[{"id":"1053","cataloger_name":["Tomasz,Neugebauer"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["Quality Assurance collection"],"source_collection_label":["Quality Assurance collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Quality Assurance Unit"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["A test collection with maximum record complexity."],"collection_source_collection_id":["SGWU_77657/Concordia"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["John Wieners at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 8 October 1966 - COPY"],"item_title_source":["Catalgouer"],"item_title_note":["\"J. WIENES I006/SR119\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. J. WIENES refers to John Wieners. Wieners is mispelled "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_series_description":["This is a test description of a series."],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_subseries_description":["subseries description for Poetry 1, swallow ID 141"],"item_identifiers":["[I006/SR119]"],"rights":["No Copyright non commercial reuse only (NoCNC)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (BY-NC-ND)"],"rights_notes":["May use for research and teaching purposes. Non commercial use, with full citation."],"creator_names":["Wieners, John"],"creator_names_search":["Wieners, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/90723960\",\"name\":\"Wieners, John\",\"dates\":\"1934-2002\",\"notes\":\" American poet, playwright and essayist John Wieners was born in Boston on January 6, 1934. In 1934, Wieners earned a B.A. in English from Boston College, and subsequently worked at Harvard University’s Lamont Library. A 1955 poetry reading by Charles Olson inspired Wieners to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met and was mentored by Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. After completing studies in 1956, John Wieners moved back to Boston and started Measure, a (short-lived) literary magazine, as well as becoming involved in the Poet’s Theater in Cambridge. At the age of 24, (in 1958) Wieners moved to San Francisco and met Beat Poets Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, and published his first book of poems, The Hotel Wentley Poems (Dave Haselwood Publishing, 1965). John Wieners’ San Francisco journal, The Journal of John Wieners Is To Be Called 707 Scott Street for Billie Holiday, 1959, was published in 1966 by Sun & Moon Press. Wieners wrote plays that were never published during this time, until 1964 when he published Ace of Pentacles (published by James F. Carr & Robert A. Wilson). Charles Olson asked Wieners to be a graduate student and a teaching assistant at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1965, and Wieners eventually became the university’s chair of poetics, when he left by 1967. John Wieners suffered from mental illness, and was institutionalized for the second time in 1969, where he wrote Asylum Poems (For My Father) (Press of the Black Flag Raised). In 1970, he published Nerves (Cape Goliard Press), an internationally published book of poetry, and between 1967 to 1972, he published six smaller books of poetry. Behind the State Capitol; or, Cincinnati Pike (Good Gay Poets Press) was published in 1975 and thus marked the last of his published poems. John Wieners’ poetry, while highly appraised by Beat Poets, Black Mountain Poets and his peers, did not achieve wide public acclaim or readership. In 1985, however, Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (Black Sparrow Press) was compiled with the help of Robert Creeley and Allen Ginsberg. In the 70’s, John Wieners lived and became involved with anti-war movements and became an activist for gay rights, living at 44 Joy Street in Boston. Becoming more and more reclusive after the mid 70’s, John Wieners died of an apparent stroke on March 1, 2002. Michael Carr edited a posthumous collection of Wiener’s 1971 journals which was published in 2007.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Layton, Irving"],"contributors_names_search":["Layton, Irving"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/66482092/#Layton,_Irving,_1912-2006.\",\"name\":\"Layton, Irving\",\"dates\":\"1912-2006\",\"notes\":\"Irving Layton was on the Poetry Series organizing committee the year that John Wieners read at Sir George Williams University.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1966],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"Single Track\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/11552/I0006_11_0119_tape.jpg\",\"other\":\"The reel is shorter than most in the Poetry Series, with no additional real documenting this event. One wonders why it was recorded at 7.5 ips if only a 5 inch reel was available.\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch RB-5\",\"generations\":\"Original\",\"Conservation\":\"Not baked before being digitized.\",\"equalization\":\"None\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"7 1/2 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"T00:00:24\",\"physical_condition\":\"Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"Cardboard tape box.\",\"other_physical_description\":\"In good condition.\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1966 10 08\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"The date of the performance was originally found in the Howard Fink inventory list, and then corroborated with reference to student newspaper articles.\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"The Hall Building Art Gallery is currently occupied by Reggie's Pub and The Hive Co-op restaurant.\",\"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 Wieners reads from Ace of Pentacles (Carr & Wilson, 1964) as well as works published in 1985 in Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (Black Sparrow Press)."],"contents":["john_wieners_i006-11-119.mp3\n\nJohn Wieners\n00:00:00\nReads “Invocation to Summer” [recording begins abruptly].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:01:09\n\"Invitation Au Voyage: II\". Do you know that poem of Baudelaire's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501]? It's something at the end of the world. He’s speaking to his beloved, very simple. You know, lots of the German Romanticism was very simple.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:01:30\nReads \"Invitation Au Voyage: II\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:03:15\nWell let's go back to the old poems then, that have been published. Stuart Montgomery, well it doesn't matter. But that--I can send it off to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] to the Fulcrum Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5507820] doing a lot of Basil Bunting [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2886803] and the English poet of 65, resuscitated in America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] again, it's about time.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:03:44\nReads \"Long Nook\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:04:38\nI'll just make random choices. \"At Big Sur\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:04:53\nReads \"At Big Sur” [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:12\n\"Louise\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:21\nReads \"Louise\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:48\n\"The Pool of Light\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:53\nReads \"The Pool of Light\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:06:14\nFor Mari--No, this is “For Marion\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:06:19\nReads \"For Marion\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:07:05\n“The Mermaid Song”, forgive me for this, I thought the other poems would carry me through, but I'm reading and keeping with the mood for tonight, it seems to be more lyrical. \"The Serpent's Hiss\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:07:52\nReads \"The Serpent's Hiss\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:08:37\nAnd this is called \"Tuesday, 5 pm\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:08:43\nReads \"Tuesday, 5 pm\" [published later as “Tuesday 7:00 PM” in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:10:45\nI'm going to read the \"The Imperatrice\". Ace of Pentacles is a card in the Tarot deck, but the book should be called ‘pente’ which all the words that appeared in a hypnagogic vision, hypnagogic is the state between waking and sleeping, it's what Jung [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41532] practiced and his Marie Louise Franz would take down the things that came to him in the state between waking and sleeping and the letters ‘pente’ appeared in that state and I didn't know what they meant so I kept hunting around and I made the word 'pinnacles' out of it and somebody said why don't you call it \"Ace of Pinnacles\" and we made a whole thing about the Tarot deck, but that's not the title of the book. It should be ‘pente’ and that's from the Greek  which is ‘wall’. And I'd like have as a fronts piece for the book William Blake's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] \"The Chimney Sweep\"  [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2587725] the second version of that from the \"Songs of Experience\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27890603] when he says that my mum and father have gone up to the church to pray and they make a heaven of my misery. That kind of thing. Imperatrice there's another card from the Tarot deck it's the third card of the deck.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:12:09\nReads \"The Imperatrice\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:13:38\nThere is something else I thought I'd like to read after that one. I'll read a poem for Sylvia Plath [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133054] who was an American poet who married an English man, Ted Hughes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q272194] and had mental troubles and wrote a novel about it called The Bell Jar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1213085] under a pseudonym Victoria Lucas, so not to embarrass her mother, and then things became too much for her and I think in 1963, she did away with herself in London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], and it was a great loss, some people feel that and some do not, they feel that at least--Lowell has written an introduction to her poems posthumously printed called Ariel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q224733] and her first book was The Colossus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29889462]. But Victoria Lucas was, The Bell Jar, was, you could buy it through William Hiderman and it came down from Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] to the United States and it's never been printed in the country. This is \"The Suicide\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:15:06\nReads \"The Suicide\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:16:57\nLet's read some happy poems, I'm getting depressed.\n\nUnknown\n00:17:03\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n\nJohn Wieners\n00:17:04\nReads \"Ode on a Common Fountain\" [from Ace of Pentacles; recording jumps to mid-poem].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:19:51\nThat's the first poem, I ever, I was twenty, so that was twelve years ago, that poem was written. Now I can go back--I'm still writing about Acis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q419156] and Galatea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q241070] but these are terribly sentimental and distraught, drunken poems, you can call them. Maybe we'll have one more, or is that anything from that first reading that you'd like to hear again? I'd rather not go into it. [Unknown audience member suggests poem. Title unintelligible]. Okay, that's what Spender [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q448764] did say to me, he said you look like a de-frocked priest, so. Which I thought was awfully cruel, but I think I am one, my sister was a nun, I'll be a priest. Poets are priests, you know.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:20:54\nReads “There are holy orders in life...” [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nEND\n00:21:42\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\n From 1965-67, John Wieners was at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, either working as a graduate student or as the chair of poetics. At that time, Charles Olson left SUNY in 1966, to be replaced by Robert Creeley. Wieners’ The Journal of John Wieners Is To Be Called 707 Scott Street for Billie Holiday, 1959, was published in 1966.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nNo direct connections between John Wieners and Sir George Williams University are known, however Wieners was an important poet, connected with poets from both the Black Mountain school and Beat movements. \\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 (mp3)\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Foster, Edward Halsey. \\\"Gay Literature: Poetry and Prose\\\". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (ed). Oxford University Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/john-wieners-9143191.html\",\"citation\":\"Ward, Geoff. “John Joseph Wieners, poet, Jan. 6th 1934 - March 1st 2002”. The Independent, 15 March 2000.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ace-of-pentacles-a-new-book-of-poems-by-john-wieners/oclc/702932793?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Wieners, John. Ace of Pentacles. New York: Carr & Wilson, 1964\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-1958-1984/oclc/743392421&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wieners, John. Selected Poems, 1958-1984. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1985.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-wieners-at-sgwu-1966/\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Poetry Readings Inaugurated”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 10 October 1966, p. 6. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Wieners, John, 1934-”. Literature Online Biography. Literature Online: ProQuest, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12H55HcY0pAZtzJ9AmxLabbX2hdjvCaX0\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548245053440,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:52.745Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Wieners 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\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Wieners Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/john_wieners_i006-11-119.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"john_wieners_i006-11-119.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Standard\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:21:42\",\"precision\":\"Double\",\"size\":\"52.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"320 Kbps\",\"encoding\":\"compressed\",\"contents\":\"John Wieners\\n00:00:00\\nReads “Invocation to Summer” [recording begins abruptly].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:01:09\\n\\\"Invitation Au Voyage: II\\\". Do you know that poem of Baudelaire's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501]? It's something at the end of the world. He’s speaking to his beloved, very simple. You know, lots of the German Romanticism was very simple.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:01:30\\nReads \\\"Invitation Au Voyage: II\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:03:15\\nWell let's go back to the old poems then, that have been published. Stuart Montgomery, well it doesn't matter. But that--I can send it off to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] to the Fulcrum Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5507820] doing a lot of Basil Bunting [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2886803] and the English poet of 65, resuscitated in America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] again, it's about time.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:03:44\\nReads \\\"Long Nook\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:04:38\\nI'll just make random choices. \\\"At Big Sur\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:04:53\\nReads \\\"At Big Sur” [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:12\\n\\\"Louise\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:21\\nReads \\\"Louise\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:48\\n\\\"The Pool of Light\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:53\\nReads \\\"The Pool of Light\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:06:14\\nFor Mari--No, this is “For Marion\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:06:19\\nReads \\\"For Marion\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:07:05\\n“The Mermaid Song”, forgive me for this, I thought the other poems would carry me through, but I'm reading and keeping with the mood for tonight, it seems to be more lyrical. \\\"The Serpent's Hiss\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:07:52\\nReads \\\"The Serpent's Hiss\\\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:08:37\\nAnd this is called \\\"Tuesday, 5 pm\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:08:43\\nReads \\\"Tuesday, 5 pm\\\" [published later as “Tuesday 7:00 PM” in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:10:45\\nI'm going to read the \\\"The Imperatrice\\\". Ace of Pentacles is a card in the Tarot deck, but the book should be called ‘pente’ which all the words that appeared in a hypnagogic vision, hypnagogic is the state between waking and sleeping, it's what Jung [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41532] practiced and his Marie Louise Franz would take down the things that came to him in the state between waking and sleeping and the letters ‘pente’ appeared in that state and I didn't know what they meant so I kept hunting around and I made the word 'pinnacles' out of it and somebody said why don't you call it \\\"Ace of Pinnacles\\\" and we made a whole thing about the Tarot deck, but that's not the title of the book. It should be ‘pente’ and that's from the Greek  which is ‘wall’. And I'd like have as a fronts piece for the book William Blake's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] \\\"The Chimney Sweep\\\"  [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2587725] the second version of that from the \\\"Songs of Experience\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27890603] when he says that my mum and father have gone up to the church to pray and they make a heaven of my misery. That kind of thing. Imperatrice there's another card from the Tarot deck it's the third card of the deck.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:12:09\\nReads \\\"The Imperatrice\\\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:13:38\\nThere is something else I thought I'd like to read after that one. I'll read a poem for Sylvia Plath [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133054] who was an American poet who married an English man, Ted Hughes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q272194] and had mental troubles and wrote a novel about it called The Bell Jar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1213085] under a pseudonym Victoria Lucas, so not to embarrass her mother, and then things became too much for her and I think in 1963, she did away with herself in London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], and it was a great loss, some people feel that and some do not, they feel that at least--Lowell has written an introduction to her poems posthumously printed called Ariel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q224733] and her first book was The Colossus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29889462]. But Victoria Lucas was, The Bell Jar, was, you could buy it through William Hiderman and it came down from Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] to the United States and it's never been printed in the country. This is \\\"The Suicide\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:15:06\\nReads \\\"The Suicide\\\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:16:57\\nLet's read some happy poems, I'm getting depressed.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:17:03\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n\\nJohn Wieners\\n00:17:04\\nReads \\\"Ode on a Common Fountain\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles; recording jumps to mid-poem].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:19:51\\nThat's the first poem, I ever, I was twenty, so that was twelve years ago, that poem was written. Now I can go back--I'm still writing about Acis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q419156] and Galatea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q241070] but these are terribly sentimental and distraught, drunken poems, you can call them. Maybe we'll have one more, or is that anything from that first reading that you'd like to hear again? I'd rather not go into it. [Unknown audience member suggests poem. Title unintelligible]. Okay, that's what Spender [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q448764] did say to me, he said you look like a de-frocked priest, so. Which I thought was awfully cruel, but I think I am one, my sister was a nun, I'll be a priest. Poets are priests, you know.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:20:54\\nReads “There are holy orders in life...” [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nEND\\n00:21:42\",\"notes\":\"John Wieners reads from Ace of Pentacles (Carr & Wilson, 1964) as well as works published in 1985 in Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (Black Sparrow Press).\\n\\n00:00- Reading “Invitation to Summer” [recording does not start at beginning of poem]\\n01:09- Introduces “Invitation Au Voyage” [INDEX: German Romanticism]\\n01:30- Reads “Invitation Au Voyage”\\n03:15- Introduces “Long Nook” [Howard Fink list “One Look”] [INDEX: Stuart Montgommery, Fulcrum Press, Basil Bunting]\\n03:44- Reads “Long Nook”\\n04:38- Introduces “At Big Sur”\\n04:53- Reads “At Big Sur”\\n05:12- Introduces “Louise”\\n05:21- Reads “Louise”\\n05:48- Introduces “The Pool of Light”\\n05:53- Reads “The Pool of Light”\\n06:14- Introduces “Not For Marion” [Howard Fink List “I have found her snow white in my head”]\\n06:19- Reads “For Marion”\\n07:05- Introduces “The Serpent’s Hiss”\\n07:52- Reads “The Serpent’s Hiss”\\n08:37- Introduces “Tuesday, 5 pm” [published as “Tuesday 7:00 PM”]\\n08:43- Reads “Tuesday, 5 pm”\\n10:45- Introduces “Imperatrice” [INDEX: Ace of Pentacles, Tarot, hypnogogic, Karl Yung, Marie Louise Franz, William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweep”, “Songs of Experience”]\\n12:09- Reads “Imperatrice”\\n13:38- Introduces “The Suicide” [INDEX: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, mental illness, The Bell Jar 1963, Ariel, The Colossus, Victoria Lucas, William Hiderman]\\n15:06- Reads “The Suicide”\\n17:04- Introduces unknown poem, mid-sentence “About your pipes and mouth...” [Howard Fink first line “In patience wait the flooding...”]\\n19:51- Introduces unknown poem “I was born to be a priest...” [Howard Fink first line “There are holy orders in life...] [INDEX: Asis, Galatea, Spender]\\n20:54- Reads unknown poem\\n21:24.91- END OF RECORDING\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0119_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Wieners Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"John Wieners Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/rbr-62/rb757a\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1252","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 Wieners at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 8 October 1966"],"item_title_source":["Catalgouer"],"item_title_note":["\"J. WIENES I006/SR119\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. J. WIENES refers to John Wieners. Wieners is mispelled "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Closed"],"creator_names":["Wieners, John"],"creator_names_search":["Wieners, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/90723960\",\"name\":\"Wieners, John\",\"dates\":\"1934-2002\",\"notes\":\" American poet, playwright and essayist John Wieners was born in Boston on January 6, 1934. In 1934, Wieners earned a B.A. in English from Boston College, and subsequently worked at Harvard University’s Lamont Library. A 1955 poetry reading by Charles Olson inspired Wieners to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met and was mentored by Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. After completing studies in 1956, John Wieners moved back to Boston and started Measure, a (short-lived) literary magazine, as well as becoming involved in the Poet’s Theater in Cambridge. At the age of 24, (in 1958) Wieners moved to San Francisco and met Beat Poets Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, and published his first book of poems, The Hotel Wentley Poems (Dave Haselwood Publishing, 1965). John Wieners’ San Francisco journal, The Journal of John Wieners Is To Be Called 707 Scott Street for Billie Holiday, 1959, was published in 1966 by Sun & Moon Press. Wieners wrote plays that were never published during this time, until 1964 when he published Ace of Pentacles (published by James F. Carr & Robert A. Wilson). Charles Olson asked Wieners to be a graduate student and a teaching assistant at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1965, and Wieners eventually became the university’s chair of poetics, when he left by 1967. John Wieners suffered from mental illness, and was institutionalized for the second time in 1969, where he wrote Asylum Poems (For My Father) (Press of the Black Flag Raised). In 1970, he published Nerves (Cape Goliard Press), an internationally published book of poetry, and between 1967 to 1972, he published six smaller books of poetry. Behind the State Capitol; or, Cincinnati Pike (Good Gay Poets Press) was published in 1975 and thus marked the last of his published poems. John Wieners’ poetry, while highly appraised by Beat Poets, Black Mountain Poets and his peers, did not achieve wide public acclaim or readership. In 1985, however, Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (Black Sparrow Press) was compiled with the help of Robert Creeley and Allen Ginsberg. In the 70’s, John Wieners lived and became involved with anti-war movements and became an activist for gay rights, living at 44 Joy Street in Boston. Becoming more and more reclusive after the mid 70’s, John Wieners died of an apparent stroke on March 1, 2002. Michael Carr edited a posthumous collection of Wiener’s 1971 journals which was published in 2007.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1966],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"7 1/2 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1966 10 08\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["John Wieners reads from Ace of Pentacles (Carr & Wilson, 1964) as well as works published in 1985 in Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (Black Sparrow Press)."],"contents":["john_wieners_i006-11-119.mp3\n\nJohn Wieners\n00:00:00\nReads “Invocation to Summer” [recording begins abruptly].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:01:09\n\"Invitation Au Voyage: II\". Do you know that poem of Baudelaire's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501]? It's something at the end of the world. He’s speaking to his beloved, very simple. You know, lots of the German Romanticism was very simple.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:01:30\nReads \"Invitation Au Voyage: II\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:03:15\nWell let's go back to the old poems then, that have been published. Stuart Montgomery, well it doesn't matter. But that--I can send it off to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] to the Fulcrum Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5507820] doing a lot of Basil Bunting [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2886803] and the English poet of 65, resuscitated in America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] again, it's about time.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:03:44\nReads \"Long Nook\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:04:38\nI'll just make random choices. \"At Big Sur\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:04:53\nReads \"At Big Sur” [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:12\n\"Louise\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:21\nReads \"Louise\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:48\n\"The Pool of Light\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:05:53\nReads \"The Pool of Light\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:06:14\nFor Mari--No, this is “For Marion\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:06:19\nReads \"For Marion\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:07:05\n“The Mermaid Song”, forgive me for this, I thought the other poems would carry me through, but I'm reading and keeping with the mood for tonight, it seems to be more lyrical. \"The Serpent's Hiss\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:07:52\nReads \"The Serpent's Hiss\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:08:37\nAnd this is called \"Tuesday, 5 pm\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:08:43\nReads \"Tuesday, 5 pm\" [published later as “Tuesday 7:00 PM” in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:10:45\nI'm going to read the \"The Imperatrice\". Ace of Pentacles is a card in the Tarot deck, but the book should be called ‘pente’ which all the words that appeared in a hypnagogic vision, hypnagogic is the state between waking and sleeping, it's what Jung [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41532] practiced and his Marie Louise Franz would take down the things that came to him in the state between waking and sleeping and the letters ‘pente’ appeared in that state and I didn't know what they meant so I kept hunting around and I made the word 'pinnacles' out of it and somebody said why don't you call it \"Ace of Pinnacles\" and we made a whole thing about the Tarot deck, but that's not the title of the book. It should be ‘pente’ and that's from the Greek  which is ‘wall’. And I'd like have as a fronts piece for the book William Blake's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] \"The Chimney Sweep\"  [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2587725] the second version of that from the \"Songs of Experience\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27890603] when he says that my mum and father have gone up to the church to pray and they make a heaven of my misery. That kind of thing. Imperatrice there's another card from the Tarot deck it's the third card of the deck.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:12:09\nReads \"The Imperatrice\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:13:38\nThere is something else I thought I'd like to read after that one. I'll read a poem for Sylvia Plath [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133054] who was an American poet who married an English man, Ted Hughes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q272194] and had mental troubles and wrote a novel about it called The Bell Jar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1213085] under a pseudonym Victoria Lucas, so not to embarrass her mother, and then things became too much for her and I think in 1963, she did away with herself in London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], and it was a great loss, some people feel that and some do not, they feel that at least--Lowell has written an introduction to her poems posthumously printed called Ariel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q224733] and her first book was The Colossus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29889462]. But Victoria Lucas was, The Bell Jar, was, you could buy it through William Hiderman and it came down from Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] to the United States and it's never been printed in the country. This is \"The Suicide\".\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:15:06\nReads \"The Suicide\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:16:57\nLet's read some happy poems, I'm getting depressed.\n\nUnknown\n00:17:03\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n\nJohn Wieners\n00:17:04\nReads \"Ode on a Common Fountain\" [from Ace of Pentacles; recording jumps to mid-poem].\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:19:51\nThat's the first poem, I ever, I was twenty, so that was twelve years ago, that poem was written. Now I can go back--I'm still writing about Acis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q419156] and Galatea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q241070] but these are terribly sentimental and distraught, drunken poems, you can call them. Maybe we'll have one more, or is that anything from that first reading that you'd like to hear again? I'd rather not go into it. [Unknown audience member suggests poem. Title unintelligible]. Okay, that's what Spender [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q448764] did say to me, he said you look like a de-frocked priest, so. Which I thought was awfully cruel, but I think I am one, my sister was a nun, I'll be a priest. Poets are priests, you know.\n \nJohn Wieners\n00:20:54\nReads “There are holy orders in life...” [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\n \nEND\n00:21:42\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\n From 1965-67, John Wieners was at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, either working as a graduate student or as the chair of poetics. At that time, Charles Olson left SUNY in 1966, to be replaced by Robert Creeley. Wieners’ The Journal of John Wieners Is To Be Called 707 Scott Street for Billie Holiday, 1959, was published in 1966.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nNo direct connections between John Wieners and Sir George Williams University are known, however Wieners was an important poet, connected with poets from both the Black Mountain school and Beat movements. \\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 (mp3)\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Foster, Edward Halsey. \\\"Gay Literature: Poetry and Prose\\\". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (ed). Oxford University Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/john-wieners-9143191.html\",\"citation\":\"Ward, Geoff. “John Joseph Wieners, poet, Jan. 6th 1934 - March 1st 2002”. The Independent, 15 March 2000.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ace-of-pentacles-a-new-book-of-poems-by-john-wieners/oclc/702932793?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Wieners, John. Ace of Pentacles. New York: Carr & Wilson, 1964\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-1958-1984/oclc/743392421&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wieners, John. Selected Poems, 1958-1984. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1985.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-wieners-at-sgwu-1966/\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Poetry Readings Inaugurated”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 10 October 1966, p. 6. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Wieners, John, 1934-”. Literature Online Biography. Literature Online: ProQuest, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12H55HcY0pAZtzJ9AmxLabbX2hdjvCaX0\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548643512320,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0119_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Wieners 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_0119_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Wieners 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_0119_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Wieners 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_0119_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0119_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Wieners 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/john_wieners_i006-11-119.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"john_wieners_i006-11-119.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:21:42\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"52.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"John Wieners\\n00:00:00\\nReads “Invocation to Summer” [recording begins abruptly].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:01:09\\n\\\"Invitation Au Voyage: II\\\". Do you know that poem of Baudelaire's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501]? It's something at the end of the world. He’s speaking to his beloved, very simple. You know, lots of the German Romanticism was very simple.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:01:30\\nReads \\\"Invitation Au Voyage: II\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:03:15\\nWell let's go back to the old poems then, that have been published. Stuart Montgomery, well it doesn't matter. But that--I can send it off to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] to the Fulcrum Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5507820] doing a lot of Basil Bunting [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2886803] and the English poet of 65, resuscitated in America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] again, it's about time.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:03:44\\nReads \\\"Long Nook\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:04:38\\nI'll just make random choices. \\\"At Big Sur\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:04:53\\nReads \\\"At Big Sur” [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:12\\n\\\"Louise\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:21\\nReads \\\"Louise\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:48\\n\\\"The Pool of Light\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:05:53\\nReads \\\"The Pool of Light\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:06:14\\nFor Mari--No, this is “For Marion\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:06:19\\nReads \\\"For Marion\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:07:05\\n“The Mermaid Song”, forgive me for this, I thought the other poems would carry me through, but I'm reading and keeping with the mood for tonight, it seems to be more lyrical. \\\"The Serpent's Hiss\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:07:52\\nReads \\\"The Serpent's Hiss\\\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:08:37\\nAnd this is called \\\"Tuesday, 5 pm\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:08:43\\nReads \\\"Tuesday, 5 pm\\\" [published later as “Tuesday 7:00 PM” in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:10:45\\nI'm going to read the \\\"The Imperatrice\\\". Ace of Pentacles is a card in the Tarot deck, but the book should be called ‘pente’ which all the words that appeared in a hypnagogic vision, hypnagogic is the state between waking and sleeping, it's what Jung [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41532] practiced and his Marie Louise Franz would take down the things that came to him in the state between waking and sleeping and the letters ‘pente’ appeared in that state and I didn't know what they meant so I kept hunting around and I made the word 'pinnacles' out of it and somebody said why don't you call it \\\"Ace of Pinnacles\\\" and we made a whole thing about the Tarot deck, but that's not the title of the book. It should be ‘pente’ and that's from the Greek  which is ‘wall’. And I'd like have as a fronts piece for the book William Blake's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] \\\"The Chimney Sweep\\\"  [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2587725] the second version of that from the \\\"Songs of Experience\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27890603] when he says that my mum and father have gone up to the church to pray and they make a heaven of my misery. That kind of thing. Imperatrice there's another card from the Tarot deck it's the third card of the deck.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:12:09\\nReads \\\"The Imperatrice\\\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:13:38\\nThere is something else I thought I'd like to read after that one. I'll read a poem for Sylvia Plath [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133054] who was an American poet who married an English man, Ted Hughes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q272194] and had mental troubles and wrote a novel about it called The Bell Jar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1213085] under a pseudonym Victoria Lucas, so not to embarrass her mother, and then things became too much for her and I think in 1963, she did away with herself in London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], and it was a great loss, some people feel that and some do not, they feel that at least--Lowell has written an introduction to her poems posthumously printed called Ariel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q224733] and her first book was The Colossus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29889462]. But Victoria Lucas was, The Bell Jar, was, you could buy it through William Hiderman and it came down from Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] to the United States and it's never been printed in the country. This is \\\"The Suicide\\\".\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:15:06\\nReads \\\"The Suicide\\\" [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:16:57\\nLet's read some happy poems, I'm getting depressed.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:17:03\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n\\nJohn Wieners\\n00:17:04\\nReads \\\"Ode on a Common Fountain\\\" [from Ace of Pentacles; recording jumps to mid-poem].\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:19:51\\nThat's the first poem, I ever, I was twenty, so that was twelve years ago, that poem was written. Now I can go back--I'm still writing about Acis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q419156] and Galatea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q241070] but these are terribly sentimental and distraught, drunken poems, you can call them. Maybe we'll have one more, or is that anything from that first reading that you'd like to hear again? I'd rather not go into it. [Unknown audience member suggests poem. Title unintelligible]. Okay, that's what Spender [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q448764] did say to me, he said you look like a de-frocked priest, so. Which I thought was awfully cruel, but I think I am one, my sister was a nun, I'll be a priest. Poets are priests, you know.\\n \\nJohn Wieners\\n00:20:54\\nReads “There are holy orders in life...” [published later in Selected Poems, 1958-1984].\\n \\nEND\\n00:21:42\",\"notes\":\"John Wieners reads from Ace of Pentacles (Carr & Wilson, 1964) as well as works published in 1985 in Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (Black Sparrow Press).\\n\\n00:00- Reading “Invitation to Summer” [recording does not start at beginning of poem]\\n01:09- Introduces “Invitation Au Voyage” [INDEX: German Romanticism]\\n01:30- Reads “Invitation Au Voyage”\\n03:15- Introduces “Long Nook” [Howard Fink list “One Look”] [INDEX: Stuart Montgommery, Fulcrum Press, Basil Bunting]\\n03:44- Reads “Long Nook”\\n04:38- Introduces “At Big Sur”\\n04:53- Reads “At Big Sur”\\n05:12- Introduces “Louise”\\n05:21- Reads “Louise”\\n05:48- Introduces “The Pool of Light”\\n05:53- Reads “The Pool of Light”\\n06:14- Introduces “Not For Marion” [Howard Fink List “I have found her snow white in my head”]\\n06:19- Reads “For Marion”\\n07:05- Introduces “The Serpent’s Hiss”\\n07:52- Reads “The Serpent’s Hiss”\\n08:37- Introduces “Tuesday, 5 pm” [published as “Tuesday 7:00 PM”]\\n08:43- Reads “Tuesday, 5 pm”\\n10:45- Introduces “Imperatrice” [INDEX: Ace of Pentacles, Tarot, hypnogogic, Karl Yung, Marie Louise Franz, William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweep”, “Songs of Experience”]\\n12:09- Reads “Imperatrice”\\n13:38- Introduces “The Suicide” [INDEX: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, mental illness, The Bell Jar 1963, Ariel, The Colossus, Victoria Lucas, William Hiderman]\\n15:06- Reads “The Suicide”\\n17:04- Introduces unknown poem, mid-sentence “About your pipes and mouth...” [Howard Fink first line “In patience wait the flooding...”]\\n19:51- Introduces unknown poem “I was born to be a priest...” [Howard Fink first line “There are holy orders in life...] [INDEX: Asis, Galatea, Spender]\\n20:54- Reads unknown poem\\n21:24.91- END OF RECORDING\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-wieners-at-sgwu-1966/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1254","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":["Anthony Hecht at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 21 October 1966"],"item_title_source":["Transcribed from the Artifact"],"item_title_note":["\"I006/SR41 ANTHONY HECHT\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Hecht, Anthony"],"creator_names_search":["Hecht, Anthony"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/76363549\",\"name\":\"Hecht, Anthony\",\"dates\":\"1923-2004\",\"notes\":\"American poet Anthony Hecht was born in New York City on January 16th, 1923. Hecht has admitted that it was only in his freshman year at Bard College that he became interested in poetry. Upon graduating from Bard in 1944, he was drafted into the United States Army and served in Western Europe and Japan. Hecht was especially impacted by the release of Jews in the concentration camps, a subject that is echoed throughout his poetry. On his return, Hecht was convinced to study with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College, and Ransom became a major influence in Hecht’s poetic and intellectual formation. Hecht’s poetry was first published in magazines like the Hudson Review, the Kenyon Review and the New Yorker, and in 1950 he won the Prix de Rome bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hecht’s first book, A Summoning of Stones (MacMillan, 1954) was published, along with a limited edition pamphlet named The Seven Deadly Sins (Gehenna Press, 1954). Hecht then taught at Smith College in Northampton from 1956 to 1959, and then at Bard College from 1961 until 1967. It was at this point that Hecht began to travel on reading tours of his poetry. His next publication, Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (Atheneum, 1966), with John Hollander and Milton Glaser, compiled a new light verse form called ‘double-dactyl’, which they had invented. A year later, Hecht released his second collection of verse, The Hard Hours (Atheneum, 1967), and took a position at the University of Rochester. In the next few years, Hecht translated Aeschylus’ tragedy of war, Seven Against Thebes (Oxford University Press, 1973) with Helen Bacon. He was also the visiting professor at Washington University (1971), Harvard (1973), and at Yale (1977). Hecht then published collections of poetry, Millions of Strange Shadows (Atheneum, 1977) and The Venetian Vespers (Atheneum, 1979), a collection of criticism, Obbligati (Atheneum, 1986), The Transparent Man (Knopf, 1990) and Flight Among the Tombs (Knopf, 1990). Hecht retired in the early 1990s from his post at Rochester, but remained active and published Hidden Law (1993), a book-length study of Auden’s poetry, and provided the introduction to “The New Cambridge Shakespeare Sonnets” in 1996. Hecht was the first American poet to be invited to lecture at the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in 1992. Hecht published his last collection of poetry, The Darkness and the Light (Knopf) in 2001. Anthony Hecht died of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma on October 20, 2004.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Unknown"],"contributors_names_search":["Unknown"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Unknown\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Series_organizer_name":["Unknown"],"Speaker_name":["Unknown"],"Performance_Date":[1966],"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\":\"\\\"I006/SR41 ANTHONY HECHT\\\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1966 10 21\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date is approximate, using other recordings and readings to guess the time period (October-November 1966)\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"SGW University\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["SGW University"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Anthony Hecht reads from his book The Hard Hours which was published later in 1967 by Atheneum Press."],"contents":["anthony_hecht_i006-11-041.mp3\n\nIntroducer\n00:00:00\nOn behalf of the Poetry Reading Committee of this university, Mr. Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789], Mrs. Wynne Francis, Mr. Howard Fink, Mr. Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289], and Mr. Stanton Hoffman, I wish to welcome you to the second reading in our fall series. The reader for this evening is Mr. Anthony Hecht [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3618497] of New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60]. Mr. Hecht was born in New York City. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463271]. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, A Summoning of Stones, which was published by Macmillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217] in New York City in 1954, and a later volume published in Northampton, Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49186] in 1958, Seven Deadly Sins. Mr. Hecht is a poetry editor of The Hudson Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15708605]. Mr. Hecht has also been a faculty member of such universities as Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49204], New York University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49210] and Bard College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49109], and he will be joining the faculty of the University of Rochester [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q149990] very soon. Mr. Hecht is the author of three forthcoming volumes: The Hard Hours, which is to be published soon by Viking [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q921536], a volume called Double Dactyls, which is to appear about Christmas and is to be published by Atheneum [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4813415], and a volume of verse epigrams to the engravings of Thomas Bewick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q437594], which is to be published by the Harvard University Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1587900]. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Anthony Hecht. \n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:01:36\nThank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, this is my first trip to Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], and I regret that it should be so brief. I must leave tomorrow, but I'm struck by the frigidity of the weather and the warmth of the greeting that I received upon arriving. I'd like to begin with a poem which I'll, is set in Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], where I spent quite a while. It's called \"A Hill\", and it's what...about a purported visionary experience. \n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:02:21\nReads \"A Hill\" from The Hard Hours..\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:04:50\nThe next is called \"A Letter\". Some of these, I think, will require some sort of explanatory comment from me, but I don't think this will. \n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:04:59\nReads \"A Letter\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:06:44\nThe next is called \"The Vow\". I should say that all the poems that I want to read to you this evening are from a book called The Hard Hours. They...the book is, I fear, for better or for worse, somewhat on the grim side, as the title is meant to indicate. It perhaps is a corrective to the abundant cheerfulness of my first book. But I hope that there were a few light moments here and there. This one, on the other--is somewhat grim. It is in fact about a miscarriage. And I had better explain to you that a large part of the second stanza, and all of the third stanza is spoken by the ghost of the child who fails to be born. It is called \"The Vow\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:07:42\nReads \"The Vow\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:10:01\nThe next one is also somewhat on the grim side, but it requires an appeasing little note of explanation. Its title is \"More Light! More Light!\" which purport to be the last words of Goethe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5879] on his deathbed. There's been a good deal of discussion and dispute as to quite what he meant at the time, which may simply have been to raise the shade. But inasmuch as he is regarded as the spirit of the German Enlightenment, a great deal more profound significance is normally attached to those words. He plays a very minor, somewhat ghostly role in this poem, which is a deliberate and violent contrast, so violent, indeed, that the poem was rejected by The New Yorker [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217305] on the grounds that the contrast was much too violent for their taste. Between an execution, which is in fact a conflation I've made myself of several executions that took place in England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] during the Renaissance [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4692], and an execution that took place in the Buchenwald concentration camp [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152802] during the Second World War [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], and the details of which I got from a book by Eugene Kogan, who was himself a prisoner there for five years and survived, miraculously, and was then flown to England to help draw up the indictments that were used, [coughs], excuse me, at the Nuremberg Trials [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80130]. Goethe's role, his ghostly role in this, is explained by the fact that most prisoners who were brought to Buchenwald were brought by train, and there was no railroad station there at the camp, so the prisoners were, disembarked at the nearest railroad station, which was Weimar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3955], and they walked the rest of the way from there. \n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:12:01\nReads \"More Light! More Light!\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:14:36\nThe next is a little lighter, gratefully. But it has its gruesome aspects too, as a matter of fact. It is called \"The Man Who Married Magdalen: Variation on a Theme by Louis Simpson\". Louis Simpson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1871997], a fine poet and very old friend of mine. A road poem in one of his early books, called \"The Man Who Married Magdalen\", a fine and delicate poem, in which he imagines that this man who raged and stormed throughout his married life, upon the death of his wife finds it in his heart to forgive her and to acknowledge his abiding love for her. In fact, if I can remember the last stanza, it goes, \"But when he woke, and woke alone, he wept and would deny the loose behaviour of the bone, and the immodest thigh\". I have chosen to make him far less forgiving in my version. He is a very angry man, and the whole poem takes place in a bar where he has been releasing his anger in a bibulous way for some time. His anger is not only personal, however, it's also theological. He is someone who believes in and accepts the ancient dispensation according to which Mary Magdalene [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q63070] had done something which could not, in fact, be so easily forgiven. And he regards the new dispensation as an antinomian heresy which leaves him bewildered and accounts for the rather promiscuous behaviour he finds all around him in the bar. I ought to tell you also that I went on a reading tour of New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389] a few years ago, and I planned to include this, but when I got to...it has some frankly dirty language in the second stanza, and I decided that it was unbecoming at certain colleges, [audience laughter], but I was assured by a friend of mine on the faculty at Wellesley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49205] that the girls there were tough, and they could take it.  [Audience laughter]. He liked it, and he thought I should read it. And indeed, I did. And nobody batted an eye. So, from then on, without compunction at all, I read it everywhere else, and when I got to Mount Hollyhock, [audience laughter], there I had every intention of reading it, but they were not only taping it, as you are here this evening, but they were taping it for radio broadcast, so I felt obliged to warn the Federal Communications Commission [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128831] [audience laughter] that this was the sort of thing that they would probably have to excise. And after the tour was over, I got a postcard from a friend of mine in that bastion of propriety, Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100], saying that he had heard the whole broadcast with nothing cut out, so I take it there's absolutely nothing wrong with it now [audience laughter]. It has, in any case, a lofty epigraph from the Book of Jonah [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178819] [audience laughter], which says, \"Then said the Lord, 'Dost thou well, to be angry?'”\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:17:57\nReads \"The Man Who Married Magdalen: Variation on a Theme by Louis Simpson\" from The Hard Hours [audience laughter throughout].\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:20:26\nA poem of a somewhat different sort, called \"Message from the City\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:20:37\nReads \"Message from the City\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:23:02\nThe poem I want to read next is also, again, on the somewhat grim side. It is, in fact, incomplete, but it stands altogether, by itself. It's going to be longer, but it is a unit, as it appears, or as I shall read it to you, and it's called, in its present state, \"The Rune\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:23:35\nReads \"The Rune\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:27:54\nI guess a really violent change of pace is required, and I can provide it. But you are not to be spared as easily as that. There's another sort of wracking one that comes up in a minute. However, I can interject something in between. There's a little sort of period piece, a Restoration comedy song, sort of, called \"The Song of the Flea\". It was written...there were a group of poems that I wrote in collaboration with an artist. We did a bestiary together, and he did a whole bunch of very handsome lithographs of animals, and I wrote a few animal poems, and this is one of them.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:28:45\nReads \"The Song of the Flea\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:29:40\nNow this, this next, is quite frankly a stinker, I've got to warn you. It's a very unnerving poem. It's a colloquy; there are two voices, but I'm sure you'll have no difficulty telling them apart. There is one speaker who is a kind of compulsive talker, and he has a very patient and somewhat helpless auditor. The poem is called \"Behold the Lilies of the Field\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:30:18\nReads \"Behold the Lilies of the Field\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:34:34\nThe next is a blessed relief. It's called \"Jason\", which is the name of my older son, and it's a poem written to celebrate his birth. He was born at the time I was teaching at Smith, and he was born on a Sunday, which has some bearing on the poem, but it conveniently avoided my, disrupting my academic obligations. And it has an epigraph from Doctor Faustus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50919], which goes, \"And from America, the Golden Fleece\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:35:16\nReads \"Jason\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:37:12\nThe next one is also, this is also rather cheery too--well, not really. I told you that I had gone on this New England tour a few years ago, and I began it in Maine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q724]. Well, I may have been misled [distortion], but I was told at the two or three colleges and universities where I read that Maine was a dry state, and I had so arranged my poems, completely unconsciously, that I had a whole bunch of them that all took place in bars, in bars altogether [audience laughter]. So I had the feeling as I was reading--I couldn't stop, you see, there I was-- after the third poem, I felt that I appeared to be an obsessive alcoholic. [Audience laughter]. This also takes place in a bar. I was born and brought up in New York City, and remember it from the time when Third Avenue had an elevator train that ran down its length. Now, that has all been torn down. But in the old days, not only did it have the elevator train, but it was lined on both sides all the way up and down with bars. The bars are still there. But the advantage of the El was that it cast a nice, gloomy shadow over the whole avenue even on the brightest days, so that you weren't obliged to face utter reality as soon as you stepped outside [audience laughter]. There was a sort of modulating gloom that you got out into. Now that's been torn down, and it's tougher than it was. The poem is called \"Third Avenue in Sunlight\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:38:45\nReads \"Third Avenue in Sunlight\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:40:31\nThere are two more poems I should like to read. The first of these is called \"Birdwatchers of America\". It has an epigraph from the journals of Baudelaire [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501], very near the end of his life. Baudelaire wrote as follows: \"I suffer now continually from vertigo, and today, the 23rd of January, 1862, I received a singular warning. I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:41:14\nReads \"Birdwatchers of America\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:42:50\nThis is called \"The End of the Weekend\".\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:42:56\nReads \"The End of the Weekend\" from The Hard Hours.\n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:44:38\nFinally, there is a poem that I must remind you of which I enormously admire, by Matthew Arnold [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q271032]. \"Dover Beach\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5302469]. I have, in spite of my admiration for it, ventured to write a somewhat impertinent commentary upon it, which is called \"The Dover Bitch\" and subtitled [audience laughter], \"A Criticism of Life\", which is what Arnold said poetry ought to be. \n \nAnthony Hecht\n00:45:13\nReads \"The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life\" from The Hard Hours [audience laughter throughout].\n \nEND\n00:46:55\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1966, Hecht was teaching at Bard College, and was participating in traveling tours reading his poetry. Three of his works were in the process of being published: The Hard Hours, Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls and AEsopic: twenty four couplets.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAnthony Hecht was an important figure in American poetry, as well as an influential professor of literature and writing. He is the inventor of the double dactyl, a form of light verse as well as the recipient of many valued awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the Bollingen Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award. His connection to Sir George Williams is unknown at this time.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcription by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-english-literature/oclc/1205259088&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Hecht, Anthony\\\". The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Dinah Birch (ed). Oxford University Press Inc., 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Hecht, Anthony [Evan]\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press, 1995.  \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Freeland, Petra. “Hecht, Anthony, 1923-”. Literature Online Biography. Proquest and H.W. Wilson Company, 2005. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548656095232,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0041_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0041_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Anthony Hecht 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_0041_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0041_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Anthony Hecht 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_0041_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0041_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Anthony Hecht 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_0041_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0041_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"Anthony Hecht 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/anthony_hecht_i006-11-041.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"anthony_hecht_i006-11-041.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:46:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"112.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Introducer\\n00:00:00\\nOn behalf of the Poetry Reading Committee of this university, Mr. Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789], Mrs. Wynne Francis, Mr. Howard Fink, Mr. Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289], and Mr. Stanton Hoffman, I wish to welcome you to the second reading in our fall series. The reader for this evening is Mr. Anthony Hecht [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3618497] of New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60]. Mr. Hecht was born in New York City. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463271]. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, A Summoning of Stones, which was published by Macmillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217] in New York City in 1954, and a later volume published in Northampton, Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49186] in 1958, Seven Deadly Sins. Mr. Hecht is a poetry editor of The Hudson Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15708605]. Mr. Hecht has also been a faculty member of such universities as Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49204], New York University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49210] and Bard College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49109], and he will be joining the faculty of the University of Rochester [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q149990] very soon. Mr. Hecht is the author of three forthcoming volumes: The Hard Hours, which is to be published soon by Viking [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q921536], a volume called Double Dactyls, which is to appear about Christmas and is to be published by Atheneum [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4813415], and a volume of verse epigrams to the engravings of Thomas Bewick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q437594], which is to be published by the Harvard University Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1587900]. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Anthony Hecht. \\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:01:36\\nThank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, this is my first trip to Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], and I regret that it should be so brief. I must leave tomorrow, but I'm struck by the frigidity of the weather and the warmth of the greeting that I received upon arriving. I'd like to begin with a poem which I'll, is set in Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], where I spent quite a while. It's called \\\"A Hill\\\", and it's what...about a purported visionary experience. \\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:02:21\\nReads \\\"A Hill\\\" from The Hard Hours..\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:04:50\\nThe next is called \\\"A Letter\\\". Some of these, I think, will require some sort of explanatory comment from me, but I don't think this will. \\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:04:59\\nReads \\\"A Letter\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:06:44\\nThe next is called \\\"The Vow\\\". I should say that all the poems that I want to read to you this evening are from a book called The Hard Hours. They...the book is, I fear, for better or for worse, somewhat on the grim side, as the title is meant to indicate. It perhaps is a corrective to the abundant cheerfulness of my first book. But I hope that there were a few light moments here and there. This one, on the other--is somewhat grim. It is in fact about a miscarriage. And I had better explain to you that a large part of the second stanza, and all of the third stanza is spoken by the ghost of the child who fails to be born. It is called \\\"The Vow\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:07:42\\nReads \\\"The Vow\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:10:01\\nThe next one is also somewhat on the grim side, but it requires an appeasing little note of explanation. Its title is \\\"More Light! More Light!\\\" which purport to be the last words of Goethe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5879] on his deathbed. There's been a good deal of discussion and dispute as to quite what he meant at the time, which may simply have been to raise the shade. But inasmuch as he is regarded as the spirit of the German Enlightenment, a great deal more profound significance is normally attached to those words. He plays a very minor, somewhat ghostly role in this poem, which is a deliberate and violent contrast, so violent, indeed, that the poem was rejected by The New Yorker [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217305] on the grounds that the contrast was much too violent for their taste. Between an execution, which is in fact a conflation I've made myself of several executions that took place in England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] during the Renaissance [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4692], and an execution that took place in the Buchenwald concentration camp [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152802] during the Second World War [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], and the details of which I got from a book by Eugene Kogan, who was himself a prisoner there for five years and survived, miraculously, and was then flown to England to help draw up the indictments that were used, [coughs], excuse me, at the Nuremberg Trials [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80130]. Goethe's role, his ghostly role in this, is explained by the fact that most prisoners who were brought to Buchenwald were brought by train, and there was no railroad station there at the camp, so the prisoners were, disembarked at the nearest railroad station, which was Weimar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3955], and they walked the rest of the way from there. \\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:12:01\\nReads \\\"More Light! More Light!\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:14:36\\nThe next is a little lighter, gratefully. But it has its gruesome aspects too, as a matter of fact. It is called \\\"The Man Who Married Magdalen: Variation on a Theme by Louis Simpson\\\". Louis Simpson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1871997], a fine poet and very old friend of mine. A road poem in one of his early books, called \\\"The Man Who Married Magdalen\\\", a fine and delicate poem, in which he imagines that this man who raged and stormed throughout his married life, upon the death of his wife finds it in his heart to forgive her and to acknowledge his abiding love for her. In fact, if I can remember the last stanza, it goes, \\\"But when he woke, and woke alone, he wept and would deny the loose behaviour of the bone, and the immodest thigh\\\". I have chosen to make him far less forgiving in my version. He is a very angry man, and the whole poem takes place in a bar where he has been releasing his anger in a bibulous way for some time. His anger is not only personal, however, it's also theological. He is someone who believes in and accepts the ancient dispensation according to which Mary Magdalene [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q63070] had done something which could not, in fact, be so easily forgiven. And he regards the new dispensation as an antinomian heresy which leaves him bewildered and accounts for the rather promiscuous behaviour he finds all around him in the bar. I ought to tell you also that I went on a reading tour of New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389] a few years ago, and I planned to include this, but when I got to...it has some frankly dirty language in the second stanza, and I decided that it was unbecoming at certain colleges, [audience laughter], but I was assured by a friend of mine on the faculty at Wellesley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49205] that the girls there were tough, and they could take it.  [Audience laughter]. He liked it, and he thought I should read it. And indeed, I did. And nobody batted an eye. So, from then on, without compunction at all, I read it everywhere else, and when I got to Mount Hollyhock, [audience laughter], there I had every intention of reading it, but they were not only taping it, as you are here this evening, but they were taping it for radio broadcast, so I felt obliged to warn the Federal Communications Commission [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128831] [audience laughter] that this was the sort of thing that they would probably have to excise. And after the tour was over, I got a postcard from a friend of mine in that bastion of propriety, Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100], saying that he had heard the whole broadcast with nothing cut out, so I take it there's absolutely nothing wrong with it now [audience laughter]. It has, in any case, a lofty epigraph from the Book of Jonah [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178819] [audience laughter], which says, \\\"Then said the Lord, 'Dost thou well, to be angry?'”\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:17:57\\nReads \\\"The Man Who Married Magdalen: Variation on a Theme by Louis Simpson\\\" from The Hard Hours [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:20:26\\nA poem of a somewhat different sort, called \\\"Message from the City\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:20:37\\nReads \\\"Message from the City\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:23:02\\nThe poem I want to read next is also, again, on the somewhat grim side. It is, in fact, incomplete, but it stands altogether, by itself. It's going to be longer, but it is a unit, as it appears, or as I shall read it to you, and it's called, in its present state, \\\"The Rune\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:23:35\\nReads \\\"The Rune\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:27:54\\nI guess a really violent change of pace is required, and I can provide it. But you are not to be spared as easily as that. There's another sort of wracking one that comes up in a minute. However, I can interject something in between. There's a little sort of period piece, a Restoration comedy song, sort of, called \\\"The Song of the Flea\\\". It was written...there were a group of poems that I wrote in collaboration with an artist. We did a bestiary together, and he did a whole bunch of very handsome lithographs of animals, and I wrote a few animal poems, and this is one of them.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:28:45\\nReads \\\"The Song of the Flea\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:29:40\\nNow this, this next, is quite frankly a stinker, I've got to warn you. It's a very unnerving poem. It's a colloquy; there are two voices, but I'm sure you'll have no difficulty telling them apart. There is one speaker who is a kind of compulsive talker, and he has a very patient and somewhat helpless auditor. The poem is called \\\"Behold the Lilies of the Field\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:30:18\\nReads \\\"Behold the Lilies of the Field\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:34:34\\nThe next is a blessed relief. It's called \\\"Jason\\\", which is the name of my older son, and it's a poem written to celebrate his birth. He was born at the time I was teaching at Smith, and he was born on a Sunday, which has some bearing on the poem, but it conveniently avoided my, disrupting my academic obligations. And it has an epigraph from Doctor Faustus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50919], which goes, \\\"And from America, the Golden Fleece\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:35:16\\nReads \\\"Jason\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:37:12\\nThe next one is also, this is also rather cheery too--well, not really. I told you that I had gone on this New England tour a few years ago, and I began it in Maine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q724]. Well, I may have been misled [distortion], but I was told at the two or three colleges and universities where I read that Maine was a dry state, and I had so arranged my poems, completely unconsciously, that I had a whole bunch of them that all took place in bars, in bars altogether [audience laughter]. So I had the feeling as I was reading--I couldn't stop, you see, there I was-- after the third poem, I felt that I appeared to be an obsessive alcoholic. [Audience laughter]. This also takes place in a bar. I was born and brought up in New York City, and remember it from the time when Third Avenue had an elevator train that ran down its length. Now, that has all been torn down. But in the old days, not only did it have the elevator train, but it was lined on both sides all the way up and down with bars. The bars are still there. But the advantage of the El was that it cast a nice, gloomy shadow over the whole avenue even on the brightest days, so that you weren't obliged to face utter reality as soon as you stepped outside [audience laughter]. There was a sort of modulating gloom that you got out into. Now that's been torn down, and it's tougher than it was. The poem is called \\\"Third Avenue in Sunlight\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:38:45\\nReads \\\"Third Avenue in Sunlight\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:40:31\\nThere are two more poems I should like to read. The first of these is called \\\"Birdwatchers of America\\\". It has an epigraph from the journals of Baudelaire [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501], very near the end of his life. Baudelaire wrote as follows: \\\"I suffer now continually from vertigo, and today, the 23rd of January, 1862, I received a singular warning. I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:41:14\\nReads \\\"Birdwatchers of America\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:42:50\\nThis is called \\\"The End of the Weekend\\\".\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:42:56\\nReads \\\"The End of the Weekend\\\" from The Hard Hours.\\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:44:38\\nFinally, there is a poem that I must remind you of which I enormously admire, by Matthew Arnold [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q271032]. \\\"Dover Beach\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5302469]. I have, in spite of my admiration for it, ventured to write a somewhat impertinent commentary upon it, which is called \\\"The Dover Bitch\\\" and subtitled [audience laughter], \\\"A Criticism of Life\\\", which is what Arnold said poetry ought to be. \\n \\nAnthony Hecht\\n00:45:13\\nReads \\\"The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life\\\" from The Hard Hours [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEND\\n00:46:55\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Anthony Hecht reads from his book The Hard Hours which was published later in 1967 by Atheneum Press.\\n\\n00:00- Unknown Introducer introduces Anthony Hecht [INDEX: Poetry Reading Committee: Roy Kiyooka, Wynne Francis, Howard Fink, Irving Layton, Stanton Hoffman; New York City, fellow of the American Academy in Rome, A Summoning of Stones published by Macmillan NYC 1954, Seven Deadly Sins published in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1958; poetry editor of The Hudson Review; faculty member of Smith University, New York University, Bard College, University of Rochester; The Hard Hours published by Viking Press, Double Dactyls published by Atheneum Press, AEsopic: twenty four couplets written with Thomas Bewick, Harvard University Press.]\\n01:36- Anthony Hecht introduces “A Hill”. [INDEX: first trip to Canada, cold weather, Italy; from The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n02:21- Reads “A Hill”.\\n04:50- Introduces “A Letter” [INDEX: from The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967)]\\n04:59- Reads “A Letter”.\\n06:44- Introduces “The Vow”. [INDEX: all poems read from The Hard Hours, miscarriage, ghost of a child.]\\n07:42- Reads “The Vow”.\\n10:01- Introduces “More Light! More Light!”. [INDEX: last words of Goethe, German Enlightenment, poem rejected by The New Yorker, England during the Renaissance,      Buchenwald concentration camps during WWII, book by Eugene Kogan, Nuremburg   Trials, prisoners brought by train, Weimar; from The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press,   \\t1967).]\\n12:01- Reads “More Light! More Light!”.\\n14:36- Introduces \\\"The Man Who Married Magdalen: Variation on a Theme by Louis        Simpson.\\\" [INDEX: Louis Simpson: poet and friend, poem in Simpson’s early books  \\tcalled “The Man Who Married Magdalen”, husband forgiving wife, line from the last  \\tstanza “But when he woke, and woke alone, he wept and would deny the loose    behaviour of the bone, and the immodest thigh”, takes place in a bar, reading tour of   England, Wellesley, Mount Hollyhock, Federal Communications Commission, Boston,     Book of Jonah “Then said the Lord, ‘Dost thou well, to be angry?’”; from The Hard    \\tHours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n17:57- Reads \\\"The Man Who Married Magdalen: Variation on a Theme by Louis \\tSimpson\\\".\\n20:26- Introduces “Message from the City”. [INDEX: from The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n20:37- Reads “Message from the City”.\\n23:02- Introduces “The Rune”. [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n23:35- Reads “The Rune”.\\n27:54- Introduces “The Song of the Flea”. [INDEX: Restoration comedy song called “The Song of the Flea”, group of poems written in collaboration with an artist, bestiary, lithographs of animals; from The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n28:45- Reads “The Song of the Flea”.\\n29:40- Introduces “Behold the Lilies of the Field”. [INDEX: colloquy, two voices, one   compulsive talker, and a patient auditor; The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n30:18- Reads “Behold the Lilies of the Field”.\\n34:34- Introduces “Jason”. [INDEX: Hecht’s older son to celebrate his birth, teaching at Smith, epigraph from Dr. Faustus “And from America, the Golden Fleece”; The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n35:16- Reads “Jason”.\\n37:12- Introduces “Third Avenue in Sunlight”. [INDEX: New England Tour, began in Maine, dry state, reading poems about bars; born in NYC on Third Avenue elevator train, bars; The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n38:45- Reads “Third Avenue in Sunlight”.\\n40:31- Introduces “Birdwatchers of America”. [INDEX: Epigraph from the journals of Baudelaire “I suffer now continually from vertigo, and today, the 23rd of January 1862, I       received a singular warning. I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.”; The       Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n41:14- Reads “Birdwatchers of America”.\\n42:50- Reads “The End of the Weekend”. [INDEX: from The Hard Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n44:38- Introduces “The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life”. [INDEX: Poem by Matthew Arnold “Dover Beach”, Arnold said poetry ought to be “A criticism of life”; from The Hard     Hours (Atheneum Press, 1967).]\\n45:13- Reads “The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life”.\\n46:55.93- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/anthony-hecht-at-sgwu-1966/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1255","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":["Robert Kelly at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 4 November 1966"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Robert Kelly at Sir George Williams University, Montreal 4 November, 1966\" handwriitten on the back of the tape's box. Date and name also written on spine of the box and stickers on the reel. Additional Info: I086-11-027 and RT 503"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Streaming"],"creator_names":["Kelly, Robert,"],"creator_names_search":["Kelly, Robert,"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/7411990\",\"name\":\"Kelly, Robert, \",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"Prolific American poet, Robert Kelly, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1935. He attended both Columbia University and the City College of New York. He took positions as a translator, later becoming a lecturer and writer-in-residence at several universities, including the California Institute of Technology, Bard College and Tufts University. In 1957, he co-founded and edited the Chelsea Review (now Chelsea) until 1960, after which he co-edited Trobar magazine until 1965. Kelly was involved in the creation of The Blue Yak poetry co-operative in New York City. His first published collection of poems was Armed Descent in 1961 (Hawk’s Well Press), followed by seven other collections including Lunes/Sightings with Jerome Rothenberg in 1964 (Hawk’s Well Press), and Weeks in 1966 (El Corno Emplumado). He began editing Matter magazine in 1963, and has had affiliations with several other magazines like Caterpilar, Los, Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics and Fulcrum. Publishing over forty books of poetry, prose, essays and plays, Kelly’s most notable books include The Scorpions (Doubleday, 1967), Finding the Measure (Black Sparrow Press, 1968), California Journal (Big Venus/Asphodel, 1969), Mill of Particulars (1973), The Loom (1975), The Convections (1978), Kill the Messenger (1979), Spiritual Exercises (1981) and Not This Island Music (1987) all published by Black Sparrow Press. Robert Kelly has been the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College from 1986 onwards; he was the co-director of The Writing Program and the founding member of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. He has won many awards and honors, including a Doctor of Letters from State University of New York in 1994, the Award for Distinction from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1986 and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1976.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1966],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Kodak\",\"generations\":\"Duplicate\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"00:30:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1966 11 4\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the tape box and on a sticker on the tape reel\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco (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":["Robert Kelly reads from Lectiones (Duende Press, 1965) and Weeks (El Corno Emplumado, 1966) as well as poems from unknown sources."],"contents":["robert_kelly_i086-11-027.mp3\n\nRobert Kelly\n00:00:00\n...Read a couple of poems from a book that came out last year that's very hard to find, it's called Lectiones. These are poems that I offered in the book, very humbly, as poems that I think needed the instrumentation of the human voice, my voice, someone's voice to present them. I don't think they hold on paper. To some extent all of the poems that I've written, all of the poems anyone writes are scores for an eventual ideal performance in someone's mind's ear. More particularly in my poetry any kind of deviation from the margin represents a pitch variation, space left out indicates silence, in an obvious way, I don't know how better to do it, you know Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] played around with the notion of notation for songs, then he realized the words have to do with, I understand, two of the words must do it, but there are ways of setting them down. This is a poem called \"Dates of the Calendar\".\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:01:11\nReads \"Dates of the Calendar\" [from Lectiones].\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:03:03\nI'd like really, since I've read now tiny fragments, scatter of history, I'd like now for my good to read poems that are very recent, so everything that I read from here on after will be from the summer or after, this past summer. i.e. things that are still urgent with me that I have to deal with, as to say them or give. “King of Death”.\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:03:49\nReads \"King of Death\".\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:04:38\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nRobert Kelly\n00:05:47\nThat's a very difficult poem for me. It's meant to sound difficult. I mean it's not meant to flow and it's filled with rhyme and I think rhyme is the torment. The real reason that rhyme was invented must have been pain, the pain of psychosis, the pain of madness, of hoping by that fictive and easy device to cling to a measure of order, because you can get cling, cling, ring, ring, ring the way the tantric hindus make their gestures of introjection, intro- substance via mantrum, rhyme noises, [unintelligible], they say. Fellini [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7371] makes fun of it in that 8 ½ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12018], the girl in the old Hindu...But I think rhyme is madness and rhyme is pain, and maybe poets will no longer have to be madmen now that we have come to abandon rhyme. Don't you think that free-verse poets are less mad then rhyming poets? [Audience laughter]. They need order somewhere else, they can't keep it there. Alright. I mean A.A. Milne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q207036] was probably the craziest man in the world. [Audience laughter]. This is a hard poem in a number of ways, the music of it interests me very much, it's a variety, it all fits on one page somehow but it's a long poem. It's based on the word ‘Gala’, the old Greek word for 'milk' from which we get obviously galactose and galactose but also galaxy from milky way, gala way.\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:08:01\nReads unnamed poem. \n\nRobert Kelly\n00:08:11\nLet me try that again.\n\nRobert Kelly\n00:08:013\nReads unnamed poem [restarts]. \n\nRobert Kelly\n00:11:43\nThis is, strange that I should say it, but this is the time of the world, you know, it is now upon us, when women can acquire souls. The whole of our culture is based on the soullessness of women, the woman gets soul from man, from children, from mother, but now perhaps woman is a separate entity, can be a separate entity, even if it means separate from me, but that is a large concern of mine. That's obvious from the poem, why do I have to say this. It comes of teaching and schools [audience laughter], that sort of thing, no one can understand a thing, nobody can understand anything, I can say it and say it again. Here's a poem, last spring, \"Memorial Day\". I looked out and saw the students of the college, oh, scattered on the lawn having a wiener roast or something.\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:13:13\nReads \"Memorial Day\".\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:16:19\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nRobert Kelly\n00:17:22\nI'd like to move back in time a little bit and read you a few sections from this very long poem called \"Weeks\", which is perhaps even going to be out even this month, sometime soon, I've just finished the proofs of it a week or so ago. Let me read you the first one, at any rate, this is not a narrative poem, but it is a continuity of poems, there are 150 sections, some of them are quite short and some of them are fairly long. So there is not what we are trying to call a formal similarity between the sections, there is a continuity of sound and of concern and that's enough.\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:18:35\nReads “Weeks: 1” published later in Weeks. \n \nRobert Kelly\n00:19:05\nIt's deliberately a--what poems do at their beginnings is to set measures of music, to set new measures, not to declare more than the sound of themselves, I think that's important and a long poem might take a section or two or three or ten, in this case I think the first ten sections do no more than to set the measure of the poem. But I don't want to read them all. God, I don't want to read all 150 of them. I tried that once, not publicly, but I couldn't do it, even privately, even with coffee and the ability to s-m-o-k-e, can't do that here…[Audience laughter]. There is much said in this world about city, I mean I see all around me here the evidence of a monumental concern with city, and we're taught to think about Socrates [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q913] and polis and all of that--polis, city, the community of men, and we haven't said all that has to be said about it. In the last 100--the last 50 sections of \"Weeks\" I get very involved with that. I get very involved with the fact that we do build cities as we build rooms with no place to sit down, with no air, and so on and so forth, and the simplest way we can find that objectionable is simple: Animals, but in a different sense we have allowed that sense of community to destroy something that's closer to the bone, that possibility of a man's doing, and this is what experimental art is always about isn't it? A man doing his own work, that's the hardest experiment of all to do and to maintain, to continue doing your work and not somebody else's. So this is 107, it's about 'polis', the Greek word for 'city' if I am not pronouncing it clearly.\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:21:15\nReads “Weeks: 107” published later in Weeks.\n \nRobert Kelly\n00:22:47\nAnd that's followed by 108, which is more specific and is about the murder of a great man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43303].   \n \nRobert Kelly\n00:22:57\nReads “Weeks: 108” published later in Weeks. \n \nEND\n00:24:57\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nKelly was working as a visiting professor of Modern Poetry at Tufts University in 1966, and was working on several collections of poetry, such as Devotions (Salitter Books), Twenty Poems (Asphodel), Axon Dendron Tree (Asphodel), Crooked Bridge Love Society (Salitter Books), A Joining: A Sequence for H.D. (Black Sparrow Press), and Alpha (J.Fisher) which all came out in 1967, as well as his first work of fiction, The Scorpions (Doubleday, 1967).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nKelly’s direct connection to Sir George Williams University is unknown, however as an important and prolific American poet and professor, he was no doubt known to Canadian writers and professors.\",\"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-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/937869379&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gray, Robert. \\\"Kelly, Robert\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lectiones-for-joan/oclc/123285319&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kelly, Robert. Lectiones. New Mexico: Duende Press, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/weeks/oclc/8726084&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kelly, Robert. Weeks. Mexico: El Corno Emplumado, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"http://inside.bard.edu/~kelly/about.html\",\"citation\":\"Kelly, Robert. “Curriculum Vitae”. Bard College Website. November 11, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-kelly-at-sgwu-1966/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 4 November 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-kelly-at-sgwu-1966/\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “The Electronic Poetry of Robert Kelly”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 11 November 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page  6.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Kelly, Robert, 1935-”. Literature Online Biography. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 2000.    \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548658192384,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0027_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0027_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Kelly 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_0027_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0027_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Kelly 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_0027_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0027_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Kelly 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_0027_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0027_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Kelly 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/robert_kelly_i086-11-027.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"robert_kelly_i086-11-027.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:24:57\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"59.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Robert Kelly\\n00:00:00\\n...Read a couple of poems from a book that came out last year that's very hard to find, it's called Lectiones. These are poems that I offered in the book, very humbly, as poems that I think needed the instrumentation of the human voice, my voice, someone's voice to present them. I don't think they hold on paper. To some extent all of the poems that I've written, all of the poems anyone writes are scores for an eventual ideal performance in someone's mind's ear. More particularly in my poetry any kind of deviation from the margin represents a pitch variation, space left out indicates silence, in an obvious way, I don't know how better to do it, you know Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] played around with the notion of notation for songs, then he realized the words have to do with, I understand, two of the words must do it, but there are ways of setting them down. This is a poem called \\\"Dates of the Calendar\\\".\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:01:11\\nReads \\\"Dates of the Calendar\\\" [from Lectiones].\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:03:03\\nI'd like really, since I've read now tiny fragments, scatter of history, I'd like now for my good to read poems that are very recent, so everything that I read from here on after will be from the summer or after, this past summer. i.e. things that are still urgent with me that I have to deal with, as to say them or give. “King of Death”.\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:03:49\\nReads \\\"King of Death\\\".\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:04:38\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:05:47\\nThat's a very difficult poem for me. It's meant to sound difficult. I mean it's not meant to flow and it's filled with rhyme and I think rhyme is the torment. The real reason that rhyme was invented must have been pain, the pain of psychosis, the pain of madness, of hoping by that fictive and easy device to cling to a measure of order, because you can get cling, cling, ring, ring, ring the way the tantric hindus make their gestures of introjection, intro- substance via mantrum, rhyme noises, [unintelligible], they say. Fellini [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7371] makes fun of it in that 8 ½ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12018], the girl in the old Hindu...But I think rhyme is madness and rhyme is pain, and maybe poets will no longer have to be madmen now that we have come to abandon rhyme. Don't you think that free-verse poets are less mad then rhyming poets? [Audience laughter]. They need order somewhere else, they can't keep it there. Alright. I mean A.A. Milne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q207036] was probably the craziest man in the world. [Audience laughter]. This is a hard poem in a number of ways, the music of it interests me very much, it's a variety, it all fits on one page somehow but it's a long poem. It's based on the word ‘Gala’, the old Greek word for 'milk' from which we get obviously galactose and galactose but also galaxy from milky way, gala way.\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:08:01\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n\\nRobert Kelly\\n00:08:11\\nLet me try that again.\\n\\nRobert Kelly\\n00:08:013\\nReads unnamed poem [restarts]. \\n\\nRobert Kelly\\n00:11:43\\nThis is, strange that I should say it, but this is the time of the world, you know, it is now upon us, when women can acquire souls. The whole of our culture is based on the soullessness of women, the woman gets soul from man, from children, from mother, but now perhaps woman is a separate entity, can be a separate entity, even if it means separate from me, but that is a large concern of mine. That's obvious from the poem, why do I have to say this. It comes of teaching and schools [audience laughter], that sort of thing, no one can understand a thing, nobody can understand anything, I can say it and say it again. Here's a poem, last spring, \\\"Memorial Day\\\". I looked out and saw the students of the college, oh, scattered on the lawn having a wiener roast or something.\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:13:13\\nReads \\\"Memorial Day\\\".\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:16:19\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:17:22\\nI'd like to move back in time a little bit and read you a few sections from this very long poem called \\\"Weeks\\\", which is perhaps even going to be out even this month, sometime soon, I've just finished the proofs of it a week or so ago. Let me read you the first one, at any rate, this is not a narrative poem, but it is a continuity of poems, there are 150 sections, some of them are quite short and some of them are fairly long. So there is not what we are trying to call a formal similarity between the sections, there is a continuity of sound and of concern and that's enough.\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:18:35\\nReads “Weeks: 1” published later in Weeks. \\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:19:05\\nIt's deliberately a--what poems do at their beginnings is to set measures of music, to set new measures, not to declare more than the sound of themselves, I think that's important and a long poem might take a section or two or three or ten, in this case I think the first ten sections do no more than to set the measure of the poem. But I don't want to read them all. God, I don't want to read all 150 of them. I tried that once, not publicly, but I couldn't do it, even privately, even with coffee and the ability to s-m-o-k-e, can't do that here…[Audience laughter]. There is much said in this world about city, I mean I see all around me here the evidence of a monumental concern with city, and we're taught to think about Socrates [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q913] and polis and all of that--polis, city, the community of men, and we haven't said all that has to be said about it. In the last 100--the last 50 sections of \\\"Weeks\\\" I get very involved with that. I get very involved with the fact that we do build cities as we build rooms with no place to sit down, with no air, and so on and so forth, and the simplest way we can find that objectionable is simple: Animals, but in a different sense we have allowed that sense of community to destroy something that's closer to the bone, that possibility of a man's doing, and this is what experimental art is always about isn't it? A man doing his own work, that's the hardest experiment of all to do and to maintain, to continue doing your work and not somebody else's. So this is 107, it's about 'polis', the Greek word for 'city' if I am not pronouncing it clearly.