger generation. She would always say, \\\"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\\\". And so I saw these rivers, and every time I saw them I kept saying, \\\"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\\\". [Laughter]. And so then I started thinking of all of these Norwegian immigrants that just came, you know, more of them over here than there are over there...and...so I, it's about the rivers, it's called \\\"Norwegian Rivers\\\", and it's about the people, the younger people, and it's about the immigrants, and the older immigrants, everything like that, I guess.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:45:22\\nReads \\\"Norwegian Rivers\\\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and collected later in Any Body’s Song and in Selected Poems].\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n00:48:08\\nWell, there's several like that. But I want to do some other things, so I'll just leave them alone. I'm...you know, I'm translating from the Russian, and no pretense about it, I have two great friends, Thomas Axel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23565070], who was press agent for Imre Nagy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q177917] for eleven days, before, at the time of the Hungarian Revolution, and then he escaped to Austria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40]. He teaches at my university, he's a very fine poet, he used to be a director of theatre in Budapest, of the State Theatre. And then Laszlo Ticosz, he teaches in the German-Russian department at the university. They both, for years, have been collecting from the underground poems by relatively unknown poets, student poets and so forth, from Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159], and they have a magnificent collection of these things. They give me, absolutely literal cribbed translations, and then I work with them, and there're some magnificent things coming, and I'm as certain as I stand here that the moment these things are sent into a publisher, not because of what I'm doing, but because of the nature of the thing, that it'll be just snapped up. This is relative, totally fresh new material, no one else has it, they have, through their own channels in the underground, they are being fed this. And so I find it very exciting, and as I said to someone today, I have to sort of take it through my own experience, which included...I won't say poverty, that's not the right word, but absolutely no money, not poverty because we could milk the cow and, you know, raise the garden vegetables and shear our sheep and make our own blankets and, you know, we had food, clothing, and shelter. And then the war in Europe, and I was in well, concentration camps, I wasn't in them, but I was, at Nordhausen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7033], I sort of participated in the burial of five thousand people in one day in open trenches, and was with a headquarters unit a few days after and captured Buchenwald [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152802], and it...I won't say it's these things that pulled together, I was in Weimar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3955] when it was turned over to the Russians, I remember going out of there, you know, it was half the German population in their carts going toward Eisenach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7070], to the west, and the Russian cavalry coming in, meeting it from the east...lots of things, but so that's simply what this material comes through, and so I have some sympathy for it. This is a poem \\\"Drowning\\\", by a person named Sergei Chudakov [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4517600]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:51:23\\nReads \\\"Drowning\\\" by Sergei Chudakov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:51:31\\nSee, in the original it says, \\\"bright as a house\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:51:36\\nResumes reading \\\"Drowning\\\" by Sergei Chudakov.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:06\\nThis is \\\"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\\\" by Joseph Brodsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:12\\nReads \\\"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\\\" by Joseph Brodsky.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:32\\nSee the poem says, \\\"lie musicians, lawyers, businessmen, and revolutionaries\\\". I'm very certain in this case that, you know, I felt great when I thought of saying it in this other way. Makes it better. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:47\\nResumes reading \\\"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\\\" by Joseph Brodsky.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:54:03\\nFor instance, the original translation was that this whole thing is \\\"one hour by foot FROM the nearest bus stop\\\" And as far as I'm concerned, saying \\\"to\\\" is apt, a crucial difference, \\\"and the crooked faces of the plywood\\\", see, \\\"are one hour by foot TO the nearest bus stop\\\". Wanted the whole sense that they might all get up and walk and haunt us, see, coming the other way. Here's a poem about conditions by Artyemy Mikhailov. These names may be just be relatively anonymous, although some of them are among the friends that have been defending Sinyavsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q468267] and Daniel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q435770]. His idea about conditions. And it was a pretty rigid, stiff poem and I had to try to get movement in it and so forth. And it's whole, if, if you've, if your dearest friend has not been trapped and dragged to a camp, if, if, if, the entire way through.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:55:01\\nReads “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikahilov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:56:07\\nHere once again, there's so many of these, I just, here's one in the older style but it's one that's full of an elegant, lyric despair, \\\"Now that I know\\\", by Vladimir Kovshin.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:56:21\\nReads \\\"Now that I Know\\\" by Vladimir Kovshin [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:57:01\\nThis is a poem called \\\"After the War\\\" by Gleb Garbovsky. I just completed this this previous weekend, these I'm reading from now. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:57:11\\nReads \\\"After the War\\\" by Gleb Garbovsky [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:58:54\\nIncidentally, I used the phrase \\\"called back\\\" because that's on Emily Dickinson's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441]  tomb in Amherst [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49164], Massachusetts. Just an example of how you get your own little allegiance and locality into something else. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:59:08\\nResumes reading \\\"After the War\\\" by Gleb Garbovsky.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:59:27\\nHere's one, \\\"Keeping up with the Humanskys\\\". It's a poem about keeping up with the Joneses. [Audience laughter]. I had a lieutenant in the army who said his name was Humansky, and he said his, that man, I'll never forget it because he said that means \\\"son of the fields\\\" but I've been called worse names. I remember him saying that [audience laughter]. And so I...Son of the fields, I thought, that's great, you know, I was looking for a Russian name that would be like the Joneses, only this is like the serfs, son of the fields, of the soil. Couldn't be better. \\\"Keeping up with the Humanskys\\\". So, see, that's my good luck out of a little piece of experience that came to me when I needed it. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:00:06\\nReads \\\"Keeping up with the Humanskys\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:01:33\\nThen there's one about a march from Russia to Siberia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5428]. And, \\\"Etape\\\". There's no title in the original, there's a footnote, which was, these were sent to Axel and Ticosz from Russia, this poem. Neither the name nor the fate of its author is known. The phrase \\\"Marching in Etape\\\" originates from the nineteenth century. One stretch of the Long March from Russia to Siberia was called Etape, and it was in a ballad stanza form, so that's the way I did it. It's...little old style, but.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:02:07\\nReads \\\"Etape\\\" by an unknown author.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:03:57\\nThen \\\"The Garbage Collector,\\\" a poem that...\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:04:03\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:04:04\\nReads \\\"The Garbage Collector” [begins abruptly; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:04:27\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:04:30\\nI'm very proud of that too, because you know in the old Renaissance things there's always these, an infinitely wise Christ Child, you know, at the mother's breast but his eyes are looking out elsewhere, and he's pointing like this, you know, and it's, so I thought, you know, that's not quite the translation but it's mine [audience laughter]. \\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:04:46\\nResumes reading “The Garbage Collector”.\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:05:32\\nWell, these are, you know, poems out of new, unknown--\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:05:36\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:05:37\\nI've sort of been threatening to sing something, and the trouble is, I'm...as I...I wouldn't play the piano if there were one here, and I don't play the guitar, and if I play this thing, it's locked stuff, I'm tied to it, and, I haven't played this tape that's accompanying me, you know, for at least three weeks, and I haven't sung a note since I left Amherst, except the notes I sang here, so, that's all right. These are songs of all sorts. So this is my accompaniment. I hope it works, if it doesn't I'll just stop it. \\n \\nUnknown\\n01:06:17\\nAmbient Sound [music; recorded track]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:06:22\\nListen here, just a song called \\\"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:06:37\\nPerforms \\\"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song] accompanied by recorded track.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:08:02\\nThis next is a song called \\\"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\\\". Sometimes I wonder, just trying to remember it here, whether I'm supposed to start singing now, and I'll get to the end of the song and I won't have accompaniment for the last dance. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:08:31\\nPerforms \\\"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\\\" accompanied by recorded track [published later as \\\"Song At Evening” in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems] \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:10:23\\nThis is a song called \\\"Jump on my Back\\\". It's about Iowa and Wyoming. But since Wyoming didn't work, I had to say Idaho [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1221]. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:10:45\\nPerforms \\\"Jump on my Back\\\" accompanied by recorded track.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:11:25\\nThis next one is called \\\"A Hiroshima Lullaby\\\". There's an infinitely sad story. In Hiroshima [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34664] when the bomb fell, in 1945, there was a little girl, Sadako Sasaki [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q231997], two years old, some of you may know of her. She was a mile and a half from the centre of the blast and apparently unharmed. She was a very gay and popular girl, and her classmates loved her. And she was in the sixth grade or the equivalent, age twelve, in Hiroshima, Hiroshima, however you pronounce it.  And she developed leukemia, which is of course, as many of you know, a latent effect of many people exposed to radiation, so she was, after all, a victim. And she, well she finally became so ill she had to go to the hospital. And her friends came to visit her. And among other things, they told her, and that she knew, that there's an old Japanese legend about herons. I've been writing poem about herons and cranes and I have some in my book, one on a sandhill crane, and I told some people today that I'm going to the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145] in June to speak in their summer Academy of the Arts, and I heard of a person who works in wildlife out in Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824], and so because of the poem about the crane he's invited me to visit his wildlife refuge, about two or three hours east of Eugene [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q171224], where he has a refuge among other things for sandhill cranes, you know these water birds are simple. And so I'm going to visit him. I look forward to it. Not because of a poem, see, it's nice. And so, Sadako Sasaki in the hospital, she heard that if you fold a thousand paper cranes in this Japanese folding technique, this will protect your health and save you. So she started folding them. And the tale has two sides. She reached 964 and she died. Her classmates were so, at the centre so involved they completed the thousand, they formed them in a chain. They went around gathering the equivalent of pennies, around Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and when they got enough they asked a sculptor from Tokyo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1490] to make a statue of this girl, and so he made a statue showing...you'll surely see pictures of this if you haven't. It's a young, twelve year-old girl, you know, still with a girl's body, she's standing up like this....and she stands in the Peace Park in Hiroshima now. And over her, made out of gold, the folded crane. And so, I wanted to write a poem for her. And so just using the fifth in the bass, and then using the five notes, black keys, I wrote a little ballad and I'll probably sing one stanza maybe, and then read the rest. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:15:03\\nPerforms the beginning of \\\"A Hiroshima Lullaby\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:15:38\\nReads the continuation of “A Hiroshima Lullaby\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:16:49\\nI wanted to write a civil rights song, something that you could march to in Madison Square Garden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q186125]. And that's, you know, it's a marching song. That's like that. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:17:15\\nPerforms unnamed song accompanied by recorded track. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:18:00\\nStops recorded track. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:18:00\\nWell, there are a lot more of these songs and I'm just going to stop the tape at this time because...I haven't even begun reading you my favourite poems, [audience laughter], and I know it's about to end but maybe, maybe I can read for fifteen minutes or so. If you have to go, just get up and go. But. When I was in Italy in 1954, I read in Marcus Cunliffe's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6758114] The Literature of the United States, \\\"New York is the intellectual centre of the United States.\\\"  That made my blood boil [audience laughter] because it's a marketplace, so I just simply took his own book, The Literature of the United States, took all his authors, and lined them up, and all the places where they were born, where they grew up, and where they wrote from, and sent them the chart, which proves, out of his own book, that in literature, creative ideas, there have been three great centres and then two subordinate ones. New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389], the Midwest, and the South, and then as subordinate ones, they're the West Coast, and then the mid-Atlantic, New York area. That's in literature [audience laughter]. And we got in an argument...the result of it all was that I invited him to come and teach at my university [audience laughter]. So he came and he gave an address, and in one of his speeches he said, “Americans are overly given to haruspication and scrying” [audience laughter]. Well, you know, when someone comes out of England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and says, gives, delivers a lecture to an American audience and says that, among other things you have to look up the words. [Audience laughter]. And, so...so I looked them up and I discovered \\\"haruspication\\\", the Haruspects were Roman and Etruscan pagan priests who examined the entrails of sacrificial animals [audience laughter] to predict natural phenomena and the future. So I started thinking about that. I grew up on a general farm, we had about a hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, a hundred head of cattle, twenty milk cows, a thousand chickens, about one hundred turkeys, twelve goats, you know [audience laughter], anywhere from twenty to fifty cats, and all sorts of wild animals, and I had seen bulls gored to death, I had seen flocks of sheep driven over limestone cliffs by dogs, I'd seen hawks that'd ripped little lambs and chickens, I'd seen skunks that had eaten them up, I'd butchered all of these things, I'd castrated, you know, I myself have castrated maybe three thousand pigs, and [laughter]..and...so, I thought okay. In fact, some of you may know that \\\"The Wheel of Summer\\\", the title poem, is about the castration of one hundred pigs, by three teenage boys [audience laughter], and as I was introduced in England once, he said it's probably the most distinguished poem in English about the castration of a hundred pigs. [Audience laughter]. But I started thinking about all of this and I thought, well, okay, I have a philosophy of life too, and it's been based with the whole business of producing food for you. You know, that's the end of it, the end of it all. And I participated in an awful lot of killing and...routine, it’s a way of life. And you know, if you eat meat, well you too. So I said, well okay, I've been haruspicating for a long time. And I gradually went up from age six to age eighteen, and meantime I achieved some kind of maturity, and I'm going to write my own poems. So I wrote all these poems, and the titles are, you know, like \\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\", \\\"Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\\\", but I'm going to read you the ultimate titles, which aren't in the book. Just running from age six on up to age eighteen, or when we got all old enough and we all went off to the war, as the last poem said.  But these say, you know, that's what these poems are really about.  \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:22:38\\n\\\"The Clarity of Innocence: Sacrifice of a Trout\\\". “The Loss of Early Innocence: Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\\\". \\\"The Plunder of Idealism: Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\\\". \\\"The Sickle among the Flowers\\\"...I quit making the equation...\\\"The Sickle Among the Flowers\\\". \\\"The Decline of Heroic Voices\\\"--that's the goring to death of a bull. \\\"The Suffocations of Love\\\"--that's the killing a pet chick by over-affection. \\\"The Attritions of Man\\\". \\\"The Unhousing of Beneficent God\\\". \\\"The Seeming, the Necessary and Beneficial Perversions of Love\\\"--that's my sacrifice of a gunny sack of cats. \\\"The Subtleties of Violent Revenge: Sacrifice of an old Sow\\\". \\\"The Sweet Solace of Evil\\\". \\\"The Absurdities of Fact\\\". \\\"The Pitfalls of Group Action: Sacrifice of a Flock of Sheep\\\"--they ran over this cliff, twelve of them died at once, and people say you shouldn't write villanelles, but that's the way sheep act, so I wrote a villanelle, you know, they repeat. \\\"The Catechism of Human Culpability\\\"--that's Eric, a suicide of a man. \\\"The Oddities of Affection\\\". \\\"The Sacred Violence of Purity\\\". \\\"The Bounties of Natural Law\\\". \\\"The Winter of the Cold War: Sacrifice of a Grey Wolf\\\". \\\"The Decline of Natural Instincts: Sacrifice of Three Wild Geese\\\". \\\"The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas\\\"--that's a sacrifice of a red squirrel. \\\"A Dream of the Ultimate Holocaust: Sacrifice of a Hill of Ants\\\" and \\\"The Warfare of the Sensuous Past: Sacrifice of My Aunt Marie\\\".  And then it all culminates in the longer narrative poem, \\\"The Wheel of Summer\\\". Which is just simply coming to maturity as a man. Well I'll, I'll read a few of these. \\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\" has no music, but I oftentimes start singing when I'm reading it, but I'm not going to now, I've done that. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:24:43\\n\\\"Suddenly\\\"--this is six years old, you know.