\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:21:15\\nReads “Weeks: 107” published later in Weeks.\\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:22:47\\nAnd that's followed by 108, which is more specific and is about the murder of a great man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43303].   \\n \\nRobert Kelly\\n00:22:57\\nReads “Weeks: 108” published later in Weeks. \\n \\nEND\\n00:24:57\\n\",\"notes\":\"Robert Kelly reads from Lectiones (Duende Press, 1965) and Weeks (El Corno Emplumado, 1966) as well as poems from unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00- Robert Kelly introduces reading [INDEX: Lectiones, Reading poetry: techniques, Yeats: spacing and notations of poems]\\n01:11- Reads “Dates of the Calendar”\\n03:03- Introduces “King of Death”\\n03:49- Reads “King of Death”\\n04:38- Reads first line “The sun didn’t know a thing...”\\n05:47- Introduces first line “Galas, star, all the things I meant...” [INDEX: Rhyme, mantrums, Fellini, Poet A.A. Milne, ‘gala’: Greek for ‘milk’, constellations]\\n08:01- Reads first line “Galas, star, all the things I meant...”\\n11:43- Introduces “Memorial Day” [INDEX: Teaching]\\n13:13- Reads “Memorial Day”\\n16:19- Reads first line “This who I have chosen...”\\n17:22- Introduces “Weeks” (Series of 150 poems) [INDEX: Weeks (1966) Formal similarities vs. continuity of sound as ways of connecting poems]\\n18:35- Reads “Weeks: 1”\\n19:05- Introduces “Weeks: 107” [INDEX: Greek word ‘polis’]\\n21:15- Reads “Weeks: 107”\\n22:47- Introduces “Weeks: 108” [INDEX: Malcolm X]\\n22:57- Reads “Weeks: 108”\\n24:57.12- END OF RECORDING\\n  \\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n \\n4/11/66\\none 5” reel @ 3 3/4 mono lasting 1/2 hr\\n \\n1.  From book Lectiones, “Dates of the Calendar”\\n2.  “King of Death”\\n3.  first line “The sun didn’t know...”\\n4.  first line “Galas, star...”\\n5.  “Memorial Day”\\n6.  first line “This, who I have chosen...”\\n7.  “Weeks” (selected sections)\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-kelly-at-sgwu-1966/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1256","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":["Phyllis Webb and Gwendolyn MacEwen at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 November 1966"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["“PHYLLIS WEBB. Recorded November 18, 1966 with Gwedolyn MacEwan. 3.75 its, 1/2 track on 1. mil tape” written on sticker on the back of the tape box. Gwendolyn MacEwen's name is misspelled. “PHYLLIS WEBB I006/SR130” written on sticker on the spine of tape box. “i006-11-130” written on sticker on the reel.\n\n\"GWENDOLYN MacEWAN I066/SR161\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. MacEwen is misspelled. \"I006-11-161\" written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-130, I006-11-161]"],"access":["Streaming"],"creator_names":["MacEwen, Gwendolyn","Webb, Phyllis"],"creator_names_search":["MacEwen, Gwendolyn","Webb, Phyllis"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/115290827\",\"name\":\"MacEwen, Gwendolyn\",\"dates\":\"1941-1987\",\"notes\":\"Poet, novelist and short story writer Gwendolyn MacEwen was born in Toronto in 1941, and spent her childhood there and in Winnipeg. Her first poem was published in The Canadian Forum, and a year later, when she was eighteen, she left school to pursue a career in writing. She self-published her first two collections of poetry, Selah and The drunken clock in 1961 (Aleph Press). In 1962, she briefly married fellow poet Milton Acorn, published her first novel, Julian the magician (Macmillan, 1963), and a collection of poetry, The rising fire (Contact Press, 1963), which established her reputation on the Canadian scene at the age of twenty-two. That same year, her work was published in Jacques Godbout and John Robert Colombo’s anthology Poetry 64/Poesie 64 (Ryerson Press/ Editions du jour, 1963). MacEwen followed this success with poetry collections A Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press, 1966), The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969) which won a Governor General’s Award for poetry, The Armies of the Moon (Macmillan, 1972), which won the A.J.M. Smith Poetry Award, Magic Animals: Selected Poems (Macmillan, 1975), The Fire-Eaters (Oberon Press, 1976), The T.E. Lawrence Poems (Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 1982) and Earthlight: Selected Poems (General Publisher, 1982). She was re-married to Greek singer Nikos Tsingos, who introduced her to worlds Mediterranean. MacEwen published in other genres, including a CBC verse play Terror and Erebus (reprinted as Afterworlds in 1987), novel King of Egypt, King of Dreams (Macmillan, 1971), collections of short stories Norman (Oberon Press, 1972) and Norman’s Land (1985), travel book Mermaids and Ikons: A Greek Summer (Anansi, 1978), a translation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women: A Play (Playwright’s Co-op, 1979), and two children’s books, The chocolate moose (New Canada Publications, 1981) and The honey drum (Mosaic Press, Flatiron Books, 1983).  Her last publication, Afterworlds (McClelland and Stewart, 1987) won a Governor General’s Award, and was published shortly before her death in 1987. Two volumes of selected work appeared posthumously, The poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen: the early years (Exile Editions, 1993) and The poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen: the later years (Exile Editions, 1994) edited by Margaret Atwood and Barry Callaghan.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/29847238\",\"name\":\"Webb, Phyllis\",\"dates\":\"1927-2021\",\"notes\":\"Poet Phyllis Webb was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1927. She completed a B.A. in Philosophy and English at University of British Columbia and at the young age of twenty-two, she ran as a CCF candidate for the B.C. legislature. She finished one year of graduate studies at McGill University in 1950 in Montreal. She traveled and lived in San Francisco, Paris and England before settling back in B.C. where she taught at UBC for four years. Her first poems were published in Trio (Contact Press) in 1954 with Eli Mandel and Gael Turnbull, and in Even your right eye in 1956 (McClelland and Stewart). The Sea is Also a Garden (Ryerson Press) was published in 1952, and Naked poems (Periwinkle Press) was published in 1965. While in Toronto, Phyllis Webb conceived and was executive producer of the CBC radio program “Ideas” from 1966 to 1969. Two years later in 1971, Webb published Selected Poems (Talon Books). Webb’s many publications also include Wilson’s bowl (Coach House Press, 1980), Sunday water: thirteen anti ghazals (Island Writing Series, 1982), The vision tree: selected poems (Talon Books, 1982) which won the Governor General’s Award and Hanging fire (Coach House Press, 1990). Along with poetry, Phyllis Webb also collected her essays, reviews and radio discussions in Taking (1982), Nothing but brush strokes: selected prose (NeWest, 1995). She was the writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and taught at University of Victoria and the Banff Centre. Phyllis Webb has also won the Canada Council Senior Arts Award in 1981 and 1987, as well as being awarded an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1992. She lives on Saltspring Island, B.C.\",\"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\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1966],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"\",\"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\":\"1966 11 18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the tape box. Date is also referenced but not specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco (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 Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Phyllis Webb reads from The Sea is Also a Garden (Ryerson Press, 1962), Even Your Right Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1956), and Naked Poems (Periwinkle Press, 1965). Gwendolyn MacEwen reads from Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press, 1966) and poems published later in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969) and a few unknown poems."],"contents":["phyllis_webb_i006-11-130.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nNow perhaps some of you are wondering what these readings are all about and how the choices made, I have here a slight commentary on that which I would like to read to you. Our answer to this is that we have not attempted to make the series an exhaustive coverage of any particular school or faction of poetry. Nor has our concern been an attempt to seek out the so-called \"great poets\". Our choices have been made with the desire to present to you, hopefully, the possibilities of utterance that is more than parochial. In short, this is our attempt to sound just that diversity that so much characterizes the North American Poetry scene. Now tonight it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you two poets whose distinctiveness is more than the fact of their sex. I want to introduce each poet in turn, Phyllis Webb [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7188637] will begin the readings and after the intermission, I shall introduce to you Gwendolyn MacEwen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4276487]. Now Phyllis Webb has published three books of poems, they are Even Your Right Eye in 1956, The Sea is Also a Garden in ‘62 and Naked Poems in ‘65. Her earlier work appeared in Trio along with Eli Mandel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3050883] and Gael Turnbull [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5516589]. She is currently a program organizer for CBC's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] Ideas Series [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5988057]. Ladies and Gentleman, Ms. Phyllis Webb.\n \nUnknown\n00:02:20\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:02:21\nI'd like to begin with a found poem, in that it was simply given to me by a child behaving in my presence. It's called \"Alec\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:02:35\nReads \"Alec\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:04:07\nReads \"Rilke\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:05:58\nThis next poem is called \"Continuum\" and it's not a very extraordinary or terribly good poem even, I don't think, but it came out of a rather extraordinary experience, which was television. And it was simply a news clip from Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881], but this one had soundtrack on it, which made it rather more touching and inspired me to wire the Prime Minister. And shortly after that and I didn't know I was getting to the wire in the middle of it until I got there and it has to do with the almost totally impossibility of separating out objective events  that happen out there in history and in time and one's own private history. \"Continuum\".\n\nPhyllis Webb\n00:07:04\nReads \"Continuum\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:08:34\nI'm afraid I am suffering from the Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] plague which may be rampant here too. The next poem has a title longer than the poem. The title is \"A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:09:04\nReads \"A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:09:13\nAnd the next poem is dedicated to Paul Goodman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q943567], and there is a quotation embedded in the poem which you will probably catch when I come to it. It's a short poem.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:09:32\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:10:06\nReads \"Poetry\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:11:54\nI will read now from my volume The Sea is Also a Garden. \"Propositions\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:12:16\nReads \"Propositions\" from The Sea is Also a Garden.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:13:28\nThe next poem is one that seems to elicit negative vibrations from an audience in the first three quarters, so go ahead and zoom them at me.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:13:43\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:16:02\nI don't think I have the voice to read both sides of this poems tonight, there are two poems, one called \"Breaking\" and one called \"Making\". They're about the creative process that involves both those things, but \"Making\" is rather long and a little hard to read, so I'll read \"Breaking\" which is better probably as a poem.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:16:47\nReads \"Breaking\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:19:04\nThe next poem is called \"The Time of Man\" and had a rather interesting genesis. I was reading an article in Horizon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3786777] by Dr. Loren Eiseley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2634723], which he was putting forward some ideas on evolution and it was very beautifully written this Dr. Eiseley's an excellent stylist as well as a good scientist and I discovered that as I was going through I was marking the sentences and a few days later I began writing a poem and picked up the book and listed the sentences, so this poem takes off from the Eiseley article which is called \"The Time of Man\" in which Eiseley says we must live evolution forward amongst many other interesting things and it is started with quotations, which you will get some of the time and some of the time you won't. I sent it to him for confirmation about the scientific aspects of it, he said okay, I used to write poetry too. \"The Time of Man\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:20:24\nReads \"The Time of Man\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:21:38\nReads \"Sitting\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:22:08\nI want to read an old poem now, which I wrote in Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1761], long years ago, if I can find it. It's called \"Poems of Dublin\", where I'd gone on a sort of literary pilgrimage in search of the spirit of Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] and Joyce [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6882] among others, it's a very down to earth sort of poem, in four parts.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:22:45\nReads \"Poems of Dublin\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:25:33\nI want to move on now to my latest book called Naked Poems and which one of your local critics, or at least he wrote for the Montreal Star [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3521910] at this particular point, exclaimed of the price because there are so few words in the book. It's 2.25$. These poems are very small, and therefore very expensive and came at a bitter price, I may say, to me. They came quite as a surprise, I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote them, the first fourteen or so I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here, and I couldn't quite take them seriously and then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic in them, and realized that here was something, almost a new form for me to work on, and it's very bare, naked, undecorated and I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to write a couple hundred of them, and I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem, and finally reduced them to, I don't know, forty or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation, let's say. I'm going to read the first fourteen which comprise a total poem, in a sense the whole book is a poem. And then I'll read a few more as long as my voice and your patience will hold out. \"Suite I\".\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:27:56\nReads \"Suite I\" from Naked Poems.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:28:53\nReads \"Flies\" from Naked Poems.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:29:10\nReads \"Your Blouse\" from Naked Poems.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:29:41\nReads \"Suite II\" from Naked Poems.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:31:27\nOne of the things I was interested in doing in these poems is again this subjective and the objective, here the subject and the object relationship, so that I use objects just to speak for themselves, in a sense, and yet they are all prismed in the way I see them. And again this impossibility of the dichotomy of subjective-objective.\n \nPhyllis Webb\n00:32:09\nReads unnamed poem from Naked Poems.\n \nEND\n00:32:43\n\n\ngwendolyn_macewan_i006-11-161.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nSecond half of our program...on the second half of our program we will have Gwendolyn MacEwen reading for us. I have notes in my hand concerning her, but on the back of this album, here, a CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] publications release of...is it eight Canadian poets? One, two, three, four… [Audience laughter]. Yes, eight Canadian poets, this album is about to be released very shortly. There's a much more comprehensive biography of her, so I shall read this as an introduction to her. Born in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] in 1941, began publishing poetry in the Canadian Forum [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5030045] at age fifteen. She left school at eighteen, a high school dropout, as the sociologists would say [audience applause and laughter] to devote herself to writing. She has published three books of poetry, The Drunken Clock, The Rising Fire, and most recently, A Breakfast for Barbarians. She has also published a novel called Julian the Magician. In 1965, she was awarded the prize for poetry in the CBC's new writing contest. With the aid of a Canada Council [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2993809] grant, she is currently at work on a novel on the, how do you pronounce the guy's name? [whispers off-mic to MacEwen]...Pharaoh Akhenaten [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81794] [laughter] of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79]. Ladies and gentlemen, Gwendolyn MacEwen.\n \nUnknown\n00:01:47\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:01:47\nSo listen, I had a great idea that if our voices gave out we were just going to open up the record and bring a recorder up on a stage and place the needle in the proper groove, and then just let the record speak for itself. However, I guess the voice is intact. I'm reading first from my latest work, poems from the last year. The first is called \"The Zoo\".\n  \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:02:22\nReads \"The Zoo\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:03:38\nNot feeling that I'd sufficiently exploited beasts and things, I wrote another called \"The Taming of the Dragon\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:03:49\nReads \"The Taming of the Dragon\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:04:57\nStill not having exploited the animal kingdom, I wrote a poem which, well, is not connected with the animal kingdom at all, really. It's called \"The Horse-head Nebula\".\n  \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:05:12\nReads \"The Horse-head Nebula\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:06:19.86\nReads \"Wheels\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:07:18\nThis is a poem which, oddly enough, came out in a Mexican magazine in Spanish not too long ago, looking completely unrecognizable to me. It's called \"I Should Have Predicted\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:07:38\nReads \"I Should Have Predicted\" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:08:47\nSome people have asked me if that poem was about Toronto, and I'm at a loss to answer, not having seen horses, riders, chariots, or anything remotely similar in Toronto. Plus the fact, I'm sure many people have predicted the death of Toronto, as far as that goes. I recall Phyllis reading a poem on perhaps an evolutionary theme, and I have one here called \"The Heel\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:09:32\nReads \"The Heel\" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:11:16\nNow, I think I can safely move into Breakfast for Barbarians. It needs a little preparation, a little cushioning, perhaps. This is a poem called \"The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:12:01\nReads \"The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:13:33\nI think all poets should have some suffering poems, poems of great anguish. So feeling I was somewhat deficient in this area [audience laughter], I made use of a very opportune situation, recovering from an appendectomy in hospital. [Audience laughter]. Deciding that surely this was my moment, if I was ever going to write a painful poem it must be now. [Audience laughter]. So this is \"Appendectomy\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:14:20\nReads \"Appendectomy\".\n \nUnknown\n00:14:22\n[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].\n \nUnknown\n00:14:57\n[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:15:20\nAlthough I can't say that I'm convinced that that suffering was valid, either. But. The next poem is called \"The Self Assumes\", and I rarely talk about how a poem gets written because it seems mostly irrelevant, but I would remark that the last line of this poem was one of those very strange, surprising things that comes to one almost instantaneously, and one plucks it out of the air. I was very delighted with it. \"The Self Assumes\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:16:08\nReads \"The Self Assumes\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:18:01\nThe next poem is one of a group of poems toward the end of this book where the, I think the tone or the voice takes a somewhat radical departure from the poems in the rest of the book. It's called \"The Caravan\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:18:23\nReads \"The Caravan\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians. \n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:20:29\nI'm trying to locate a poem in this book which I realized doesn't exist. It's somewhere else altogether. I'd like to end this reading with a trilogy of poems. Which are also toward the end of Breakfast for Barbarians. Poems which, for me, represent a stage in my own growth as a poet. They are called the Arcanum poems, I believe they're on the record which Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] was showing you. \n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:21:15\nReads \"Arcanum One\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:22:35\nBefore I go into \"Arcanum Two\", in case anyone is mystified with beetles and suns and various creatures like that, let me say that the book is, the poem, rather, is of an Egyptian theme. A royal house. And the events taking place within it. So we move on: \"Arcanum Two\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:23:05\nReads \"Arcanum Two\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:24:33\nAnd finally, \"Arcanum Three\".\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:24:39\nReads \"Arcanum Three\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\n \nGwendolyn MacEwen\n00:25:31\nThank you very much. \n \nUnknown\n00:25:34\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:25:34\n...everybody here, I want to thank Gwendolyn MacEwen. Our night three is on December the second. Thank you very much. \n \nEND\n00:25:42\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\n In 1966, Phyllis Webb was executive producer of CBC’s “Ideas” radio show in Toronto. She had just published Naked Poems in 1965.\\n\\nIn 1966, Gwendolyn MacEwen published Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"\\nLocal Connections:\\n\\nWhile studying at McGill in the early 50’s, she became involved with the literary circle that included F.R. Scott, Louis Dudek and Irving Layton. Her work was published by Toronto’s Coach House Press, McClelland and Stewart, Ryerson University Press and Vancouver’s Talonbooks. She also kept correspondences with George Bowering (Archives Canada).\\n\\nThe direct connection between Sir George Williams University and Gwendolyn MacEwen is unknown. However, MacEwen was an important emerging poet from Toronto, associated with poets Margaret Atwood, and husband Milton Acorn.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"I006-11-130:\\nOriginal transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones \\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\\nI006-11-161:\\nOriginal transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, introduction 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/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. “MacEwen, Gwendolyn (1941-87)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post- Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson & L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poetry-of-gwendolyn-macewen-volume-one-the-early-years/oclc/1127735121&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret and Barry Callaghan (eds). The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen; Volume One: The Early Years. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1993. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Beddoes, Julie. “Webb, Phyllis (1927-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/988192362&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poetry Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1994. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/margaret-atwood-a-biography/oclc/398000144&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998. \"},{\"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. “Gwendolyn MacEwen”. From There to Here. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-x2/oclc/977756354&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary. “Gwendolyn MacEwen (1941-1987)”. 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. \\\"Webb, Phyllis\\\". 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/macewen_gwendolyn.html\",\"citation\":\"“Gwendolyn MacEwen (1941-1987)”. One Zero Zero: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Press 1945-2044. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/breakfast-for-barbarians/oclc/468766375&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"MacEwen, Gwendolyn. A Breakfast for Barbarians. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/magic-animals-selected-poems-old-and-new/oclc/643604498&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"MacEwen, Gwendolyn. Magic Animals: Selected Poems Old and New. Toronto: Macmillan, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/659470&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli. “Gwendolyn MacEwen”. Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Manhire, Bill.\\\"MacEwen, Gwendolyn\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/archives-literary/Pages/list-fonds-collections.aspx#p\",\"citation\":\"“Phyllis Webb fonds”. Library and Archives Canada. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sea-is-also-a-garden/oclc/422686224&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Webb, Phyllis. The Sea is Also a Garden. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/even-your-right-eye/oclc/654581694&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Webb, Phyllis. Even Your Right Eye. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1956. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/naked-poems/oclc/423359678&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Webb, Phyllis. Naked Poems. Vancouver: Periwinkle Press, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Woodcock, George & Rosemary Sullivan. \\\"MacEwen, Gwendolyn\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"MacEwen, Gwendolyn. The Shadow-Maker. Toronto: Macmillan, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/phyllis_webb_i006-11-130.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"phyllis_webb_i006-11-130.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:32:43\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"78.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"phyllis_webb_i006-11-130.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nNow perhaps some of you are wondering what these readings are all about and how the choices made, I have here a slight commentary on that which I would like to read to you. Our answer to this is that we have not attempted to make the series an exhaustive coverage of any particular school or faction of poetry. Nor has our concern been an attempt to seek out the so-called \\\"great poets\\\". Our choices have been made with the desire to present to you, hopefully, the possibilities of utterance that is more than parochial. In short, this is our attempt to sound just that diversity that so much characterizes the North American Poetry scene. Now tonight it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you two poets whose distinctiveness is more than the fact of their sex. I want to introduce each poet in turn, Phyllis Webb [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7188637] will begin the readings and after the intermission, I shall introduce to you Gwendolyn MacEwen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4276487]. Now Phyllis Webb has published three books of poems, they are Even Your Right Eye in 1956, The Sea is Also a Garden in ‘62 and Naked Poems in ‘65. Her earlier work appeared in Trio along with Eli Mandel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3050883] and Gael Turnbull [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5516589]. She is currently a program organizer for CBC's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] Ideas Series [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5988057]. Ladies and Gentleman, Ms. Phyllis Webb.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:02:20\\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:02:21\\nI'd like to begin with a found poem, in that it was simply given to me by a child behaving in my presence. It's called \\\"Alec\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:02:35\\nReads \\\"Alec\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:04:07\\nReads \\\"Rilke\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:05:58\\nThis next poem is called \\\"Continuum\\\" and it's not a very extraordinary or terribly good poem even, I don't think, but it came out of a rather extraordinary experience, which was television. And it was simply a news clip from Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881], but this one had soundtrack on it, which made it rather more touching and inspired me to wire the Prime Minister. And shortly after that and I didn't know I was getting to the wire in the middle of it until I got there and it has to do with the almost totally impossibility of separating out objective events  that happen out there in history and in time and one's own private history. \\\"Continuum\\\".\\n\\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:07:04\\nReads \\\"Continuum\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:08:34\\nI'm afraid I am suffering from the Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] plague which may be rampant here too. The next poem has a title longer than the poem. The title is \\\"A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:09:04\\nReads \\\"A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:09:13\\nAnd the next poem is dedicated to Paul Goodman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q943567], and there is a quotation embedded in the poem which you will probably catch when I come to it. It's a short poem.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:09:32\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:10:06\\nReads \\\"Poetry\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:11:54\\nI will read now from my volume The Sea is Also a Garden. \\\"Propositions\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:12:16\\nReads \\\"Propositions\\\" from The Sea is Also a Garden.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:13:28\\nThe next poem is one that seems to elicit negative vibrations from an audience in the first three quarters, so go ahead and zoom them at me.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:13:43\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:16:02\\nI don't think I have the voice to read both sides of this poems tonight, there are two poems, one called \\\"Breaking\\\" and one called \\\"Making\\\". They're about the creative process that involves both those things, but \\\"Making\\\" is rather long and a little hard to read, so I'll read \\\"Breaking\\\" which is better probably as a poem.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:16:47\\nReads \\\"Breaking\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:19:04\\nThe next poem is called \\\"The Time of Man\\\" and had a rather interesting genesis. I was reading an article in Horizon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3786777] by Dr. Loren Eiseley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2634723], which he was putting forward some ideas on evolution and it was very beautifully written this Dr. Eiseley's an excellent stylist as well as a good scientist and I discovered that as I was going through I was marking the sentences and a few days later I began writing a poem and picked up the book and listed the sentences, so this poem takes off from the Eiseley article which is called \\\"The Time of Man\\\" in which Eiseley says we must live evolution forward amongst many other interesting things and it is started with quotations, which you will get some of the time and some of the time you won't. I sent it to him for confirmation about the scientific aspects of it, he said okay, I used to write poetry too. \\\"The Time of Man\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:20:24\\nReads \\\"The Time of Man\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:21:38\\nReads \\\"Sitting\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:22:08\\nI want to read an old poem now, which I wrote in Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1761], long years ago, if I can find it. It's called \\\"Poems of Dublin\\\", where I'd gone on a sort of literary pilgrimage in search of the spirit of Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] and Joyce [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6882] among others, it's a very down to earth sort of poem, in four parts.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:22:45\\nReads \\\"Poems of Dublin\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:25:33\\nI want to move on now to my latest book called Naked Poems and which one of your local critics, or at least he wrote for the Montreal Star [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3521910] at this particular point, exclaimed of the price because there are so few words in the book. It's 2.25$. These poems are very small, and therefore very expensive and came at a bitter price, I may say, to me. They came quite as a surprise, I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote them, the first fourteen or so I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here, and I couldn't quite take them seriously and then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic in them, and realized that here was something, almost a new form for me to work on, and it's very bare, naked, undecorated and I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to write a couple hundred of them, and I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem, and finally reduced them to, I don't know, forty or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation, let's say. I'm going to read the first fourteen which comprise a total poem, in a sense the whole book is a poem. And then I'll read a few more as long as my voice and your patience will hold out. \\\"Suite I\\\".\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:27:56\\nReads \\\"Suite I\\\" from Naked Poems.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:28:53\\nReads \\\"Flies\\\" from Naked Poems.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:29:10\\nReads \\\"Your Blouse\\\" from Naked Poems.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:29:41\\nReads \\\"Suite II\\\" from Naked Poems.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:31:27\\nOne of the things I was interested in doing in these poems is again this subjective and the objective, here the subject and the object relationship, so that I use objects just to speak for themselves, in a sense, and yet they are all prismed in the way I see them. And again this impossibility of the dichotomy of subjective-objective.\\n \\nPhyllis Webb\\n00:32:09\\nReads unnamed poem from Naked Poems.\\n \\nEND\\n00:32:43\\n\",\"notes\":\"Phyllis Webb reads from The Sea is Also a Garden (Ryerson Press, 1962), Even Your Right Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1956), and Naked Poems (Periwinkle Press, 1965). \\n\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka Introduction [INDEX: Kiyooka explains decisions behind Reading Series Poets, North American Poetry scene, Phyllis Webb, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Even Your Right Eye in 1956, The Sea is Also a Garden in 1962 and Naked Poems in 1965 by Phyllis Webb, Trio with Eli Mandel and Gael Turnbull, CBC’s Ideas Series]\\n02:21- Phyllis Webb introduces “Alec” [INDEX: found poem]\\n02:35- Reads “Alec”\\n04:07- Reads “Rilke”\\n05:58- Introduces “Continuum” [INDEX: Television clip from Vietnam, Prime Minister,        objective events and private history]\\n07:04- Reads “Continuum”\\n08:34- Introduces “A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the         Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing” [INDEX: Toronto]\\n09:04- Reads “A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the   \\tSupermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing”\\n09:13- Introduces first line “What decides the vision...” [INDEX: Paul Goodman]\\n09:32- Reads first line “What decides the vision...”\\n10:06- Reads “Poetry”\\n11:54- Introduces “Propositions” [INDEX: from The Sea is Also a Garden]\\n12:16- Reads “Propositions”\\n13:28- Introduces first line “To friends who have also considered suicide...”\\n13:43- Reads first line “To friends who have also considered suicide...”\\n16:02- Introduces “Breaking” [INDEX: “Making”, creative process]\\n16:47- Reads “Breaking”\\n19:04- Introduces “The Time of Man” [INDEX: article in Horizon by Dr. Loren Eiseley,         evolution]\\n20:24- Reads “The Time of Man”\\n21:38- Reads “Sitting”\\n22:08- Introduces “Poems of Dublin” [INDEX: pilgrimage to Dublin, Yeats, Joyce]\\n22:45- Reads “Poems of Dublin”\\n25:33- Reads “Suite I” [INDEX: from Naked Poems, critic from the Montreal Star, writing     process of Naked Poems]\\n28:53- Reads “Flies” [INDEX: not in Howard Fink List of poems]\\n29.10- Reads “Your Blouse” [INDEX: not in Howard Fink List of poems]\\n29:41- Reads “Suite II” [INDEX: not in Howard Fink List of poems]\\n31:27- Introduces first line “An instant of white roses...” [INDEX: in section “Non Linear” in Naked Poems, subject-object relationship; not in Howard Fink List of Poems]\\n32:43.57- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/phyllis-webb-at-sgwu-1966-roy-kiyooka/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/gwendolyn_macewen_i006-11-161.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"gwendolyn_macewan_i006-11-161.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:25:42\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"61.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"gwendolyn_macewan_i006-11-161.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nSecond half of our program...on the second half of our program we will have Gwendolyn MacEwen reading for us. I have notes in my hand concerning her, but on the back of this album, here, a CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] publications release of...is it eight Canadian poets? One, two, three, four… [Audience laughter]. Yes, eight Canadian poets, this album is about to be released very shortly. There's a much more comprehensive biography of her, so I shall read this as an introduction to her. Born in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] in 1941, began publishing poetry in the Canadian Forum [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5030045] at age fifteen. She left school at eighteen, a high school dropout, as the sociologists would say [audience applause and laughter] to devote herself to writing. She has published three books of poetry, The Drunken Clock, The Rising Fire, and most recently, A Breakfast for Barbarians. She has also published a novel called Julian the Magician. In 1965, she was awarded the prize for poetry in the CBC's new writing contest. With the aid of a Canada Council [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2993809] grant, she is currently at work on a novel on the, how do you pronounce the guy's name? [whispers off-mic to MacEwen]...Pharaoh Akhenaten [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81794] [laughter] of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79]. Ladies and gentlemen, Gwendolyn MacEwen.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:01:47\\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:01:47\\nSo listen, I had a great idea that if our voices gave out we were just going to open up the record and bring a recorder up on a stage and place the needle in the proper groove, and then just let the record speak for itself. However, I guess the voice is intact. I'm reading first from my latest work, poems from the last year. The first is called \\\"The Zoo\\\".\\n  \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:02:22\\nReads \\\"The Zoo\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:03:38\\nNot feeling that I'd sufficiently exploited beasts and things, I wrote another called \\\"The Taming of the Dragon\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:03:49\\nReads \\\"The Taming of the Dragon\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:04:57\\nStill not having exploited the animal kingdom, I wrote a poem which, well, is not connected with the animal kingdom at all, really. It's called \\\"The Horse-head Nebula\\\".\\n  \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:05:12\\nReads \\\"The Horse-head Nebula\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:06:19.86\\nReads \\\"Wheels\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:07:18\\nThis is a poem which, oddly enough, came out in a Mexican magazine in Spanish not too long ago, looking completely unrecognizable to me. It's called \\\"I Should Have Predicted\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:07:38\\nReads \\\"I Should Have Predicted\\\" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:08:47\\nSome people have asked me if that poem was about Toronto, and I'm at a loss to answer, not having seen horses, riders, chariots, or anything remotely similar in Toronto. Plus the fact, I'm sure many people have predicted the death of Toronto, as far as that goes. I recall Phyllis reading a poem on perhaps an evolutionary theme, and I have one here called \\\"The Heel\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:09:32\\nReads \\\"The Heel\\\" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:11:16\\nNow, I think I can safely move into Breakfast for Barbarians. It needs a little preparation, a little cushioning, perhaps. This is a poem called \\\"The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:12:01\\nReads \\\"The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography\\\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:13:33\\nI think all poets should have some suffering poems, poems of great anguish. So feeling I was somewhat deficient in this area [audience laughter], I made use of a very opportune situation, recovering from an appendectomy in hospital. [Audience laughter]. Deciding that surely this was my moment, if I was ever going to write a painful poem it must be now. [Audience laughter]. So this is \\\"Appendectomy\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:14:20\\nReads \\\"Appendectomy\\\".\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:14:22\\n[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:14:57\\n[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:15:20\\nAlthough I can't say that I'm convinced that that suffering was valid, either. But. The next poem is called \\\"The Self Assumes\\\", and I rarely talk about how a poem gets written because it seems mostly irrelevant, but I would remark that the last line of this poem was one of those very strange, surprising things that comes to one almost instantaneously, and one plucks it out of the air. I was very delighted with it. \\\"The Self Assumes\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:16:08\\nReads \\\"The Self Assumes\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:18:01\\nThe next poem is one of a group of poems toward the end of this book where the, I think the tone or the voice takes a somewhat radical departure from the poems in the rest of the book. It's called \\\"The Caravan\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:18:23\\nReads \\\"The Caravan\\\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians. \\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:20:29\\nI'm trying to locate a poem in this book which I realized doesn't exist. It's somewhere else altogether. I'd like to end this reading with a trilogy of poems. Which are also toward the end of Breakfast for Barbarians. Poems which, for me, represent a stage in my own growth as a poet. They are called the Arcanum poems, I believe they're on the record which Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] was showing you. \\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:21:15\\nReads \\\"Arcanum One\\\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:22:35\\nBefore I go into \\\"Arcanum Two\\\", in case anyone is mystified with beetles and suns and various creatures like that, let me say that the book is, the poem, rather, is of an Egyptian theme. A royal house. And the events taking place within it. So we move on: \\\"Arcanum Two\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:23:05\\nReads \\\"Arcanum Two\\\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:24:33\\nAnd finally, \\\"Arcanum Three\\\".\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:24:39\\nReads \\\"Arcanum Three\\\" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.\\n \\nGwendolyn MacEwen\\n00:25:31\\nThank you very much. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:25:34\\n[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:25:34\\n...everybody here, I want to thank Gwendolyn MacEwen. Our night three is on December the second. Thank you very much. \\n \\nEND\\n00:25:42\\n\",\"notes\":\"Gwendolyn MacEwen reads from Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press, 1966) and poems published later in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969) and a few unknown poems.\\n\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Gwendolyn MacEwen. [INDEX: second half of reading, CBC recording of eight Canadian poets (Phyllis Webb, Earle Birney, John Newlove, Al Purdy, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, George Bowering and Gwendolyn MacEwen (CBC, 1966), biography, born in Toronto in 1941, publishing poetry at age 15, high school dropout, sociologists, three poetry books: The Drunken Clock, The Rising Fire and Breakfast for Barbarians, novel Julian and the Magician, 1965 award from CBC’s\\nwriting contest, Canada Council grant, Pharaoh Akhenaton and the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt, (perhaps King of Egypt, King of Dreams (Macmillan, 1971)].\\n01:47- Gwendolyn MacEwen introduces reading and “The Zoo”. [INDEX: loss of voice,\\nrecording, record, latest work].\\n02:22- Reads “The Zoo”.\\n03:38- Introduces “The Taming of the Dragon”. [INDEX: exploited beasts].\\n03:49- Reads “The Taming of the Dragon”.\\n04:57- Introduces “The Horse-head Nebula”. [INDEX: exploited the animal kingdom].\\n05:12- Reads “The Horse-head Nebula”.\\n06:19- Reads “Wheels”.\\n07:18- Introduces “I Should Have Predicted”. [INDEX: published in Mexican magazine in\\nSpanish; later published in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969)].\\n07:38- Reads “I Should Have Predicted”.\\n08:47- Explains “I Should Have Predicted” and introduces “The Heel”. [INDEX: about\\nToronto, horses, riders, chariots, death of Toronto, Phyllis [Webb] poem, evolutionary\\ntheme; later published in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969)].\\n09:32- Reads “The Heel”.\\n11:16- Introduces Breakfast for Barbarians. [INDEX: preparation, cushioning].\\n11:52- Introduces “The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography”. [INDEX: from\\nBreakfast for Barbarians].\\n12:01- Reads “The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography”.\\n13:33- Introduces “Appendectomy”. [INDEX: suffering poem, poets, appendectomy in hospital,painful poem; from Breakfast for Barbarians].\\n14:20- Reads “Appendectomy”.\\n14:22- Damage to recording\\n14:57- Damage to recording\\n15:20- Explains “Appendectomy”, introduces “The Self Assumes”. [INDEX: suffering,\\nvalidity, how a poem gets written, irrelevant, last line, strange surprise, instantaneous, out of air; from Breakfast for Barbarians].\\n16:08- Reads “The Self Assumes”.\\n18:01- Introduces “The Caravan”. [INDEX: group of poems, tone, voice, radical departure; from Breakfast for Barbarians].\\n18:23- Reads “The Caravan”.\\n20:29- Introduces “Arcanum One”. [INDEX: poem that doesn’t exist, trilogy of poems, at the end of Breakfast for Barbarians, stage in growth as a poet, Arcanum poems, on record, Roy Kiyooka].\\n21:15- Reads “Arcanum One”.\\n22:35- Introduces “Arcanum Two”. [INDEX: beetles, sun, creatures, Egyptian theme, royal house].\\n23:05- Reads “Arcanum Two”.\\n24:33- Reads “Arcanum Three”.\\n25:31- Gwendolyn MacEwen thanks the audience.\\n25:34- Roy Kiyooka thanks Gwendolyn MacEwen, announces date of next reading. [INDEX: next reading December 2].\\n25:42.80- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gwendolyn-macewen-at-sgwu-1966/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1257","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":["Roy Kiyooka and Richard (Dick) Sommer at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 2 December 1966"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"R. KIYOOKA 2/12/66\" written on the spine of the tape's box. \"Roy Kiyooka (2 tracls 3 3/4) and I086-11-030\" also written on reel and the tape's box.\n\n\"Dick Sommer Sides 1 & 2  3 3/4\"/sec 2/12/66\" handwriitten on the back of the tape's box. \"I086-11-046\" and \"RT 500\" also written."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[I086-11-030, I086-11-046]"],"access":["Streaming"],"creator_names":["Sommer, Richard","Kiyooka, Roy"],"creator_names_search":["Sommer, Richard","Kiyooka, Roy"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/46769463/#Sommer,_Richard\",\"name\":\"Sommer, Richard\",\"dates\":\"1934-2012\",\"notes\":\"Richard Sommer was born on August 27, 1934 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 1956, then went on to receive an A.M. in 1957 and a Ph.D. in 1962 from Harvard University. In 1961 Sommer married Gillian Taylor, but remarried Victoria Tansey in 1969, with whom he had two children. Sommer won the American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowship for research in Norway in 1958-9, and published The Odyssey and Primitive Religion in 1962 (Norwegian Universities Press). That same year, he was hired at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) as an assistant professor from 1962 to 1967, when he became an associate professor of English in 1967. His second publication, Strangers and Pilgrims: An Essay on the Metaphor of Journey, was published in 1964, written with Georg Roppen (Humanities Press). Sommer’s collections of poetry that have been published by Delta Canada include Homage to Mr. MacMullin (Delta Canada, 1969), The Blue Sky Notebook (New Delta, 1972), Milarepa (New Delta, 1976), Left Hand Mind (New Delta, 1976), The Other Side of Games (New Delta, 1977), and Selected and New Poems (1983) published by Vehicule Press. After Sommer retired from Sir George Williams University, he became increasingly active in environmental conservation, leading the conservation effort of Pinnacle Mountain in Quebec, which was documented in an NFB film, The Poet and the Pinnacle (1995). In the early 2000s, Richard Sommer was diagnosed with prostate cancer and, shortly before his death in 2012, he published Cancer Songs (Signature Editions 2011), a mix of verse and journaling exploring his experiences living with the illness.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\",\"Series organizer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"Roy Kiyooka was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1926. Sculptor, painter, photographer, poet, film-maker and teacher, he was influential in many important literary and artistic scenes all across Canada. Kiyooka studied fine art at the Provincial Institute of Art and Technology in Alberta, the Institute Allende in Mexico, the University of Saskatchewan, Emma Lake Workshops. He married Monica Dealtry Barker in 1955 and had three children.  He has exhibited his works in numerous cities, including Edmonton, Calgary, San Miguel D’Allende, Saskatoon, Regina, Vancouver, Toronto, New York and Montreal. Kiyooka’s work was shown at the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art in Washington, D.C. He won the silver medal representing Canada at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1966. Kiyooka taught at various institutions, including Regina College, where he worked from 1956 to 1960, the Vancouver School of Art (Now Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design) from 1960-1965, Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) from 1966 to 1969 and the University of British Columbia from 1972 to his retirement. During the 60’s, Kiyooka played a crucial role in the artistic renaissance of Vancouver poetry and art, and served to connect the Vancouver scene with the Coach House Press group in Toronto. It was around this time that he began writing poetry, publishing Kyoto airs in 1964 (Periwinkle Press), illustrating Daphne Marlatt’s The unquiet bed in 1967, Nevertheless these eyes also in 1967 (Coach House Press), Stoned gloves in 1970 (Coach House Press), Transcanada letters in 1975 (Talon Books), The Fontainebleau dream machine: 18 frames from a book in 1977 (Coach House Press), and Of seasonal pleasures and small hindrances in 1978 (B.C. Monthly). Pacific windows: collected poems of Roy Kiyooka came out in 1974 (Talon Books), and included a biography, bibliography and notes on his poetry. Pear tree poems came out almost a decade later in 1988 (Coach House Press) and was nominated for a Governor General’s Award. More recently he published Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka in 1997(NeWest Press), edited by Daphne Marlatt. Roy Kiyooka died in 1994.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"contributors_names_search":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Hoffman, Stanton\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Speaker\"]}]"],"Series_organizer_name":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"Speaker_name":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"Performance_Date":[1966],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"Duplicate\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Kodak\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"00:50:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1966 12 2\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the tape box and on a sticker on the tape reel\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco (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 Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Roy Kiyooka reads from Kyoto Airs (Periwinkle Press, 1964) and poems published later in Nevertheless These Eyes (Coach House Press, 1967). Richard (Dick) Sommer reads poems from an unknown selection of books. "],"contents":["roy_kiyooka_i086-11-030.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nStanton Hoffman\n00:00:00\nOn behalf of the Poetry Reading Committee of Sir George Williams University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342] I wish to welcome you to this, the fifth, in a series of poetry readings, given at this University during 1966-67. Tonight there will be readings by two poets living in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], and members of the faculty of this university. There will be a fifteen minute intermission in between each reading. Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] was born in Moose Jaw [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1019496], Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1989], he studied at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, the Instituto Allende [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17989128] in Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96], and the University of Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1514848] Emma Lake Workshops. He has had one-man exhibitions in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096], Calgary [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36312], San Miguel de Allende [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4063467], Saskatoon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10566], Regina [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2123], Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], Victoria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2132], New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] and Montreal. He exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q653360], where he was one of four painters representing Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], and where he received honourable mention and a Silver Medal. His most recent show was held last month at the Laing Galleries [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28846441] in Toronto. In 1964, his first volume of poems, Kyoto Airs, was published by the Periwinkle Press in Vancouver. His second volume, Nevertheless These Eyes is being published this month, in Montreal by Bev Leech. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Roy Kiyooka.\n \nUnknown\n00:01:24\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:01:25\n--want to start off this evening by reading a few poems from my earlier book, the one that Stan mentioned. These poems were written as a result of a summer in Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and they are very much occasional poems, they address themselves to the particular occasion of having been there, and they were meant in part to account for that experience of having been there, to my numerable friends in Vancouver. I'll begin by reading three very short little poems, they all relate to, what should we call it, the various contexts in which I saw the sculptured image of the Buddha. The first one is called \"Waiting Out the Rain\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:02:51\nReads \"Waiting Out the Rain\" [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:03:13\nThis is \"Buddha in the Garden\". Again, very brief.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:03:23\nReads \"Buddha in the Garden\" [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:03:47\nThis is \"Sunday at the Temple\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:03:53\nReads \"Sunday at the Temple\" [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:04:20\nAnd this is the image of a Buddha seen in the Kyoto Museum, a reclining figure.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:04:30\nReads unnamed poem [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:05:01\nNow the next is a sequence of four little poems, very much like the traditional Japanese poems called the Haiku. This is a sequence, the title of which is \"The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\". The first one goes like this:\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:05:27\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\", part 1 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:05:45\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\", part 2 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:06:07\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\", part 3 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:06:24\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\", part 4 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:06:49\nNow this one is called \"Children's Shrine\". Throughout most of the cities and towns and villages all over Japan you'll find way-side shrines, they're frequently just built into the wall in a very narrow street and people on whatever religious occasion come to worship there. This is a shrine particularly for children. And it goes like this:\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:07:24\nReads \"Children's Shrine\" [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:08:41\nWell this is rather a long sequence, once more very short poems, there are eleven of them, and the title of the sequence is simply \"Higashiyama\", now 'higashiyama' means, in English, 'east mountain'.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:09:22\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 1 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:09:39\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 2 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:10:04\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 3 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:10:20\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 4 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:10:38\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 5 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:10:54\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 6 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:11:13\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 7 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:11:38\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 8 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:11:55\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 9 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:12:17\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 10 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:12:43\nReads \"Higashiyama\", part 11 [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:13:01\nWell I'll go on to the last poem in the book, this is an attempt, as it were, to sum up the varied experiences that I had there. The poem is called \"Itinerary of a View\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:13:29\nReads \"Itinerary of a View\" [from Kyoto Airs].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:17:07\nI think I need to say a few words about this next group of poems, they were, they're from the book that I am having done at the moment, I started these poems in June 1965 in Montreal when I first came here. I don't know how to tell you this, except that at the time I came, I stayed with Alfred Pinsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21997094], or rather I stayed at his home, at his invitation, while I was looking for a place to live. Now, this took me about two weeks, it was very hot, and in the evenings I used to go through his library and pick up things and scanned them. One evening I came across this book, which was a biography of the English painter, Stanley Spencer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282413]. Spencer, we could say is perhaps the co-partner in the origin and the form and the content of this book. The book is in three parts, the first part is called the mirror, \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", and it is prefaced by a quotation from Spencer, which goes like this: \"I am meeting you all the time, and sending my longing for you into chaos, into the darkness, beyond these walls\". I may add that these poems, likewise, are on the whole, very brief, though some are longer.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:19:31\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 1 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:20:34\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 2 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:21:55\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 3 published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:22:49\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 4 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:23:23\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 5 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:24:18\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 6 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:24:46\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 7 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:25:24\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 8 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:25:51\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 9 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:26:27\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 10 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:27:02\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 11 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:27:26\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 12 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:28:06\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 13 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:28:36\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 14 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:29:21\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 15 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:30:05\nThe last one in this section.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:30:11\nReads \"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\", part 16 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:30:53\nThere's a terrible draft coming in from the back, I think you're right Dick, we're going to end up with arthritic ankles. Well, this is the second section, and it is called \"The Proposal\". Once more, prefaced with a remark from Stanley Spencer, a very beautiful one. They are set down, as I found them in the book, I have used them in the context of this section of the book and these four poems, taken from his writings are meant to define certain of her attributes. Now I have given a title to each one of these four poems, and I hope they will clarify the context in which they belong here. \"Portrait of the Beloved\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:32:06\nReads \"Portrait of the Beloved\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:32:56\nThis I called \"The Marriage\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:33:05\nReads \"The Marriage\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:33:37\nThis is called \"The Separation\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:33:45\nReads \"The Separation\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:34:07\nAnd this, is \"Her Apotheosis\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:34:17\nReads \"Her Apotheosis\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:35:23\nThat incidentally, is a description he wrote to a friend about a painting that he in fact had made. From your response, I gathered, it has a comic element, but I don't think that he himself made it that way. [Laughter].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:36:05\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:38:04\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:38:36\nThe first stanza of this two-stanza poem is from Spencer, once again.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:38:43\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:39:34\nThe reference in this poem is to an exemplary sculptor who died many years ago, who obsessionally sculpted the human female form, his name is Gaston Lachaise [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1495586].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:40:02\nReads unnamed poem.\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:40:59.50\nThe title of this poem is the same as the title of the second section, it's \"The Proposal\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:41:14\nReads \"The Proposal\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:42:27\nThis one is called \"The Dance\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:42:33\nReads \"The Dance\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:43:59\nThe title of this poem is called \"Her Admonition\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:44:06\nReads \"Her Admonition\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:45:28\nNow the following five poems are called \"Poems of Resurrection\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:45:46\nReads \"Poems of Resurrection\", part 1 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:47:27\nSecond \"Resurrection\" poem.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:47:28\nReads \"Poems of Resurrection\", part 2 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:48:33\nReads \"Poems of Resurrection\", part 3 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:49:07\nReads \"Poems of Resurrection\", part 4 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:49:49\nThe last Resurrection poem, which concludes with a very brief, two-line coda.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:50:01\nReads \"Poems of Resurrection\", part 5 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:50:51\nNow, the second to last poem is called \"The Visitation\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:51:16\nReads \"The Visitation\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:53:14\nAnd finally,\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:53:22\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:53:56\nWell, this is the final section. This is called \"Nevertheless These Eyes\" and briefly, and again from Spencer, a preface that goes like this: \"I am on this side of angels and dirt\".\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:55:25\nReads \"Nevertheless These Eyes\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n01:00:20\nAnd finally, by way of acknowledging the nature of this book.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n01:00:31\nReads unnamed poem [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n01:00:57\nThank you very much--\n\nUnknown\n01:00:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n01:01:00\n--and I were reading together, decided we should write one for the occasion, so we have each come up with a haiku. This is my haiku, it's especially for Dick. I have in brackets here, \"A gentle admonition to the audience following my reading, and preceding his\" and it goes like this: \"Let the stone tell how /snow-covered in whiteness, /these words, when his words come.\"\n \nEND\n01:01:42\n\n\nrichard_sommer_i086-11-046.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nStanton Hoffman\n00:00:00\nThe second reader of this evening, Dick Sommer, was born in St. Paul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28848], Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527], and educated at the University of Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q238101] where he most recently returned as a visiting Assistant Professor of English, and at Harvard [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13371]. In 1958 he was a recipient of the Academy of American Poets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q282096] Prize, and over a period of several years published his poems in the Harvard Advocate. He has given readings in Cambridge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49111], Minneapolis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36091], and in Oslo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q585]. Also, he does not want me to mention his scholarly publications: Dash, Which Are, Strangers and Pilgrims, an essay on the Metaphor of the Journey written with Georg Roppen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23944662] and published by the Humanities Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97958829] in New York City, as well as by the Norwegian University's Press, in Norway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20] and A Monograph, the Odyssey and Primitive Religion, published by the University of Bergen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q204457] in 1962. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Dick Sommer.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:01:02\nI didn't want him to mention those. Oh I've got the deal with Roy, as well. So this is a haiku with, which you'll be glad to know also has seventeen syllables in the title. \"The Haiku to Roy Kiyooka\", in reply to his haiku to me.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:01:31\nReads \"The Haiku to Roy Kiyooka\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:01:50\nAnd this is the Haiku that began the mess, this was the one that I originally threatened to read to him, and naturally will carry out my threat. Which has a slightly different title, \"Haiku at Roy Kiyooka\"\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:02:07\nReads \"Haiku at Roy Kiyooka\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:02:27\nAnd then there's the one that I think you have on that broadsheet, which as I looked at it, in all of its mimeographed splendor, struck me as sounding a bit, now, like the theme song of the Central Intelligence Agency [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37230], but I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean it that way when I wrote it.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:02:55\nReads unnamed haiku.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:03:13\nI'm as you've heard, I'm responsible for having written some criticism, sorry about that, but I hope to make it up with the next poem, which is also on your broadsheet. Called the meaning of- \"The Meaning of Poetry\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:03:36\nReads \"The Meaning of Poetry\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:04:19\nAnd this next poem, you'll be very happy to know I have my wife's permission to read.\n\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:04:26\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:05:02\nYou're going to be out of luck if you don't play chess, for this next one. You may be out of luck if you do, but that has more to do with the poem than your ability at chess.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:05:23\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:06:27\nRoy's given us a series of poems in praise of 'her', I don't know who 'her' is, but I have another name for her myself, she's called the Lady of Situations, and that's the title of this poem. You know, situations in the sense of she's always getting involved, or people are always getting involved. This is that Lady of Situation. And, oh yes, there's some erudition in this one too, there's a marvelous drawing taken from the tomb of Tuthmosis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1320491], which appears in the Skera, Egyptian Painting Volume, and you might look it up because she appears there as a tree, a breasted tree, and giving suck to a Pharaoh, it's quite interesting as a painting, anyway, that's in here too.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:07:34\nReads \"Lady of Situation\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:09:29\nThe, I noticed that the Brotherhood of Railroad Engineers has arranged to have separate drinking glasses, or they're trying to get themselves put into the sanitary code, I think this is Roy's. This must be mine, still water. This next one, I wrote the day following my seeing of a movie that I hope many of you are familiar with, it's the Russian version of Don Quixote [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49612156], a lovely film, beautiful adaptation of the myth of Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q630823] in the terms of the revolution to come, and I was particularly fascinated to the title that was given to Don Quixote, in this film, so I used it for the title of the poem.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:10:54\nReads \"Don Quixote de la Manchesky\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:13:25\nThis next one takes its title, this is another area of that reference, takes its title from a little known and very important folk ballad, I had to put something in ethnic here, so this is it. It's, the title is \"The Other Side of the Mountain\", and it comes from that little song that begins \"The bear climbed over the mountain to see what he could see, but the other side of the mountain was all that he could see\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:14:05\nReads \"The Other Side of the Mountain\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:17:15\nIncidentally, you must not get the idea that the mountain, you know, came entirely from the, from the, from the song. It, you can find it on the Greater Barrington Quadrangle, for the appropriate section of the Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q771] of the US [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] geological survey, it's right on the map. It's really there, it's got position. This poem is in four sections, there are three narrative sections and then there's a short epilogue. And it's called \"My Loveliest Enemies\". I don't think there's any point in keeping you in suspense about this, my loveliest enemies are birds. And that's the punchline, so now you know it and you can listen to the poem.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:18:24\nReads \"My Loveliest Enemies\" [parts 1-3].\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:33:12\nAnd here's the epilogue.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:33:19\nReads \"Epilogue\" of \"My Loveliest Enemies\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:35:52\nIt's a race against not time but against the creeping gelatination, I think is the word of my lower extremities, and I'm sure the creeping sleepiness that is likely to affect you. This next, excuse me, here's to you! This next poem requires an erudite explanation too and I'm sorry for that. I hope, actually, it's not necessary. Alcuin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q154332], the Charles the King, Alcuin was an 8th century scholar who was brought from his, from the York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42462] diocese, to the court of Charlemagne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3044], and there became the principal architect of Charlemagne's attempt to bring Latin and Latin culture to the Francs. You might say, I suppose, that he was the first of, first great humanist, but we'll see what his Latin is worth in this poem. This is a letter, written by Alcuin, actually it was written by me, presumably written by Alcuin, to Charles the King.\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:37:33\nReads \"Letter written by Alcuin, to Charles the King\".\n \nRichard (Dick) Sommer\n00:41:46\nAnd this poem is, has a title, and a subtitle. The title is \"Concentration\" the subtitle, \"Homage to Eva Jerome\".\n\nEND\n00:42:12\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1966, Kiyooka was working on Nevertheless these eyes (1967) and was teaching at Sir George Williams University. He was part of the Reading Series Committee.\\n\\nIn 1966, Richard Sommer was teaching at Sir George Williams University.\\n\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka had many connections all across Canada: he was involved in the poetry renaissance in Vancouver in the 60’s, he was connected to the Coach House poetry group in Toronto, thus he was most likely influential in the communication between Sir George Williams Reading Series and other Canadian poets.\\n\\nRichard Sommer became an important influence and player in Montreal poetry in the 1970’s, associated with Vehicule Press and poets Artie Gold, Ken Norris and Stephen Morrissey.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/poetry-in-english\",\"citation\":\"Barbour, Douglas. “Poetry in English: The New Generation: After 1960”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica-Dominion, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Boxer, Avi and Bryan McCarthy and Graham Seal. “Re: Reverend Richard J. Sommer”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 12 November 1971, page 4. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gary-snyder-at-sgwu-1971/#1\",\"citation\":\"Boxer, Avi and Bryan McCarthy and Graham Seal. “Get Your Shit Together...”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 19 November 1971, page 4. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/montreal-english-poetry-of-the-seventies/oclc/1072194565&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Farkas, Andre & Ken Norris (eds). Montreal English Poetry of the Seventies. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1977. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hancock, Geoff. \\\"Kiyooka, Roy\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/kyoto-airs/oclc/70783779&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kiyooka, Roy. Kyoto Airs. Vancouver: Periwinkle Press, 1964. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/nevertheless-these-eyes/oclc/1138698061&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kiyooka, Roy. Nevertheless These Eyes. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Reading Info”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 25 November 1966, page 7. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 13.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/the-georgian/The%20Georgian_Vol%2031%20no%2010_1967-10-17.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Prism Awards For Literature”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 17 October 1967, page 11.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Marlatt, Daphne. “Roy Kiyooka: from eminence to immanence”. West Coast Line: A Journal of Contemporary Writing & Criticism. No. 38.3 (Winter 2005), page 39.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Roy (Kenzie) Kiyooka.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Richard J(erome) Sommer.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/roy-kiyooka-at-sgwu-1966-stanton-hoffman/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 2 December 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/4-montreal-poets-peter-van-toorn-marc-plourde-arty-gold-richard-sommer/oclc/622296821&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Solway, David. 4 Montreal poets: Peter van Toorn, Marc Plourde, Arty Gold and Richard       Sommer. Fredericton, N.B., Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stevens, Peter. \\\"Sommer, Richard\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.  \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/8722/Richard-Sommer.html#ixzz0Zb3DRqFx\",\"citation\":\"Stevens, Peter. “Richard Sommer Biography- (b.1934), The Poet and the Pinnacle, Blue sky notebook, The other side of games”. Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/roy-kiyooka-at-sgwu-1966-stanton-hoffman/\",\"citation\":\"Stock, Sandra. “Kiyooka Examined”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 4 November 1966. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548665532416,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0030_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0030_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Roy Kiyooka 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_0030_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0030_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Roy Kiyooka Tape Box - 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In 1958 he was a recipient of the Academy of American Poets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q282096] Prize, and over a period of several years published his poems in the Harvard Advocate. He has given readings in Cambridge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49111], Minneapolis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36091], and in Oslo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q585]. Also, he does not want me to mention his scholarly publications: Dash, Which Are, Strangers and Pilgrims, an essay on the Metaphor of the Journey written with Georg Roppen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23944662] and published by the Humanities Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97958829] in New York City, as well as by the Norwegian University's Press, in Norway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20] and A Monograph, the Odyssey and Primitive Religion, published by the University of Bergen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q204457] in 1962. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Dick Sommer.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:01:02\\nI didn't want him to mention those. Oh I've got the deal with Roy, as well. So this is a haiku with, which you'll be glad to know also has seventeen syllables in the title. \\\"The Haiku to Roy Kiyooka\\\", in reply to his haiku to me.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:01:31\\nReads \\\"The Haiku to Roy Kiyooka\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:01:50\\nAnd this is the Haiku that began the mess, this was the one that I originally threatened to read to him, and naturally will carry out my threat. Which has a slightly different title, \\\"Haiku at Roy Kiyooka\\\"\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:02:07\\nReads \\\"Haiku at Roy Kiyooka\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:02:27\\nAnd then there's the one that I think you have on that broadsheet, which as I looked at it, in all of its mimeographed splendor, struck me as sounding a bit, now, like the theme song of the Central Intelligence Agency [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37230], but I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean it that way when I wrote it.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:02:55\\nReads unnamed haiku.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:03:13\\nI'm as you've heard, I'm responsible for having written some criticism, sorry about that, but I hope to make it up with the next poem, which is also on your broadsheet. Called the meaning of- \\\"The Meaning of Poetry\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:03:36\\nReads \\\"The Meaning of Poetry\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:04:19\\nAnd this next poem, you'll be very happy to know I have my wife's permission to read.\\n\\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:04:26\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:05:02\\nYou're going to be out of luck if you don't play chess, for this next one. You may be out of luck if you do, but that has more to do with the poem than your ability at chess.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:05:23\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:06:27\\nRoy's given us a series of poems in praise of 'her', I don't know who 'her' is, but I have another name for her myself, she's called the Lady of Situations, and that's the title of this poem. You know, situations in the sense of she's always getting involved, or people are always getting involved. This is that Lady of Situation. And, oh yes, there's some erudition in this one too, there's a marvelous drawing taken from the tomb of Tuthmosis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1320491], which appears in the Skera, Egyptian Painting Volume, and you might look it up because she appears there as a tree, a breasted tree, and giving suck to a Pharaoh, it's quite interesting as a painting, anyway, that's in here too.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:07:34\\nReads \\\"Lady of Situation\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:09:29\\nThe, I noticed that the Brotherhood of Railroad Engineers has arranged to have separate drinking glasses, or they're trying to get themselves put into the sanitary code, I think this is Roy's. This must be mine, still water. This next one, I wrote the day following my seeing of a movie that I hope many of you are familiar with, it's the Russian version of Don Quixote [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49612156], a lovely film, beautiful adaptation of the myth of Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q630823] in the terms of the revolution to come, and I was particularly fascinated to the title that was given to Don Quixote, in this film, so I used it for the title of the poem.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:10:54\\nReads \\\"Don Quixote de la Manchesky\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:13:25\\nThis next one takes its title, this is another area of that reference, takes its title from a little known and very important folk ballad, I had to put something in ethnic here, so this is it. It's, the title is \\\"The Other Side of the Mountain\\\", and it comes from that little song that begins \\\"The bear climbed over the mountain to see what he could see, but the other side of the mountain was all that he could see\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:14:05\\nReads \\\"The Other Side of the Mountain\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:17:15\\nIncidentally, you must not get the idea that the mountain, you know, came entirely from the, from the, from the song. It, you can find it on the Greater Barrington Quadrangle, for the appropriate section of the Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q771] of the US [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] geological survey, it's right on the map. It's really there, it's got position. This poem is in four sections, there are three narrative sections and then there's a short epilogue. And it's called \\\"My Loveliest Enemies\\\". I don't think there's any point in keeping you in suspense about this, my loveliest enemies are birds. And that's the punchline, so now you know it and you can listen to the poem.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:18:24\\nReads \\\"My Loveliest Enemies\\\" [parts 1-3].\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:33:12\\nAnd here's the epilogue.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:33:19\\nReads \\\"Epilogue\\\" of \\\"My Loveliest Enemies\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:35:52\\nIt's a race against not time but against the creeping gelatination, I think is the word of my lower extremities, and I'm sure the creeping sleepiness that is likely to affect you. This next, excuse me, here's to you! This next poem requires an erudite explanation too and I'm sorry for that. I hope, actually, it's not necessary. Alcuin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q154332], the Charles the King, Alcuin was an 8th century scholar who was brought from his, from the York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42462] diocese, to the court of Charlemagne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3044], and there became the principal architect of Charlemagne's attempt to bring Latin and Latin culture to the Francs. You might say, I suppose, that he was the first of, first great humanist, but we'll see what his Latin is worth in this poem. This is a letter, written by Alcuin, actually it was written by me, presumably written by Alcuin, to Charles the King.\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:37:33\\nReads \\\"Letter written by Alcuin, to Charles the King\\\".\\n \\nRichard (Dick) Sommer\\n00:41:46\\nAnd this poem is, has a title, and a subtitle. The title is \\\"Concentration\\\" the subtitle, \\\"Homage to Eva Jerome\\\".\\n\\nEND\\n00:42:12\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Richard (Dick) Sommer reads poems from an unknown selection of books. \\n\\n00:00- Stanton Hoffman introduces Richard/Dick Sommer [INDEX: St. Paul, Minnesota,         University of Minnesota, Harvard, published in Harvard Advocate, Academy of    American Poets Prize, Readings in Cambridge, Minneapolis, Oslo, Strangers and    Pilgrims: an essay on the Metaphor of Journey by Richard Sommer and Georg Roppen,  published by Humanities Press in New York City and by the Norwegian University Press, Monograph, the Odyssey and Primitive Religion by Richard Sommer, published by University of Bergen 1962, Criticism: Dash, Which Are]\\n01:02- Introduces “The Haiku to Roy Kiyooka” [INDEX: Haiku Battle with Roy Kiyooka]\\n01:31- Reads “The Haiku to Roy Kiyooka”\\n01:50- Introduces “Haiku at Roy Kiyooka”\\n02:07- Reads “Haiku at Roy Kiyooka”\\n02:27- Introduces first line haiku “The little known eye...” [INDEX: C.I.A.]\\n02:55- Reads first line “The little known eye...”\\n03:13- Introduces “The Meaning of Poetry” [INDEX: Writing criticism]\\n03:36- Reads “The Meaning of Poetry”\\n04:19- Introduces first line “The figure eight....”\\n04:26- Reads first line “The figure eight...”\\n05:02- Introduces first line “How much wildness in that horseman’s eye...” [INDEX: Chess]\\n05:23- Reads “How much wildness in that horseman’s eye...”\\n06:27- Introduces “Lady of Situation” [INDEX: Tomb of Tuthmosis, Skera- Egyptian Painting Volume, Pharaoh]\\n07:34- Reads “Lady of Situation”\\n09:29- Introduces “Don Quixote de la Manchesky” [INDEX: Brotherhood of Railroad   Engineers, Don Quixote: Russian Film “Don Kikhot”, Sancho Panza]\\n10:54- Reads “Don Quixote de la Manchesky”\\n13:25- Introduces “The Other Side of the Mountain” [INDEX: Folk ballads]\\n14:05- Reads “The Other Side of the Mountain”\\n17:15- Introduces “My Loveliest Enemies” [INDEX: Greater Barrington Quadrangle]\\n18:24- Reads “My Loveliest Enemies” parts 1-3\\n33:19- Reads “Epilogue” from “My Loveliest Enemies”\\n35:52- Introduces “Letter Written by Alcuin, to Charles the King” [INDEX: Alcuin \\t, Charlemange, 8th Century Scholars, Latin; Howard Fink List “Great Lord”.]\\n37:33- Reads “Letter Written by Alcowen, to Charles the King” [sp?]\\n41:46- Introduces “Concentration: Homage to Eva Jerome” (poem is never read)\\n42:12.32- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nHoward Fink List: 2/12/66\\n 3 3/4, on one 5” reel, two tracks mono, 50 mins\\n \\n1.  Haiku for Roy Kiyooka first line “the snow melts...”\\n2.  Haiku at Roy Kiyooka first line “I hear Roy speak...”\\n3.  Haiku first line “The little known eye...”\\n4.  “The Meaning of Poetry”\\n5.  first line “The figure eight...:\\n6.  first line “How much wilderness in that horses eye...”\\n7.   “The Lady of Situations”\\n8.  “Don Quixote de la Manchasky”\\n9.  “The Other Side of the Mountain”\\n10.  A poem in four sections: “My Loveliest Enemies” parts of section one missing\\n11. first line “Great Lord...”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/richard-dick-sommer-at-sgwu-1966-stanton-hoffman/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/roy_kiyooka_i086-11-030.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"roy_kiyooka_i086-11-030.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:01:42\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"148.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"roy_kiyooka_i086-11-030.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nStanton Hoffman\\n00:00:00\\nOn behalf of the Poetry Reading Committee of Sir George Williams University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342] I wish to welcome you to this, the fifth, in a series of poetry readings, given at this University during 1966-67. Tonight there will be readings by two poets living in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], and members of the faculty of this university. There will be a fifteen minute intermission in between each reading. Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] was born in Moose Jaw [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1019496], Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1989], he studied at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, the Instituto Allende [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17989128] in Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96], and the University of Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1514848] Emma Lake Workshops. He has had one-man exhibitions in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096], Calgary [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36312], San Miguel de Allende [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4063467], Saskatoon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10566], Regina [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2123], Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], Victoria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2132], New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] and Montreal. He exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q653360], where he was one of four painters representing Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], and where he received honourable mention and a Silver Medal. His most recent show was held last month at the Laing Galleries [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28846441] in Toronto. In 1964, his first volume of poems, Kyoto Airs, was published by the Periwinkle Press in Vancouver. His second volume, Nevertheless These Eyes is being published this month, in Montreal by Bev Leech. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Roy Kiyooka.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:01:24\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:01:25\\n--want to start off this evening by reading a few poems from my earlier book, the one that Stan mentioned. These poems were written as a result of a summer in Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and they are very much occasional poems, they address themselves to the particular occasion of having been there, and they were meant in part to account for that experience of having been there, to my numerable friends in Vancouver. I'll begin by reading three very short little poems, they all relate to, what should we call it, the various contexts in which I saw the sculptured image of the Buddha. The first one is called \\\"Waiting Out the Rain\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:02:51\\nReads \\\"Waiting Out the Rain\\\" [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:03:13\\nThis is \\\"Buddha in the Garden\\\". Again, very brief.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:03:23\\nReads \\\"Buddha in the Garden\\\" [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:03:47\\nThis is \\\"Sunday at the Temple\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:03:53\\nReads \\\"Sunday at the Temple\\\" [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:04:20\\nAnd this is the image of a Buddha seen in the Kyoto Museum, a reclining figure.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:04:30\\nReads unnamed poem [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:05:01\\nNow the next is a sequence of four little poems, very much like the traditional Japanese poems called the Haiku. This is a sequence, the title of which is \\\"The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\\\". The first one goes like this:\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:05:27\\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\\\", part 1 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:05:45\\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\\\", part 2 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:06:07\\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\\\", part 3 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:06:24\\nReads “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji\\\", part 4 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:06:49\\nNow this one is called \\\"Children's Shrine\\\". Throughout most of the cities and towns and villages all over Japan you'll find way-side shrines, they're frequently just built into the wall in a very narrow street and people on whatever religious occasion come to worship there. This is a shrine particularly for children. And it goes like this:\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:07:24\\nReads \\\"Children's Shrine\\\" [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:08:41\\nWell this is rather a long sequence, once more very short poems, there are eleven of them, and the title of the sequence is simply \\\"Higashiyama\\\", now 'higashiyama' means, in English, 'east mountain'.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:09:22\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 1 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:09:39\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 2 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:10:04\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 3 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:10:20\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 4 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:10:38\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 5 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:10:54\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 6 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:11:13\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 7 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:11:38\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 8 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:11:55\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 9 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:12:17\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 10 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:12:43\\nReads \\\"Higashiyama\\\", part 11 [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:13:01\\nWell I'll go on to the last poem in the book, this is an attempt, as it were, to sum up the varied experiences that I had there. The poem is called \\\"Itinerary of a View\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:13:29\\nReads \\\"Itinerary of a View\\\" [from Kyoto Airs].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:17:07\\nI think I need to say a few words about this next group of poems, they were, they're from the book that I am having done at the moment, I started these poems in June 1965 in Montreal when I first came here. I don't know how to tell you this, except that at the time I came, I stayed with Alfred Pinsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21997094], or rather I stayed at his home, at his invitation, while I was looking for a place to live. Now, this took me about two weeks, it was very hot, and in the evenings I used to go through his library and pick up things and scanned them. One evening I came across this book, which was a biography of the English painter, Stanley Spencer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282413]. Spencer, we could say is perhaps the co-partner in the origin and the form and the content of this book. The book is in three parts, the first part is called the mirror, \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", and it is prefaced by a quotation from Spencer, which goes like this: \\\"I am meeting you all the time, and sending my longing for you into chaos, into the darkness, beyond these walls\\\". I may add that these poems, likewise, are on the whole, very brief, though some are longer.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:19:31\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 1 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:20:34\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 2 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:21:55\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 3 published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:22:49\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 4 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:23:23\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 5 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:24:18\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 6 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:24:46\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 7 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:25:24\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 8 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:25:51\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 9 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:26:27\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 10 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:27:02\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 11 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:27:26\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 12 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:28:06\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 13 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:28:36\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 14 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:29:21\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 15 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:30:05\\nThe last one in this section.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:30:11\\nReads \\\"The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight\\\", part 16 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:30:53\\nThere's a terrible draft coming in from the back, I think you're right Dick, we're going to end up with arthritic ankles. Well, this is the second section, and it is called \\\"The Proposal\\\". Once more, prefaced with a remark from Stanley Spencer, a very beautiful one. They are set down, as I found them in the book, I have used them in the context of this section of the book and these four poems, taken from his writings are meant to define certain of her attributes. Now I have given a title to each one of these four poems, and I hope they will clarify the context in which they belong here. \\\"Portrait of the Beloved\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:32:06\\nReads \\\"Portrait of the Beloved\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:32:56\\nThis I called \\\"The Marriage\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:33:05\\nReads \\\"The Marriage\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:33:37\\nThis is called \\\"The Separation\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:33:45\\nReads \\\"The Separation\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:34:07\\nAnd this, is \\\"Her Apotheosis\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:34:17\\nReads \\\"Her Apotheosis\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:35:23\\nThat incidentally, is a description he wrote to a friend about a painting that he in fact had made. From your response, I gathered, it has a comic element, but I don't think that he himself made it that way. [Laughter].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:36:05\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:38:04\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:38:36\\nThe first stanza of this two-stanza poem is from Spencer, once again.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:38:43\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:39:34\\nThe reference in this poem is to an exemplary sculptor who died many years ago, who obsessionally sculpted the human female form, his name is Gaston Lachaise [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1495586].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:40:02\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:40:59.50\\nThe title of this poem is the same as the title of the second section, it's \\\"The Proposal\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:41:14\\nReads \\\"The Proposal\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:42:27\\nThis one is called \\\"The Dance\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:42:33\\nReads \\\"The Dance\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:43:59\\nThe title of this poem is called \\\"Her Admonition\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:44:06\\nReads \\\"Her Admonition\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:45:28\\nNow the following five poems are called \\\"Poems of Resurrection\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:45:46\\nReads \\\"Poems of Resurrection\\\", part 1 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:47:27\\nSecond \\\"Resurrection\\\" poem.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:47:28\\nReads \\\"Poems of Resurrection\\\", part 2 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:48:33\\nReads \\\"Poems of Resurrection\\\", part 3 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:49:07\\nReads \\\"Poems of Resurrection\\\", part 4 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:49:49\\nThe last Resurrection poem, which concludes with a very brief, two-line coda.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:50:01\\nReads \\\"Poems of Resurrection\\\", part 5 [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:50:51\\nNow, the second to last poem is called \\\"The Visitation\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:51:16\\nReads \\\"The Visitation\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:53:14\\nAnd finally,\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:53:22\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:53:56\\nWell, this is the final section. This is called \\\"Nevertheless These Eyes\\\" and briefly, and again from Spencer, a preface that goes like this: \\\"I am on this side of angels and dirt\\\".\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:55:25\\nReads \\\"Nevertheless These Eyes\\\" [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n01:00:20\\nAnd finally, by way of acknowledging the nature of this book.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n01:00:31\\nReads unnamed poem [published later in Nevertheless These Eyes].\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n01:00:57\\nThank you very much--\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:00:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n01:01:00\\n--and I were reading together, decided we should write one for the occasion, so we have each come up with a haiku. This is my haiku, it's especially for Dick. I have in brackets here, \\\"A gentle admonition to the audience following my reading, and preceding his\\\" and it goes like this: \\\"Let the stone tell how /snow-covered in whiteness, /these words, when his words come.\\\"\\n \\nEND\\n01:01:42\\n\",\"notes\":\"Roy Kiyooka reads from Kyoto Airs (Periwinkle Press, 1964) and poems published later in Nevertheless These Eyes (Coach House Press, 1967).\\n\\n00:00- Introducer (Stanton Hoffman) introduces Roy Kiyooka [INDEX: Fifth reader in the       1966-67 Poetry Reading Series, Moose Jaw, Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, \\tInstituto Allende in Mexico, University of Saskatchewan: Emma Lake Workshop, One         man exhibitions in: Calgary, San Miguel D’Allende, Saskatoon, Toronto, Regina,        \\tMontreal, Vancouver, Victoria, New York City, Sao Paulo Biennial: Silver Medal     \\trepresenting Canada, Lane [or Ling?] Gallery in Toronto, Kyoto Airs by Roy Kiyooka, 1964, Periwinkle Press, Vancouver, [Unknown A1] Nevertheless These Eyes by Roy Kiyooka (1966), published by Bev Leech in Montreal, written in June 1965 in Montreal\\n01:25- Roy Kiyooka introduces Kyoto Airs and “Waiting Out the Rain” [INDEX: Occasional poetry in Japan, sculptured image of the Buddha, Japan]\\n02:51- Reads “Waiting Out the Rain”\\n03:13- Reads “Buddha in the Garden”\\n03:47- Reads “Sunday at the Temple”\\n04:20- Introduces first line “Hovering, he is hovering, his eyes closed...”\\n04:30- Reads first line “Hovering, he is hovering, his eyes closed...”\\n05:01- Introduces “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji” [INDEX: series of four haikus, stone      gardens in Royanji, Japan]\\n05:27- Reads haikus 1-4 of “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji Series”\\n06:49- Introduces “Children’s Shrine” [INDEX: Shrines in Japan]\\n07:24- Reads “Children’s Shrine”\\n08:41- Introduces “Higashiyama” sequence of eleven poems.\\n09:22- Reads “Higashiyama, 1-11”\\n13:01- Introduces “Itinerary of a View”\\n13:29- Reads “Itinerary of a View”\\n17:07- Introduces poems 1-15 of the section “The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight” from Nevertheless These Eyes. [INDEX: Sequence poems, Higashiyama Mountain Japan, Alfred Pinsky, English Painter Stanley Spencer]\\n19:31- Reads poems 1-16 from “The Song the Mirror Sang at Midnight”\\n30:53- Introduces poems from the second section “The Proposal” from Nevertheless These Eyes. [INDEX: English Painter Stanley Spencer]\\n32:06- Reads “Portrait of the Beloved”\\n32:56- Reads “The Marriage”\\n33:37- Reads “The Separation”\\n34:07- Reads “Her Apotheosis”\\n35:23- Explains “Her Apotheosis”\\n36:05- Reads first line “The grotesque flash...”\\n38:04- Reads first line “The beloved is resilient...”\\n38:36- Introduces first line “The women say what I like...” [INDEX: English Painter Stanley Spencer]\\n38:43- Reads first line “The women say what I like...”\\n39:34- Introduces first line “Gaston Lachaise...”\\n40:02- Reads first line “Gaston Lachaise...”\\n40:59- Reads “The Proposal”\\n42:27- Reads “The Dance”\\n43:59- Reads “Her Admonition”\\n45:28- Introduces five poems called “Five Poems of Resurrection”\\n45:46- Reads 1-5 poems of “Five Poems of Resurrection”\\n50:51- Reads “The Visitation”\\n53:22- Reads first line “What the beloved said...”\\n53:56- Introduces “Nevertheless These Eyes”\\n55:25- Reads “Nevertheless These Eyes”\\n1:00:31- Reads first line “The figure in the poems are his...”\\n1:00:57- Introduces and reads haiku written for this reading [see transcript for entire poem] [INDEX: Haiku to Dick Sommers]\\n1:01:42.65- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n2/12/66\\n one 5” @ 3 3/4 time: 1 hr 10 mins\\n \\nA)From Kyoto Airs about his experience in Japan\\n1. “Waiting Out the Rain”\\n2. “Buddha in the Garden”\\n3. “Sunday at the Temple”\\nFrom series- “The Stone Garden of Ryoanji” (first lines only)\\n4. “hovering, he is hovering...\\n5. “they whisper...”\\n6. “the boards...”\\n7. “white sand...”\\n8.  “when...”\\n9.  title: “Children’s Shrine” sequence of eleven poems\\n10. titled “Higashiyama” (first lines only) “kneeling, she...”\\n11.  “o the white pigeon...”\\n12.  “you raise up...”\\n13.  “she call’d...”\\n14.  “small comfort...”\\n15.  “on Higashiyama...”\\n16.   “tonight...”\\n17.  “beyond...”\\n18.  “put stone...”\\n19.  “tell me, Cid...”\\n20.  “I have left...”\\n21.   Title: “Itinerary of a View” (a poem summing up his experience in Japan)\\nB)  from Nevertheless These Eyes; a collection which was motivated from Kiyooka’s reading the biography of the English writer/sculptor Stanley Spencer. -  poems from section one; The song the mirror sang at midnight (first lines)\\n22.  “Climbing into the mirror...”\\n23.  “ Behind my eyes...”\\n24.  “The image of her...”\\n25.  “At least...”\\n26.  “Since you asked me...”\\n27.  “The distance...”\\n28.  “Moonch...”\\n29.  “My hand covets...”\\n30.  “The other face...”\\n31.  “Turning away...”\\n32.  “The mirror...”\\n33.  “In all this space...”\\n34.  “In a room...”\\n35.  “It is the vision of her...\\n36.  “Now, other faces appear...”\\n37.  “Who, among you...” four poems from the second section, “The Proposal”\\n38.  “Portrait of the Beloved”\\n39.  “The Marriage”\\n40.  “The Separation”\\n41.  “Her Apotheosis”\\n42.  first line- “The grotesque flash...”\\n43.  first line- “The beloved is...”\\n44.  first line- “The women say...”\\n45.  first line- “Gaston Lachaise”\\n46.  “The Proposal”\\n47.  “The Dance”\\n48.  “Her Admonition” series of five, from Poems of Resurrection\\n49.  first line “the way...”\\n50.  first line “the Fallen have risen”\\n51.  first line “the moon...”\\n52.  first line “Stanley Spencer painted...”\\n53.  first line “The resurrected flesh...”\\n54.  “The Visitation”\\n55.  first line “what the beloved said...” from section three Nevertheless These Eyes\\n56.  first line “Nevertheless these eyes”\\n57. a haiku composed for the reading by Kiyooka\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/richard-dick-sommer-at-sgwu-1966-stanton-hoffman/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1258","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":["Henry Beissel and Mike Gnarowski at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 January 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Henry Beissel Reading in The Poetry Series at Sir George Williams University, 1967-01-13\" handwritten on the back of the tape's box. Spelling mistakes and Mike Gnarwoski's name scratched over with pen. \n\n\"I086-11-003\" and \"RT 516\" also written. \n\n\"GNAROWSKI & BISSEL I006/SR122\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. Gnarowski refers to Michael Gnarowski. Bissel refers to Henry Beissel. Biessel is mispelled "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[I086-11-003, I006-11-122]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Gnarowski, Michael","Beissel, Henry"],"creator_names_search":["Gnarowski, Michael","Beissel, Henry"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/115582508\",\"name\":\"Gnarowski, Michael\",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"Michael Gnarowski was born on September 27, 1934 in Shanghai, China. He attended several universities: McGill University, B.A. in 1956, Indiana University in 1959, University of Montreal, M.A. in 1960 and University of Ottawa, Ph.D. in 1967. While at McGill, he published his poetry in Yes, which he co-edited. Gnarowski was heavily involved in several presses and magazines throughout his career, which include Le Chien d’or/The Golden Dog, Delta, Golden Dog Press, the Tecumseh Press, Arc Poetry Magazine and McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series (Ryerson Press, 1970), and Canadian Poetry. Along with Ron Everson, Raymond Souster and Louis Dudek, he founded the League of Canadian Poets in 1966. He taught English at the University of Sherbrooke from 1961-62; at Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario from 1962-65; was an assistant professor of English at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) from 1966-72; Carleton University from 1972 onwards. He published a book of his own poetry, Postscript for St. James Street in 1965 (Delta Press), and has since edited and compiled over fifteen other books.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/5489879\",\"name\":\"Beissel, Henry\",\"dates\":\"1929-\",\"notes\":\"Poet Henry Beissel was born in 1929 in Cologne, Germany. Beissel studied philosophy at universities in Cologne and in London before emigrating to Canada in 1951 where he graduated with an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto in 1960. He taught at the University of Edmonton, the University of Alberta as well as Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal. Beissel served as editor for the controversial literary and political journal Edge from 1963 (in Edmonton) until 1969 (in Montreal). He translated the poetry of German-Canadian Walter Bauer, called The Price of Morning in 1968 (Prism International Press). His first book, New Wings for Icarus was published in 1966 (Coach House Press), followed by Face on the Dark in 1970. Beissel later published The Salt I Taste (D.C. Books, 1975), The Cantos North (Penumbra Press, 1982), Season of Blood (Mosaic Press,1984), Poems new and selected (Grove Press, 1987), Across the Sun’s Warp (BuschekBooks, 2003). He later wrote and published several plays; Inook and the Sun was performed at the Stratford Festival in 1973. In 1980-1, Henry Beissel acted as President of the League of Canadian Poets.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy","Dudek, Louis"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy","Dudek, Louis"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/49240132\",\"name\":\"Dudek, Louis\",\"dates\":\"1918-2001\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Dudek, Louis"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Speaker_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Kodak\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Popped strands\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 1 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"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":["Henry Beissel reads largely from New Wings for Icarus (Coach House Press, 1966). Mike Gnarowski reads from Postscript for St. James Street (Delta, 1965) and from other unknown sources."],"contents":["Henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nLadies and Gentleman, um, let's see, what am I going to say? [Audience laughter and applause]...Well, glad to see y’all here. So, Professor Louis Dudek []https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] from McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] will introduce the two poets who’re reading this evening. \n\nAudience\n00:00:31\nApplause.\n\nLouis Dudek\n00:00:40\nI expected a longer introduction than that, it will be very fine. There are two kinds of readings that I like to attend very much, one kind is the sort that they're having tonight at McGill University, where a well-established poet who has been on the scene for forty or fifty years comes to read. Over there, it's A.J.M. Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4647944] from Michigan State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270222], Canadian anthologist and well-known poet. With a poet like that, really makes no difference what he reads or how he reads it's just important to see him and even the tottering saint can perform miracles on occasions. The other kinds of poets I do like to hear very much are the sort that we'll hear tonight, Gnarowski and Beissel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1606507]. The McGill publicity department sent out a notice about A.J.M. Smith and described him as well-known Anthropologist of Canadian poetry. Actually, they corrected it in ink, they made the mistake twice though, probably a typist error. But they didn't know how correct they were, with the current scene in Canadian writing, there are primitive types around that are hard to classify and we need anthropologists...Well, Beissel and Gnarowski are not of this breed of poets who seem to have lost all sense of poetic organization or form, where you think that conventions, poetic conventions have been abolished and what is left are chaotic bits of internal monologue on the page. Of course, that kind of school may be very interesting to watch to see what comes out of it but at present, having watched it now for a few years I'm a little impatient often and tired of the magazines where this material occurs because it seems so easy to turn out and anyone has these bits of chaotic monologue going on. On the other hand, there are many poets still writing who are not following the conventional forms of English metrics and rhyme and so forth, who are turning out poems or at least watching what happens what happens with the words on the page and both the poets we're listening to tonight are of this kind. They are very careful craftsmen. Henry Beissel has the long list of achievements to his credits already, but two on that list strike me very much. One is, amongst many of the posts where he's taught, one is the University of Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q640694] is the kind of political stir that was created on the campus when his magazine Edge was brought into the classroom by one of the professors. That is, his poetry contains, content that can make one think, that is morally committed to certain issues in today's world. He's very strongly a moral poet on one side, and the other item in his biography is his new book which has just appeared New Wings for Icarus, which is extremely aesthetic at the same time that it is meaningful in this way. His poetry seems to combine two things, one is a moral urgency and on the other hand, at the same time, a romantic sense of language and of imagery and of emotion that goes with that, which are all very, very promising characteristics for a beginning poet, but I think that this New Wings for Icarus book is his first considerable book. So, without more ado, I introduce to you Henry Beissel. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:05:30\nWhen I considered the kind of poems that I might read this evening and the order in which to read them, I was thinking of the condition of this hall, as it was the last time I was here and I therefore chose two poems which I wrote in the West Indies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q669037]. [Audience laughter]. They celebrate the sun in an ambiguous sort of way, I'm going to read them all the same, despite the fact that the conditions have changed. I don't know how much you need to know about the West Indies, I'm hoping—oh.\n\nAudience Member 1\n00:06:15\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:06:17\nIs this any better? Is there someone in the hall who can attend please to all this? \n\nAudience Member 2\n00:06:28\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\n\nAudience\n00:06:30\nLaughter.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:06:39\nWell I'll try to speak a little louder on my own, in spite of the microphone. I was saying that I don't know how much one needs to know of the West Indies to respond to this sort of poem, I'm hoping something of the West Indies might be in the poems, the first is called \"Pans at Carnival\". Pan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6610630] is the expression for a steel drum. The imagery in the poem is taken entirely from the steel drum and its use at Carnival [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4618], a feast that is about to be celebrated in Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q754] in about a month. Rhythmically, the poem tries to catch something of the rhythm of the steel pan. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:07:28\nReads \"Pans at Carnival\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:10:18\nThe second poem celebrates something of the violence that the sun, with which the sun blesses those parts of the world from which it never really disappears.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:10:34\nReads \"Where the Sun Only\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:12:49\nNext I want to read two parts from New Wings for Icarus. Time does not allow me to read the whole poem, because then I could read you nothing else. “Icarus” is a poem that is written in four parts, it is with some regret that I read only two, because to me it is like playing the second and fourth part of a symphony, but there is no alternative. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:19\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:51\nSorry, I'll start again. This is a hard one to read and this print is very small. I better hold it closer.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:59\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:19:41\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 4 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:26:39\nNow for a little sort of relaxation in-between, I find unrelieved serious poetry hard to bear myself, I'll read—unfortunately I do not write occasional poems terribly often, they always seem to grow into something much bigger than I can handle, but the next two poems I want to read you are occasional poems, poetry can come out of anything of course, and this one came out of an encounter in a house of Inquisition in Cartagena [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q657461], in Colombia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739], it is really self-explanatory. It's called \"En la Casa de Inquisición\". \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:27:40\nReads \"En la Casa de Inquisición\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:29:23\nThe next poem leads me on to the last set of poems, but you won't discover that until you hear the last two poems. This poem is dedicated to my daughter, when she was 1 and a half, the first stanza deals with the circumstances of her birth, which were somewhat elaborate, there were firemen. The second stanza deals with her present—this would be the past from the time of the poem, the second deals with her present, and the third with her future. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:30:07\nReads \"To My Daughter at Age 1 1/2\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:33:25\nAnd now I come to the final two poems. They belong together and are part of a— we agreed not to torture you and not to read for more than 30 minutes this evening and I am trying to stick to that. This is rather the beginning of something that I may never live to finish, the entire thing is supposed to have some 26 poems, of which you will hear the first two, one is a prologue and the other one is called \"Adam Enter Eve\". In the prologue, a character introduces himself who is to play his part in the rest of the poem. It's not really a dramatic poem, although it's, well I don't think of it as a drama, although it has dramatic qualities. Anyway, I don't like to be my own critic. I prefer just to read you the poem. The whole cycle will be called \"The Dancer from the Dance\" that is as you no doubt know, a quotation from Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:34:45\nReads \"Prologue\" from \"The Dancer from the Dance\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:37:04\nReads \"Adam Enter Eve\".\n\nEND\n00:49:40\n[Recording continues on mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3].\n\nmike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nLouis Dudek\n00:00:00\nStrongly I was impressed and moved by that reading by Henry Beissel. Really several times after the poems I wanted to applaud, only we don't do that. They were magnificently organized forms with powerful language and very well read, I felt, I think I'm speaking for most people here when I say that. Mike Gnarowski who reads next is different perhaps in the extent to which his poetry is oriented towards reality. Not by implication because Beissel's also is very real and very down to earth and very much committed to the real world, but Gnarowski's poetry has a lot to do with Canadian poetry and the way it has turned towards the real world since about 1925 since A.J.M. Smith and Scott [F.R. Scott; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656] and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] began writing. Gnarowski's been very active as a student of Canadian literature, a scholar and a bibliographer and so forth of our literature looking into the sources of this modern poetry and to letters and documents. In this he has done some very valuable work, indexing little magazines that would be otherwise, less well known, preparing bibliographies and he is now working on a larger anthology of criticism introducing the backgrounds of modern Canadian poetry. All this kind of study which is very valuable on the academic side is also important to his poetry I feel, that it places him within the line of modern Canadian poets who have tried to interpret the real, the visible, the actual, directly in poetry. Somewhat in the way I suppose that all modern poetry in English does, including T.S. Eliot's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] \"Waste Land\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q581458] and Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \"Cantos\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and e. e. cumming's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703] comedies and satires and Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] poetry also. That is the characteristic of twentieth-century poetry is that its extreme realism and the bringing of the romantic conceptions of the last century to bear upon the actual world and showing that the conflict, the intense conflict that exists in the poet between his conception of things and what he sees before him. That you find in Gnarowski very much. He as a writer he is a meticulous craftsman, I don't know if that's symbolic [audience laughter]... He's also a meticulous craftsman and his poems seem to grow by accretion, very gradually. He writes with a stubborn integrity and knows what he thinks and what he's trying to say in a poem, they aren't just momentary fusions. They're highly worked up pieces of writing. There's a strong element of rationality and reality in this poetry, less of the flight of the emotions and the fantasy that's in most other poets. There's a very strong formal organization in his poetry, a clean speech, straight as the Greeks as Ezra Pound used to say in the past. His first book is entitled Postscript for St. James Street which has to do with, in some part anyhow, with the business world in which we live and he has chosen that quite consciously as a subject that could be turned into poetry, to take the business man, the real in that sense, St. James Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1526237] and see what can be made out of that imaginatively. Most poets when they treat a subject like that turn it into satire, because what else can you make out of St. James Street, but Gnarowski wants to keep his vision clear and straight for the fact to see what it really is without elevating too much or perhaps without caricaturing the reality, and it's a very interesting experiment. I'm sure you'll all enjoy listening to his poetry.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:05:09\nA couple of years ago I had the occasion to go up into North Western Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], and I lived there for three or four years and more specifically on Port Arthur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230482] which is on the very shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], and I kept looking at this magnificent and fantastic lake and it kept bothering me. It was too big and too vast and too meaningful and too ominous in many ways to be let off too easily. I also had a friend up there who was an anthropologist and archaeologist and a very good one, and he spent a lot of time going up into that country up around Lake Superior and he kept coming back with all sorts of wonderful thing, all sorts of relics of the past as it were. Gaffs and skulls and this and that which he kept finding and he told me that that part of the world had at one time had supported a pretty fantastic civilization of its own, a very peculiar civilization. And I looked at the lake, Lake Superior, and I decided I would try to write something about it, about the feelings that I think that this ominous body of water might have. A little poem I did for it is entitled \"Great Sea\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:06:30\nReads \"Great Sea\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:10:40\nAnd following along the same themes, a little poem entitled \"Amethyst Harbour\" which was occasioned by a visit of A.Y. Jackson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3499926] and several friends who gathered in this quite magnificent place on the lake, just about this time of the year and you could look out across Thunder Bay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9298873] and you saw nothing but ice-locked island and of course snow and ice continuing forever and ever. I always felt the nature, of course, there had not been overcome by man and that nature always threatened man and that there was a struggle, a conflict, a tension going on. So here is \"Amethyst Harbour\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:11:31\nReads \"Amethyst Harbour\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:13:20\nAs Louis Dudek pointed out, I've always been fascinated by those men who wheel and deal and who are responsible for much of the life of the nation, I suppose, of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49], the so-called businessman, much maligned most of the time. I normally try to deal as properly as I can and in this instance I think I'm probably being unkind. This is a poem entitled \"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:13:55\nReads \"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\".\n\nAudience\n00:15:26\nApplause [one person].\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:15:30\nUhh--Thank you. A little while ago, or a few years ago I should say, I had the occasion to go to a town south-east of here called Victoriaville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141731], I was there on business and I went through an old-age or an old-people's home and some of you may know what those places are like, I was profoundly affected by this experience and I tried to write something about it and I've called this little thing \"Provincia Nostra\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:15:56\nReads \"Provincia Nostra”.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:16:50\nThis is for a friend who was lost in an automobile accident.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:16:54\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:31\nA very short thing, which I think fills the purpose of keeping me from becoming too serious.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:46\nReads unnamed poem. \n\nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:59\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:18:00\nLaughter and applause [cut off].\n\nIntroducer\n00:18:03\nWe'd like to express our thanks to Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, and our special appreciation to Louis Dudek who made the supreme sacrifice of tearing himself away from McGill to come here and introduce them. [Audience applause]. Our next reading will be in two weeks, on Friday, January 27 Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] will be coming from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] to read her poetry and the following reading on Sat. Feb. 11, Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] who is the Poet in Residence at the City College in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1093910] and the author of, among other things, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit will be coming here to read his poetry. Thank you.\n \nEND\n00:19:00\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-specific Information:\\n\\nHenry Beissel was teaching at Sir George Williams University in 1966. He also edited Edge: An Independent Periodical, no. 6, Spring 1967.\\n\\nMike Gnarowski received his Ph.D. from University of Ottawa in 1967, and was working as an associate professor at Sir George Williams University. He co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada with Louis Dudek, which was published by Ryerson Press in 1967. He was the editor of Yes magazine from 1956-69.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local connections:\\n\\nBeissel retired as Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English from Concordia University in 1996. Henry Beissel, Mike Gnarowski and Louis Dudek (also in this reading) organized the Montreal Committee, and organized The Emergency Symposium on the Americanization of Canadian Universities in May of 1969.\\n\\nMike Gnarowski is very involved in the effort to promote Canadian authors and writers, editing and publishing criticism and anthologies of Canadian poetry, specifically those of Leonard Cohen, Archibald Lampman and Raymond Knister as well as little known writers.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) and Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-wings-for-icarus-a-poem-in-four-parts/oclc/1127807997&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Beissel, Henry. New Wings for Icarus. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/canadianization-movement-emergence-survival-and-success/oclc/1165482183&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cormier, Jeffrey. The Canadianization movement: emergence, survival and success. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/archiveslitteraires/027011-200.058-e.html\",\"citation\":\"“Gnarowski, Michael 1934-”. Michael Gnarowski fonds 1956-1985. Library and Archives       \\t\\nCanada\\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/postscript-for-st-james-street/oclc/2566553&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gnarowski, Michael. Postscript for St. James Street. Montreal: Delta, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings Resume Tonight with Beissel and Gnarowski”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 13 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal: The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 9 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/865265719&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stevens, Peter. \\\"Beissel, Henry\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition. \\nEugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Professor Poets With Urgency and Imagery”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, January 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/86526\",\"citation\":\"Toye, William. \\\"League of Canadian Poets, The\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian \\nLiterature, 2nd edition. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, \\n2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Michael Gnarowski.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548668678144,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0122_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0122_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mike Gnarowski Tape Box 1 - 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_0122_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0122_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mike Gnarowski Tape Box 1 - 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:19:00\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"45.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nLouis Dudek\\n00:00:00\\nStrongly I was impressed and moved by that reading by Henry Beissel. Really several times after the poems I wanted to applaud, only we don't do that. They were magnificently organized forms with powerful language and very well read, I felt, I think I'm speaking for most people here when I say that. Mike Gnarowski who reads next is different perhaps in the extent to which his poetry is oriented towards reality. Not by implication because Beissel's also is very real and very down to earth and very much committed to the real world, but Gnarowski's poetry has a lot to do with Canadian poetry and the way it has turned towards the real world since about 1925 since A.J.M. Smith and Scott [F.R. Scott; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656] and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] began writing. Gnarowski's been very active as a student of Canadian literature, a scholar and a bibliographer and so forth of our literature looking into the sources of this modern poetry and to letters and documents. In this he has done some very valuable work, indexing little magazines that would be otherwise, less well known, preparing bibliographies and he is now working on a larger anthology of criticism introducing the backgrounds of modern Canadian poetry. All this kind of study which is very valuable on the academic side is also important to his poetry I feel, that it places him within the line of modern Canadian poets who have tried to interpret the real, the visible, the actual, directly in poetry. Somewhat in the way I suppose that all modern poetry in English does, including T.S. Eliot's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] \\\"Waste Land\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q581458] and Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \\\"Cantos\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and e. e. cumming's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703] comedies and satires and Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] poetry also. That is the characteristic of twentieth-century poetry is that its extreme realism and the bringing of the romantic conceptions of the last century to bear upon the actual world and showing that the conflict, the intense conflict that exists in the poet between his conception of things and what he sees before him. That you find in Gnarowski very much. He as a writer he is a meticulous craftsman, I don't know if that's symbolic [audience laughter]... He's also a meticulous craftsman and his poems seem to grow by accretion, very gradually. He writes with a stubborn integrity and knows what he thinks and what he's trying to say in a poem, they aren't just momentary fusions. They're highly worked up pieces of writing. There's a strong element of rationality and reality in this poetry, less of the flight of the emotions and the fantasy that's in most other poets. There's a very strong formal organization in his poetry, a clean speech, straight as the Greeks as Ezra Pound used to say in the past. His first book is entitled Postscript for St. James Street which has to do with, in some part anyhow, with the business world in which we live and he has chosen that quite consciously as a subject that could be turned into poetry, to take the business man, the real in that sense, St. James Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1526237] and see what can be made out of that imaginatively. Most poets when they treat a subject like that turn it into satire, because what else can you make out of St. James Street, but Gnarowski wants to keep his vision clear and straight for the fact to see what it really is without elevating too much or perhaps without caricaturing the reality, and it's a very interesting experiment. I'm sure you'll all enjoy listening to his poetry.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:05:09\\nA couple of years ago I had the occasion to go up into North Western Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], and I lived there for three or four years and more specifically on Port Arthur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230482] which is on the very shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], and I kept looking at this magnificent and fantastic lake and it kept bothering me. It was too big and too vast and too meaningful and too ominous in many ways to be let off too easily. I also had a friend up there who was an anthropologist and archaeologist and a very good one, and he spent a lot of time going up into that country up around Lake Superior and he kept coming back with all sorts of wonderful thing, all sorts of relics of the past as it were. Gaffs and skulls and this and that which he kept finding and he told me that that part of the world had at one time had supported a pretty fantastic civilization of its own, a very peculiar civilization. And I looked at the lake, Lake Superior, and I decided I would try to write something about it, about the feelings that I think that this ominous body of water might have. A little poem I did for it is entitled \\\"Great Sea\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:06:30\\nReads \\\"Great Sea\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:10:40\\nAnd following along the same themes, a little poem entitled \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\" which was occasioned by a visit of A.Y. Jackson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3499926] and several friends who gathered in this quite magnificent place on the lake, just about this time of the year and you could look out across Thunder Bay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9298873] and you saw nothing but ice-locked island and of course snow and ice continuing forever and ever. I always felt the nature, of course, there had not been overcome by man and that nature always threatened man and that there was a struggle, a conflict, a tension going on. So here is \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:11:31\\nReads \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:13:20\\nAs Louis Dudek pointed out, I've always been fascinated by those men who wheel and deal and who are responsible for much of the life of the nation, I suppose, of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49], the so-called businessman, much maligned most of the time. I normally try to deal as properly as I can and in this instance I think I'm probably being unkind. This is a poem entitled \\\"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:13:55\\nReads \\\"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\\\".\\n\\nAudience\\n00:15:26\\nApplause [one person].\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:15:30\\nUhh--Thank you. A little while ago, or a few years ago I should say, I had the occasion to go to a town south-east of here called Victoriaville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141731], I was there on business and I went through an old-age or an old-people's home and some of you may know what those places are like, I was profoundly affected by this experience and I tried to write something about it and I've called this little thing \\\"Provincia Nostra\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:15:56\\nReads \\\"Provincia Nostra”.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:16:50\\nThis is for a friend who was lost in an automobile accident.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:16:54\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:31\\nA very short thing, which I think fills the purpose of keeping me from becoming too serious.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:46\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n\\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:59\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:18:00\\nLaughter and applause [cut off].\\n\\nIntroducer\\n00:18:03\\nWe'd like to express our thanks to Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, and our special appreciation to Louis Dudek who made the supreme sacrifice of tearing himself away from McGill to come here and introduce them. [Audience applause]. Our next reading will be in two weeks, on Friday, January 27 Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] will be coming from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] to read her poetry and the following reading on Sat. Feb. 11, Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] who is the Poet in Residence at the City College in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1093910] and the author of, among other things, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit will be coming here to read his poetry. Thank you.\\n \\nEND\\n00:19:00\\n\",\"notes\":\" Mike Gnarowski reads from Postscript for St. James Street (Delta, 1965) and from other unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00 - Introduction by Louis Dudek [INDEX: Henry Beissel’s reading, realism in poetry, Canadian poetry since 1925, A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, A.M. Klein, bibliographer, indexing smaller magazines, T.S. Eliot’s “Wastel Land”, Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”, e e cumming’s satires and comedies, W.H. Auden, romantic conceptions of 19th century vs. extreme realism of 20th century, Postscript for St. James Street by Gnarowski]\\n05:09 - Mike Gnarowski introduces “Great Sea” [INDEX: North Western Ontario, Port Arthur, Lake Superior, archaeological artifacts]\\n06:30 - Reads “Great Sea”\\n10:40 - Introduces “Amethyst Harbour” [INDEX: A.Y. Jackson, Thunder Bay, man vs. nature]\\n11:31 - Reads “Amethyst Harbour”\\n13:20 - Introduces “Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell” \\n13:55 - Reads “Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell”\\n15:30 - Introduces “Provincia Nostra” [INDEX: Victoriaville]\\n15:56 - Reads “Provincia Nostra”\\n16:50 - Introduces first line “For some inimitable action...”\\n16:54 - Reads first line “For some inimitable action...”\\n17:31 - Introduces first line “If I had legs like yours...”\\n17:46 - Reads first line “If I had legs like yours...”\\n18:03 - Introducer (unknown) says thank-you’s. [INDEX: Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, Louis Dudek, McGill, Margaret Avison, Paul Blackburn]\\n19:00 - END OF EVENT.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/henry-beissel-reads-with-introduction-by-louis-dudek-michael-gnarowski-in-same-reading/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:49:40\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"119.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and Gentleman, um, let's see, what am I going to say? [Audience laughter and applause]...Well, glad to see y’all here. So, Professor Louis Dudek []https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] from McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] will introduce the two poets who’re reading this evening. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:31\\nApplause.\\n\\nLouis Dudek\\n00:00:40\\nI expected a longer introduction than that, it will be very fine. There are two kinds of readings that I like to attend very much, one kind is the sort that they're having tonight at McGill University, where a well-established poet who has been on the scene for forty or fifty years comes to read. Over there, it's A.J.M. Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4647944] from Michigan State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270222], Canadian anthologist and well-known poet. With a poet like that, really makes no difference what he reads or how he reads it's just important to see him and even the tottering saint can perform miracles on occasions. The other kinds of poets I do like to hear very much are the sort that we'll hear tonight, Gnarowski and Beissel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1606507]. The McGill publicity department sent out a notice about A.J.M. Smith and described him as well-known Anthropologist of Canadian poetry. Actually, they corrected it in ink, they made the mistake twice though, probably a typist error. But they didn't know how correct they were, with the current scene in Canadian writing, there are primitive types around that are hard to classify and we need anthropologists...Well, Beissel and Gnarowski are not of this breed of poets who seem to have lost all sense of poetic organization or form, where you think that conventions, poetic conventions have been abolished and what is left are chaotic bits of internal monologue on the page. Of course, that kind of school may be very interesting to watch to see what comes out of it but at present, having watched it now for a few years I'm a little impatient often and tired of the magazines where this material occurs because it seems so easy to turn out and anyone has these bits of chaotic monologue going on. On the other hand, there are many poets still writing who are not following the conventional forms of English metrics and rhyme and so forth, who are turning out poems or at least watching what happens what happens with the words on the page and both the poets we're listening to tonight are of this kind. They are very careful craftsmen. Henry Beissel has the long list of achievements to his credits already, but two on that list strike me very much. One is, amongst many of the posts where he's taught, one is the University of Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q640694] is the kind of political stir that was created on the campus when his magazine Edge was brought into the classroom by one of the professors. That is, his poetry contains, content that can make one think, that is morally committed to certain issues in today's world. He's very strongly a moral poet on one side, and the other item in his biography is his new book which has just appeared New Wings for Icarus, which is extremely aesthetic at the same time that it is meaningful in this way. His poetry seems to combine two things, one is a moral urgency and on the other hand, at the same time, a romantic sense of language and of imagery and of emotion that goes with that, which are all very, very promising characteristics for a beginning poet, but I think that this New Wings for Icarus book is his first considerable book. So, without more ado, I introduce to you Henry Beissel. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:05:30\\nWhen I considered the kind of poems that I might read this evening and the order in which to read them, I was thinking of the condition of this hall, as it was the last time I was here and I therefore chose two poems which I wrote in the West Indies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q669037]. [Audience laughter]. They celebrate the sun in an ambiguous sort of way, I'm going to read them all the same, despite the fact that the conditions have changed. I don't know how much you need to know about the West Indies, I'm hoping—oh.\\n\\nAudience Member 1\\n00:06:15\\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:06:17\\nIs this any better? Is there someone in the hall who can attend please to all this? \\n\\nAudience Member 2\\n00:06:28\\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:06:30\\nLaughter.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:06:39\\nWell I'll try to speak a little louder on my own, in spite of the microphone. I was saying that I don't know how much one needs to know of the West Indies to respond to this sort of poem, I'm hoping something of the West Indies might be in the poems, the first is called \\\"Pans at Carnival\\\". Pan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6610630] is the expression for a steel drum. The imagery in the poem is taken entirely from the steel drum and its use at Carnival [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4618], a feast that is about to be celebrated in Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q754] in about a month. Rhythmically, the poem tries to catch something of the rhythm of the steel pan. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:07:28\\nReads \\\"Pans at Carnival\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:10:18\\nThe second poem celebrates something of the violence that the sun, with which the sun blesses those parts of the world from which it never really disappears.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:10:34\\nReads \\\"Where the Sun Only\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:12:49\\nNext I want to read two parts from New Wings for Icarus. Time does not allow me to read the whole poem, because then I could read you nothing else. “Icarus” is a poem that is written in four parts, it is with some regret that I read only two, because to me it is like playing the second and fourth part of a symphony, but there is no alternative. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:19\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:51\\nSorry, I'll start again. This is a hard one to read and this print is very small. I better hold it closer.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:59\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:19:41\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 4 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:26:39\\nNow for a little sort of relaxation in-between, I find unrelieved serious poetry hard to bear myself, I'll read—unfortunately I do not write occasional poems terribly often, they always seem to grow into something much bigger than I can handle, but the next two poems I want to read you are occasional poems, poetry can come out of anything of course, and this one came out of an encounter in a house of Inquisition in Cartagena [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q657461], in Colombia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739], it is really self-explanatory. It's called \\\"En la Casa de Inquisición\\\". \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:27:40\\nReads \\\"En la Casa de Inquisición\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:29:23\\nThe next poem leads me on to the last set of poems, but you won't discover that until you hear the last two poems. This poem is dedicated to my daughter, when she was 1 and a half, the first stanza deals with the circumstances of her birth, which were somewhat elaborate, there were firemen. The second stanza deals with her present—this would be the past from the time of the poem, the second deals with her present, and the third with her future. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:30:07\\nReads \\\"To My Daughter at Age 1 1/2\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:33:25\\nAnd now I come to the final two poems. They belong together and are part of a— we agreed not to torture you and not to read for more than 30 minutes this evening and I am trying to stick to that. This is rather the beginning of something that I may never live to finish, the entire thing is supposed to have some 26 poems, of which you will hear the first two, one is a prologue and the other one is called \\\"Adam Enter Eve\\\". In the prologue, a character introduces himself who is to play his part in the rest of the poem. It's not really a dramatic poem, although it's, well I don't think of it as a drama, although it has dramatic qualities. Anyway, I don't like to be my own critic. I prefer just to read you the poem. The whole cycle will be called \\\"The Dancer from the Dance\\\" that is as you no doubt know, a quotation from Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:34:45\\nReads \\\"Prologue\\\" from \\\"The Dancer from the Dance\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:37:04\\nReads \\\"Adam Enter Eve\\\".\\n\\nEND\\n00:49:40\\n[Recording continues on mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3].\\n\",\"notes\":\"Henry Beissel reads largely from New Wings for Icarus (Coach House Press, 1966).\\n\\n00:00 - Unknown speaker introduces Louis Dudek [INDEX: McGill University, Louis Dudek]\\n00:40 - Louis Dudek introduces Henry Beissel [INDEX: A.J.M. Smith from Michigan State as Canadian Anthropologist of poetry, Mike Gnarowski, poetic organization and conventions, new schools of poetry, ‘chaotic monologue’, English metrics and rhyme, University of Alberta, Edge Magazine, New Wings for Icarus]\\n05:30 - Henry Beissel speaks [INDEX: West Indies]\\n06:39 - Henry Beissel introduces “Pans at Carnival” [INDEX: imagery of a steel drum, Trinidad]\\n07:28 - Reads “Pans at Carnival”\\n10:18 - Introduces “Where the Sun Only” [INDEX: imagery of the sun]\\n10:34 - Reads “Where the Sun Only”\\n12:49 - Introduces “New Wings for Icarus”, part 2 [INDEX: Icarus]\\n13:51 - Re-starts poem\\n19:41 - Reads “New Wings for Icarus”, part 4\\n26:39 - Introduces “En la Casa de Inquisition” [INDEX: occasional poetry, Cartagena, Columbia]\\n27:40 - Reads “En la Casa de Inquisition”\\n29:23 - Introduces “To my Daughter at Age 1 1/2” [INDEX: poem for his daughter]\\n30:07 - Reads “To my Daughter at Age 1 1/2”\\n33:25 - Introduces “Prologue” and “Adam Enter Eve” from “The Dancer from the Dance” [INDEX: Yeats]\\n34:45 - Reads “Prologue”\\n37:04 - Reads “Adam Enter Eve”\\n49:40 - END OF RECORDING.\\n\\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n“Henry Beissel”\\nJanuary 13, 1967\\nwith reel information\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/henry-beissel-reads-with-introduction-by-louis-dudek-michael-gnarowski-in-same-reading/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1259","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":["Margaret Avison at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 27 January 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Marg. Avison (2 tracks 3 3/4\"/sec ) I086-11-002\" written on sticker on the reel and on the tape's box. Marg. Avison refers to Margaret Avison. \"RT 518\" also written."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Avison, Margaret"],"creator_names_search":["Avison, Margaret"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/79128508\",\"name\":\"Avison, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1918-2007\",\"notes\":\"Poet Margaret Avison was born in Galt, Ontario in 1918. She was educated at the University of Toronto and received her Bachelor’s degree in 1940. During the early forties, she contributed her poetry to Sid Corman’s Origin, with the likes of Charles Olson, Denise Levertov and Robert Creeley. While she is often associated with this group of poets, her content differs from theirs. Avison worked as an English literature lecturer, a secretary, a librarian, a researcher and as a social worker at a mission in downtown Toronto. Her first collection of poems was published in 1960, titled Winter Sun (University of Toronto Press), followed by The Dumbfounding (Noron, 1966). Avison’s poetry was also anthologized in Eli Mandel and Jean-Guy Pilon’s Poetry 62 (Ryerson, 1961). In 1963, she returned to the University of Toronto to write her thesis on Don Juan and to pursue graduate work. Avison taught and lectured English at Scarborough College and at the University of Toronto, as well as working at the Presbyterian Church Mission in Toronto. In 1970, she collaborated with bp Nichol and published The Cosmic Chef Glee & Perloo Memorial Society under the direction of Captain Poetry presents...: [an evening of concrete, courtesy of Oberon Cement Works] (Oberon Press). Avison, staying on the periphery of the poetry scene, attended and participated in several readings, and supported other writers in their pursuits. She translated poems from Hungarian, which appear in The Plough and the Pen: Writings from Hungary, 1930-1956 (London, P. Owen, 1963). Sunblue was published in 1978 by Lancelot Press, and a collected edition of Winter Sun/The Dumbfounding: Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland & Stewart, 1982) and No time (Lancelot Press, 1989). Her Selected Poems was published in 1991 by Oxford University Press, followed by A kind of perseverance (Lancelot Press, 1994) and Not yet but still (Lancelot Press, 1997). Avison has produced a number of books, Always Now: The collected poems (Porcupine’s Quill) came as a three volume series published between 2003 and 2005. Momentary dark (McClelland & Stewart, 2006), Listening: the last poems (McClelland & Stewart, 2009) and I am here and not not-there: an autobiography (Porcupine’s Quill, 2009) have both recently been released. Margaret Avison died in Toronto in August of 2007.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]}]"],"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":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 1 27\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"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"],"contents":["margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nIn view of the embarrassment of having made such a mess of introducing the last poet, I spent a considerable amount of time setting out what I should say this evening, so hopefully I'll be a little more successful. Well, this is our seventh poetry evening and we welcome you all here this cold and blustery evening. Now, this evening we're having Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] read poems, and I wanted to say a few things about her. I first listened to Margaret read her poems at the poetry conference, University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], during the summer of 1963. Her reading, together with those of the other poets on hand, are among the most memorable occasions I've had in my love affair with poems and poets. Four years later, in early January, we spent an afternoon together. Now I don't want to attribute, what I felt with a thought, on Bloor Street, to our conversation, but the warmth of it was very real. Margaret Avison was born in Guelph [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q504114], Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904]; some early years were spent in Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]; she graduated from Victoria College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551503], the University of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180865], in 1940, with a BA in English Language and Literature. She has been a secretary of all sorts for various firms, individuals, and organizations, and has also been a research assistant and librarian and presently teaches English at Scarborough College, Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6594] in poetry, and during the forties her work appeared in various Canadian magazines, and in the fifties, mainly in American ones. She has published two books of poems; The Winter Sun in 1960 won the Governor General's Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256], and in 1966, W.W. Norton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282208] in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] issued The Dumbfounding [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42189162], her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.\n \nUnknown\n00:02:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:02:59\nI don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] again here, and being introduced by him. If this were Monday, or up to a week from tonight, I would be able to join the Angry Art Week. I don't know if anybody else has received these letters, but in New York City initially they're trying this and anybody who gets a letter from them is asked to dedicate any reading or event to what they're trying to do. You can still send them money, too, I'll give you the address if you want it later. What they're going to do is play harps in railroad stations and have...lets see, Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] cantatas in railroad stations, play-ins in various museums and the lobbies of concert halls, recital halls, business buildings--I like that one--dramatic presentations in laundromats and supermarkets, [audience laughter], a paint-in, and fences and billboards throughout Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] with their work showing and so on. This is a series. \"What we're trying to do is through art to reach the American people as human beings.\" So...[audience laughter]. If this were Monday I'd dedicate the reading [audience laughter and applause]...This is all very orderly, although it doesn't look it, and it starts with other people's poems of various kinds. A little section of C. Bukowski [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76409], somebody said that's Charles, an American poet. It's a great long thing that was in a mimeograph magazine, and the description is of a woman with a bicycle and a baby carriage, high-heeled shoes, white socks, and all her belongings, on a hot day in the middle of a road in a city. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:05:28\nReads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:06:30.\nThat's sad, so on the same page I copied one of Al Fowler's, which was in a magazine called Lines, which is the all-time happiest little poem, and I don't know why. I'm going to stop where the lines stop, not where the sense stops, so you can see the shape of it.  There's no capital letters. There's no title.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:07:01\nReads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].\n\nAudience \n00:07:20\nLaughter.\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:07:30\nThis is one by Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756], called \"Zoo\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:07:39\nReads \"Zoo\" by Gerry Gilbert.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:08:00\nI may bring in some more of other people's, but this is just a little, it's a friend of mine in Toronto who's made it to grade seven this year. He calls it \"The Delinquent\", and he has, in this copy he has said that it's his copyright so if you betray the fact that I read some of it, I'll be in trouble with him.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:08:33\nReads \"The Delinquent\" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:10:20\nIt goes on, a bit, I want to go back to where it gets sad, though. I love \"She twisted her pinkies behind her but all the knots held more\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:10:30\nResumes reading \"The Delinquent\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:11:33\nThere's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:11:41\nResumes reading \"The Delinquent\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:12:43\nIt ends up with knotting a burning matchstick into her old man's hair. [Audience laughter]. I think as he goes on he'll be somebody. If I'm not reading mine I'll warn of you. Some of these...the first one is a Toronto poem with footnotes, saying that TTC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17978] means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:13:38\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:14:37\nThe second subway poem...a little child, it's called \"Subway Station Why Not.\"\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:14:53\nReads \"Subway Station Why Not\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:15:56\nThis next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called \"Insomniac Report\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:16:11\nReads \"Insomniac Report\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:17:07\nFeels as if I should be doing something different, but I don't know what. I did a poem to people writing examinations I'm hunting for, but I think I've forgotten it. There's three about this odd experience of teaching and students. This one was written before I had had the experience, but was looking forward to it. And it had the title \"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\" And it's very full of fine theory and idealism.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:18:18\nReads \"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:19:21\nAnd I've got two other incomplete ones that should be read with that. I'll just read two stanzas of the first one, it's got one four-line stanza for the students...\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:19:36\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:20:36\nThe teacher's answer hasn't got written yet. Here's another bit, two stanzas, the student and the teacher, that isn't finished. The student is talking although it doesn't sound like it. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:21:01\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:21:51\nThere's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called \"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:22:03\nReads \"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:23:07\nI had planned to get all this organized on the plane, but I was in the middle of the three seats and I kept getting the briefcase out and everything would fall to the floor, and this one would dive for it, or this one, and I finally gave up, so it's upside down. This is dedicated to Jacques Ellul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q322922], The Technological Society [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607727], a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:23:56\nReads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time]. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:26:39\nThere's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239303], when it was a fairly quiet room, and stare all morning, and if any words occurred to him, he dashed them down. And sometime he worked up his sketches and sometime he didn't, which is a technique that's lots of fun to practice, and occasionally something grows out of it. In this case I don't think I'll ever do anything but it'll show you the kind of thing that I mean, if, as I assume, most of you are writers.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:27:38\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:28:25\nNow a poem with syntax and stuff called \"The Seven Birds\". A corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto which is the kind of buildings that have been there since the first world war, where there's often stores on the street level and an apartment or two above. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:29:01\nReads \"The Seven Birds\" [published later in sunblue].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:30:15\nI think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q381107], called \"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\". Ilona Duczynska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q967353] did a literal translation for me and then read it to me for sound and we worked through it that way.  Apparently the poem started, or happened, in 1956 in Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781]. Illyes had written it some years before but hadn't been angry enough at the time to risk what it was to bring it out. But he grew angry enough and somebody said the one thing that nobody censors is the magazine which tells you what lectures are going on where and what movies are running where and is just a news sheet, and the middle spread was for advertising, so they printed this in the middle sheet and it was, they tried to stop it as soon as the authorities found it but by then they were storming the radio station or however it started. I can't do it in one breath because it goes on for several pages. In the first part of it, \"it,\" meaning \"tyranny\" is small \"i\" and towards the end it's a capital \"I.\"\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:32:27\nReads English translation of \"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:39:26\nSo, after the revolution he was much too well-known to disappear but they said he was insane and he was in an asylum for a while, but he wrote a lot of lovely things there, so I don't think he was, and he's not there now. It's much better, I think. A group of silly things it's embarrassing to read but I will, called \"Bestialities\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:40:19\nReads \"Bestialities\", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:14\nThe last one I think is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I'll explain, it's like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper...\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:41:26\nDon't explain, just say it.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:28\nAlright, you can tell me then, eh? \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:33\nReads \"Bestialities\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:40\nNow, come on...[Audience laughter]. Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I've read it. It's just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumble it up and you throw it down and the mite goes up...Now I'll read it again.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:42:17\nReads \"Bestialities\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:42:35\n“The Absorbed\". This is one of the very cold days, I guess about ten below, enough. It's inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:43:09\nReads \"The Absorbed\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:45:50\nReads [\"Thaw\" from Winter Sun].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:47:37\nI would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:47:54\nReads \"Two Mayday Selves\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:49:42\nAnd the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called \"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:50:06\nReads \"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].\n\nUnknown\n00:52:53\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:52:54\nI've been asked to read \"The Valiant Vacationist\". It was written so many years ago...I think I would be quite right in saying thirty years ago, and probably a little more. And I couldn't write this well now but in a way when you're very young you've got the whole world in one lump without any lump, and you only get bits later on. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:53:34\nReads \"The Valiant Vacationist\" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:56:54\nThen the one \"To Professor X, Year Y\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:57:03\nReads \"To Professor X, Year Y\" [from Winter Sun].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:59:57\nI'd like to read one introductory poem to the long one, \"The Earth that Falls Away\", and that one, and two short ones, if you'll bear with me that long. This is called \"The Absolute, the Day\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:00:22\nReads \"The Absolute, the Day\" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].\n\nMargaret Avison\n01:01:39\nThis one is \"The Earth that Falls Away\". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2165597] Death's Jest-Book [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42188673]: \"Can a man die? Aye, as the sun doth set, it is the earth that falls away from light\". There are a number of human situations, some into the past, through the present generation, the rest various city people, myself, and the stories come interleaving so that as I name a new section it'll be a new group of people, and by request I'm going to  stop at the line-ends here. \n \nMargaret Avison\n01:02:32\nReads \"The Earth that Falls Away\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:15:52\nReads [\"He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:16:54\nThere's one more and I'll stop with this one. \n \nMargaret Avison\n01:17:00\nReads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].\n \nEND\n01:17:54\n[Cut off abruptly].\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, Margaret Avison was teaching English at Scarborough College. The Dumbfounding had been published the previous year.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nMargaret Avison met Roy Kiyooka, who was teaching at Sir George Williams University at a reading in 1963 at the University of British Columbia.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, introduction 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\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Anderson, Mia. “Avison, Margaret (1918-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; Connoly, L.W. (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/always-now-the-collected-poems-vol-1/oclc/834732786&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. Always Now: The Collected Poems, Vols 1-3. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dumbfounding-poems/oclc/635930&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. The Dumbfounding. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/no-time/oclc/751204318&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. No Time. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1989. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sunblue/oclc/867940471&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. sunblue. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1978.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/winter-sun/oclc/320960000&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. Winter Sun. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1960. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"“Avison: Next Poet to Read”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960/oclc/441669839&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. The Gazette. Saturday, December 31, 1966: page 39.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/margaret-avison/oclc/556890573&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Redekop, Ernest. Margaret Avison: Studies in Canadian Literature. Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Margaret Avison’s Poetry”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 3 February 1967. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548673921024,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison 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_0002_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison 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_0002_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison 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_0002_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison 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/margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:17:54\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"187 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Roy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nIn view of the embarrassment of having made such a mess of introducing the last poet, I spent a considerable amount of time setting out what I should say this evening, so hopefully I'll be a little more successful. Well, this is our seventh poetry evening and we welcome you all here this cold and blustery evening. Now, this evening we're having Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] read poems, and I wanted to say a few things about her. I first listened to Margaret read her poems at the poetry conference, University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], during the summer of 1963. Her reading, together with those of the other poets on hand, are among the most memorable occasions I've had in my love affair with poems and poets. Four years later, in early January, we spent an afternoon together. Now I don't want to attribute, what I felt with a thought, on Bloor Street, to our conversation, but the warmth of it was very real. Margaret Avison was born in Guelph [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q504114], Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904]; some early years were spent in Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]; she graduated from Victoria College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551503], the University of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180865], in 1940, with a BA in English Language and Literature. She has been a secretary of all sorts for various firms, individuals, and organizations, and has also been a research assistant and librarian and presently teaches English at Scarborough College, Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6594] in poetry, and during the forties her work appeared in various Canadian magazines, and in the fifties, mainly in American ones. She has published two books of poems; The Winter Sun in 1960 won the Governor General's Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256], and in 1966, W.W. Norton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282208] in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] issued The Dumbfounding [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42189162], her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:02:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:02:59\\nI don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] again here, and being introduced by him. If this were Monday, or up to a week from tonight, I would be able to join the Angry Art Week. I don't know if anybody else has received these letters, but in New York City initially they're trying this and anybody who gets a letter from them is asked to dedicate any reading or event to what they're trying to do. You can still send them money, too, I'll give you the address if you want it later. What they're going to do is play harps in railroad stations and have...lets see, Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] cantatas in railroad stations, play-ins in various museums and the lobbies of concert halls, recital halls, business buildings--I like that one--dramatic presentations in laundromats and supermarkets, [audience laughter], a paint-in, and fences and billboards throughout Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] with their work showing and so on. This is a series. \\\"What we're trying to do is through art to reach the American people as human beings.\\\" So...[audience laughter]. If this were Monday I'd dedicate the reading [audience laughter and applause]...This is all very orderly, although it doesn't look it, and it starts with other people's poems of various kinds. A little section of C. Bukowski [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76409], somebody said that's Charles, an American poet. It's a great long thing that was in a mimeograph magazine, and the description is of a woman with a bicycle and a baby carriage, high-heeled shoes, white socks, and all her belongings, on a hot day in the middle of a road in a city. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:05:28\\nReads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:06:30.\\nThat's sad, so on the same page I copied one of Al Fowler's, which was in a magazine called Lines, which is the all-time happiest little poem, and I don't know why. I'm going to stop where the lines stop, not where the sense stops, so you can see the shape of it.  There's no capital letters. There's no title.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:01\\nReads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].\\n\\nAudience \\n00:07:20\\nLaughter.\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:30\\nThis is one by Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756], called \\\"Zoo\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:39\\nReads \\\"Zoo\\\" by Gerry Gilbert.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:08:00\\nI may bring in some more of other people's, but this is just a little, it's a friend of mine in Toronto who's made it to grade seven this year. He calls it \\\"The Delinquent\\\", and he has, in this copy he has said that it's his copyright so if you betray the fact that I read some of it, I'll be in trouble with him.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:08:33\\nReads \\\"The Delinquent\\\" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:10:20\\nIt goes on, a bit, I want to go back to where it gets sad, though. I love \\\"She twisted her pinkies behind her but all the knots held more\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:10:30\\nResumes reading \\\"The Delinquent\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:11:33\\nThere's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:11:41\\nResumes reading \\\"The Delinquent\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:12:43\\nIt ends up with knotting a burning matchstick into her old man's hair. [Audience laughter]. I think as he goes on he'll be somebody. If I'm not reading mine I'll warn of you. Some of these...the first one is a Toronto poem with footnotes, saying that TTC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17978] means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:13:38\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:14:37\\nThe second subway poem...a little child, it's called \\\"Subway Station Why Not.\\\"\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:14:53\\nReads \\\"Subway Station Why Not\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:15:56\\nThis next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called \\\"Insomniac Report\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:16:11\\nReads \\\"Insomniac Report\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:17:07\\nFeels as if I should be doing something different, but I don't know what. I did a poem to people writing examinations I'm hunting for, but I think I've forgotten it. There's three about this odd experience of teaching and students. This one was written before I had had the experience, but was looking forward to it. And it had the title \\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\" And it's very full of fine theory and idealism.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:18:18\\nReads \\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:19:21\\nAnd I've got two other incomplete ones that should be read with that. I'll just read two stanzas of the first one, it's got one four-line stanza for the students...\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:19:36\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:20:36\\nThe teacher's answer hasn't got written yet. Here's another bit, two stanzas, the student and the teacher, that isn't finished. The student is talking although it doesn't sound like it. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:21:01\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:21:51\\nThere's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:22:03\\nReads \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:23:07\\nI had planned to get all this organized on the plane, but I was in the middle of the three seats and I kept getting the briefcase out and everything would fall to the floor, and this one would dive for it, or this one, and I finally gave up, so it's upside down. This is dedicated to Jacques Ellul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q322922], The Technological Society [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607727], a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:23:56\\nReads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time]. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:26:39\\nThere's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239303], when it was a fairly quiet room, and stare all morning, and if any words occurred to him, he dashed them down. And sometime he worked up his sketches and sometime he didn't, which is a technique that's lots of fun to practice, and occasionally something grows out of it. In this case I don't think I'll ever do anything but it'll show you the kind of thing that I mean, if, as I assume, most of you are writers.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:27:38\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:28:25\\nNow a poem with syntax and stuff called \\\"The Seven Birds\\\". A corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto which is the kind of buildings that have been there since the first world war, where there's often stores on the street level and an apartment or two above. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:29:01\\nReads \\\"The Seven Birds\\\" [published later in sunblue].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:30:15\\nI think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q381107], called \\\"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\\\". Ilona Duczynska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q967353] did a literal translation for me and then read it to me for sound and we worked through it that way.  Apparently the poem started, or happened, in 1956 in Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781]. Illyes had written it some years before but hadn't been angry enough at the time to risk what it was to bring it out. But he grew angry enough and somebody said the one thing that nobody censors is the magazine which tells you what lectures are going on where and what movies are running where and is just a news sheet, and the middle spread was for advertising, so they printed this in the middle sheet and it was, they tried to stop it as soon as the authorities found it but by then they were storming the radio station or however it started. I can't do it in one breath because it goes on for several pages. In the first part of it, \\\"it,\\\" meaning \\\"tyranny\\\" is small \\\"i\\\" and towards the end it's a capital \\\"I.\\\"\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:32:27\\nReads English translation of \\\"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\\\" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:39:26\\nSo, after the revolution he was much too well-known to disappear but they said he was insane and he was in an asylum for a while, but he wrote a lot of lovely things there, so I don't think he was, and he's not there now. It's much better, I think. A group of silly things it's embarrassing to read but I will, called \\\"Bestialities\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:40:19\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:14\\nThe last one I think is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I'll explain, it's like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper...\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:41:26\\nDon't explain, just say it.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:28\\nAlright, you can tell me then, eh? \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:33\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:40\\nNow, come on...[Audience laughter]. Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I've read it. It's just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumble it up and you throw it down and the mite goes up...Now I'll read it again.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:42:17\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:42:35\\n“The Absorbed\\\". This is one of the very cold days, I guess about ten below, enough. It's inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:43:09\\nReads \\\"The Absorbed\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:45:50\\nReads [\\\"Thaw\\\" from Winter Sun].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:47:37\\nI would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:47:54\\nReads \\\"Two Mayday Selves\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:49:42\\nAnd the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called \\\"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:50:06\\nReads \\\"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:52:53\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:52:54\\nI've been asked to read \\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\". It was written so many years ago...I think I would be quite right in saying thirty years ago, and probably a little more. And I couldn't write this well now but in a way when you're very young you've got the whole world in one lump without any lump, and you only get bits later on. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:53:34\\nReads \\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:56:54\\nThen the one \\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:57:03\\nReads \\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\" [from Winter Sun].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:59:57\\nI'd like to read one introductory poem to the long one, \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\", and that one, and two short ones, if you'll bear with me that long. This is called \\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:00:22\\nReads \\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n01:01:39\\nThis one is \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2165597] Death's Jest-Book [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42188673]: \\\"Can a man die? Aye, as the sun doth set, it is the earth that falls away from light\\\". There are a number of human situations, some into the past, through the present generation, the rest various city people, myself, and the stories come interleaving so that as I name a new section it'll be a new group of people, and by request I'm going to  stop at the line-ends here. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:02:32\\nReads \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:15:52\\nReads [\\\"He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:16:54\\nThere's one more and I'll stop with this one. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:17:00\\nReads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].\\n \\nEND\\n01:17:54\\n[Cut off abruptly].\\n\",\"notes\":\"Margaret Avison reads from Winter Sun (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960) and The Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton & Co, 1966), as well as a few poems published years later in books like sunblue (Lancelot Press, 1978) and No Time (Lancelot Press and Brick Books, 1998). The majority of the poems read were also collected in three volumes, entitled Always Now (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).\\n\\nI086-11-002.1=AC\\n\\n(Rachel has indexed poems)\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Margaret Avison. [INDEX: seventh poetry evening, poetry conference at UBC summer of 1963; Bloor Street, Guelph Ontario, Alberta, Victoria College of the University of Toronto in 1940 with BA from English Language and Literature, secretary at firms, research assistant, librarian, teaching English at    \\tScarborough College (Toronto), Guggenheim Fellow 1956-7, Canadian and American    \\tmagazines; books: The Winter Sun won Governor General’s Award in 1960, The    Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton in New York, 1966).]\\n02:59- Avison introduces poem by Charles Bukowski, first line “She had gone wrong somewhere...” [INDEX: Roy Kiyooka (meeting), Angry Art Week in NYC, dedicate    \\treadings to Angry Art Week, Bach, Manhattan, American people, American poet,        \\tMimeograph Magazine.]\\n05:28- Reads section from a poem by Charles Bukowski “She had gone wrong somewhere...”\\n06:30- Introduces poem by Al Fowler first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint     tea?”. [INDEX: magazine Line, line stops, shape of poem, no capital letters, no title.]\\n07:01- Reads poem by Al Fowler, first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?”.\\n07:30- Introduces poem by Gerry Gilbert called “Zoo”.\\n07:39- Reads poem by Gerry Gilbert, called  “Zoo”.\\n08:00- Introduces poem called “The Delinquent”  by unknown child. [INDEX: friend in Toronto, in grade seven.]\\n08:33- Reads “The Delinquent”.\\n10:20- Interjects comment about poem.\\n10:30- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.\\n11:33- Interjects comment about poem.\\n11:41- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.\\n12:43- Explains “The Delinquent”, Introduces poem, first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”.  [INDEX: Toronto poem, footnotes, TTC means Toronto Transit Commission, Yonge       \\tSubway between Bloor and Rosedale.]\\n13:38- Reads first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, transportation, subway; from an unknown source.]\\n14:37- Introduces “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: subway poem, child, from unknown source]\\n14:53- Reads “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto,  transportation, subway, child; from an unknown source.]\\n15:56- Introduces “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: St. Clair Avenue (Toronto), car tracks.]\\n16:11- Reads “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, night, streets, sounds, sleep; from an unknown source.]\\n17:07- Introduces “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: students writing exams, teaching, theory, idealism; from an unknown source.]\\n18:18- Reads “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work, children, student.]\\n19:21- Introduces incomplete poems, first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX:        incomplete poem, two stanzas of first, one four-line stanza for the students; from an      unknown source.]\\n19:36- Reads first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work,        children, students.]\\n20:36- Introduces incomplete poem, first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: teacher’s answer, two stanzas, incomplete poem; from an unknown source.]\\n21:01- Reads first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: work, school,        teaching, children, students.]\\n21:51- Introduces \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.\\\". [INDEX: daybreak bus; from an unknown source]\\n22:03- Reads \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.\\\". [INDEX: nature, time, day.]\\n23:07- Introduces unknown poem first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: plane, dedicated to Jacques Ellul who wrote The Technological Society; from an unknown source.]\\n23:55- Reads first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: cities, bus, truck, metal, urban, waste, stone, wreck, yard, grass, gargoyle.]\\n26:39- Introduces first line, “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: sketching, poet in Chicago, Art       Institute; from an unknown source.]\\n27:38- Reads first line “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: language, play, process, sketch.]\\n28:25- Introduces “The Seven Birds”. [INDEX: poem with syntax, corner of Bathurst and     College Street in Toronto, First World War building; from sunblue in “Sketches”.]\\n29:01- Reads “The Seven Birds”.\\n30:15- Introduces poem Avison translated, called “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula     Illyes. [INDEX: Ilona Duczynska, translation, 1956 in Budapest, censorship in magazines, newsheets, radio station, authorities, protest, tyranny; collected in Always  Now, Vol. 1 (Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).]\\n32:27- Reads “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula Illyes.\\n39:26- Explains “Of Tyranny in One Breath”, introduces “Bestialities”. [INDEX: revolution, Gyula Illyes, insane asylum; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n40:19- Reads “Bestialities”. [INDEX: play, animals, language, puns.]\\n41:14- Introduces first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.      [INDEX: misunderstood poem, 8x11 typing paper.]\\n41:26- Audience member interjects, asks her to read it without explanation.\\n41:28- Avison reads first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.\\n41:40- Explains “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”. [INDEX:        crumpled up letter, mite; from unknown source.]\\n42:17- Re-reads “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.\\n42:35- Introduces “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: cold day, glass pane, sky; from unknown source.]\\n43:09- Reads “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: nature, weather, glass, window, cold, winter, ice.]\\n45:50- Reads “The Thaw”. [INDEX: city, children, weather, winter, spring, streets, dog, sparrow, pigeons, boy; published as “Thaw” in Winter Sun.]\\n47:37- Introduces poem, first line “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX weather   poem, May; Howard Fink list “To May Day”.]\\n47:54- Reads “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX: colours, birds, grackle, city,   streets, winter, day, breath; from unknown source.]\\n49:42- Introduces “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: late spring, early summer, Jet-plane terminuses, May 18th, 1965.]\\n50:06- Reads “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: nature, flowers, birds, plane, flight,     leaves, snow, sky, sea, music, ice; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n52:53.49- END OF RECORDING.\\n  \\nPoem (by stated title or first line):                                     \\nFIRST CD: I086-11-002.1=AC                         \\t\\t           Time            Duration\\n\\n[\\\"She had gone wrong...\\\"]by Charles Bukowski                        00:05:28      \\t01:01\\n[\\\"Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?\\\"] by Al Fowler    00:07:01      \\t00:28\\n\\\"Zoo\\\" by Gerry Gilbert                                                       \\t00:07:39      \\t00:19\\n\\\"The Delinquent\\\" by an unknown, seven year-old friend  \\t00:08:33      \\t04:10\\n[\\\"Inside the TTC's fence...\\\"]                                               \\t00:13:38      \\t00:58\\n\\\"Subway Station Why Not\\\"                                    \\t        \\t00:14:53      \\t01:03  \\n\\\"Insomniac Report\\\"                                                            \\t00:16:11      \\t00:55\\n\\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\"                 \\t00:18:18      \\t01:02\\n[\\\"No instant morality for us...\\\"]                                          \\t00:19:36      \\t00:58\\n[\\\"The boy with the brilliant promises\\\"]                              \\t00:21:01      \\t00:50\\n\\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\"                        \\t00:22:03      \\t01:02\\n [\\\"A junk truck stopped beside my bus\\\"]                           \\t00:23:56      \\t02:40\\n[\\\"Grey by water...\\\"]                                                            \\t00:27:38      \\t00:45\\n\\\"The Seven Birds\\\"                                                              \\t00:29:01      \\t01:13\\n\\\"Of Tyranny in One Breath\\\" by Gyula Illyes         \\t        \\t00:32:27      \\t04:58\\n\\\"Bestialities\\\"                                                           \\t        \\t00:40:19      \\t00:54\\n\\\"Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka.\\\"      00:41:33      \\t00:57\\n\\\"Be Absorbed\\\"                                                                    \\t00:43:09      \\t02:40\\n\\\"The Thaw\\\"                                                                        \\t00:45:50      \\t01:40\\n\\\"The grackle shining in long grass\\\"                                   \\t00:47:54      \\t00:46\\n\\\"Black-White Under Green,\\\" May 18th, 1965                   \\t00:50:06      \\t02:47\\n\\nI086-11-002.2=AC \\n\\n00:00- Avison introduces “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: written more than thirty years before, writing when young; from Elsewhere.]\\n00:41- Reads “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: vacation, travel, walking, picnic, park, city, landing, steps, trees, bridge, tourist, stranger.]\\n04:00- Reads “To Professor X, Year Y”. [INDEX: November, waiting, uniformity, crowd,        downtown, history, historian, death, snow; from The Winter Sun.]\\n07:04- Introduces “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: introductory poem to “The Earth that Falls Away”.] \\n07:28- Reads “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: power, rabbi, Judaism, good, morality, love.]\\n08:46- Introduces “The Earth that Falls Away”. [INDEX: epigraph from Beddoes’s Death’s Jest Book, human situations, present generation, city people, stop at the line-ends; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n09:38- Reads “The Earth that Falls Away”. [INDEX: long poem, Romans, history, Bible,    silence, breaking, marriage, illness, winter, summer, city, Dawson City, gold rush, books, Canadiana, photographs, remembrance, scholar, value, cloth, fabric, textiles, production, operation, cancer, treasure, children, blind, snow, farm, emptiness, isolation, solitude, sight, sound.]\\n22:58- Reads first line “He chose a street where he wouldn’t be safe...” [INDEX: city, street, party, Bible, safety, saviour, Jesus; from unknown source; not indicated as separate poem on Howard Fink List.]\\n24:00- Reads first line “Sir, you have nothing...”. [INDEX emptiness, nothing, snow, heart, cup, fullness, joy; from unknown source. .]