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:24:46\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:25:42\\nI'll skip the lamb and read the owl. I wanted to just talk--\\\"We strung our wind-up rooster dead on a post\\\"--see, it can't be any flatter than that. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:25:52\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:27:39\\nI'll read the one of the neighbors. No one can live on a, in a farm area without seeing over a period of years, people lose fingers, toes, arms, legs, in various ways. It's...I was on a reading tour, actually, when Kennedy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9696] was killed. And I was actually in an auditorium about to start reading these poems, when it was cancelled, because of the announced death of the president. I couldn't have read them, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I was just sitting there, and five minutes from starting time. But this is \\\"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:28:20\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:28:39\\nThat was my brother.\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:28:42\\nResumes reading “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:31:02\\n\\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\". I read it in New York City, I didn't know that the officers of the Society for the Friends of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were sitting in the audience. After I went back to Amherst I got a letter from them, saying that every year there are twenty-five million unwanted pets born in the United States [audience laughter] and we secure funds to get the females spayed and the males castrated, and your poem, \\\"The Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\" is perfect for our purposes for our annual appeal, and, could we...[audience laughter.]..could we use it, please. I thought, my God, you know, I just, I read this poem, like all of these things out of a great affection, and this is the thing, you'll have to forgive me but this is what occurred to me, you know. I just had this great affectionate conception of the whole thing, and now they wanted to turn it into a kind of contraceptive. [Audience laughter]. And...and then I thought, well, okay, what can I do at this point? And so, showing this charming little picture, you know, it's a dog, and a little puppy dog [audience laughter], little kitten and laying their heads against each other and saying \\\"Annual Appeal\\\" and on the back of it was my \\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\" and...I, you know, when I travel around the United States even now, I often like wonder in what town did I do in this poor little male cat or this female, you know, cooperating in one way or another, it's like, you know, I have to refuse to pay your taxes...you don't know what you're maiming at a certain point. But that's an example. I wanted to start from the most ordinary thing and see how I could carry it, and this is the \\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:33:13\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:36:23\\nOne hard poem about the old sow, which is, says something about this world. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:36:31\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of an Old Sow\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:37:48\\nWell that's the way we do it. Then one, pretty hard poem, too, it's about Eric, but it's really about us, and then I'll read the squirrel poem, and then leave these alone. That...okay, actually this, I had in mind an uncle, a favourite uncle. Very talented, frustrated.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:38:19\\nReads [\\\"The Sacrifice of Eric” from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:41:09\\nAlright, and then the squirrel. Actually, I...last week, I had a letter from some fellow in Kansas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1558], I never, of course I don't know him at all. He wants to set the thing to music, I don't know what he's going to do with it, but...he plays the guitar, and so I said, fine. And just about anybody who gets caught in a rut...I must say that after this I'm going to read one little ballad on Adlai Stevenson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q311719], but...\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:41:47\\nReads [\\\"The Sacrifice of a Red Squirrel\\\" from The Wheel of Summer]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:44:25\\nLittle ballad for Stevenson, and I don't have it with me, but I know it. The state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1204] is the oak, the cardinal, and the violet. That's green, red, and violet. It struck me, that's half a rainbow. That seemed like Adlai Stevens' life. A great theoretical life, unfinished, has to be completed by someone else. I asked, what's the other half, they're yellow, orange, and blue, and his home at Libertyville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1787181], Illinois, you can't improve on that for the title, \\\"Libertyville\\\", it has a river the Des Plaines River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8637], that's before it enters the Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] drainage system, it's a nice blue stream out of the Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1537] woods, that's blue, the sky is blue, the light by day is orange, and by night yellow. That's the full rainbow. \\\"There's a fountain in the wood\\\"...It's called \\\"Libertyville\\\" and past that, a little epigraph about the state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois, and I wanted to, for the schoolchildren of Illinois...\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:45:27\\nReads \\\"Libertyville\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:47:02\\nApplause.\\n \\nEND\\n01:47:35\\n\",\"notes\":\"Joseph Langland reads from The Green Town (Scribner, 1956) and The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963), as well as poems published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973), Any Body’s Song (Doubleday, 1980), and Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).\\n\\n00:06- Unknown introducer introduces Joseph Langland. [INDEX: Spring Grove, Minnesota, public schools, Iowa, State University of Iowa, University of British Columbia, University of Washington, San Francisco Poetry Center, University of Wyoming, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Review, editorial board, books For Harold, memorial poems for brother, WWII, published in Germany in 1945, The Green Town published by Scribner’s in 1956, nominated for the National Book Award for poetry in 1957, The Wheel of Summer, (Dial Press, 1963), winner of the Melville Kane Poetry Award, anthologies Poet’s Choice co-edited with Paul Engle (1952), The Short Story (Macmillan, 1956) co-edited with James B. Hall, forthcoming books: Adlai Stevenson, Iowa City, Stonewall Press [unknown actual publication], long memorial poem, lyric poems, Songs and Half-Songs [unknown actual publication], poetry anthologies, Poetry Chicago, Hudson Review, Chicago Review, Paris Review, London Magazine, Nation magazine, song lyrics, Morton Gould, Phillip Esantzen, Elliot Schwartz, folk songs, Folk Ways Scholastic Records, grants, 1953-4 Ford Faculty Fellowship in Humanities, 1955 and 1956 Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, 1966 National Council of Arts Grant in Poetry, readings at universities in Europe, Glasgow, London, Sussex, Munich, Oslo, University College in Dublin.]\\n03:19- Joseph Langland introduces “Desperate Equations”. [INDEX: written in answer to a critic; from The Wheel of Summer (1963).]\\n03:47- Reads “Desperate Equations”.\\n04:33- Introduces “Natures”. [INDEX: newer poem]\\n04:44- Reads “Natures”.\\n06:54- Introduces “Dandelion”. [INDEX: daughter of famous poet, procedure among  \\tartists, wife, poem of affection.]\\n07:40- Reads “Dandelion”.\\n09:26- Introduces “The Amalfi Grotto”. [INDEX: grotto in the southern coast of Italy, tourist trade, magical place, sea level, Tyrrhenian Sea, cave, sunlight, morning, cafe, water, orb, poetry, poem about poetry; from The Wheel of Summer (1963).]\\n11:38- Reads “The Amalfi Grotto”.\\n12:53- Introduces “War” and “A Seachange for Harold”. [INDEX: poem for brother, killed in the Philippines in WWII, Europe, wrote thirty poems for him, history, Germany,     \\tGerman soldier, former infantry officer of the German Army, captive at Stalingrad, United States, teaches music, American university, irony, sequence, art, enmity, published in Japanese anthology, translated into Italian, axis powers, Hungarian Revolution, Budapest in 1956, Hungarian, history, humbled, forms, subjects, Williams Carlos Williams, reading at the Lexington Y in NYC in 1954, 96th Street, foghorns, Manhattan, beginning of poem “A Seachange for Harold”.; from The Wheel of Summer (1963)]\\n16:22- Reads beginning of “A Seachange for Harold”.\\n16:40- Introduces “War”. [INDEX: subjects, family, nine children; from The Wheel of  Summer (1963).]\\n17:15- Reads “War”.\\n18:43- Introduces “A Hard Song to Sing”. [INDEX: music for poems, song, contemporary condition of war, civil rights, United States, monosyllabic, pitch, love, Edward Grieg, A flat, resonance, body.]\\n20:24- Sings “A Hard Song to Sing”.\\n21:48- Introduces “An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison”. [INDEX: Ralph Ellison and his wife   Fanny, Langland’s wife Judy, beach on small Italian fishing town, civil rights movement,        Ellison’s essays, The Invisible Man, poem not published, jazz player, trumpet,      \\tphotographer, cellar, background, letter; published later in The Massachusetts Review Vol. 40, n.4, (Winter, 1999/2000).]\\n23:16- Reads “An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison”.\\n27:02- Introduces “How It, So Help Me, Was”. [INDEX: Thoreau, book of letters to famous people, Walden Pond, art farm, title, 1963/1962, 100 years after the Civil War, blue, grey, shadow, pond, illegal; published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1, (Autumn, 1962).]\\n29:04- Reads “How It, So Help Me, Was”.\\n32:10- Introduces “Still to be Man”. [INDEX: poetry, alive, body, animal.]\\n32:44- Reads “Still to be Man”.’\\n32:51- Interrupts with explanation. [INDEX: writing a poem, home, kitchen, land on the earth, air.]\\n33:04- Continues reading “Still to be Man”.\\n34:10- Introduces “La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey”. [INDEX: family, Rome, syndrome,      Roman women, trapped in society, extreme conservatism, teacher of art at an American    university, adopting child in Italy, law, sterile men, Naples, doctor, lawyer, certified, high    school, Adorazione (school), beautiful and young women, married, dressing in black,   \\tspaghetti, children, husbands, lovers.]\\n36:12- Reads “La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey”.\\n37:24- Introduces “He and Her”. [INDEX: society, series of half-songs, half-pitch, half- singing, talk, two parts, rhyme, class (at Sir George Williams University), aesthetic value, \\t“Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song”, first part is “He and Her”, noun, object,    second part “She and Him”, talking, printed, page.]\\n38:44- Reads “Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song, part 1: He and Her”.\\n39:60- Introduces “She and Him”. [INDEX: triad, rhyme, answers.]\\n39:47- Reads “Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song, part 2: She and Him”\\n40:59- Langland announces break.\\n41:25- Introduces second part of reading and “Singing in Late Summer”. [INDEX:     \\tvalidity, grandparents, Norway, name ‘Langeland’, Norwegian poet Paul Brekke,    translations, Norwegian, two poems written in Norway, death of his father, folk song   \\t“Den store hvide Flok”/ “The Great White Host”, funeral, children’s jobs, farm in Iowa,       ranch in Wyoming, hotel in Switzerland, Provincetown, painting, writing; published later  in Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).]\\n43:03- Reads “Singing in Late Summer”.\\n44:17- Introduces “Norwegian Rivers”. [INDEX: traveling through Norway, rivers,    \\tmountains, Oslo, Bergen, Trodheim, Island of Store, west coast of Norway, older  \\twoman, younger generation, Norwegian immigrants; published first in The       \\tMassachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1, (Autumn, 1962); later in Selected Poems       \\t(University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).]\\n45:22- Reads “Norwegian Rivers”.\\n48:08- Introduces “Drowning” by Sergey Chudakov. [INDEX: translation from Russian,     friends Thomas Axel, press agent for Imre Nagy, Hungarian Revolution, escape to        \\tAustria, teaches at university, poet, director of theatre in Budapest, State Theatre, Laszlo Ticosz, teaches in the German-Russian department at the university, collecting   underground poems from unknown poets from Russia, collection of poems, literal \\ttranslations, not sent to a publisher, new material, channels in the underground, war in   Europe, concentration camps, Nordhaussen, burial of five thousand people in one day in open trenches, captured Buchenwald, Weimar, Russians, German population Eisenach, Russian cavalry; from Poetry from the Russian Underground  (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n51:23- Reads “Drowning” by Sergey Cuchadakov.\\n52:06- Reads “The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad” by Joseph Brodsky. [INDEX:   \\tprobably intended for Poetry from the Russian Underground but was never published.]\\n52:32- Interrupts reading with explanation. [INDEX: translation changes.]\\n52:47- Continues reading “The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad” by Joseph Bordsky.\\n54:03- Explains “The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad” translations, introduces first line         “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikhailov. [INDEX: conditions, defending Sinyavsky and    Daniel, trapped, dragged to camp; from Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n55:01- Reads first line “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikhailov.\\n56:07- Introduces “Now that I Know” by Vladimir Kovshin. [INDEX: older style, elegant    lyric despair; from Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n56:21- Reads “Now that I Know” by Vladimir Kovshin.\\n57:01- Introduces “After the War” by Gleb Garbovsky. [INDEX: newest poem; from Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n57:11- Reads “After the War” by Gleb Garbovsky.\\n58:54- Interrupts reading with explanation. [INDEX: Emily Dickinson’s tomb in Amherst        Massachusetts, locality.]\\n59:08- Continues reading “After the War” by Gleb Garbovsky.\\n59:27- Introduces “Keeping up with the Humansky’s”. [INDEX: Joneses, lieutenant in the army, son of the fields, Russian name, serfs, experience.]\\n1:00:06- Reads “Keeping up with the Humansky’s”.\\n1:01:33- Introduces “Etape”. [INDEX: march from Russia to Siberia, original, title,     \\tfootnote, Axel, Ticosz, author unknown, nineteenth century, part of the long March from   Russia called Etape, ballad stanza form.]\\n1:02:07- Reads “Etape”.\\n1:03:57- Begins to Introduce “The Garbage Collector”, but recording ends suddenly.\\n1:04:03.32- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nRachel Kyne has tracked poem times and durations:\\n \\nTitle                                                                        \\tTime           \\tDuration (mins)\\nFIRST CD:\\n“Desperate Equations”                                           \\t00:03:47      \\t00:45\\n“Natures”                                                                \\t00:04:44      \\t02:09\\n“Dandelion”                                                            \\t00:07:40      \\t01:43\\n“The Amalfi Grotto”                                              \\t00:11:38      \\t01:14\\n“War”                                                                      \\t00:17:15      \\t01:27\\n“A Hard Song to Sing” (one stanza sung)              \\t00:20:24      \\t00:17\\n“A Hard Song to Sing” (read)                                \\t00:20:47      \\t01:00\\n“An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison”                        \\t00:23:16      \\t03:45\\n“How It, So Help Me, Was”                                   \\t00:29:04      \\t00:24\\n“Still to be Man”                                                    \\t00:32:44      \\t01:24\\n“La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey”                           \\t00:36:12      \\t01:11\\n“He and Her”                                                          \\t00:38:44      \\t00:56\\n“She and Him”                                                        \\t00:39:47      \\t01:10\\n“Singing in Late Summer”                                     \\t00:43:03      \\t01:13\\n“Norwegian Rivers”                                               \\t00:45:22      \\t02:44\\n“Drowning”                                                            \\t00:51:23      \\t00:42\\n“The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad”                    \\t00:52:12      \\t01:55\\n“Conditions”                                                           \\t00:55:01      \\t01:05\\n“Now That I Know”                                               \\t00:56:21      \\t00:40\\n“After the War”                                                      \\t00:57:11      \\t02:09\\n“Keeping up with the Humanskys”                        \\t01:00:06      \\t01:26\\n“Etape”                                                                   \\t01:02:07      \\t01:48\\n  \\n00:00- Reads “The Garbage Collector”.\\n00:27- Interrupts poem with explanation, then continues reading.  [INDEX: Renaissance, Christ Child, mother’s breast, translation”.\\n01:33- Introduces song “All the Lovers that You Ever Knew”. [INDEX: piano, singing,       guitar, Amherst, recorded tape.]\\n02:14- Plays recorded piano accompaniment.\\n02:33- Sings “All the Lovers that You Ever Knew”.\\n03:59- Introduces “Alone the Evening Falls on Me”. [INDEX: recording, singing, song,        last dance”; most likely from Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press,    1991).]\\n04:28- Sings “Alone the Evening Falls on Me”.\\n06:20- Introduces “Jump on my Back”. [INDEX: Iowa, Wyoming, Idaho.]\\n06:41- Sings “Jump on my Back”.\\n07:22- Introduces “A Hiroshima Lullaby”. [INDEX: sad story, Hiroshima bomb, 1945, little girl named Sadako Saki, unharmed, leukemia, hospital, Japanese legend about herons,       cranes, sandhill crane, University of Oregon in June, Summer Academy of the Arts,       wildlife refuge, Oregon, Eugene, fold a thousand paper cranes, health, sculptor from        Tokyo, statue, Peace Park, five notes, black keys, fifth in the bass, sing, stanza; published later in Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).]\\n11:00- Plays and Sings “A Hiroshima Lullaby”.\\n12:46- Introduces first line “I long to walk in the promised land”, [INDEX: Civil rights        \\tsong, march in Madison Square Garden, marching song.]\\n13:12- Sings first line “I long to walk in the promised land”.\\n13:57- Introduces The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963). [INDEX: Italy in 1954, Marcus Cunliffe’s The Literature of the United States, authors, New England, Midwest, South, West Coast and mid-Atlantic New York area, literature, speech, England, Haruspects, Roman/ Etruscan pagan priests, sacrificial animals, natural phenomena, farm animals, “The Wheel of Summer” title poem, titles “Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout”, “Sacrifice of my Pet Lamb”, poem titles that aren’t in the book.]\\n18:34- Reads poem titles from The Wheel of Summer. [INDEX: \\\"The Clarity of   Innocence: Sacrifice of a Trout.”, “The Loss of Early Innocence: Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\\\", \\\"The Plunder of Idealism: Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\\\", \\\"The Sickle among the Flowers\\\", \\\"The Sickle Among the Flowers\\\", \\\"The Decline of Heroic Voices\\\",  \\\"The Suffocations of Love\\\", \\\"The Attrition of Man\\\", \\\"The Unhousing of Beneficent God,\\\" \\\"The Seeming, the Necessary and Beneficial Perversions of Love\\\", \\\"The Subtleties of Violent Revenge: Sacrifice of an old Sow\\\", \\\"The Sweet Solace of Evil\\\", \\\"The Absurdities of Fact”,  \\\"The Pitfalls of Group Action: Sacrifice of a Flock of Sheep\\\", \\\"The Catechism of Human Culpability\\\", \\\"The Oddities of Affection”,  \\\"The Sacred Violence of Purity\\\", \\\"The        Bounties of Natural Law\\\", \\\"The Winter of the Cold War: Sacrifice of a Grey Wolf\\\", \\\"The    Decline of Natural Instincts: Sacrifice of Three Wild Geese\\\", \\\"The Tyranny of Fixed   Ideas\\\", \\\"A Dream of the Ultimate Holocaust: Sacrifice of a Hill of Ants\\\", \\\"The Warfare of  \\tthe Sensuous Past: Sacrifice of My Aunt Marie”, longer narrative poem, \\\"The Wheel of     Summer\\\",\\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\"; titles from The Wheel of Summer.]\\n20:43- Reads “Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout”. [INDEX: from The Wheel of Summer, (Dial   Press, 1963).]\\n21:38- Introduces “Sacrifice of a Golden Owl”. [INDEX: lamb, owl, from The Wheel of        Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n21:49- Reads “Sacrifice of a Golden Owl”.