\\n25:01.03- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nPoems Time Stamped with Duration\\nSECOND CD: I086-11-002.2=AC                         \\t\\tTime            \\tDuration\\n\\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\"                                                  \\t00:00:41      \\t03:15\\n\\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\"                                                   \\t00:04:10      \\t02:55\\n\\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\"                                                    \\t00:07:28      \\t01:15\\n\\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\"                                              \\t00:09:38      \\t13:15\\n\\\"He chose a street where he wouldn't be safe\\\"                   \\t00:22:58      \\t01:00\\n \\\"Sir, you have nothing\\\"                                                     \\t00:24:06      \\t00:55\\n\\nHoward Fink List:\\n“Marg Avison” reading her own poetry 21/1/67 reel information.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1260","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":["Robert Creeley at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 24 February 1967 "],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"ROBERT CREELEY I006/SR89.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. I006-11-089.1 is written on a sticker on the tape reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Creeley, Robert"],"creator_names_search":["Creeley, Robert"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109562114\",\"name\":\"Creeley, Robert\",\"dates\":\"1926-2005\",\"notes\":\"American poet and essayist Robert Creeley was born in 1926 in Arlington, Massachusetts. His early life was marred by tragedy, as he lost his left eye in an accident and suffered the death of his father when he was four years old. Creeley then grew up on a farm, and felt repressed by his traditional Puritanical New England upbringing. After a year of Harvard University, Creeley joined the US Field Service in India and Burma. Returning again to Harvard, he married his first wife Ann MacKinnon, with whom he had three children, only to leave Harvard in his final semester. From 1948 to 1950, Creeley and his family moved to several locations including Provincetown, New Hampshire; Provenance, France; and Mallorca, Spain. Once in Mallorca, he set up The Divers Press with poet Denise Levertov. Creeley thus began correspondence with Charles Olson, and Olson offered Creeley a teaching position at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in 1954. During his short time at Black Mountain, Creely edited Black Mountain Review, a journal known for its experimental writing. As well as many publications in poetry magazines, he published his first collection of short stories in The Gold Diggers in 1954 (Divers Press). After his marriage dissolved, Creeley headed West to San Francisco, meeting with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Kenneth Rexroth, as well as other Beat poets during the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Creeley then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, completed his M.A., and then took a position as professor of English. There, he met and married Bobbie Louise Hall, with whom he had two daughters and for whom he wrote most of his love poetry. His first major collection of poetry was For Love: Poems 1950-1960, published in 1962 (Scribner Press). Creeley subsequently published his novel, The Island (Scribner Press, 1963), and other poetry collections including Words (Scribner), The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems (Perishable Press, 1967), and Pieces (Scribner, 1969). His essays and prose publications include A Quick Graph: Collected Notes and Essays (Four Seasons Foundation, 1970), A Sense of Measure (Calder and Boyars, 1973), and Was That a Real Poem and Other Essays (Four Seasons Foundation, 1979). His marriage with Bobbie ended in the late 70’s, and he married his third wife, Penelope Highton.  Creeley continued to publish his poetry in collections such as Later (New Directions, 1979), Mirrors (New Directions, 1983), Windows (New Directions, 1990), Echoes (New Directions, 1994), Life and Death (New Directions, 1998), and If I Were Writing This (New Directions, 2003). He has won a number of awards and honors, including the New York State Poet Laureate from 1989-91. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999, received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, a Rockefeller Grant and two Guggenheim Fellowships. Robert Creeley died in 2005, but his poetry has been published posthumously in On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay (University of California Press, 2009), The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005 (University of California Press, 2006) and Robert Creeley: Selected Poems, 1945-2005 (University of California Press, 2008).\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Layton, Irving"],"contributors_names_search":["Layton, Irving"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66482092\",\"name\":\"Layton, Irving\",\"dates\":\"1912-2006\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Layton, Irving"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"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\":\"Tape\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 2 24\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" \",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" (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 Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Robert Creeley reads from For Love (Scribner, 1962) and Words (Scribner, 1967)."],"contents":["robert_creeley_i006-11-089-1_1987.mp3\n\nIrving Layton\n00:00:15\nMr. Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620] has published too many books for me to list for you this evening, but some titles are deserving of notice. His Collected Poems was published by Scriveners in 1962 under the title For Love. He has also published short stories and they're brought out by Scriveners after first being published, privately I believe, under the title of The Gold Diggers. His most recent book, also brought out by Scriveners, is called Words. Mr. Creeley has a style that is unique and inimitable. There are many, both in this country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16?wprov=srpw1_0] and in United States of America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30?wprov=srpw1_0] that are trying to capture the delicate, tenuous quality of his work, and not quite successfully. For his is an art of pauses, of hesitations. He affirms by diffidence, and he destroys our pretensions with a whisper. He uses silence as a modern composer of music [unintelligible], or the way a contemporary painter uses space. He bounces words off against the wall of [unintelligible]. If you listen carefully, you'll hear reverberations and the subtlest of echoes. Mr. Creeley is one of the most honest poets writing today. And a very brave man, who knows the price that has to be paid for a good poem certified to endure. He has written a little song, sing days of happiness, make a pardonable wonder of one's blunders. The man who wrote those words knows all that needs to be known about the perilous vocation of the poet. One critic has said his poems are miniatures, but then hastened to add that they are not miniatures, sorry-One critic has said-this is not from memory-One critic has said that his poems are miniatures, but there's nothing miniature about the power that they release. I have said somewhere that he has written skinny poems, that miraculously grow in length and breath, one's air absorbed into one's consciousness. Slender firecrackers that explode with the power of a bomb. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Robert Creeley.\n\nAudience\n00:03:42\nApplause.\n\nRobert Creeley\n00:03:52\nSee now, it's extremely generous, Irving [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289], all that. No, because we have had a very long association. I think I'd like to say my piece too, apropos that fact that I think that the kind of community that say either Irving or myself in this way were involved with was what kinds of, no really, how could you find the world?  I mean, I, for example first read his poems in the collection called Cerberus with Louis Dudek [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] and Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129] and then I was very interested in the magazine that they had going called Contact, I was looking for connections I suppose, the man, in no hips sense, but we were, I was extraordinar--I wanted to know where the world was, and Irving seemed to be very much, very much part of any world I certainly could respect. And so, what he generously and definitely himself ignores was that he was that he was a very decisive contributing editor for the Black Mountain Review, and it was really, a very decisive friend all those fifteen years he imagines. Let me read now. Let me start from back then, \"A Song\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:05:47\nReads \"A Song\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:06:37\nThis is apropos. \"The Conspiracy\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:06:43\nReads \"The Conspiracy\" [from For Love].\n \nAudience\n00:07:11\nLaughter.\n\nRobert Creeley\n00:07:12\nThat was no joke. \"Chanson\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:07:26\nReads \"Chanson\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:00\n\"The Operation\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:05\nReads \"The Operation\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:35\n\"The Death of Venus\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:41\nReads \"The Death of Venus\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:09:17\nI was thinking Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] happily has been here, so this is a poem, again of the same, the same situation that we were very active in the exchange of, I mean, again I want to emphasize  the sense that we were looking around to see what kinds of possibility that we could find in the world and I suppose if we shared anything, I was thinking of Irving's lovely stories and letters about the problems of visiting literary parties [laughs] and partly being forbidden because he made such awkward problems for guests and hosts, etc. So that Paul Blackburn at this point was translating from Provencal poetry, he'd been at the University of Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q838330] and had had a very active and useful relation with the woman there, I think it was, teaching Provencal, so that he'd also been very involved with Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366?wprov=srpw1_0], with Pound's senses of activity in verse and had therefore become particularly interested in Provencal and had begun to translate, and through the same agency that we had in Mallorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8828], my wife and I then, the so called Divers Press that had published Irving's book, we published a collection of Paul's Provencal translations called Proensa. So the title, is actually Paul's title, I can't now remember what- I don't think he ever published the poem it was the title for, but I was struck by it, and you know, you take things, obviously from friends, it was that you were stealing, but that it was always a common situation. It's a form of adaptation, and I think a young friend now at Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q681025] were presently working was telling me that I am in the courtly tradition which is confusing to me, but I can see what he means simply that did pick up a lot through Paul Blackburn and writers in this way using a vocabulary or sense of possibility involved with that kind of writing. So this poem, for example, would be, would be actually a, would be a poem not written by Paul Blackburn, but a poem much informed by his way of perceiving. \"A Form of Adaptation\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:11:46\nReads \"A Form of Adaptation\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:12:40\n“The Whip”.\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:12:43\nReads \"The Whip\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:13:29\n\"Please\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:13:36\nReads \"Please\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:14:36\n\"The Three Ladies\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:14:39\nReads \"The Three Ladies\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:16:04\n[Unintelligible] \"New Year’s\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:16:17\nReads \"New Year’s\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:17:34\n\"Entre Nous\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:17:40\nReads \"Entre Nous\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:18:08\n\"The Place\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:18:11\nReads \"The Place\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:19:20\n\"The Hill\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:19:32\nReads \"The Hill\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:20:21\n\"The Awakening\" for Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:20:25\nReads \"The Awakening\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:22:04\n\"The Rain\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:22:12\nReads \"The Rain\" [from For Love]. \n \nRobert Creeley\n00:23:12\n\"Kore\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:23:20\nReads \"Kore\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:24:09\nI thought I'd read a few more of these in this particular collection. Zukofsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q975481] is a man I very much respect. \"The House\", for Louis Zukofsky.\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:24:29\nReads \"The House\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:25:06\n\"The Pool\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:25:13\nReads \"The Pool\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:26:18\nWater, I really love water. To Water.\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:26:26\nReads \"The Rocks\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:27:47\n\"The Fire\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:27:50\nReads \"The Fire\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:28:31\n\"Something\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:28:37\nReads \"Something” [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:29:46\nThat was a, there's another poem with that same sense, no really, I'm very, I think that some of the lovely incongruities of existence [unintelligible] Charlotte- whose last name I can't remember, [unintelligible] like to say was arrested in New York for trying to, as she put it, and I believe, lovely innocence, she wanted to have chamber music as quote sexy unquote as other life circumstances seemed to be becoming, so that she was playing something like [unintelligible] or Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] in topless condition and was arrested by a very discreet policeman and taken away. Although she wanted apparently to entertain the sight as well as the ear. I don't know, I mean, why shouldn't she be permitted to do that? \"Distance\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:31:03\nReads \"Distance\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:34:29\nA couple of these, two from Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. \"The Window\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:34:36\nReads \"The Window\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:35:30\n\"To Bobbie\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:35:34\nReads \"To Bobbie\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:36:46\nI wanna, there's one poem, apropos I'd like to go back to, a couple--\"The Rose\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:37:02\nReads \"The Rose\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:38:46\n\"Love Comes Quietly\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:38:53\nReads \"Love Comes Quietly\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:15\n\"The Gesture\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:21\nReads \"The Gesture\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:52\n\"For Love\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:56\nReads \"For Love\" [from For Love].\n\nRobert Creeley\n00:42:39\nI want to go back to this one. There's one... called, \"Anger\". This interpolates, so to speak of. I've been traveling in an extraordinary company of people the last, or the week previous and then, we'll see them again at the same activity tomorrow night in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60?wprov=srpw1_0]. We were billed as quote contemporary voices in the arts, unquote, but apart from that the, we were visiting various colleges and universities in the Upstate New York area from say Albany State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4709390] to Rensselaer Polytechnic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49211] to Potsdam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7603628], and then places St Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1411093] or Union College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567748] and we were trying, in effect, to- we had the problem of we were billed as a panel, seven men, sitting down to discuss- John Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] is one of the participants, and he said, 'well', of course if we sit down, we say, 'well where do you think art is going?' and then you have to figure out where do you think art's come from? [laughter] And at that point you just might as well come home because it's going to be a long, long conversation. So we decided that we would, instead of having the formal sense of panel, that we would simply create, improvise, or go about in effect at our own activity, except that we wouldn't isolate ourselves in that but would simply try to improvise, as we were seven people, a poem that could permit each one of us to be active, all together so that we at no point had much- we had no decision as to what the others would be doing, so that the whole activity occurred as the complex, and I was- I mean, I had never had any experience of this kind previously at all, John Cage had made, oh very large decisions indeed about this kind of possibility in music, simply that he wanted all possibility of sound to be admitted into the context that music proposes. He also had very decisive relation to what are called loosely 'happenings', and both he and Merce Cunningham [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q318364], another participant, had in that with some previous experience, but the point is that they weren't- neither was trying to create a system from previous experience, but again was trying to think of how this activity of seven people could be evident in ways that simply didn't create a three-ring circus but was actually a participation so, I was intrigued, I was extraordinarily intrigued as to how words, as poetry and whatnot could enter into this circumstance, and because I literally was in it, I have in a sense no quote objective unquote experience at all, but it was extraordinary to me to hear how things are heard in a multiple, in a multiple event, rather than the kind of singularity that this occasion proposes. So I still have that on my mind in a way, and I may, I really do feel that say, all the arts, I mean if one does want some kind of statement about them, that all the arts are moving into a situation where the agency is becoming less and less singular, I don't mean necessarily that in some seminal sense, that everyone's quote an artist, I mean I don't know what an artist is, in one way at all, but I think that the participation is becoming much more a situation of process and activity, and that it is becoming less and less evident as one singular isolation of person, and I realize in my own writing how much the previous condition had been my, my occasion. So, I may be reading these poems for the last time in that sense. I'm certainly prepared to do so, I'm not at all interested in continuing an activity that maybe, you know, maybe have much more experience or much more range of possibility than say contemporary habits about it seem to imply. But anyhow, that was interesting to me to have that experience and also interesting of course is what it had as an impact on educational process. Immediately this activity finished and I've never been in such a- I mean I've been, you know, like they say in [unintelligible] auditorium in the summer, I certainly have seen light shows and other [unintelligible] happenings, a few years ago, it was Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789], knows, having been there also, there was an extraordinary happening like they say put on by the Tate Music Center from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]  [unintelligible] being the painter doing the so called decor, doing the set, the set that was used, creating the visual. But this other thing was something quite distinct, simply that each person was so active in ways that he couldn't anticipate and we had with us also Billy Kluver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4912866], who can be most easily identified as the man who, is literally is an Engineer at Bell Labs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217365] in New Jersey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1408?wprov=srpw1_0] who engineered the 9 Evenings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4646407] of the Armory [Hall (?)] in company with Rauschenberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164358], [Vergan (?)] and Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] and others, a situation that brought technology into close apropos with the arts, and led to the practical effects of this activity are very evident, it led to ten patented inventions, all of which have much more extensive use, let's say than that occasion of those particular evenings. That was [unintelligible] you know, many, many poets [unintelligible] of this kind, that is, it turns out that when the arts are permitted this situation, that, I think we were talking to Irving earlier this evening, I think we both fear a situation, or have some kind of, feeling of personal awkwardness about a situation that is turning to the arts as if the arts had a necessary message or condition of life to stake for people to have use of, I mean, again, in these evenings we were round in these colleges, I mean the students or the people present, again and again said that \"what were you trying to tell us?\" And the point was that we weren't trying to tell them anything. We were in fact, we thought, that the activity was something which each person could have experienced, it would be like going to the beach and saying what do you think the water is trying to tell us? [audience laughter.] And you stand there, you're swimming [unintelligible] for two hours enjoying yourself thoroughly and then you come out and say to your friend, but what did it all mean? You know, we assumed that the people there would have some - would have some decision of their own, you know, did you think it was too cold, or too hot, or did you enjoy it, or you know, that's the kind of question no one can answer for you. In any case, I do feel the arts has, as Irving feels also, are being turned to, as some possibility of decision in contemporary society and don't think they can offer that ever, I don't- I think the very value of the arts is that they have no conclusion of this kind to propose, that what they do give is something I think perhaps Pound puts as ably as anyone when he says that \"art is the antenna of the race\". It's a very large statement obviously, and I think what he proposes in it is perhaps even can be put more simply in that the arts tend to experience the condition of the society that is, in a sense, and that way I have use of the condition of the society, perhaps more immediately than any other definition or activity in the society, I mean they tend to respond to the present condition perhaps more decisively than any other segment, I mean everyone else tends, not- I don't mean this in any put down sense of their attitudes in this society but I mean, that as the war goes on because it's an historical precedent and so on and so forth, I mean people continued to act as though what they were doing is still what they are doing, what they are doing is still what they were doing and they literally tend to continue in those habits of attitude or activity until something simply makes them impossible, but the arts tend to have experience I think of present condition, that they have no other viable occasion, they tend to propose what the immediate experience of say any life situation simply is, but they have no instruction therefore offer except that is possible, so that as I say, if poetry, as we've now experienced it is about to yield to another situation that is if books or printed medium of this order are to be changed, in societal experience, great, I mean I don't see why I want you to have to carry around all these pieces of paper, there must be, I'm sure that there's a simple way to communicate this kind of content but I do want to make the insistence that these poems or what I'm doing here has- I mean, I'm enjoying this, I'd probably do this even if you weren't here. [audience laughter], obviously did do it, you know. Now this is something else again, I had no messages, if the media is the message, this is perhaps the most absolute demonstration you'll probably get. \"Anger\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:54:01\nReads \"Anger\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:59:25\nI'd like if people are feeling reasonably restless, I'd like to read one or two more poems and then one more story to make a selection frankly [unintelligible]  I think I'll see what would be useful. A couple of shorter poems for the end. One called \"A Tally\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:00:01\nReads \"A Tally\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:01:41\n\"Enough\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:01:45\nReads \"Enough\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:06:00\nOne last poem I want to read now, [unintelligible] \"The Hole\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:06:07\nReads \"The Hole\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:07:53\nRead a story that's in effect going back some time to the time of the writing of the Island, a novel. And I hadn't written any prose for some time, not since the middle 50's and I had a [joke (?)], myself and my wife and our four kids were all down in Guatemala [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q774]where I was tutoring children on a coffee plantation, and having that kind of isolation and time that seemed to, you know, have the possibility to try some prose. I like prose simply that it has--it's continuous, it permits a kind of variety of activity in ways that sometimes poetry from my own experience, at least in the way I'm given to write it, doesn't altogether- I mean, the emotional demand, let's say in a poem is in my own experience has known it, is of such order that alternatives in a curious way aren't possible, you simply say what you're thus brought to say as best you can. In prose, the emotional so called situation tends to be more various, it goes up, down, it ebbs, flows, re-forms, changes its mind, and so on and so forth, so I--not in recent years, I think the last prose I wrote was this novel, called the Island and I've not really written any since, that's about--when I was in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639]teaching I finished that novel, and that was the last prose I think I've written and hopefully won't--I would like to go back to prose for a time. I'd like to have it open, I mean, again, this experience of being with these particular people, whenever habits become, oh let's say whenever you expect everything to be as you have experienced, it's time to look out or do something else because it means that you're assuming of the reality of your life has become too much of a pattern of a habit. Anyhow, this is a story called \"The Book\". I sort of like this story.\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:10:22\nReads \"The Book\".\n\nRobert Creeley\n01:21:15\nThank you very much for your...\n\nAudience \n01:21:16\nApplause.\n\nIntroducer\n01:21:39\nI think I speak for everyone in thanking Robert Creeley for being able to come down and make the scene tonight. There are a couple of announcements that I want to make, the first one I can't remember so I'll have to [unintelligible], [Audrey Brunet (?)], that I do remember invites everyone to come to hear \"Prayers on the Periphery\", an original reading, this coming Monday, March the 6th at 8:30 pm in the little gallery on the mezzanine. Our next reading is a week from now, next Friday, March the 3rd, and Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] and George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] from Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435]  and Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] will be coming. Thank you.\n\nAudience\n01:22:32\nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n01:22:45\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n\nRobert Creeley \n01:22:48\nReads “The Book” [repeated from 00:27:43].\n\nEND\n01:23:12\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nRobert Creeley, tenured as a full professor at SUNY Buffalo in 1967, edited The New Writing in the USA with Don Allen, and published Words and The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems.  Creeley attended the London International Poetry Festival in July of 1967.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nCreeley had ties with Irving Layton through the Black Mountain Review in the 50’s. Creeley moved to Vancouver to work at the University of British Columbia in 1960-61. He had contacts with Phyllis Webb and Irving Layton. Creeley was George Bowering’s Master's thesis advisor at University of British Columbia until 1963, and wrote introductions for Bowering’s poetry[1]. He came to visit Montreal and Sir George Williams University the same year Layton was poet in residence, after years of correspondence.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Notes on item identifiers: \\n\\nIrving Layton makes introductory speech, and it’s referred to in Irving’s reading, in 1967. I006-11-089.1 and I006-11-089.1-AC2 are from same reading. I006-11-089.2 is a separate reading.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Sarah McDonnell and Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-of-robert-creeley/oclc/1151730303&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert, and Penelope Creeley. The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945-1975. University of California Press, 2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/was-that-a-real-poem-other-essays/oclc/247870873&referer=brief_results#reviews\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert; Allen, Donald; Novik, Mary. Was That a Real Poem and Other Essays. Four Seasons Foundation, 1979. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/words-poems/oclc/421895361?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Words: poems. New York: Scribner, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sense-of-measure/oclc/718716260&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. A Sense of Measure. Calder and Boyars, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/some-echoes/oclc/1167543687&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Echoes. New Directions, 1994.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/for-love-poems-1950-1960/oclc/268031?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. For Love: Poems Poems 1950-1960. New York: Scribner, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/if-i-were-writing-this/oclc/181140062&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. If I Were Writing This. New Directions, 2008. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/later/oclc/470953767&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Later. New Directions, 1980. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/life-death/oclc/694895837&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Life and Death. New Directions, 2000.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/mirrors/oclc/239774564&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Mirrors. New Directions, 1983. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/on-earth-last-poems-and-an-essay/oclc/264039622&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay. University of California Press, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/pieces/oclc/729928833&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Pieces. Scribner, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/charm/oclc/9997283&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems. Book People & Mudra, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/gold-diggers-and-other-stories/oclc/10263594&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. The Gold Diggers. Divers Press, 1954. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/windows/oclc/797857141&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Windows. Boyars, 1991. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/robert-creeley-a-biography/oclc/951202214&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Fass, Ekbert. Robert Creeley: A Biography. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal: The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39.  \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"O’Reilly, Elizabeth. “Creeley, Robert, 1926-”. Literature Online Biography. Proquest, 2008. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548677066752,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0089-1_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - 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_0089-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0089-1_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - 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_0089-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/robert_creeley_i006-11-089-1_1967.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"robert_creeley_i006-11-089-1_1987.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:23:12\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"199.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Irving Layton\\n00:00:15\\nMr. Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620] has published too many books for me to list for you this evening, but some titles are deserving of notice. His Collected Poems was published by Scriveners in 1962 under the title For Love. He has also published short stories and they're brought out by Scriveners after first being published, privately I believe, under the title of The Gold Diggers. His most recent book, also brought out by Scriveners, is called Words. Mr. Creeley has a style that is unique and inimitable. There are many, both in this country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16?wprov=srpw1_0] and in United States of America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30?wprov=srpw1_0] that are trying to capture the delicate, tenuous quality of his work, and not quite successfully. For his is an art of pauses, of hesitations. He affirms by diffidence, and he destroys our pretensions with a whisper. He uses silence as a modern composer of music [unintelligible], or the way a contemporary painter uses space. He bounces words off against the wall of [unintelligible]. If you listen carefully, you'll hear reverberations and the subtlest of echoes. Mr. Creeley is one of the most honest poets writing today. And a very brave man, who knows the price that has to be paid for a good poem certified to endure. He has written a little song, sing days of happiness, make a pardonable wonder of one's blunders. The man who wrote those words knows all that needs to be known about the perilous vocation of the poet. One critic has said his poems are miniatures, but then hastened to add that they are not miniatures, sorry-One critic has said-this is not from memory-One critic has said that his poems are miniatures, but there's nothing miniature about the power that they release. I have said somewhere that he has written skinny poems, that miraculously grow in length and breath, one's air absorbed into one's consciousness. Slender firecrackers that explode with the power of a bomb. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Robert Creeley.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:03:42\\nApplause.\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n00:03:52\\nSee now, it's extremely generous, Irving [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289], all that. No, because we have had a very long association. I think I'd like to say my piece too, apropos that fact that I think that the kind of community that say either Irving or myself in this way were involved with was what kinds of, no really, how could you find the world?  I mean, I, for example first read his poems in the collection called Cerberus with Louis Dudek [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] and Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129] and then I was very interested in the magazine that they had going called Contact, I was looking for connections I suppose, the man, in no hips sense, but we were, I was extraordinar--I wanted to know where the world was, and Irving seemed to be very much, very much part of any world I certainly could respect. And so, what he generously and definitely himself ignores was that he was that he was a very decisive contributing editor for the Black Mountain Review, and it was really, a very decisive friend all those fifteen years he imagines. Let me read now. Let me start from back then, \\\"A Song\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:05:47\\nReads \\\"A Song\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:06:37\\nThis is apropos. \\\"The Conspiracy\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:06:43\\nReads \\\"The Conspiracy\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:07:11\\nLaughter.\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n00:07:12\\nThat was no joke. \\\"Chanson\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:07:26\\nReads \\\"Chanson\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:00\\n\\\"The Operation\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:05\\nReads \\\"The Operation\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:35\\n\\\"The Death of Venus\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:41\\nReads \\\"The Death of Venus\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:09:17\\nI was thinking Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] happily has been here, so this is a poem, again of the same, the same situation that we were very active in the exchange of, I mean, again I want to emphasize  the sense that we were looking around to see what kinds of possibility that we could find in the world and I suppose if we shared anything, I was thinking of Irving's lovely stories and letters about the problems of visiting literary parties [laughs] and partly being forbidden because he made such awkward problems for guests and hosts, etc. So that Paul Blackburn at this point was translating from Provencal poetry, he'd been at the University of Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q838330] and had had a very active and useful relation with the woman there, I think it was, teaching Provencal, so that he'd also been very involved with Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366?wprov=srpw1_0], with Pound's senses of activity in verse and had therefore become particularly interested in Provencal and had begun to translate, and through the same agency that we had in Mallorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8828], my wife and I then, the so called Divers Press that had published Irving's book, we published a collection of Paul's Provencal translations called Proensa. So the title, is actually Paul's title, I can't now remember what- I don't think he ever published the poem it was the title for, but I was struck by it, and you know, you take things, obviously from friends, it was that you were stealing, but that it was always a common situation. It's a form of adaptation, and I think a young friend now at Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q681025] were presently working was telling me that I am in the courtly tradition which is confusing to me, but I can see what he means simply that did pick up a lot through Paul Blackburn and writers in this way using a vocabulary or sense of possibility involved with that kind of writing. So this poem, for example, would be, would be actually a, would be a poem not written by Paul Blackburn, but a poem much informed by his way of perceiving. \\\"A Form of Adaptation\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:11:46\\nReads \\\"A Form of Adaptation\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:12:40\\n“The Whip”.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:12:43\\nReads \\\"The Whip\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:13:29\\n\\\"Please\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:13:36\\nReads \\\"Please\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:14:36\\n\\\"The Three Ladies\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:14:39\\nReads \\\"The Three Ladies\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:16:04\\n[Unintelligible] \\\"New Year’s\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:16:17\\nReads \\\"New Year’s\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:17:34\\n\\\"Entre Nous\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:17:40\\nReads \\\"Entre Nous\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:18:08\\n\\\"The Place\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:18:11\\nReads \\\"The Place\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:19:20\\n\\\"The Hill\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:19:32\\nReads \\\"The Hill\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:20:21\\n\\\"The Awakening\\\" for Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:20:25\\nReads \\\"The Awakening\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:22:04\\n\\\"The Rain\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:22:12\\nReads \\\"The Rain\\\" [from For Love]. \\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:23:12\\n\\\"Kore\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:23:20\\nReads \\\"Kore\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:24:09\\nI thought I'd read a few more of these in this particular collection. Zukofsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q975481] is a man I very much respect. \\\"The House\\\", for Louis Zukofsky.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:24:29\\nReads \\\"The House\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:25:06\\n\\\"The Pool\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:25:13\\nReads \\\"The Pool\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:26:18\\nWater, I really love water. To Water.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:26:26\\nReads \\\"The Rocks\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:27:47\\n\\\"The Fire\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:27:50\\nReads \\\"The Fire\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:28:31\\n\\\"Something\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:28:37\\nReads \\\"Something” [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:29:46\\nThat was a, there's another poem with that same sense, no really, I'm very, I think that some of the lovely incongruities of existence [unintelligible] Charlotte- whose last name I can't remember, [unintelligible] like to say was arrested in New York for trying to, as she put it, and I believe, lovely innocence, she wanted to have chamber music as quote sexy unquote as other life circumstances seemed to be becoming, so that she was playing something like [unintelligible] or Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] in topless condition and was arrested by a very discreet policeman and taken away. Although she wanted apparently to entertain the sight as well as the ear. I don't know, I mean, why shouldn't she be permitted to do that? \\\"Distance\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:31:03\\nReads \\\"Distance\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:34:29\\nA couple of these, two from Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. \\\"The Window\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:34:36\\nReads \\\"The Window\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:35:30\\n\\\"To Bobbie\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:35:34\\nReads \\\"To Bobbie\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:36:46\\nI wanna, there's one poem, apropos I'd like to go back to, a couple--\\\"The Rose\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:37:02\\nReads \\\"The Rose\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:38:46\\n\\\"Love Comes Quietly\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:38:53\\nReads \\\"Love Comes Quietly\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:15\\n\\\"The Gesture\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:21\\nReads \\\"The Gesture\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:52\\n\\\"For Love\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:56\\nReads \\\"For Love\\\" [from For Love].\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n00:42:39\\nI want to go back to this one. There's one... called, \\\"Anger\\\". This interpolates, so to speak of. I've been traveling in an extraordinary company of people the last, or the week previous and then, we'll see them again at the same activity tomorrow night in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60?wprov=srpw1_0]. We were billed as quote contemporary voices in the arts, unquote, but apart from that the, we were visiting various colleges and universities in the Upstate New York area from say Albany State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4709390] to Rensselaer Polytechnic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49211] to Potsdam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7603628], and then places St Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1411093] or Union College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567748] and we were trying, in effect, to- we had the problem of we were billed as a panel, seven men, sitting down to discuss- John Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] is one of the participants, and he said, 'well', of course if we sit down, we say, 'well where do you think art is going?' and then you have to figure out where do you think art's come from? [laughter] And at that point you just might as well come home because it's going to be a long, long conversation. So we decided that we would, instead of having the formal sense of panel, that we would simply create, improvise, or go about in effect at our own activity, except that we wouldn't isolate ourselves in that but would simply try to improvise, as we were seven people, a poem that could permit each one of us to be active, all together so that we at no point had much- we had no decision as to what the others would be doing, so that the whole activity occurred as the complex, and I was- I mean, I had never had any experience of this kind previously at all, John Cage had made, oh very large decisions indeed about this kind of possibility in music, simply that he wanted all possibility of sound to be admitted into the context that music proposes. He also had very decisive relation to what are called loosely 'happenings', and both he and Merce Cunningham [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q318364], another participant, had in that with some previous experience, but the point is that they weren't- neither was trying to create a system from previous experience, but again was trying to think of how this activity of seven people could be evident in ways that simply didn't create a three-ring circus but was actually a participation so, I was intrigued, I was extraordinarily intrigued as to how words, as poetry and whatnot could enter into this circumstance, and because I literally was in it, I have in a sense no quote objective unquote experience at all, but it was extraordinary to me to hear how things are heard in a multiple, in a multiple event, rather than the kind of singularity that this occasion proposes. So I still have that on my mind in a way, and I may, I really do feel that say, all the arts, I mean if one does want some kind of statement about them, that all the arts are moving into a situation where the agency is becoming less and less singular, I don't mean necessarily that in some seminal sense, that everyone's quote an artist, I mean I don't know what an artist is, in one way at all, but I think that the participation is becoming much more a situation of process and activity, and that it is becoming less and less evident as one singular isolation of person, and I realize in my own writing how much the previous condition had been my, my occasion. So, I may be reading these poems for the last time in that sense. I'm certainly prepared to do so, I'm not at all interested in continuing an activity that maybe, you know, maybe have much more experience or much more range of possibility than say contemporary habits about it seem to imply. But anyhow, that was interesting to me to have that experience and also interesting of course is what it had as an impact on educational process. Immediately this activity finished and I've never been in such a- I mean I've been, you know, like they say in [unintelligible] auditorium in the summer, I certainly have seen light shows and other [unintelligible] happenings, a few years ago, it was Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789], knows, having been there also, there was an extraordinary happening like they say put on by the Tate Music Center from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]  [unintelligible] being the painter doing the so called decor, doing the set, the set that was used, creating the visual. But this other thing was something quite distinct, simply that each person was so active in ways that he couldn't anticipate and we had with us also Billy Kluver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4912866], who can be most easily identified as the man who, is literally is an Engineer at Bell Labs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217365] in New Jersey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1408?wprov=srpw1_0] who engineered the 9 Evenings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4646407] of the Armory [Hall (?)] in company with Rauschenberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164358], [Vergan (?)] and Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] and others, a situation that brought technology into close apropos with the arts, and led to the practical effects of this activity are very evident, it led to ten patented inventions, all of which have much more extensive use, let's say than that occasion of those particular evenings. That was [unintelligible] you know, many, many poets [unintelligible] of this kind, that is, it turns out that when the arts are permitted this situation, that, I think we were talking to Irving earlier this evening, I think we both fear a situation, or have some kind of, feeling of personal awkwardness about a situation that is turning to the arts as if the arts had a necessary message or condition of life to stake for people to have use of, I mean, again, in these evenings we were round in these colleges, I mean the students or the people present, again and again said that \\\"what were you trying to tell us?\\\" And the point was that we weren't trying to tell them anything. We were in fact, we thought, that the activity was something which each person could have experienced, it would be like going to the beach and saying what do you think the water is trying to tell us? [audience laughter.] And you stand there, you're swimming [unintelligible] for two hours enjoying yourself thoroughly and then you come out and say to your friend, but what did it all mean? You know, we assumed that the people there would have some - would have some decision of their own, you know, did you think it was too cold, or too hot, or did you enjoy it, or you know, that's the kind of question no one can answer for you. In any case, I do feel the arts has, as Irving feels also, are being turned to, as some possibility of decision in contemporary society and don't think they can offer that ever, I don't- I think the very value of the arts is that they have no conclusion of this kind to propose, that what they do give is something I think perhaps Pound puts as ably as anyone when he says that \\\"art is the antenna of the race\\\". It's a very large statement obviously, and I think what he proposes in it is perhaps even can be put more simply in that the arts tend to experience the condition of the society that is, in a sense, and that way I have use of the condition of the society, perhaps more immediately than any other definition or activity in the society, I mean they tend to respond to the present condition perhaps more decisively than any other segment, I mean everyone else tends, not- I don't mean this in any put down sense of their attitudes in this society but I mean, that as the war goes on because it's an historical precedent and so on and so forth, I mean people continued to act as though what they were doing is still what they are doing, what they are doing is still what they were doing and they literally tend to continue in those habits of attitude or activity until something simply makes them impossible, but the arts tend to have experience I think of present condition, that they have no other viable occasion, they tend to propose what the immediate experience of say any life situation simply is, but they have no instruction therefore offer except that is possible, so that as I say, if poetry, as we've now experienced it is about to yield to another situation that is if books or printed medium of this order are to be changed, in societal experience, great, I mean I don't see why I want you to have to carry around all these pieces of paper, there must be, I'm sure that there's a simple way to communicate this kind of content but I do want to make the insistence that these poems or what I'm doing here has- I mean, I'm enjoying this, I'd probably do this even if you weren't here. [audience laughter], obviously did do it, you know. Now this is something else again, I had no messages, if the media is the message, this is perhaps the most absolute demonstration you'll probably get. \\\"Anger\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:54:01\\nReads \\\"Anger\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:59:25\\nI'd like if people are feeling reasonably restless, I'd like to read one or two more poems and then one more story to make a selection frankly [unintelligible]  I think I'll see what would be useful. A couple of shorter poems for the end. One called \\\"A Tally\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:00:01\\nReads \\\"A Tally\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:01:41\\n\\\"Enough\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:01:45\\nReads \\\"Enough\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:06:00\\nOne last poem I want to read now, [unintelligible] \\\"The Hole\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:06:07\\nReads \\\"The Hole\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:07:53\\nRead a story that's in effect going back some time to the time of the writing of the Island, a novel. And I hadn't written any prose for some time, not since the middle 50's and I had a [joke (?)], myself and my wife and our four kids were all down in Guatemala [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q774]where I was tutoring children on a coffee plantation, and having that kind of isolation and time that seemed to, you know, have the possibility to try some prose. I like prose simply that it has--it's continuous, it permits a kind of variety of activity in ways that sometimes poetry from my own experience, at least in the way I'm given to write it, doesn't altogether- I mean, the emotional demand, let's say in a poem is in my own experience has known it, is of such order that alternatives in a curious way aren't possible, you simply say what you're thus brought to say as best you can. In prose, the emotional so called situation tends to be more various, it goes up, down, it ebbs, flows, re-forms, changes its mind, and so on and so forth, so I--not in recent years, I think the last prose I wrote was this novel, called the Island and I've not really written any since, that's about--when I was in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639]teaching I finished that novel, and that was the last prose I think I've written and hopefully won't--I would like to go back to prose for a time. I'd like to have it open, I mean, again, this experience of being with these particular people, whenever habits become, oh let's say whenever you expect everything to be as you have experienced, it's time to look out or do something else because it means that you're assuming of the reality of your life has become too much of a pattern of a habit. Anyhow, this is a story called \\\"The Book\\\". I sort of like this story.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:10:22\\nReads \\\"The Book\\\".\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n01:21:15\\nThank you very much for your...\\n\\nAudience \\n01:21:16\\nApplause.\\n\\nIntroducer\\n01:21:39\\nI think I speak for everyone in thanking Robert Creeley for being able to come down and make the scene tonight. There are a couple of announcements that I want to make, the first one I can't remember so I'll have to [unintelligible], [Audrey Brunet (?)], that I do remember invites everyone to come to hear \\\"Prayers on the Periphery\\\", an original reading, this coming Monday, March the 6th at 8:30 pm in the little gallery on the mezzanine. Our next reading is a week from now, next Friday, March the 3rd, and Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] and George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] from Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435]  and Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] will be coming. Thank you.\\n\\nAudience\\n01:22:32\\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:22:45\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n\\nRobert Creeley \\n01:22:48\\nReads “The Book” [repeated from 00:27:43].\\n\\nEND\\n01:23:12\\n\",\"notes\":\"Robert Creeley reads from For Love (Scribner, 1962) and Words (Scribner, 1967).\\n\\nI006-11-089.1=AC.1\\n\\n00:15- Irving Layton introduces Robert Creeley [INDEX: Irving Layton, Collected Poems         \\tScriveners Press 1962, For Love, The Gold Diggers, Words by Robert Creeley]\\n03:52- Robert Creeley responds to Layton’s introduction and introduces “A Song”. [INDEX:  \\tCerberus, Contact Magazine, Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster, Irving Layton as editor for \\tBlack Mountain Review]\\n05:47- Reads “A Song”\\n06:37- Reads “The Conspiracy”\\n07:12- Reads “Chanson”\\n08:00- Reads “The Operation”\\n08:35- Reads “The Death of Venus”\\n09:17- Introduces “A Form of Adaptation”. [INDEX: Paul Blackburn, University of Wisconsin, Divers Press, Irving Layton, Provencal Poetry, Ezra Pound, Mallorca, Proensa by Paul Blackburn.]\\n11:46- Reads “A Form of Adaptation”\\n12:40- Reads “The Whip”\\n13:29- Reads “Please”\\n14:36- Reads “The Three Ladies”\\n16:04- Reads “New Year’s”\\n17:34- Reads “Entre-Nous”\\n18:08- Reads “The Place”\\n19:20- Reads “The Hill”\\n20:21- Reads “The Awakening” [INDEX: Charles Olson]\\n22:04- Reads “The Rain”\\n23:12- Reads “Kore”\\n24:09- Introduces “The House” [INDEX: Louis Zukofsky]\\n24:29- Reads “The House”\\n25:06- Reads “The Pool”\\n26:18- Reads “To Water”\\n27:47- Reads “The Fire”\\n28:31- Reads “Something”\\n29:46- Introduces “Distance” [INDEX: New York, Bach]\\n31:03- Reads “Distance”\\n34:29- Introduces “The Window”\\n34:36- Reads “The Window”\\n35:30- Reads “To Bobby”\\n36:46- Reads “The Rose”\\n38:46- Reads “Love Comes Quietly”\\n39:25- Reads “The Gesture”\\n39:52- Reads “For Love”\\n42:39.23- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nI006-11-089.1= AC2\\n \\n00:00- Robert Creeley introduces “Anger” and talks about the state of art and poetry [INDEX:    Upstate New York, Albany State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Pottsdam, St.        \\tLawrence College, Union College- Part of Reading Series of seven artists with John Cage, Merce Cunningham. Roy Kiyooka at the Tate Music Center in San Francisco. Billy Kluver from Bell Labs in New Jersey, engineered “9 Evenings” at the Armory Hall with Rauschenberg, [Vergan (?) ] and John Cage. Technology and art, purpose of art, Ezra Pound.]\\n11:21- Reads “Anger”\\n16:46- Reads “A Tally”\\n19:02- Reads “Enough”\\n23:21- Reads “The Hole”\\n25:14- Introduces short story “The Book”. [INDEX: Prose, middle 50’s, Guatemala (teaching \\tchildren on a coffee plantation), writing poetry vs. prose, Vancouver, Island by Robert   \\tCreeley.]\\n27:43- Reads “The Book”\\n38:59- Unknown male thanks Robert Creeley, makes announcements. [INDEX: Audrey Brunet   [?] “Prayers on the Periphery” on March 6th. Victor Coleman and George Bowering from  \\tBuffalo and Toronto reading on March 3rd.]\\n40:32- END OF RECORDING.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-creeley-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1261","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":["Victor Coleman at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series,  3 March 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"VICTOR COLEMAN I006/SR159\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-159\" is written on a sticker on the tape reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Coleman, Victor","Bowering, George"],"creator_names_search":["Coleman, Victor","Bowering, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/38160442\",\"name\":\"Coleman, Victor\",\"dates\":\"1944-\",\"notes\":\"A self-educated poet and publisher, Victor Coleman was born in Toronto on September 11, 1944, and he lived in both Montreal and Toronto. By the end of 1964, he had met poet Raymond Souster and founded Island Magazine and Island Press, drawing the avant-garde poetry centre from the West Coast to Toronto. Mr. Coleman was a publishing assistant for the Oxford University Press in Toronto from 1966 to 1967, after which he served for almost ten years as the editor for Coach House Press. Coleman was influential in the creations of Is, Image Nation, The Goose & Duck and Open Letter magazines and journals. He published his own poetry in From Erik Satie’s Notes to the Music (Island Press, 1965),  One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967), Light Verse (Coach House Press, 1969), Old Friends’ Ghosts: Poems 1963-68 (Weed/Flower, 1970), along with a dozen other titles. Victor Coleman was the director of the “A Space” (1975-1978), “31 Mercer” (1975-1978), Nightingale Arts Council in Toronto, the editor and writer for the Association of Non-Profit Artist-Run Centres, and has served as the director of the National Film Theatre in Kingston, Ontario. The poet also taught Creative Writing at both Queen's and York Universities. In 1995, as Coach House Press struggled, Coleman and Stan Bevington created Coach House Books to save the Press. In 2001, Victor Coleman became the Editorial Director for the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, a website devoted to the promotion of Canadian artists and writers. Victor Coleman continues to promote the development of avant-garde or postmodernist Canadian writing.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"Mentioned, but missing from recording\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors_names":["Francis, Wynne"],"contributors_names_search":["Francis, Wynne"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/77926194\",\"name\":\"Francis, Wynne\",\"dates\":\"1918-2000\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Francis, Wynne"],"Series_organizer_name":["Francis, Wynne"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"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\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"Tape\",\"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\":\"1967 3 3\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco (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 Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Victor Coleman reads from One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967)."],"contents":["victor_coleman_i086.11-159.mp3\n\nWynne Francis\n00:00:00\nBy the way I must remember a most important announcement, there is to be no smoking in the theatre. You may smoke at intermission, but please do not smoke during the readings. Our first reader tonight is Mr. Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] who comes to us from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. Mr. Coleman is the publisher of Island Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15754909], and Is Magazine which is spelled 'i' 's' and looks like 'is' but is pronounced 'I’s', and he is also the publisher and editor of Island Press. He is a very active promoter of new Canadian poetry and he himself has published in several little magazines in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] and he has made translations from Erik Satie's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q187192] notes to the music, he has also been published in New Wave Canada, an anthology of new Canadian poets published by Contact Press, and edited by Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129]. He is also affiliated, his press, Island Press, is affiliated with the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585] in Toronto and through this press a book of his poems will be appearing this spring. He is our first reader and our second reader is Mr. George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280], who has already published three books, the first one by Contact Press called Points On The Grid, the second one, The Silver Wire published by Quarry Press and the third one, A Man in Yellow Boots, by El Corno Emplumado which was done bilingually in Spanish and in English and which contains montages and illustrations by poet and artist Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. Mr. Bowering is also editor of Imago Magazine, which emanated from Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951] and which is devoted to the long poem or the longer poem, he is expecting to publish very shortly, in the spring I believe, a novel called The Mirror on the Floor. Mr. Coleman will read first, and then there will be a short intermission, and then Mr. Bowering will read to you.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:02:49\nI like to make it a habit always at a reading to start off with something that somebody else wrote, simply to show you that my concerns lie elsewhere, then in my own self. This is something from A History of America by an American writer by the name of Bill Hutton and it's— well, I won't explain it to you.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:03:35\nReads unnamed poem by Bill Hutton.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:06:00\nI'll read a few short poems first, and then go into something from a sequence, a longer sequence. This is a poem dedicated to Bill Hutton, the author of that piece I just read, it's called \"Buff Hello, 6\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:06:33\nReads \"Buff Hello, 6\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:08:27\nI'm going to focus on that clock every once in a while, simply because I want to keep track of myself. If I might say, um, it's interesting that I'm reading with George Bowering and my general tenure at this time, uh, which I'm not really that self-conscious about which is interesting to me to be growing a beard at this time and that the last time that I started to grow a beard was the first time that I met George Bowering and it was about two years ago and we were sitting up in my attic which was a room and I said to him, \"How do you like my beard?\" and he says that \"It makes you look like an impotent D.H. Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34970]”. [Audience laughter]. This is a poem called \"The Lady Vanishes\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:09:41\nReads \"The Lady Vanishes\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:11:14\nHere's a kind of poem that I can bug everybody with because it probably won't mean anything to you at all, but simply because it really is my occasion but rather than hide it away, um, I think that the sound of it is enough to carry to you, some measure of the poetry that I got from the occasion that I speak of. It's called \"For Basil Bunting\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:11:48\nReads \"For Basil Bunting\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:12:34\nI don't know whether any of you are familiar with a Japanese-English dictionary called Kenkyusha [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6389422], if not, all I can tell you is that it's a Japanese-English dictionary and that it has a strange quality to be able to predict the future, by chance operations in that it's very fat and you open it and you're like the guy with the funny hat at the track who really shouldn't be there because he can only guess and he just opens the racing form and sticks his finger on the horse and he bets on the horse and he usually loses. Kenkyusha is a little better than that because you're not trying to win anything, you're looking for some kind of instruction and the time I wrote these poems I was rather desperate for some kind of instruction, and uh, it's just a matter of opening the book, pointing and getting the epigraph for each poem from the Japanese-English dictionary. I'll just read a couple. \"Day Seven\", oh there are given days, that are sort of daily devotions.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:14:09\nReads \"Day Seven\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:14:33\nReads \"Day Eight\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:15:19\nReads \"Day Ten\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:16:18\nMany of these relate to certain experiences with LSD also.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:16:29\nReads \"Day Thirteen\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:16:49\nThe reason that the definitions, the English definitions in this section are so interesting and not like the ones we are accustomed to is because the characters that they represent go through their own changes and it's almost an ideogrammatic dictionary rather than a dictionary of definitions.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:17:13\nResumes reading “Day Thirteen”.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:20:17\nI need to get one of those spider clocks, can't read in this light.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:20:39\nReads \"Day Twenty-One\" .\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:22:36\nReads \"Day Twenty-Two\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:24:56\nReads \"Day Twenty-Four\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:28:22\nThese next poems are the poems that are closest to me now. It's another long sequence called \"Separations\" and I don't think I need to give you any background on it. I'll not read the whole thing because it's quite long.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:28:56\nReads \"Separations” [parts 4-8, 10-12, and 14].\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:37:00\nThank you.\n \nEND\n00:37:17\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"George Bowering is repeatedly mentioned on the tape and in printed announcements, but no supporting audio has been found. \",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Year-specific Information:\\n\\nOne/eye/love was published in 1967, and Coleman was working at Coach House Press.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local connections:\\n\\nVictor Coleman was very involved in the promotion of small presses and Canadian writers, specifically through his own presses and Coach House Press. Victor Coleman and George Bowering regularly corresponded (Archives Canada has these correspondences under George Bowering).\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) & Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/802667762&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House \\nPress, 1984. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/one-eye-love/oclc/461736&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Coleman, Victor. One/eye/love. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/coleman_victor.html\",\"citation\":\"“Coleman, Victor (1944-  )”. One Zero One: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Press 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, 2009. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/victor-coleman-at-sgwu/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 28 February 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Staines, David. \\\"Coleman, Victor\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye, eds. Oxford University Press 2001. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548681261056,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0159_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman 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_0159_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman 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_0159_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman 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_0159_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman 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/victor_coleman_i086-11-159.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"victor_coleman_i086.11-159.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:37:17\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"89.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Wynne Francis\\n00:00:00\\nBy the way I must remember a most important announcement, there is to be no smoking in the theatre. You may smoke at intermission, but please do not smoke during the readings. Our first reader tonight is Mr. Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] who comes to us from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. Mr. Coleman is the publisher of Island Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15754909], and Is Magazine which is spelled 'i' 's' and looks like 'is' but is pronounced 'I’s', and he is also the publisher and editor of Island Press. He is a very active promoter of new Canadian poetry and he himself has published in several little magazines in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] and he has made translations from Erik Satie's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q187192] notes to the music, he has also been published in New Wave Canada, an anthology of new Canadian poets published by Contact Press, and edited by Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129]. He is also affiliated, his press, Island Press, is affiliated with the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585] in Toronto and through this press a book of his poems will be appearing this spring. He is our first reader and our second reader is Mr. George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280], who has already published three books, the first one by Contact Press called Points On The Grid, the second one, The Silver Wire published by Quarry Press and the third one, A Man in Yellow Boots, by El Corno Emplumado which was done bilingually in Spanish and in English and which contains montages and illustrations by poet and artist Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. Mr. Bowering is also editor of Imago Magazine, which emanated from Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951] and which is devoted to the long poem or the longer poem, he is expecting to publish very shortly, in the spring I believe, a novel called The Mirror on the Floor. Mr. Coleman will read first, and then there will be a short intermission, and then Mr. Bowering will read to you.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:02:49\\nI like to make it a habit always at a reading to start off with something that somebody else wrote, simply to show you that my concerns lie elsewhere, then in my own self. This is something from A History of America by an American writer by the name of Bill Hutton and it's— well, I won't explain it to you.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:03:35\\nReads unnamed poem by Bill Hutton.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:06:00\\nI'll read a few short poems first, and then go into something from a sequence, a longer sequence. This is a poem dedicated to Bill Hutton, the author of that piece I just read, it's called \\\"Buff Hello, 6\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:06:33\\nReads \\\"Buff Hello, 6\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:08:27\\nI'm going to focus on that clock every once in a while, simply because I want to keep track of myself. If I might say, um, it's interesting that I'm reading with George Bowering and my general tenure at this time, uh, which I'm not really that self-conscious about which is interesting to me to be growing a beard at this time and that the last time that I started to grow a beard was the first time that I met George Bowering and it was about two years ago and we were sitting up in my attic which was a room and I said to him, \\\"How do you like my beard?\\\" and he says that \\\"It makes you look like an impotent D.H. Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34970]”. [Audience laughter]. This is a poem called \\\"The Lady Vanishes\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:09:41\\nReads \\\"The Lady Vanishes\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:11:14\\nHere's a kind of poem that I can bug everybody with because it probably won't mean anything to you at all, but simply because it really is my occasion but rather than hide it away, um, I think that the sound of it is enough to carry to you, some measure of the poetry that I got from the occasion that I speak of. It's called \\\"For Basil Bunting\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:11:48\\nReads \\\"For Basil Bunting\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:12:34\\nI don't know whether any of you are familiar with a Japanese-English dictionary called Kenkyusha [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6389422], if not, all I can tell you is that it's a Japanese-English dictionary and that it has a strange quality to be able to predict the future, by chance operations in that it's very fat and you open it and you're like the guy with the funny hat at the track who really shouldn't be there because he can only guess and he just opens the racing form and sticks his finger on the horse and he bets on the horse and he usually loses. Kenkyusha is a little better than that because you're not trying to win anything, you're looking for some kind of instruction and the time I wrote these poems I was rather desperate for some kind of instruction, and uh, it's just a matter of opening the book, pointing and getting the epigraph for each poem from the Japanese-English dictionary. I'll just read a couple. \\\"Day Seven\\\", oh there are given days, that are sort of daily devotions.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:14:09\\nReads \\\"Day Seven\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:14:33\\nReads \\\"Day Eight\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:15:19\\nReads \\\"Day Ten\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:16:18\\nMany of these relate to certain experiences with LSD also.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:16:29\\nReads \\\"Day Thirteen\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:16:49\\nThe reason that the definitions, the English definitions in this section are so interesting and not like the ones we are accustomed to is because the characters that they represent go through their own changes and it's almost an ideogrammatic dictionary rather than a dictionary of definitions.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:17:13\\nResumes reading “Day Thirteen”.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:20:17\\nI need to get one of those spider clocks, can't read in this light.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:20:39\\nReads \\\"Day Twenty-One\\\" .\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:22:36\\nReads \\\"Day Twenty-Two\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:24:56\\nReads \\\"Day Twenty-Four\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:28:22\\nThese next poems are the poems that are closest to me now. It's another long sequence called \\\"Separations\\\" and I don't think I need to give you any background on it. I'll not read the whole thing because it's quite long.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:28:56\\nReads \\\"Separations” [parts 4-8, 10-12, and 14].\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:37:00\\nThank you.\\n \\nEND\\n00:37:17\\n\",\"notes\":\"Victor Coleman reads from One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967).\\n\\nList of Poems Read and Time Stamps [File 1 of 2]\\n0:00 - Introductions of Coleman and George Bowering (also reading the same night, but not on    this recording.) [INDEX: Island Magazine, Is Magazine, Island Press, new Canadian   poetry, translations of Eric Satie’s notes to music, New Wave Canada edited by Ramond Souster published by Contact Press, Coach House Press in Toronto. George Bowering: Contact Press published Points on the Grid, The Silver Wire, A Man in Yellow Boots by El Corno Emplumado in Spanish and English with drawings by Roy Kiyooka. Editor of Imago Magazine, Alberta, Long Poem or Longer Poem, The Mirror on the Floor.]\\n2:49 - Victor Coleman introduces poem by Bill Hutton from History of America, first line “John         Fitzgerald Kennedy shot John Wilkes Booth...” [INDEX: History of America by Bill Hutton]\\n3:35 - Reads unknown poem by Bill Hutton from History of America.\\n5:45 - Introduces “Buff Hello 6”\\n6:33 - Reads “Buff Hello 6”\\n8.27 - Introduces “The Lady Vanishes” [INDEX: George Bowering, D.H. Lawrence]\\n9:41 - Reads “The Lady Vanishes”\\n11:14 - Introduces “For Basil Bunting” [INDEX: Basil Bunting, occasional poetry]\\n11:48 - Reads “For Basil Bunting”\\n12:34 - Introduces “Day Seven” [INDEX: Japanese-English Dictionary Kenkyusha, chance     operations, days of devotions]\\n14:09 - Reads “Day Seven”\\n14:33 - Reads “Day Eight”\\n15:19 - Reads “Day Ten”\\n16:18 - Introduces “Day Thirteen” [INDEX: experiences with LSD]\\n16:29 - Reads “Day Thirteen”\\n20:17 - Introduces “Day 21”\\n20:39 - Reads “Day 21”\\n22:36 - Reads “Day 22”\\n24:56 - Reads “Day 24”\\n28:22 - Introduces “Separations” [INDEX: long sequence poem]\\n28:56 - Reads “Separations”, #4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14.\\n37:17 - END OF RECORDING.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/victor-coleman-at-sgwu/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1262","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":["Irving Layton at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 March 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"IRVING LAYTON (2 tracks-3 3/4)\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box and on the reel. \"I086-11-031\" also written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Layton, Irving"],"creator_names_search":["Layton, Irving"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66482092\",\"name\":\"Layton, Irving\",\"dates\":\"1912-2006\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet Irving Layton was born Israel Lazarovitch in Romania on March 12, 1913. His parents moved to Montreal when he was an infant. He attended Baron Byng High School, and then received a B.Sc. in agriculture in 1939 at MacDonald College. He completed an M.A. in 1946 in economics and political science at McGill University. At McGill, Layton began publishing his poetry in 1943 in First Statement, joining John Sutherland and Louis Dudek on the editorial board, and was involved with Northern Review from 1945-1956. Irving Layton was a founding member of Contact Press, along with Dudek and Raymond Souster in 1952. Layton’s first collection of poems began with Here and now (First Statement, 1945), followed by Now is the place (First Statement, 1948), The black huntsman (Contact Press [?], 1951), Love the conqueror worm (Contact Press, 1953), In the midst of my fever (published by Robert Creeley for Divers Press in 1954), The long pea-shooter (Laocoon Press, 1954), The cold green element and The blue propeller (Contact Press, 1955), The bull calf and other poems, Music on a Kazoo and The improved binoculars (published with an introduction by William Carlos Williams, Contact Press and J.Williams Press, 1956), A laughter in the mind (J. Williams, 1958) and A red carpet for the sun (J. Williams, 1959), which won a Governor General’s Award. He was a member of the editorial board of the Black Mountain Review in 1955. Layton also taught part time at Sir George University (now Concordia University) which appointed him poet-in-residence in 1965. Producing an average of one collection of poems per year, Layton published The swinging flesh (1961), Balls for a one-armed juggler (1963), The laughing rooster (1964), Collected poems (1965), Periods of the moon (1967), The shattered plinths (1968), The whole bloody bird: obs, alphs, and poems (1969), Nail polish (1971), Lovers and lesser men (1973), The pole vaulter (1974), For my brother Jesus (1976), The covenant (1977), The tightrope dancer (1978), Droppings from heaven (1979), For my neighbours in hell (Mosaic Press, 1980), Europe and other bad news (1981), The Gucci bag (1983), and Fortunate exile (1987), all published by McClelland and Stewart Press unless otherwise indicated. Layton also published selected poems in The collected poems of Irving Layton (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1971), The darkening fire: selected poems, 1945-68 (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1975), The unwavering eye: selected poems, 1969-75 (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1975), A wild peculiar joy: selected poems 1945-1982 (1982), Final reckoning: poems 1982-1986 (Mosaic Press, 1987), and Fornaluxt: selected poems 1928-1990 (1992). Layton has edited dozens of anthologies of Canadian poems and prose, as well as having his poetry published internationally. Layton ended his teaching career at York University in Toronto. An influential part of Canada’s literary scene, Irving Layton died on January 4, 2006.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Fink, Howard,"],"contributors_names_search":["Fink, Howard,"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/6332801\",\"name\":\"Fink, Howard, \",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Series_organizer_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"00:60:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 3 18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Irving Layton reads from Collected Poems (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) and Periods of the Moon (McClelland &Stewart, 1967). "],"contents":["irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\n\nHoward Fink\n00:00:00\n...Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289] to this stage again tonight, this time to read his poetry. The last time he was up here was to introduce Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], and what was said then clearly explained the close relations between Mr. Layton and the Black Mountain Group [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] in the 50's, so I won't go into that again, but I'll only add that Mr. Layton was a member of the editorial board of Black Mountain Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] from 1955 on. Of course he's been publishing poetry since the 40's and was associated during those years with the First Statement Press, which became the Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] in 1949, and all this time studying at McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] where he received the M.A. in Political Science and Economics in 1946. It's impossible to list all of his appearances in periodicals and little magazines, and I'll mention only a few of his two dozen or so volumes of poetry, anyway that's what it seemed like to me when I looked at that page in the new one. A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959, with the well-known introduction by William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] which acknowledged, American recognition of Mr. Layton's reputation. A Red Carpet, like all of Mr. Layton's subsequent books was published by McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. Then, a book of short stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh, which came out in 1961, Balls for a One-armed Juggler in 1963, The Laughing Rooster in 1964, Collected Poems in 1965 and his latest work, just published this winter, Periods of the Moon. And I should say the ones that I have mentioned are the ones which are still in stock and able to be bought. Among Mr. Layton's other frenetic activities, poetry readings in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] and elsewhere, television appearances, controversial ones and so on, he finds time to communicate with students as well as Poet in Residence of this university [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. I'd like to present Mr. Irving Layton.\n\nAudience\n00:02:21\nApplause.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:02:30\nThank you Howard, for your kind introduction. I'm glad that you did not introduce me as a letter writer. I'm very glad to see so large a turn out this evening. I am very heartened by it, very moved, and I'm very glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience. I like beginning my reading with a poem \"There Are No Signs\" because if any one poem expresses what I try to say, and all the poems and stories that I have written, is that modern man, pretty well, has to find out where he is going, by just going. Now the old sign posts are down, and that he must make his sign posts as he goes along.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:04:00\nReads \"There Are No Signs\" [published as “There Were No Signs in Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:04:51\n\"The Swimmer\", my symbol for the poet, condemned to live in two realms, and happy to live in neither of them. The realm of actuality and the realm of the imagination. Here I compare the poet to the swimmer.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:05:15\nReads \"The Swimmer\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:06:38\nSeveral years ago I taught at the Jewish Library, one of my students was a Mrs. Fornheim, who had lived in Vienna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1741], and left Vienna when that city fell to the Nazis. She went to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], and left Paris for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], when the Vichy government was formed. From Spain, she went to Portugal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45] and then came to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], where I taught her English. She died of cancer, this is my poem for her. \"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:07:19\nReads \"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:08:12\n\"Gothic Landscape\", or what it means to be a Jewish boy growing up in a hostile neighbourhood of French Canadians and Italians who are convinced that you have lately murdered Christ. And where you are entranced by the church bells every Sunday, because of the ecstatic music over the sky, over the rooftops, and yet, in that ecstatic music of the bells, a sound of menace, something alien and frightening.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:09:00\nReads \"Gothic Landscape\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:10:19\n\"The Black Huntsmen\". This was written at a time when Jewish skin was made into lampshades. Or, the song of innocence becoming the song of experience.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:10:42\nReads \"The Black Huntsmen\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nUnknown\n00:12:07\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nIrving Layton\n00:12:08\nThis is how the fringes of a prayer shawl, a sheitel is a wig. If you are an Orthodox, Jewess as my mother was, you have to cut your hair very short and wear a wig so that you are no longer attractive so to speak, to any other man but your husband. Peculiar way of looking at it.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:12:43\nReads \"Archetypes\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nIrving Layton\n00:13:38\nReads \"Soleil de Noces\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:14:15\n\"De Bullion Street\". I don't suppose De Bullion Street has the reputation that it had when I was a boy. I suppose the present administration has cleaned up things, and anyway harlots now are more peripatetic. So this, in a sense, is an old fashioned poem.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:14:40\nReads \"De Bullion Street\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:16:10\n\"On My Way To School\" or the changes that come. I wasn't the most punctual of students, and it's a great comfort to me therefore when I was late to find a sign on a Baptist church \"Jesus Saves\". Many years, I returned and found some change had taken place and this poem celebrates the change, or records it.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:16:44\nReads \"On My Way To School\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:17:20\nReads \"Love the Conqueror Worm\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:18:31\n\"Vexata Quaestio\". Western man is the product we are told, of two traditions, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The Greek, pagan, believing that all experience is worth having, and man should refuse no experience. The Hebrew believing that the proper life, salvation is to be found in obedience to God's will. The two traditions are quite contradictory and can never be reconciled. It is our unfortunate destiny to try to reconcile them. I do not think we have been successful at it because the task cannot be done, it's impossible. So I've written this poem, \"Vexata Quaestio\" and what I'm saying is that each and every one of us in the West is a sort of compromise between these two traditions. Here I use the tree, a tall tree, as a symbol for the Hebraic, the Maccabean and the sun becomes a symbol for the pagan, and you'll see what happens to both the tree and the sun.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:20:11\nReads \"Vexata Quaestio\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:21:19\n\"Cemetery in August\". Only humans of course are aware of death, and even in August, when you feel the flush and thrill and intensity of life, you are aware of the autumn and the winter and when you are in a cemetery, the macabre juxtaposition of life and death becomes even more intense. So I wrote this poem, \"Cemetery in August\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:21:54\nReads \"Cemetery in August\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:24:20\n\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\". This was a graduating class, not at Sir George Williams, but my high school I taught several years ago. And I was very fortunate one year in having six very, very lovely, nubile adolescents, very attractive, and very, very well aware of precisely where attractions lay [audience laughter]. And very often when I was in the middle of a serious lecture in history, one of them would make some provocative gesture that would drive my thoughts from the lecture to something far more interesting [audience laughter].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:25:15\nReads \"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nAudience\n00:26:30\nLaughter.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:26:33\nAnd what you see when you are in the tavern, the kind of dreams you have about pleasure and about the strange, the strange dance that all of us lead. And this very queer life and journey of ours. And I call this \"Bacchanal\", and it's a rather unusual Bacchanal, because it's a rather sad one, or shall I say a prayerful one.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:27:10\nReads \"Bacchanal\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:28:18\nThis one is for my son, \"Maxie\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:28:24\nReads \"Maxie\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:30:03\nAnd I suppose all teachers of literature have had the experience of giving an inspired lecture on Shakespeare [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q692] or John Donne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140412], and finding some hand at the back waving furiously as you're getting to the home stretch and your peroration is the most resounding thing that you've ever thought about but this hand out there, very insistent, you know, and finally you stop in the middle of the peroration and you say \"Yes, yes what is it?\" and the student says, \"Sir, will this be on the exam?\" [audience laughter].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:30:57\nReads \"Seven o'Clock Lecture\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:34:07\n\"The Birth of Tragedy\". The title is taken from one of the earliest books of Nietzsche [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9358], the gods here that I speak about in the poem, are the gods of Dream and Dance, of Reason and Ecstasy, Apollo and Dionysus, Nietzsche held that tragedy came from the union of both dream and dance, intellect and impulse.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:34:44\nReads \"The Birth of Tragedy\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:36:44\nAnd I suppose no Layton reading would be quite complete without this poem, \"Misunderstanding\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:36:54\nReads \"Misunderstanding\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:37:16\n\"The Cold Green Element\". This is about life, death, nature, and poetry. It's really a meditation, and, I hope, a passionate meditation on art and life. Like Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213], I am very concerned with the necessary antinomies or contradictions of life. Like Yeats, I believe that great art results from the happy, the miraculous fusion of the two.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:38:04\nReads \"The Cold Green Element\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:40:20\n\"The Improved Binoculars\", my symbol for science. It is truism to say that unless man's moral development, his capacity for sympathy, keeps space, or this development in science and technology he's in danger of blowing himself off the face of this earth. This poem is an apocalyptic poem, it is a vision of the future, such as I hope will never be realized. But in one of my more despairing moments, or one of my more savage and bitter moments, I wrote this poem, \"The Improved Binoculars\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:41:05\nReads \"The Improved Binoculars\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:42:25\nReads [“Orpheus” from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:44:11\nReads \"Death of a Construction Worker\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:45:08\nReads “Theology” [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:45:47\nReads “For Louise, Age 17” [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:47:14\n\"Song for Naomi\". Naomi's my daughter. Several years ago we were out in the country, I was appalled to find that while she was by the bank of the lake, I couldn't see her because the weeds and the flowers were taller than she was. If she fell into the lake, neither I nor my wife might see it. But nothing happened. Just a day before we were to pack up to leave, I noticed my daughter down by the lake, and this time, her dear little head was peeping just above the weeds and the flowers and this gave me the idea for this poem, which I wrote, while of course my wife did the packing.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:48:12\nReads \"Song for Naomi\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:49:47\nHere's a rather erotic poem, called \"Gathering of Poets\", to be taken of course with a grain of salt.\n \nUnknown\n00:49:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:00\n...to be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Just a short thing.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:08\nReads \"Gathering of Poets\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:40\nReads \"The Bull Calf\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:19\nAnd here's a lighter poem called \"Bargain\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:22\nReads \"Bargain\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nAudience\n00:53:46\nLaughter.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:58\nThis next poem is for my mother, who died at the age of 89. She was a very remarkable woman, I'd like to tell you a great deal about her, she certainly merits it, she was a most remarkable character with a tremendous joie-de-vivre and a wonderful gift of vituperation, which it is said I have inherited [audience laughter]. Certainly I learned the cadence of poetry from my mother's cursing. My mother would start cursing as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and wouldn't stop cursing until I closed them at night when I went to bed. But the cadence was what interested me [audience laughter] and I didn't pay any attention to words. Occasionally I would get the drift, of course, of what the curses were intended to say, and I must say it did me a wonderful lot of good because later on when I got knocked my critics and so on, it was like so much water off a duck's back after my mother's cursing. Nothing the critics say could possibly make any impression upon me whatsoever [audience laughter]. She was extremely vain of her black eyebrows. When she was 85, I was taking her somewhere and we stopped for a red light. I noticed a very lovely girl standing on the curb, and of course, I looked very intently at her. My mother caught my intent gaze and said, sighing, \"Yes, she's very beautiful, but has she got my black eyebrows?\" [audience laughter]. She wore earrings that were made of old Romanian coins, she wore an amber necklace, which I remember playing with when I was a child. But it was her immense vitality and joie-de-vivre, coupled with an immense discontent that always fascinated me about my mother. She was a very Orthodox woman, reverencing God, but often giving me the impression that she might have made a much better job of creation than God himself. So this is my tribute to my very, very remarkable mother.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:56:56\nReads \"Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:59:16\nReads \"The Well-Wrought Urn\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:59:57\nSome time ago, I went down to the church at Notre Dame, and you know, you have halos lighting up over the head of your favourite saint, or the Virgin Mary, if you drop the requisite number of coins. There's nobody else in that vast gloomy church, except another man and myself, and he went over to the little machine and he dropped some coins, and he waited for the halo to light up and it didn't. And that nettled him a great deal, and he waited, and it still didn't light up so he gave the machine a kick, nothing happened. But he said something and I went home and I wrote this poem.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:01:01\nReads \"This Machine Age\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:02:09\nThis next poem of mine is also based on an actual experience, I'm sure that most of you have heard of Djilas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153909], the very courageous Yugoslav writer who's imprisoned by his erstwhile comrade and companion in arms, Tito. He's imprisoned for writing and publishing outside of the country, Conversations with Stalin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5166446]. That was several years ago, he's just been released. Well I thought a brave man like that deserves some kind of support, especially from and by writers, and so I decided to go up to Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930] and demonstrate in front of the Yugoslav Embassy. I took my wife with me, and one or two of the local poets, we made some signs and we drove up to Ottawa. We got out of the car, and the sign read, of course, \"Free Djilas\", and I was amazed and delighted to find that a considerable crowd gathered around me and the sign. Until I realized just what was happening. And so I wrote this poem, called \"Free Djilas\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:03:31\nReads \"Free Djilas\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:04:29\nThis one, in a more serious vein, \"The Predator\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:04:36\nReads \"The Predator\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nIrving Layton\n01:06:41\nReads \"Plaza de Toros\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:09:13\nReads \"At the Alhambra\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:10:20\nReads \"For My Green Old Age\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:11:44\nNow I want to read a few poems from my most recent book, Periods of the Moon. \"Castles on the Rhine\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:12:01\nReads \"Castles on the Rhine\" [published as “Rhine Boat Trip in Periods of the Moon].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:12:54\nReads \"Mutability\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:14:19\nReads \"Time's Velvet Tongue\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:15:20\nReads \"Gratitude\" from Periods of the Moon.\n\nAudience\n01:16:00\nLaughter \n\nIrving Layton\n01:16:04\nMy contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode”.\n\nIrving Layton\n01:16:10\nReads \"Confederation Ode\" from Periods of the Moon [audience laughter throughout].\n\nAudience\n01:17:23\nLaughter and Applause.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:17:34\nReads \"The Beautiful Unknown Girl\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:18:55\nAnd this one, \"For Musia's Grandchildren\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:19:09\nReads \"For Musia's Grandchildren\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:20:59\nReads \"Look Homeward, Angel\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:21:45\nAnd this last one, \"Family Portrait\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:21:54\nReads \"Family Portrait\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n\nAudience\n01:22:59\nLaughter and Applause.\n \nEND\n01:23:43\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nHis collection of poetry Periods of the Moon was published in 1967, and he participated in several other readings at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, among other places. His poetry was anthologized in Modern Canadian Verse: In English and French (Oxford University Press), edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, also edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith in 1967 (Macmillan). Layton was poet-in-residence at Sir George Williams University.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nLayton’s meeting with Louis Dudek and John Sutherland culminated in the very influential First Statement magazine and press in 1942. His poetry is widely-read and has been awarded generously. Layton has also become a well-known figure in Montreal, and caught the attention of many critics--for better or for worse. Layton and Dudek helped Aileen Collins found the magazine CIV/n, and with Raymond Souster founded Contact Press in 1952, which both published many young Canadian poets like Margaret Atwood, Phyllis Webb, Eli Mandel, D.G. Jones, Alden Nowlan, Gwendolyn MacEwen, George Bowering, Frank Davey and John Newlove. Through Raymond Souster, he began correspondence with Robert Creeley in 1953, and continued to prove to American poets that Canadian poets had something interesting to say. Layton, Dudek and F.R. Scott promoted and mentored the newer generation of Canadian poets. He has become a Montreal icon, as he spent most of his life in the city.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Layton, Irving\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001. \"},{\"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. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960, Our Nature-Our Voices II. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-irving-layton/oclc/460183130&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Layton, Irving. Collected Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/periods-of-the-moon-poems/oclc/907399867&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Layton, Irving. Periods of the Moon. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol2/oclc/1156824609&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Lynch, Gerald. “Layton, Irving (1912-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly, (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 13. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry &hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal; The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548809187328,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton 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_0031_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton 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_0031_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton 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/irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:23:43\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"200.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Howard Fink\\n00:00:00\\n...Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289] to this stage again tonight, this time to read his poetry. The last time he was up here was to introduce Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], and what was said then clearly explained the close relations between Mr. Layton and the Black Mountain Group [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] in the 50's, so I won't go into that again, but I'll only add that Mr. Layton was a member of the editorial board of Black Mountain Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] from 1955 on. Of course he's been publishing poetry since the 40's and was associated during those years with the First Statement Press, which became the Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] in 1949, and all this time studying at McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] where he received the M.A. in Political Science and Economics in 1946. It's impossible to list all of his appearances in periodicals and little magazines, and I'll mention only a few of his two dozen or so volumes of poetry, anyway that's what it seemed like to me when I looked at that page in the new one. A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959, with the well-known introduction by William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] which acknowledged, American recognition of Mr. Layton's reputation. A Red Carpet, like all of Mr. Layton's subsequent books was published by McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. Then, a book of short stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh, which came out in 1961, Balls for a One-armed Juggler in 1963, The Laughing Rooster in 1964, Collected Poems in 1965 and his latest work, just published this winter, Periods of the Moon. And I should say the ones that I have mentioned are the ones which are still in stock and able to be bought. Among Mr. Layton's other frenetic activities, poetry readings in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] and elsewhere, television appearances, controversial ones and so on, he finds time to communicate with students as well as Poet in Residence of this university [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. I'd like to present Mr. Irving Layton.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:02:21\\nApplause.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:02:30\\nThank you Howard, for your kind introduction. I'm glad that you did not introduce me as a letter writer. I'm very glad to see so large a turn out this evening. I am very heartened by it, very moved, and I'm very glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience. I like beginning my reading with a poem \\\"There Are No Signs\\\" because if any one poem expresses what I try to say, and all the poems and stories that I have written, is that modern man, pretty well, has to find out where he is going, by just going. Now the old sign posts are down, and that he must make his sign posts as he goes along.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:04:00\\nReads \\\"There Are No Signs\\\" [published as “There Were No Signs in Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:04:51\\n\\\"The Swimmer\\\", my symbol for the poet, condemned to live in two realms, and happy to live in neither of them. The realm of actuality and the realm of the imagination. Here I compare the poet to the swimmer.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:05:15\\nReads \\\"The Swimmer\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:06:38\\nSeveral years ago I taught at the Jewish Library, one of my students was a Mrs. Fornheim, who had lived in Vienna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1741], and left Vienna when that city fell to the Nazis. She went to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], and left Paris for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], when the Vichy government was formed. From Spain, she went to Portugal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45] and then came to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], where I taught her English. She died of cancer, this is my poem for her. \\\"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:07:19\\nReads \\\"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:08:12\\n\\\"Gothic Landscape\\\", or what it means to be a Jewish boy growing up in a hostile neighbourhood of French Canadians and Italians who are convinced that you have lately murdered Christ. And where you are entranced by the church bells every Sunday, because of the ecstatic music over the sky, over the rooftops, and yet, in that ecstatic music of the bells, a sound of menace, something alien and frightening.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:09:00\\nReads \\\"Gothic Landscape\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:10:19\\n\\\"The Black Huntsmen\\\". This was written at a time when Jewish skin was made into lampshades. Or, the song of innocence becoming the song of experience.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:10:42\\nReads \\\"The Black Huntsmen\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:12:07\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n00:12:08\\nThis is how the fringes of a prayer shawl, a sheitel is a wig. If you are an Orthodox, Jewess as my mother was, you have to cut your hair very short and wear a wig so that you are no longer attractive so to speak, to any other man but your husband. Peculiar way of looking at it.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:12:43\\nReads \\\"Archetypes\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n00:13:38\\nReads \\\"Soleil de Noces\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:14:15\\n\\\"De Bullion Street\\\". I don't suppose De Bullion Street has the reputation that it had when I was a boy. I suppose the present administration has cleaned up things, and anyway harlots now are more peripatetic. So this, in a sense, is an old fashioned poem.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:14:40\\nReads \\\"De Bullion Street\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:16:10\\n\\\"On My Way To School\\\" or the changes that come. I wasn't the most punctual of students, and it's a great comfort to me therefore when I was late to find a sign on a Baptist church \\\"Jesus Saves\\\". Many years, I returned and found some change had taken place and this poem celebrates the change, or records it.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:16:44\\nReads \\\"On My Way To School\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:17:20\\nReads \\\"Love the Conqueror Worm\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:18:31\\n\\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\". Western man is the product we are told, of two traditions, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The Greek, pagan, believing that all experience is worth having, and man should refuse no experience. The Hebrew believing that the proper life, salvation is to be found in obedience to God's will. The two traditions are quite contradictory and can never be reconciled. It is our unfortunate destiny to try to reconcile them. I do not think we have been successful at it because the task cannot be done, it's impossible. So I've written this poem, \\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\" and what I'm saying is that each and every one of us in the West is a sort of compromise between these two traditions. Here I use the tree, a tall tree, as a symbol for the Hebraic, the Maccabean and the sun becomes a symbol for the pagan, and you'll see what happens to both the tree and the sun.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:20:11\\nReads \\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:21:19\\n\\\"Cemetery in August\\\". Only humans of course are aware of death, and even in August, when you feel the flush and thrill and intensity of life, you are aware of the autumn and the winter and when you are in a cemetery, the macabre juxtaposition of life and death becomes even more intense. So I wrote this poem, \\\"Cemetery in August\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:21:54\\nReads \\\"Cemetery in August\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:24:20\\n\\\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\\\". This was a graduating class, not at Sir George Williams, but my high school I taught several years ago. And I was very fortunate one year in having six very, very lovely, nubile adolescents, very attractive, and very, very well aware of precisely where attractions lay [audience laughter]. And very often when I was in the middle of a serious lecture in history, one of them would make some provocative gesture that would drive my thoughts from the lecture to something far more interesting [audience laughter].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:25:15\\nReads \\\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:26:30\\nLaughter.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:26:33\\nAnd what you see when you are in the tavern, the kind of dreams you have about pleasure and about the strange, the strange dance that all of us lead. And this very queer life and journey of ours. And I call this \\\"Bacchanal\\\", and it's a rather unusual Bacchanal, because it's a rather sad one, or shall I say a prayerful one.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:27:10\\nReads \\\"Bacchanal\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:28:18\\nThis one is for my son, \\\"Maxie\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:28:24\\nReads \\\"Maxie\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:30:03\\nAnd I suppose all teachers of literature have had the experience of giving an inspired lecture on Shakespeare [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q692] or John Donne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140412], and finding some hand at the back waving furiously as you're getting to the home stretch and your peroration is the most resounding thing that you've ever thought about but this hand out there, very insistent, you know, and finally you stop in the middle of the peroration and you say \\\"Yes, yes what is it?\\\" and the student says, \\\"Sir, will this be on the exam?\\\" [audience laughter].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:30:57\\nReads \\\"Seven o'Clock Lecture\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:34:07\\n\\\"The Birth of Tragedy\\\". The title is taken from one of the earliest books of Nietzsche [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9358], the gods here that I speak about in the poem, are the gods of Dream and Dance, of Reason and Ecstasy, Apollo and Dionysus, Nietzsche held that tragedy came from the union of both dream and dance, intellect and impulse.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:34:44\\nReads \\\"The Birth of Tragedy\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:36:44\\nAnd I suppose no Layton reading would be quite complete without this poem, \\\"Misunderstanding\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:36:54\\nReads \\\"Misunderstanding\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:37:16\\n\\\"The Cold Green Element\\\". This is about life, death, nature, and poetry. It's really a meditation, and, I hope, a passionate meditation on art and life. Like Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213], I am very concerned with the necessary antinomies or contradictions of life. Like Yeats, I believe that great art results from the happy, the miraculous fusion of the two.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:38:04\\nReads \\\"The Cold Green Element\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:40:20\\n\\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\", my symbol for science. It is truism to say that unless man's moral development, his capacity for sympathy, keeps space, or this development in science and technology he's in danger of blowing himself off the face of this earth. This poem is an apocalyptic poem, it is a vision of the future, such as I hope will never be realized. But in one of my more despairing moments, or one of my more savage and bitter moments, I wrote this poem, \\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:41:05\\nReads \\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:42:25\\nReads [“Orpheus” from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:44:11\\nReads \\\"Death of a Construction Worker\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:45:08\\nReads “Theology” [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:45:47\\nReads “For Louise, Age 17” [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:47:14\\n\\\"Song for Naomi\\\". Naomi's my daughter. Several years ago we were out in the country, I was appalled to find that while she was by the bank of the lake, I couldn't see her because the weeds and the flowers were taller than she was. If she fell into the lake, neither I nor my wife might see it. But nothing happened. Just a day before we were to pack up to leave, I noticed my daughter down by the lake, and this time, her dear little head was peeping just above the weeds and the flowers and this gave me the idea for this poem, which I wrote, while of course my wife did the packing.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:48:12\\nReads \\\"Song for Naomi\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:49:47\\nHere's a rather erotic poem, called \\\"Gathering of Poets\\\", to be taken of course with a grain of salt.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:49:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:00\\n...to be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Just a short thing.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:08\\nReads \\\"Gathering of Poets\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:40\\nReads \\\"The Bull Calf\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:19\\nAnd here's a lighter poem called \\\"Bargain\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:22\\nReads \\\"Bargain\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:53:46\\nLaughter.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:58\\nThis next poem is for my mother, who died at the age of 89. She was a very remarkable woman, I'd like to tell you a great deal about her, she certainly merits it, she was a most remarkable character with a tremendous joie-de-vivre and a wonderful gift of vituperation, which it is said I have inherited [audience laughter]. Certainly I learned the cadence of poetry from my mother's cursing. My mother would start cursing as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and wouldn't stop cursing until I closed them at night when I went to bed. But the cadence was what interested me [audience laughter] and I didn't pay any attention to words. Occasionally I would get the drift, of course, of what the curses were intended to say, and I must say it did me a wonderful lot of good because later on when I got knocked my critics and so on, it was like so much water off a duck's back after my mother's cursing. Nothing the critics say could possibly make any impression upon me whatsoever [audience laughter]. She was extremely vain of her black eyebrows. When she was 85, I was taking her somewhere and we stopped for a red light. I noticed a very lovely girl standing on the curb, and of course, I looked very intently at her. My mother caught my intent gaze and said, sighing, \\\"Yes, she's very beautiful, but has she got my black eyebrows?\\\" [audience laughter]. She wore earrings that were made of old Romanian coins, she wore an amber necklace, which I remember playing with when I was a child. But it was her immense vitality and joie-de-vivre, coupled with an immense discontent that always fascinated me about my mother. She was a very Orthodox woman, reverencing God, but often giving me the impression that she might have made a much better job of creation than God himself. So this is my tribute to my very, very remarkable mother.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:56:56\\nReads \\\"Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:59:16\\nReads \\\"The Well-Wrought Urn\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:59:57\\nSome time ago, I went down to the church at Notre Dame, and you know, you have halos lighting up over the head of your favourite saint, or the Virgin Mary, if you drop the requisite number of coins. There's nobody else in that vast gloomy church, except another man and myself, and he went over to the little machine and he dropped some coins, and he waited for the halo to light up and it didn't. And that nettled him a great deal, and he waited, and it still didn't light up so he gave the machine a kick, nothing happened. But he said something and I went home and I wrote this poem.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:01:01\\nReads \\\"This Machine Age\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:02:09\\nThis next poem of mine is also based on an actual experience, I'm sure that most of you have heard of Djilas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153909], the very courageous Yugoslav writer who's imprisoned by his erstwhile comrade and companion in arms, Tito. He's imprisoned for writing and publishing outside of the country, Conversations with Stalin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5166446]. That was several years ago, he's just been released. Well I thought a brave man like that deserves some kind of support, especially from and by writers, and so I decided to go up to Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930] and demonstrate in front of the Yugoslav Embassy. I took my wife with me, and one or two of the local poets, we made some signs and we drove up to Ottawa. We got out of the car, and the sign read, of course, \\\"Free Djilas\\\", and I was amazed and delighted to find that a considerable crowd gathered around me and the sign. Until I realized just what was happening. And so I wrote this poem, called \\\"Free Djilas\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:03:31\\nReads \\\"Free Djilas\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:04:29\\nThis one, in a more serious vein, \\\"The Predator\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:04:36\\nReads \\\"The Predator\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:06:41\\nReads \\\"Plaza de Toros\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:09:13\\nReads \\\"At the Alhambra\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:10:20\\nReads \\\"For My Green Old Age\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:11:44\\nNow I want to read a few poems from my most recent book, Periods of the Moon. \\\"Castles on the Rhine\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:12:01\\nReads \\\"Castles on the Rhine\\\" [published as “Rhine Boat Trip in Periods of the Moon].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:12:54\\nReads \\\"Mutability\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:14:19\\nReads \\\"Time's Velvet Tongue\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:15:20\\nReads \\\"Gratitude\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n\\nAudience\\n01:16:00\\nLaughter \\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:16:04\\nMy contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode”.\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:16:10\\nReads \\\"Confederation Ode\\\" from Periods of the Moon [audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:17:23\\nLaughter and Applause.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:17:34\\nReads \\\"The Beautiful Unknown Girl\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:18:55\\nAnd this one, \\\"For Musia's Grandchildren\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:19:09\\nReads \\\"For Musia's Grandchildren\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:20:59\\nReads \\\"Look Homeward, Angel\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:21:45\\nAnd this last one, \\\"Family Portrait\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:21:54\\nReads \\\"Family Portrait\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:22:59\\nLaughter and Applause.\\n \\nEND\\n01:23:43\\n\",\"notes\":\"Irving Layton reads from Collected Poems (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) and Periods of the Moon (McClelland &Stewart, 1967). \\n\\nI086-11-031.1\\n00:00- Howard Fink introduces Irving Layton [INDEX: Layton introduced Robert Creeley in earlier reading, Black Mountain Poetry Group in 1950’s, Board of Black Mountain      \\tReview in 1955 onwards, First Statement Press- became Northern Review in 1949,  A    red carpet for the sun (1959) with intro by William Carlos Williams, published by       \\tMcClelland and Stewart, The swinging flesh,  Balls for a one-armed juggler (1963),        \\tLaughing Rooster (1964), Collected Poems (1965), Periods of the Moon (1967),    \\tcontroversial T.V. appearances, Poet in Residence at Sir George University 1967]\\n02:30- Irving Layton introduces “There Are No Signs”\\n04:00- Reads “There Are No Signs”\\n04:51- Introduces “The Swimmer” [INDEX: Poet as swimmer symbol; Howard Fink List “The Summer”.]\\n05:15- Reads “The Swimmer”\\n06:38- Introduces “Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee” [INDEX: Jewish Library: teaching English, Mrs. Fornheim: an European refugee from Nazis]\\n07:19- Reads “Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee”\\n08:12- Introduces “Gothic Landscape” [INDEX: Jewish boy living in Christian and Catholic neighborhoods]\\n09:00- Reads “Gothic Landscape”\\n10:19- Introduces “The Black Huntsman”\\n10:40- Reads “The Black Huntsman”\\n12:08- Introduces “Archetypes” [INDEX: Orthodox Judaism]\\n12:43- Reads “Archetypes”\\n13:38- Reads “Soleil de Nos”\\n14:15- Introduces “De Bullion Street”\\n14:40- Reads “De Bullion Street”\\n16:10- Introduces “On My Way To School”\\n16:44- Reads “On My Way To School”\\n17:20- Reads “Love the Conqueror Worm”\\n18:31- Introduces “Exata Christio” [INDEX: Western man: Greek vs. Hebraic Cultures]\\n20:11- Reads “Exata Christio”\\n21:19- Introduces “Cemetery in August”\\n21:54- Reads “Cemetery in August”\\n24:20- Introduces “To The Girls of My Graduating Class”\\n25:15- Reads “To The Girls of My Graduating Class”\\n26:33- Introduces “Bacchanal”\\n27:10- Reads “Bacchanal”\\n28:18- Introduces “Maxie” [INDEX: poem for his son]\\n28:24- Reads “Maxie”\\n30:03- Introduces “Seven O’Clock Lecture”\\n30:57- Reads “Seven O’Clock Lecture”\\n34:07- Introduces “Birth of a Tragedy” [INDEX: Nietzsche]\\n34:44- Reads “Birth of a Tragedy”\\n36:44- Introduces “Misunderstanding”\\n36:54- Reads “Misunderstanding”\\n37:16- Introduces “A Cold Green Element” [INDEX: William Butler Yeats]\\n38:04- Reads “A Cold Green Element”\\n40:20- Introduces “The Improved Binoculars” [INDEX: dangers of science and technology]\\n41:05- Reads “The Improved Binoculars”\\n42:25- Reads first line “Poets of a distant time...”\\n44:11- Reads “Death of a Construction Worker”\\n45:08- Reads “Theology”\\n45:47- Reads “For Louise, Age 17”\\n47:14- Introduces “Song for Naomi”\\n48:12- Reads “Song for Naomi” [INDEX: Poem for Naomi, daughter]\\n49:47- Begins to introduce “Gathering of Poets”\\n49:59.53- END OF RECORDING\\n   \\nHoward Fink List of poems:\\n18/03/67\\nmono, 2 tracks, speed 3 3/4 one one 5” reel, lasting 1 hr 35 min\\n \\n1.  “There Are No Signs”\\n2.  “The Summer”\\n3.  “Mrs. Fornheim, the Refugee”\\n4.  “Gothic Landscape”\\n5.  “The Black Huntsman”\\n6.  “Archetypes”\\n7.  “Soleil de Nos”\\n8.  “DeBullion Street”\\n9.  “On My Way To School”\\n10. “Love the Conquerer Worm”\\n11. “Exata Christio”\\n12. “Cemetary in August”\\n13. “To the Girls (gauls) of My Graduating Class”\\n14. “Bachnal”\\n15. “Maxie”\\n16. “Seven O’clock Lecture”\\n17. “The Birth Of Tragedy”\\n18. “Misunderstanding”\\n19. “The Cold Green Element”\\n20. “The Improved Binoculars”\\n21. first line “Poets of a distant time...”\\n22. “Death of a Construction Worker”\\n23. first line “She came to us...”\\n24. “Song for Naomi”\\n25. “Gathering of Poets”\\n\\nI086-11-031.2\\n00:00- Irving Layton introduces “Gathering of Poets”\\n00:08- Reads “Gathering of Poets”\\n00:40- Reads “The Bull Calf”\\n03:20- Reads “Bargain”\\n03:58- Introduces “Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959” [INDEX: Layton’s mother, Keine \\tLazarovitch]\\n06:57- Reads “Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959”\\n09:15- Reads “The Wall Watt Urn”\\n09:56- Introduces “This Machine Age”\\n11:01- Reads “This Machine Age”\\n12:09- Introduces “Free Djilas” [INDEX: Milovan Djilas Conversations with Stalin, Tito]\\n13:31- Reads “Free Djilas”\\n14:29- Reads “The Predator”\\n14:36- Reads “Plaza de Toros” [Plaza de Toros in Madrid]\\n19:14- Reads “At The Alhambra”\\n20:20- Reads “For My Green Old Age”\\n21:44- Reads “Castles on the Rhine”, following poems are from Periods of the Moon\\n22:54- Reads “Mutability” [INDEX: The Rhine]\\n24:20- Reads “Time’s Velvet Tongue”\\n25:02- Reads “Gratitude”\\n26:02- Reads “Confederation Ode” [INDEX: Canada’s Centennial Year, Confederation Ode]\\n27:35- Reads “The Beautiful Unknown Girl”\\n28:55- Reads “For Musia’s Grandchildren”\\n31:00- Reads “Look Homeward, Angel”\\n31:45- Reads “Family Portrait”\\n33:43.03- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nHoward Fink list of poems:\\n26.  “The Bull Calf”\\n27.  “Bargain”\\n28.  “Kana (sp??) Laserovich” (Layton’s mom)--Keine Lazarovitch\\n29.  “The Will Watt Van”\\n30.  “This Machine Age”\\n31.  “Free Gilas”\\n32.  “The Predator”\\n33.  “Plaza de Toro’s”\\n34.  first line “I sat where...”\\n35.  “For My Green Old Age”\\nThe following poems are from Layton’s book Periods of the Moon:\\n36.  “Castles On the Rine”\\n37.  “Meutability”\\n38.  “Times Velvet Tongue”\\n39.  “Gratitude”\\n40.  “Confederation Ode”\\n41.  “The Beautiful Unknowen Girl”\\n42.  “For Muska’s Grandchildren”\\n43.  “Look Homeward Angel”\\n44.  “Family Portrait”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/irving-layton-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1263","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":["Margaret Atwood and Alden Nowlan at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 October 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MARGARET ATWOOD & ALDEN NOWLAN Recorder October 13, 1967 3.75 ips on 1.mil tape, 1/2 track\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"ATWOOD & NOWLAN I006/SR36\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-036\" also 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":["Atwood, Margaret","Nowlan, Alden"],"creator_names_search":["Atwood, Margaret","Nowlan, Alden"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109322990\",\"name\":\"Atwood, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"Internationally acclaimed novelist, poet, critic and activist Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, November 18,  1939. She lived in Ottawa until 1946, when her family settled in Leaside, a suburb of Toronto. Atwood entered Victoria College, University of Toronto, graduating with honours in 1961. Her first published collection of short stories was Double Persephone (Hawkshead Press, 1961). By 1962 she had received her MA in English from Radcliffe College in the United States, working on further graduate work at Harvard University between 1962-3 and in 1965-7. Atwood published her second collection, The Circle Game (Anansi, 1966), which won the Governor General Award for Poetry. She wrote articles and reviews for Alphabet, Canadian Literature and Poetry among other publications, and poems for Kayak, Quarry and the Tamarack Review. Poems published in her book The Animals in That Country (Oxford University Press, 1968) won first prize in Canada’s 1967 Centennial Commission poetry competition. In 1970, she published three books, Procedures for Underground (Oxford University Press), Time, and The Journals of Susanna Moodie (Oxford University Press). Between 1971 and 1973, Atwood worked as an editor and on the board of directors for the House of Anansi press in Toronto, which in 1972 published Power Politics. Upon the discovery at Harvard that there was no published critical study of Canadian literature, she herself wrote and published Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Anansi, 1971), which created a stir of controversy, but by 1982 it had sold more than 85,000 copies. Since 1973, she has lived with novelist and activist Graeme Gibson, producing one daughter, Eleanor Jess in 1967. Atwood taught and lectured at several Universities across Canada, the US and Australia, including University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) (1967-68) and at York University, Toronto. A selection of her publications include Surfacing (Simon & Schuster, 1972), You Are Happy (Harper &Row, 1974), Selected Poems (Oxford University Press) in 1976, Two-Headed Poems (Simon & Schuster, 1978), True Stories (Oxford University Press, 1981) and Second Words (Anansi, 1982). Her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (McClelland & Stewart) became one of her most popular and critically acclaimed works. In 1986 she was appointed the Berg Chair at New York University, as well as serving as writer-in-residence at several other Universities. She co-founded and served as chair to the Writer’s Union of Canada in 1982-3, and served as president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN from 1984-6. She has subsequently published dozens of books, including Cat’s Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1988), The Robber Bride (Doubleday, 1993), Alias Grace (Nan A. Talese, 1996), The Blind Assassin (Nan A. Talese, 2000), Oryx and Crake (2003), The Penelopiad (Canongate, 2005) and The Tent (Bloomsbury, 2006). Along with many other publications of her critical essays, Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing 1970-2005 (Verago) came out in 2005. Her most recent novel, Year of the Flood was published in 2009 by Doubleday Press. Her many prizes and honours include the Booker Prize, the E.J. Pratt Medal (1961), The Radcliffe Medal (1980), the Commonwealth Writers Prize (1992), and she is a Companion of the Order of Canada. Atwood continues to work as spokesperson on behalf of human rights and the environment. \",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61671170\",\"name\":\"Nowlan, Alden\",\"dates\":\"1933-1983\",\"notes\":\"Poet Alden Nowlan was born in 1933, in a small rural community near Windsor, Nova Scotia. Nowlan worked as a young man on farms, lumbermills and as a sawmill helper before he left Nova Scotia for New Brunswick to take a position as editor at The Heartland Observer and the night-news editor of the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. Nowlan published his first book of poetry, The rose and the puritan (New Brunswick University) in 1958, which was followed closely by A darkness in the earth (Hearse Press, 1959), Wind in a rocky country (Emblem Books, 1961), Under the ice (Ryerson Press, 1961) and The things which are (Contact Press,1962). In 1967 he was awarded the Governor General’s Award for his collection Bread, wine and salt (Clarke, Irwin). Nowlan was offered a writer-in-residence position at the University of New Brunswick, which he held until his death in 1983. His other publications include The mysterious naked man (Clarke, Irwin, 1969), Between tears and laughter (Clarke, Irwin, 1971), I’m a stranger here myself (Clarke, Irwin, 1974), Smoked glass (Clarke, Irwin, 1977) and I might not tell everybody this (Clarke, Irwin, 1982). Nowlan was also involved in theatre, and wrote three stage plays with Walter Learning: Frankenstein (Clarke, Irwin, 1976), The incredible murder of Cardinal Tosca (Learning Productions, 1978) and The dollar woman (Borealis Press, 1981). Nowlan was awarded a Doctor of Letters from the University of New Brunswick, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Nowlan has also published an autobiography, Various persons named Kevin O’Brien (Clarke, Irwin, 1973), a collection of short stories, Miracle at Indian River (Clarke, Irwin, 1968), a travel book Campobello, the outer island (Clarke, Irwin, 1975) and collected twenty-seven of his magazine articles in Double exposure (Brunswick Press, 1978). Numerous titles were published posthumously, including Alden Nowlan, early poems (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1983), The best of Alden Nowlan (Lancelot Press, 1993), Will ye let the mummers in? (Clarke, Irwin, 1984), An exchange of gifts: poems new and selected (Irwin, 1985), Alden Nowlan: selected poems (Irwin, 1985).\",\"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":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"\",\"AV_types\":\"\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"\",\"recording_type\":\"\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"\",\"physical_composition\":\"\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 10 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" (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 Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Margaret Atwood reads from The Circle Game (House of Anansi, 1966) as well as poems later published in The Animals in that Country (Oxford University Press, 1968). Alden Nowlan reads from Bread Wine and Salt (Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1967) along with some poems from unknown sources.  "],"contents":["margaret_atwood_alden_nowlan_i006-11-036.mp3\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:00:00\nI should apologize to begin with for my voice. I don't usually sound quite this much like Tallulah Bankhead [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q255815]. I have the Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] plague. The first poem is called \"This is a Photograph of Me,\" and it's the first poem in The Circle Game [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7723073].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:00:22\nReads \"This is a Photograph of Me\" from The Circle Game.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:35\nThe next poem is called \"Camera,\" and is dedicated to somebody I knew who liked to take pictures. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:44\nReads \"Camera\" [from The Circle Game].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:03:24\nAnd a small poem called \"Carved Animals\".\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:03:28\nReads \"Carved Animals\" [from The Circle Game].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:04:25\nNow some more recent poems, which I should explain were mostly written in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] when I was living there recently. The first one called \"At the Tourist centre in Boston\". Now Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] does have a Tourist centre in Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:04:50\nReads \"At the Tourist centre in Boston\" [published later in The Animals in that Country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7713834]].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:06:48\nAnd a poem called \"The Green Man\", which is dedicated to the Boston Strangler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2855440]. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:06:56\nReads \"The Green Man\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:08:03\nThis poem called \"A Fortification\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:08:08\nReads \"A Fortification\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:09:17\nAnd this is a poem dedicated to my landlady who didn't remain my landlady for very long, called \"The Landlady\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:09:29\nReads \"The Landlady\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:10:47\nAnd this poem called, \"A Foundling\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:10:52\nReads \"A Foundling\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:11:41\nAnd this poem, which has no title.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:11:49\nReads [\"Untitled\"].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:12:58\nAnd a poem called \"Chronology\", which I wrote in one of my more paranoid states of mind. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:13:06\nReads \"Chronology\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:14:39\nAnd here's my love poem to the, our large, friendly neighbour to the south. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:14:50\nReads \"Backdrop addresses cowboy\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:16:28\nThen a slightly happier poem called \"A Voice\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:16:36\nReads \"A Voice\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:17:40\nAnd this one called, \"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\", which I wrote when I heard that they were planning to use a certain South Pacific island for the building of an airstrip. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:17:59\nReads \"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:19:19\nAnd this poem called, \"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:19:26\nReads \"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:20:49\nReads \"I was reading a scientific article\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:22:20\nAnd the last poem. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:22:25\nReads \"The Reincarnation of Captain Cook\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:23:44\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:23:46\nApplause [cut off abruptly].\n \nUnknown\n00:23:49\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:23:58\n...for quite a number of years as a journalist in the Maritimes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q731613], and this evening he is here with his wife and son and will be reading to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Alden Nowlan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4713563].\n \nAudience\n00:24:17\nApplause.\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:24:26\nThank you, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. First of all, I want to reassure everyone that I'm not going to read everything that's in this. I feel that probably there are some who are terrified when they see this, you know. It's really basically laziness that I haven't shortened anything out, I simply have wads of things here. \n \nAudience\n00:24:55\nLaughter.\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:24:56\nNo no, not that one, I'm not going to read them all, definitely, definitely not. \n \nUnknown\n00:25:09\nSilence [pause].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:25:19\nFirst of all I have a very, very bad poem that I can't resist reading. I realized that it's sort of a bad beginning to start off with a poem that the poet himself considers a very bad one, but I wrote this when I arrived here this afternoon. To the natural egotism of a poet, you see, I can't resist offering it to this sort of captive audience here. [Audience laughter]. \"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\". [Audience laughter].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:26:06\nReads \"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:26:30\nThat isn't really as critical of the Ritz Carlton as it sounds, because I sort of like the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173882], too, you see. [Audience laughter]. Next, I'd like to read some poems from my new book, Bread Wine and Salt, which is going to be published by Carter when, the first week in November, at three dollars and fifty cents. [Audience laughter]. That is the commercial.  \"I, Icarus\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:27:15\nReads \"I, Icarus\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:28:34\nReads \"Sailors\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:30:06\nThis poem is entitled \"The Cinnamon Bears\", which sounds at first as if it were some sort of an animal cooking. But actually, what these cinnamon bears were, was back around the turn of the century in New Brunswick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1965], as I've been told, there were all sorts of touring side-show type of things, you know, that, fortune tellers, and...people with a monkey, organ grinders with a monkey, and all this type of, sort of strolling pyres or wandering minstrels that existed up until the advent of radio and television. And it was a terrific thing, of course, in these backwoods communities. No doubt throughout Canada and the United States, when one of these people arrived. And among the, among these people were men who had trained bears, who, because of their colouration, were called cinnamon bears. And this poem actually is sort of a found poem, because it's not so much a creative thing as it is the transcription of a conversation which I happened to overhear between an old couple in northern New Brunswick. A man and his wife in their seventies, when they, suddenly something brought back these memories of these days of the organ grinders and the cinnamon bears. And as I say, I sort of made the poem more or less by simply transcribing the things which they said to one another, which it seemed to me was sort of a poetry, a form of poetry itself. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:32:20\nReads \"The Cinnamon Bears\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:33:21\nReads \"Britain Street, St. John, New Brunswick” [published as “Britain Street” in Bread, Wine and Salt].\n\nAlden Nowlan\n00:34:22\nThis is another, sort of a found poem, I'm not really terribly convinced that it's a poem at all. Last year, when I had a quite serious illness, one afternoon I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office, and the only thing that seemed to lay at hand for me to read was a copy of one of these Confessions magazines entitled Secret Life. [Audience laughter]. And as I glanced through it, it seemed to me, all that I actually read of it, you know, were these sort of captions at the top of the articles, and some of the big type in it. But it seemed to me really, as I glanced through it, that it had, that it contained sort of a crazy poetry of its own. At least, in the mood that I was in at the time, I sort of responded to it as though it were a crazy sort of poetry. And so as I sat there I sort of jotted down some of these things from the magazine, and ever since I've been trying to pass it off as a poem. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:35:37\nReads \"Secret Life\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt; audience laughter throughout].\n \nAudience\n00:36:39\nLaughter. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:36:57\nReads \"In Our Time\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:40:51\nReads \"The Changeling\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:41:49\nReads \"The Hollow Men\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:42:38\nThis poem is entitled \"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2138], New Brunswick\". And I'm a little afraid that many of you will feel that it is sort of pointless. I'm not sure really but what you'd have to be completely immersed in the atmosphere of New Brunswick to get the real point of it, but. But that said, not implying any superiority on the part of New Brunswickers, unfortunately. Anyway.\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:43:26\nReads \"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:44:36\nReads \"Every Man Owes God a Death\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:46:41\nThis poem, for no particular reason, is entitled \"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\". \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:46:48\nReads \"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:48:23\nThis is a poem that came out of a serious illness that I had last year, and it's entitled \"In the Operating Room\". \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:48:38\nReads \"In the Operating Room\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:50:05\nI have a few other recent poems I'll dig out of these. \n \nUnknown\n00:50:12\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\n\nAlden Nowlan\n00:50:47\nAs I sort through these, I'm silently cursing myself for not having done this before I came here. \n \nUnknown\n00:50:52\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\n\nAlden Nowlan\n00:51:20\nHere's a fairly recent poem which isn't a political poem at all, but a human poem. And one that I wrote as a result of watching on television the debates in the United Nations [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065] on the Middle East [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7204] crisis. And one of the horrible things I felt as I watched it was how completely dehumanized it all was, that the real, human issues had been lost sight of, and sort of drowned in an ocean of resolutions and memos from embassies and all this sort of things. And one night when they televised these sessions through until about four o'clock, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q851] spoke, and he delivered certainly a very bigoted speech, and one that as a speech I wouldn't have agreed with, but I felt an admiration for him, because it had seemed to me that he was the only really human thing that had happened there all day. You know, that certainly he was a bigoted old man, full of thousands of years of hatred, but it was a human hatred, expressed in a human manner, something that the rest of them had completely lost sight of. And as a result of this feeling I wrote this poem, \"For Jamil Baroody [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96384169], Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:53:21\nReads \"For Jamil Baroody, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:56:26\nReads \"Fireworks\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:57:34\nReads \"Two Poems for the Nova Scotia Department of Highways\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:59:31\nFinally, this is a poem entitled \"State Visit\", and the motivation of it, like one of the earlier ones I read, was sort of this same feeling of frustration at the complete dehumanization of politics as we feel it today, and particularly, this sort of apotheosis of world leaders into some sort of a symbol, so they even, I think, begin to think of themselves in these sort of abstract terms, rather than as a human being. And out of--this is sort of, I suppose, perhaps to a degree sort of a bitter little poem, but it stemmed from an emotion which I'm sure many of us feel. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n01:00:27\nReads \"State Visit\".\n \nEND\n01:01:39\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, Margaret Atwood had moved to Montreal and took a position at the Sir George Williams University English Department. She taught four courses, as well as working on The Animals in that Country, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Procedures for Underground and finished The Edible Woman.\\n\\nIn 1967, Nowlan was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Bread Wine and Salt which was published the same year. He was also offered a position as writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick during this time.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAtwood became an important award-winning poet and critic in Canada by the late 60‘s. Sir George Williams English Department hired Atwood in 1967 as an English lecturer, after she had graduated from Harvard.  \\n\\nHis direct connection to Sir George Williams is unknown, but Nowlan was one of the most popular and important Maritime poets of the sixties and seventies.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones.\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/nowlan_alden.html\",\"citation\":\"“Alden Nolan (1933-1983)”. One Zero Zero: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small      Presses, 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art: The Canadian Art Database. Toronto: York University. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/977851868&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. Selected Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/animals-in-that-country/oclc/301739674&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. The Animals in that Country. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/circle-game/oclc/549399081&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. The Circle Game. Toronto, House of Anansi, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/840722670&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bartlett, Donald R. “Nowlan, Alden”. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Hamiton, Ian (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/489958766&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\",\"citation\":\"Charny, Marty. “Georgantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 13 October 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"ttps://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Findley, Timothy. “Atwood, Margaret (1939-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial        Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “Nowlan, Alden”. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Benson,       Eugene and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/833713141&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/bread-wine-and-salt/oclc/4321706&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nowlan, Alden. Bread, Wine and Salt. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\",\"citation\":\"“Poets Next Week:”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, October 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-the-novel/oclc/470223344&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rowland, Susan. “Margaret Atwood 1939- (Canadian)”. Encyclopedia of the Novel. Schellinger, Paul (ed.); Christopher Hudson, Marijke Rijsberman (asst. eds.). Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998. 2 vols.\"},{\"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\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=waYtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u58FAAAAIBAJ&pg=7250,4345207&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"Stephens, Anna. “Poetry- Anywhere, Anytime”. The Gazette. 20 October 1967, page 10. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Kibble, Matthew. “Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939-”. Literature Online biography. Proquest Information and Learning Company, H.W. Wilson Company, 2006. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548812333056,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0036_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan 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_0036_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan 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_0036_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan 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_0036_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan 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/margaret_atwood_alden_nowlan_i006-11-036.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"margaret_atwood_alden_nowlan_i006-11-036.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:01:39\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"148 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Margaret Atwood\\n00:00:00\\nI should apologize to begin with for my voice. I don't usually sound quite this much like Tallulah Bankhead [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q255815]. I have the Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] plague. The first poem is called \\\"This is a Photograph of Me,\\\" and it's the first poem in The Circle Game [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7723073].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:00:22\\nReads \\\"This is a Photograph of Me\\\" from The Circle Game.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:35\\nThe next poem is called \\\"Camera,\\\" and is dedicated to somebody I knew who liked to take pictures. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:44\\nReads \\\"Camera\\\" [from The Circle Game].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:03:24\\nAnd a small poem called \\\"Carved Animals\\\".\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:03:28\\nReads \\\"Carved Animals\\\" [from The Circle Game].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:04:25\\nNow some more recent poems, which I should explain were mostly written in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] when I was living there recently. The first one called \\\"At the Tourist centre in Boston\\\". Now Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] does have a Tourist centre in Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:04:50\\nReads \\\"At the Tourist centre in Boston\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7713834]].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:06:48\\nAnd a poem called \\\"The Green Man\\\", which is dedicated to the Boston Strangler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2855440]. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:06:56\\nReads \\\"The Green Man\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:08:03\\nThis poem called \\\"A Fortification\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:08:08\\nReads \\\"A Fortification\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:09:17\\nAnd this is a poem dedicated to my landlady who didn't remain my landlady for very long, called \\\"The Landlady\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:09:29\\nReads \\\"The Landlady\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:10:47\\nAnd this poem called, \\\"A Foundling\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:10:52\\nReads \\\"A Foundling\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:11:41\\nAnd this poem, which has no title.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:11:49\\nReads [\\\"Untitled\\\"].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:12:58\\nAnd a poem called \\\"Chronology\\\", which I wrote in one of my more paranoid states of mind. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:13:06\\nReads \\\"Chronology\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:14:39\\nAnd here's my love poem to the, our large, friendly neighbour to the south. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:14:50\\nReads \\\"Backdrop addresses cowboy\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:16:28\\nThen a slightly happier poem called \\\"A Voice\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:16:36\\nReads \\\"A Voice\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:17:40\\nAnd this one called, \\\"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\\\", which I wrote when I heard that they were planning to use a certain South Pacific island for the building of an airstrip. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:17:59\\nReads \\\"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:19:19\\nAnd this poem called, \\\"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:19:26\\nReads \\\"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:20:49\\nReads \\\"I was reading a scientific article\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:22:20\\nAnd the last poem. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:22:25\\nReads \\\"The Reincarnation of Captain Cook\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:23:44\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:23:46\\nApplause [cut off abruptly].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:23:49\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:23:58\\n...for quite a number of years as a journalist in the Maritimes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q731613], and this evening he is here with his wife and son and will be reading to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Alden Nowlan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4713563].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:24:17\\nApplause.\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:24:26\\nThank you, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. First of all, I want to reassure everyone that I'm not going to read everything that's in this. I feel that probably there are some who are terrified when they see this, you know. It's really basically laziness that I haven't shortened anything out, I simply have wads of things here. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:24:55\\nLaughter.\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:24:56\\nNo no, not that one, I'm not going to read them all, definitely, definitely not. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:25:09\\nSilence [pause].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:25:19\\nFirst of all I have a very, very bad poem that I can't resist reading. I realized that it's sort of a bad beginning to start off with a poem that the poet himself considers a very bad one, but I wrote this when I arrived here this afternoon. To the natural egotism of a poet, you see, I can't resist offering it to this sort of captive audience here. [Audience laughter]. \\\"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\\\". [Audience laughter].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:26:06\\nReads \\\"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:26:30\\nThat isn't really as critical of the Ritz Carlton as it sounds, because I sort of like the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173882], too, you see. [Audience laughter]. Next, I'd like to read some poems from my new book, Bread Wine and Salt, which is going to be published by Carter when, the first week in November, at three dollars and fifty cents. [Audience laughter]. That is the commercial.  \\\"I, Icarus\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:27:15\\nReads \\\"I, Icarus\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:28:34\\nReads \\\"Sailors\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:30:06\\nThis poem is entitled \\\"The Cinnamon Bears\\\", which sounds at first as if it were some sort of an animal cooking. But actually, what these cinnamon bears were, was back around the turn of the century in New Brunswick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1965], as I've been told, there were all sorts of touring side-show type of things, you know, that, fortune tellers, and...people with a monkey, organ grinders with a monkey, and all this type of, sort of strolling pyres or wandering minstrels that existed up until the advent of radio and television. And it was a terrific thing, of course, in these backwoods communities. No doubt throughout Canada and the United States, when one of these people arrived. And among the, among these people were men who had trained bears, who, because of their colouration, were called cinnamon bears. And this poem actually is sort of a found poem, because it's not so much a creative thing as it is the transcription of a conversation which I happened to overhear between an old couple in northern New Brunswick. A man and his wife in their seventies, when they, suddenly something brought back these memories of these days of the organ grinders and the cinnamon bears. And as I say, I sort of made the poem more or less by simply transcribing the things which they said to one another, which it seemed to me was sort of a poetry, a form of poetry itself. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:32:20\\nReads \\\"The Cinnamon Bears\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:33:21\\nReads \\\"Britain Street, St. John, New Brunswick” [published as “Britain Street” in Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n\\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:34:22\\nThis is another, sort of a found poem, I'm not really terribly convinced that it's a poem at all. Last year, when I had a quite serious illness, one afternoon I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office, and the only thing that seemed to lay at hand for me to read was a copy of one of these Confessions magazines entitled Secret Life. [Audience laughter]. And as I glanced through it, it seemed to me, all that I actually read of it, you know, were these sort of captions at the top of the articles, and some of the big type in it. But it seemed to me really, as I glanced through it, that it had, that it contained sort of a crazy poetry of its own. At least, in the mood that I was in at the time, I sort of responded to it as though it were a crazy sort of poetry. And so as I sat there I sort of jotted down some of these things from the magazine, and ever since I've been trying to pass it off as a poem. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:35:37\\nReads \\\"Secret Life\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:36:39\\nLaughter. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:36:57\\nReads \\\"In Our Time\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:40:51\\nReads \\\"The Changeling\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:41:49\\nReads \\\"The Hollow Men\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:42:38\\nThis poem is entitled \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2138], New Brunswick\\\". And I'm a little afraid that many of you will feel that it is sort of pointless. I'm not sure really but what you'd have to be completely immersed in the atmosphere of New Brunswick to get the real point of it, but. But that said, not implying any superiority on the part of New Brunswickers, unfortunately. Anyway.\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:43:26\\nReads \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:44:36\\nReads \\\"Every Man Owes God a Death\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:46:41\\nThis poem, for no particular reason, is entitled \\\"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\\\". \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:46:48\\nReads \\\"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:48:23\\nThis is a poem that came out of a serious illness that I had last year, and it's entitled \\\"In the Operating Room\\\". \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:48:38\\nReads \\\"In the Operating Room\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:50:05\\nI have a few other recent poems I'll dig out of these. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:50:12\\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\\n\\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:50:47\\nAs I sort through these, I'm silently cursing myself for not having done this before I came here. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:50:52\\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\\n\\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:51:20\\nHere's a fairly recent poem which isn't a political poem at all, but a human poem. And one that I wrote as a result of watching on television the debates in the United Nations [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065] on the Middle East [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7204] crisis. And one of the horrible things I felt as I watched it was how completely dehumanized it all was, that the real, human issues had been lost sight of, and sort of drowned in an ocean of resolutions and memos from embassies and all this sort of things. And one night when they televised these sessions through until about four o'clock, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q851] spoke, and he delivered certainly a very bigoted speech, and one that as a speech I wouldn't have agreed with, but I felt an admiration for him, because it had seemed to me that he was the only really human thing that had happened there all day. You know, that certainly he was a bigoted old man, full of thousands of years of hatred, but it was a human hatred, expressed in a human manner, something that the rest of them had completely lost sight of. And as a result of this feeling I wrote this poem, \\\"For Jamil Baroody [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96384169], Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:53:21\\nReads \\\"For Jamil Baroody, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:56:26\\nReads \\\"Fireworks\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:57:34\\nReads \\\"Two Poems for the Nova Scotia Department of Highways\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:59:31\\nFinally, this is a poem entitled \\\"State Visit\\\", and the motivation of it, like one of the earlier ones I read, was sort of this same feeling of frustration at the complete dehumanization of politics as we feel it today, and particularly, this sort of apotheosis of world leaders into some sort of a symbol, so they even, I think, begin to think of themselves in these sort of abstract terms, rather than as a human being. And out of--this is sort of, I suppose, perhaps to a degree sort of a bitter little poem, but it stemmed from an emotion which I'm sure many of us feel. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n01:00:27\\nReads \\\"State Visit\\\".\\n \\nEND\\n01:01:39\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Margaret Atwood reads from The Circle Game (House of Anansi, 1966) as well as poems later published in The Animals in that Country (Oxford University Press, 1968). Nowlan reads from Bread Wine and Salt (Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1967) along with some poems from unknown sources.  \\n\\n00:00- Atwood introduces “This is a Photograph of Me”. [INDEX: Montreal plague, Tallula Bankhead, The Circle Game; from The Circle Game.]\\n00:22- Reads “This is a Photograph of Me”.\\n01:35- Introduces “The Camera”. [INDEX: dedication; published as “Camera” in The Circle \\tGame]\\n01:44- Reads “Camera”.\\n03:28- Reads “Carved Animals”. [INDEX: from The Circle Game, part III of “Some Objects of Wood and Stone”.]\\n04:25- Introduces “At the tourist center in Boston”. [INDEX: recent poems, written in the   United States, Canada’s Tourist Center in Boston; from The Animals in that Country.]\\n04:50- Reads “At the tourist centre in Boston”.\\n06:48- Introduces “The Green Man” [INDEX: dedicated to the Boston Strangler; from   unknown source.]\\n06:56- Reads “The Green Man”.\\n08:03- Reads “A fortification”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country]\\n09:17- Introduces “The landlady”. [INDEX: dedicated to Atwood’s landlady; from The Animals in that Country.]\\n09:29- Reads “The landlady”.\\n10:47- Reads “A foundling”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n11:41- Reads “Untitled”.\\n12:58- Introduces “Chronology”. [INDEX: written in a paranoid state of mind; from unknown source.]\\n13:06- Reads “Chronology”.\\n14:39- Introduces “Backdrop addresses cowboy”. [INDEX: U.S.A.]\\n14:50- Reads “Backdrop addresses cowboy”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n16:36- Reads “A voice”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n17:40- Introduces “Elegy for giant tortoises”. [INDEX: South Pacific Island as airstrip; from The Animals in that Country.]\\n17:59- Reads “Elegy for giant tortoises”.\\n19:19- Reads “It’s dangerous to read newspapers”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that        Country.]\\n20:49- Reads “I was reading a scientific article”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n22:25- Reads “The reincarnation of Captain Cook”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that      Country.]\\n23:44- End of Atwood’s Reading.\\n23:49- CUT in recording.\\n23:58- Roy Kiyooka introduces Alden Nowlan (recording starts mid-introduction). [INDEX: Journalist from the Maritimes, with wife and son.]\\n24:26- Alden Nowlan introduces the reading. [INDEX: shortened poems, poems for reading.]\\n25:19- Introduces “Poem for the Rich Carlton”. [INDEX: bad poem, written upon arrival in Montreal, egotism of poet, audience.]\\n26:06- Reads “Poem for the Rich Carlton”.\\n26:30- Explains “Poem for the Rich Carlton”. [INDEX: crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral.]\\n26:43- Introduces “I, Icarus”. [INDEX: from new book, Bread Wine and Salt, published by Carter at $3.50.]\\n27:15- Reads “I, Icarus”.\\n28:34- Reads “Sailors” [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n30:06- Introduces “The Cinnamon Bears”. [INDEX: animal cooking, turn of the century, New Brunswick, touring side-show, fortune tellers, monkey, organ grinders, strolling pyres, wandering minstrels, advent of radio and television, Canada, United States, trained bears, found poem, creative, transcription of a conversation, northern New Brunswick, form of poetry; from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n32:30- Reads “The Cinnamon Bears”.\\n33:21- Reads “Britain Street, St. John, New Brunswick”. [INDEX: published as “Britain     Street” in Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n34:22- Introduces “The Secret Life”. [INDEX: found poem, maybe not a poem, serious illness, doctor’s office, Confessions magazines called Sacred Life, crazy poetry; from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n35:37- Reads “Secret Life”.\\n36:57- Reads “In Our Time” [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n40:51- Reads “The Changeling” [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n41:49- Reads “The Hollow Men”. [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n42:38- Introduces \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick.\\\" [INDEX: atmosphere of New Brunswick; from   Bread, Wine and Salt.].]\\n43:26- Reads \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick.\\\"\\n44:36- Reads “Every Man Owes God a Death”. [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n46:41- Introduces “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner”. [INDEX: title, from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n46:48- Reads “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner”.\\n48:23- Introduces “In the Operating Room”. [INDEX: serious illness the previous year, from Bread, Wine and Salt.].]\\n48:38- Reads “In the Operating Room”.\\n51:20- Introduces “For Jamol Barudi, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967”. [INDEX: political      poem, human poem, television debates, United Nations, Middle East Crisis,    dehumanization, bigoted speech.]\\n53:21- Reads “For Jamol Barudi, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on    the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967”.\\n56:26- Reads “Fireworks”.\\n57:34- Reads “Two Poems for the Nova Scotia Department of Highways”.\\n59:31- Introduces “State Visit”. [INDEX: dehumanization of politics, apotheosis of world     leaders into a symbol, abstract terms, emotion.]       \\n1:00:27- Reads “State Visit”.\\n1:01:27- RECORDING ENDS (suddenly).\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1264","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":["Barbara Howes at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 3 November 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Barbara Howes Poetry Reading Nov 3, 1967\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box. \"RT 521\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box. \"Howes Poetry Nov 3/67\" written on sticker on the reel. \"Barbara Howes 3/11/67 I068-11-024\" also written on the spine of the tape's box"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Howes, Barbara"],"creator_names_search":["Howes, Barbara"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/38160442\",\"name\":\"Howes, Barbara\",\"dates\":\"1914-1996\",\"notes\":\"American poet, short story writer, essayist, editor and translator Barbara Howes was born in New York in 1914, and adopted into a family in Boston. She enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont before moving to New York City upon her graduation. Howes then worked as an editor of Chimera: A Literary Magazine between 1944 and 1947. She married poet William Jay Smith, and they lived in England and Italy for a short while. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1948, named The Undersea Farmer (Banyan Press), which was followed by In the Cold Country (Bonaci & Saul in association with Grove Press, 1954), both of which drew critical acclaim and praise. She then published Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966), The Blue Garden (Wesleyan University Press, 1972) and A Private Signal: Poems New and Selected (Wesleyan University Press, 1977). Howes divorced in the 60’s and traveled to the Caribbean, which inspired her to edit two anthologies of Caribbean and Latin American writing: From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean (Macmillan, 1966) and The Eye of the Heart: Short Stories from Latin America (Bobbs-Merrill, 1973). Howes also edited 23 Modern Stories, (Vintage, 1963), The Sea-Green Horse with her son Gregory Jay Smith (Macmillan, 1970), The Road Commissioner and Other Stories (Stinehour Press, 1983). She published two final collections of poetry, Moving (Elysian Press, 1983) and The Collected Poems of Barbara Howes, 1945-1990 (University of Arkansas Press, 1995), which was nominated for the 1995 National Book Award. Her poetry can be found in dozens of periodicals and literary magazines. Barbara Howes died at the age of 81 in Pownal, Vermont in 1996.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"contributors_names_search":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Hoffman, Stanton\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"Series_organizer_name":["Hoffman, Stanton"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Ampex\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"Tape\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 11 3\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written three times on the reel and tape's box\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Barbara Howes reads from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966), and From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean, (Macmillan, 1966) as well as some poems from unknown sources."],"contents":["barbara_howes_i086-11-024.mp3\n\nStanton Hoffman\n00:00:00\nThe reading this evening is by Miss Barbara Howes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4858990[. Miss Barbara Howes was born in Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100] and educated at Bennington College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q817902]. She has published four volumes of poems: The Undersea Farmer, which was published in 1948 by the Banyan Press; In the Cold Country, which was was published by Bonaci and Saul in cooperation with Grove Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3777164] in 1954, Light and Dark, which was published by Wellesley University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49205] Press in 1959, and the recent Looking up at Leaves, which was published by Knopf [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1431868] in 1966 and which was nominated for the National Book Awards. She has been the editor of a volume of writings of the Carribean which was published by MacMillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217]in 1966 and Twenty-three Modern Stories published in 1963 by Vintage Books [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3560313]. In 1949, she won the Bess Hokin Prize of Poetry Magazine, in 1955 she held a Guggenheim Fellowship [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1316544], and in 1957, she won the Brandeis Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals, such as Harper's Bazaar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q654606], New World Writing [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7012606], Poetry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7207482], Suani Review, New Republic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1329873], and so forth. And next week in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], Miss Howes will be reading as part of series, or brothers, as part of reading, as part of a reading by fifteen or so other poets, as part of a Poets for Peace, sponsored by the Compassionate Art of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Barbara Howes. \n \nAudience\n00:01:48\nApplause.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:02:17\nThank you very much, Mr. Hoffman, I'm delighted to be here. If you can't hear me, raise your hands or let me know by some other device. Is this a microphone or does this have to do with this machine? Well I'll try to be clear. I thought rather than read a kind of segmented, like a string of sausages, series of poems, going on and on and on, which gives one very little hope that it'll ever end, it'd be better to say that I'm going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that would be...and so I've arranged the poems in this way, so you will have hope that I won't continue forever, which has been done, in the annals of poetry. I wanted to write, read some poems that have to do with place, because I've thought a lot about the effect of place on poems, and to what extent the place you're in influences what you write. One's imagination would never become extended in certain directions if you hadn't happened to live in a certain place. I was very conscious of that when we lived in Florence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2044] for two years and when my older boy was born, and subsequently for another two years. And I would never--because we--I would never possibly have been able to think, I mean this is obvious in a way, but it gets more complicated, of...Some of the imaginative happenings that occurred would, could never have happened, well in Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q771] or anywhere else, and also even in, I mean in Vermont [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16551], where we now live, have been profoundly affected by the section of the mountain which we life. And also we spent some time in Haiti [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q790], and so on and so forth, so this first group will be mostly poems that have a lot to do with experiences that have happened because of a particular place. The first poem is an Italian poem, or written out of Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], called \"Primavera\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:04:48\nReads \"Primavera\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:06:19\nThis is called \"The Triumph of Love\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:06:27\nReads \"The Triumph of Love\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:07:18\nThen for a summer, we lived in a little town in the south of France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], Le Lavandou [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q736462], and it was a very good summer all in all, although, except we had no car and a very big house with only about one room on a floor. So the baby was on the top floor, and the kitchen, it's one burner, was on, you know, it's four floors down. And I would rush up and pick him up and then put him back in his bed, and then rush down and light the burner, and then rush up and get him, and then rush down. So it was difficult in some ways. But one of our entertainments, or entertainments that seemed to certainly entertain friends was to go to an island off Toulon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44160] called Ile Levant [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q292516], which is half a naval base and half a colony. And you could go out there in a small--it took about an hour in a small boat, and one time we stood on the dock not quite sure what to do next. Another person who'd come in the boat with us in very high heels and an enormous black hat removed everything else and ran up the hill. [Audience laughter]. So this is “L'Ile du Levant, the Nudist Colony”.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:08:55\nReads \"L'Ile du Levant: the Nudist Colony\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:10:59\nNow living as I do in the country in Vermont, there comes that terrible time in November when all the hunters from the cities come rushing up with their pint bottles and their confusion and they lounge around half the time sitting in cars and shooting vaguely at anything. So I used to try to write an anti-hunter poem every fall,I don't know about this year, I haven't got an idea yet, but I may see if I can do something. \"In Autumn\". Excuse me. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:11:37\nReads \"In Autumn\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:12:29\nAnd this is another on the same subject.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:12:39\nReads [\"Landscape, Deer Season\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:13:16\nThis is another Pownal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1940266] poem, it's really two things put together. It's called \"A Night Picture of Pownal”, for JFK. And I stood one evening in very bright moonlight looking out at the shadow of the apple tree across the road on the snow and it made an impression on me, I began to take notes in the dark as best I could on it. And then later, shortly after that, for the death of Kennedy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9696], then I saw the poem wasn't, it was inadequate, and I somehow put, wove those two things together.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:14:06\nReads \"A Night Picture of Pownal\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:15:19\nAnother Vermont poem or Pownal poem on a more cheerful note. \"Town Meeting Tuesday\". Town meeting is the first Tuesday in March, and many of the people who have stayed in all winter then emerge like woodchucks from their houses.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:15:45\nReads \"Town Meeting Tuesday\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:16:22\nNow, we spent two or three Easter vacations in the islands of the Caribbean [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q664609], we went to Guadeloupe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17012] once for two weeks. And most of the time I find I write fish poems when I go down to the islands but this one is about a dead toucan in Guadeloupe. There was a little, well, a strange little zoo at the small hotel where we stayed and we would look at these creatures and one day I went and there was the toucan and it had fallen over dead. Somehow, it made an impression on me. \"Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:17:04\nReads \"Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:17:55\nI hope you can hear--can you hear me? In the back rows? We also spent some time in Haiti, earlier, and I'd like to read a couple of poems from that period. This was a thing--it could perfectly well have happened elsewhere but it was the kind of thing that, after we lived in Haiti for a while, I could see very clearly, would definitely have to happen there. There was a young man of about nineteen, very talented as a painter, and did, had just tried out through the art centre there, and doing really quite good and interesting work. And he needed a job so he could buy paints and paper, and anyway just to exist. So an American woman had two small boys and he said he could look after them and play ball and, you know, keep them out of trouble and so on and so forth. And she said, “Can you swim?” And he said, “Oh yes, of course.” So the boys dove into the pool because they had been swimming, as most American boys do, for years. And he dove into the pool, and didn't come up. And nobody was around except some workers who were fixing the garden. But like everybody, almost, in Haiti, they didn't want to get involved, because then the police might ask them questions, and then at the end there's trouble, so the poor young man just died, because the little boys couldn't do anything, and nobody else did anything. And so that made an impression on me. But it's the kind of unfortunate tragedy, due to his saying that he could swim and he couldn't, just because he was so desperately anxious to get the job, and he just made himself believe he could swim. Just a complete waste. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:20:10\nReads [\"In a Prospect of Flowers\" from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:21:10\n\"Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34261]\". This, there was a little sign on a tree we used to pass every day and then I thought of this poem.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:21:19\nReads \"Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:21:59\nThere's one other. Oh yes. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:22:06\nReads [\"On a Bougainvillea Vine at the Summer Palace\" from Light and Dark]. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:23:36\nWell, this is one of the fishing poems from the, from Barbados [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q244], from the islands.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:23:46\nReads [\"Out Fishing\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:24:58\nThis poem is written in one foot, it's just an experiment to see what would happen. I, you know, diameter's two feet, or is it, trimeter is three feet. And tetrameter is four, and pentameter is five. One foot means you just have one sound, like that, and it's just, was a technical experiment, but I might as well read it. And it's also another fish poem. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:25:32\nReads [\"The Crane Chub--Barbados\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:26:18\nHere's a fish, well, a jellyfish poem, from Texas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1439]. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:26:32\nReads [\"On Galveston Beach\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:27:32\nAnd then there's the last Caribbean poem, “A Letter from the Caribbean”. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:27:45\nReads “A Letter From The Caribbean” [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:28:59\nI've thought I would read just a few poems by modern poets that I like, they're not by any means their strongest or anything, but they're just ones I'm attached to. The first I cut out of the paper once, a long time ago. It's by an African schoolgirl, and I think it's very imaginative. It's awkward but it's really quite wonderful.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:29:38\nReads unnamed poem by an unknown author. \n\nBarbara Howes\n00:29:53\nThis is an early poem of Wystan Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] that he kept out of, he didn't use in his book and then he printed again in a recent edition. I think it's technically as awfully, it's light verse but it's also very serious underneath, as good light verse can me. Poem. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:30:15\nReads [\"To You Simply\"] by W.H. Auden [published in The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:30:57\nAnd this is a, I think a simply charming poem by Richard Wilbur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1333582]. It gets...it's about the Piazza di Spagna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15124814], the Spanish Steps in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q220], and it gets the feeling of someone gliding, really gliding down that long, gorgeous stairway. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:31:22\nReads [\"Piazza Di Spagna, Early Morning\"] by Richard Wilbur.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:32:11\nThis is a poem by Louise Bogan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q516180], who's a very well known American poet, a very recent one that she, that came out in The New Yorker [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217305], this summer, I think.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:32:27\nReads [\"Masked Woman’s Song\"] by Louise Bogan.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:32:51\nIt's a difficult poem, might read that again, if you don't mind. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:32:56\nRe \"Masked Woman’s Song\" by Louise Bogan.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:33:17\nAnd then, the last, oh, oh that's right, I thought I would read a poem by Derek Walcott [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q132701], which I used in this Carribean Anthology. It's mostly short stories but I put a poem in front of each language section. This is by Derek Walcott who's a young poet from St. Lucia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q760], called \"Missing the Sea\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:33:48\nReads \"Missing the Sea\" by Derek Walcott [from The Castaway and collected in From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:34:31\nIt's quite a difficult poem but you...he had a book out, oh, can't remember the name, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3067003] a couple of years ago, in the United States. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] And the last of this group is a poem that I've heard about a hundred thousand times, but it still gives me a chill. It's called \"American Primitive\" by William Jay Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4355736].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:35:06\nReads \"American Primitive\" by William Jay Smith.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:35:47\nI still get a chill! Now, I don't know whether you prefer to have an intermission, and get up and smoke, or prefer for me to continue, what would you think, Stanton?\n \nUnknown\n00:36:06\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:36:08\nHave an intermission? So people can...breathe?\n \nUnknown\n00:36:17\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nUnknown\n00:36:23\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:36:23\nThe problem is the third group of poems, I'd read some poems that are more or less to and about people, and some new poems, although I've noticed that most of my new poems are very depressing, and this is not a good note on which to end, so I'll maybe not read them. I've been very much interested in old French forms, the trielle, the villanelle, the rondeau and rondelle, and ballade and so on and so forth, and they're very difficult but they're fascinating to try, at least. And this is in the form of a trielle. And the lines have to be repeated in a certain fashion which gives you very little room in which to maneuver. This is called \"Early Supper\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:37:14\nReads \"Early Supper\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:38:10\nThis is a poem I wrote for W.H. Auden for his fiftieth birthday, which was several years ago, now. I think actually, he was last year, sixty.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:38:21\nReads [\"To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday\" from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:39:22\nI wrote three poems at that point about winds, and I'll just read one of them. The winds have names in Italy and they almost become like familiar characters. The sirocco, when it blows, is so terrible in its effect on people that if there're crimes of passion, the people generally get off with a lighter sentence, because you sell, well, the sirocco. Naturally you can throttle your wife during that period. This is about the mistral, which, if it blows for three days, one survives, if it blows for six days it's simply awful. If it blows for nine days you've probably already gone out of your head. It's a very wild wind who rushes down the Rhone Valley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2747791] and just blows everything away. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:40:22\nReads [\"Mistral\" from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:41:23\nThis is another one, an old French form, the rondeau, which again makes its, has its own complications because of the repetition of lines. And what interested me to do was to try to use, not the usual subject of the rondeaux but to write about, as in this case, the death of a Vermont farm woman, instead of just doing some sort of chittery-chattery business that generally is what people use a rondeau for. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:42:03\nReads [\"Death of a Vermont Farm Woman\" from Light and Dark].  \n\nBarbara Howes\n00:42:51\nThis is a poem about a very disagreeable character, a thirteenth-century tyrant called Ugolino [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q706003], who met his death from being thrown into prison to die of hunger. He is reputed to have attempted to eat his sons, who were there with him. I must say, it's not an agreeable picture, but I don't think there's been much improvement in that part of mankind. Dante [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067] writes of him in the 33rd Canto of the Inferno [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4509219]. This poem is called \"The Critic\" and, I must say, critics have disliked it heartily. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:43:28\nReads \"The Critic\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:44:23\nThis is a, an odd combination about a person and about Pownal, I guess. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:44:32\nReads [\"Running into Edgar Bellemare\" from Looking Up at Leaves]. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:45:27\nThis is a poem I wrote for Katherine Anne Porter [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q236958] on the occasion of her 75th birthday. \"For Katherine Anne Porter\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:45:39\nReads “For Katherine Anne Porter” [from Looking Up at Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:46:15\nIt's quite marvelous, those collective nouns, who would know that you call a lot of heron a siege of herons and so forth. I'll read that again, because it really is, I was very lucky the way it worked out.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:46:31\nReads line from “For Katherine Anne Porter”.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:47:06\nThis is called \"Looking up at Leaves\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:47:14\nReads \"Looking up at Leaves\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:48:09\nI'd like to read one New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389] poem, this is a newer poem, I haven't read this before, I guess.\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:48:16\nReads [\"Still Life: New England\", published later in The Blue Garden].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:49:34\nI'll read three more poems, I think. This is \"A Rune for C.\"--‘C.’ was a dog of ours. \n \nBarbara Howes\n00:49:51\nReads \"A Rune for C.\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:50:36\nActually, I had just often, I'd made up a good luck thing that seeing the caboose was good luck, but then I found out that this has been an old piece of, well, I don't know, country folklore, that to see the caboose, it means luck. I want to read one poem about my son, and then one short one. \"Portrait of the Boy as Artist\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:51:18\nReads \"Portrait of the Boy as Artist\" [from Light and Dark].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:52:11\nOh, I did want to read one that I'll read next week in New York. This poem is a, this is a rondelle, which is another old French form. And I'm obviously not using it for the usual subject, in this case. It's arranged about the idea, really, of a contrast of the use of space. \"Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:52:45\nReads \"Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:53:31\nAnd then one last poem on a more cheerful note. \"Leaning into Light\".\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:53:44\nReads \"Leaning into Light\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\n \nBarbara Howes\n00:54:21.\nThank you very much. \n \nAudience\n00:54:23\nApplause.\n \nStanton Hoffman\n00:54:38\nOne announcement, the next reading will be by Charles Reznikoff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065911], and that's Friday, the same time, November 17th. \n\nUnknown\n00:54:46\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nEND\n00:54:57\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, Looking Up At Leaves was published in Poetry Magazine. The previous year, Howes edited From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1966.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nDirect connections between Barbara Howes and Sir George Williams University are unknown at this time. Howes’ position as an important American poet, though her work was not often acknowledged publicly, made her an ideal candidate for the Reading Series.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Grosholz, Emily. \\\"Howes, Barbara\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/light-and-dark-poems/oclc/1150226992&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Howes, Barbara. Light and Dark. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/looking-up-at-leaves-poems/oclc/1150237234&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Howes, Barbara. Looking Up at Leaves. New York: Knopf, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-the-green-antilles-writings-of-the-caribbean/oclc/1140475941&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Howes, Barbara. (ed) From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean. New York: Macmillan, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/25/us/barbara-howes-poet-and-editor-dies-at-81.html?pagewanted=1\",\"citation\":\"Pace, Eric. “Barbara Howes, Poet and Editor, Dies at 81”. New York Times. February 25, 1996. New York Edition: Obituary, page 139.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3307\",\"citation\":\"“Barbara Howes (1914-1996)”. Poetry Foundation. Poet Biography. Poetry Foundation: 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 Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"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. 14 September 1967, page 15. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Howes, Barbara. Looking Up at Leaves. Poetry Magazine. Volume 109, January 1967, Page 270.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Howes, Barbara\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed). Phillip W. Leininger (rev.). Oxford University Press 1995.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548818624512,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0024_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0024_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Barbara Howes 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_0024_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0024_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Barbara Howes 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_0024_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0024_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Barbara Howes 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_0024_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0024_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Barbara Howes 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/barbara_howes_i086-11-024.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"barbara_howes_i086-11-024.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:54:57\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"131.