\\n23:36- Introduces “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”. [INDEX: farm, lost body parts, death of       President Kennedy, reading tour, auditorium, poems, cancelled; from The Wheel   \\tof Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n24:17- Reads “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”.\\n26:58- Introduces “Sacrifice of the Gunny-Sack of Cats”. [INDEX: read in New York City, officers of the Society for the Friends of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Amherst,    letter, unwanted animals, United States, cat spaying, contraceptive, Annual Appeal, taxes;  from The Wheel of Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n29:10- Reads “Sacrifice of the Gunny-Sack of Cats”.\\n32:19- Introduces “Sacrifice of an Old Sow”. [INDEX: old sow, hard poem, world; from       The Wheel of Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n32:28- Reads “Sacrifice of an Old Sow”.\\n33:45- Introduces “The Catechism of Human Culpability”. [INDEX: hard poem, Eric, squirrel poem, uncle.]\\n34:15- Reads “The Catechism of Human Culpability”.\\n37:05- Introduces “The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas”. [INDEX: squirrel, letter, Kansas, music,    guitar, ballad on Adlai Stevens.]\\n37:44- Reads “The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas”.\\n40:21- Introduces “Libertyville”. [INDEX: Stevens, ballad, state tree, bird, flower,      \\tIllinois, oak, cardinal, violet, red, green, violet, rainbow, theoretical life, yellow, orange,       blue, Libertyville Illinois, Des Plaines River, Chicago drainage system, Winsconsin   woods, blue, sky, light, epigraph, school children.]\\n41:24- Reads “Libertyville”.\\n43:32.33- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nSECOND CD:\\n“The Garbage Collector”                                        \\t00:00:00      \\t01:27\\n“All the Lovers that You Ever Knew” (song)        \\t00:02:33      \\t01:25\\n“Alone the Evening Falls on Me” (song)               \\t00:04:28      \\t01:45\\n“Jump on my Back” (song)                                    \\t00:06:41      \\t00:40\\n“A Hiroshima Lullaby” (song and reading)           \\t00:11:00      \\t01:45\\n[“I long to walk in the Promised Land”]                \\t00:13:12      \\t00:44\\n“Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout”                              \\t00:20:43      \\t00:57\\n“Sacrifice of the Golden Owl”                               \\t00:21:49      \\t01:15\\n“Sacrifice of my Neighbours”                                \\t00:24:17      \\t02:30\\n“Sacrifice of the Gunny-Sack of Cats”                  \\t00:29:10      \\t03:08\\n“Sacrifice of an Old Sow”                                      \\t00:32:28      \\t01:18\\n“The Catechism of Human Culpability”                \\t00:34:15      \\t02:45\\n“The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas”                                         00:37:44      \\t02:44\\n“Libertyville”                                                         \\t00:41:24      \\t01:35\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/joseph-langland-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.5454967},{"id":"1271","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":["Michael McClure and George Montana at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 22 March 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MICHAEL McCLURE I006/SR160\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-160\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["McClure, Michael","Montana, George"],"creator_names_search":["McClure, Michael","Montana, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/71493269\",\"name\":\"McClure, Michael\",\"dates\":\"1932-\",\"notes\":\"American poet, playwright, essayist, novelist and teacher Michael McClure was born on October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas. After his parents divorced, he went to live with his grandfather in Seattle, who influenced McClure’s early interests in the natural world. McClure attended several universities in Kansas and Arizona before completing his Bachelor degree at the San Francisco State College in 1955. McClure met his first wife, Joanna Kinnison, and married her in 1954. They later had one daughter, Katherine Jane (b. 1956), but divorced in 1986. While at San Francisco State College, he took a course with poet Robert Duncan, and was influenced by Charles Olson, William Blake and Walt Whitman’s poetries as well as Jackson Pollock’s paintings. McClure received instant fame when he participated in the infamous Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco with Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder and Philip Lamantia. McClure was thus associated with the Beat movement, and began publishing in what became a prolific writing career. In 1956, with poet and publisher Jonathan Williams and James Harmon, McClure published the work of both Black Mountain school poets and San Francisco Beat poets in Ark II/Moby I review; it was published in 1957. Jonathan Williams then published McClure’s first book of poetry, Passage (Jargon Book Series, 1956). McClure subsequently published many collections of poetry, including For Artaud (Totem Press, 1959), Hymns to St. Geryon and Other Poems (Auerhahn Press, 1959), Dark Brown (Auerhahn Press, 1961), The New Book/ A Book of Torture (Grove Press, 1961), Meat Science Essays (City Lights Books, 1963), Love Lion Lioness (Privately printed, 1963), Ghost Tantras (Privately printed, 1964), 13 Mad Sonnets (Privately printed, 1965), The Beard (Several publishers between 1965-7), The Sermons of Jean Harlow and the Curses of Billy the Kid (Four Seasons press, 1968), The Mammals (Cranium Press, 1972), Jaguar Skies (New Directions, 1975), Scratching the Beat Surface (North Point Press, 1982), Selected Poems (New Directions, 1986), and Rebel Lions (New Directions, 1991). McClure also wrote many plays, including !The Feast! (San Francisco, Batman Gallery, 22 December 1960), The Blossom; or Billy the Kid (New York, American Theatre for Poets, 1964), the controversial play The Beard (San Francisco, Encore Theatre, Encore Theare, December 18, 1965), Gorf (San Francisco, Magic Theare,1976) and Josephine the Mouse Singer (New York, WPA Theatre, November 20, 1978), recipient of two Off-Broadway Theatre Awards. In 1963, McClure became a professor at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, where he taught for more than 40 years, eventually becoming a professor emeritus. McClure was awarded numerous honours, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967 and 1974, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974, a Pushcart Prize for Poetry in 1991 and a Lifetime Achievement Poetry Award from the National Poetry Society in 1993. More recently, McClure published Simple Eyes (New Directions, 1992), Love Lion Video (with Ray Manzarek, Mystic Fire Video, 1993), The Mad Club (Blue Moon Books, 1995), Rain Mirror (New Directions, 1999),  There’s a Word! audio recording with Ray Manzarek (Rare Angel Music 2001), and Plum Stones: Cartoons of No Heaven (O Books, 2002). In 1997, McClure married a sculptor, Amy Evans. Michael McClure continues to perform and write from the San Francisco Bay Area\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Montana, George\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"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\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"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\":\"3/22/1968\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"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 Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Michael McClure reads poems collected in The Beards (Coyote, 1967), Star (Grove Press, 1970), Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969), and Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967). McClure also performs a number of songs with George Montana."],"contents":["michael_mcclure_george_montana_i006-11-160.mp3\n \nIntroducer\n00:00:00\nLadies and gentlemen, Michael McClure [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1390054], George Montana. \n\nAudience\n00:00:05\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:00:29\nThat was [unintelligible]. Star is a four letter word, s-t-a-r. Now, in case I read, I--is this on right? In case I read something here tonight with a four letter word in it, which I'm liable to cause I might start off be reading part of The Beard, um, [unintelligible] if anyone would be offended, it would be a good thing if they got their money back, right now. It's their right to do so.\n\nAudience\n00:01:07\nApplause.\n\nMichael McClure\n00:01:22\nThe Beard is a poem of mine in the form of a play that's just been arrested fifteen nights in a row by Los Angeles [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65] police and a state law has been passed against it being performed in the state colleges in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. These are the trials and tribulations. And right now we're waiting for a panel of three federal judges to come and see it and decide if it has redeeming special significance. [Audience laughter]. And if they don't think it is, we'll take it to the Supreme Court [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11201] and see what they think. And, the play has two characters in it, Billy the Kid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44200] and Jean Harlow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q105719]. And they're together in a blue velvet eternity, they both are wearing little beards made out of torn white tissue paper. They're--they only thing on the set with them is a table and two chairs covered with furs and Harlow is wearing a blue gown and she has a purse with her and a mirror and the Kid is dressed in a costume appropriate to his costume--I mean appropriate to his career. And when the curtain opens, there's an orange light shining on him which goes up after the first, about the first thirty seconds. And being that this is a poem in the form of a play, I can only read it, I can't read it properly, I can't be two people, I can't be Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow I can only be the author so I'll have to read it that way where it's actually meant to be a poem and acted by me on a stage, on a shelf with lights. We have a shelf with lights, but that's the best I can do.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:03:41\nReads selection from The Beard.\n\nAudience\n00:10:29\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:11:02\nUm, I'm going to read two more tonight. I want to read for a while and then have an intermission and then I'd like to come back on and play some musical pieces that my music guru George Montana has been working on with me and we've been writing some songs together, but I'd like to read poems for maybe half an hour or so first. I want to read some poems called \"Mad Sonnets\" and I imagine a lot of you know what sons are, what known as sons are, fourteen lines with a legitimate rhyme scheme, and these are not quite exactly like that...Does this microphone sound right? If I stand right here is that okay so that I don't have to lean into it?\n \nMichael McClure\n00:12:25\nReads \"Mad Sonnet\" [from Star].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:14:08\nAnother \"Mad Sonnet\", kind of ecological.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:14:23\nReads [\"Mad Sonnet 3\" from Star].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:16:03\nHere's a--I live in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], but here's a \"Mad Sonnet\" that I started in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], I went to Wall Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11690] on a Saturday morning, I guess you can imagine what it's like during the weekdays, it's a narrow street, buildings stretching up like cliffs on each side of them and on Saturday morning it's cold and empty and you can feel the crush and vibrations from the previous part of the week.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:16:32\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 13” from Star, published later as “Cold Saturday Mad Sonnet” in Selected Poems].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:17:58\nI never thought of those signs--they told me I can't smoke up here. It's my life. I'll do what I want, [unintelligible]. [Audience laughter]. The work--I think-are we all, I think I'm waiting for, this technology with which we live in, which is wonderful enough in it's own way, is also costly and [unintelligible], eating up the planet, and I think I'm waiting for an all-chemical science, by means in which we can manifest ourselves through the universe and I guess we'll have to tinker toys like rocket ships and space ships to begin it, but I don't think that's how we'll really do it. And it's become kind of tradition to write songs to science, so I guess I had to do one too.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:19:20\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 5” from Star].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:20:48\nI've got a book of poems in a language I call Beast Language, they're about half in English and half in this invented language. The book is called Ghost Tantras, ghost like the German word \"gist\", g-i-s-t, which means spirit, and I just said \"ghost\". Why can't ghost be a spirit, why can't we use that in English? And tantra, t-a-n-t-r-a, which is a Hindu form of poetry, it's poetry written in an invented language for magical purposes to bring about changes in the universe. I felt these poems, I felt these poems coming on, and I felt like I had a ball of silence within myself, within my body and I heard these sounds within that ball of silence, and I wrote them down phonetically, so kind of like Marvel comics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173496], you know where it says \"keee\" or \"rash\", k-e-e-e, or r-a-s-h. And I see later that things like this have been done in gnostic Bizantine chants too, which also, is like Marvel comics. \"Ka-pow\". And some of them were written in San Francisco, some of them were written in airplanes, on the way to Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. I was going to Mexico to bring back cultures of [unintelligible] Mexicana, the sacred [salsavie (?)] mushroom which were grown by scientists in Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419]. And, then upon my return I finished from there. I finished these \"Mad Sonnets\", there are 99 of them and I don't think you've probably heard anything like them before, and I guess all you can do is just relax. I like to start with one that starts with English because it's not so strange, they're about a third English or half English maybe.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:23:15\nBegins to perform unnamed sound poem.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:23:19\nNo, that's not it...Where'd George go? George? [Audience laughter].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:24:00\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #51” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:25:42\nHere's another one that starts in English, it starts in Spanish. Just went to Spanish, [unintelligible] George is.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:25:57\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #54” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:27:45\nI just had a lot of microphone trouble in Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435] too. I don't know what. It's alright?\n \nMichael McClure\n00:27:55\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #69” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:29:45\nHere's one, this was written the day after Marilyn Monroe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4616] died, August 6, 1962.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:30:11\nReads \"Ghost Tantra #39\" [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:31:37\nYou've got a tourist card in the back of the room [(?)] Is everybody relaxed? Cause I'm not. Eddie in [unintelligible] was dismissed recently and I guess this poem had something to do with it. And, the poem is the ending of, it's the sexual ending of a very long poem called \"Dark Brown\" I see nothing wrong in taking any sexual part of the poem from any other part of the poem, and the sexual writing today will be viewed in fifty years or a hundred years much the way we view nature poetry today in the 19th century, because some [unintelligible] classes we kept bringing up the fact that for our [unintelligible] today if you were to look at the atmosphere or the air we breathe, the primary part of our environment is either other human bodies or concrete and we choose human bodies rather than the concrete which seems to be a pretty good choice. I think that given the changes that are going on today, I believe we won't be able to say anything. If we can say anything now. If we can say anything anytime but I mean, I think this will be looked upon as [unintelligible] Nature poetry, Shelley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q93343] and Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083]were pulling cockney school in their day, which of course was all there is for Shelley since he was a [unintelligible] and probably some of Keats although it was worse since he was a cockney. [Audience laughter]. They were insulted for their new nature poetries, and this too. I'd like to read some like, preliminary stanzas of that poem, and then read part of the longer section which seems to have to do with the [unintelligible]. In Eddie's defense I'll say that the London Times [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50008] literary supplement found that this is [unintelligible]. The poem is written in independent stanzas, I'd like to think of the stanzas as being independent in the way an organism is, and the totality of the poem in the totality in a way an--the way a primitive--and this is a primitive organism is comprised of [unintelligible] individuals to make up its [unintelligible] of being. The poem is called \"Dark Brown\" and I've just opened it to the page I wanted to. The stanza I wanted to.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:35:21\nReads \"Dark Brown\" from Dark Brown.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:37:48\nReads [\"The black black black damned and undreamy odem the undersoul\" from Dark Brown].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:40:00\nAnother poem. Okay, have I justified enough? Now's your chance to go home. I'm going to read the tough part.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:40:23\nReads [“Fuck Ode” from Dark Brown].\n \nAudience\n00:50:00\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:50:15\nI'll take a break. George and I are going to play, George Montana and I, and I won't guarantee anything about it as my fingers are feeling very clumsy tonight. I'll be playing an instrument but I know George will play for us, so if you hear any faults in the playing, it's me not George. I want to take like, at least, I want to take a ten minute break and anybody who'd like to stay is welcome to stay, and if you'd like to go, go, and if you want to leave during the music if you don't like the music for god's sake go. Thank you. \n \nUnknown\n00:51:09\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:12\nI'm kind of nervous, us going through it again.\n \nGeorge Montana\n00:51:19\n[IUnintelligible].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:23\nSure, let's see if it picks up.\n \nGeorge Montana\n00:51:24\nI think it's picking up\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:25\nYeah?\n \nGeorge Montana\n00:51:26\nYeah.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:27\nCan you hear us whispering?\n \nAudience\n00:51:28\nYes.\n \nUnknown\n00:51:30\nAmbient Sound [music].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:41\nLet's see what it sounds like.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:43\nIs it picking up? Can you hear in the back? Can you hear in the back row? Yeah, I think I lost that pic already. Christ. \n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n00:52:17\nPerform unnamed song.\n \nAudience\n01:01:41\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:01:56\nUm, I don't think I can sing. Do you want to do that one?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:02:00\nAh, okay.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:02:04\nShall we tell them it's a new song? Why don't you tell them?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:02:07\nThis is a song that Michael and I just have done, so I don't know the words by heart yet. So here it is.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:02:19\nAnd I haven't learned this melody very well yet. Let's get coordinated together. You set the [unintelligible]. You wanna sing it through three times? \n\nUnknown\n01:02:41\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:02:57\nIs this picking up alright? Can you hear it clear, loud enough? No? [Audience laughter]. Get out. [Audience laughter].