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Stanton Hoffman\\n00:00:00\\nThe reading this evening is by Miss Barbara Howes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4858990[. Miss Barbara Howes was born in Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100] and educated at Bennington College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q817902]. She has published four volumes of poems: The Undersea Farmer, which was published in 1948 by the Banyan Press; In the Cold Country, which was was published by Bonaci and Saul in cooperation with Grove Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3777164] in 1954, Light and Dark, which was published by Wellesley University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49205] Press in 1959, and the recent Looking up at Leaves, which was published by Knopf [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1431868] in 1966 and which was nominated for the National Book Awards. She has been the editor of a volume of writings of the Carribean which was published by MacMillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217]in 1966 and Twenty-three Modern Stories published in 1963 by Vintage Books [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3560313]. In 1949, she won the Bess Hokin Prize of Poetry Magazine, in 1955 she held a Guggenheim Fellowship [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1316544], and in 1957, she won the Brandeis Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals, such as Harper's Bazaar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q654606], New World Writing [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7012606], Poetry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7207482], Suani Review, New Republic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1329873], and so forth. And next week in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], Miss Howes will be reading as part of series, or brothers, as part of reading, as part of a reading by fifteen or so other poets, as part of a Poets for Peace, sponsored by the Compassionate Art of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Barbara Howes. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:01:48\\nApplause.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:02:17\\nThank you very much, Mr. Hoffman, I'm delighted to be here. If you can't hear me, raise your hands or let me know by some other device. Is this a microphone or does this have to do with this machine? Well I'll try to be clear. I thought rather than read a kind of segmented, like a string of sausages, series of poems, going on and on and on, which gives one very little hope that it'll ever end, it'd be better to say that I'm going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that would be...and so I've arranged the poems in this way, so you will have hope that I won't continue forever, which has been done, in the annals of poetry. I wanted to write, read some poems that have to do with place, because I've thought a lot about the effect of place on poems, and to what extent the place you're in influences what you write. One's imagination would never become extended in certain directions if you hadn't happened to live in a certain place. I was very conscious of that when we lived in Florence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2044] for two years and when my older boy was born, and subsequently for another two years. And I would never--because we--I would never possibly have been able to think, I mean this is obvious in a way, but it gets more complicated, of...Some of the imaginative happenings that occurred would, could never have happened, well in Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q771] or anywhere else, and also even in, I mean in Vermont [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16551], where we now live, have been profoundly affected by the section of the mountain which we life. And also we spent some time in Haiti [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q790], and so on and so forth, so this first group will be mostly poems that have a lot to do with experiences that have happened because of a particular place. The first poem is an Italian poem, or written out of Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], called \\\"Primavera\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:04:48\\nReads \\\"Primavera\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:06:19\\nThis is called \\\"The Triumph of Love\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:06:27\\nReads \\\"The Triumph of Love\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:07:18\\nThen for a summer, we lived in a little town in the south of France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], Le Lavandou [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q736462], and it was a very good summer all in all, although, except we had no car and a very big house with only about one room on a floor. So the baby was on the top floor, and the kitchen, it's one burner, was on, you know, it's four floors down. And I would rush up and pick him up and then put him back in his bed, and then rush down and light the burner, and then rush up and get him, and then rush down. So it was difficult in some ways. But one of our entertainments, or entertainments that seemed to certainly entertain friends was to go to an island off Toulon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44160] called Ile Levant [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q292516], which is half a naval base and half a colony. And you could go out there in a small--it took about an hour in a small boat, and one time we stood on the dock not quite sure what to do next. Another person who'd come in the boat with us in very high heels and an enormous black hat removed everything else and ran up the hill. [Audience laughter]. So this is “L'Ile du Levant, the Nudist Colony”.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:08:55\\nReads \\\"L'Ile du Levant: the Nudist Colony\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:10:59\\nNow living as I do in the country in Vermont, there comes that terrible time in November when all the hunters from the cities come rushing up with their pint bottles and their confusion and they lounge around half the time sitting in cars and shooting vaguely at anything. So I used to try to write an anti-hunter poem every fall,I don't know about this year, I haven't got an idea yet, but I may see if I can do something. \\\"In Autumn\\\". Excuse me. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:11:37\\nReads \\\"In Autumn\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:12:29\\nAnd this is another on the same subject.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:12:39\\nReads [\\\"Landscape, Deer Season\\\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:13:16\\nThis is another Pownal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1940266] poem, it's really two things put together. It's called \\\"A Night Picture of Pownal”, for JFK. And I stood one evening in very bright moonlight looking out at the shadow of the apple tree across the road on the snow and it made an impression on me, I began to take notes in the dark as best I could on it. And then later, shortly after that, for the death of Kennedy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9696], then I saw the poem wasn't, it was inadequate, and I somehow put, wove those two things together.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:14:06\\nReads \\\"A Night Picture of Pownal\\\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:15:19\\nAnother Vermont poem or Pownal poem on a more cheerful note. \\\"Town Meeting Tuesday\\\". Town meeting is the first Tuesday in March, and many of the people who have stayed in all winter then emerge like woodchucks from their houses.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:15:45\\nReads \\\"Town Meeting Tuesday\\\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:16:22\\nNow, we spent two or three Easter vacations in the islands of the Caribbean [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q664609], we went to Guadeloupe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17012] once for two weeks. And most of the time I find I write fish poems when I go down to the islands but this one is about a dead toucan in Guadeloupe. There was a little, well, a strange little zoo at the small hotel where we stayed and we would look at these creatures and one day I went and there was the toucan and it had fallen over dead. Somehow, it made an impression on me. \\\"Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:17:04\\nReads \\\"Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe\\\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:17:55\\nI hope you can hear--can you hear me? In the back rows? We also spent some time in Haiti, earlier, and I'd like to read a couple of poems from that period. This was a thing--it could perfectly well have happened elsewhere but it was the kind of thing that, after we lived in Haiti for a while, I could see very clearly, would definitely have to happen there. There was a young man of about nineteen, very talented as a painter, and did, had just tried out through the art centre there, and doing really quite good and interesting work. And he needed a job so he could buy paints and paper, and anyway just to exist. So an American woman had two small boys and he said he could look after them and play ball and, you know, keep them out of trouble and so on and so forth. And she said, “Can you swim?” And he said, “Oh yes, of course.” So the boys dove into the pool because they had been swimming, as most American boys do, for years. And he dove into the pool, and didn't come up. And nobody was around except some workers who were fixing the garden. But like everybody, almost, in Haiti, they didn't want to get involved, because then the police might ask them questions, and then at the end there's trouble, so the poor young man just died, because the little boys couldn't do anything, and nobody else did anything. And so that made an impression on me. But it's the kind of unfortunate tragedy, due to his saying that he could swim and he couldn't, just because he was so desperately anxious to get the job, and he just made himself believe he could swim. Just a complete waste. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:20:10\\nReads [\\\"In a Prospect of Flowers\\\" from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:21:10\\n\\\"Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34261]\\\". This, there was a little sign on a tree we used to pass every day and then I thought of this poem.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:21:19\\nReads \\\"Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:21:59\\nThere's one other. Oh yes. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:22:06\\nReads [\\\"On a Bougainvillea Vine at the Summer Palace\\\" from Light and Dark]. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:23:36\\nWell, this is one of the fishing poems from the, from Barbados [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q244], from the islands.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:23:46\\nReads [\\\"Out Fishing\\\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:24:58\\nThis poem is written in one foot, it's just an experiment to see what would happen. I, you know, diameter's two feet, or is it, trimeter is three feet. And tetrameter is four, and pentameter is five. One foot means you just have one sound, like that, and it's just, was a technical experiment, but I might as well read it. And it's also another fish poem. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:25:32\\nReads [\\\"The Crane Chub--Barbados\\\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:26:18\\nHere's a fish, well, a jellyfish poem, from Texas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1439]. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:26:32\\nReads [\\\"On Galveston Beach\\\" from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:27:32\\nAnd then there's the last Caribbean poem, “A Letter from the Caribbean”. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:27:45\\nReads “A Letter From The Caribbean” [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:28:59\\nI've thought I would read just a few poems by modern poets that I like, they're not by any means their strongest or anything, but they're just ones I'm attached to. The first I cut out of the paper once, a long time ago. It's by an African schoolgirl, and I think it's very imaginative. It's awkward but it's really quite wonderful.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:29:38\\nReads unnamed poem by an unknown author. \\n\\nBarbara Howes\\n00:29:53\\nThis is an early poem of Wystan Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] that he kept out of, he didn't use in his book and then he printed again in a recent edition. I think it's technically as awfully, it's light verse but it's also very serious underneath, as good light verse can me. Poem. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:30:15\\nReads [\\\"To You Simply\\\"] by W.H. Auden [published in The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:30:57\\nAnd this is a, I think a simply charming poem by Richard Wilbur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1333582]. It gets...it's about the Piazza di Spagna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15124814], the Spanish Steps in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q220], and it gets the feeling of someone gliding, really gliding down that long, gorgeous stairway. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:31:22\\nReads [\\\"Piazza Di Spagna, Early Morning\\\"] by Richard Wilbur.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:32:11\\nThis is a poem by Louise Bogan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q516180], who's a very well known American poet, a very recent one that she, that came out in The New Yorker [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217305], this summer, I think.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:32:27\\nReads [\\\"Masked Woman’s Song\\\"] by Louise Bogan.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:32:51\\nIt's a difficult poem, might read that again, if you don't mind. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:32:56\\nRe \\\"Masked Woman’s Song\\\" by Louise Bogan.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:33:17\\nAnd then, the last, oh, oh that's right, I thought I would read a poem by Derek Walcott [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q132701], which I used in this Carribean Anthology. It's mostly short stories but I put a poem in front of each language section. This is by Derek Walcott who's a young poet from St. Lucia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q760], called \\\"Missing the Sea\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:33:48\\nReads \\\"Missing the Sea\\\" by Derek Walcott [from The Castaway and collected in From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:34:31\\nIt's quite a difficult poem but you...he had a book out, oh, can't remember the name, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3067003] a couple of years ago, in the United States. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] And the last of this group is a poem that I've heard about a hundred thousand times, but it still gives me a chill. It's called \\\"American Primitive\\\" by William Jay Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4355736].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:35:06\\nReads \\\"American Primitive\\\" by William Jay Smith.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:35:47\\nI still get a chill! Now, I don't know whether you prefer to have an intermission, and get up and smoke, or prefer for me to continue, what would you think, Stanton?\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:36:06\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:36:08\\nHave an intermission? So people can...breathe?\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:36:17\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:36:23\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:36:23\\nThe problem is the third group of poems, I'd read some poems that are more or less to and about people, and some new poems, although I've noticed that most of my new poems are very depressing, and this is not a good note on which to end, so I'll maybe not read them. I've been very much interested in old French forms, the trielle, the villanelle, the rondeau and rondelle, and ballade and so on and so forth, and they're very difficult but they're fascinating to try, at least. And this is in the form of a trielle. And the lines have to be repeated in a certain fashion which gives you very little room in which to maneuver. This is called \\\"Early Supper\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:37:14\\nReads \\\"Early Supper\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:38:10\\nThis is a poem I wrote for W.H. Auden for his fiftieth birthday, which was several years ago, now. I think actually, he was last year, sixty.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:38:21\\nReads [\\\"To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday\\\" from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:39:22\\nI wrote three poems at that point about winds, and I'll just read one of them. The winds have names in Italy and they almost become like familiar characters. The sirocco, when it blows, is so terrible in its effect on people that if there're crimes of passion, the people generally get off with a lighter sentence, because you sell, well, the sirocco. Naturally you can throttle your wife during that period. This is about the mistral, which, if it blows for three days, one survives, if it blows for six days it's simply awful. If it blows for nine days you've probably already gone out of your head. It's a very wild wind who rushes down the Rhone Valley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2747791] and just blows everything away. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:40:22\\nReads [\\\"Mistral\\\" from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:41:23\\nThis is another one, an old French form, the rondeau, which again makes its, has its own complications because of the repetition of lines. And what interested me to do was to try to use, not the usual subject of the rondeaux but to write about, as in this case, the death of a Vermont farm woman, instead of just doing some sort of chittery-chattery business that generally is what people use a rondeau for. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:42:03\\nReads [\\\"Death of a Vermont Farm Woman\\\" from Light and Dark].  \\n\\nBarbara Howes\\n00:42:51\\nThis is a poem about a very disagreeable character, a thirteenth-century tyrant called Ugolino [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q706003], who met his death from being thrown into prison to die of hunger. He is reputed to have attempted to eat his sons, who were there with him. I must say, it's not an agreeable picture, but I don't think there's been much improvement in that part of mankind. Dante [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067] writes of him in the 33rd Canto of the Inferno [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4509219]. This poem is called \\\"The Critic\\\" and, I must say, critics have disliked it heartily. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:43:28\\nReads \\\"The Critic\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:44:23\\nThis is a, an odd combination about a person and about Pownal, I guess. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:44:32\\nReads [\\\"Running into Edgar Bellemare\\\" from Looking Up at Leaves]. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:45:27\\nThis is a poem I wrote for Katherine Anne Porter [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q236958] on the occasion of her 75th birthday. \\\"For Katherine Anne Porter\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:45:39\\nReads “For Katherine Anne Porter” [from Looking Up at Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:46:15\\nIt's quite marvelous, those collective nouns, who would know that you call a lot of heron a siege of herons and so forth. I'll read that again, because it really is, I was very lucky the way it worked out.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:46:31\\nReads line from “For Katherine Anne Porter”.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:47:06\\nThis is called \\\"Looking up at Leaves\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:47:14\\nReads \\\"Looking up at Leaves\\\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:48:09\\nI'd like to read one New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389] poem, this is a newer poem, I haven't read this before, I guess.\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:48:16\\nReads [\\\"Still Life: New England\\\", published later in The Blue Garden].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:49:34\\nI'll read three more poems, I think. This is \\\"A Rune for C.\\\"--‘C.’ was a dog of ours. \\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:49:51\\nReads \\\"A Rune for C.\\\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:50:36\\nActually, I had just often, I'd made up a good luck thing that seeing the caboose was good luck, but then I found out that this has been an old piece of, well, I don't know, country folklore, that to see the caboose, it means luck. I want to read one poem about my son, and then one short one. \\\"Portrait of the Boy as Artist\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:51:18\\nReads \\\"Portrait of the Boy as Artist\\\" [from Light and Dark].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:52:11\\nOh, I did want to read one that I'll read next week in New York. This poem is a, this is a rondelle, which is another old French form. And I'm obviously not using it for the usual subject, in this case. It's arranged about the idea, really, of a contrast of the use of space. \\\"Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:52:45\\nReads \\\"Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:53:31\\nAnd then one last poem on a more cheerful note. \\\"Leaning into Light\\\".\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:53:44\\nReads \\\"Leaning into Light\\\" [from Looking Up At Leaves].\\n \\nBarbara Howes\\n00:54:21.\\nThank you very much. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:54:23\\nApplause.\\n \\nStanton Hoffman\\n00:54:38\\nOne announcement, the next reading will be by Charles Reznikoff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065911], and that's Friday, the same time, November 17th. \\n\\nUnknown\\n00:54:46\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nEND\\n00:54:57\\n\",\"notes\":\"Barbara Howes reads from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966), and From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean, (Macmillan, 1966) as well as some poems from unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00- Stanton Hoffman introduces Barbara Howes [INDEX: Boston, Bennington College, volumes of poetry: The Undersea Farmer (Banyan Press, 1948), In the Cold Country (Bonaci & Saul (Grove Press), 1954), Light and Dark (Wellesley University Press, 1959), Light and Dark (Knopf, 1966)- nominated for the National Book Award, editor of Caribbean writing (MacMillan, 1966), Twenty-Three Modern Stories (Vintage, 1963), won Bess Hawkin Prize of Poetry Magazine (1949), Guggenheim Fellowship (1955), Brandeis Poetry Award (1957), Harper's Bazaar, New World Writing, Poetry, Suani Review, New Republic, reading in NYC Poets for Peace sponsored by the Compassionate Art of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.]\\n01:48- Barbara Howes introduces reading, and “Primavera”. [INDEX: Mr. Hoffman,  \\tmicrophone, recording ‘machine’, reading order, poetry readings, place poems, influences, imagination, Florence (Italy), first son, Massachusetts, Vermont, Haiti,   \\tmountain, Italian poem.]\\n04:48- Reads \\\"Primavera\\\"  [INDEX:  horse, sick, city, Florence, Italy, riding, catacomb, past, history, stone, journey, Giotto, Aphrodite, art, architecture.]\\n06:29- Introduces and reads “The Triumph of Love”.  [INDEX: Italy, city, Venice, art,   Veronese, sight, gaze, painting, palace, love; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University \\tPress, 1958)]\\n07:18- Introduces “L’Ile du Levant: The Nudist Colony”. [INDEX: La Bandue, town in the south of France, summer, car, house, baby, housewife, entertainment, island Toulon, Ile \\tle Bon, naval base, colony, small town, dock, nudist colony; from Light and Dark   (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n08:55- Reads “L’Ile du Levant: the Nudist Colony”. [INDEX: place, island, France, plants, cicadas, colony, nudist, vacation, display, clothes, body, skin, dusk]\\n10:59- Introduces “In Autumn”. [INDEX: Vermont, November, hunters, cities, pint bottles,  anti-hunter poem; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958)]\\n11:37- Reads \\\"In Autumn\\\"  [INDEX: place, Vermont, city, rural, country, hunter,       \\thunting, game, cars, guns, blood, body, red, male, stag.]\\n12:29- Reads “Landscape, Deer Season”  [INDEX: buck, gun, deer, hunting, body, blood, sun, country, place, Vermont, death; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]\\n13:16- Introduces “A Night Picture of Pownal for JFK”.  [INDEX Pownal poem, apple tree, snow, nighttime, death of Kennedy; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]\\n14:06- Reads “A Night Picture of Pownal, for JFK”. [INDEX:  place, night, Pownal, Kennedy, history, Matthew Brady, civil war, moon, sound, death, tree, sight, tragedy, stain.]\\n15:19- Introduces “Town Meeting, Tuesday”. [INDEX: Vermont poem, Parnell Poem, cheerful, town meeting, first Tuesday in March, winter, woodchucks; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]\\n15:45- Reads \\\"Town Meeting, Tuesday\\\"  [INDEX: place, Vermont, trees.]\\n16:22- Introduces  “Dead Toucan, Guadeloupe”. [INDEX: Easter vacations, Caribbean,          Guadeloupe, fish poems, islands, zoo, small hotel; ; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]\\n17:04- Reads “Dead Toucan, Guadeloupe”. [INDEX: place, Guadeloupe, nature, bird, toucan, death, animals.]\\n17:55- Introduces “In a Prospect of Flowers”. [INDEX: Haiti, young painter, American woman, children, drowning death, Haitian attitudes and politics, tragedy, job; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n20:10- Reads “In a Prospect of Flowers”. [INDEX:  place, Haiti, art, artist, picture, water, pool, death, drowning, Icarus, elegy, ideal.]\\n21:10- Introduces “Mirror Image, Port-au-Prince”. [INDEX: sign on a tree; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n21:19- Reads “Mirror Image, Port-au-Prince”. [INDEX: place, Haiti, mirror, makeup,       woman, hairdresser; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n21:59- Reads “On Bougainvillea Vine at the Summer Palace”.  [INDEX: place, Haiti, lizard, nature, animals, palace, couple, winter.]\\n23:36- Introduces “Out Fishing”. [INDEX: Barbados, fishing poems; from Looking up at       Leaves (Knopf, 1966).] \\n23:46- Reads  “Out Fishing”. [INDEX: place, Barbados, ocean, fishing, fish, boat, war]\\n24:58- Introduces “The Crane Chub, Barbados”. [INDEX: technical experiment, diameter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, one foot, one sound, fish poem; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]\\n25:32- Reads “The Crane Chub, Barbados”. [INDEX: place, Barbados, fish, ocean, chub, eating, food, lover, absence]\\n26:18- Introduces “On Galveston Beach”. [INDEX: Jellyfish poem, Texas; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]\\n26:32- Reads \\\"On Galveston Beach\\\"  [INDEX: place, Texas, Galveston Beach, ocean, beach, fish, jellyfish]\\n27:32- Introduces “A Letter from the Caribbean”. [INDEX:   Caribbean poem.]\\n27:45- Reads \\\"A Letter from the Caribbean\\\" [INDEX: place, Carribean, wind, air, nature, time, memory, remembrance.]\\n28:59- Introduces poem by Unknown author, first line “What a wonderful bird, the   \\tfraga” [Spelling unknown.] [INDEX: modern poets, poems Howes is attached to, poem   \\tcut out of newspaper, by an African schoolgirl; from unknown source.]\\n29:38- Reads “What a wonderful bird, the fraga” by unknown poet. [INDEX: nature, animal, bird, fraga.]\\n29:53- Introduces unknown poem, first line “For what is easy, for what though small” by    Wystan Auden. [INDEX: W.H. Auden, early poem, not published in his first edition,    \\tprinted in a recent edition, technical qualities, light verse; from Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 (Faber Press, 1966) by W.H. Auden.]\\n30:15- Reads unknown poem, first line “For what is easy, for what though small” by    Wystan Auden. [INDEX: word, heart, memory]\\n30:57- Introduces poem by Richard Wilbur “Piazza Di Espagna, Early Morning”. [INDEX: Spanish Steps in Rome, gliding down a stairway; from unknown source.]\\n31:22- Reads poem by Richard Wilbur “Piazza Di Espagna, Early Morning”.\\n32:11- Introduces poem by Louise Bogan “Masked Woman Song”. [INDEX: American poet, The New Yorker Magazine; from unknown source.]\\n32:27- Reads “Masked Woman Song” by Louise Bogan. [INDEX: sight, woman, man, face, mask, virtue, evil, beauty.]\\n32:51- Decides to re-read the poem [INDEX: poem difficult to read.]\\n33:56- Re-reads “Masked Woman Song” by Louise Bogan.\\n33:17- Introduces “Missing the Sea” by Derek Walcott. [INDEX: Caribbean Anthology, short stories, poem in front of language section, St. Lucia; from From the Green Antilles:     Writings of the Caribbean (MacMillan, 1966).]\\n33:48- Reads “Missing the Sea” by Derek Walcott. [INDEX: place, house, absence, sea, sound, dead.]\\n34:31- Explains “Missing the Sea”, introduces “American Primitive” by William J. Smith. [INDEX: difficult poem, Walcott’s book (perhaps Another Life 1966) published by Farrar,   Straus & Giroux, United States, William J. Smith; from unknown source.]\\n35:06- Reads “American Primitive” by William J. Smith. [INDEX: man, clothes, money,     America, father, daddy, dollar.]\\n35:47- Introduces intermission. [INDEX: chill from poem, Stanton (Hoffman).]\\n36:23- Cut made in tape.\\n36:23- Howe introduces third group of poems and “Early Supper”. [INDEX: poems to or about people, new poems as depressing, old French forms, trielle, villanelle, rondeau and rondelle, ballade, difficult but fascinating, trielle; from unknown source.]    \\n37:14- Reads “Early Supper”. [INDEX: genre, form, trielle, kitchen, autumn, children, eating, cooking, food, night.]\\n38:10- Introduces “To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday”. [INDEX: poem for W.H. Auden on his fiftieth birthday, sixtieth birthday last year; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan \\tUniversity Press, 1958).]\\n38:21- Reads “To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday”. [INDEX: occasional poem, books, library, poem, poet, Auden.]\\n39:22- Introduces “Mistral”. [INDEX: three poems about winds, wind names in Italy, sirocco, crimes of passion, mistral blows for three days, down the Rhone Valley; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n40:22- Reads “Mistral”. [INDEX: nature, wind, Mistral, place, Italy, solitude, sound, storm.]\\n41:23- Introduces “Death of a Vermont Farm Woman”. [INDEX: old French form,   \\tcomplications because of the repetition of lines, not the usual subject of the rondeaux; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n42:03- Reads “Death of a Vermont Farm Woman”. [INDEX: form, genre, rondeau, death, woman, Vermont, place, farm.]\\n42:51- Introduces “The Critic”. [INDEX: disagreeable character, thirteenth century tyrant called Ugolino, prison, eat his sons, Dante’s 33rd Canto of the Inferno, critics dislike the poem; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).] \\n43:28- Reads “The Critic”. [INDEX: Ugolino, Dante, critic, criticism, poets, Eliot, Yeats,      eating, wisdom.]\\n44:23- Introduces “Running into Edgar Blemar”. [INDEX: odd combination or a person and Pownal; from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).] \\n44:32- Reads \\\"Running into Edgar Belmar\\\"  [INDEX: place, Vermont, Pownal, Edgar Belmar, car, children, accident.]\\n45:27- Introduces “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: written for Catherine Ann Porter on her 75th birthday; from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).] \\n45:39- Reads “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: occasional poem, Catherine Ann Porter, birthday, birds, heron, peacock, dove, starling, nightingale, lark.]\\n46:15- Introduces unknown poem first line “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX:   \\tcollective nouns, siege of herons.]\\n46:31- Rereads “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: occasional poem, Catherine Ann     Porter, birthday, birds, heron, peacock, dove, starling, nightingale, lark.]\\n47:06- Introduces “Looking up at Leaves”. [INDEX: from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf,     1966).] \\n47:14- Reads “Looking up at Leaves”. [INDEX: nature, tree, leaves, sight, reflection.]\\n48:09- Introduces “Still Life, New England”. [INDEX: new poem, never read before; unknown source.]\\n48:16- Reads “Still Life, New England”.   [INDEX: nature, animal, cow, birth, calf, sheep, boar, death, cat.]\\n49:34- Introduces “A Rune for C.”. [INDEX: dog named ‘C’; from Looking Up at Leaves      (Knopf, 1966).]\\n49:51- Reads “A Rune for C.”. [INDEX: animal, dog, sickness, omen, luck, rune, fate, death, train]\\n50:36- Explains “A Rune for C.”, introduces “Portrait of the Boy as Artist”. [INDEX: good    luck, caboose, country folklore; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]\\n51:18- Reads “Portrait of the Boy as Artist”.  [INDEX: son, boy, artist, composer, music,     painter, train, colour, poet, Theseus, Daniel Boone, youth.]\\n52:11- Introduces “Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle”. [INDEX: will read in New York, rondelle, old French form, not usual subject, contrast of the use of space; unknown source.]\\n52:45- Reads “Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle”. [INDEX: war, Vietnam, peace, bomb, death, face, genre, form, rondelle.]\\n53:31- Introduces “Leaning into Light”. [INDEX: cheerful poem; unknown source.]\\n53:44- Reads “Leaning into Light”. [INDEX: hibiscus, nature, plant, light, shadow, wisteria]\\n54:21- Barbara Howes thanks audience.\\n54:38- Stanton Hoffman makes announcement about next reading. [INDEX: Charles Reznikoff reading on Friday, November 17th.]\\n54:57.60- RECORDING ENDS.\\n \\nHoward Fink Print catalogue page from Concordia University archives contains the following information:\\n \\nTitle: Barbara Howes reading poetry, November 3, 1967\\nDate: November 3, 1967\\nSource: one 7”, two track tape, mono, @ 3 ¾ ips, lasting one hour and 15 mins.\\n \\n1. Title:              \\n    First line: “The horse with consumption…”\\n2. Title: The Triumph of Love\\n    First line:        \\n3. Title:              \\n    First line: “All the wide…”\\n4. Title:              \\n    First line: “In Autumn, red men come…”\\n5. Title: Landscape: Deer Season\\n    First line: “Snorting his pleasure in the…”\\n6. Title: A Night Picture of Ponel for J.F.K.\\n    First line: “Thanks to the moon…”\\n7. Title: Town Meeting; Tuesday\\n    First line: “Our roadside trees…”\\n8. Title: Dead Tucan; Guadeloupe\\n    First line: “Down like the oval fall of a hammer…\\n9. Title:              \\n    First line: “As in his tomb…\\n10. Title: Mirror Image: Port au Prince\\n      First line: “Mirror image: Port au Prince…”\\n11. Title:              \\n      First line: “Under the Sovereign…”\\n12. Title: Out Fishing\\n      First line: “We went out…”\\n13. Title:              \\n      First line: “Darling I learn the full…”\\n14. Title: On Galveston Beach\\n      First line: “The sky was…”\\n15. Title: A Letter from the Caribbean\\n      First line: “Breeze ways in the tropics\\n16. Title: poem by a young African girl [is this the real title or a stand-in?]\\n      First line: “What a wonderful…”\\n17. Title: by W. H. Auden Poem\\n      First line: “For what is easy…”\\n18. Title: by R. Wilbur\\n      First line: “I can’t forget how she stood…”\\n19. Title: by L. Boden Masked Woman Song\\n      First line: “Before I saw the tall…”\\n20. Title: by D. Walker Missing the Sea\\n      First line: “Something removed roars in the ears…”\\n21. Title: by W. J. Smith American Primitive\\n      First line: “Look at him there…”\\nend of track one\\n22. Title: Early Supper  \\n      First line: “Laughter children bring…”\\n23. Title:              \\n      First line: “Books collide…”\\n24. Title: Mistral\\n      First line:        \\n25. Title:              \\n      First line: “It is time now to go away…”\\n26. Title: The Critic\\n      First line: “…takes his rest…”\\n27. Title:              \\n      First line: “In my fool…”\\n28. Title: For Katherine N. Porter\\n      First line: “Madam, a siege…”\\n29. Title: Looking up at Leaves\\n      First line: “No one need feel alone”\\n30. Title: Still Life: New England\\n      First line: “From that old cow…”\\n31. Title:              \\n      First line: “Luck, I am upset…”\\n32. Title: Portrait of a Boy as Artist\\n      First line: “Were he a composer…”\\n33. Title:              \\n      First line: “To save face…”\\n34. Title: Leaving into Light\\n      First line: “Beginning…”\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/barbara-howes-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1265","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Charles Reznikoff at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 17 November 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"CHARLES REZNIKOFF I006/SR153\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-153\" 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":["Reznikoff, Charles"],"creator_names_search":["Reznikoff, Charles"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/51811237\",\"name\":\"Reznikoff, Charles\",\"dates\":\"1894-1976\",\"notes\":\"American poet Charles Reznikoff was born on August 31, 1894, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Jewish Russian émigrés, and often encountered anti-semitism, which would have a strong influence on Reznikoff’s later work. An intelligent boy, Reznikoff finished high school in 1909, at the age of fifteen- three years ahead of his class. In the hopes of becoming a writer, Reznikoff entered the journalism department at the University of Missouri, but left after a year when he realized the priorities of a journalist and a poet were different. In 1912, he enrolled in New York University’s Law school, graduating at the top of his class in 1915, and entered the Bar of the State of New York the next year. Reznikoff spent a few years practicing as a lawyer, but again, he felt he needed to spend his energy writing, not working as a lawyer. Reznikoff published his first book of poems Rhythms in 1918, on his own small press, the next year printing Rhythms II. In 1920, he met Samuel Roth, who published Poems (S.Roth at the New York Poetry Book Shop), and during that decade he was able to publish more poems in magazines and plays. Reznikoff supported himself by working on the editorial board of the American Law Book Company, writing law encyclopedias. Reznikoff married his wife, Marie Syrkin in 1930. During the 1930s, Reznikoff met and joined the Objectivist group with Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen and Carl Rakosi. The Objectivist Press published three of Reznikoff’s books, Jerusalem the Golden (Objectivist Press, 1934), In Memoriam: 1933 (Objectivist Press, 1934) and Separate Way (Objectivist Press, 1936). Reznikoff spent a short time in Hollywood in the late 30’s, working as a screenwriter. Marie Reznikoff was hired by the English Department at Brandeis University in Boston, and throughout the 40’s Charles Reznikoff stayed in New York working on freelance contracts. Reznikoff published Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (Futuro Press, 1941). For a period of eighteen years, Reznikoff did not publish any poetry, until 1959, when Inscriptions: 1944-1956  was self-published. Reznikoff then published By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse (New Directions, 1962), his major works Testimony: The United States (1885-1890): Recitative (New Directions, 1965), Testimony: The United States (1891-1900): Recitative (Privately Published, 1968) and Holocaust (Black Sparrow Press, 1975). Reznikoff also published By the Well of Living and Seeing and The Fifth Book of the Maccabees (Self Published, 1969), By the Well of Living & Seeing: New & Selected Poems 1918-1973 (Black Sparrow Press, 1974), several works of prose including Testimony (The Objectivist Press, 1934) and Family Chronicle: An Odyssey from Russia to America (Norton Bailey with the Human Constitution, 1969). A lifelong resident of New York City, Charles Reznikoff died on January 22, 1976 after suffering from a heart attack. The most comprehensive collection of Reznikoff’s work can be found in Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow Press, 1976-77), edited by Seamus Cooney.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Bowering, George"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"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\":\"Tape\",\"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\":\"1967 11 17\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"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":["Charles Reznikoff reads poems from several books, including Jerusalem the Golden (Objectivist Press, 1934), Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (Shulsinger Brothers, 1959), Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (Futuro Press, 1941), and By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse (New Directions, 1962). Many of the poems were later re-organized, edited, and included in other publications, such as Poems 1918-1975:The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow, 1989). "],"contents":["charles_reznikoff_i006-11-153.mp3\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nI'd like to welcome you all to our third reading, and announce just before I have to say what I say that the next reading will be with Daryl Hine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5226186] on the first of December. Tonight's reading will be by, as you probably all know, Mr. Charles Reznikoff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065911], whom I'm very happy to have the job, the chore of introducing, because I've been interested in his work for many years. He was born in Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419], 1894, and graduated from the law school of New York University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49210], admitted to the bar of the state of New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] but never practiced, however, the law experience has stood him in good stead for his later poetry. He's published a number of volumes of verse and several volumes of prose, but most to the point, books that you probably saw on the table outside, in print by New Directions [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27474] and the San Francisco Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17087510], By the Waters of Manhattan, which was this joint effort's first book in 1962, and in 1965, Testimony, which is the first volume in a projected series of volumes about the moral and legal history of the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30]. The main--my--the reason I said that I'm very happy about Mr. Reznikoff is because when I was going to university I was very hard looking for an alternative to the kind of poetry that was in vogue, especially in the universities, that is, that which tended towards T.S. Eliot [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] and highly symbolic language, and Mr. Reznikoff was one of the first poets I found able to do that for me, and I found a short poem of his which I would like to be brash enough to read, as introduction. He said, \"Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largesse of spring. Not for victory, but for the day's work done, as well as I was able, not for a seat upon the dais, but at the common table.\"  So to this common table, rather than dais, I'd like to welcome Mr. Charles Reznikoff.  \n \nAudience\n00:02:34\nApplause.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:02:56\nVery much obliged to the gentleman who introduced me, among other things, for reading something I did. Perhaps I should ask him to read all that I brought along. But to get down to what I have here, let me say, to begin with, a few days ago, I came across in a bookshop a collection of Chinese verse translated into English. At the beginning was the following, written a thousand years ago, and I was very much impressed with it, and permit me to read it to you as a sort of an introduction. This man who wrote in the 11th century, this Chinese, said this: \"Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling.  It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling.\" I thought that was...expressed exactly what I feel, and what I have tried to do, not always, not always, I'm afraid, as well as called for, but a recipe. Among other things, let me begin by reading a couple of things I did also on the way I think verse should be written. And this is from this, By the Waters of Manhattan. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:04:47\nReads \"Salmon and Red Wine\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse [also published in Inscriptions: 1944-1956].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:05:39\nThat's the first in this. And the second, I did on the same theme, in a way. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:05:47\nReads \"I have neither the time nor the weaving skill, perhaps\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse [also published in Inscriptions: 1944-1956].\n\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:06:13\nNow, let me start with a group which I've written about the city I come from, New York, and its suburbs, and some of its residents, including myself.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:06:27\nReads \"The winter afternoon darkens\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:06:44\nAnd this I call \"The Scrubwoman\". \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:06:48\nReads \"The Scrubwoman\" [from Rhythms II and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:07:07\nReads \"The peddler who goes from shop to shop\". \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:07:27\nAnd this next. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:07:31\nReads “The elevator man\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:07:54\nReads \"The shopgirls leave their work\" [from Five Groups of Verse, Rhythms, and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:08:16\nThis one I call \"Cooper Union Library\". I should add, it's no longer that way, this is the way it used to be.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:08:23\nReads \"Cooper Union Library\" [from \"Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:08:42\nReads \"Showing a Torn Sleeve\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in Poems 1918-1936: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff]. \n\nCharles Reznikoff\n00:09:06\nReads \"Two girls of twelve or so at a table\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:09:54\nReads \"I am always surprised to meet\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:10:23\nReads \"Rails in the Subway\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nAudience\n00:10:35\nLaughter.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:10:41\nReads \"This subway station, with its electric lights\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nAudience\n00:10:58\nLaughter.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:11:06\nReads \"Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:11:18\nReads \"The sky is blue\" [from Jerusalem is Golden].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:11:42\nThis I call \"Suburban River, Winter\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:11:48\nReads \"Suburban River, Winter\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:12:07\nAnd this too I call \"Suburban River,\" this is \"Summer\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:12:13\nReads \"Suburban River, Summer\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:12:38\nThis I call \"Twilight\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:12:40\nReads \"Twilight\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:12:56\nReads \"Fraser, I think, tells of a Roman\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse; audience laughter throughout].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:13:21\nReads \"The dogs that walk with me” [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:13:44\nThis I call a \"Fable\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:13:46\nReads \"Fable\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:14:15\nReads \"Scrap of paper\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].  \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:14:28\nReads \"One of my sentinels, a tree\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].   \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:14:45\nReads \"I have not even been in the fields\" [from Rhythms ll and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:15:01\nReads \"How grey you are! No, white!” [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:15:25\nReads \"Blurred sight, and trembling fingers\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:15:47\nReads \"You were young and contemptuous\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:16:03\nThis I call \"Heart and Clock\", there's a series in here. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:16:09\nReads \"Heart and Clock” [from Separate Way and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:16:51\nReads \"If my days were like the ant's\" [published as “Heart and Clock II” in By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:17:18\nReads \"Our nightingale, the clock\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].  \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:17:32\nReads \"The clock on the bookcase ticks\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:17:47\nReads \"My hair was caught in the wheels of a clock\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].   \n\nCharles Reznikoff\n00:17:58\nReads \"Of course we must die\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:18:20\nReads \"Now it is cold\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n\nCharles Reznikoff\n00:19:33\nReads \"It had been snowing at night\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:19:54\nReads \"Hardly a breath of wind\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:20:14\nReads \"After I had worked all day\" [from Five Groups of Verse and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:20:42\nNow I have a group that I will call 'religious,' for perhaps no better word, and this I call \"Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays\", and the first is “New Year's”. As many of you, or some of you may know, no doubt, the Jewish New Year's comes in the fall. This is based on it.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:21:11\nReads \"Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays: New Year's\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:23:19\nAnd I call the next one \"The Day of Atonement\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:23:24\nReads \"The Day of Atonement\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:24:50\nAnd this I call \"Hanukkah\" which incidentally is a holiday that's just about to come, and it, as some of you may know, it represents the victory, a festival celebrating the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians, about 150 B.C.E.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:25:14\nReads \"Hanukkah\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:26:59\nI don't know why I should be having a cold on this occasion but, [laughter], these things [blows nose]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:27:18\nReads \"The lamps are burning in the synagogue\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:28:40\nThis one I call \"Samuel\". Samuel in the Bible, of course.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:28:47\nReads \"Samuel\" [from Five Groups of Verse and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:30:06\nThese are all from By the Waters of Manhattan, and I'm going to read you, if I may, something quite different, from the volume called Testimony, and which I call \"Recitative\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:30:27\nReads \"Recitative\" [from Testimony: the United States (1885-1890); Recitative].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:31:15\nThat's the first. This, these, incidentally, I might say, are all based on law cases. Ah...I don't know what...whether that'll excuse their ferocity, but apparently something like that once happened. The names are different. The facts are the same.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:31:39\nReads \"Tilda was just a child...” [from Testimony: the United States (1885-1890); Recitative].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:32:49\nAnd this is the third in this. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:32:53\nReads \"Years ago, a company procured a body of land...\" [from Testimony: the United States (1885-1890); Recitative].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:33:44\nNow...let's see, if I may, the time...Here is a poem with which I generally end these readings but I don't intend to end this unless you wish me to because I have some other things to read. But I'll end it right here anyway and then we'll see how much time is left. I call this \"Kaddish\". Now, it's not the Kaddish for mourners that you might know about. It was written at the beginning of the rise of Hitler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q352]. I did it; I mean, I did the writing, not the Kaddish, which is very old. It was written at the beginning of the rise of Hitler and his influence, and before his extermination program was put into effect. It's really an ancient blessing in the Jewish ritual. And incidentally, I use that word \"Torah,\" and I doubt, it may be strange to many, but James Parks, I notice, in his History of the Jewish People, has defined it, correctly, I think, \"The word Torah,\" he says, \"has been defined as law, but is much wider in meaning. It applies a way of life\".  Now this is this \"Kaddish\".\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:35:09\nReads \"Kaddish\" [from Separate Way and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:36:43\nThis ends the, let's say the first part. And I'll continue, if you like, with some others, unless you're all...[inaudible]\n \nAudience\n00:36:51\nApplause.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:37:04\nWell I, if, I shall continue, if you're not all exhausted. I have here, quite a few things that are not arranged in any way, so they're more or less haphazard. And...this is one. Let's see...well this one is “After Reading Translations of Ancient Texts on Stone and Clay”.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:37:37\nReads “After Reading Translations of Ancient Texts on Stone and Clay”.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:38:47\nNow, these, these are much less organized than that, haphazard, you'll have to take them as they come if we keep on. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:39:00\nReads \"As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n\nCharles Reznikoff\n00:39:36\nReads \"The young fellow walks about with nothing to do\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:40:09\nReads “A well-phrased eulogy\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:40:44\nReads \"On a Sunday, when the place was closed\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down].  \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:41:12\nNow here are two earlier testimony, two or more things based on a law case, which I call \"Testimony\", and these were included in that same By the Waters of Manhattan. \n \nBy the Waters of Manhattan. \n00:41:28\nReads \"The Company had advertised for men\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:43:13\nThat's the first, and this is the second.\n \nCharles Reznikoff \n00:43:16\nReads \"Amelia was just fourteen\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:44:33\nThat's the second. I have some more I'd like to get at before I close. Well, this I wrote for my wife. Pity she isn't here, but we'll read it in her absence.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:44:55\nReads \"Malicious women greet you, saying...\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \n\n Charles Reznikoff\n00:45:38\nNow, this, this is a kind of counterpiece to this I have just read. It was not written for my wife. [Laughter].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:45:56\nReads \"He had with him a bag\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \n \nAudience\n00:46:38\nLaughter. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:46:42\nI'm reading this 'cause...\"On a seat\"...maybe it would....I think this is rather appropriate in view of all the Hebrew things I read.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:46:56\nReads \"On a seat in the subway\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down].  \n\nCharles Reznikoff\n00:47:41\nReads \"Permit me to warn you\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nAudience\n00:47:51\nLaughter.\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:47:59\nReads \"These days, the papers in the street\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:48:36\nLet me close, unless it...if I should...with something that I tried to do which may be something to close with. This is based on the Book of Ezra [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131635], and the Book of Ezra, according to my note, I've probably forgotten by this time, is, 'This is a rearrangement and a versification of parts of the Fourth Book of Ezra.' And that's what it's called in the appendix to the Vulgate [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131175], or two Esdras of the Protestant Apocrypha. And I based this upon a translation of this Book of Ezra from the Syriac by a friend of mine who taught, and I have their permission and all, but the original was probably, there's quite a discussion as to what the original was right, and some scholars believe that it was in Greek, and a Doctor Bocks, who was in, G.H. Bocks, thinks that it was in Hebrew, and Bloch, who was, they had in 42nd Street at the library, didn't think that it was in either Greek or Hebrew, but Aramaic. Anyway, excuse me just, [laughter], anyway, I will read it, and its adaptation of it, and see what one can do with things that you...clear up. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:50:12\nReads “Because I saw the desolation of Zion\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975]. \n \nCharles Reznikoff\n00:53:33\nAnd I think this is enough, perhaps, for a time. \n \nAudience\n00:53:36\nApplause.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:54:01\nWhat else, thank you very much, Mr. Reznikoff, and I'd just like to repeat that the next reading is at, two weeks from tonight, December the first, Daryl Hine, who's a graduate of the other university.\n \nEND\n00:54:21\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n \\nIn 1967, Reznikoff held several other readings, including one at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The next year, 1968, Testimony: The United States (1891-1900): Recitative was published.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nNo direct connections to Sir George Williams University are known. However, Charles Reznikoff was an established and highly regarded poet from New York. Reznikoff was involved in the Objectivist movement and an important American poet during the 60’s and 70’s.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Heller, Michael. “Reznikoff, Charles\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-reznikoff-at-sgwu-1967/\",\"citation\":\"Nemiroff, Michael. “Nemiroff on Reznikoff.” OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 28 November 1967, p. 7. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-the-jewish-people/oclc/32303940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Parks, James Williams. A History of the Jewish People. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1952. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-reznikoff-at-sgwu-1967/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry: Bards Heard”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 14 November 1967, page 6. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-reznikoff-at-sgwu-1967\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings - Sir George Williams”. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0009.html\",\"citation\":\"“The Register of Charles Reznikoff Papers 1912-1976”. Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, University of California, San Diego. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/694\",\"citation\":\"“Reznikoff, Charles”. Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, 2007-2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Reznikoff, Charles\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press, 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/concise-oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/1146399202&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Reznikoff, Charles\\\". The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed). Oxford University Press, 1986. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/by-the-waters-of-manhattan-selected-verse-introduction-by-cp-snow/oclc/503805384&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse. San Francisco: San Francisco Review, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/five-groups-of-verse-by-charles-reznikoff/oclc/457809461&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Five Groups of Verse. New York: Charles Reznikoff, 1927. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/going-to-and-fro-and-walking-up-and-down/oclc/644000166&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down. New York: Futuro Press, 1941. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/inscriptions-1944-1956-by-charles-reznikoff/oclc/459778991&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Inscriptions: 1944-1956. New York: Shulsinger Brothers, 1959. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/jerusalem-the-golden-poems/oclc/503805492&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Jerusalem The Golden. New York: Objectivist Press, 1934. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/rhythms/oclc/11216921&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Rhythms. New York: Charles Reznikoff, 1918. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/rhythms-ii-poems/oclc/4400024&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Rhythms ll. New York: Charles Reznikoff, 1919. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/separate-way/oclc/2377996&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Separate Way. New York: Objectivist Press, 1936. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/testimony-the-united-states-1885-1890-recitative/oclc/1079271632&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Testimony: The United States (1885-1890); Recitative. New York: Charles Reznikoff, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/testimony-the-united-states-1891-1900-recitative/oclc/49565&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. Testimony: The United States (1891-1900); Recitative. New York: Charles Reznikoff, 1968.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poems-1918-1975-the-complete-poems-of-charles-reznikoff-edited-by-seamus-cooney/oclc/1167716778&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Reznikoff, Charles. The Poems of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1989. \"},{\"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\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Reznikoff, Charles, 1894-1976”. Literature Online Biography. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 2000. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548825964544,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0153_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0153_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Charles Reznikoff 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_0153_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0153_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Charles Reznikoff 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_0153_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0153_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Charles Reznikoff 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_0153_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0153_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Charles Reznikoff 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/charles_reznikoff_i006-11-153.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"charles_reznikoff_i006-11-153.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:54:21\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"130.4 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"George Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nI'd like to welcome you all to our third reading, and announce just before I have to say what I say that the next reading will be with Daryl Hine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5226186] on the first of December. Tonight's reading will be by, as you probably all know, Mr. Charles Reznikoff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065911], whom I'm very happy to have the job, the chore of introducing, because I've been interested in his work for many years. He was born in Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419], 1894, and graduated from the law school of New York University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49210], admitted to the bar of the state of New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] but never practiced, however, the law experience has stood him in good stead for his later poetry. He's published a number of volumes of verse and several volumes of prose, but most to the point, books that you probably saw on the table outside, in print by New Directions [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27474] and the San Francisco Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17087510], By the Waters of Manhattan, which was this joint effort's first book in 1962, and in 1965, Testimony, which is the first volume in a projected series of volumes about the moral and legal history of the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30]. The main--my--the reason I said that I'm very happy about Mr. Reznikoff is because when I was going to university I was very hard looking for an alternative to the kind of poetry that was in vogue, especially in the universities, that is, that which tended towards T.S. Eliot [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] and highly symbolic language, and Mr. Reznikoff was one of the first poets I found able to do that for me, and I found a short poem of his which I would like to be brash enough to read, as introduction. He said, \\\"Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largesse of spring. Not for victory, but for the day's work done, as well as I was able, not for a seat upon the dais, but at the common table.\\\"  So to this common table, rather than dais, I'd like to welcome Mr. Charles Reznikoff.  \\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:34\\nApplause.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:02:56\\nVery much obliged to the gentleman who introduced me, among other things, for reading something I did. Perhaps I should ask him to read all that I brought along. But to get down to what I have here, let me say, to begin with, a few days ago, I came across in a bookshop a collection of Chinese verse translated into English. At the beginning was the following, written a thousand years ago, and I was very much impressed with it, and permit me to read it to you as a sort of an introduction. This man who wrote in the 11th century, this Chinese, said this: \\\"Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling.  It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling.\\\" I thought that was...expressed exactly what I feel, and what I have tried to do, not always, not always, I'm afraid, as well as called for, but a recipe. Among other things, let me begin by reading a couple of things I did also on the way I think verse should be written. And this is from this, By the Waters of Manhattan. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:04:47\\nReads \\\"Salmon and Red Wine\\\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse [also published in Inscriptions: 1944-1956].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:05:39\\nThat's the first in this. And the second, I did on the same theme, in a way. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:05:47\\nReads \\\"I have neither the time nor the weaving skill, perhaps\\\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse [also published in Inscriptions: 1944-1956].\\n\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:06:13\\nNow, let me start with a group which I've written about the city I come from, New York, and its suburbs, and some of its residents, including myself.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:06:27\\nReads \\\"The winter afternoon darkens\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:06:44\\nAnd this I call \\\"The Scrubwoman\\\". \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:06:48\\nReads \\\"The Scrubwoman\\\" [from Rhythms II and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:07:07\\nReads \\\"The peddler who goes from shop to shop\\\". \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:07:27\\nAnd this next. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:07:31\\nReads “The elevator man\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:07:54\\nReads \\\"The shopgirls leave their work\\\" [from Five Groups of Verse, Rhythms, and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:08:16\\nThis one I call \\\"Cooper Union Library\\\". I should add, it's no longer that way, this is the way it used to be.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:08:23\\nReads \\\"Cooper Union Library\\\" [from \\\"Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:08:42\\nReads \\\"Showing a Torn Sleeve\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in Poems 1918-1936: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff]. \\n\\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:09:06\\nReads \\\"Two girls of twelve or so at a table\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:09:54\\nReads \\\"I am always surprised to meet\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:10:23\\nReads \\\"Rails in the Subway\\\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:10:35\\nLaughter.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:10:41\\nReads \\\"This subway station, with its electric lights\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:10:58\\nLaughter.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:11:06\\nReads \\\"Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies\\\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:11:18\\nReads \\\"The sky is blue\\\" [from Jerusalem is Golden].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:11:42\\nThis I call \\\"Suburban River, Winter\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:11:48\\nReads \\\"Suburban River, Winter\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:12:07\\nAnd this too I call \\\"Suburban River,\\\" this is \\\"Summer\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:12:13\\nReads \\\"Suburban River, Summer\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:12:38\\nThis I call \\\"Twilight\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:12:40\\nReads \\\"Twilight\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:12:56\\nReads \\\"Fraser, I think, tells of a Roman\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:13:21\\nReads \\\"The dogs that walk with me” [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:13:44\\nThis I call a \\\"Fable\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:13:46\\nReads \\\"Fable\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:14:15\\nReads \\\"Scrap of paper\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].  \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:14:28\\nReads \\\"One of my sentinels, a tree\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].   \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:14:45\\nReads \\\"I have not even been in the fields\\\" [from Rhythms ll and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:15:01\\nReads \\\"How grey you are! No, white!” [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:15:25\\nReads \\\"Blurred sight, and trembling fingers\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:15:47\\nReads \\\"You were young and contemptuous\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:16:03\\nThis I call \\\"Heart and Clock\\\", there's a series in here. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:16:09\\nReads \\\"Heart and Clock” [from Separate Way and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:16:51\\nReads \\\"If my days were like the ant's\\\" [published as “Heart and Clock II” in By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:17:18\\nReads \\\"Our nightingale, the clock\\\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].  \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:17:32\\nReads \\\"The clock on the bookcase ticks\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:17:47\\nReads \\\"My hair was caught in the wheels of a clock\\\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].   \\n\\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:17:58\\nReads \\\"Of course we must die\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:18:20\\nReads \\\"Now it is cold\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n\\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:19:33\\nReads \\\"It had been snowing at night\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:19:54\\nReads \\\"Hardly a breath of wind\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:20:14\\nReads \\\"After I had worked all day\\\" [from Five Groups of Verse and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:20:42\\nNow I have a group that I will call 'religious,' for perhaps no better word, and this I call \\\"Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays\\\", and the first is “New Year's”. As many of you, or some of you may know, no doubt, the Jewish New Year's comes in the fall. This is based on it.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:21:11\\nReads \\\"Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays: New Year's\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:23:19\\nAnd I call the next one \\\"The Day of Atonement\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:23:24\\nReads \\\"The Day of Atonement\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:24:50\\nAnd this I call \\\"Hanukkah\\\" which incidentally is a holiday that's just about to come, and it, as some of you may know, it represents the victory, a festival celebrating the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians, about 150 B.C.E.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:25:14\\nReads \\\"Hanukkah\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:26:59\\nI don't know why I should be having a cold on this occasion but, [laughter], these things [blows nose]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:27:18\\nReads \\\"The lamps are burning in the synagogue\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:28:40\\nThis one I call \\\"Samuel\\\". Samuel in the Bible, of course.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:28:47\\nReads \\\"Samuel\\\" [from Five Groups of Verse and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:30:06\\nThese are all from By the Waters of Manhattan, and I'm going to read you, if I may, something quite different, from the volume called Testimony, and which I call \\\"Recitative\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:30:27\\nReads \\\"Recitative\\\" [from Testimony: the United States (1885-1890); Recitative].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:31:15\\nThat's the first. This, these, incidentally, I might say, are all based on law cases. Ah...I don't know what...whether that'll excuse their ferocity, but apparently something like that once happened. The names are different. The facts are the same.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:31:39\\nReads \\\"Tilda was just a child...” [from Testimony: the United States (1885-1890); Recitative].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:32:49\\nAnd this is the third in this. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:32:53\\nReads \\\"Years ago, a company procured a body of land...\\\" [from Testimony: the United States (1885-1890); Recitative].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:33:44\\nNow...let's see, if I may, the time...Here is a poem with which I generally end these readings but I don't intend to end this unless you wish me to because I have some other things to read. But I'll end it right here anyway and then we'll see how much time is left. I call this \\\"Kaddish\\\". Now, it's not the Kaddish for mourners that you might know about. It was written at the beginning of the rise of Hitler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q352]. I did it; I mean, I did the writing, not the Kaddish, which is very old. It was written at the beginning of the rise of Hitler and his influence, and before his extermination program was put into effect. It's really an ancient blessing in the Jewish ritual. And incidentally, I use that word \\\"Torah,\\\" and I doubt, it may be strange to many, but James Parks, I notice, in his History of the Jewish People, has defined it, correctly, I think, \\\"The word Torah,\\\" he says, \\\"has been defined as law, but is much wider in meaning. It applies a way of life\\\".  Now this is this \\\"Kaddish\\\".\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:35:09\\nReads \\\"Kaddish\\\" [from Separate Way and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:36:43\\nThis ends the, let's say the first part. And I'll continue, if you like, with some others, unless you're all...[inaudible]\\n \\nAudience\\n00:36:51\\nApplause.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:37:04\\nWell I, if, I shall continue, if you're not all exhausted. I have here, quite a few things that are not arranged in any way, so they're more or less haphazard. And...this is one. Let's see...well this one is “After Reading Translations of Ancient Texts on Stone and Clay”.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:37:37\\nReads “After Reading Translations of Ancient Texts on Stone and Clay”.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:38:47\\nNow, these, these are much less organized than that, haphazard, you'll have to take them as they come if we keep on. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:39:00\\nReads \\\"As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n\\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:39:36\\nReads \\\"The young fellow walks about with nothing to do\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:40:09\\nReads “A well-phrased eulogy\\\" [from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:40:44\\nReads \\\"On a Sunday, when the place was closed\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down].  \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:41:12\\nNow here are two earlier testimony, two or more things based on a law case, which I call \\\"Testimony\\\", and these were included in that same By the Waters of Manhattan. \\n \\nBy the Waters of Manhattan. \\n00:41:28\\nReads \\\"The Company had advertised for men\\\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:43:13\\nThat's the first, and this is the second.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff \\n00:43:16\\nReads \\\"Amelia was just fourteen\\\" from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:44:33\\nThat's the second. I have some more I'd like to get at before I close. Well, this I wrote for my wife. Pity she isn't here, but we'll read it in her absence.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:44:55\\nReads \\\"Malicious women greet you, saying...\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \\n\\n Charles Reznikoff\\n00:45:38\\nNow, this, this is a kind of counterpiece to this I have just read. It was not written for my wife. [Laughter].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:45:56\\nReads \\\"He had with him a bag\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff 1918–1975].  \\n \\nAudience\\n00:46:38\\nLaughter. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:46:42\\nI'm reading this 'cause...\\\"On a seat\\\"...maybe it would....I think this is rather appropriate in view of all the Hebrew things I read.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:46:56\\nReads \\\"On a seat in the subway\\\" [from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down].  \\n\\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:47:41\\nReads \\\"Permit me to warn you\\\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:47:51\\nLaughter.\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:47:59\\nReads \\\"These days, the papers in the street\\\" [from Jerusalem the Golden and from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse].\\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:48:36\\nLet me close, unless it...if I should...with something that I tried to do which may be something to close with. This is based on the Book of Ezra [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131635], and the Book of Ezra, according to my note, I've probably forgotten by this time, is, 'This is a rearrangement and a versification of parts of the Fourth Book of Ezra.' And that's what it's called in the appendix to the Vulgate [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131175], or two Esdras of the Protestant Apocrypha. And I based this upon a translation of this Book of Ezra from the Syriac by a friend of mine who taught, and I have their permission and all, but the original was probably, there's quite a discussion as to what the original was right, and some scholars believe that it was in Greek, and a Doctor Bocks, who was in, G.H. Bocks, thinks that it was in Hebrew, and Bloch, who was, they had in 42nd Street at the library, didn't think that it was in either Greek or Hebrew, but Aramaic. Anyway, excuse me just, [laughter], anyway, I will read it, and its adaptation of it, and see what one can do with things that you...clear up. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:50:12\\nReads “Because I saw the desolation of Zion\\\" [from By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse and published later in The Poems of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975]. \\n \\nCharles Reznikoff\\n00:53:33\\nAnd I think this is enough, perhaps, for a time. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:53:36\\nApplause.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:54:01\\nWhat else, thank you very much, Mr. Reznikoff, and I'd just like to repeat that the next reading is at, two weeks from tonight, December the first, Daryl Hine, who's a graduate of the other university.\\n \\nEND\\n00:54:21\\n\",\"notes\":\"Charles Reznikoff reads poems from several books, including Jerusalem the Golden (Objectivist Press, 1934), Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (Shulsinger Brothers, 1959), Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (Futuro Press, 1941), and By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse (New Directions, 1962). Many of the poems were later re-organized, edited, and included in other publications, such as Poems 1918-1975:The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow, 1989). \\n\\n00:00- Unknown Introducer introduces Charles Reznikoff. [INDEX: Daryl Hine reading on December 1, 1967; born in Brooklyn in 1894, graduated from law school New York       University, state bar of NY, New Directions Press and the San Francisco Review, By the Waters of Manhattan (1962), Testimony (1965), moral and legal history of United States; Reznikoff as an alternative to popular poetry taught at universities; quote from “Te Deum” by Charles Reznikoff.]\\n02:56- Charles Reznikoff introduces “Salmon and Red Wine”. [INDEX: collection of Chinese verse translated in English, quotes from it as introduction, 11th century, \\\"Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling.  It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling\\\"; reading from By the Waters of Manhattan (New Directions, 1962).]\\n04:47- Reads first line “Salmon and red wine”. [INDEX: process, writing life, travel, Bible; found in By the Waters of Manhattan (New Directions, 1962).]\\n05:39- Introduces first line “I have neither the time nor the weaving skill, perhaps...”. [INDEX: second poem in the same theme; found in By the Waters of Manhattan (New    Directions, 1962).]\\n05:47- Reads first line “I have neither the time nor the weaving skill, perhaps...”. [INDEX: craft, descriptive.]\\n06:13- Introduces unknown poem, first line “The winter afternoon darkens...” [INDEX: group of poems about New York.]\\n06:27- Reads unknown poem, first line “The winter afternoon darkens...”. [INDEX: cities, New York, work.]\\n06:44- Introduces “The Scrubwoman”.\\n06:48- Reads “The Scrubwoman”. [INDEX: cities, New York, work, poverty.]\\n07:07- Reads unknown poem, first line “The peddler who goes from shop to shop...”. [INDEX: cities, New York, Work.]\\n07:31- Reads first line “The elevator man”. [INDEX: cities, New York, poverty, work; from the poem “Autobiography: New York” in By the Waters of Manhattan (New Directions, 1962).]\\n07:54- Reads unknown poem, first line “The shopgirls leave their work...”. [INDEX: cities, New York, work.]\\n08:16- Introduces “Cooper Union Library”.\\n08:23- Reads “Cooper Union Library”. [INDEX: cities, New York, reading, from the poem        “Autobiography: New York” in By the Waters of Manhattan (New Directions, 1962).]\\n08:42- Reads unknown poem, first line “Showing a torn sleeve...”. [INDEX: cities, New York, poverty, food, age.]\\n09:06- Reads “Two girls of twelve or so at a table”. [INDEX: cities, New York, poverty, food, age; from Inscriptions: 1944-1956.]\\n09:54- Reads first line “I am always surprised to meet...” [INDEX: cities, New York, death; from the poem “Autobiography: New York” in Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941).]\\n10:23- Reads unknown poem, first line “Rails in the subway”. [INDEX: cities, New York,         transportation, building.]\\n10:41- Reads unknown poem, first line “This subway station, with its electric lights”.   [INDEX: cities, New York, transportation, building, from the poem “Autobiography:      \\tNew York” in Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941).]\\n11:06- Reads unknown poem, first line “Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies...”. [INDEX: cities, New York, building.]\\n11:18- Reads unknown poem, first line “The sky is [a peculiar] blue...”. [INDEX: cities, New York, water, pollution; from “Sightseeing Tour: New York”, from Inscriptions:   1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n11:48- Reads “Suburban River, Winter”. [INDEX: cities, New York, water.]\\n12:13- Reads “Suburban River, Summer”. [INDEX: cities, New York, water, women.]\\n12:40- Reads “Twilight”. [INDEX: nature, sky, horse.]\\n13:16- Reads first line “Frasier, I think, tells of a Roman...”. [INDEX: nature, New York; from poem “Sightseeing Tour: New York” from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n13:31- Reads first line “The dogs that walk with me...”. [INDEX: time, nature, now, here, if; from By the Waters of Manhattan.]\\n13:46- Reads “Fable”. [INDEX: solitude, friendship, woods, song, joke, from By the Waters of Manhattan.]\\n14:15- Reads first line “Scrap of paper”. [INDEX: money, streets, from Inscriptions:  \\t1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n14:28- Reads first line “One of my sentinels, a tree...”. [INDEX: summer, seasons, time, nature, from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n14:45- Reads poem, first line “I have not even been in the fields...”. [INDEX: age, time,        seasons, wind.]\\n15:01- Reads poem, first line “How grey are you, no white...”. [INDEX: age, body, death,     friends, dog; from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n15:25- Reads poem, first line “Blurred sight, and trembling fingers...”. [INDEX: age; from  “Notes on the Spring Holiday” from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of  Manhattan (1962).]\\n16:03- Introduces “Hardened Clock”. [INDEX: series.]\\n16:09- Reads “Hardened Clock”. [INDEX: time, sun, cycles, clocks, stars.]\\n16:51- Reads poem, fist line “If my days were like the ant’s...”. [INDEX: time, ant, carpe diem; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n17:18- Reads poem, first line “Our nightingale, the clock...”. [INDEX: time, clocks, birds,        nightingale, nature; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n17:32- Reads poem, first line “The clock on the bookcase ticks...”. [INDEX: time, clocks,     insects, consumption; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n17:47- Reads poem, first line “My hair was caught in the wheels of a clock...”. [INDEX: age, clocks, time, baldness; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n17:58- Reads poem, first line “Of course we must die...”. [INDEX:  death, telephone numbers; perhaps from “Hardened Clock”, from By the Waters of Manhattan.]\\n18:20- Reads poem, first line “Now it is cold...”. [INDEX: age, winter, time, seasons, death, birds, sparrow, sun, tree, anger, statues, weather, Don Juan, St. Francis; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n19:33- Reads poem, first line “It had been snowing at night...”. [INDEX: winter, time, snow, weather, morning; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n19:54- Reads poem, first line “Hardly a breath of wind...”. [INDEX: wind, leaves, fate;        perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n20:14- Reads poem, first line: “After I had worked all day...”. [INDEX: work, fatigue, strength, tide; perhaps part of “Hardened Clock”.]\\n20:42- Introduces group called ‘religious’, poem called “Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays”. [INDEX: religious, Jewish New Year's.]\\n21:11- Reads “New Year’s” from “Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays”. [INDEX:   religious, holiday, water, farewell, death, harvest, autumn, trees, beginning, God,  \\tholidays, seasons, Israel, Judaism, grief, peace, servants, inheritance, remembrance; from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n23:19- Introduces “Day of Atonement”. [INDEX: from “Meditations on the Fall and Winter         Holidays” from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan    \\t(1962).]\\n23:24- Reads “Day of Atonement”. [INDEX: time, religious holidays, Judaism, Yom Kippur, God, time, day, write, rabbi, creation, world, men.]\\n24:50- Introduces “Hanukah”. [INDEX: victory of Maccabees over Syrians in 150 BCE, festival celebration; from “Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays”, from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n25:14- Reads “Hanukah”. [INDEX: religious holiday, Judaism, death, water, songs,    \\tremembrance, power, God.]\\n27:18- Reads poem, first line, “The lamps are burning in the synagogue...” [INDEX: religious, Judaism, travel, tradition, remembrance, names, knowledge, ignorance, eternal life; from “Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays”, from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962).]\\n28:40- Introduces “Samuel”. [INDEX: Samuel in the Bible.]\\n28:47- Reads “Samuel”. [INDEX: religious, Judaism, Bible, tradition, spirit, fire, seasons,      waiting, service.]\\n30:06- Introduces “Recitative”. [INDEX: from Inscriptions: 1944-1956 (1959), By the Waters of Manhattan (1962), Testimony (1965-8).]\\n30:27- Reads “Recitative”. [INDEX: birth, water, fire, murder, death]\\n31:15- Introduces poem, first line “Tilda was just a child...”. [INDEX: Testimony about law cases, different names, facts same.]\\n31:59- Reads poem, first line “Tilda was just a child...”. [INDEX: adolescence, girl,   \\tmenstruation, work, rural, domestic; from “The North: Boys & Girls, 5.” from Testimony.]\\n32:53- Reads poem, first line, “Years ago, a company procured a body of land...”. [INDEX: company land, urban planning, city, Mississippi City, streets, railroad, depot, pier, bankruptcy; from “The South: Negroes, X” from Testimony.]          \\n33:44- Introduces “Kaddish”. [INDEX: mourning, written at the beginning of the rise of Hitler, extermination program, ancient blessing in the Jewish ritual, Torah, quote from James Parks’ History of the Jewish People; from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941).]\\n35:09- Reads “Kaddish”. [INDEX: religious, Judaism, Kaddish, Torah, Israel, blessing.]\\n37:04- Introduces “After Reading Translations of Ancient Texts on Stone and Clay”. [INDEX: from Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941).]\\n37:37- Reads “After Reading Translations of Ancient Texts on Stone and Clay”. [INDEX: religious, Bible, Judaism, Moses, Israel, Pharaoh, Egypt, soldiers.]\\n38:47- Introduces “As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts...”\\n39:00- Reads “As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts...”. [INDEX: unhappiness, sun, wind, paradise, Adam.]\\n39:36- Reads “The young fellow walks about with nothing to do”. [INDEX: work,   \\tunemployment, cigarettes, youth, stranger.]\\n40:09- Reads “A well-phrased eulogy”. [INDEX: funeral, death, eulogy, politeness.]\\n40:44- Reads “On a Sunday, when the place was closed”. [INDEX: mouse, food, God, blessing.]\\n41:12- Introduces “Testimony”. [INDEX: earlier testimony, based on law case, included in By the Waters of Manhattan.]\\n41:28- Reads “The company had advertised for men...”. [INDEX: company, work, dock,   water, ice, river, death.]\\n43:13- Introduces “Amelia was just fourteen...”.\\n43:16- Reads “Amelia was just fourteen...” [INDEX: work, orphanage, youth, girl, books,   wound.]\\n44:33- Introduces “Malicious women greet you, saying...”. [INDEX: poem written for his wife, wife not in attendance.]\\n44:55- Reads “Malicious women greet you, saying...”.  [INDEX: love poem, women, beauty, timeless.]\\n45:38- Introduces “He had with him a bag”. [INDEX: counter-piece, not written for wife.]\\n45:56- Reads “He had with him a bag”. [INDEX: scolding, walking, wives, husbands,   marriage.]\\n46:38- Introduces “On a seat in the subway”. [INDEX: Hebrew.]\\n46:56- Reads “On a seat in the subway”. [INDEX: cities, subway, Judaism, work,      \\tdiscrimination, racial, sadness, Aryan.]\\n47:41- Reads “Permit me to warn you...”. [INDEX: car, accident.]\\n47:59- Reads “These days, the papers in the street...”. [INDEX: cities, streets, sun.]\\n48:36- Introduces “Because I saw the desolation of Zion...”. [INDEX: Book of Ezra, fourth book of Ezra, appendix to the Vulgate, Protestant Apocrypha, translation, Syriac, original, Greek, Doctor G.H. Bocks, Hebrew, Bloch, 42nd Street Library, Aramaic.]\\n50:12- Reads “Because I saw the desolation of Zion”. [INDEX: Bible, Judaism, Ezra, Zion, God, prayer, angel, heaven, hell, fire, wind, sea, dialogue, Israel, plants, seeds, earth.]\\n54:01- Unknown introducer thanks Charles Reznikoff, announces next reading: Daryl Hine on December 1st. [INDEX: Daryl Hine reading, December 1.]\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/charles-reznikoff-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1266","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":["Daryl Hine at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 1 December 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"DARYL HINES I006/SR158\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. DARYL HINES refers to Daryl Hine; HINES is mispelled. \"I006-11-158\" 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":["Hine, Daryl"],"creator_names_search":["Hine, Daryl"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/94517620\",\"name\":\"Hine, Daryl\",\"dates\":\"1936-2012\",\"notes\":\"Canadian-American poet, translator and editor Daryl Hine was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1936. His first poems were published when he was fifteen in Contemporary Verse. In 1954 he traveled to Montreal to study classics and philosophy at McGill University, and completed his B.A. by 1958. His first books of poetry published was Five Poems (Emblem Books, 1955), followed by The carnal and the crane (McGill Poetry Series by Contact Press, 1957). In 1968 Hine received a Canada Foundation-Rockefeller fellowship which he used to travel Europe and live in France. In 1962 he returned, and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago in comparative literature by 1967. Hine then took on a position teaching English at the University of Chicago, and the next year edited the distinguished Poetry magazine until 1978. By this time Hine had already published The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960), Heroics: Five Poems (Grosswiller, 1961), The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965), Minutes (Atheneum, 1969), Resident Alien (Atheneum, 1975), privately printed In and Out in 1975 (reprinted in 1989 by Knopf) and Daylight Saving (Atheneum, 1978). Hine has also translated The Homeric Hymns and the Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Atheneum, 1972), Ovid’s Heroines: A Verse Translations of the Hero Heroides (Yale University Press, 1991) and Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of The Greek Anthology (Princeton University Press, 2001), several radio and stage plays A Mutual Flame (BBC Radio, 1961), The Death of Seneca (Chicago, 1968) and Alecstis (BBC Radio, 1972). Hine has won several prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980, an American Academy Award in 1982 and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1986. He has since published a novel, The Prince of Darkness & Co (Abelard-Schuman, 1961), and poetry collections, including Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1980), Academic Festival Overtures (Atheneum, 1985), Postscripts (Random House, 1990), Recollected poems: 1951-2004 (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2007) along with dozens of articles and poems in magazines and anthologies. Hine died in 2012. \",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Atwood, Margaret"],"contributors_names_search":["Atwood, Margaret"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109322990\",\"name\":\"Atwood, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Atwood, Margaret"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"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\":\"00:60:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 12 1\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\" \",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Daryl Hine reads from The Carnal and the Crane (McGill Poetry Series by Contact Press, 1957), The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960), and The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965), as well as poems published later in Minutes (Atheneum, 1968)."],"contents":["daryl_hine_i006-11-158.mp3\n\nUnknown\n00:00:00\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:00:12\nI first met Daryl Hine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5226186] about six years ago in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], where he was living in the midst of a colony of cockroaches, and on that occasion, he drank me under the table with more ease and urbanity than anybody that's been able to manage since, which is actually a literary comment on the way he writes poetry. It's a pleasure to welcome him back to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], while attending the 'other' university here; before that he lived in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], where he was born in 1936, and where he began writing poetry at the age of twelve, and publishing it in such magazines as Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] and Contemporary Verse at the age of fifteen. His first book, Five Poems, was published when he was eighteen, and his next, The Carnal and the Crane, established him as an important poet at age 21, when most poets are still cutting their poetic teeth. Since then, his career, like his poetry, has been international, rather than national. After becoming a college dropout, he traveled widely in Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46] and then in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], producing, en route, four other books, The Devil's Picture Book and The Wooden Horse, both of which are poetry, The Prince of Darkness, a novel, and a travel book called Polish Subtitles.  He is currently awaiting the publication of his next book of poetry, to be called Minutes, while teaching in the English department at the University of Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131252]. He says that his plans for the future are vague, but he assures me that they include the evasion of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. Ladies and gentlemen, Daryl Hine.\n \nAudience\n00:02:03\nApplause.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:02:11\nI thought I'd begin by reading some poems that I wrote when I lived in Montreal...if I can find some fuel. Poems that are in my second book, which I tend to think of as my first book, The Carnal and the Crane. I'll read the third and fourth of four fabulary satires.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:02:48\nReads “Four Fabulary Satires” part III from The Carnal and the Crane.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:04:51\nAnd the fourth satire.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:04:53\nReads “Four Fabulary Satires” part IV from The Carnal and the Crane.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:06:56\nThe other poem that I'll read from The Carnal and the Crane is a one-sided dialogue called \"A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden\". It's in four fairly distinct parts. They're more distinct than the ordinary stanzas in a poem.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:07:35\nReads \"A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden\" from The Carnal and the Crane.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:10:52\nA number of the poems in my next book, The Devil's Picture Book, were also written in Montreal, although the book was published about two years after I left Montreal and went to Europe. I'm going to read one of the longest poems in this book, which is called \"The Double-Goer\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:11:41\nReads \"The Double-Goer\" from The Devil’s Picture Book.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:16:31\nImmediately following that poem in The Devil's Picture Book, which I feel is very accurately titled, immediately after that poem is another much shorter, and...perhaps not really simpler poem on the same subject, the subject which seemed to preoccupy me a great deal at the time and I'm glad to say no longer does. This poem is a villanelle, and it's called \"The Black Swan\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:17:12\nReads \"The Black Swan\" from The Devil’s Picture Book.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:18:38\nThere's a...poem in The Wooden Horse that deals also, perhaps, I think, with the same subject, but in a different way, and at a different stage. It's called \"The Ouija Board\".  It may be that some of you don't know what an ouija board is, in any case, this one wasn't a real ouija board. We made it up using a teacup, an inverted, as I remember, cracked, willow-patterned teacup, on a round circular table top. Four of us operated this by placing a single finger each on the teacup, and we cut out letters of the alphabet and placed them around the table. I did this in company with a friend of mine who's done it for many years, and has developed such perfect communication with the other side that instead of getting the usual scrambled answers that people get in these attempted communications, he gets extremely long, involved, and very literate answers, rather in the style of his own prose writing....[audience laughter] which all purport, or most of them purport to come from a Greek or Roman character called, in this poem Io, he's actually called Ephraim, although perhaps I shouldn't mention it. Anyway, this is about a session with the teacup.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:20:15\nReads “The Ouija Board” from The Wooden Horse. \n \nDaryl Hine\n00:21:54\nPerhaps as an alternative to all of this tinkering with the other side, I'll read a poem that is, most of it, very much about this side, called \"Bluebeard's Wife\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:22:21\nReads \"Bluebeard's Wife\" from The Wooden Horse.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:25:46\nThe last poem I'll read from The Wooden Horse is the last poem in The Wooden Horse, and I beg your indulgence, as it's a trifle long. It's called \"The Wave\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:26:17\nReads \"The Wave” from The Wooden Horse.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:31:01\nFour years ago I came back to Montreal on my first visit since I left rather quietly in 1958, and spent the next year after this return visit, which was very pleasant, although very brief, struggling with a poem which I think perhaps is still not quite finished, but I think will go either in this form or some other form into the next book. It's a poem, of course, about the impossibility of writing an autobiographical poem. And it's called \"The Apology\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:31:56\nReads \"The Apology\" [published later in Minutes]. \n\nDaryl Hine\n00:35:53\nWell, I've returned to other places than Montreal [audience laughter], and two summers ago I went back just for the summer to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], where I lived for something more than, between three and four years, and I didn't like it very much. And these are two poems from a series that I wrote about not liking it. This one is called \"The Marché aux Puces and the Jardin des Plantes\"- the Marché aux Puces is of course the flea market, and the Jardin des Plantes is the botanical and zoological gardens, where I spent, in one place or other I spent most of my afternoons, that rather boring summer in Paris. Having the habit of working in the morning.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:36:53\nReads \"The Marché aux Puces and the Jardin des Plantes\" [published later in Minutes; audience laughter throughout]. \n \nDaryl Hine\n00:38:17\nWell, I think perhaps I'll read three of these [inaudible]. The next one will seem familiar to, I'm sure, many of you. I haven't quite decided on a title, it might be called \"Jardin des Gourmets\", or it might be called \"Rendez-vous des routiers\" or something like that, it's about a certain sort of French restaurant.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:38:42\nReads \"Le Rendezvous des Gourmets\" [published later in Minutes; audience laughter throughout].\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:40:18\nAnd this poem isn't quite as funny [audience laughter], not that I really thought the last one was, but this one is really about Henry James' [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170509] novel, The Ambassadors [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q650571]. It's also, of course, about being in any town in the off season, in this case, Paris, and of course, Paris in August is emptier than anywhere I've ever been. But, I imagine that other places in their off seasons are the same. It's called \"Clôture annuelle\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:40:57\nReads \"Clôture annuelle\" [published later in Minutes].\n\nDaryl Hine\n00:42:19\nI also, this year, or was it last, returned to my place of origin, British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]. A [inaudible] which will be familiar to some of you as the site of the University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], I don't mean the University by any of the architectural things I mention in this poem, but I'm talking about the beach, a very beautiful, barren Pacific beach that lies below Point Grey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16898567]. \n \nDaryl Hine\n00:43:05\nBegins to read unnamed poem.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:43:10\nWell...[shuffles paper] I'll read another version, I think. Excuse me. \n \nDaryl Hine\n00:43:18\nReads [“Point Grey”; published later in Minutes].\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:45:03\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:46:12\nThe last poem I'll read, if I can find it...it is called...\"The Trout\".\n \nDaryl Hine\n00:46:50\nReads \"The Trout\" [published later in Minutes].\n \nAudience\n00:48:41\nApplause.\n \nAnnouncer\n00:48:59\nI want to thank Mr. Hine and also announce that the next reading is on January 26th, by the American poet John Logan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6245151].\n \nEND\n00:49:12\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\n In 1969, Daryl Hine published Commonplaces (Unicorn Press), and had published Bluebeard’s wife (Pasdeloup Press) and Minutes: poems (Atheneum) and the play The Death of Seneca in 1968. Hines was working at the University of Chicago and was editing Poetry magazine.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\n At different points in his career, Daryl Hine lived in Montreal, and studied at McGill University. He met Margaret Atwood (the event presenter) in 1963 in New York, and I assume that she offers the direct connection between Hine and Sir George Williams University. Regardless of this connection, Hine is an important and influential Canadian-American poet, editor, translator and writer.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gilbert, Roger. \\\"Hine, Daryl\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/minutes-poems/oclc/61503623&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hine, Daryl. Minutes. New York: Atheneum, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/carnal-and-the-crane/oclc/460627893&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hine, Daryl. The Carnal and the Crane. Montreal: McGill Poetry Series, 1957. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/devils-picture-book-poems/oclc/707438836&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hine, Daryl. The Devil's Picture Book. Toronto: Abelard-Schuman, 1960.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/wooden-horse-poems/oclc/613046839&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hine, Daryl. The Wooden Horse. New York: Atheneum, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Sullivan, Rosemary. \\\"Hine, Daryl\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3167\",\"citation\":\"“Daryl Hine (1936-)”. The Poetry Foundation Website. Poetryfoundation.org, 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 Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"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. 14 September 1967, page 15.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry: From the Archive”. Poetry Magazine Website. Poetrymagazine.org\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548831207424,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0158_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0158_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Daryl Hine 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_0158_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0158_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Daryl Hine 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_0158_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0158_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Daryl Hine 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_0158_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0158_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Daryl Hine 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/daryl_hine_i006-11-158.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"daryl_hine_i006-11-158.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:49:12\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"118.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Unknown\\n00:00:00\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:00:12\\nI first met Daryl Hine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5226186] about six years ago in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], where he was living in the midst of a colony of cockroaches, and on that occasion, he drank me under the table with more ease and urbanity than anybody that's been able to manage since, which is actually a literary comment on the way he writes poetry. It's a pleasure to welcome him back to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], while attending the 'other' university here; before that he lived in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], where he was born in 1936, and where he began writing poetry at the age of twelve, and publishing it in such magazines as Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] and Contemporary Verse at the age of fifteen. His first book, Five Poems, was published when he was eighteen, and his next, The Carnal and the Crane, established him as an important poet at age 21, when most poets are still cutting their poetic teeth. Since then, his career, like his poetry, has been international, rather than national. After becoming a college dropout, he traveled widely in Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46] and then in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], producing, en route, four other books, The Devil's Picture Book and The Wooden Horse, both of which are poetry, The Prince of Darkness, a novel, and a travel book called Polish Subtitles.  He is currently awaiting the publication of his next book of poetry, to be called Minutes, while teaching in the English department at the University of Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131252]. He says that his plans for the future are vague, but he assures me that they include the evasion of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. Ladies and gentlemen, Daryl Hine.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:03\\nApplause.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:02:11\\nI thought I'd begin by reading some poems that I wrote when I lived in Montreal...if I can find some fuel. Poems that are in my second book, which I tend to think of as my first book, The Carnal and the Crane. I'll read the third and fourth of four fabulary satires.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:02:48\\nReads “Four Fabulary Satires” part III from The Carnal and the Crane.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:04:51\\nAnd the fourth satire.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:04:53\\nReads “Four Fabulary Satires” part IV from The Carnal and the Crane.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:06:56\\nThe other poem that I'll read from The Carnal and the Crane is a one-sided dialogue called \\\"A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden\\\". It's in four fairly distinct parts. They're more distinct than the ordinary stanzas in a poem.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:07:35\\nReads \\\"A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden\\\" from The Carnal and the Crane.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:10:52\\nA number of the poems in my next book, The Devil's Picture Book, were also written in Montreal, although the book was published about two years after I left Montreal and went to Europe. I'm going to read one of the longest poems in this book, which is called \\\"The Double-Goer\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:11:41\\nReads \\\"The Double-Goer\\\" from The Devil’s Picture Book.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:16:31\\nImmediately following that poem in The Devil's Picture Book, which I feel is very accurately titled, immediately after that poem is another much shorter, and...perhaps not really simpler poem on the same subject, the subject which seemed to preoccupy me a great deal at the time and I'm glad to say no longer does. This poem is a villanelle, and it's called \\\"The Black Swan\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:17:12\\nReads \\\"The Black Swan\\\" from The Devil’s Picture Book.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:18:38\\nThere's a...poem in The Wooden Horse that deals also, perhaps, I think, with the same subject, but in a different way, and at a different stage. It's called \\\"The Ouija Board\\\".  It may be that some of you don't know what an ouija board is, in any case, this one wasn't a real ouija board. We made it up using a teacup, an inverted, as I remember, cracked, willow-patterned teacup, on a round circular table top. Four of us operated this by placing a single finger each on the teacup, and we cut out letters of the alphabet and placed them around the table. I did this in company with a friend of mine who's done it for many years, and has developed such perfect communication with the other side that instead of getting the usual scrambled answers that people get in these attempted communications, he gets extremely long, involved, and very literate answers, rather in the style of his own prose writing....[audience laughter] which all purport, or most of them purport to come from a Greek or Roman character called, in this poem Io, he's actually called Ephraim, although perhaps I shouldn't mention it. Anyway, this is about a session with the teacup.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:20:15\\nReads “The Ouija Board” from The Wooden Horse. \\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:21:54\\nPerhaps as an alternative to all of this tinkering with the other side, I'll read a poem that is, most of it, very much about this side, called \\\"Bluebeard's Wife\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:22:21\\nReads \\\"Bluebeard's Wife\\\" from The Wooden Horse.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:25:46\\nThe last poem I'll read from The Wooden Horse is the last poem in The Wooden Horse, and I beg your indulgence, as it's a trifle long. It's called \\\"The Wave\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:26:17\\nReads \\\"The Wave” from The Wooden Horse.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:31:01\\nFour years ago I came back to Montreal on my first visit since I left rather quietly in 1958, and spent the next year after this return visit, which was very pleasant, although very brief, struggling with a poem which I think perhaps is still not quite finished, but I think will go either in this form or some other form into the next book. It's a poem, of course, about the impossibility of writing an autobiographical poem. And it's called \\\"The Apology\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:31:56\\nReads \\\"The Apology\\\" [published later in Minutes]. \\n\\nDaryl Hine\\n00:35:53\\nWell, I've returned to other places than Montreal [audience laughter], and two summers ago I went back just for the summer to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], where I lived for something more than, between three and four years, and I didn't like it very much. And these are two poems from a series that I wrote about not liking it. This one is called \\\"The Marché aux Puces and the Jardin des Plantes\\\"- the Marché aux Puces is of course the flea market, and the Jardin des Plantes is the botanical and zoological gardens, where I spent, in one place or other I spent most of my afternoons, that rather boring summer in Paris. Having the habit of working in the morning.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:36:53\\nReads \\\"The Marché aux Puces and the Jardin des Plantes\\\" [published later in Minutes; audience laughter throughout]. \\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:38:17\\nWell, I think perhaps I'll read three of these [inaudible]. The next one will seem familiar to, I'm sure, many of you. I haven't quite decided on a title, it might be called \\\"Jardin des Gourmets\\\", or it might be called \\\"Rendez-vous des routiers\\\" or something like that, it's about a certain sort of French restaurant.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:38:42\\nReads \\\"Le Rendezvous des Gourmets\\\" [published later in Minutes; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:40:18\\nAnd this poem isn't quite as funny [audience laughter], not that I really thought the last one was, but this one is really about Henry James' [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170509] novel, The Ambassadors [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q650571]. It's also, of course, about being in any town in the off season, in this case, Paris, and of course, Paris in August is emptier than anywhere I've ever been. But, I imagine that other places in their off seasons are the same. It's called \\\"Clôture annuelle\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:40:57\\nReads \\\"Clôture annuelle\\\" [published later in Minutes].\\n\\nDaryl Hine\\n00:42:19\\nI also, this year, or was it last, returned to my place of origin, British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]. A [inaudible] which will be familiar to some of you as the site of the University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], I don't mean the University by any of the architectural things I mention in this poem, but I'm talking about the beach, a very beautiful, barren Pacific beach that lies below Point Grey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16898567]. \\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:43:05\\nBegins to read unnamed poem.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:43:10\\nWell...[shuffles paper] I'll read another version, I think. Excuse me. \\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:43:18\\nReads [“Point Grey”; published later in Minutes].\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:45:03\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:46:12\\nThe last poem I'll read, if I can find it...it is called...\\\"The Trout\\\".\\n \\nDaryl Hine\\n00:46:50\\nReads \\\"The Trout\\\" [published later in Minutes].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:48:41\\nApplause.\\n \\nAnnouncer\\n00:48:59\\nI want to thank Mr. Hine and also announce that the next reading is on January 26th, by the American poet John Logan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6245151].\\n \\nEND\\n00:49:12\\n\",\"notes\":\" Daryl Hine reads from The Carnal and the Crane (McGill Poetry Series by Contact Press, 1957), The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960), and The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965), as well as poems published later in Minutes (Atheneum, 1968).\\n\\n00:12- Unknown (female- perhaps Wynne Francis?) introduces Daryl Hine [INDEX: met in New York, McGill University, Vancouver (b. 1936), Northern Review, Contemporary Verse, books Five Poems (Emblem Books, 1955), The carnal and the crane (McGill Poetry Series by Contact Press, 1957), international career, traveling in Europe and the U.S., books The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960), The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965), The Prince of Darkness (Abelard-Schuman, 1961), Polish Subtitles (Abelard-Schuman,1962), next publication: Minutes (Atheneum, 1975), teaching at the University of Chicago, Toronto.]\\n02:11- Daryl Hine introduces “Four Fabulary Satires” part III. [INDEX: first line “Bee, at the end of your famous garden, admonished...”; poems written in Montreal, poems in “second” book (actually first); from The Carnal and the Crane (McGill Poetry Series,   \\t1957).]\\n02:48- Reads “Four Fabulary Satires” part III. [INDEX: garden, nature, bee, poppy,    hollyhock, time, rhetoric, language, orator, grasshopper, ant, grammar; Duration: 02:03.]\\n04:51- Introduces “Four Fabulary Satires” Part IV. [INDEX: fourth satire; from The Carnal and the Crane (McGill Poetry Series, 1957)]\\n04:53- Reads “Four Fabulary Satires” Part IV.\\n06:56- Introduces “A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden”. [INDEX:   one-sided dialogue, four parts, rather than stanzas; from The Carnal and the Crane    (McGill Poetry Series, 1957).]\\n07:35- Reads “A Bewilderment at the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden”. [INDEX: boy,   demons, paradise, money, angel, sleep, art, Hamlet, duality; duration: 03:17.]\\n10:52- Introduces “The Double-Goer”. [INDEX: number of poems in The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960) written in Montreal, left Montreal for Europe, longest poem in the book.]\\n11:41- Reads “The Double-Goer”. [INDEX: lyric, error, crime, art, heart, half, double, heaven, earth, duality, day, single, sleeper, dream, sublime, careless; from The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960), duration 04:50; Howard Fink list “The Double Door”.]\\n16:31- Introduces “The Black Swan”. [INDEX: title of The Devil’s Picture Book, poem following “The Double-goer” is shorter, subject matter, villanelle; from The Devil’s       \\tPicture Book (Abelard, 1960).]\\n17:12- Reads “The Black Swan”. [INDEX: nature, air, water, swan, villanelle, guilt, lover, fair, duality; from The Devil’s Picture Book (Abelard, 1960), duration 01:26.]\\n18:38- Introduces “The Ouija Board”. [INDEX: from The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965), deals with similar subject to “The Black Swan” but at different stage, ouija board, self-made ouija board out of willow-patterned teacup, on table, four people operating it,   literate answers, prose writing, Greek or Roman character called Io or Ephraim.]\\n20:15- Reads “The Ouija Board”. [INDEX: ouija board, voices, spirit, questions, answers, dialogue, glass, grave, death, other side, other world, love; duration 01:38.]\\n21:54- Introduces “Bluebeard’s Wife”. [INDEX: about the other side; from The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965)]\\n25:46- Reads “Bluebeard's Wife”. [INDEX: Bluebeard, myth, fairy tale, wife, objects, summer, nature, air, alone, artifice, rooms; from The Wooden Horse (Atheneum, 1965); duration 02:24.]\\n26:17- Reads “The Wave”. [INDEX: day, Sunday, sea, tide, beach, write, event, documentation, earthquake, death, flood, God; from unknown source; duration 03:45.]\\n31:01- Introduces “The Apology”. [INDEX: first trip to Montreal since 1958, came back with idea for this poem, not in finished form, about the impossibility of writing an      \\tautobiographical poem, published in next book of poetry; first published in Minutes         \\t(Atheneum, 1968). Note: possible differences in published version?]\\n31:56- Reads “The Apology”. [INDEX: apology, time machine, woman, school, poem,   machine, mechanical, reader, verse, silence, experience, meaning, poet; duration 03:57.]\\n35:53- Introduces “The Marche aux puces and the Jardin des Plantes”. [INDEX: return to Paris, lived there for 3-4 years, poem about not liking Paris, Marche aux puces is a flea   market, Jardin des Plantes is the botanical and zoological gardens, summer in Paris, working in the morning; from Minutes (Atheneum, 1968).]\\n36:53- Reads “The Marche aux Puces and the Jardins des Plantes”. [INDEX: art, beauty, zoo, flea market, metro, cities, Paris; duration 01:22.]\\n38:17- Introduces unknown poem, first line “The price is fixed...”. [INDEX: possible titles    “Jardin des Gourmets” or “Rendez-vous des routiers”, about French Restaurant;    published as “Le Rendezvous des Gourmets” in Minutes (Atheneum, 1968).]\\n38:42- Reads unknown poem, first line “The price is fixed...”. [INDEX: restaurant, food, soup, menu, bread, sacrament, Last Supper, remembrance; duration 01:34.]\\n40:18- Introduces “Clôture annuelle”. [INDEX: Henry James’ novel, The Ambassadors, being   in a town in the off-season, Paris in August; from Minutes (Atheneum, 1968).]\\n40:57- Reads “Clôture annuelle”. [INDEX: cities, Paris, August, emptiness, solitude, weather, summer, winter, stranger, life; duration 01:22.]\\n42:19- Introduces unknown poem, first line “Brought up as I was to judge the weather...”. [INDEX: returning to B.C., University of British Columbia, barren beach below Point Grey; published as “Point Grey” in Minutes (Atheneum, 1968).]\\n43:05- Begins to read “Brought up as I was to judge the weather...”.\\n43:10- Interrupts reading to read a different version.\\n43:18- Reads “Brought up as I was to ask of the weather...”. [INDEX: cities, Vancouver,    beach, water, mountains, rain, weather, concrete, guilt, waves, beauty.]\\n45:03- Reads “Antaeus, when once separated from the ground...”. [INDEX: myth, Antaeus, Hercules, gravity, love, suffering; from unknown source.]\\n46:12- Introduces “The Trout”. [INDEX: from Minutes (Atheneum, 1968).]\\n46:50- Reads “The Trout”. [INDEX: water, fish, prison, reality, music, cycles, death, pattern, paradise; duration 01:48.]\\n48:59- Unknown male announcer makes announcement of next reading [INDEX: January 26, American poet John Logan.]\\n\\nHoward Fink List: Print catalogue page from archives contains the following information:\\n\\nTitle: Daryl Hine reading his own poetry\\nDate: December 1, 1969\\nSource: one, two-track, 7” tape, 3 ¾, lasting 55 mins.\\n \\n1. Title:  \\n    First line: “Be, at the end of your famous garden…”\\n2. Title:              \\n    First line: “The fox and the crow…”\\n3. Title: A Bewilderment of the Entrance of the Fat Boy into Eden\\n    First line: “Not knowing…”\\n4. Title: The Double Door\\n    First line: “All that I do is…”\\n5. Title: The Black Swan\\n    First line: “Confused between the water and the air…”\\n6. Title: Ouija Board\\n    First line: “The wood that they prefer to walk…”\\n7. Title: Bluebeard’s Wife\\n    First line: “Impatiently she tampered with”\\n**Note inserted in archived print catalogue: -between poems #7 and #8; The Wave\\nFirst line: “Suddenly it was quiet as a Sunday”\\n8. Title: The Apology\\n    First line:“The time machine”\\n9. Title:              \\n    First line:“There are too many hours in a day”\\n10. Title:              \\n      First line: “The price is fixed…”\\n11. Title:              \\n      First line: “X, in August…”\\n12. Title:              \\n      First line: “Brought up as I was…”\\n13. Title: The Trout\\n      First line: “The water…”\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/daryl-hine-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"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":2.1907105},{"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 - 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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":2.1907105},{"id":"1269","cataloger_name":["Bindu,Reddy"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Earle Birney at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 23 February 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"EARLE BIRNEY Recorded February 23, 1968 3.75 ips, on 1/2 track on 1 mil. tape\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"EARLE BIRNEY i006/SR18\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-018\" also written on sticker on the reel.\n"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Birney, Earle"],"creator_names_search":["Birney, Earle"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/97679781\",\"name\":\"Birney, Earle\",\"dates\":\"1904-1955\",\"notes\":\"Poet Earle Birney was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1904, when it was still part of the Northwest Territories. Birney spent his early years on a remote farm, until his family moved to Banff in 1911, and then again in 1916 to Creston, British Columbia. Upon graduation from high-school, Birney worked odd jobs as a bank clerk, a farm labourer and as a general labourer at national parks in B.C. before enrolling at the University of British Columbia, in chemistry, in 1922. He quickly switched into english literature and became the associate editor and subsequently editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Ubyssey. Birney graduated in Honours English in 1926, and completed a Master’s Degree from the University of Toronto in 1927. Birney pursued further graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, until leaving in 1930 for the University of Utah to become a lecturer for two years. He returned to Toronto to complete his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and became a party organizer for the Trotskyist branch of the Communist Party. Birney received a fellowship to the University of London, England to study and thus traveled to Norway to interview Leon Trotsky. In 1938, with Ph.D. in hand, Birney taught at the University of Toronto and became the editor of the Canadian Forum until 1940. After enlisting in the Canadian Army, he published his first volume of poetry, David (Ryerson Press, 1942) which won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Birney then shipped off to serve in the Second World War, returning with a manuscript for Now is time (Ryerson Press, 1945), which also won a Governor General’s Award. Birney was editor of The Canadian Poetry Magazine (1946-48) and a professor at the University of British Columbia (1948-62). There, Birney created the very first department of creative writing in Canada. His subsequent publications include The strait of Anian (Ryerson Press, 1948), Trial of a city (Ryerson Press,1952) which was later published with its original title, The damnation of Vancouver (McClelland and Stewart, 1957), Ice cod bell or stone (McClelland and Stewart, 1962). Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, his poetry became more innovative and radical, publishing Near false creek mouth (McClelland and Stewart, 1964), a collaboration with bp Nichol, Pnomes, jukollages & other stunzas (Ganglia Press, 1969), Rag and bone shop (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), What’s so big about green? (McClelland and Stewart, 1973), The rugging and the moving times (Black Moss Press, 1976), Alphbeings and other seasyours (Pikadilly Press, 1976), and Fall by fury (McClelland and Stewart, 1978). Along with poetry, Birney published two prose novels, Turvey  (McClelland and Stewart, 1949) and Down the long table (McClelland and Stewart, 1955), a collection of stories Big bird in the bush (Mosaic Press, 1978), non fiction The creative writer (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1966), and The cow jumped over the moon (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972) among others. Birney’s poems have been collected in Selected poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1966), The poems of Earle Birney (McClelland and Stewart, 1969), Collected poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), and his last volume, Last makings (McClelland and Stewart, 1991). Birney received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Earle Birney died in 1995.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"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\":\"06:00:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 2 23\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on tape box\",\"source\":\"Accompanying material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Sir George Williams University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1455  Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455  Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal"],"Venue":["Sir George Williams University"],"content_notes":["Earle Birney reads from Near False Creek Mouth (McClelland and Stewart, 1964) and Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966), as well as poems later collected in Rag & Bone Shop (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), and Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1977)."],"contents":["earle_birney_i006-11-018.mp3\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nI think it's, it's either redundant or futile to do anything more than the formality of introducing Earle Birney [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3046415] who's probably the most famous poet we've ever had and who you will see described on those pieces of paper, pink that flit around, as always as a, the Dean of Canadian Poetry, though I prefer to think of him as the federal Minister for Poetry, and the times he has been a semi-official courier of Canadian poetry around the world. Sadly enough, as he tells me, the only book of his still generally in print is the Selected Poems of 1966, which we do have on sale outside the door and of which, I should remind you, he gets a cut from his publisher. [Audience laughter]. Luckily there, I have, have heard that there will be a couple of Birney books within the next little while, one of them published in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] and the other one by the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585], presuming always that there will be a Coach House Press in the next little while. I would just like to mention that my association with Earle Birney has always been very, a good one, for me, and I wouldn't be here today to be talking about him unless I happened to be a member of the Poetry Committee, and, except that if it hadn't been for him, and the fact that both he and I were in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] at one time, I probably wouldn't have been writing any poems at all. Either that, or he would be writing mine. So without any further ado, and probably to our great delectation, I would like to introduce Earle Birney. \n \nAudience\n00:02:15 \nApplause.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:02:26\nThank you very much, George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. I should, in all fairness to George, say that he actually wrote all this information about me and probably a good number of the poems, which I will be reading under my own name tonight. I would also like to say that I have, was recently corresponding with a man who had just resigned as president of a University to become a Dean of another University and had said, well, at least I will show them that if a Dean is a mouse in training to be a rat, then some rats can revert to being mice. Now, if we apply this to the world of poetry, I would say that I am a mouse in training to be less than a mouse, to be something in another category--I think I'd like to be Bursar of Canadian Poetry. But nobody has really set me up for that. I'm going to start by making sure that I read one good poem tonight by reading a poem of W. B. Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] [audience laughter] called \"A Prayer for Old Age\", which has, I think, I'm afraid, more and more pertinence to my condition. He wrote it at 69. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:04:10\nReads \"A Prayer for Old Age\"  by W. B. Yeats.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:04:54\nThat I will use as an excuse for some of the poems I now shall read you, if I can find my list. The last thing. Ah yes, here it is. Now there's no mic and I want to make sure that everyone is hearing me. If I'm not talking loud enough, those that cannot hear, would you please put a hand up now. I'm very sorry, I'm very sorry--well, you will have to go to the back and then somebody who's standing can come here. I'm sorry there aren't, that some of you have to stand, and I'll try to make it as fast as possible so we can all get out of here. [Audience laughter]. I'm going to begin with some poems that are, alas, too well known to my fellow poets, most of them in this room, but I had planned it this way and I'm stuck with it now and so are they. I'm going to begin with a series that came out, some members of a series that came out in Ice Cod Bell or Stone, and later others in, Near False Creek Mouth, that have to do with wandering around the global village, and this one begins in, well it since begins in Vancouver, but it's about Honolulu [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18094]. I got a fellowship to go to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and I was in Vancouver and I discovered that it only cost me two hundred dollars and some odd cents more to go to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] and back to Vancouver by way of going around the world, you know, just heading west. The air tickets were accommodating me that way. So I decided to go west, and my first stop, I noticed, was Honolulu, and I began to get a bit of a temperature about that, and I thought, how 'bout, I might as well live it up, I'm going to Honolulu tomorrow morning, going to be there tomorrow night, and so I will engage a room in Hawaiian Village Hotel for the one night, because first night, I know I have a little money. After that, God knows what's going to happen to me because I intend to stay in a lot of places before I get to London. So I did this, I reserved a room before I left Vancouver, not realizing that this had put me in a bit of a box, because this is one of the Kaiser-Hilton hotels on Waikiki Beach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q254861], and they have a special greeter who meets all the planes, just for people coming to them. And it happened, through another mischance, that I was the only one for that hotel, and this unsettled me so much I had to write about it. [Audience laughter]. Something which I call \"Twenty-Third Flight\" for reasons, well, the poem is imitative of another poet, much older, much greater, by the name of David. Not the one that I pushed off the cliff [audience laughter], the one who was a harpist.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:08:39\nReads \"Twenty-Third Flight\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\n \nAudience\n00:10:58\nApplause and laughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:11:06\nThank you very much, I hesitate to look as if I anticipated more applause, but I would much prefer it if you'd just let me rattle ahead here, for one thing it's getting hotter in here and more and more uncomfortable and as I say, let me get ahead with it, and so if at the end, of course, if anybody is still here with enough energy left, fine. Is there anybody who knows where water is available, any water hole out there in those vast cement deserts?\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:11:50\nThere should be some beside you, there.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:11:52\nUh, well, there's a water pitcher, and a water glass…[audience laughter]. I'll prove it... [audience laughter].\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:12:05\nIf I drink it, it's okay.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:12:06\nYeah! ...Well, while George is away I'll read one of his poems. This one is called \"Honolulu\" and follows immediately after the other, but in between was about forty, twenty-four hours, I guess, in which I visited the very famous outdoor aviary, one of the world's famous aviaries, and also the aquarium and so on, and I also encountered a type, a Honolulu type of sorts. So this poem, which is perhaps about the involvement of people with animals through self-projection, and the involvement of human animals with each other. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:13:05\nReads \"Honolulu\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:14:41\nThen I went to Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and I want to read you one little poem, this is my Zen poem, I guess. [Audience laughter]. Every poet has to have a Zen poem. Thank you, George. \n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:14:54\nOh ho, I could give you a Zen greeting. Alright. It's really cold. I tried to get it out of the Coke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2813] machine but it just didn't work. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:15:03\nGood gin, thank you. \"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\"--you know these little glass-leave things, which one expects to see in Japan, but not suddenly to hear when you're all alone in an old ruin. Some left up in the rafters.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:15:31\nReads \"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:16:12\nBut I think I'm going to leave Asia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48] for the moment, and get on to Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], briefly, been around to Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], at any rate. I was sitting, more or less minding my own business, on a plaza in Madrid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2807] one morning, having my coffee, and something happened, which again I felt I should chronicle. Desmond Pacey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5264782] says I'm a chronicler, and so I, having learned that, I now use the word [audience laughter] to explain what I'm doing. I renamed the plaza, it had a rather dull name, I call it Plaza de Inquisicion. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:17:09\nReads “Plaza de Inquisicion” [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:17:44\nI also went to the Prado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160112] of course, and saw, for the first time, the original of one of the three studies by El Greco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q301] of The Espolio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q52301456], or the taking-off and rending of Christ's garments, which was one of El Greco's themes. And I was struck, as I had never been really before, I suppose because I never had really looked at these paintings properly, I had looked at them in small illustrations--I was struck by the extraordinary amount of space which had been taken up, which El Greco had devoted to the carpenter who was making the holes in the cross preparatory to having Christ nailed to the cross. In fact, the whole lower third of the canvas is devoted to him in one of these three versions, and not only that but he is, they're facing us, with his back to Christ, and on the right and left are two of the Marys, whose eyes are on him. I felt that perhaps El Greco was trying to say something here, apart from what he was saying about the actual scene of the crucifixion, in a symbolic way, perhaps about something that happened to do, really, with this religion, but with, whatever we'd call it, religion, whatever we'd call it, of art. Or if not of art, but craft. It's a little, perhaps, exaggerated, to call the carpenter an artist, but it's obvious that he'd been very much at that moment a craftsman. And so I wrote \"El Greco: Espolio\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:20:04\nReads \"El Greco: Espolio\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:22:29\nWhen I come to Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], now, I'm going to kind of sneak in on the side by reading you a poem that has to do with a very remote, I suppose the most remote part of Canada, in fact, the piece of land that is even nearer to the North Pole [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q934] than Greenland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q223] or anything the Russians have, Ellesmereland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q146841]. And I will read it first of all in English, and then, more or less for the hell of it, I'm going to read it in a translation into Spanish, but anyway, because I think I like the sound of it in Spanish. It's short, so I've practiced my Spanish on it, and maybe I won't make too many boobs.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:23:30\nReads \"Ellesmereland\" in English [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:24:10\nReads \"Ellesmereland\" in Spanish.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:24:59\nWell I'll get down and turn to more familiar territory. \"Canada Case History\". This is a poem written quite a long time ago, in 1945, in fact, when I'd just got back from World War Number Two [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], I always have to be careful to name which one it is, people getting confused about how far back I go now. And I found that in 1967 I had to do a little patching and changing of this, because history had not only caught up with me, it had changed me. But here, first of all is the original. No, I don't think, I can't, I don't think I can bear to read the original, I think I'll just read you what, what happened to this poem in 1967 in the centennial year.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:26:09\nReads \"Canada: Case History\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:28:15\nWell now I'm going to read you other various scrappy things about Canadian literature which have never been published and never will be, I think, sneak them out like this once in a while. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:28:38\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nAudience \n00:29:20\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:29:29\nThen there's John, Jean Cabot, as I think my school teacher, trying very hard to be bilingual, made us say, but it turns out he wasn't French at all, but Italian. His name was Giovanni Caboto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85642]. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:29:48\nReads \"John Cabot\" [published later as “giovanni caboto - john cabot” in Rag & Bone Shop].\n \nAudience\n00:30:27\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:30:36\nThis is something to my publisher, when they brought out a book of mine, Ice Cod Bell or Stone, full of beautiful artwork, except that the man in charge of the artwork had never read the little poem, the \"Klein Ellesmereland\" that I've just read to you, and so never discovered that when I was talking about bells, I was talking about harebells, or flowers, and he put very large iron church bells into all the illustrations. [Audience laughter]. I had asked to see the artwork in advance and was told that the authors, that this was not the custom to show authors the artwork in advance, so I didn't see it. So all I could do at the end was write something. \"To the reader”, which was not included in the volume.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:31:45\nReads \"To the reader\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:32:39\nI went to spend a weekend a couple of years ago for the first time with Al Purdy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4704621] in his shack in Ameliasburg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4742321], and I had read a lot of his Ameliasburg poems before, and I knew Al, but this was a new experience to be actually in the country of the poet, particularly as it was so well staked out--nobody else has ever written about Ameliasburg and the country north of there. Or ever will, I think. But Al has used it, and the country, and developed it into part of the remarkable fineness of his poetry. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:33:33\nReads \"In Purdy's Ameliasburg\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop]. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:37:13\nNow a poem about another part of Canada. Still Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], part of the north. This is a poem about driving west with somebody else, another guy, and...well there it is. It's called \"Way to the West\". Summertime.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:37:46\nReads \"Way to the West\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:41:45\nWell, I'm going to get out to the West Coast very briefly. I'm going to read you something toward the end of a long poem. The trouble with long poems is, you could never dare to read the whole thing to any audience. So I'll read you, it's toward the end of the thing called \"November walk near False Creek mouth\". The last page.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:42:26\nReads final section of \"November walk near False Creek mouth\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEND\n00:45:06\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:45:07\nI'm going to read you a few odd things which are to some extent experimental, I suppose. Most of these have not been published, and some of them I haven't read before. This one is called a \"Swahili Serenade\" and I'll tell you about it after I read it. It's Swahili Found Serenade, really. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:45:44\nReads \"Swahili Serenade\" [published later as “found swahili serenade” in Rag & Bone Shop; audience laughter throughout].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:46:13\nWell, as some of you have already perceived, already noticed, this is made up, each line is a juke-box tune, it's just a very easy kind of poem to make up; I offer it to you as a formula for quick poetry, just sit down by a jukebox and pick off some titles. [Audience laughter]. Five minute poem. Here's another kind of found poem of a different sort, called, I call it \"Space Conquest\". That's about all that I've contributed to it. \"Space Conquest\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:46:56\nReads \"Space Conquest\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:47:33\nWell those ten lines, each of five syllables, came out of a computer at the University of Waterloo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1049470] last week, into which we had programmed a hundred and eleven, the one hundred and eleven words of George Meredith's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90238] \"Lucifer in Starlight,\" and the last thirty-three words of Archibald MacLeish's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q633354] \"The End of the World.\" Don't ask me why we picked those two poems, I had nothing to do with the picking of the poems. But some of us, two linguists, two linguist-isists, a mathematician, and myself, and masses of computers are producing this sort of poetry. It took point eight-three seconds, not even one second, to produce the hundred-some-odd lines, out of which I chose those ten. So you can see it doesn't take very long, once you've programmed the machine, to find the, you know, the entire text of Hamlet [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41567], but this is what we have done so far, we haven't put too much time on it yet. Some things that I haven't had computers write for me, although perhaps I might have, or should have. This one's called \"Kooks of the Monk\". \n \nEarle Birney\n00:49:24\nReads \"Kooks of the Monk\".\n \nAudience\n00:49:37\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:49:39\nThat is sometimes called \"concrete\". Fun anyway, to do. This is something that I may not be able to finish, but I'll try it. It's the train from Cardiff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10690] to London. English trains sound different, of course. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:50:03\nPerforms \"Train from Cardiff to London\".\n \nAudience\n00:50:53\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:50:59\nThis is a found collage from one issue of the Toronto Daily Star [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067299], called \"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\", and this is only a small part of the poem which has no beginning or end, it goes on forever if you read the whole of the Star.  \n \nEarle Birney\n00:51:22\nReads \"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:53:26\nA series of poems with reference back to the Yeats poem I read at the beginning, perhaps. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:53:36\nReads \"Like an eddy\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\n\nEarle Birney\n00:55:42\nAnd, two short haikus.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:55:47\nReads [two of three haikus from “hokkai in the dew line snow”, published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:56:16\nReads [\"BUILDINGS\", published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:56:50\nAnd, a poem that is written in kind of an attempt to write something to express a tiny little bit of the pleasure I've had, through most of my life, in reading Chaucer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5683]. Called \"I'm always going back to Chaucer\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:57:20\nReads \"I'm always going back to Chaucer\" in Middle English.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:59:06\nNow something that has to do with my Shetland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47134] grand-aunt. Tea with my Shetland grand-aunt. This is a little, slightly different dialect. And there's a kind of an opposition of styles going on here. It's a very old poem, refurbished.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:59:32\nReads \"Tea at my Shetland Aunt’s\" in a Shetland dialect [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n\n \nEarle Birney\n01:01:21\nWell now I'm going to turn back to older poems. To conclude. Hum...I'm going to read two or three poems that, who have some relationship to California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99] and Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824]. First of all, a poem that, when I wrote it, I wrote it on the day of its date. I thought the date was going to be very significant. August the seven, 1964, Florence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862740], Oregon. And that was because on that day, the American fleet moved into the coast and shelled the coast of North Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881], against the international agreements into which the United States had entered some years before. And I thought that this would surely go down in living memory, as a deed of aggression and perfidy. But there have been so many since, almost every day, that everybody has forgotten about that first shelling of the shore from the Gulf of Tonkin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212428]. But I happened to be on the shore of the Pacific [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98] almost directly across from the Gulf of Tonkin, in fact, the waves that were coming in perhaps had their pulsing first on the other side. And this, one couldn't get it out of one's mind, having seen the morning papers and heard the radio, and I went, I had gone fishing with an American poet and his two boys. The salmon were running, coming in, but I have got less and less interested in killing even fish as I get older and softer, and I soon gave up even wanting to cook fish, and left it to the others, and I went up, because I had nothing to do then, I went up and I sat on a cliff, and started thinking about the sea out there, and cormorants fishing, and once in a while the flash of a seal coming up, also fishing, and I also suddenly realized I was sitting there just staring out at the sea and I began to think, I remembered Frost's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q168728] poem about how odd human beings are, you know, they go down to the sea and they sit and they all, they always look out at the sea, although they can't look very far out or very far in. And I thought that was exactly what I was feeling, the whole thing. But I thought well it's not really Frost's ocean, this is Robinson Jeffers' [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q734955] ocean, and here is this great eye of indifference, so I began my poem, called \"Looking from Oregon\" with a line from Robinson Jeffers about the Pacific: \"And what it watches is not our wars\".\n \nEarle Birney\n01:04:54\nReads \"Looking from Oregon\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:06:20\nAnd another little poem which is really a video poem, and I should put it on a screen but I forgot to bring my slides. Brought them as far as the hotel, but I forgot to bring them up here.  o you'll just have to visualize a poem shaped like a pair of stairs but coming up at you, and visualize yourself at the top of these stairs with your back against the side of a theatre, a campus theatre at the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145], with signs of last week's shows, this one to go on tonight, that I'm waiting to go into, waiting for my friends, who have the tickets, and watching people come up these steps, the cars coming by and discharging people. \"Campus Theatre Steps\". Summertime, a beautiful summer night. \n \nEarle Birney\n01:07:14\nReads \"Campus Theatre Steps\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:08:04\nThen I was driving along the coast, a long time, and I was confronted with a sign that hadn't been there before. A billboard, with the same message multiplied up and down the coast and everywhere I went, since the last time I was there. Now I, this is my favourite state of the American Union, Oregon, absolutely beautiful, still, despite whatever, all the attempts of man to un-beautify it, there's still this great volcanic, snow-covered mountains, such, shaped a bit like Fujiyama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39231], there is also all those beautiful rocks and sea-lion caves and the pounding surf and the rhododendrons, the whole works. And there's these, this sign saying, \"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice, Courtesy of Oregon Chamber of Commerce\". I brooded about this, and being alone, I couldn't get the answer. What is the philosophy behind this? So I invented a hitchhiker, and I picked him up, and he told me, and this is what he said. This poem is dated 61-62, and Khruschev [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35314] is still in power in Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159]. \n \nEarle Birney\n01:09:36\nReads \"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:11:42\nWell, I think we'll slip down into Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] for a moment before we wind this show up. There's a very short little thing called Irapuato [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q816845]. Well it's all part, it's like, poetry is like guidebooks, you know, guidebooks are always pointing out irrational connections between things, and so is poetry, so sometimes they get together, and in this case the guidebook had told me that there were two things, sort of, that this place was famous for, and I had discovered they were right.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:12:29\nReads \"Irapuato\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:13:06\nReads \"Memory No Servant\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:14:20\nA poem addressed to friend and writer George Lamming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1340511], who's perhaps best known for his autobiography of his child as a poor negro boy on the island of Barbados [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q244]. George Lamming who wrote In the Castle of My Skin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23307454], and who happened to be in Jamaica [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766] when I went there, and was extremely hospitable to me, and so were all his friends. And when I left I wrote him this poem, which had to do with a split-second feeling, something, thing happening inside me, an internal happening, the night of the last party, the last night of the last party. \n \nEarle Birney\n01:15:18\nReads \"For George Lamming\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:16:32\nWell just in case you would think that I am soft about this and I'm going to like anybody if their skin is darker than mine, I'll read you a counter-poem that happened to come out of the island of Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128323], out of some little external happening, perhaps in part, perhaps really just an internal happening.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:17:20\nReads \"Meeting of Strangers\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:19:06\nAnd then a very brief little, Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289]-type poem from Curacao [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25279]. Very much a...very pallid compared with Irving's, I must say.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:19:22\nReads \"Curacao\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nAudience\n01:19:45\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:19:54\nNow I'm going to conclude with two pieces. One is about the farthest back of these poems. Although some things I've read tonight began earlier but have been revised, this one has not been particularly revised. It's called \"The Road to Nijmegen\" and was written in Holland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55] in January of 1945, the last winter of the war. Which was the coldest winter, and in this part of Holland, first the Germans in coming and then in retreating had cut down every tree anywhere around. The trees were used for fuel and for mine props and...And then we had come in, and if there were any trees left, we'd got them. And in fact, it was no longer a matter of trees, it was a matter of trying to find bits and pieces of coal and getting the coal working and getting the coal out of the hands of black marketeers. And meantime the people were cold, even colder than we were, and they also lacked food. This is a letter home to a friend.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:22:10\nReads \"The Road to Nijmegen\" [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:24:38\nAnd finally, “From The Hazel Bough”.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:24:48\nReads \"From the Hazel Bough\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966 and collected ater in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:25:41\nThank you very much.\n \nAudience\n01:25:43\nApplause.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n01:26:12\nI guess you've already said it for us, and I can only repeat, thanks very much, Earle.\n \nEND\n01:26:25\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, Birney left for Australia on a trip financed by a Canada Council Medal and Award. He also went on a Canadian reading tour, which this reading might have been part of (see Elspeth Cameron’s Earle Birney: A Life, pg 492). Birney was also working on Pnomes, jukollages & other stunzas (Ganglia Press, 1969), a collaboration with bp Nichol.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nEarle Birney was an influential poet and professor at the University of British Columbia thus influencing a younger generation of poets like Frank Davey, George Bowering, Daphne Marlatt, David Bromige, Phyllis Webb, John Newlove, Joe Rosenblatt, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Michael Ondaatje, bill bissett and Lionel Kearns among many others during the early 60’s. Birney was also connected to poets like A.J.M. Smith, Irving Layton, Al Purdy and Robert Creeley. *On an interesting note, a trip to Montreal to read at Sir George Williams in 1970 was cancelled due to a car accident Birney was involved in. (Elspeth Cameron’s Earle Birney: A Life (Viking Press, 1994), page 498).\\n\",\"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/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Adam, Ian. “Birney, Earle (1904-). Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ice-cod-bell-or-stone-new-poems/oclc/61536179&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Ice Cod Bell or Stone. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/near-false-creek-mouth-new-poems/oclc/301604488&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Near False Creek Mouth. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/rag-bone-shop/oclc/877159326&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Rag & Bone Shop. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghost-in-the-wheels-selected-poems/oclc/906091320&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-of-earle-birney-volume-1/oclc/941923628&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-1940-1966/oclc/256837965&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Selected Poems 1940-1966. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/earle-birney-a-life/oclc/30973945&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cameron, Elspeth. Earle Birney: A Life. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/earle-birney-at-sgwu-1968/#reading1\",\"citation\":\"Charney, Marty. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 23 February 1968.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Birney, Earle\\\". 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. “Earle Birney (b. 1904)”. Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"New, W.H. \\\"Birney, (Alfred) Earle\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapersid=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. Montreal: The Gazette, 14 September 1967, page 15. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Freeland, Petra. “Birney, Earle, 1904-1995”. Literature Online Biography.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548842741760,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0018_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney 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_0018_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney 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_0018_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney 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_0018_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney 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/earle_birney_i006-11-018.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"earle_birney_i006-11-018.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:26:25\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"207.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"George Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nI think it's, it's either redundant or futile to do anything more than the formality of introducing Earle Birney [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3046415] who's probably the most famous poet we've ever had and who you will see described on those pieces of paper, pink that flit around, as always as a, the Dean of Canadian Poetry, though I prefer to think of him as the federal Minister for Poetry, and the times he has been a semi-official courier of Canadian poetry around the world. Sadly enough, as he tells me, the only book of his still generally in print is the Selected Poems of 1966, which we do have on sale outside the door and of which, I should remind you, he gets a cut from his publisher. [Audience laughter]. Luckily there, I have, have heard that there will be a couple of Birney books within the next little while, one of them published in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] and the other one by the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585], presuming always that there will be a Coach House Press in the next little while. I would just like to mention that my association with Earle Birney has always been very, a good one, for me, and I wouldn't be here today to be talking about him unless I happened to be a member of the Poetry Committee, and, except that if it hadn't been for him, and the fact that both he and I were in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] at one time, I probably wouldn't have been writing any poems at all. Either that, or he would be writing mine. So without any further ado, and probably to our great delectation, I would like to introduce Earle Birney. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:15 \\nApplause.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:02:26\\nThank you very much, George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. I should, in all fairness to George, say that he actually wrote all this information about me and probably a good number of the poems, which I will be reading under my own name tonight. I would also like to say that I have, was recently corresponding with a man who had just resigned as president of a University to become a Dean of another University and had said, well, at least I will show them that if a Dean is a mouse in training to be a rat, then some rats can revert to being mice. Now, if we apply this to the world of poetry, I would say that I am a mouse in training to be less than a mouse, to be something in another category--I think I'd like to be Bursar of Canadian Poetry. But nobody has really set me up for that. I'm going to start by making sure that I read one good poem tonight by reading a poem of W. B. Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] [audience laughter] called \\\"A Prayer for Old Age\\\", which has, I think, I'm afraid, more and more pertinence to my condition. He wrote it at 69. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:04:10\\nReads \\\"A Prayer for Old Age\\\"  by W. B. Yeats.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:04:54\\nThat I will use as an excuse for some of the poems I now shall read you, if I can find my list. The last thing. Ah yes, here it is. Now there's no mic and I want to make sure that everyone is hearing me. If I'm not talking loud enough, those that cannot hear, would you please put a hand up now. I'm very sorry, I'm very sorry--well, you will have to go to the back and then somebody who's standing can come here. I'm sorry there aren't, that some of you have to stand, and I'll try to make it as fast as possible so we can all get out of here. [Audience laughter]. I'm going to begin with some poems that are, alas, too well known to my fellow poets, most of them in this room, but I had planned it this way and I'm stuck with it now and so are they. I'm going to begin with a series that came out, some members of a series that came out in Ice Cod Bell or Stone, and later others in, Near False Creek Mouth, that have to do with wandering around the global village, and this one begins in, well it since begins in Vancouver, but it's about Honolulu [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18094]. I got a fellowship to go to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and I was in Vancouver and I discovered that it only cost me two hundred dollars and some odd cents more to go to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] and back to Vancouver by way of going around the world, you know, just heading west. The air tickets were accommodating me that way. So I decided to go west, and my first stop, I noticed, was Honolulu, and I began to get a bit of a temperature about that, and I thought, how 'bout, I might as well live it up, I'm going to Honolulu tomorrow morning, going to be there tomorrow night, and so I will engage a room in Hawaiian Village Hotel for the one night, because first night, I know I have a little money. After that, God knows what's going to happen to me because I intend to stay in a lot of places before I get to London. So I did this, I reserved a room before I left Vancouver, not realizing that this had put me in a bit of a box, because this is one of the Kaiser-Hilton hotels on Waikiki Beach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q254861], and they have a special greeter who meets all the planes, just for people coming to them. And it happened, through another mischance, that I was the only one for that hotel, and this unsettled me so much I had to write about it. [Audience laughter]. Something which I call \\\"Twenty-Third Flight\\\" for reasons, well, the poem is imitative of another poet, much older, much greater, by the name of David. Not the one that I pushed off the cliff [audience laughter], the one who was a harpist.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:08:39\\nReads \\\"Twenty-Third Flight\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:10:58\\nApplause and laughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:11:06\\nThank you very much, I hesitate to look as if I anticipated more applause, but I would much prefer it if you'd just let me rattle ahead here, for one thing it's getting hotter in here and more and more uncomfortable and as I say, let me get ahead with it, and so if at the end, of course, if anybody is still here with enough energy left, fine. Is there anybody who knows where water is available, any water hole out there in those vast cement deserts?\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:11:50\\nThere should be some beside you, there.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:11:52\\nUh, well, there's a water pitcher, and a water glass…[audience laughter]. I'll prove it... [audience laughter].\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:12:05\\nIf I drink it, it's okay.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:12:06\\nYeah! ...Well, while George is away I'll read one of his poems. This one is called \\\"Honolulu\\\" and follows immediately after the other, but in between was about forty, twenty-four hours, I guess, in which I visited the very famous outdoor aviary, one of the world's famous aviaries, and also the aquarium and so on, and I also encountered a type, a Honolulu type of sorts. So this poem, which is perhaps about the involvement of people with animals through self-projection, and the involvement of human animals with each other. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:13:05\\nReads \\\"Honolulu\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:14:41\\nThen I went to Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and I want to read you one little poem, this is my Zen poem, I guess. [Audience laughter]. Every poet has to have a Zen poem. Thank you, George. \\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:14:54\\nOh ho, I could give you a Zen greeting. Alright. It's really cold. I tried to get it out of the Coke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2813] machine but it just didn't work. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:15:03\\nGood gin, thank you. \\\"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\\\"--you know these little glass-leave things, which one expects to see in Japan, but not suddenly to hear when you're all alone in an old ruin. Some left up in the rafters.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:15:31\\nReads \\\"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:16:12\\nBut I think I'm going to leave Asia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48] for the moment, and get on to Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], briefly, been around to Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], at any rate. I was sitting, more or less minding my own business, on a plaza in Madrid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2807] one morning, having my coffee, and something happened, which again I felt I should chronicle. Desmond Pacey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5264782] says I'm a chronicler, and so I, having learned that, I now use the word [audience laughter] to explain what I'm doing. I renamed the plaza, it had a rather dull name, I call it Plaza de Inquisicion. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:17:09\\nReads “Plaza de Inquisicion” [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:17:44\\nI also went to the Prado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160112] of course, and saw, for the first time, the original of one of the three studies by El Greco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q301] of The Espolio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q52301456], or the taking-off and rending of Christ's garments, which was one of El Greco's themes. And I was struck, as I had never been really before, I suppose because I never had really looked at these paintings properly, I had looked at them in small illustrations--I was struck by the extraordinary amount of space which had been taken up, which El Greco had devoted to the carpenter who was making the holes in the cross preparatory to having Christ nailed to the cross. In fact, the whole lower third of the canvas is devoted to him in one of these three versions, and not only that but he is, they're facing us, with his back to Christ, and on the right and left are two of the Marys, whose eyes are on him. I felt that perhaps El Greco was trying to say something here, apart from what he was saying about the actual scene of the crucifixion, in a symbolic way, perhaps about something that happened to do, really, with this religion, but with, whatever we'd call it, religion, whatever we'd call it, of art. Or if not of art, but craft. It's a little, perhaps, exaggerated, to call the carpenter an artist, but it's obvious that he'd been very much at that moment a craftsman. And so I wrote \\\"El Greco: Espolio\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:20:04\\nReads \\\"El Greco: Espolio\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:22:29\\nWhen I come to Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], now, I'm going to kind of sneak in on the side by reading you a poem that has to do with a very remote, I suppose the most remote part of Canada, in fact, the piece of land that is even nearer to the North Pole [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q934] than Greenland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q223] or anything the Russians have, Ellesmereland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q146841]. And I will read it first of all in English, and then, more or less for the hell of it, I'm going to read it in a translation into Spanish, but anyway, because I think I like the sound of it in Spanish. It's short, so I've practiced my Spanish on it, and maybe I won't make too many boobs.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:23:30\\nReads \\\"Ellesmereland\\\" in English [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:24:10\\nReads \\\"Ellesmereland\\\" in Spanish.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:24:59\\nWell I'll get down and turn to more familiar territory. \\\"Canada Case History\\\". This is a poem written quite a long time ago, in 1945, in fact, when I'd just got back from World War Number Two [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], I always have to be careful to name which one it is, people getting confused about how far back I go now. And I found that in 1967 I had to do a little patching and changing of this, because history had not only caught up with me, it had changed me. But here, first of all is the original. No, I don't think, I can't, I don't think I can bear to read the original, I think I'll just read you what, what happened to this poem in 1967 in the centennial year.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:26:09\\nReads \\\"Canada: Case History\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:28:15\\nWell now I'm going to read you other various scrappy things about Canadian literature which have never been published and never will be, I think, sneak them out like this once in a while. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:28:38\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nAudience \\n00:29:20\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:29:29\\nThen there's John, Jean Cabot, as I think my school teacher, trying very hard to be bilingual, made us say, but it turns out he wasn't French at all, but Italian. His name was Giovanni Caboto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85642]. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:29:48\\nReads \\\"John Cabot\\\" [published later as “giovanni caboto - john cabot” in Rag & Bone Shop].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:30:27\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:30:36\\nThis is something to my publisher, when they brought out a book of mine, Ice Cod Bell or Stone, full of beautiful artwork, except that the man in charge of the artwork had never read the little poem, the \\\"Klein Ellesmereland\\\" that I've just read to you, and so never discovered that when I was talking about bells, I was talking about harebells, or flowers, and he put very large iron church bells into all the illustrations. [Audience laughter]. I had asked to see the artwork in advance and was told that the authors, that this was not the custom to show authors the artwork in advance, so I didn't see it. So all I could do at the end was write something. \\\"To the reader”, which was not included in the volume.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:31:45\\nReads \\\"To the reader\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:32:39\\nI went to spend a weekend a couple of years ago for the first time with Al Purdy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4704621] in his shack in Ameliasburg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4742321], and I had read a lot of his Ameliasburg poems before, and I knew Al, but this was a new experience to be actually in the country of the poet, particularly as it was so well staked out--nobody else has ever written about Ameliasburg and the country north of there. Or ever will, I think. But Al has used it, and the country, and developed it into part of the remarkable fineness of his poetry. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:33:33\\nReads \\\"In Purdy's Ameliasburg\\\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop]. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:37:13\\nNow a poem about another part of Canada. Still Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], part of the north. This is a poem about driving west with somebody else, another guy, and...well there it is. It's called \\\"Way to the West\\\". Summertime.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:37:46\\nReads \\\"Way to the West\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:41:45\\nWell, I'm going to get out to the West Coast very briefly. I'm going to read you something toward the end of a long poem. The trouble with long poems is, you could never dare to read the whole thing to any audience. So I'll read you, it's toward the end of the thing called \\\"November walk near False Creek mouth\\\". The last page.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:42:26\\nReads final section of \\\"November walk near False Creek mouth\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEND\\n00:45:06\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:45:07\\nI'm going to read you a few odd things which are to some extent experimental, I suppose. Most of these have not been published, and some of them I haven't read before. This one is called a \\\"Swahili Serenade\\\" and I'll tell you about it after I read it. It's Swahili Found Serenade, really. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:45:44\\nReads \\\"Swahili Serenade\\\" [published later as “found swahili serenade” in Rag & Bone Shop; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:46:13\\nWell, as some of you have already perceived, already noticed, this is made up, each line is a juke-box tune, it's just a very easy kind of poem to make up; I offer it to you as a formula for quick poetry, just sit down by a jukebox and pick off some titles. [Audience laughter]. Five minute poem. Here's another kind of found poem of a different sort, called, I call it \\\"Space Conquest\\\". That's about all that I've contributed to it. \\\"Space Conquest\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:46:56\\nReads \\\"Space Conquest\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:47:33\\nWell those ten lines, each of five syllables, came out of a computer at the University of Waterloo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1049470] last week, into which we had programmed a hundred and eleven, the one hundred and eleven words of George Meredith's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90238] \\\"Lucifer in Starlight,\\\" and the last thirty-three words of Archibald MacLeish's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q633354] \\\"The End of the World.\\\" Don't ask me why we picked those two poems, I had nothing to do with the picking of the poems. But some of us, two linguists, two linguist-isists, a mathematician, and myself, and masses of computers are producing this sort of poetry. It took point eight-three seconds, not even one second, to produce the hundred-some-odd lines, out of which I chose those ten. So you can see it doesn't take very long, once you've programmed the machine, to find the, you know, the entire text of Hamlet [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41567], but this is what we have done so far, we haven't put too much time on it yet. Some things that I haven't had computers write for me, although perhaps I might have, or should have. This one's called \\\"Kooks of the Monk\\\". \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:49:24\\nReads \\\"Kooks of the Monk\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:49:37\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:49:39\\nThat is sometimes called \\\"concrete\\\". Fun anyway, to do. This is something that I may not be able to finish, but I'll try it. It's the train from Cardiff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10690] to London. English trains sound different, of course. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:50:03\\nPerforms \\\"Train from Cardiff to London\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:50:53\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:50:59\\nThis is a found collage from one issue of the Toronto Daily Star [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067299], called \\\"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\\\", and this is only a small part of the poem which has no beginning or end, it goes on forever if you read the whole of the Star.  \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:51:22\\nReads \\\"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:53:26\\nA series of poems with reference back to the Yeats poem I read at the beginning, perhaps. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:53:36\\nReads \\\"Like an eddy\\\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\\n\\nEarle Birney\\n00:55:42\\nAnd, two short haikus.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:55:47\\nReads [two of three haikus from “hokkai in the dew line snow”, published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:56:16\\nReads [\\\"BUILDINGS\\\", published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:56:50\\nAnd, a poem that is written in kind of an attempt to write something to express a tiny little bit of the pleasure I've had, through most of my life, in reading Chaucer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5683]. Called \\\"I'm always going back to Chaucer\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:57:20\\nReads \\\"I'm always going back to Chaucer\\\" in Middle English.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:59:06\\nNow something that has to do with my Shetland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47134] grand-aunt. Tea with my Shetland grand-aunt. This is a little, slightly different dialect. And there's a kind of an opposition of styles going on here. It's a very old poem, refurbished.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:59:32\\nReads \\\"Tea at my Shetland Aunt’s\\\" in a Shetland dialect [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:01:21\\nWell now I'm going to turn back to older poems. To conclude. Hum...I'm going to read two or three poems that, who have some relationship to California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99] and Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824]. First of all, a poem that, when I wrote it, I wrote it on the day of its date. I thought the date was going to be very significant. August the seven, 1964, Florence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862740], Oregon. And that was because on that day, the American fleet moved into the coast and shelled the coast of North Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881], against the international agreements into which the United States had entered some years before. And I thought that this would surely go down in living memory, as a deed of aggression and perfidy. But there have been so many since, almost every day, that everybody has forgotten about that first shelling of the shore from the Gulf of Tonkin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212428]. But I happened to be on the shore of the Pacific [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98] almost directly across from the Gulf of Tonkin, in fact, the waves that were coming in perhaps had their pulsing first on the other side. And this, one couldn't get it out of one's mind, having seen the morning papers and heard the radio, and I went, I had gone fishing with an American poet and his two boys. The salmon were running, coming in, but I have got less and less interested in killing even fish as I get older and softer, and I soon gave up even wanting to cook fish, and left it to the others, and I went up, because I had nothing to do then, I went up and I sat on a cliff, and started thinking about the sea out there, and cormorants fishing, and once in a while the flash of a seal coming up, also fishing, and I also suddenly realized I was sitting there just staring out at the sea and I began to think, I remembered Frost's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q168728] poem about how odd human beings are, you know, they go down to the sea and they sit and they all, they always look out at the sea, although they can't look very far out or very far in. And I thought that was exactly what I was feeling, the whole thing. But I thought well it's not really Frost's ocean, this is Robinson Jeffers' [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q734955] ocean, and here is this great eye of indifference, so I began my poem, called \\\"Looking from Oregon\\\" with a line from Robinson Jeffers about the Pacific: \\\"And what it watches is not our wars\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:04:54\\nReads \\\"Looking from Oregon\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:06:20\\nAnd another little poem which is really a video poem, and I should put it on a screen but I forgot to bring my slides. Brought them as far as the hotel, but I forgot to bring them up here.  o you'll just have to visualize a poem shaped like a pair of stairs but coming up at you, and visualize yourself at the top of these stairs with your back against the side of a theatre, a campus theatre at the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145], with signs of last week's shows, this one to go on tonight, that I'm waiting to go into, waiting for my friends, who have the tickets, and watching people come up these steps, the cars coming by and discharging people. \\\"Campus Theatre Steps\\\". Summertime, a beautiful summer night. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:07:14\\nReads \\\"Campus Theatre Steps\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:08:04\\nThen I was driving along the coast, a long time, and I was confronted with a sign that hadn't been there before. A billboard, with the same message multiplied up and down the coast and everywhere I went, since the last time I was there. Now I, this is my favourite state of the American Union, Oregon, absolutely beautiful, still, despite whatever, all the attempts of man to un-beautify it, there's still this great volcanic, snow-covered mountains, such, shaped a bit like Fujiyama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39231], there is also all those beautiful rocks and sea-lion caves and the pounding surf and the rhododendrons, the whole works. And there's these, this sign saying, \\\"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice, Courtesy of Oregon Chamber of Commerce\\\". I brooded about this, and being alone, I couldn't get the answer. What is the philosophy behind this? So I invented a hitchhiker, and I picked him up, and he told me, and this is what he said. This poem is dated 61-62, and Khruschev [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35314] is still in power in Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159]. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:09:36\\nReads \\\"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:11:42\\nWell, I think we'll slip down into Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] for a moment before we wind this show up. There's a very short little thing called Irapuato [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q816845]. Well it's all part, it's like, poetry is like guidebooks, you know, guidebooks are always pointing out irrational connections between things, and so is poetry, so sometimes they get together, and in this case the guidebook had told me that there were two things, sort of, that this place was famous for, and I had discovered they were right.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:12:29\\nReads \\\"Irapuato\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:13:06\\nReads \\\"Memory No Servant\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:14:20\\nA poem addressed to friend and writer George Lamming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1340511], who's perhaps best known for his autobiography of his child as a poor negro boy on the island of Barbados [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q244]. George Lamming who wrote In the Castle of My Skin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23307454], and who happened to be in Jamaica [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766] when I went there, and was extremely hospitable to me, and so were all his friends. And when I left I wrote him this poem, which had to do with a split-second feeling, something, thing happening inside me, an internal happening, the night of the last party, the last night of the last party. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:15:18\\nReads \\\"For George Lamming\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:16:32\\nWell just in case you would think that I am soft about this and I'm going to like anybody if their skin is darker than mine, I'll read you a counter-poem that happened to come out of the island of Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128323], out of some little external happening, perhaps in part, perhaps really just an internal happening.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:17:20\\nReads \\\"Meeting of Strangers\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:19:06\\nAnd then a very brief little, Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289]-type poem from Curacao [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25279]. Very much a...very pallid compared with Irving's, I must say.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:19:22\\nReads \\\"Curacao\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:19:45\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:19:54\\nNow I'm going to conclude with two pieces. One is about the farthest back of these poems. Although some things I've read tonight began earlier but have been revised, this one has not been particularly revised. It's called \\\"The Road to Nijmegen\\\" and was written in Holland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55] in January of 1945, the last winter of the war. Which was the coldest winter, and in this part of Holland, first the Germans in coming and then in retreating had cut down every tree anywhere around. The trees were used for fuel and for mine props and...And then we had come in, and if there were any trees left, we'd got them. And in fact, it was no longer a matter of trees, it was a matter of trying to find bits and pieces of coal and getting the coal working and getting the coal out of the hands of black marketeers. And meantime the people were cold, even colder than we were, and they also lacked food. This is a letter home to a friend.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:22:10\\nReads \\\"The Road to Nijmegen\\\" [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:24:38\\nAnd finally, “From The Hazel Bough”.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:24:48\\nReads \\\"From the Hazel Bough\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966 and collected ater in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:25:41\\nThank you very much.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:25:43\\nApplause.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n01:26:12\\nI guess you've already said it for us, and I can only repeat, thanks very much, Earle.\\n \\nEND\\n01:26:25\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Earle Birney reads from Near False Creek Mouth (McClelland and Stewart, 1964) and Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966), as well as poems later collected in Rag & Bone Shop (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), and Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).\\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces Earle Birney. [INDEX: most famous poet, flyers for readings, ‘Dean of Canadian Poetry’, Selected Poems of 1966, publisher, sale of book at reading, United States, Coach House Press, SGWU Poetry Committee, inspiration for  writing poems, Vancouver.]\\n02:26- Earle Birney introduces reading. [INDEX: George Bowering’s introduction, university Dean, ‘Bursar of Canadian Poetry’.]\\n03:41- Introduces W.B. Yeats poem “A Prayer for Old Age”. [INDEX: good poem, old age, written at age 69.]\\n04:10- Reads W.B. Yeats poem “A Prayer for Old Age”.\\n04:54- Introduces “Twenty-Third Flight” [INDEX: no microphone at reading, other poets in the room, well-known poems, reading plan, series that came out in Ice Cod Bell or Stone near False Creek mouth, wandering around a global village, Vancouver, Honolulu, fellowship to go to England, traveling West around the world, Hawaiian Village Hotel, Kaiser-Hilton hotels on Wakiki Beach, greater poet named David, push off a cliff,       harpist; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n08:39- Reads “Twenty-Third Flight”.\\n11:06- Thanks audience for applause, asks for water\\n12:06- Introduces “Honolulu”. [INDEX: George Bowering, twenty-four hours after previous poem’s action, outdoor aviary, aquarium, Honolulu, people and animals, self-projection, involvement of human animals with each other; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n13:05- Reads “Honolulu”.\\n14:41- Introduces “Wind Chimes in a Temple Ruin”. [INDEX: Japan, Zen poem, George        Bowering; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).] \\n14:54- George Bowering brings Earle Birney a cold drink from a vending machine. [INDEX: Zen greeting, Coke Machine.]\\n15:03- Birney continues introducing “Wind Chimes in a Temple Ruin”. [INDEX: Japan, old ruins, chimes left in rafters.]\\n15:31- Reads “Wind Chimes in a Temple Ruin”.\\n16:12- Introduces “Plaza de Inquisicion”. [INDEX: Leave Asia, Europe, Spain, plaza in        Madrid, coffee, Desmond Pacey, chronicler, renaming plaza; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n17:09- Reads “Plaza de Inquisicion”.\\n17:44- Introduces “El Greco: Espolio”. [INDEX: Prado, one of the three studies by El Greco of the Espolio, Christs’ garments, El Greco’s themes, struck by the painting, amount of space, carpenter making the holes in the cross, Virgin Mary, religion of art, craft, carpenter as artist; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n20:04- Reads “El Greco: Espolio”.\\n22:29- Introduces “Ellesmereland”. [INDEX: Canada, remotest part of Canada, nearest to the North Pole, Greenland, Russians, English, translation into Spanish, sound of poem in Spanish; found in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975).]\\n23:30- Reads “Ellesmereland”.\\n24:10- Reads “Ellesmereland” in Spanish.\\n24:59- Introduces “Canada Case History”. [INDEX: familiar territory, written in 1945, Birney’s return from WWII, edited the poem in 1967 because history had ‘changed’       \\tBirney, original, 1967 Centennial year; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n26:09- Reads “Canada Case History”.\\n28:15- Introduces unknown poem, first line “Our forefathers literary...”. [INDEX: Canadian literature, poems never published.]\\n28:38- Reads unknown poem, first line “Our forefathers literary...”.\\n29:29- Introduces “John Cabot”. [INDEX: Jean Cabot, schoolteacher, bilingual, French, Italian, Giovanni Cabotto; from unknown source.]\\n29:48- Reads “John Cabot”.\\n30:36- Introduces “To the Reader Who Was Not Included in the Volume”. [INDEX:   publisher, Ice Cod Bell or Stone, artwork, artist never read “Ellesmereland”, didn’t    \\tknow that bells were harebells or flowers, church bells, authors barred from viewing art \\tbefore publication, poem as a result; unknown source.]\\n31:45- Reads “To the Reader...”\\n32:39- Introduces “In Purdy’s Ameliasburg”. [INDEX: weekend spent with Al Purdy, shack in Ameliasburg, Ameliasburg poems, country of the poet; unknown source.]\\n33:33- Reads “In Purdy’s Ameliasburg”.\\n37:13- Introduces “Way to the West”. [INDEX: poem about Canada, north Ontario, driving west, summertime; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).] 37:46- Reads “Way to the West”.\\n41:45- Introduces selection from “November Walk Near False Creek Mouth”. [INDEX: West Coast, end of a long poem, problems reading long poems, audience, last page of the poem; unknown source; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart,    1966).]\\n42:26- Reads selection from “November Walk Near False Creek Mouth”.\\n45:06.96- END OF RECORDING.\\n\\n00:00- Earle Birney introduces second part of reading and “Swahili Serenade”. [INDEX:        experimental poems, not been published, never read, “Swahili Found Serenade”;   unknown source.]\\n00:37- Reads “Swahili Serenade”.\\n01:06- Explains “Swahili Serenade”, introduces  “Space Conquest”. [INDEX: poem composed of line from a juke-box tune, formula for quick poetry, five minute poem, found poem, title; unknown source.]\\n01:49- Reads “Space Conquest”.\\n02:26- Explains “Space Conquest”, introduces “Kooks of the Monk”. [INDEX: ten lines, five syllables, constraint poetry, computer at the University of Waterloo, programmed 111 words of George Meredith’s “Lucifer in Starlight”, 33 words from Archibald MacLeish’s “The End of the World”, random poems; linguists, mathematician, computers composed poem; 0.83 seconds to compose, chose ten lines, entire text of Hamlet; unknown source]\\n04:17- Reads “Kooks of the Monk”. [INDEX: list, wordplay, onomatopaeic, nonsense poem.]\\n04:32- Explains “Kooks of the Monk”, introduces “Train from Cardiff to London”. [INDEX:        concrete poetry; Cardiff, London, English trains, sound of train; unknown source.]\\n04:56- Reads “Train from Cardiff to London”. [INDEX: sound poem.] \\n05:52- Introduces “Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings”. [INDEX: found collage poem, issue of the Toronto Daily Star “Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings”, small part of the poem, no beginning   or end, goes on forever; unknown source.]\\n06:15- Reads “Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings”.\\n08:19- Introduces unknown poem, “Like an eddy, my words move...”. [INDEX: reference to Yeats poem “A Prayer for Old Age”; published in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n08:29- Reads unknown poem, “Like an eddy, my words move...”.\\n10:35- Introduces haiku “To sleep under real stars...”\\n10:40- Reads “To sleep under real stars...” [INDEX: Haiku; unknown source]\\n10:53- Reads “A north door opens...” [INDEX: Haiku; unknown source]\\n11:09- Reads “Walls”. [INDEX: unknown source]\\n11:43- Introduces “I’m always going back to Chaucer”. [INDEX: poem an attempt to express pleasure of reading Chaucer; unknown source.]\\n12:13- Reads “I’m always going back to Chaucer”. [INDEX: written and read in Middle      English.]\\n13:59- Introduces “Tea with my Shetland Grand-Aunt” [INDEX: dialect, opposition of styles, old poem ‘refurbished’; published later as “Tea at my Shetland Aunt’s” in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975).]\\n14:25- Reads “Tea with my Shetland Grant-Aunt”. [INDEX: read in voice of aunt in a rolling Shetland dialect.]\\n16:15- Introduces “Looking from Oregon”. [INDEX: older poems, California, oregon, date, August 7, 1964; Florence, Oregon; American fleet shelled the coast of North Vietnam, international agreements, United States, deed of aggression, living memory, forgetting, shelling of the Gulf of Tonkin, Pacific Ocean, morning papers, radio, fishing with an American poet, salmon, killing fish, old age, cormorants fishing, seal, Robert Frost poem, Robinson Jeffers line “And what it watches is not our wars”; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n19:47- Reads “Looking from Oregon”.\\n21:13- Introduces “Campus Theatre Steps” [INDEX: video poem, screen, slides, hotel, visualize poem shaped like a pair of stairs, theatre, campus, University of Oregon, shows, friends, tickets, cars, people, summertime, nighttime; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n22:07- Reads “Campus Theatre Steps”.\\n22:57- Introduces unknown poem “Billboards Build Freedom of Choice”. [INDEX: driving along coast, billboard, Oregon, man, volcanic snow-covered mountains, Fujiyama, sea-lion caves, surf, rhododendrons, sign says “Billboards Build Freedom of Choice, Courtesy of Oregon Chamber of Commerce”, philosophy, invented hitchhiker, poem dated 61-62, Khruschev in power in Russia; from Selected Poems 1940-1966        \\t(McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n24:29- Reads “Billboards Build Freedom of Choice”\\n26:35- Introduces “Irapuato” [INDEX: Mexico, Irapuato, poetry like a guidebook, irrational connections; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n27:22- Reads “Irapuato”.\\n27:59- Reads “Memory No Servant”. [INDEX: from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n29:13- Introduces “For George Lamming”. [INDEX: George Lamming, autobiography of        childhood, poor boy on the island of Barbados, book In the Castle of my Skin, Jamaica, the last night of the last party; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n30:11- Reads “For George Lamming”.\\n31:25- Introduces “Meeting of Strangers”. [INDEX: race issues, Trinidad, external/internal ‘happenings’; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n33:59- Introduces “Curacao”. [INDEX: Irving Layton poem; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n34:15- Reads “Curacao”.\\n34:47- Introduces “The Road to Nijmegen”. [INDEX: oldest poem, not revised, written in     Holland in January 1945, last winter of the war, Germans invading and then retreating,   \\tcut down trees, used for fuel and mine props, coal, lacked food, letter home to a friend,   published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975).]