\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:03:24\nPerform unnamed song.\n \nAudience\n01:10:50\nApplause.\n \nUnknown\n01:10:59\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:11:39\nThese are called technical difficulties. By the way we can smoke on the stage now because the lights are off in the auditorium. That's the fire alarm. [Audience laughter].\nWant to play the “Bells of Moscow”?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:12:22\nHow about the other [unintelligible].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:12:31\nI don't think I'm up to...\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:12:40\nWe're going to try to do the Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] \"For President Walt\".\n \nMichael McClure\n01:12:43\nI think I'm too scared to. We'll try it. I might be too--can you hear alright? I might be too scared. This isn't very complicated, isn't it a two chord one?\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:13:04\nPerform \"For President Walt\" by Allen Ginsberg.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:13:20\nI can't remember the words.\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:13:31\nPerform \"For President Walt\" by Allen Ginsberg.\n \nAudience\n01:16:29\nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n01:16:39\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:16:45\nI was just thinking you'd play it your way fast. No, let's do a non-vocal.\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:17:03\nOkay, which one.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:17:05\nWhat about \"The Bells of Moscow\"?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:17:06\nThat one?\n \nUnknown\n01:17:11\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \n\nGeorge Montana\n01:17:15\nWe'll play for you a little instrumental one it's called \"The Bells of Moscow\".\n \nMichael McClure\n01:17:20\nNamed today.\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:17:56\nPerform \"The Bells of Moscow\".\n \nAudience\n01:23:06\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:23:17\nI don't think that was picking up here. Alright. Or I was too close. More music lovers are leaving. I don't know, we could try the [unintelligible] thing. \n\nUnknown\n01:23:40\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:24:12\nGeorge and I usually do this in my front room. With no light but a candle and the incense, but we can smoke there of course. This is a song by William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513].\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:24:59\nPerform \"How sweet I roam’d from field to field\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19049519] by William Blake.\n \nAudience\n01:30:25\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:30:46\nHow about, um, Dvořák’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7298] 43rd auto-harp duet? Which one is that?\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:31:44\nBegin to perform unnamed song.\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:31:58\nPerform unnamed song.\n \nAudience\n01:35:52\nApplause. \n\nUnknown\n01:35:57\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nMichael McClure\n01:36:12\nGood night.\n \nAudience \n01:36:28\nApplause. \n \nEND\n01:37:00\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nUnknown date-around 1970. McClure was teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. He was publishing prolifically, often printing his own work in pamphlets and chap books.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nThe connection between McClure and Sir George Williams University is unknown, however as a member of the Beat movement, McClure was certainly a poet of interest for Canadians. McClure read his poetry often and his performances were also a part of his poetics. \",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction, and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dictionary-of-literary-biography-vol-16-the-beats-literary-bohemians-in-postwar-america-edited-by-ann-charters-parts-1-2/oclc/59250319&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"King, William R. “Michael (Thomas) McClure”. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar  America. Ann Charters (ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dark-brown/oclc/69024444?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Dark Brown. San Francisco: Dave Haselwood Books, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghost-tantras/oclc/923460319&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Ghost Tantras. San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/beard/oclc/561713511&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. The Beard. San Francisco: Coyote Books, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-book-a-book-of-torture/oclc/918221317&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. The New Book: A Book of Torture. New York City: Grove Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/916271510?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Selected Poems. New York City: New Directions Books, 1986. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/star-poems/oclc/462091780&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Star. New York City: Grove Press, 1970. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"McClure, Michael (Thomas)\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart, ed., rev. Phillip W. Leininger. Oxford University Press 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Camlot, Jason. “Mammals and Machines: Michael McClure’s Embodying Poetics”. Atenea, 23, no.1; June 2003.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Michael McClure” Literature Online Biography. Literature Online, 2008.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548858470400,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0160_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - 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_0160_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0160_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - 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_0160_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/michael_mcclure_george_montana_i006-11-160.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"michael_mcclure_george_montana_i006-11-160.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:37:00\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"232.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Introducer\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and gentlemen, Michael McClure [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1390054], George Montana. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:05\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:00:29\\nThat was [unintelligible]. Star is a four letter word, s-t-a-r. Now, in case I read, I--is this on right? In case I read something here tonight with a four letter word in it, which I'm liable to cause I might start off be reading part of The Beard, um, [unintelligible] if anyone would be offended, it would be a good thing if they got their money back, right now. It's their right to do so.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:01:07\\nApplause.\\n\\nMichael McClure\\n00:01:22\\nThe Beard is a poem of mine in the form of a play that's just been arrested fifteen nights in a row by Los Angeles [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65] police and a state law has been passed against it being performed in the state colleges in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. These are the trials and tribulations. And right now we're waiting for a panel of three federal judges to come and see it and decide if it has redeeming special significance. [Audience laughter]. And if they don't think it is, we'll take it to the Supreme Court [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11201] and see what they think. And, the play has two characters in it, Billy the Kid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44200] and Jean Harlow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q105719]. And they're together in a blue velvet eternity, they both are wearing little beards made out of torn white tissue paper. They're--they only thing on the set with them is a table and two chairs covered with furs and Harlow is wearing a blue gown and she has a purse with her and a mirror and the Kid is dressed in a costume appropriate to his costume--I mean appropriate to his career. And when the curtain opens, there's an orange light shining on him which goes up after the first, about the first thirty seconds. And being that this is a poem in the form of a play, I can only read it, I can't read it properly, I can't be two people, I can't be Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow I can only be the author so I'll have to read it that way where it's actually meant to be a poem and acted by me on a stage, on a shelf with lights. We have a shelf with lights, but that's the best I can do.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:03:41\\nReads selection from The Beard.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:10:29\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:11:02\\nUm, I'm going to read two more tonight. I want to read for a while and then have an intermission and then I'd like to come back on and play some musical pieces that my music guru George Montana has been working on with me and we've been writing some songs together, but I'd like to read poems for maybe half an hour or so first. I want to read some poems called \\\"Mad Sonnets\\\" and I imagine a lot of you know what sons are, what known as sons are, fourteen lines with a legitimate rhyme scheme, and these are not quite exactly like that...Does this microphone sound right? If I stand right here is that okay so that I don't have to lean into it?\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:12:25\\nReads \\\"Mad Sonnet\\\" [from Star].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:14:08\\nAnother \\\"Mad Sonnet\\\", kind of ecological.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:14:23\\nReads [\\\"Mad Sonnet 3\\\" from Star].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:16:03\\nHere's a--I live in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], but here's a \\\"Mad Sonnet\\\" that I started in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], I went to Wall Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11690] on a Saturday morning, I guess you can imagine what it's like during the weekdays, it's a narrow street, buildings stretching up like cliffs on each side of them and on Saturday morning it's cold and empty and you can feel the crush and vibrations from the previous part of the week.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:16:32\\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 13” from Star, published later as “Cold Saturday Mad Sonnet” in Selected Poems].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:17:58\\nI never thought of those signs--they told me I can't smoke up here. It's my life. I'll do what I want, [unintelligible]. [Audience laughter]. The work--I think-are we all, I think I'm waiting for, this technology with which we live in, which is wonderful enough in it's own way, is also costly and [unintelligible], eating up the planet, and I think I'm waiting for an all-chemical science, by means in which we can manifest ourselves through the universe and I guess we'll have to tinker toys like rocket ships and space ships to begin it, but I don't think that's how we'll really do it. And it's become kind of tradition to write songs to science, so I guess I had to do one too.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:19:20\\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 5” from Star].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:20:48\\nI've got a book of poems in a language I call Beast Language, they're about half in English and half in this invented language. The book is called Ghost Tantras, ghost like the German word \\\"gist\\\", g-i-s-t, which means spirit, and I just said \\\"ghost\\\". Why can't ghost be a spirit, why can't we use that in English? And tantra, t-a-n-t-r-a, which is a Hindu form of poetry, it's poetry written in an invented language for magical purposes to bring about changes in the universe. I felt these poems, I felt these poems coming on, and I felt like I had a ball of silence within myself, within my body and I heard these sounds within that ball of silence, and I wrote them down phonetically, so kind of like Marvel comics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173496], you know where it says \\\"keee\\\" or \\\"rash\\\", k-e-e-e, or r-a-s-h. And I see later that things like this have been done in gnostic Bizantine chants too, which also, is like Marvel comics. \\\"Ka-pow\\\". And some of them were written in San Francisco, some of them were written in airplanes, on the way to Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. I was going to Mexico to bring back cultures of [unintelligible] Mexicana, the sacred [salsavie (?)] mushroom which were grown by scientists in Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419]. And, then upon my return I finished from there. I finished these \\\"Mad Sonnets\\\", there are 99 of them and I don't think you've probably heard anything like them before, and I guess all you can do is just relax. I like to start with one that starts with English because it's not so strange, they're about a third English or half English maybe.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:23:15\\nBegins to perform unnamed sound poem.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:23:19\\nNo, that's not it...Where'd George go? George? [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:24:00\\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #51” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:25:42\\nHere's another one that starts in English, it starts in Spanish. Just went to Spanish, [unintelligible] George is.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:25:57\\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #54” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:27:45\\nI just had a lot of microphone trouble in Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435] too. I don't know what. It's alright?\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:27:55\\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #69” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:29:45\\nHere's one, this was written the day after Marilyn Monroe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4616] died, August 6, 1962.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:30:11\\nReads \\\"Ghost Tantra #39\\\" [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:31:37\\nYou've got a tourist card in the back of the room [(?)] Is everybody relaxed? Cause I'm not. Eddie in [unintelligible] was dismissed recently and I guess this poem had something to do with it. And, the poem is the ending of, it's the sexual ending of a very long poem called \\\"Dark Brown\\\" I see nothing wrong in taking any sexual part of the poem from any other part of the poem, and the sexual writing today will be viewed in fifty years or a hundred years much the way we view nature poetry today in the 19th century, because some [unintelligible] classes we kept bringing up the fact that for our [unintelligible] today if you were to look at the atmosphere or the air we breathe, the primary part of our environment is either other human bodies or concrete and we choose human bodies rather than the concrete which seems to be a pretty good choice. I think that given the changes that are going on today, I believe we won't be able to say anything. If we can say anything now. If we can say anything anytime but I mean, I think this will be looked upon as [unintelligible] Nature poetry, Shelley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q93343] and Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083]were pulling cockney school in their day, which of course was all there is for Shelley since he was a [unintelligible] and probably some of Keats although it was worse since he was a cockney. [Audience laughter]. They were insulted for their new nature poetries, and this too. I'd like to read some like, preliminary stanzas of that poem, and then read part of the longer section which seems to have to do with the [unintelligible]. In Eddie's defense I'll say that the London Times [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50008] literary supplement found that this is [unintelligible]. The poem is written in independent stanzas, I'd like to think of the stanzas as being independent in the way an organism is, and the totality of the poem in the totality in a way an--the way a primitive--and this is a primitive organism is comprised of [unintelligible] individuals to make up its [unintelligible] of being. The poem is called \\\"Dark Brown\\\" and I've just opened it to the page I wanted to. The stanza I wanted to.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:35:21\\nReads \\\"Dark Brown\\\" from Dark Brown.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:37:48\\nReads [\\\"The black black black damned and undreamy odem the undersoul\\\" from Dark Brown].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:40:00\\nAnother poem. Okay, have I justified enough? Now's your chance to go home. I'm going to read the tough part.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:40:23\\nReads [“Fuck Ode” from Dark Brown].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:50:00\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:50:15\\nI'll take a break. George and I are going to play, George Montana and I, and I won't guarantee anything about it as my fingers are feeling very clumsy tonight. I'll be playing an instrument but I know George will play for us, so if you hear any faults in the playing, it's me not George. I want to take like, at least, I want to take a ten minute break and anybody who'd like to stay is welcome to stay, and if you'd like to go, go, and if you want to leave during the music if you don't like the music for god's sake go. Thank you. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:51:09\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:12\\nI'm kind of nervous, us going through it again.\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n00:51:19\\n[IUnintelligible].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:23\\nSure, let's see if it picks up.\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n00:51:24\\nI think it's picking up\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:25\\nYeah?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n00:51:26\\nYeah.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:27\\nCan you hear us whispering?\\n \\nAudience\\n00:51:28\\nYes.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:51:30\\nAmbient Sound [music].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:41\\nLet's see what it sounds like.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:43\\nIs it picking up? Can you hear in the back? Can you hear in the back row? Yeah, I think I lost that pic already. Christ. \\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n00:52:17\\nPerform unnamed song.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:01:41\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:01:56\\nUm, I don't think I can sing. Do you want to do that one?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:02:00\\nAh, okay.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:02:04\\nShall we tell them it's a new song? Why don't you tell them?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:02:07\\nThis is a song that Michael and I just have done, so I don't know the words by heart yet. So here it is.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:02:19\\nAnd I haven't learned this melody very well yet. Let's get coordinated together. You set the [unintelligible]. You wanna sing it through three times? \\n\\nUnknown\\n01:02:41\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:02:57\\nIs this picking up alright? Can you hear it clear, loud enough? No? [Audience laughter]. Get out. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:03:24\\nPerform unnamed song.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:10:50\\nApplause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:10:59\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:11:39\\nThese are called technical difficulties. By the way we can smoke on the stage now because the lights are off in the auditorium. That's the fire alarm. [Audience laughter].\\nWant to play the “Bells of Moscow”?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:12:22\\nHow about the other [unintelligible].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:12:31\\nI don't think I'm up to...\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:12:40\\nWe're going to try to do the Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] \\\"For President Walt\\\".\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:12:43\\nI think I'm too scared to. We'll try it. I might be too--can you hear alright? I might be too scared. This isn't very complicated, isn't it a two chord one?\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:13:04\\nPerform \\\"For President Walt\\\" by Allen Ginsberg.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:13:20\\nI can't remember the words.\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:13:31\\nPerform \\\"For President Walt\\\" by Allen Ginsberg.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:16:29\\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:16:39\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:16:45\\nI was just thinking you'd play it your way fast. No, let's do a non-vocal.\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:17:03\\nOkay, which one.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:17:05\\nWhat about \\\"The Bells of Moscow\\\"?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:17:06\\nThat one?\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:17:11\\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \\n\\nGeorge Montana\\n01:17:15\\nWe'll play for you a little instrumental one it's called \\\"The Bells of Moscow\\\".\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:17:20\\nNamed today.\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:17:56\\nPerform \\\"The Bells of Moscow\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n01:23:06\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:23:17\\nI don't think that was picking up here. Alright. Or I was too close. More music lovers are leaving. I don't know, we could try the [unintelligible] thing. \\n\\nUnknown\\n01:23:40\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:24:12\\nGeorge and I usually do this in my front room. With no light but a candle and the incense, but we can smoke there of course. This is a song by William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513].\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:24:59\\nPerform \\\"How sweet I roam’d from field to field\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19049519] by William Blake.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:30:25\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:30:46\\nHow about, um, Dvořák’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7298] 43rd auto-harp duet? Which one is that?\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:31:44\\nBegin to perform unnamed song.\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:31:58\\nPerform unnamed song.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:35:52\\nApplause. \\n\\nUnknown\\n01:35:57\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nMichael McClure\\n01:36:12\\nGood night.\\n \\nAudience \\n01:36:28\\nApplause. \\n \\nEND\\n01:37:00\\n\",\"notes\":\"Michael McClure reads poems collected in The Beards (Coyote, 1967), Star (Grove Press, 1970), Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969), and Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967). McClure also performs a number of songs with George Montana.\\n\\n00:00- Unknown male introduces Michael McClure and George Montana.\\n00:29- Michael McClure introduces the reading, and selection from “The Beards”. [INDEX: four-letter words, offended audience, poem in the form of a play, arrested, Los Angeles Police, state laws, state colleges in California, federal judges, Supreme Court, Billy the Kid, Jean Harlow, set of the play/poem, character’s costumes, stage.]\\n03:41- Michael McClure reads selection from “The Beards”. [INDEX: selection begins on first page of the play/poem, The Beards (Coyote, 1967).]\\n11:02- Introduces “Mad Sonnet 1” series, first line “The plumes of love are black...”. [INDEX: reading arrangement, intermission, musical pieces, George Montana, songs,       “Mad Sonnets”, fourteen lines, rhyme scheme; from The New Book / A Book of Torture  \\t(Grove, 1961) and collected in Star (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n12:25- Reads “Mad Sonnet 1” first line “The plumes of love are black...”.\\n14:08- Introduces “Mad Sonnet 3” first line “Tiny mammals walk on white between the    yellow...” [INDEX: ecological; from Star  (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n14:23- Reads  “Mad Sonnet 3” first line “Tiny mammals walk on white between the   yellow...”\\n16:03- Introduces “Mad Sonnet 13” first line “On cold Saturday I walked in the empty      \\tvalley of Wall Street...”. [INDEX: San Francisco, New York, Wall Street, Saturday        \\tmorning, buildings, cliffs; from Star (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n16:32- Reads “Mad Sonnet 13 ” first line “On cold Saturday I walked in the empty valley of Wall Street...”.\\n17:58- Introduces “To Science”, published as “Mad Sonnet 5”. [INDEX: no-smoking signs in auditorium, technology, planet, all-chemical science, universe, rocket ships, space ships, tradition, songs written for science; from Star (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n19:20- Reads “To Science”.\\n20:48- Introduces poem from Ghost Tantras “#51” first line “I love to think of the red-purple rose...”. [INDEX: book of poems, Beast Language, half English, half in invented language, Ghost Tantras, German word “gist”, ghost, spirit, English, tantra, Hindu form of poetry, magical poetry, changes in the universe, body, Marvel Comic strips, some written in San Francisco, some written in airplanes, Mexico, Mexicana, Mexican sacred mushroom, scientists in Brooklyn, “Mad Sonnets”, 99 poems; from Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969)]\\n23:15- Begins to read unknown poem in Beast language.\\n23:19- Stops reading unknown poem. [INDEX: wrong poem, George Montana.]\\n24:00- Reads poem “Ghost Tantara #51”\\n25:42- Introduces poem first line “The motion of cool air shudders my shoulders...”.   [INDEX: English, Spanish, George Montana; from unknown source]\\n25:57- Reads first line “The motion of cool air shudders my shoulders...”.\\n27:45- Talks about prior reading in Buffalo, New York. [INDEX: microphone problems, Buffalo, New York.]\\n27:55- Reads “Ghost Tantra #69” first line Ooor greeeooossshhh strato, butterfly, beaks and pants...”. [INDEX: from Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969)]\\n29:45- Introduces poem “Ghost Tantra #39 first line “Marilyn Monroe today...”. [INDEX: \\twritten the day after Marilyn Monroe’s death, August 6, 1962; from Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969)]\\n30:11- Reads “Ghost Tantra #39”\\n31:37- Introduces “Dark Brown”. [INDEX: Eddie [unknown reference], sexual ending, long poem, fifty years into the future, 19th century, nature poetry, atmosphere, air,   \\tenvironment, human bodies, concrete, changes, [Percy] Shelley, [John] Keats, cockney, stanzas, London Times literary supplement, independent stanzas, organism; from Dark    Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967)]\\n35:21- Reads “Dark Brown”.\\n37:48- Reads poem, first line “The black, black, black damned and un-dreamy...”. [INDEX: from Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967)]\\n40:00- Introduces poem, “(Fuck Ode)” first line “The huge figures fucking...”. [INDEX:       justification of poems, from Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967)]\\n40:23- Reads “(Fuck Ode)”.\\n50:15- Michael McClure introduces a break and the second part of the reading. [INDEX: George Montana, break, instruments, music.]\\n51:09.06- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\n00:00- Michael McClure and George Montana whisper to each other away from the microphone.\\n00:21- McClure and Montana begin to play unknown instruments, perhaps sitars.\\n00:33- Play first song. [Unknown song, no lyrics, only instrumental.]\\n10:47- McClure and Montana discuss which song to play next.\\n10:58- Montana introduces song. [INDEX: new song.]\\n11:10- McClure introduces song. [INDEX: melody, co-ordinated, singing.]\\n12:15- Play second song, George Montana sings. [Unknown song.]\\n19:50- McClure and Montana discuss playlist, inaudible to microphone.\\n20:30- McClure introduces the next song, “For President Walt” by Allen Ginsberg. [INDEX: smoking, auditorium, “Bells of Moscow”]\\n21:55- Plays song “For President Walt” by Allen Ginsberg, McClure sings.\\n25:35- McClure and Montana discuss next song, “The Bells of Moscow”.\\n26:46- Play song “The Bells of Moscow”.\\n32:08- McClure and Montana discuss next song, “Song: How sweet I roam’d from field to field” by William Blake [INDEX: practice at home, candles, incense, smoking.]\\n33:50- Play “Song: How sweet I roam’d from field to field” by William Blake.\\n39:37- McClure introduces song, first line “Takes a hundred sixty-five-thousand chicks to lay a railway from here to Chicago...”. [INDEX: Vorshack’s 43 auto-harp duet]\\n40:35- Play song, first line “Takes a hundred sixty-five-thousand chicks to lay a railway   from here to Chicago...”.\\n45:51.44- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/michael-mcclure-and-george-montana-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.5454967},{"id":"1273","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":["George Oppen at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 25 November 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"(GEORGE) G OPPEN Poetry Oct 25/68 I086-11-040\" written on the spine of the tape's box. \"G. OPPEN Poetry I086-11-040\" also written on sticker on the reel. \"RT 523\" 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 3"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Oppen, George"],"creator_names_search":["Oppen, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/98097764\",\"name\":\"Oppen, George\",\"dates\":\"1908-1984\",\"notes\":\"Poet George Oppen was born on April 24, 1908 in New Rochelle, New York. Spending much of his childhood in San Francisco, Oppen enrolled in the Agricultural College at Corvallis (now University of Oregon) in 1926. He met his future wife, Mary Colby there, and they married in 1928. Oppen attended a prep school in Oakland in the hopes of enrolling at the University at Berkeley, but instead the couple made their way to New York in the hopes of meeting Ezra Pound.  In New York City, they met Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky, and in 1931 they formed the Objectivist movement. Having finally met Ezra Pound, Oppen’s poetry was published in his Active Anthology in 1933 (Faber and Faber). Oppen’s first collection of poetry, written in 1929, Discrete Series, was published by the Objectivist Press in 1934 and opened with a preface by Ezra Pound. From that point onwards, Oppen stopped writing poetry. The Depression had hit and the Oppens spent their time in the 30’s and 40’s organizing the unemployed in Brooklyn. Oppen served for the U.S. Army from 1943-1945 and received a Purple Heart among other honours. After the war, his family moved to Los Angeles, until 1950 when they were harassed by the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee for their affiliations with Communism. They fled to Mexico and resided there for eight years. By the time the Oppen family moved back to New York in 1958, Oppen had taken up poetry again. In 1962, Oppen published his second collection of poems, The Materials (New Directions Press), followed in 1965 with This In Which and Of Being Numerous in 1968 (New Directions Press), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1969. Seascape: Needle’s Eye was published in 1972 (Sumac Press), and in 1975 Oppen compiled his previously published material with new poems in Collected Poems (New Directions). His final collection of poetry, Primitive was published in 1978 (Black Sparrow Press). George Oppen died in July 1984.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"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\":\"Poor\",\"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"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 11 25\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the spine of the tape's box. Previous researcher statest the Gazette published the date of the reading as March 8, 1968 but may have been changed subsequently\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building\",\"notes\":\"Exact venue unknown\",\"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"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["George Oppen reads his long poem “The Route” from Of Being Numerous (New Directions Press, 1968). "],"contents":["george_oppen_i086-11-040.mp3\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nThis evening, we're having George Oppen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3101810], who is going to start off the third series, now I want to keep this introduction to George very succinct, and I'm going to quote a part of the letter that he sent to us, regarding his activities, I think it adequately, perhaps, sums up what he's been about. It goes like this: \"A bibliography, in so far as my memory will produce it. Objectivist Issue of Poetry, Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297], circa 1932. A book, Discrete Series, Objectivist Press, 1934, re-issued by Asphodel Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2089201], 463 The Arcade, Cleveland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37320], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. Pound's Active Anthology, 1936, a number of little magazines during 33, 34, Hound and Horn, I believe, Lion and Crown, etc. There it is, you'll see, 25 year gap. Touched on in some of the poems including “Pro Nobis” in This In Which. A forthcoming book, Of Being Numerous, New Directions [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27474] scheduled for the spring of 1968.\" And he ends by saying, \"If there is a moral it is one has in fact a great deal of triumph, and then, recently, he has had the following books done: This in Which, by New Directions, 1957, The Materials, New Directions again, 1962, Of Being Numerous, 1968. Now if there's any a book of poems, Discrete Series, there is a long preface by Ezra Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366], I'd like to quote a segment of that, which goes like this: \"I salute a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man's sensibility, and which is not been got out of other man's books.\" Ladies and gentlemen, George Oppen.\n\nUnknown \n00:02:47\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nGeorge Oppen\n00:02:48\nI think I will, I plan to read two of the longer poems in the last volume, so I will just read the poems. Without pleasantries and so on. We can easily make a conversation if you want afterwards, but I think I better just read the books, read the poems, and I'll make a few intermissions, it's a great deal of poetry both for you and for me, at a single sitting, and we'll make intermissions as however you think, however I think. I'll start with the poem in Of Being Numerous, called \"The Route\". That's r-o-u-t-e, route.\n \nGeorge Oppen\n00:03:37\nReads \"The Route\" from Of Being Numerous.\n \nUnknown\n00:18:45\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\n \nGeorge Oppen\n00:18:58\nResumes reading “The Route’\n \nUnknown\n00:22:14\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n \nEND\n00:40:12\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nIn 1968, George Oppen published Of Being Numerous (New Directions Press, 1968).\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nThe direct connection between Oppen and Montreal or Sir George Williams University is unknown. Oppen was an important American poet, forming with Charles Reznikoff (also in this series) and Louis Zukofsky the Objectivist movement, and working with both William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound.\\n\",\"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://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Oppen, George\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/of-being-numerous/oclc/462091047?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Oppen, George. Of Being Numerous. New York: New Directions Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. Montreal: The Gazette. 14September 1967, page 15. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Sutton, Mark. “Oppen, George”. Literature Online Biography. H.W. Wilson Company, Proquest, 2002. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548870004736,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/george_oppen_i086-11-040.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"george_oppen_i086-11-040.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:40:12\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"96.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Roy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nThis evening, we're having George Oppen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3101810], who is going to start off the third series, now I want to keep this introduction to George very succinct, and I'm going to quote a part of the letter that he sent to us, regarding his activities, I think it adequately, perhaps, sums up what he's been about. It goes like this: \\\"A bibliography, in so far as my memory will produce it. Objectivist Issue of Poetry, Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297], circa 1932. A book, Discrete Series, Objectivist Press, 1934, re-issued by Asphodel Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2089201], 463 The Arcade, Cleveland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37320], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. Pound's Active Anthology, 1936, a number of little magazines during 33, 34, Hound and Horn, I believe, Lion and Crown, etc. There it is, you'll see, 25 year gap. Touched on in some of the poems including “Pro Nobis” in This In Which. A forthcoming book, Of Being Numerous, New Directions [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27474] scheduled for the spring of 1968.\\\" And he ends by saying, \\\"If there is a moral it is one has in fact a great deal of triumph, and then, recently, he has had the following books done: This in Which, by New Directions, 1957, The Materials, New Directions again, 1962, Of Being Numerous, 1968. Now if there's any a book of poems, Discrete Series, there is a long preface by Ezra Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366], I'd like to quote a segment of that, which goes like this: \\\"I salute a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man's sensibility, and which is not been got out of other man's books.\\\" Ladies and gentlemen, George Oppen.\\n\\nUnknown \\n00:02:47\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nGeorge Oppen\\n00:02:48\\nI think I will, I plan to read two of the longer poems in the last volume, so I will just read the poems. Without pleasantries and so on. We can easily make a conversation if you want afterwards, but I think I better just read the books, read the poems, and I'll make a few intermissions, it's a great deal of poetry both for you and for me, at a single sitting, and we'll make intermissions as however you think, however I think. I'll start with the poem in Of Being Numerous, called \\\"The Route\\\". That's r-o-u-t-e, route.\\n \\nGeorge Oppen\\n00:03:37\\nReads \\\"The Route\\\" from Of Being Numerous.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:18:45\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nGeorge Oppen\\n00:18:58\\nResumes reading “The Route’\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:22:14\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nEND\\n00:40:12\\n\",\"notes\":\"George Oppen reads his long poem “The Route” from Of Being Numerous (New Directions Press, 1968). \\n\\n00:00- Introducer (George Bowering?) introduces George Oppen [INDEX: Objectivist Issue of Poetry, 1932, Discreet Series, Objectivist Press, 1934, re-issued by Asphodel press, 462 Arcade, Cleveland Ohio: with long preface from Ezra Pound, Active Anthology ed. Ezra Pound 1936, Hound and Horn Magazine, Lion and Crown Magazine, Of Being Numerous, New Directions Press, 1968- [One year after recording won the Pulitzer Prize], The Materials, New Directions Press, 1962, This In Which, New Directions Press, 1957]\\n02:48- George Oppen introduces “The Route”.\\n03:37- Reads “The Route”. [INDEX: “The Route” in Of Being Numerous : partly about WWII, Alcace, German Nazi Soldiers]\\n40:12.69- END OF RECORDING\\n \\nFrom the Howard Fink list of poems:\\n25/11/68\\none 5” mono, single track reel, @ 3 3/4 ips, lasting 40 min.\\n1. “The Route”.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/george-oppen-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.5454967},{"id":"1303","cataloger_name":["Ali,Barillaro"],"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":["James Wright at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 December 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"I006/SR157 JAMES WRIGHT\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape box. \"I006-11-157\" written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 3"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Wright, James"],"creator_names_search":["Wright, James"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/12322205\",\"name\":\"Wright, James\",\"dates\":\"1927-1980\",\"notes\":\"American poet James Arlington Wright was born on December 13, 1927 in Martins Ferry, Ohio, an industrial town along the Ohio River. He began writing sonnets as a young child, was encouraged by his teachers to continue writing, though he suffered from a nervous breakdown in 1943. After graduation in 1946, Wright joined the U.S. Army, serving in Japan until 1948 when he returned to Ohio and enrolled in Kenyon College (where the influential John Crowe Ransom was teaching). His poetry was published in the Kenyon Review, Poetry (Chicago) and in The New Yorker.  In 1952 he married a high school classmate Liberty Kardules and spent the next year on a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Vienna. His first child, Franz, was born in 1953, and Wright enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, where his teachers were Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. His first book, The Green Wall (Yale University Press, 1958) was published because of his submission to the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, which W.H. Auden was judging. His second book, published in 1959 was Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press), the same year he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on Charles Dickens. During the next few years, Wright’s marriage failed, and he was denied tenure at the University of Minnesota. Wright’s next publication, The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963) proved to be groundbreaking, and was followed by Shall We Gather at the River (1968). Wright spent a few years at the Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and was then awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965-66. Wright moved again, to New York City and took up a position at Hunter College in 1966. He met his second wife, Edith Anne Runk that same year. Wright was awarded both a Rockefeller Foundation Grant and an Ingram Merrill Foundation award for the publication of Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University) in 1969. Wright was able to publish his Collected Poems (Wesleyan University, 1971) which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, and was followed by Two Citizens (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973) and To a Blossoming Pear Tree (Farrer, Straus and Giroux, 1977). Wright was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue, and died four months later, in New York City on March 25, 1980. This Journey (Random House, 1982), Collected Prose (University of Michigan Press, 1983) and Above the River: The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992) were all published posthumously.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"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"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 12 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date referenced in \\\"Howard Fink Print Catalogue\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building\",\"notes\":\"Exact venue location unknown \",\"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"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["James Wright reads from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963), Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), and from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968)."],"contents":["james_wright_ i086-11-157.mp3\n\nJames Wright\n00:00:00\nWell, I feel about poetry in a curious way, I guess. I have a very strong classical streak in me, I think, I like poems that are very regular, and poems that rhyme, and poems that are passionately intellectual, and I think that I feel this way because the poems that are the most passionately intellectual have a way of spilling over into something which is completely free in its feeling. Oh here's a little poem by Ben Jonson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q193857]. It's called \"On My First Sonne\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7091055]. A little elegy. \n \nJames Wright\n00:00:52\nReads \"On My First Sonne\" by Ben Jonson.\n \nJames Wright\n00:01:55\nPoor old Ben Jonson, in a pig's eye. The next poem I would like to say is by an American poet, W.S. Merwin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q680368], who has just published his selected translations, and of course in addition to the very beautiful poems of his own that Merwin has, he's been a prolific translator, and he, he really does know the languages. I've loved his poetry always because he has such a beautiful ear, it was very interesting to me when I saw him in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] a few weeks ago, when he said that his Selected Translations were about to appear. I asked him if he remembered the transla--well of course he remembered, I just told him I always liked very much the poem he had translated, a later poem by Garcia Lorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41408]called \"Gacela of Unforseen Love\". What a weird thing! He didn't remember that he had done it. And it's not in his book. Well, I wish it were. \"Gacela of Unforseen Love\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:03:35\nReads \"Gacela of Unforseen Love\" by Federico Garcia Lorca and translated in English by W.S. Mervin.\n \nJames Wright\n00:04:30\nCan't imagine doing that in English and then forgetting that you've done it. Maybe it was frightening. Here in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] I've been thinking about what in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] we hear about Montreal, about the English background, and the French background, and the Canadian, all of which are very vital and alive, but what do you make of the Irish up here? Are there any Irishmen in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16]? [pauses for response]. Just on March 17th. Only on March 17th, fine. My own family background is kind of complicated. I'm an Ohioan, which is a kind of hell in itself [audience laughter]. But both sides of my family have roots in the south, but they have a strong streak of Irish behind them; it wasn't until I was quite old that I found out about some of Irish literature, of course we've all of us read Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. The son of a bitch. He not only did everything first but he did it best. We all feel that. But really he didn't do it all first. He may have done it best but there are some Irish things that I found that perhaps he grew out of it. Do you know for example, the poems of, of all people, Jonathan Swift [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41166]? Jonathan Swift is a wonderful poet. He published Gulliver's Travels [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181488] in 1725, and I found a little poem of his called \"On Burning a Dull Poem\". Of 1729. And it has a, it's a wonderful expression of the Irish art of the curse. I shouldn't lean on this. I don't mean the poem, I mean the lectern. [Audience laughter]. But it's a wonderful example of the Irish art of the curse, what is supposed to be very regular and it's almost like a prayer. The art here is that you should decide first of all whether or not what you feel annoyed by really is worthy of a curse. And then if it is, you should not come out and blast it directly, but exercise some indirection on it. So here we have Swift, \"On Burning a Dull Poem\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:07:29\nReads  \"On Burning a Dull Poem\" by Jonathan Swift.\n \nJames Wright\n00:08:25\nI can't help bringing that a little closer to our own time. We all know the very beautiful plays of John Millington Synge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q213447]. Perhaps people haven't so widely enjoyed his poems. He didn't write a great many, but to my mind he wrote enough. He also, he made a translation of Petrarch [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1401] into the same language as those people, as those women on the Aran Islands [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212893] who used to clean his room. He said he learned something about the rhythm of his language just by listening to them. So that in the sound of the Petrarch after Laura is dead and is appearing in heaven, and the angels are astonished by her beauty, the sestet of that sonnet, in Synge's translation, the angels see Laura and suddenly say, \"What rare beauty is that now? What rare beauty at all.\" So that those old women who cleaned his room on the Aran Islands have the voices of the angels. Well, after The Playboy of the Western World [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q451517] was first produced, he was criticized and he wanted to write something about the criticism. He didn't know whether the, who the critic was, really, he didn't know anything about him, he didn't know whether or not the critic had a sister. But there was the poem, and since he realized, as Aristotle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q868] said, that “poetry is a higher and more philosophical thing than history”--history being limited to what is or was, and poetry having available to it what ought to be, what might be...Synge invented a sister, and he wrote a little poem called \"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\". [Audience laughter]. This is a prayer. [Audience laughter]. And blasphemy also is a very delicate art. \"Lord\"...no I have to say, that you have to understand, really what \"Mountjoy\" is. Mountjoy is a place on the edge of Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1761], a kind of charity place where the Skid Rowers go.  \n \nJames Wright\n00:11:06\nReads \"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\" by John Millington Synge.\n \nAudience\n00:11:32\nLaughter.\n \nJames Wright\n00:11:43\nI came to like those Irish poets, so much, because they enjoyed poetry. My God, you've got to do something, life is a mess. Well, alright, I want to say one more poem that I care about. I know I'm going on too long with this business. One more. Let me say it in English first, and you can't say that I'm translating at sight, but perhaps by ear, and it'll be very awkward, but it's not awkward in the German. When--it's a poem that doesn't have a title. I don't think I'll tell you who wrote it. The poem goes: \"When the clocks nearby strike as if their own hearts were beating, and things--that is, material objects-things, with hesitant voices say to me softly, ‘Are you there?’ Then I am not the same man who woke this morning, for the night has sent me a name which no one to whom I spoke by daylight can listen to without being deeply frightened. Every door in me opens, and then I know that nothing dies, neither gesture, nor prayer. Things are too heavy for that. My whole childhood stands always around me. I am never alone. Many who live before me, and many who spring forth from me”--which I would also, I suppose, translate as ‘many who spring forth out of my body'--”wove, wove into my being. And if I sit down opposite you and say, lightly, I have been suffering, do you hear? Who knows? Who murmurs that voice with me?\"\n\nJames Wright\n00:14:19\nReads untitled poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in German.\n \nJames Wright\n00:15:28\nOh, no that's corny, of course it's by Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483]. I mean it's corny to hold back the name. It's one of those lyrics that Rilke wrote between those New Poems [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7011009] and the big terrible ones, the Duino Elegies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q688426] and the Sonnets. Well, let me proceed now to some poems of my own. The first one I think I will read is a poem called \"A Note left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\". I've been thinking about that poem a little bit recently for a lot of reasons. I think I should tell you something about what's behind it. There was an old guy called Minnegan Leonard who, or maybe Francis Leonard, who grew up--no, [laughter] I mean he was old, I grew up--he was already there [audience laughter]. Back in Martins Ferry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1018313], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. The story about him was that he had been a very well-educated man and he sort of deteriorated, everyone said. One night, a couple of friends and I found him in the, when the snow was starting to fall. And his, he wore a pair of overalls, the ones that cross behind, and they were too big, my friends and I helped him get home. We were very much afraid of his brother, Jimmy. Minnegan had drunk so much that his brain was practically gone, and he had nothing left to say to the universe except \"God bless my soul.\" We were stupid, we were afraid of his brother Jimmy, because his brother Jimmy, although drunk, was still mean. He still had some of his humanity left. And we were afraid of him. I thought about this poem as being spoken by a boy, I was about twelve years old. I also wanted to see if I could get away with swearing in a poem, and give the word, give the profanity some of its true force. The only thing that I deplore about the open use of profanity is that very soon, when the four-letter words are used commonly, they start to lose touch with their old, magical, dark force. When I was in the army, twenty years ago, I realized that this happened. You couldn't say \"fuck\" to refer to anything dark or anything interesting. It became a musical notation. Merely a musical notation, like a comma, when you were having chow. [Audience laughter]. But then there came those necessary moments when one absolutely needs to curse, and what does one do then? Then I saw all sorts of people around me, floundering, turning to what Wordsworth would have called the \"poetic diction,\" and finding that to say \"fuck\" had about as much effect on the release of one's feelings as the Finney crew had on anybody who was trying to read about fish in the end of the 18th century. Then I met a poetic genius named Mark W. Patrick from Crafton, Alabama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173], who was not hobbled by this. Someone asked him once, no he had invention, true invention. He knew how to swear. My wife has heard this before. Alright, I'll say it again. Someone said to him, \"Where are you from?\" And he said, \"I come from so far back in the country, they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making.” [Audience laughter]. No, wait a minute, you didn't hear the rest of the conceit. Now listen to this carefully and think of it as in Shakespearian. \"I come from so far back in the country they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making ring-tailed biscuits.\" [Audience laughter]. I thought, let us somehow rescue through invention our power to curse. Well this poem is called, \"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\". It's about taking Minnegan Leonard home when he was helpless in the snow.\n \nJames Wright\n00:21:07\nReads \"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\" [from Saint Judas].\n \nUnknown\n00:22:43\nAmbient Sound. \n \nJames Wright\n00:22:58\nNow for a while I think I would like to read from my new book. There are a couple of city poems in this new book, well, more than a couple, and many of the things that I had written before were about the country, more or less, in Ohio, and in Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527]. But I developed a certain feeling about cities, I guess, and...I didn't have a very happy time in Minneapolis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36091] and St. Paul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28848], but I lived there for about eight years, and before I left I thought I ought to say farewell, somehow. I couldn't think of a title for this poem that would convey or suggest what I really felt, and the true title came to me. I wanted it to be a poem about, not only about Minneapolis but about many American cities, and what has been happening in them. Minneapolis is my favourite because I lived there for quite a while, and they had a very big Skid Row there, and the Skid Row was cleared out by the city administration, the last, the most recent one. It was a very big Skid Row, between the Great Northern Railroad Station and the Mississippi River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1497], right a strip across there, several blocks wide. And they sort of flattened it. They put up an insurance building and the rest were parking lots. And it never occurred to them that the people who lived there would...well, even existed. And I know where those people went, they went down Nickolet Avenue, scattered down there. It's a very strange thing. Spiro T. Agnew [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203433], our new American Vice-President said, during the campaign, \"The reasons the slums are so over-crowded is that there are too many people in them.\" [Audience laughter]. Well, this is my city poem. It's called \"The Minneapolis Poem\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:26:11\nReads \"The Minneapolis Poem\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:30:39\nThe next poem is called, \"In Terror of Hospital\"-- [cut or edit in tape] \"In Terror of Hospital Bills\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:30:51\nReads \"In Terror of Hospital Bills\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].   \n \nJames Wright\n00:32:36\nThis poem is called \"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\". It's about leaving Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297]. I went down there for a long Thanksgiving weekend to visit a man whose poetry I had seen, I had never met him, I admired it very much. His name is Bill Mott. He has finally published a first book. He lived in an area down there where there were some sort of poor people...I don't mean poor people in the sense of being savagely poor, really really put down, but just sort of drifters, the guys who go into the, who go in on Thanksgiving and get a dinner there from the Salvation Army [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q188307] and look at it and then sweep up and leave. \n \nJames Wright\n00:33:53\nReads \"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:35:43\nYou know, George Orwell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3335] remarked in Down and Out in Paris and London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1355487] that when he got back to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] from France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142] where he'd been a dishwasher, he had so little money that he realized that he would have to beg, only somehow his clothes, ratty as they were, were still too good to beg with. And so he, he sold what clothes he had, or traded them, rather, for a really crummy suit of clothes, and when he got those old, really poor man's clothes on, he noticed all sorts of strange things. The way people looked at him. The way women looked at him. As well as other men. And the fact that he was poor had an effect on the way people's souls were shaped, somehow. I only had a very slight experience of that in my life, and I don't want any more of it. Because it's not very romantic. For a while I had a sort of, an account at a department store in Minneapolis, and I was behind in my payments. At that time I had an old green coat my father had given me, it didn't quite fit but a coat is a coat. So I had it, and I was, in order to keep myself going one way or another, I went up to the cashier's office at this department store and tried to cash a small cheque for twenty dollars, or something like that. There was a very beautiful girl there, the cashier, and she looked at me, and she disappeared for a moment and she came back with a fellow who had a crew cut. And he evidently was the Grand Vizier, or something. Well, they were about a foot and a half away from my face while I waited, and they talked about me, without paying any attention to me. And I realized something I had never realized before. That I'm, I am content simply to think about it, I don't want it to happen to me again  I thought, Jesus Christ, there are millions of people in this country who are treated like things, every single intimate moment of their lives. And it's not pretty. Well. \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\". The poem is in different parts and I think I'll indicate the numbers. \n \nJames Wright\n00:38:45\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 1 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:39:17\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 2 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:39:44\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 3 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:40:20\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store”, Part 4 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:40:38\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 5 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:41:11\nI think that I'll read a couple of nature poems. Nature, in poetry and song. One of the parts of the United States that I like very much...I came to like, I've spoken kind of harshly about Minneapolis, and I have harsh feelings about that city, but actually I love the West, out at the edge of Minnesota, you have, there's Minnesota, North Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1207], and South Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1211], and that part of the country there is sort of the, it's not really flat, it's a little rolling, but it's the beginning of the prairie, and the prairie is a beautiful thing. I spent a summer up around Fargo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34109], North Dakota, and I like Fargo, I like to walk there in the summer evenings, I would go even out to the other end of town, and, well it really is a real city, there are about eighty-thousand people, but you could walk out to the edge of town, and just a little beyond the town the prairie would begin. There is something about that sudden opening that I like.  his is called, \"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:42:45\nReads \"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:43:07\nNo, may I start the poem again, I miss, I made a mistake. \n \nJames Wright\n00:43:11\nReads \"Outside Fargo, North Dakota” [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:44:04\nNow this one is called \"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\". I love those old trains, we were talking about this earlier, there's a certain thing about trains, especially in the West, west of Chicago. It's not true in the East. One of these days somebody's going to get a train from New York to Connecticut [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q779] or something and that train will never return, it'll keep coming back, every forty years with ghosts on it, flying Dutchmen. But it's different in the West, and...there's a discontinued railroad station. \n \nJames Wright\n00:44:53\nReads \"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:46:30\nI think I'll read...I think I'll read just a few more very short poems, perhaps two or three, and they're kind of nature poems, I guess. Nature indeed, one of them is a love poem. This is called \"A Light in the Hallway\". \n \nJames Wright\n00:47:07\nReads \"A Light in the Hallway\" [published as “The Lights in the Hallway” in Shall We Gather at the River]. \n \nJames Wright\n00:48:06\nAnd then a couple out of my previous book. This poem is called \"Mary Bly\", it's for my goddaughter, and I stood up there in the church and they said, well, I went through the ceremony and I am her godfather, Mary Bly, it's the first child of my old friend, my old friends, Robert and Carol Bly. I feel very proud of this poem, but it's one of those times that, it signifies one of those times in my life when I really thought of something nice to do and did it. So many things I want to do that would be nice, and usually they turn out to be something either asinine or too late, or something. But I wrote this poem for little Mary's christening, and I had it, it's the only time I've ever done this, I had it specially printed on very nice paper and print and had it put in a little silver frame, and gave it to her mother, on the day of the christening. What a calm thing to pull on an audience, how can you help but like it. [Audience laughter]. If you don't like it, it means you don't like motherhood or small children, no. \"Mary Bly\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:49:51\nReads \"Mary Bly\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\n\nJames Wright\n00:50:42\nAnd I think I will conclude with a poem which is just a description. There were some other descriptive poems in my last book which, for some weird reason, drove some reviewers to distraction. For example, in one poem, there was a poem about being at a bus stop at a place in Ohio and looking out the window and seeing a farmer at the beginning of a rain calling his cows in, and one reviewer got terribly upset about this and said, how...he's only stopping there on the bus, how did he know that there were a hundred black and white Holsteins. [Audience laughter]. And Robert Bly urged me and urged me to send the reviewer a postcard. I never did it, I wish I had. It was to have said, \"I counted the tits and divided by four.\" [Audience laughter]. Well, no but, just, I just want to present this poem. It's called \"A Blessing\", and for what it is, it's just a description of something. \n \nJames Wright\n00:52:28\nReads \"A Blessing\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\n \nJames Wright\n00:54:02\nThank you. \n \nAudience\n00:54:03\nApplause. \n \nIntroducer\n00:54:21\nI'd just like to express all our thanks to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850] for sharing his poetry and his curses and blessings with us tonight, and to remind you that the next reading in the series is by Muriel Rukeyser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735177] on Friday, January 24th. \n \nEND\n00:54:38\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nWright was teaching at the Uptown Branch of Hunter College and published Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan Press) in 1968.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nJames Wright often taught summer courses at universities across the country, and he taught at Sir George Williams University sometime between 1967 and 1972.\",\"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://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cambridge, Gerry. \\\"Wright, James”. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (ed). Oxford University Press 2004.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/wild-perfection-the-selected-letters-of-james-wright/oclc/56085881?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Wright, Anne & Saundra Rose Maley & Johnathan Blunk (eds). A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-james-wright/oclc/1097023113&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Collected Poems. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/branch-will-not-break-poems-3-print/oclc/469778489&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. The Branch Will Not Break. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1963. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/saint-judas-poems/oclc/898904265&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Saint Judas. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/shall-we-gather-at-the-river/oclc/492204830&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Shall We Gather at the River. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/two-citizens/oclc/795309054&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Two Citizens. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Wright, James [Arlington]\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548966473728,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0025_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0025_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Tape\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I0006_11_0157_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0157_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Side\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I0006_11_0157_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0157_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Front\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I0006_11_0157_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0157_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Back\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/james_wright_i006-11-157.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"james_wright_ i086-11-157.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:54:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"131.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"James Wright\\n00:00:00\\nWell, I feel about poetry in a curious way, I guess. I have a very strong classical streak in me, I think, I like poems that are very regular, and poems that rhyme, and poems that are passionately intellectual, and I think that I feel this way because the poems that are the most passionately intellectual have a way of spilling over into something which is completely free in its feeling. Oh here's a little poem by Ben Jonson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q193857]. It's called \\\"On My First Sonne\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7091055]. A little elegy. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:00:52\\nReads \\\"On My First Sonne\\\" by Ben Jonson.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:01:55\\nPoor old Ben Jonson, in a pig's eye. The next poem I would like to say is by an American poet, W.S. Merwin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q680368], who has just published his selected translations, and of course in addition to the very beautiful poems of his own that Merwin has, he's been a prolific translator, and he, he really does know the languages. I've loved his poetry always because he has such a beautiful ear, it was very interesting to me when I saw him in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] a few weeks ago, when he said that his Selected Translations were about to appear. I asked him if he remembered the transla--well of course he remembered, I just told him I always liked very much the poem he had translated, a later poem by Garcia Lorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41408]called \\\"Gacela of Unforseen Love\\\". What a weird thing! He didn't remember that he had done it. And it's not in his book. Well, I wish it were. \\\"Gacela of Unforseen Love\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:03:35\\nReads \\\"Gacela of Unforseen Love\\\" by Federico Garcia Lorca and translated in English by W.S. Mervin.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:04:30\\nCan't imagine doing that in English and then forgetting that you've done it. Maybe it was frightening. Here in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] I've been thinking about what in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] we hear about Montreal, about the English background, and the French background, and the Canadian, all of which are very vital and alive, but what do you make of the Irish up here? Are there any Irishmen in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16]? [pauses for response]. Just on March 17th. Only on March 17th, fine. My own family background is kind of complicated. I'm an Ohioan, which is a kind of hell in itself [audience laughter]. But both sides of my family have roots in the south, but they have a strong streak of Irish behind them; it wasn't until I was quite old that I found out about some of Irish literature, of course we've all of us read Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. The son of a bitch. He not only did everything first but he did it best. We all feel that. But really he didn't do it all first. He may have done it best but there are some Irish things that I found that perhaps he grew out of it. Do you know for example, the poems of, of all people, Jonathan Swift [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41166]? Jonathan Swift is a wonderful poet. He published Gulliver's Travels [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181488] in 1725, and I found a little poem of his called \\\"On Burning a Dull Poem\\\". Of 1729. And it has a, it's a wonderful expression of the Irish art of the curse. I shouldn't lean on this. I don't mean the poem, I mean the lectern. [Audience laughter]. But it's a wonderful example of the Irish art of the curse, what is supposed to be very regular and it's almost like a prayer. The art here is that you should decide first of all whether or not what you feel annoyed by really is worthy of a curse. And then if it is, you should not come out and blast it directly, but exercise some indirection on it. So here we have Swift, \\\"On Burning a Dull Poem\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:07:29\\nReads  \\\"On Burning a Dull Poem\\\" by Jonathan Swift.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:08:25\\nI can't help bringing that a little closer to our own time. We all know the very beautiful plays of John Millington Synge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q213447]. Perhaps people haven't so widely enjoyed his poems. He didn't write a great many, but to my mind he wrote enough. He also, he made a translation of Petrarch [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1401] into the same language as those people, as those women on the Aran Islands [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212893] who used to clean his room. He said he learned something about the rhythm of his language just by listening to them. So that in the sound of the Petrarch after Laura is dead and is appearing in heaven, and the angels are astonished by her beauty, the sestet of that sonnet, in Synge's translation, the angels see Laura and suddenly say, \\\"What rare beauty is that now? What rare beauty at all.\\\" So that those old women who cleaned his room on the Aran Islands have the voices of the angels. Well, after The Playboy of the Western World [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q451517] was first produced, he was criticized and he wanted to write something about the criticism. He didn't know whether the, who the critic was, really, he didn't know anything about him, he didn't know whether or not the critic had a sister. But there was the poem, and since he realized, as Aristotle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q868] said, that “poetry is a higher and more philosophical thing than history”--history being limited to what is or was, and poetry having available to it what ought to be, what might be...Synge invented a sister, and he wrote a little poem called \\\"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\\\". [Audience laughter]. This is a prayer. [Audience laughter]. And blasphemy also is a very delicate art. \\\"Lord\\\"...no I have to say, that you have to understand, really what \\\"Mountjoy\\\" is. Mountjoy is a place on the edge of Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1761], a kind of charity place where the Skid Rowers go.  \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:11:06\\nReads \\\"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\\\" by John Millington Synge.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:11:32\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:11:43\\nI came to like those Irish poets, so much, because they enjoyed poetry. My God, you've got to do something, life is a mess. Well, alright, I want to say one more poem that I care about. I know I'm going on too long with this business. One more. Let me say it in English first, and you can't say that I'm translating at sight, but perhaps by ear, and it'll be very awkward, but it's not awkward in the German. When--it's a poem that doesn't have a title. I don't think I'll tell you who wrote it. The poem goes: \\\"When the clocks nearby strike as if their own hearts were beating, and things--that is, material objects-things, with hesitant voices say to me softly, ‘Are you there?’ Then I am not the same man who woke this morning, for the night has sent me a name which no one to whom I spoke by daylight can listen to without being deeply frightened. Every door in me opens, and then I know that nothing dies, neither gesture, nor prayer. Things are too heavy for that. My whole childhood stands always around me. I am never alone. Many who live before me, and many who spring forth from me”--which I would also, I suppose, translate as ‘many who spring forth out of my body'--”wove, wove into my being. And if I sit down opposite you and say, lightly, I have been suffering, do you hear? Who knows? Who murmurs that voice with me?\\\"\\n\\nJames Wright\\n00:14:19\\nReads untitled poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in German.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:15:28\\nOh, no that's corny, of course it's by Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483]. I mean it's corny to hold back the name. It's one of those lyrics that Rilke wrote between those New Poems [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7011009] and the big terrible ones, the Duino Elegies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q688426] and the Sonnets. Well, let me proceed now to some poems of my own. The first one I think I will read is a poem called \\\"A Note left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\\\". I've been thinking about that poem a little bit recently for a lot of reasons. I think I should tell you something about what's behind it. There was an old guy called Minnegan Leonard who, or maybe Francis Leonard, who grew up--no, [laughter] I mean he was old, I grew up--he was already there [audience laughter]. Back in Martins Ferry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1018313], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. The story about him was that he had been a very well-educated man and he sort of deteriorated, everyone said. One night, a couple of friends and I found him in the, when the snow was starting to fall. And his, he wore a pair of overalls, the ones that cross behind, and they were too big, my friends and I helped him get home. We were very much afraid of his brother, Jimmy. Minnegan had drunk so much that his brain was practically gone, and he had nothing left to say to the universe except \\\"God bless my soul.\\\" We were stupid, we were afraid of his brother Jimmy, because his brother Jimmy, although drunk, was still mean. He still had some of his humanity left. And we were afraid of him. I thought about this poem as being spoken by a boy, I was about twelve years old. I also wanted to see if I could get away with swearing in a poem, and give the word, give the profanity some of its true force. The only thing that I deplore about the open use of profanity is that very soon, when the four-letter words are used commonly, they start to lose touch with their old, magical, dark force. When I was in the army, twenty years ago, I realized that this happened. You couldn't say \\\"fuck\\\" to refer to anything dark or anything interesting. It became a musical notation. Merely a musical notation, like a comma, when you were having chow. [Audience laughter]. But then there came those necessary moments when one absolutely needs to curse, and what does one do then? Then I saw all sorts of people around me, floundering, turning to what Wordsworth would have called the \\\"poetic diction,\\\" and finding that to say \\\"fuck\\\" had about as much effect on the release of one's feelings as the Finney crew had on anybody who was trying to read about fish in the end of the 18th century. Then I met a poetic genius named Mark W. Patrick from Crafton, Alabama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173], who was not hobbled by this. Someone asked him once, no he had invention, true invention. He knew how to swear. My wife has heard this before. Alright, I'll say it again. Someone said to him, \\\"Where are you from?\\\" And he said, \\\"I come from so far back in the country, they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making.” [Audience laughter]. No, wait a minute, you didn't hear the rest of the conceit. Now listen to this carefully and think of it as in Shakespearian. \\\"I come from so far back in the country they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making ring-tailed biscuits.\\\" [Audience laughter]. I thought, let us somehow rescue through invention our power to curse. Well this poem is called, \\\"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\\\". It's about taking Minnegan Leonard home when he was helpless in the snow.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:21:07\\nReads \\\"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\\\" [from Saint Judas].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:22:43\\nAmbient Sound. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:22:58\\nNow for a while I think I would like to read from my new book. There are a couple of city poems in this new book, well, more than a couple, and many of the things that I had written before were about the country, more or less, in Ohio, and in Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527]. But I developed a certain feeling about cities, I guess, and...I didn't have a very happy time in Minneapolis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36091] and St. Paul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28848], but I lived there for about eight years, and before I left I thought I ought to say farewell, somehow. I couldn't think of a title for this poem that would convey or suggest what I really felt, and the true title came to me. I wanted it to be a poem about, not only about Minneapolis but about many American cities, and what has been happening in them. Minneapolis is my favourite because I lived there for quite a while, and they had a very big Skid Row there, and the Skid Row was cleared out by the city administration, the last, the most recent one. It was a very big Skid Row, between the Great Northern Railroad Station and the Mississippi River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1497], right a strip across there, several blocks wide. And they sort of flattened it. They put up an insurance building and the rest were parking lots. And it never occurred to them that the people who lived there would...well, even existed. And I know where those people went, they went down Nickolet Avenue, scattered down there. It's a very strange thing. Spiro T. Agnew [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203433], our new American Vice-President said, during the campaign, \\\"The reasons the slums are so over-crowded is that there are too many people in them.\\\" [Audience laughter]. Well, this is my city poem. It's called \\\"The Minneapolis Poem\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:26:11\\nReads \\\"The Minneapolis Poem\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:30:39\\nThe next poem is called, \\\"In Terror of Hospital\\\"-- [cut or edit in tape] \\\"In Terror of Hospital Bills\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:30:51\\nReads \\\"In Terror of Hospital Bills\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].   \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:32:36\\nThis poem is called \\\"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\\\". It's about leaving Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297]. I went down there for a long Thanksgiving weekend to visit a man whose poetry I had seen, I had never met him, I admired it very much. His name is Bill Mott. He has finally published a first book. He lived in an area down there where there were some sort of poor people...I don't mean poor people in the sense of being savagely poor, really really put down, but just sort of drifters, the guys who go into the, who go in on Thanksgiving and get a dinner there from the Salvation Army [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q188307] and look at it and then sweep up and leave. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:33:53\\nReads \\\"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:35:43\\nYou know, George Orwell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3335] remarked in Down and Out in Paris and London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1355487] that when he got back to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] from France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142] where he'd been a dishwasher, he had so little money that he realized that he would have to beg, only somehow his clothes, ratty as they were, were still too good to beg with. And so he, he sold what clothes he had, or traded them, rather, for a really crummy suit of clothes, and when he got those old, really poor man's clothes on, he noticed all sorts of strange things. The way people looked at him. The way women looked at him. As well as other men. And the fact that he was poor had an effect on the way people's souls were shaped, somehow. I only had a very slight experience of that in my life, and I don't want any more of it. Because it's not very romantic. For a while I had a sort of, an account at a department store in Minneapolis, and I was behind in my payments. At that time I had an old green coat my father had given me, it didn't quite fit but a coat is a coat. So I had it, and I was, in order to keep myself going one way or another, I went up to the cashier's office at this department store and tried to cash a small cheque for twenty dollars, or something like that. There was a very beautiful girl there, the cashier, and she looked at me, and she disappeared for a moment and she came back with a fellow who had a crew cut. And he evidently was the Grand Vizier, or something. Well, they were about a foot and a half away from my face while I waited, and they talked about me, without paying any attention to me. And I realized something I had never realized before. That I'm, I am content simply to think about it, I don't want it to happen to me again  I thought, Jesus Christ, there are millions of people in this country who are treated like things, every single intimate moment of their lives. And it's not pretty. Well. \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\". The poem is in different parts and I think I'll indicate the numbers. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:38:45\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 1 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:39:17\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 2 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:39:44\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 3 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:40:20\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store”, Part 4 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:40:38\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 5 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:41:11\\nI think that I'll read a couple of nature poems. Nature, in poetry and song. One of the parts of the United States that I like very much...I came to like, I've spoken kind of harshly about Minneapolis, and I have harsh feelings about that city, but actually I love the West, out at the edge of Minnesota, you have, there's Minnesota, North Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1207], and South Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1211], and that part of the country there is sort of the, it's not really flat, it's a little rolling, but it's the beginning of the prairie, and the prairie is a beautiful thing. I spent a summer up around Fargo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34109], North Dakota, and I like Fargo, I like to walk there in the summer evenings, I would go even out to the other end of town, and, well it really is a real city, there are about eighty-thousand people, but you could walk out to the edge of town, and just a little beyond the town the prairie would begin. There is something about that sudden opening that I like.  his is called, \\\"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:42:45\\nReads \\\"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:43:07\\nNo, may I start the poem again, I miss, I made a mistake. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:43:11\\nReads \\\"Outside Fargo, North Dakota” [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:44:04\\nNow this one is called \\\"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\\\". I love those old trains, we were talking about this earlier, there's a certain thing about trains, especially in the West, west of Chicago. It's not true in the East. One of these days somebody's going to get a train from New York to Connecticut [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q779] or something and that train will never return, it'll keep coming back, every forty years with ghosts on it, flying Dutchmen. But it's different in the West, and...there's a discontinued railroad station. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:44:53\\nReads \\\"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:46:30\\nI think I'll read...I think I'll read just a few more very short poems, perhaps two or three, and they're kind of nature poems, I guess. Nature indeed, one of them is a love poem. This is called \\\"A Light in the Hallway\\\". \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:47:07\\nReads \\\"A Light in the Hallway\\\" [published as “The Lights in the Hallway” in Shall We Gather at the River]. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:48:06\\nAnd then a couple out of my previous book. This poem is called \\\"Mary Bly\\\", it's for my goddaughter, and I stood up there in the church and they said, well, I went through the ceremony and I am her godfather, Mary Bly, it's the first child of my old friend, my old friends, Robert and Carol Bly. I feel very proud of this poem, but it's one of those times that, it signifies one of those times in my life when I really thought of something nice to do and did it. So many things I want to do that would be nice, and usually they turn out to be something either asinine or too late, or something. But I wrote this poem for little Mary's christening, and I had it, it's the only time I've ever done this, I had it specially printed on very nice paper and print and had it put in a little silver frame, and gave it to her mother, on the day of the christening. What a calm thing to pull on an audience, how can you help but like it. [Audience laughter]. If you don't like it, it means you don't like motherhood or small children, no. \\\"Mary Bly\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:49:51\\nReads \\\"Mary Bly\\\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\\n\\nJames Wright\\n00:50:42\\nAnd I think I will conclude with a poem which is just a description. There were some other descriptive poems in my last book which, for some weird reason, drove some reviewers to distraction. For example, in one poem, there was a poem about being at a bus stop at a place in Ohio and looking out the window and seeing a farmer at the beginning of a rain calling his cows in, and one reviewer got terribly upset about this and said, how...he's only stopping there on the bus, how did he know that there were a hundred black and white Holsteins. [Audience laughter]. And Robert Bly urged me and urged me to send the reviewer a postcard. I never did it, I wish I had. It was to have said, \\\"I counted the tits and divided by four.\\\" [Audience laughter]. Well, no but, just, I just want to present this poem. It's called \\\"A Blessing\\\", and for what it is, it's just a description of something. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:52:28\\nReads \\\"A Blessing\\\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:54:02\\nThank you. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:54:03\\nApplause. \\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:54:21\\nI'd just like to express all our thanks to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850] for sharing his poetry and his curses and blessings with us tonight, and to remind you that the next reading in the series is by Muriel Rukeyser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735177] on Friday, January 24th. \\n \\nEND\\n00:54:38\\n\",\"notes\":\"James Wright reads from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963), Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), and from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).\\n\\n00:00- James Wright introduces reading and poem by Ben Jonson “On My First Son”. [INDEX: poetry, classical poetry, rhyme, passionately intellectual, free feeling, poem by  Ben Jonson, elegy.]\\n00:52- Reads poem by Ben Jonson, “On My First Son”.\\n01:55- Introuces poem translated by W.S. Merwin, by Frederico Garcia Lorca, “Garcela of Unforseen Love”. [INDEX: American poet, W.S. Merwin, translations, New York,     Selected Translations (Antheneum, 1979), poem by Garcia Lorca.]\\n03:35- Reads poem translated by W.S. Merwin, by Frederico Garcia Lorca “Garcela of        Unforseen Love”.\\n04:30- Introduces poem by Jonathan Swift, “On Burning a Dull Poem”. [INDEX: Montreal, United States, English and French, Canadian, Irish, March 17th, family background, Ohioan, hell, Southern roots, Irish literature, Yeats, Jonathan Swift published Gulliver’s Travels in 1725, poem, expression of the Irish art of the curse, lecturn, prayer.]\\n07:29- Reads poem by Jonathan Swift, “On Burning a Dull Poem”.\\n08:25- Introduces poem by John Millington Synge “Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy”. [INDEX: time, plays of John Millington Synge, poems, translation of Petrarch, of the women on Erin Islands who cleaned his room, learnt from listening to rhythm of language, Petrarch, Laura, heaven, angels, sestet of the sonnet, quote “What rare beauty is that now? What rare beauty at all”, play “The Playboy of the Western World” produced, criticism, wrote about criticism, critic’s sister, Aristotle quote ‘poetry is a higher and more philosophical thing than history’, prayer, blasphemy as a   \\tdelicate art, Mountjoy is a place on the edge of Dublin, skid row.]\\n11:06- Reads poem by John Millington Synge “Upon the Sister of the Critic who    \\tAttacked the Playboy”.\\n11:43- Introduces and reads poem by Rilke, first line “When the clocks nearby strike as if their own hearts were beating...”. [INDEX: Irish poet, English, German, awkward  \\ttranslation, untitled poem, reads entire poem.]\\n11:14- Reads in German poem by Rilke, first line “When the clocks nearby strike as if       their own hearts were beating...”.\\n15:28- Explains Rilke poem, introduces “A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack”. [INDEX: Minnegan Leonard, Francis Leonard, Martin’s Ferry Ohio, well educated man,  \\tdeteriorated, snow, overalls, afraid of his brother Jimmy, drunk, humanity, poem spoken      by twelve years old boy, swearing in a poem, army, swear word as a musical notation,     Wordsworth, ‘poetic diction’, Finney crew, fish, 18th Century, poetic genius, quote from Mark W. Patrick from Crafton, Alabama, power to curse; from Saint Judas (Wesleyan    Press, 1959).]\\n21:07- Reads “A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack”.\\n22:58- Introduces “The Minneapolis Poem”. [INDEX: read from new book, Ohio, Minnesota, St. Paul, lived for 8 years, poem about Minneapolis, American cities, skid row, Great Northern Railway Station, Mississippi River, Nickolet Avenue, Spiro T. Agneau American Vice-President,  quote, slums, city poem; from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n26:11- Reads “The Minneapolis Poem”.\\n30:39- Cut/edit in recording, sentence begins and then continues, repeated at lower quality sound, perhaps a tape change?\\n30:50- James Wright introduces “In Terror of Hospital Bills”. [INDEX: from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n30:51- Reads “In Terror of Hospital Bills”.\\n32:36- Introduces “The Poor Washed Up By Chicago Winter”. [INDEX: leaving Chicago,        Thanksgiving weekend, Bill Mott, published first book, Salvation Army; from Shall We  Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n33:53- Reads “The Poor Washed Up By Chicago Winter”.\\n35:34- Introduces “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store”. [INDEX: George  Orwell quote from Down and Out in Paris and London, France, dishwasher, beg, clothes too good to beg in, sold clothes, effects of being poor, not romantic, account at a  \\tdepartment store, Minneapolis, behind in payments, father’s coat, cheque for twenty    dollars, cashier, Grand Vizier, never wanting to feel poor again; from Shall We Gather at      the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).] \\n38:45- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part I”.\\n39:17- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part II”.\\n39:44- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part III”.\\n40:20- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part IV”.\\n40:38- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part V”.\\n41:11- Introduces “Outside Fargo, North Dakota” [INDEX: nature poems, poetry, song,       United States, West, North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, country, prairies, summer, city; from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n42:45- Reads “Outside Fargo, North Dakota”.\\n44:04- Introduces “A Poem Written Under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota”. [INDEX: old trains, West, Chicago, East, New York, Conneticut, ghost train, flying Dutchmen; from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n44:53- Reads “A Poem Written Under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station,     Fargo, North Dakota”.\\n46:30- Introduces “A Light in the Hallway”. [INDEX: nature poems, short poems, love poem; published as “The Lights in the Hallway” in Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n47:07- Reads “A Light in the Hallway”.\\n48:06- Introduces “Mary Bly”. [INDEX: from previous book, for his goddaughter, church,        ceremony, Robert and Carol Bly, first child, proud, christening, poem as a gift, audience,        motherhood, small children; from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University     Press, 1963).]\\n49:51- Reads “Mary Bly”.\\n50:42- Introduces “A Blessing”. [INDEX: description, reviewers, bus stop, Ohio, farmer, rain, cows, holsteins, Robert Bly, sent reviewer postcard; from The Branch Will Not Break \\t(Wesleyan University Press, 1963).]\\n52:28- Reads “A Blessing”.\\n54:02- Thanks audience\\n54:21- Unknown introducer thanks James Wright and introduces next reading, Mary-Lou Kaiser [?] on January 24th.\\n00:54:38.42- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nHoward Fink List of Poems: \\nJames Wright\\nI086-11-052=AC\\nInformation from the Howard Fink Print Catalogue, Concordia Archives:\\n \\nTitle: James Wright reading his own poetry at Sir George Williams University\\nDate: December 13, 1968    \\nSource: one two-track, mono, 5” reel, @ 3 ¾ ips, duration 1 hour\\n \\n1. a poem by Ben Jonson “On My First Son”\\n2. a poem by W. S. Merwin “Nobody understood the perfume…”\\n3. a poem by Jonathan Swift “On Burning a Dull Poem”\\n4. A poem by John Millington Sing “Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy”\\n5. A poem by Rilke “When the clocks nearby…” (trans. James Wright)\\n6. Title: “Note left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack”\\n    first line: “Near the dry river’s watermark…”\\n7. Title: from his book Minneapolis Poems\\n    first line: “I wonder how many old men…”\\n8. Title: In Terror of Hospital Bills\\n    first line: “I still have some money…”\\n9. Title: The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\\n    first line: “Well I still have a train ticket”\\n10. Title: Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store\\n      first line: “The beautiful cashier’s face…”\\n11. Title: Outside Fargo, North Dakota\\n      first line: “Along the…”\\n12. Title: A Poem Written Under an Archway in a Discontinued Rail Road Station\\n      first line: “Outside the great…”\\n13. Title: The Light in the Hallway\\n      first line: “The light in the hallway…”\\n14. Title: Mary Bly\\n      first line: “I sit here…”\\n15. Title: A Blessing “Just off the highway…”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/james-wright-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.5454967},{"id":"4160","cataloger_name":["Megan,Butchart"],"partnerInstitution":["University of British Columbia, Okanagan"],"collection_source_collection":["George Bowering fonds"],"source_collection_label":["George Bowering fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb at UBCO"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_id":["2019.003"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["1968 Election Year - U.S.A."],"item_title_source":["Title written on cassette."],"item_title_note":["Title on case: n/a\n\nSide A title: 1968 Election Year - U.S.A.\n\nSide B title: n/a\n\nJ-card description: n/a"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Home recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Bowering, George","Bowering, Angela","Kiyooka, Roy"],"creator_names_search":["Bowering, George","Bowering, Angela","Kiyooka, Roy"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Recordist\",\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/93542147\",\"name\":\"Bowering, Angela\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"A & B\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/1114/UBCO_Bowering_2019_003_001_a.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Maxell Compact Cassette C-60\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"30 min each side\",\"physical_condition\":\"Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"2019.003.001_Election_Year_USA_01_(MASTER_ACCESS).wav\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"96,000\",\"duration\":\"T01:04:07\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"2.23 GB\",\"bitrate\":\"24\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"Side A & B\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-10\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"Date listed on artifact.\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/453998152\",\"venue\":\"George and Angela Bowering's home\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"Grosvenor Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4872736\",\"longitude\":\"-73.619867\"}]"],"Address":["Grosvenor Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["George and Angela Bowering's home"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Contents description temporary."],"contents":["Side A consists of George Bowering recording a collage of television news and advertisement clips, and excerpts from conversations.\n \nSide B of the recording features a conversation between George Bowering, Angela Bowering, and Roy Kiyooka."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Digitization complete. Transcription complete.\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670550212182019,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.808Z","score":1.5454967}]