\\n36:54- Reads “The Road to Nijmegen”.\\n39:31- Introduces “From the Hazel Bough” [INDEX: from Selected Poems 1940-1966   (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n39:41- Reads “From the Hazel Bough”.\\n41:05- George Bowering thanks Earle Birney for the reading.\\n41:18.21- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/earle-birney-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"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":2.1907105},{"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":2.1907105},{"id":"1272","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":["Lionel Kearns and bpNichol at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 22 November 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"POETRY READING NOV 22/68 BP. NICHOL + LIONEL KEARNS PART ONE  #1 I086-11-026.1\" written partially on sticker on the spine of the tape's box and directly on the spine of the tape's box. \"POETRY 1 NOV 22\" written on sticker on the reel. \"RT 531 Pt.1\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box.\n\n\"POETRY READING NOV 22/68 2 BP. NICHOL + LIONEL KEARNS PART TWO  #1 I086-11-026.12\" written partially on sticker on the spine of the tape's box and directly on the spine of the tape's box. \"POETRY 2 NOV 22\" and \"I086-11-026.2\" written on stickers on the reel. \"RT 531 Pt.2\" 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":["[I086-11-026.1, I086-11-026.2]"],"creator_names":["Nichol, Barrie Phillip","Kearns, Lionel"],"creator_names_search":["Nichol, Barrie Phillip","Kearns, Lionel"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/76350280\",\"name\":\"Nichol, Barrie Phillip\",\"dates\":\"1944-1988 \",\"notes\":\"Canadian avant-garde poet bpNichol (Barrie Phillip) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on September 30, 1944. Nichol spent his childhood in Vancouver, in Winnipeg, Manitoba and in Port Arthur, Ontario before returning to his birthplace in 1960. Although Nichol was writing by 1961, he enrolled into the education faculty at the University of British Columbia and received a teaching degree in 1963. At UBC, Nichol audited writing classes and met younger members of the Tish group. Then Nichol taught grade four students in Port and Coquitlam, B.C. for a year before moving to Toronto, where he worked as a book searcher for the University of Toronto and entered therapy with lay analyst Lea Hindley-Smith. In 1967, Nichol established the lay-therapy foundation and community Therafields, and served as an administrator and therapist until 1983. His first publication, a ‘bp box’ included Journeying & the returns (a book), Letters Home (visual poems), Borders (a record), Wild Thing (a flip book) and Statement (printed on the back of the box) was published by Coach House Press in 1967 was followed by a collection of concrete poetry, Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer (Writer’s Forum, 1967). Nichol began working with sound poetry in the mid-1960’s, but also valued the textuality and visual materiality of words and books. Nichol collaborated with Steve McCaffery to found the Toronto Research Group through which they wrote and published essays on the materiality of writing, which were later collected in Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book Machine (1992). The duo also formed a sound poetry group, The Four Horsemen, with Rafael Barreto-Rivera and Paul Dutton. Nichol founded Ganglia Press in 1965, and started a series of pamphlets in 1969 called grOnk. Nichol also published The Complete Works (Ganglia, 1969), a package of booklets Still Water, The true eventual story of Billy the Kid, Beach head, and The cosmic chef (Talonbooks, 1970) which won a Governor General’s Award for Poetry, ABC: the aleph beth book (Oberon Press, 1971), Monotons (Talonbooks, 1971), The Other Side of the Room (Weed/Flower Press, 1971) and Two Novels (Coach House Press, 1969).  At this time, Nichol began writing his life-long serial long poem, The Martyrology Books 1 & 2 (Coach House Press, 1972), a series which Nichol published Books 3 and 4 (C.H.P., 1976), Book 5 (C.H.P., 1982), Book 6 (1987), after which Books 7-10 were published posthumously through Coach House Press. Nichols worked tirelessly as an unpaid volunteer for Coach House Press, and personally edited or acquired almost one quarter of the titles published during that time. Nichols was not only a poet, visual artist and editor, he wrote songs and scripts for the TV programs Fraggle Rocks and The Racoons, musical comedies Group (1980) and Tracks (1986), and the bestselling children’s books ONCE: A Lullaby (Black Moss Press, 1983), Moosequakes and other disasters (Black Moss Press, 1981), The man who loved his knees (Black Moss Press, 1993) and To the end of the block (Black Moss Press, 1984). His later publications include Unit of four (Seripress, 1973), Zygal (Coach House Press, 1985), Selected organs: parts of an autobiography (Black Moss Press, 1988), Art Facts (Chax Press, 1990). Nichol appears in Michael Ondaatje’s film, Sons of Captain Poetry (1970), bp: pushing the boundaries directed by Brian Nash (1997), Ron Mann’s Poetry in Motion (1982). bpNichol died in Toronto on September 25, 1988. A street in the Annex district behind Coach House Press was named in his honour, with an eight-line poem by Nichol written into the pavement: “A / LAKE / A / LANE / A / LINE / A / LONE”.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784380\",\"name\":\"Kearns, Lionel\",\"dates\":\"1937-\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet Lionel Kearns was born in Nelson, British Columbia in 1937. His father, C.F. Kearns, a Great War flyer, outdoorsman and short-story author encouraged Kearns to pursue a literary career. In the mid 1950’s, Kearns embarked on trip, traveling the world and even playing professional hockey in Mexico. Kearns then returned to B.C. and studied poetic theory and structural linguistics at the University of British Columbia, where he met and worked with George Bowering, Frank Davey and Fred Wah in the Tish collective. His M.A. thesis was published by Tishbooks as Songs of circumstance in 1962. His second publication, Listen, George (Imago Press, 1965) was a verse-letter to George Bowering about his youth, written while he was studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Kearns was influenced by the European  concrete and sound poetry movements, and spent a year in Trinidad analyzing the West Indian English dialect. In 1966, upon returning to Canada, Kearns held a position at the English department at Simon Fraser University, which he held until 1986. His next publications include By the light of the silvery McLune: media parables, poems, signs, gestures and other assaults on the interface (The Daylight Press, 1969), Practicing up to be human (1978), Ignoring the bomb (1982), and his highly acclaimed book, Convergences (1984). Kearns was the writer-in-residence at Concordia University from 1982-3. Since 1986, Kearns created a continent-wide on-line graduate course, ‘The Cybernetics of Poetry’ for ConnecEd, the distance learning facility of the New York School for Social Research in New York, which he teaches from home. Interested in the electronic and online poetry potential, Kearns became the first writer-in-electronic-residence, assisting Trevor Owen establish the ‘Wier’ project, an on-line writing project.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Bowering, George"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"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\":\"Poor\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Unfortunately, the recording appears to contain many cuts and occasionally jumps back and forth in time. At many points, it also sounds as though the sound of one tape has been layered over the other creating a doubling effect, which most likely occurred sometime after the original recording and digitization process.\",\"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\":\"Poor\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Unfortunately, the recording appears to contain many cuts and occasionally jumps back and forth in time. At many points, it also sounds as though the sound of one tape has been layered over the other creating a doubling effect, which most likely occurred sometime after the original recording and digitization process.\",\"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 11 22\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written twice on the reel and tape's box\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Unknown\",\"notes\":\" \",\"address\":\"Unknown\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}]"],"Address":["Unknown"],"Venue":["Unknown"],"content_notes":["Lionel Kearns reads from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967) and poems published later in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures, and other Assaults on the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969). bpNichol reads from a wide variety of his works, some published, some unpublished, including Dada Lama (England: Tlaloc, 1968), The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (Weed/Flower, 1970), Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer (Weed/Flower Press, 1973), and Selected Writing: As Elected (Talonbooks, 1980). Many unnamed poems may belong to two of Nichol’s series, the Captain Poetry Poems The Martyrology.\n"],"contents":["bpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-026-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nThe second reading in our third series, I don't feel very happy tonight that the crowd is nice and big, and also that because I don't quite know what's going to happen, although I've heard rumours. We have Lionel Kearns [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6555690] and bpNichol [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4953105], as you know, and they have elected instead of doing a reading by each poet, with an intermission in the middle or anything like that, a manner of joint reading. And I think, in a sense, that makes a lot of sense, because Lionel Kearns is by one of his professions, a linguist, and also one of his main, one of his main themes is the social care of human beings. bpNichol is a radical therapist, and is known especially for his border-blur poems, and it makes a lot of sense, I think, for that reason that they do read together. They read together last night at Carleton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1041737], apparently worked out very well. Lionel is as you probably know is one of the centres of the so-called Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639]Renaissance that took over Canadian poetry in the 1960's, threatened to do that too [laughter]. bp was one of those blessed children from the east, although he had lived in Vancouver before, who kept his ears open. Well, he says he was born there. bp managed to grace the city of Vancouver for a few years and I guess that's where he got the ears open in the first place, but since that time he's been opening all our ears. So seeing as how this reading threatens to last four hours, according to rumours, I think I'll stop now and give the floor to either, and, or bpNichol and Lionel Kearns.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:02:26\nWell, I'll begin by reading a poem called \"Telephone\". It's what I call a media parable, I have a whole set of poems that are media parables and things, which are coming out in a collection very soon. This one is called \"Telephone\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:02:49\nReads \"Telephone\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; audience laughter throughout].\n \nbpNichol\n00:07:04\nWhat you're going to get out of me this evening is a strange pastiche, since I managed to do that clever thing of losing everything I wrote over the last year. So this is selected weirdness.\n \nbpNichol\n00:07:23\nReads [“Monotones”, part I from Gifts: The Martyrology Book(s) 7 &”]. \n \nbpNichol\n00:08:45\nReads \"Uneven Song\". \n\nbpNichol\n00:09:28\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nLionel Kearns\n00:10:26\nReads \"Word\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:11:27\nI'll read a series of quiet poems. Because we've got some really loud ones to read too. \"Poem found among the ruins\".\n\nLionel Kearns\n00:11:43\nReads \"Poem found among the ruins\" [published as “Medium” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:12:19\nThis one's called \"The Business\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:12:24\nReads \"The Business\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:12:43\nThis one is called \"Genres”.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:12:45\nReads \"Genres” [published as “Content” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:13:51\nReads \"The Answer\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:15:05\nAnd this one, derives from my seeing a piece of sculpture, an exhibition of Haida art I think, or some West Coast Indian art. A little figure of a woman carved, a carved figure of a woman, but she is in a very strange position, she's doing a kind of funny thing. It seemed worth writing a poem about. It's called \"Labio Digital\". [Audience laughter].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:15:55\nReads \"Labio Digital\" [published as “Sculpture” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nbpNichol\n00:16:41\nReads \"The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid\" [published  later in The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid and collected in Craft Dinner: Stories & Texts 1966-1976; audience laughter throughout]]. \n \nLionel Kearns\n00:20:46\nThis one is called--I'll try reading with both the mic and without the mic and if you can't hear me, then shout and tell me that you can't hear me. I'll try this one without the mic. It's called \"Gestured” My titles are always very abstract. That's not very abstract [audience laughter]. Most of my titles are very abstract. This is written for a friend, I had to [inaudible] with a sketch.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:21:32\nReads “Gestured” [published as \"Expression\" in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n\nAudience\n00:22:36\nApplause [cut off].\n\nLionel Kearns\n00:22:39\nActually, actually, I don't think it's a good idea to clap in between the poems, because bp and I have got so many good poems that you're going to wear your hands out. [Audience laughter]. This one is called \"Transport\", it's also a media parable.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:22:56\nReads \"Transport\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n\nUnknown\n00:26:32\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nbpNichol\n00:26:33\nThere's things that I try to be absolutely very, very personal [inaudible] thing I ever wrote. I wrote it at Port Dover [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230589], in, on Lake Erie [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5492]. It's one of those days when I was flaked out on the beach, covered up because I get vicious sunburns and just peel the whole summer, and in the background was playing \"(There’ll Be Bluebirds) Over the white cliffs of Dover\" and “What’s New Pussycat” sort of juxtaposed, there was sprawled over the beach was this weird phrase \"Podunk\" and these two cats were playing football overtop of my head. So anyways I felt very sort of, weird, and wrote the following poem.\n \nbpNichol\n00:27:25\nPerforms unnamed poem.\n \nbpNichol\n00:29:06\nHugo Ball [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q70989] was kind of the daddy of us all, and he was kind of a very fine dadaist who lived in Switzerland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39] during the first World War [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q361] and sort of did the first sound poems. It was very strange, if you read Hugo Ball's diaries, it's rather fascinating because it was more or less, when he gave these sort of his final public reading he got really carried away in the midst of a sound poem an kind of got thrown back into sort of a--how to put this--an earlier space in his mind, anyways he went back and started remembering all sorts of things right back through his life doing this sound poem. As you read the diaries, there's a real feeling he became totally terrified of what was happening to him. Because at that point he then just split and left the whole thing behind. So this is kind of for Hugo Ball. It's called \"Dada Lama\". This poem's gone through so many changes I can't even keep track of it anymore.\n \nbpNichol\n00:30:28\nReads [sections of Dada Lama: a sound sequence in six parts, collected later in Selected Writing: As Elected]. \n \nLionel Kearns\n00:33:38\nI'm going to read some poems now from my collection, Pointing, which I see is for sale out on the other room. These poems are, for the most part, quiet poems, poems of my own measured voice. They're poems that originated a few years ago and they came out of the general West Coast poetry scene that was going on very intensely--hello?\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:34:09\nIt’s hard to hear... \n\nLionel Kearns\n00:34:10\nIs it hard to hear back there with this? \n\nUnknown\n00:34:12\nAmbient Sound [voices and laughter].\n\nLionel Kearns\n00:34:20\nI'll try--If I talk louder into the mic can you hear that? Keep letting me know, if you can't hear, shout. I'd like to read this one into the mic because they aren't poems that can be shouted. This one is called \"Situation\" and it derives from an experience I had in Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] many years ago. \n \nLionel Kearns\n00:35:06\nReads poem \"Situation” [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:36:24\nHow's that for sound, can you hear that? \"Insights\".\n\nLionel Kearns\n00:36:36\nReads \"Insights\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface]/\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:36:55\nI'm very sentimental [audience laughter.] This is an early poem I wrote, it's called \"Homage to Machado\". It's really a translation of a poem by Antonio Machado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q243771], the Spanish poet. I've not only translated it, I've switched the central image, but used his statement. His image was that of a boat going across a lake and he looked out and saw the ripple of the water behind it and  then commented on that. But I changed the metaphor.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:37:45\nReads \"Hommage to Machado\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:38:17\nReads \"Remains\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:39:08\nReads \"Total Presence\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:40:05\nA very small poem called \"Witness\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:40:07\nReads \"Witness\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:40:38\nAnd this one, called \"Profile\". I'll read it without the mic.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:40:45\nReads \"Profile\" [from Pointing].\n \nUnknown Audience Member 1\n00:41:32\nHave you ever thought of pausing it and--\n\nUnknown\n00:41:34\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:41:37\nWe thought of reading all of our quiet poems at the beginning, and then getting louder and louder and louder, but we thought this would get you too excited and you'd go out onto the street and...[audience laughter.] So we decided to mix them all up and you'll get everything quiet and loud and funny and very serious and that's part of it,you know,getting them all at once all in juxtaposed relationships.\n \nbpNichol\n00:42:12\nThis way you can sort of do what you want with which ones you wanna do. It's very hard to listen to a poetry reading all the way through. I can never hack poetry readings myself [audience laughter]. What Lionel and I are trying to do is maybe do you a favour so you can listen for a longer time maybe [audience laughter].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:42:32\nWho locked the door? [Audience laughter].\n \nbpNichol\n00:42:37\nAmong my poems from the last year which I lost, was a very long thing called The Martyrology which included all these things about a whole series of saints I'd evolved. Which had included St. Reet and St. Ranglehold and St. And and it's kind of too complicated to go into what they all sort of were doing, but St. Ranglehold came from the word 'stranglehold' and the rest you can kind of figure out maybe.\n \nbpNichol\n00:43:05\nReads unnamed poem from The Martyrology series.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:43:56\nWas that loud enough by the way?\n \nbpNichol\n00:43:58\nCould you hear that? It's hard to tell from behind here. This is a poem called \"Ruth\" and it was for a good friend of mine, David W. Harris, who now calls himself David W. And it begins with a quote from Ruth.\n \nbpNichol\n00:44:20\nReads \"Ruth\" [from Ruth].\n \nbpNichol\n00:46:20\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nbpNichol\n00:46:57\nAnd this uh, this is a poem that begins with a line from a poem by bill bissett [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4911496]. Actually--\n\nUnknown\n00:47:01\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nbpNichol\n00:47:18\nReads unnamed poem. \n\nLionel Kearns\n00:49:43\nWe'll try it up there. It's called \"Color Problem\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:49:49\nReads \"Color Problem\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:50:06\nThis, I'm going to read a concrete poem now. bp inspires me so much with his concrete poetry that I have begun to write concrete poetry too. Some concrete poetry is purely visual and you can't read it, it's to go on walls and things like that. Other concrete poetry is so sonic that it's nothing really to look at, but occasionally you can get the two combined so that you have something on the page which also is something else when read, but the two correspond. This one that I've got is to some extent like that, on the page it's called \"Studies in Interior Decoration Border Design\" because of the way it looks on the page, which of course being an audience at a poetry reading, you aren't concerned with. But I'll read it  and it does work, I think, sonically too. It's called \"The Woman Who Reminded Him of the Woman Who\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:51:20\nReads \"The Woman Who Reminded Him of the Woman Who\" [published as “The Woman Who” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nUnknown\n00:53:14\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts to bpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-0262.mp3 00:37:59].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:53:25\nThis one is called \"It\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:53:28\nReads \"It\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:54:02\nA lot of the poems in this book--\n \nUnknown\n00:54:05\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts back to approximately 00:53:13].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:54:15\nThis is called the \"Kinetic Poem\", my poem is called the \"Kinetic Poem\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:54:26\nReads \"Kinetic Poem\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface] with bpNichol.\n \nUnknown\n00:55:57\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nbpNichol\n00:56:00\nKon Ichikawa is the name of a Japanese film maker that made a film about the Olympics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5389]. Okay? How should we start this out--'all together now?' [audience laughter].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:56:15\nThink--think, pretend you're at the Olympics. [Audience laughter].\n \nbpNichol\n00:56:23\n“Karnijakawa--Karnijakawa”, follow me. \n\nbpNichol\n00:56:30\nChants \"Kon Ichikawa” pronounced as “Karnijakawa\" repeatedly with Lionel Kearns and the audience.\n \nbpNichol\n00:57:11\nThank you.\n\nAudience\n00:57:13\nApplause [cut off].\n \nUnknown Audience Member 2\n00:57:16\nKarni-jakawa!\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:57:22\nCarne means meat in Spanish. I was at Louis Dudek's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787], at one of his courses today and we were talking and the students were talking and so on and I was reading a few poems, and they said, \"Why are you so pessimistic about things?\" and I'm not so pessimistic, and I'll read a poem now that's got an up-beat ending [audience laughter].\n \nUnknown Audience Member 3\n00:57:59\nWhat led them to deduce your pessimism?\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:58:00\nI read a poem without an upbeat ending [audience laughter]. This is another media parable. And it's called \"The Parable of the Seventh Seal\" and naturally, it derives from a movie. Um, the movie called The Seven Samurai [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q189540]. [Audience laughter.] Or you've probably seen that, there's a,Hollywood [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34006] derived a few movies from that, one of them called The Magnificent Seven [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19069] or something like that. The original one was a Western made in Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and Hollywood stole the idea and made a Western in the West. Now I've taken the same situation, the same story and given it a Northern locale. And that's why it's called \"The Seventh Seal\" [Audience laughter]. It was published in this New Romans thing, and that makes it an anti-American poem, but it really, when I wrote it, I didn't have this book in mind. But they paid me $30 so [audience laughter] I put it in here.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:59:38\nReads \"The Parable of the Seventh Seal\" [published as “The Seventh Seal” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; reading cut off].\n \nEND\n01:01:57\n\n\nbpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-026-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nLionel Kearns\n00:00:00\nReads \"The Parable of the Seventh Seal\" [published as “The Seventh Seal” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; reading resumes from previous recording; audience laughter throughout].\n \nbpNichol\n00:06:17\nReads \"Historical Implications of Turnips\" [from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer].\n \nbpNichol\n00:07:01\nThis is called, for a reason I cannot remember at all, \"Cycle Number 22\".\n \nbpNichol\n00:07:13\nReads \"Cycle Number 22\" [from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer and published later in Selected Writing: As Elected].\n \nbpNichol\n00:07:49\nThis next poem's called \"The Child in Me\". It's kind of what all sound poetry's about anyways. Enough said.\n \nbpNichol\n00:08:09\nReads \"The Child in Me\" [from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer].\n \nbpNichol\n00:09:10\nThis is a poem called \"The New New Captain Poetry Blues\" and it's for David McFadden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5237344]. Captain Poetry is kind of this person that happened a long time ago in a magazine I used to edit called Ganglia, and David McFadden is still happening in Hamilton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133116], and is probably Canada's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] best poet and what else is there to say? Oh yes, a little footnote, there's a place in here called Plunkett [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2202272] which really exists and my mother was born there strangely enough. This is all about that.\n \nbpNichol\n00:09:48\nReads [sections of \"The New New Captain Poetry Blues: An Undecided Novel\" from The Captain Poetry Poems].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:12:53\nThis poem is called \"Split\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:12:59\nReads \"Split\" [published as “Personality” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n\nAudience\n00:14:05\nLaughter.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:14:07\nPeople occasionally, when they're put on the spot to ask me questions, say \"What's it like to be a poet\", or \"Is it true that so and so and so and so...\" and things like that, questions that are impossible to answer. But there is something about being a poet, and this is one of the things, this is one of the differences, and this poem is called \"The Difference\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:14:40\nReads \"The Difference\" [published as “Roles” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; audience laughter throughout].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:15:40\nThis is an older poem, it's a Christmas poem, it was written at the time when [Khrushchev (?)] got his call down, also about the time of the American intervention in the Dominican Republic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q786], where the Americans came in because they knew that there were Cuban influences, or the Cubans were behind the so-called rebels in the Dominican Republic and one of the proofs was that some of the rebels had been seen wearing green uniforms [audience laughter]. Of course, most military uniforms are kind of green, but they pointed out that some of Fidel Castro's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11256] soldiers had green uniforms too. But this is a Christmas poem.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:16:51\nReads \"Christmas Poem” [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:17:57\nI make most of my living teaching at Simon Fraser University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201603] and we have some troubles out there sometimes. One of the things that troubled us was the fact that when we were giving lectures to large crowds, we sometimes used the public address system and we found out that back--that the public address system was hooked up with-- operated with an FM band, and the, all your lectures could be picked up on an FM set, for example, an FM set in the President's office. We've since lost that President. And this is called \"University\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:18:55\nReads \"University\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:19:24\nThis one is called \"Economic Chronology\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:19:29\nReads \"Economic Chronology\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nbpNichol\n00:19:42\nThis one's called \"Alimony, Old Baloney\".\n \nbpNichol\n00:19:51\nReads \"Alimony, Old Baloney\" [most likely from the Captain Poetry series]. \n \nUnknown\n00:24:14\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nbpNichol\n00:24:15\nReads unnamed “Captain Poetry” poem.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:26:25\nWell if bp is going to keep reading his Captain Poetry poems, I'm going to read my “Ventilation Parable”. This is an epic.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:26:43\nReads \"Ventilation Parable\" [published as “Ventilation” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:31:19\nThis poem is called \"Creation\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:31:24\nReads \"Creation\" [from Pointing].\n \nbpNichol\n00:31:52\nI'm going to do that dangerous thing and read a poem I wrote last night. That's [inaudible]. \n \nUnknown\n00:31:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts back to 00:31:40].\n\nLionel Kearns\n00:32:00\nReads section of “Creation” [from Pointing].\n \nUnknown\n00:32:18\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts back to 00:31:52]. \n\nAudience\n00:32:19\nLaughter.\n\nbpNichol\n00:32:21\nI'm going to do that dangerous thing and read a poem I wrote last night [laughter]. That's waking Lionel up at 7:30 this morning which he didn't quite forgive me for. It starts off with a quote from a poem by Bobby Hoat [?.] Well, yesterday we were up at Carlton doing a reading there. It's a poem called \"Zero Phase\". There's a town referred to in here called Vars [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3554856] which happens to be where he lives. It's a very groovy little place, just outside of...\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:32:51\nCan you hear?\n \nbpNichol\n00:32:52\nIs that okay? If I talk kind of into it like this?\n \nbpNichol\n00:33:04\nReads \"Zero Phase\".\n \nbpNichol\n00:34:36\nThis is a poem called \"Returning\". It sort of was written after I wrote a book of poetry called Journeying and the Returns.\n \nbpNichol\n00:34:58\nReads \"Returning\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:37:49\nI'm going--I'm going to read a series of poems again, from my collection Pointing. This one is called \"It\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:38:13\nReads \"It\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:38:45\nA lot of the poems in this book derive their images from dreams, and this is a poem which is about a dream I had. And it's--I've interpreted the dream. Some extent of the poem--I interpreted as a kind of message about where I get my images for my poems, or where I got them at this particular period. And I called \"Ambergris, a Statement on Source\". Ambergris, being that stuff that sick whales cough up and which floats around on the ocean and it's very smelly stuff but it's very valuable stuff if you find it floating around because you can sell it for a great deal of money to perfume factories. And that's the interpretation of the series of images that follow.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:39:55\nReads \"Ambergris, a Statement on Source\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:40:42\nAnd this one, called \"Contra Diction\", it's a poem that is often anthologized. It's a poem that I like because I think it does what usually I'm trying to do in poems. It's not a very big poem, but it's neat, I think.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:41:12\nReads \"Contra Diction\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:41:40\nThis one is called \"Both\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:41:45\nReads \"Both\" [from Pointing].\n\nUnknown\n00:42:06\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:42:07\nThis is an early poem that I wrote, it fits into a series of poems that I was writing at the time in which I was dealing with my own background, trying to come to terms with things like my own Catholic background, and as you will see the central image is a Christian one. The situation is the fairgrounds actual--the actual situation is the PNE- the Pacific National Exhibition [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4179402]. It's an easter poem called \"Friday at the Ex\"\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:43:07\nReads \"Friday at the Ex\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:44:34\nAnd this one, called \"Prototypes\".\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:44:41\nReads \"Prototypes\" [from Pointing].\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:45:33\nAnd I think this is the last one I'll read, it's called \"End Poem\". An appropriate title.\n \nLionel Kearns\n00:45:42\nReads \"End Poem\" [from Pointing].\n\nUnknown\n00:46:04\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n\nbpNichol\n00:46:05\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nEND\n00:46:47"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, Lionel Kearns was working on By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures, and other Assaults on the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969) and published The Birth of God (Trigram Press, 1968) and Trips Out (Western Press, 1968).\\n\\nIn 1968, bpNichol was editing Gronk, published Dada Lama (Tlaloc, 1968), Captain Poetry Poems (blewointment press, 1968), DA DEAD (Ganglia Press), a collaboration with David Aylward called Strange Grey Town (Gronk Press, 1968) and was working on The Complete Works (Ganglia Press, 1969), The Martyrology (Coach House Press, 1972). Nichol and Kearns read at Carleton University the night before this reading.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nKearns met George Bowering in Vancouver at University of British Columbia and was part of the Tish movement in the early 60’s.\\n\\nNo direct connections to Sir George Williams University have been found, however\\nbpNichol’s fame exploded in the mid-60’s in Canada and was well known to the Reading Series Committee and many of the other poets who read in the series.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://www.bpnichol.ca/about\",\"citation\":\"“About bp: a short biography & select bibliography”. An Online Archive for bpNichol. Artmop Project and Ellie Nichol.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960/oclc/441669839&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “bp Nichol”. 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. \\\"Kearns, Lionel\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960/oclc/441669839&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “Lionel Kearns”. 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. \\\"Nichol, bp\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001.  \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/pointing-ryerson/oclc/695590531&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kearns, Lionel. Pointing. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/by-the-light-of-the-silvery-mclune-media-parables-poems-signs-gestures-and-other-assaults-on-the-interface/oclc/639996585&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kearns, Lionel. By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures, and other Assaults on the Interface. Vancouver: The Daylight Press & Talon Books, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Miki, Roy. “Nichol, Bp (1944-1988)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/abc-the-aleph-beth-book/oclc/906049140&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP.  ABC Aleph Beth Book. Toronto: Oberon Press, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ballads-of-the-restless-are-two-versionscommon-source/oclc/910220806&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Ballads of the Restless Are. Sacramento: Runcible Spoon, 1967-8. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/beach-head/oclc/1147729759&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Beach Head. Sacramento: Runcible Spoon, 1970.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/briefly-the-birthdeath-cycle-from-the-book-of-hours/oclc/10260162&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Briefly: the birthdeath cycle from The Book of Hours. Lantzville, British Columbia: Island Writing Series: 1981. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/craft-dinner-stories-texts-1966-1976/oclc/562773039&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Craft Dinner: Stories & Texts 1966-1976. Toronto: Aya Press, 1978. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dada-lama-a-sound-sequence-in-six-parts/oclc/877591459&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Dada Lama. Leeds, England: Tlaloc, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/extreme-positions/oclc/729776791&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Extreme Positions. Edmonton: Longspoon Press, 1981. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/journal/oclc/797400077&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Journal. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1978. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/journeying-the-returns/oclc/458215&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Journeying & the Returns. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/konfessions-of-an-elizabethan-fan-dancer/oclc/784883412&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer. Toronto: Weed/Flower Press, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ruth/oclc/1056461719&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Ruth. Toronto: Fleye Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-writing-as-elected/oclc/907413274&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. Selected Writing: As Elected. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1980.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/captain-poetry-poems/oclc/839698718&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. The Captain Poetry Poems. Vancouver: blew ointment press, 1968.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/martyrology/oclc/44068798&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. The Martyrology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/true-eventual-story-of-billy-the-kid/oclc/915720355&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nichol, BP. The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid. Toronto: Weed/Flower, 1970.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Schermbrucker, Bill. “Kearns, Lionel John (1937-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Lionel Kearns: Biography”. Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2000. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548862664704,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0026.1-back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0026.1 back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Kearns and Nichol Tape Box 1 - 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_0026.1-front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0026.1 front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Kearns and Nichol Tape Box 1 - 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We have Lionel Kearns [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6555690] and bpNichol [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4953105], as you know, and they have elected instead of doing a reading by each poet, with an intermission in the middle or anything like that, a manner of joint reading. And I think, in a sense, that makes a lot of sense, because Lionel Kearns is by one of his professions, a linguist, and also one of his main, one of his main themes is the social care of human beings. bpNichol is a radical therapist, and is known especially for his border-blur poems, and it makes a lot of sense, I think, for that reason that they do read together. They read together last night at Carleton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1041737], apparently worked out very well. Lionel is as you probably know is one of the centres of the so-called Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639]Renaissance that took over Canadian poetry in the 1960's, threatened to do that too [laughter]. bp was one of those blessed children from the east, although he had lived in Vancouver before, who kept his ears open. Well, he says he was born there. bp managed to grace the city of Vancouver for a few years and I guess that's where he got the ears open in the first place, but since that time he's been opening all our ears. So seeing as how this reading threatens to last four hours, according to rumours, I think I'll stop now and give the floor to either, and, or bpNichol and Lionel Kearns.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:02:26\\nWell, I'll begin by reading a poem called \\\"Telephone\\\". It's what I call a media parable, I have a whole set of poems that are media parables and things, which are coming out in a collection very soon. This one is called \\\"Telephone\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:02:49\\nReads \\\"Telephone\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:07:04\\nWhat you're going to get out of me this evening is a strange pastiche, since I managed to do that clever thing of losing everything I wrote over the last year. So this is selected weirdness.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:07:23\\nReads [“Monotones”, part I from Gifts: The Martyrology Book(s) 7 &”]. \\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:08:45\\nReads \\\"Uneven Song\\\". \\n\\nbpNichol\\n00:09:28\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:10:26\\nReads \\\"Word\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:11:27\\nI'll read a series of quiet poems. Because we've got some really loud ones to read too. \\\"Poem found among the ruins\\\".\\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:11:43\\nReads \\\"Poem found among the ruins\\\" [published as “Medium” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:12:19\\nThis one's called \\\"The Business\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:12:24\\nReads \\\"The Business\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:12:43\\nThis one is called \\\"Genres”.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:12:45\\nReads \\\"Genres” [published as “Content” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:13:51\\nReads \\\"The Answer\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:15:05\\nAnd this one, derives from my seeing a piece of sculpture, an exhibition of Haida art I think, or some West Coast Indian art. A little figure of a woman carved, a carved figure of a woman, but she is in a very strange position, she's doing a kind of funny thing. It seemed worth writing a poem about. It's called \\\"Labio Digital\\\". [Audience laughter].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:15:55\\nReads \\\"Labio Digital\\\" [published as “Sculpture” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:16:41\\nReads \\\"The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid\\\" [published  later in The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid and collected in Craft Dinner: Stories & Texts 1966-1976; audience laughter throughout]]. \\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:20:46\\nThis one is called--I'll try reading with both the mic and without the mic and if you can't hear me, then shout and tell me that you can't hear me. I'll try this one without the mic. It's called \\\"Gestured” My titles are always very abstract. That's not very abstract [audience laughter]. Most of my titles are very abstract. This is written for a friend, I had to [inaudible] with a sketch.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:21:32\\nReads “Gestured” [published as \\\"Expression\\\" in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:22:36\\nApplause [cut off].\\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:22:39\\nActually, actually, I don't think it's a good idea to clap in between the poems, because bp and I have got so many good poems that you're going to wear your hands out. [Audience laughter]. This one is called \\\"Transport\\\", it's also a media parable.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:22:56\\nReads \\\"Transport\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:26:32\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:26:33\\nThere's things that I try to be absolutely very, very personal [inaudible] thing I ever wrote. I wrote it at Port Dover [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230589], in, on Lake Erie [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5492]. It's one of those days when I was flaked out on the beach, covered up because I get vicious sunburns and just peel the whole summer, and in the background was playing \\\"(There’ll Be Bluebirds) Over the white cliffs of Dover\\\" and “What’s New Pussycat” sort of juxtaposed, there was sprawled over the beach was this weird phrase \\\"Podunk\\\" and these two cats were playing football overtop of my head. So anyways I felt very sort of, weird, and wrote the following poem.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:27:25\\nPerforms unnamed poem.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:29:06\\nHugo Ball [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q70989] was kind of the daddy of us all, and he was kind of a very fine dadaist who lived in Switzerland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39] during the first World War [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q361] and sort of did the first sound poems. It was very strange, if you read Hugo Ball's diaries, it's rather fascinating because it was more or less, when he gave these sort of his final public reading he got really carried away in the midst of a sound poem an kind of got thrown back into sort of a--how to put this--an earlier space in his mind, anyways he went back and started remembering all sorts of things right back through his life doing this sound poem. As you read the diaries, there's a real feeling he became totally terrified of what was happening to him. Because at that point he then just split and left the whole thing behind. So this is kind of for Hugo Ball. It's called \\\"Dada Lama\\\". This poem's gone through so many changes I can't even keep track of it anymore.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:30:28\\nReads [sections of Dada Lama: a sound sequence in six parts, collected later in Selected Writing: As Elected]. \\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:33:38\\nI'm going to read some poems now from my collection, Pointing, which I see is for sale out on the other room. These poems are, for the most part, quiet poems, poems of my own measured voice. They're poems that originated a few years ago and they came out of the general West Coast poetry scene that was going on very intensely--hello?\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:34:09\\nIt’s hard to hear... \\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:34:10\\nIs it hard to hear back there with this? \\n\\nUnknown\\n00:34:12\\nAmbient Sound [voices and laughter].\\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:34:20\\nI'll try--If I talk louder into the mic can you hear that? Keep letting me know, if you can't hear, shout. I'd like to read this one into the mic because they aren't poems that can be shouted. This one is called \\\"Situation\\\" and it derives from an experience I had in Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] many years ago. \\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:35:06\\nReads poem \\\"Situation” [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:36:24\\nHow's that for sound, can you hear that? \\\"Insights\\\".\\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:36:36\\nReads \\\"Insights\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface]/\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:36:55\\nI'm very sentimental [audience laughter.] This is an early poem I wrote, it's called \\\"Homage to Machado\\\". It's really a translation of a poem by Antonio Machado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q243771], the Spanish poet. I've not only translated it, I've switched the central image, but used his statement. His image was that of a boat going across a lake and he looked out and saw the ripple of the water behind it and  then commented on that. But I changed the metaphor.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:37:45\\nReads \\\"Hommage to Machado\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:38:17\\nReads \\\"Remains\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:39:08\\nReads \\\"Total Presence\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:40:05\\nA very small poem called \\\"Witness\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:40:07\\nReads \\\"Witness\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:40:38\\nAnd this one, called \\\"Profile\\\". I'll read it without the mic.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:40:45\\nReads \\\"Profile\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nUnknown Audience Member 1\\n00:41:32\\nHave you ever thought of pausing it and--\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:41:34\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:41:37\\nWe thought of reading all of our quiet poems at the beginning, and then getting louder and louder and louder, but we thought this would get you too excited and you'd go out onto the street and...[audience laughter.] So we decided to mix them all up and you'll get everything quiet and loud and funny and very serious and that's part of it,you know,getting them all at once all in juxtaposed relationships.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:42:12\\nThis way you can sort of do what you want with which ones you wanna do. It's very hard to listen to a poetry reading all the way through. I can never hack poetry readings myself [audience laughter]. What Lionel and I are trying to do is maybe do you a favour so you can listen for a longer time maybe [audience laughter].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:42:32\\nWho locked the door? [Audience laughter].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:42:37\\nAmong my poems from the last year which I lost, was a very long thing called The Martyrology which included all these things about a whole series of saints I'd evolved. Which had included St. Reet and St. Ranglehold and St. And and it's kind of too complicated to go into what they all sort of were doing, but St. Ranglehold came from the word 'stranglehold' and the rest you can kind of figure out maybe.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:43:05\\nReads unnamed poem from The Martyrology series.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:43:56\\nWas that loud enough by the way?\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:43:58\\nCould you hear that? It's hard to tell from behind here. This is a poem called \\\"Ruth\\\" and it was for a good friend of mine, David W. Harris, who now calls himself David W. And it begins with a quote from Ruth.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:44:20\\nReads \\\"Ruth\\\" [from Ruth].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:46:20\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:46:57\\nAnd this uh, this is a poem that begins with a line from a poem by bill bissett [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4911496]. Actually--\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:47:01\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:47:18\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:49:43\\nWe'll try it up there. It's called \\\"Color Problem\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:49:49\\nReads \\\"Color Problem\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:50:06\\nThis, I'm going to read a concrete poem now. bp inspires me so much with his concrete poetry that I have begun to write concrete poetry too. Some concrete poetry is purely visual and you can't read it, it's to go on walls and things like that. Other concrete poetry is so sonic that it's nothing really to look at, but occasionally you can get the two combined so that you have something on the page which also is something else when read, but the two correspond. This one that I've got is to some extent like that, on the page it's called \\\"Studies in Interior Decoration Border Design\\\" because of the way it looks on the page, which of course being an audience at a poetry reading, you aren't concerned with. But I'll read it  and it does work, I think, sonically too. It's called \\\"The Woman Who Reminded Him of the Woman Who\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:51:20\\nReads \\\"The Woman Who Reminded Him of the Woman Who\\\" [published as “The Woman Who” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:53:14\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts to bpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-0262.mp3 00:37:59].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:53:25\\nThis one is called \\\"It\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:53:28\\nReads \\\"It\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:54:02\\nA lot of the poems in this book--\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:54:05\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts back to approximately 00:53:13].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:54:15\\nThis is called the \\\"Kinetic Poem\\\", my poem is called the \\\"Kinetic Poem\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:54:26\\nReads \\\"Kinetic Poem\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface] with bpNichol.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:55:57\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:56:00\\nKon Ichikawa is the name of a Japanese film maker that made a film about the Olympics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5389]. Okay? How should we start this out--'all together now?' [audience laughter].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:56:15\\nThink--think, pretend you're at the Olympics. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:56:23\\n“Karnijakawa--Karnijakawa”, follow me. \\n\\nbpNichol\\n00:56:30\\nChants \\\"Kon Ichikawa” pronounced as “Karnijakawa\\\" repeatedly with Lionel Kearns and the audience.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:57:11\\nThank you.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:57:13\\nApplause [cut off].\\n \\nUnknown Audience Member 2\\n00:57:16\\nKarni-jakawa!\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:57:22\\nCarne means meat in Spanish. I was at Louis Dudek's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787], at one of his courses today and we were talking and the students were talking and so on and I was reading a few poems, and they said, \\\"Why are you so pessimistic about things?\\\" and I'm not so pessimistic, and I'll read a poem now that's got an up-beat ending [audience laughter].\\n \\nUnknown Audience Member 3\\n00:57:59\\nWhat led them to deduce your pessimism?\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:58:00\\nI read a poem without an upbeat ending [audience laughter]. This is another media parable. And it's called \\\"The Parable of the Seventh Seal\\\" and naturally, it derives from a movie. Um, the movie called The Seven Samurai [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q189540]. [Audience laughter.] Or you've probably seen that, there's a,Hollywood [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34006] derived a few movies from that, one of them called The Magnificent Seven [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19069] or something like that. The original one was a Western made in Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and Hollywood stole the idea and made a Western in the West. Now I've taken the same situation, the same story and given it a Northern locale. And that's why it's called \\\"The Seventh Seal\\\" [Audience laughter]. It was published in this New Romans thing, and that makes it an anti-American poem, but it really, when I wrote it, I didn't have this book in mind. But they paid me $30 so [audience laughter] I put it in here.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:59:38\\nReads \\\"The Parable of the Seventh Seal\\\" [published as “The Seventh Seal” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; reading cut off].\\n \\nEND\\n01:01:57\\n\",\"notes\":\"Lionel Kearns reads from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967) and poems published later in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures, and other Assaults on the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969). bpNichol reads from a wide variety of his works, some published, some unpublished, including Dada Lama (England: Tlaloc, 1968), The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (Weed/Flower, 1970), Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer (Weed/Flower Press, 1973), and Selected Writing: As Elected (Talonbooks, 1980). Many unnamed poems may belong to two of Nichol’s series, the Captain Poetry Poems The Martyrology.\\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces BP Nichol and Lionel Kearns. [INDEX: second reading in third series, rumours, BP Nichol, Lionel Kearns, intermission, reading, poet, joint reading, sense, Kearns: linguist, social care of human beings, Nichol: radical therapist, border-blur poems, reading together night before at Carleton University, Kearns: Vancouver Renaissance, Canadian poetry in 1960’s, Nichol: east, Vancouver, born, opening ears, reading four hours.]\\n02:25- Annotation: Recording drops in volume, “looped” recording begins where another part of the reading can be heard in the background of the recording.\\n02:26- Lionel Kearns introduces “Telephone”. [INDEX: media parable, set of poems, new collection to be released soon [perhaps The birth of God (Trigram Press, 1968) or Trips out (Western Press, 1968); from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n02:49- Lionel Kearns reads “Telephone”.\\n07:04- BP Nichol introduces unknown poem, first line “Out of the dark wood workings of the mind’s memories, we are alone...”. [INDEX: strange pastiche, loosing work written    \\tover past year, selected weirdness; from unknown source.]\\n07:23- BP Nichol reads unknown poem, first line “Out of the dark wood workings of the    mind’s memories, we are alone...”.\\n08:54- BP Nichol reads “Uneven Song”. *Note recording is looping over itself, so both BP and Lionel can be heard reading other poems in the background. [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n09:28- BP Nichol reads unknown poem, first line “Out of the middle the ends are taken...”.\\n10:26- Lionel Kearns reads “Word”. [INDEX: from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n11:27- BP Nichol introduces “Poem found among the ruins”. [INDEX: series of quiet poems, loud poems; from unknown source.]\\n11:43- BP Nichol reads “Poem found among the ruins”. [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n12:19- BP Nichol reads “The Business”. [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n12:43- BP Nichol reads “Geners” [sp?] first line “Each human body a temple of the holy   ghost...” [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n13:51- BP Nichol reads “Computer Riddle Poem”. [INDEX: from Konfessions of an \\tElizabethan Fan Dancer (Weed Flower Press, 1973).]\\n15:05- BP Nichol introduces “Labia Digital” [sp?.] [INDEX: piece of sculpture, Haida art        exhibition, West Coast Indian art, carved figure of a woman, poem; from unknown       \\tsource.]\\n15:55- BP Nichol reads “Labia Digital” [sp?.]\\n16:41- BP Nichol reads “The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid”. [INDEX: published in a booklet The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (Weed/Flower, 1970), and later    published in Craft Dinner: Stories & Texts 1966-1976 (Aya Press, 1978).]\\n20:46- Lionel Kearns introduces “Expression”. [INDEX: from By the Light of the Silvery\\nMcLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n21:32- Lionel Kearns reads “Expression”\\n22:39- Lionel Kearns introduces “Transport”. [INDEX: clap in between poems, good poems, media parable; from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]   \\n22:56- Lionel Kearns reads “Transport”.\\n26:33- BP Nichol introduces chant poem “umpa-pa beach park...”. [INDEX: personal poems, written at Port Dover, on Lake Eerie, beach, sunburns, summer, song “Over the white  cliffs of Dover” (perhaps Vera Lynn’s “There’ll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs of Dover”), Pussycats (unknown reference), phrase “podunk”, playing football, weird; from unknown source.]\\n27:25- BP Nichol sings sound poem “umpa-pa beach park...”.\\n29:06- BP Nichol introduces “Dadalama”. [INDEX: Hugo Ball, dadaist, Switzerland, World War I, first sound poems, strange, Hugo Ball’s diaries, final public reading, sound poem, earlier space in his mind, remembering, terrified, left poetry, poem’s changes; originally published in Dada Lama (England: Tlaloc, 1968), collected in Selected Writing: As Elected (Talonbooks, 1980).]\\n30:28- BP Nichol reads “Dadalama”.\\n30:52- CUT in tape, silence.\\n30:53- Recording starts again, silence.\\n33:38- Lionel Kearns introduces “Situation”. [INDEX: new collection Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967), for sale at reading, quiet poems, measured voice, West Coast poetry scene, shouting, experience in Mexico; from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n35:06- Lionel Kearns reads “Situation”.\\n36:36- Lionel Kearns reads “Insights”. [INDEX: from By the Light of the Silvery McLune:\\nMedia Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The\\nDaylight Press, 1969).]   \\n36:55- Lionel Kearns introduces “Homage to Machado” [INDEX: early poem, translation of a poem by Antonio Machado, Spanish poet, switched central image, boat, lake, ripple of water, changed metaphor; from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n37:45- Lionel Kearns reads “Homage to Machado”.\\n38:17- Lionel Kearns reads “Remains”. [INDEX:  from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n39:08- Lionel Kearns reads “Total Presence”. [INDEX:  from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n40:05- Lionel Kearns reads “Witness”. [INDEX:  from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n40:38- Lionel Kearns reads “Profile”. [INDEX:  from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n41:32- Unknown audience member asks question, but is CUT by the recording.\\n41:37- Lionel Kearns answers question [INDEX: reading order, quiet poems, louder, street, excited, loud, funny, serious poems, juxtaposed relationships.]\\n42:12- BP Nichol answers question [INDEX: difficulty listening to long poetry readings, listening.]\\n42:32- Lionel Kearns makes a joke [INDEX: locked doors.]\\n42:37- BP Nichol introduces “Martyrology”. [INDEX: lost poems, long poem, series of saints, St. Reet, St. Ranglehold, St. And, complicated, Stranglehold; from an early version of The Martyrology (Coach House Press, 1972).]\\n43:05- BP Nichol reads part of “Martyrology”, line “Days numbered as the years are even, time cannot withstand such order. St. Reat...”.\\n43:58- BP Nichol introduces “Ruth”. [INDEX: loudness of reading, good friend David W.     Harris, quote from Ruth; most likely from Ruth (Toronto: Fleye Press, 1967) (book       \\tunavailable to researcher).]\\n44:20- BP Nichol reads “Ruth”.\\n46:20- BP Nichol reads first line “Measure the clock, talk back time...” [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n46:57- BP Nichol introduces first line “Living now in terrible times, the TV talks from the  \\tnext room...” [INDEX: line from a poem by bill bissett, CUT in recording and the rest of    the explanation is cut out; from unknown source.]\\n47:18- BP Nichol reads poem with first line “Living now in terrible times, the TV talks from the next room...”\\n49:43- Lionel Kearns introduces “Color Problem”. [INDEX:  from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n40:49- Lionel Kearns reads “Color Problem”.\\n50:06- Lionel Kearns introduces “The Woman Who” [INDEX: concrete poem, BP Nichol\\ninspires, purely visual, to hang on the wall, sonic, or both visual and sonic, page title\\n“Studies in Interior Decoration Border Design”; from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n51:20- Lionel Kearns reads “The Woman Who”.\\n53:14- CUT in tape, silence, from this point to 54:05.82 is actually from a part in the second half of the recording from 38:10.41 onwards.\\n53:25- Lionel Kearns reads “It”. [INDEX: from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n54:02- Lionel Kearns begins to explain next poem, but there is a cut in the tape and the original recording continues.\\n54:15- Lionel Kearns introduces “Kinetic Poem”. [INDEX: from Pointing (Ryerson Press,\\n1967).]\\n54:26- Lionel Kearns and BP Nichol read “Kinetic Poem”.\\n55:57- Distortion in recording.\\n56:00- BP Nichol introduces unknown poem “Karnijikawa” [sp?.]  [INDEX: Japanese filmmaker, Olympics 1964, audience participation; from unknown source.]\\n56:23- BP Nichol, Lionel Kearns and audience chant “Karnijikawa”.\\n57:22- Lionel Kearns introduces “The Parable of the Seventh Seal”. [INDEX: ‘karne’ means meat in Spanish, Louis Dudek’s courses (at McGill University), students, pessimism, student question, reading poems, up-beat ending; published as “The Seventh Seal” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n57:59- Unknown audience member asks question. [INDEX: pessimism]\\n58:00- Lionel Kearns answers question, continues to introduce “The Parable of the Seventh Seal”. [INDEX: upbeat ending, media parable, movie, “The Seven Samurai”, Hollywood, movie “The Magnificent Seven”, Western movie made in Japan, stolen by Hollywood, West, Northern locale, New Romans publishing, anti-American poem, $30 payment for story.]\\n59:38- Lionel Kearns reads “The Parable of the Seventh Seal”.\\n01:01:57.91- END OF RECORDING (story is cut short, continues in second part of reading).\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/bpnichol-and-lionel-kearns-at-sgwu-1968/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/bpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-026-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"bpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-026-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:46:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"112.3 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"bpNichol_lionel_kearns_i086-11-026-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:00:00\\nReads \\\"The Parable of the Seventh Seal\\\" [published as “The Seventh Seal” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; reading resumes from previous recording; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:06:17\\nReads \\\"Historical Implications of Turnips\\\" [from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:07:01\\nThis is called, for a reason I cannot remember at all, \\\"Cycle Number 22\\\".\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:07:13\\nReads \\\"Cycle Number 22\\\" [from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer and published later in Selected Writing: As Elected].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:07:49\\nThis next poem's called \\\"The Child in Me\\\". It's kind of what all sound poetry's about anyways. Enough said.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:08:09\\nReads \\\"The Child in Me\\\" [from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:09:10\\nThis is a poem called \\\"The New New Captain Poetry Blues\\\" and it's for David McFadden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5237344]. Captain Poetry is kind of this person that happened a long time ago in a magazine I used to edit called Ganglia, and David McFadden is still happening in Hamilton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133116], and is probably Canada's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] best poet and what else is there to say? Oh yes, a little footnote, there's a place in here called Plunkett [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2202272] which really exists and my mother was born there strangely enough. This is all about that.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:09:48\\nReads [sections of \\\"The New New Captain Poetry Blues: An Undecided Novel\\\" from The Captain Poetry Poems].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:12:53\\nThis poem is called \\\"Split\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:12:59\\nReads \\\"Split\\\" [published as “Personality” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:14:05\\nLaughter.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:14:07\\nPeople occasionally, when they're put on the spot to ask me questions, say \\\"What's it like to be a poet\\\", or \\\"Is it true that so and so and so and so...\\\" and things like that, questions that are impossible to answer. But there is something about being a poet, and this is one of the things, this is one of the differences, and this poem is called \\\"The Difference\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:14:40\\nReads \\\"The Difference\\\" [published as “Roles” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:15:40\\nThis is an older poem, it's a Christmas poem, it was written at the time when [Khrushchev (?)] got his call down, also about the time of the American intervention in the Dominican Republic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q786], where the Americans came in because they knew that there were Cuban influences, or the Cubans were behind the so-called rebels in the Dominican Republic and one of the proofs was that some of the rebels had been seen wearing green uniforms [audience laughter]. Of course, most military uniforms are kind of green, but they pointed out that some of Fidel Castro's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11256] soldiers had green uniforms too. But this is a Christmas poem.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:16:51\\nReads \\\"Christmas Poem” [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:17:57\\nI make most of my living teaching at Simon Fraser University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201603] and we have some troubles out there sometimes. One of the things that troubled us was the fact that when we were giving lectures to large crowds, we sometimes used the public address system and we found out that back--that the public address system was hooked up with-- operated with an FM band, and the, all your lectures could be picked up on an FM set, for example, an FM set in the President's office. We've since lost that President. And this is called \\\"University\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:18:55\\nReads \\\"University\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:19:24\\nThis one is called \\\"Economic Chronology\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:19:29\\nReads \\\"Economic Chronology\\\" [from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:19:42\\nThis one's called \\\"Alimony, Old Baloney\\\".\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:19:51\\nReads \\\"Alimony, Old Baloney\\\" [most likely from the Captain Poetry series]. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:24:14\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nbpNichol\\n00:24:15\\nReads unnamed “Captain Poetry” poem.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:26:25\\nWell if bp is going to keep reading his Captain Poetry poems, I'm going to read my “Ventilation Parable”. This is an epic.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:26:43\\nReads \\\"Ventilation Parable\\\" [published as “Ventilation” in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:31:19\\nThis poem is called \\\"Creation\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:31:24\\nReads \\\"Creation\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:31:52\\nI'm going to do that dangerous thing and read a poem I wrote last night. That's [inaudible]. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:31:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts back to 00:31:40].\\n\\nLionel Kearns\\n00:32:00\\nReads section of “Creation” [from Pointing].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:32:18\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Recording cuts back to 00:31:52]. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:32:19\\nLaughter.\\n\\nbpNichol\\n00:32:21\\nI'm going to do that dangerous thing and read a poem I wrote last night [laughter]. That's waking Lionel up at 7:30 this morning which he didn't quite forgive me for. It starts off with a quote from a poem by Bobby Hoat [?.] Well, yesterday we were up at Carlton doing a reading there. It's a poem called \\\"Zero Phase\\\". There's a town referred to in here called Vars [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3554856] which happens to be where he lives. It's a very groovy little place, just outside of...\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:32:51\\nCan you hear?\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:32:52\\nIs that okay? If I talk kind of into it like this?\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:33:04\\nReads \\\"Zero Phase\\\".\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:34:36\\nThis is a poem called \\\"Returning\\\". It sort of was written after I wrote a book of poetry called Journeying and the Returns.\\n \\nbpNichol\\n00:34:58\\nReads \\\"Returning\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:37:49\\nI'm going--I'm going to read a series of poems again, from my collection Pointing. This one is called \\\"It\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:38:13\\nReads \\\"It\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:38:45\\nA lot of the poems in this book derive their images from dreams, and this is a poem which is about a dream I had. And it's--I've interpreted the dream. Some extent of the poem--I interpreted as a kind of message about where I get my images for my poems, or where I got them at this particular period. And I called \\\"Ambergris, a Statement on Source\\\". Ambergris, being that stuff that sick whales cough up and which floats around on the ocean and it's very smelly stuff but it's very valuable stuff if you find it floating around because you can sell it for a great deal of money to perfume factories. And that's the interpretation of the series of images that follow.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:39:55\\nReads \\\"Ambergris, a Statement on Source\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:40:42\\nAnd this one, called \\\"Contra Diction\\\", it's a poem that is often anthologized. It's a poem that I like because I think it does what usually I'm trying to do in poems. It's not a very big poem, but it's neat, I think.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:41:12\\nReads \\\"Contra Diction\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:41:40\\nThis one is called \\\"Both\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:41:45\\nReads \\\"Both\\\" [from Pointing].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:42:06\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:42:07\\nThis is an early poem that I wrote, it fits into a series of poems that I was writing at the time in which I was dealing with my own background, trying to come to terms with things like my own Catholic background, and as you will see the central image is a Christian one. The situation is the fairgrounds actual--the actual situation is the PNE- the Pacific National Exhibition [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4179402]. It's an easter poem called \\\"Friday at the Ex\\\"\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:43:07\\nReads \\\"Friday at the Ex\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:44:34\\nAnd this one, called \\\"Prototypes\\\".\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:44:41\\nReads \\\"Prototypes\\\" [from Pointing].\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:45:33\\nAnd I think this is the last one I'll read, it's called \\\"End Poem\\\". An appropriate title.\\n \\nLionel Kearns\\n00:45:42\\nReads \\\"End Poem\\\" [from Pointing].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:46:04\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n\\nbpNichol\\n00:46:05\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nEND\\n00:46:47\",\"notes\":\"Lionel Kearns reads from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967) and poems published later in By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures, and other Assaults on the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969). bpNichol reads from a wide variety of his works, some published, some unpublished, including Dada Lama (England: Tlaloc, 1968), The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (Weed/Flower, 1970), Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer (Weed/Flower Press, 1973), and Selected Writing: As Elected (Talonbooks, 1980). Many unnamed poems may belong to two of Nichol’s series, the Captain Poetry Poems The Martyrology.\\n\\n00:00- Recording begins mid-sentence, Lionel Kearns continues reading “The Parable of the Seventh Seal”. [INDEX: from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables,\\nPoems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n06:17- BP Nichol reads “Historical Implications of Turnips”. [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n07:02- BP Nichol introduces “Cycle Number 22”. [INDEX: title unknown; published later in Selected Writing: As Elected (Talon, 1980).]\\n07:13- BP Nichol reads “Cycle Number 22”.\\n07:49- BP Nichol introduces “The Child in Me”. [INDEX: sound poetry; from Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer, Weed Flower Press, 1973).]\\n08:09- BP Nichol reads “The Child in Me”.\\n09:10- BP Nichol introduces “The New New Captain Poetry Blues”. [INDEX: For David        McFadden, Captain Poetry, magazine Ganglia, Hamilton, Canada’s best poet, footnote,    Plunkett: place where Nichol’s mother was born; from The Captain Poetry Poem series, blewointmentpress, 1968).]\\n09:48- BP Nichol reads “The New New Canadian Captain Poetry Blues”.\\n12:53- Lionel Kearns reads “Split”.\\n14:07- Lionel Kearns introduces “The Difference” (published as “Roles”). [INDEX: questions, what it’s like to be a poet, impossible to answer, difference of being a poet; from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n14:40- Lionel Kearns reads “The Difference” [Recording is often CUT to remove laughter and applause from the recording.]\\n15:40- Lionel Kearns introduce “Christmas Poem”. [INDEX: older poem, Christmas poem, Coustchef [unknown   reference], American intervention in the Dominican Republic, Cuban influence, rebels, green uniforms, military uniforms, Fidel Castro; from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n16:51- Lionel Kearns reads “Christmas Poem”.\\n17:57- Lionel Kearns introduces “University”. [INDEX: teaching at Simon Frasier University, troubles, lectures using the public address system, FM band, President’s office; from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n18:55- Lionel Kearns reads “University”.\\n19:24- Lionel Kearns reads “Economic Chronolgy”. [INDEX: from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n19:42- BP Nichol reads “Alimony, Old Baloney”. [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n24:15- CUT in tape, BP Nichol reads first line “One day CP hitched a ride...” [INDEX:\\nCaptain Poetry, Bill Bissett, David McFadden; from unknown source, perhaps from      \\tCaptain Poetry Poem series.]\\n26:25- Lionel Kearns introduces “Ventilation”. [INDEX: BP Nichol, Captain Poetry poems, epic, parable; from By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures and other Assaults of the Interface (The Daylight Press, 1969).]\\n16:43- Lionel Kearns reads “Ventilation Parable”.\\n31:19- Lionel Kearns reads “Creation”. [INDEX: from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n31:52- BP Nichol introduces “Zero Phase”. Recording becomes inaudible as sound warps. CUT in tape. [INDEX: poem written night before; from unknown source.]\\n32:00- Lionel Kearns reads first line “Imagination explodes, they grow old quick and die...” [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n32:21- Tape rewinds to BP Nichol introducing poem at 31:52.\\n32:21- BP Nichol introduces “Zero Phase”. [INDEX: poem written night before, Lionel Kearns, morning, quote from Bobby Hoat [unknown reference], Carleton University reading, town Vars.]\\n32:51- Lionel Kearns asks audience if they can hear.\\n33:04- BP Nichol reads “Zero Phase”.\\n34:36- BP Nichol introduces “Returning”. [INDEX: book of poetry Journeying & the Returns (Coach House Press, 1967).]\\n34:58- BP Nichol reads “Returning”.\\n37:49- Lionel Kearns introduces “It”. [INDEX: from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).] NOTE:\\nThe part of the recording is repeated from I086-11-026.1 (the first part of this reading) from 53:28.68, and Cuts out again at 54:02.90.\\n38:13- Lionel Kearns reads “It”.\\n38:45- Lionel Kearns introduces “Ambergris, a Statement on Source”. [INDEX: dream,     poems in book, interpretations, messages, images, whales, ocean, money, perfume    factory; from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n39:55- Lionel Kearns reads “Ambergris, a Statement on Source”.\\n40:42- Lionel Kearns introduces “Contra-Diction”. [INDEX: anthologized, poem; from\\nPointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n41:12- Lionel Kearns reads “Contra-Diction”.\\n41:40- Lionel Kearns reads “Both”. [INDEX: from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n42:07- Lionel Kearns introduces “Friday at the Ex”. [INDEX; early poem, series of poems, background, Catholic background, central image is Christian, fairgrounds, Pacific National Exhibition, easter poem; .] from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n43:07- Lionel Kearns reads “Friday at the Ex”.\\n43:34- Lionel Kearns reads “Prototypes” [INDEX: from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n45:33- Lionel Kearns introduces “End Poem”. [INDEX: last poem in reading, appropriate title; from Pointing (Ryerson Press, 1967).]\\n45:42- Lionel Kearns reads “End Poem”.\\n46:05- BP Nichol reads line “I wanted to forget you, so I tried to erase your name...”. [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n46:47.84- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"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":2.1907105},{"id":"1274","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":["Muriel Rukeyser at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 24 January 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MURIEL RUKEYSER I006/SR162\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-162\" 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":["Rukeyser, Muriel"],"creator_names_search":["Rukeyser, Muriel"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/137544\",\"name\":\"Rukeyser, Muriel\",\"dates\":\"1913-1980\",\"notes\":\"New York poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser was born in New York City in 1913. She attended Vassar College from 1930 to 1932, working on college newspapers and magazines. She co-founded the Student Review, edited the literary journal Housaton and attended summer courses at Columbia University. Her first book of poems, Theory of Flight (Yale University Press), published in 1935, was influenced from her brief experience at the Roosevelt Aviation School. U.S. 1 (Covici, Friede) was published three years later in 1938, and she was sent by the literary journal Life and Letters Today to report on the athletic competition staged by workers’ sports clubs in Spain. Rukeyser subsequently published A Turning Wind (Viking Press) in 1939, Wake Island (Doubleday) in 1942, Beast in View (Doubleday) in 1944, The Green Wave (Doubleday) in 1948 and The poem as a mask: Orpheus (Unicorn Press) in 1949 (a long poem with drawings by Pablo Picasso). She received the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry in 1940, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award in 1941, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1942 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943. She served as associate editor of Decision, a literary magazine edited by Klaus Mann. Muriel Rukeyser taught at Sarah Lawrence College in 1946, and the following year, she won the Levinson Prize for poetry. She published Body of Waking (Harper) in 1958, Waterlily Fire (Macmillan) in 1962, The speed of darkness (Random House) in 1968, Breaking Open (Random House) in 1973, The Gates (McGraw-Hill) in 1976 and finally Collected Poems (McGraw-Hill) in 1979. She translated the work of Mexican poet Octavio Paz and Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelof. Active in the protection of human rights, she was jailed in Washington, D.C, because of her protests of the Vietnam war. Between 1975 and 1976 she was president of PEN’s American Center, traveling to South Korea in defense of poet Kim Chi-Ha. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rutgers University in 1961, a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1963, the Shelley Memorial Award and the Copernicus Award for lifetime contribution to poetry in 1977. Muriel Rukeyser died in February 1980.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"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\":\"1969 1 24\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\" \",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Uncertain, possibly Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Presenter annoucnes next reading to take place in basement theatre of the building, mostly likely referring to the Hall Building\",\"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":["Uncertain, possibly Hall Building Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Muriel Rukeyser reads largely from her book The Speed of Darkness (Random House, 1968) as well as a few poems from Elegies (New Directions, 1949) and Waterlily Fire (Macmillan, 1962) and others published later in Breaking Open (Random House, 1973).  Most of the poems read were also later collected in Collected Poems (McGraw-Hill, 1978)."],"contents":["muriel_rukeyser_i006-11-162.mp3\n\nIntroducer\n00:00:00\n...Introduction mention that she has published ten volumes of poetry which include such books as The Green Wave, The Turning Wind, Beast in View, U.S. 1, Theory of Flight, Body of Waking, Waterlily Fire, The Speed of Darkness, amongst others. She has published essays, biography, she's working on a biography now, she has published a novel called The Orgy, she has published translations of the Mexican writer Octavio Paz [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46739], and the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q366311], she has published a number of children's books and what else can I say? She's a New Yorker, she was born in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], she lives in New York, and so forth. I now introduce Muriel Rukeyser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735177].\n\nAudience\n00:00:40\nApplause. \n\nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:00:49\nThank you. It sounds peculiar when it's said that way, you know. It just means that I've been writing poems all along, and that sometimes there's been some prose or something film, prose, whatever it is, that spills into the poems that feeds into the poems. And they lie all the time about the poems to us, you know, about all of our poems they say it's something very odd and rare, that people who do it are very odd, if a man does it, he's sexually questionable, if a woman does it she's sexually questionable, besides, very few people do it [audience laughter]. And it's all lies, you know. There's a company in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] that's made a fortune, on the premise that everybody takes a snapshot at some time or other, and I would like to ask you, and this is apart from all critical standards, all criteria, all faculty and institutions, apart from any of that. I would like to ask a question, how many of you here has ever written a poem, would you put up your hands please? [Audience laughter]. Thank you. I'm always nervous before I ask the question, I ask the question now in all rooms, no matter how few or many people there are and if the universities would generally look around to see if the basketball team is there, but there's always the moment of silence, and looking around first, and generally, quite slowly, almost all the hands go up, maybe four or five do not put up their hands and if I wait around afterwards, and with any luck and favorable wins, the four or five people come up to me and will say something like, I was 15, it was a love poem, it stank. [Audience laughter]. But the thing is it's a human activity. We all do it. We lie about it, you know, and they lie about it to us. And thanks now to the young, the poets maybe, a few other people one could name together, maybe we don't lie so much as we used to, maybe we don't lie about this anymore. Maybe we don't lie about sex, maybe we don't lie about poetry, they seem to lie a great deal about politics instead, it seems to shift around. There are these, and the fact is, we all write poems, it is something we do, we come to this part of experience, as you get a very rainy, rainy evening, why do people come and listen to poems? Or you've got some marvelous summer night, why do people come and listen to poems? Alright, it's partly out of curiosity and looking at the person and I go to see what is that breathing behind, what is that heartbeat, the breathing goes against the heartbeat and these rhythms are set up, and the involuntary muscles and you see the person do it but beyond that, something is what we call shared, something is arrived at, we come to something with almost unmediated, that is the poem among us, between us, there, we're reaching each other, you giving me whatever silence you are giving me and it comes to me with great strength, your silence. Somebody said prima donna, you know, or I'm going to give this to the audience and the conductor says that's what you think, you're going to get it from the audience. That's where it comes from in a funny way. So this mediation, it is not a description, it is not only the music and it, although certainly the reinforcement of sound. The sound climbing up and finally reaching a place, the last word, the sound that begins with the first breathing, the breath of the title. Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083] doing Ode to a Nightingale [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3349126], we hardly ever say ode, nobody says nightingale, but Keats having said that, never has to say it again, it's a bird. You find it in these things, but from the beginning, from the first moment, that is the first breath, the thing that is made as, suggestion, breath, what my life has been, whatever that--what your lives have been. This is a very short one called \"Song\".\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:06:50\nReads \"Song\" [from Waterlily Fire and collected later in Collected Poems].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:07:36\nThis is another very short one, I wanted to start with these and see what happened. I called it \"In Our Time\", it's very--it's four lines.\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:07:50\nReads \"In Our Time\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:08:12\nThis is called \"The Poem As Mask\". It's for another poem, a big Orpheus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q174353] poem that I wrote a long time ago and it had the acting out the women on the mountain after the murder, the pieces of the man scattered about the top of the mountain. The slow coming together of the pieces as God. And I realized, long after, when I came to this newest book, Speed of Darkness, that this was a mask that I did not want anymore of this. You know how it is--it happens to undergraduates, say, it happens to the thing that was just before, and you see these girls acting very childish, and trading on it, and thinking they're still thirteen and able to influence their father, and it's been used up, used up, it served its purpose back there, but it isn't that anymore. And these, phases of being, \"The Poem As Mask\" for Orpheus.\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:09:25\nReads \"The Poem As Mask\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:10:42\nReads \"Air\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:11:43\nReads \"Poem\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:13:57\nReads \"Anemone\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:14:46\nReads \"For My Son\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:17:15\nReads \"Orgy\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:19:14\nThis is called \"Bunk Johnson Blowing\", if you know the early jazz men, the New Orleans [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34404] jazz men, you'll know Bunk Johnson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q487021] and his trumpet. This is years later in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]. \"Bunk Johnson Blowing\" and the dedication is in memory of Lead Belly [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q314310], and his house on 59th Street, that's New York.\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:19:45\nReads \"Bunk Johnson Blowing\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:21:19\nReads \"Endless\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:22:53\nThis last one of the first group is called \"Clues\", it's a Canadian, British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974] poem, is--how it is among the Thompson River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2143805] Indians, or how it was in the anthropological moment, that flash of moment before it was broken up by this civilization, and we have caught up to some of this, without know what the hell it was, what this is. We are full of body painting, tattooing, emblems painted on ourselves, this is further. \"Clues\".\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:23:56\nReads \"Clues\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:25:55\nHere's one piece of a long poem, it's the last of a group called \"Elegies\", which one hardly dares name anything anymore. It's called \"Elegy in Joy\" and this is just a beginning piece, I wanted to do it tonight this way, I've never cut it up.\n \n Muriel Rukeyser\n00:26:17\nReads \"Elegy in Joy\" [from Elegies and collected later in Collected Poems].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:28:26\nI thought of that very much at the beginning of this month in Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96], and yesterday when I heard a story. It's a story of what happened at Christmas time, I was in Mexico, I wonder whether you saw it, I heard of it yesterday in New York, as a little, three line story, in the back page of the New York Times [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9684], saying that the largest underground bomb test was about to be held in Nevada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1227] in the States, and to that test, the day before, came five scientists, in Utah [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q829], in the States, to protest, to picket, to try to stop it. And another person who protested, was Howard Hughes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q189081], who owns most of Las Vegas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23768] at this point, and had his own reasons for protesting. These protests did not stop the testing. The test was made. It was the largest underground made yet. Do you know this story? There was a crack, a crack in the earth, big enough, they said, the way we talk, big enough that the Empire State Building [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9188]. There's a crack there, and deep under the crust there's a three foot crack of some kind, and the rocks are still falling, and they say there will be earthquakes in various parts, unpredictable parts of the world as a result of the shift of the under-crust. Now, last night, before I came here, on TV, late news in New York, they said that there'd been a quake in the Fiji Islands [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24570183]. I have no idea what the relations between these things are, I give it to you simply, that something has happened to shift the under-crust there will be unpredictable results. This is under the ground, the way we are bound to each other, we are all so bound to each other through the air and the fall out has come over Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], this is also a part of the story that I heard yesterday, and you, I can see by your nods, you know this part of the story. People were saying one thing, and then the other about why don't we do this, why don't they do that, part of the story is that maybe nothing will fall because the Russians also wish to make underground tests. It's part of the ways in which we are bound to each other. I'll give you that. In Mexico, we are bound, under the ground, over the ground, in every way there is. In Mexico, though the stories of what really happened to the students in October, and the stories of people--of many students were killed and the police were among the crowd, and the police wore one white glove or tied a handkerchief around their right hand, and when the helicopters came over, these white hands were put up that said \"don't shoot us, we're police\". Many students were shot and they say in Mexico City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1489] that the bodies were incinerated and no reports were made and no count was made, and these are the ways in which we are bound too. And yes, I have been translating Octavio Paz, and Ekelof is another such poet, but Paz, the end of one of Octavio's poems, was printed on this issue of the University Students' Journal of the University of Mexico, with the account of September, October, November, December. And the poem ends like this in English, it's not as good, I warn you, these translations are a folly on a madness on a stupidity and at the same time one has to do it, as work to which one is driven, out of love and gratitude, and also out a motive not so noble as any of that, during the times in which one cannot write poems, it is wonderful to have something one cares about out in front of one, and work with it that way, and it's the thing, not spinning out of oneself, in those times, but having something out in front. This is the end of the, of a great poem of Octavio Paz's called \"A Broken Jar\", and jar, of course, water jar, is something quite different in Mexico, we say 'jar', 'jug', something like that, it isn't in the thing we use every day, in Mexico, it's every day, it's that kind of broken jar.\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:33:33\nReads translation of \"A Broken Jar\" by Octavio Paz in English.\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:34:35\nThese are some poems, since my last book, and I don't know whether they are finished, they may be finished. The next book that these will be in will be called Breaking Open. This is a short one called \"Martin Luther King\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8027].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:34:56\nReads \"Martin Luther King\" [published later as “Martin Luther King, Malcolm X” in Breaking Open and collected in Collected Poems].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:35:45\nThis is a poem, I found a long time ago, you probably have found it in the same way, it's on the back of a one of the Gauguin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37693] watercolours, it's a piece of poem without any heading, without any signature, I didn't know what it was, and it stopped me, and it stayed in me, and I tried to turn it into English, and I couldn't do it. And I finally found out what it was and I finally turned it into English, it's a poem by Charles Morice [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2959857], who is hardly read, now, you know him? No, he's one of those people around Gauguin, and I said well, you can't print anything like that, people, and then 2001 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q835341] was written and released, and 2001 has stargate, starbaby, the whole thing, and I put the name \"Next\" on this and I'm reading it to you partly for itself, but partly because one line of it is something I used in a poem I wrote when the same thing happened to many of us, the Olympics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5389] committee wrote to us and asked for poems, you know, for the games, or for the times of the games, or for something. And one wasn't exactly going to do that, but there was something that could be said, and so on. Anyway, this is the Morice, and I've called it \"Next\".\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:37:25\nReads \"Next\", an English translation of an unnamed poem by Charles Morice [published later in Breaking Open and collected in Collected Poems].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:38:19\nAnd this poem, using one line of that was what I sent to Mexico, it's called \"Voices\".\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:38:30\nReads \"Voices\" [published later in Breaking Open and collected in Collected Poems].\n \nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:40:00\nThe last poem I'll read this evening is a group, the group is called \"The Speed of Darkness\". They're short poems, and I'll just pause between poems, there should be numbers going up in back of me, 1, 2, 3 [audience laughter]. I'll just pause. \"The Speed of Darkness\".\n\nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:40:27\nReads \"The Speed of Darkness\" from The Speed of Darkness. \n\nMuriel Rukeyser\n00:46:11\nThank you very much.\n \nAudience\n00:46:14\nApplause.\n \nIntroducer\n00:46:37\nWe wish to announce that the next reading will be by F.R. Scott [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656], and that will be on February 14, at the same time, in the theatre in the basement of this building. Thank you.\n \nUnknown\n00:46:58\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nEND\n00:51:24\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nThe speed of darkness was published the previous year, in 1968. Muriel Rukeyser did a reading in 1969 at Vassar College.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nMuriel Rukeyser was an influential American poet and human rights activist. No other connections to Montreal or Sir George Williams University are known.\",\"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\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/breaking-open-muriel-rukeyser/oclc/924572095?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Rukeyser, Muriel. Breaking Open. New York: Random House, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/elegies/oclc/504012626?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Rukeyser, Muriel. Elegies. New York: New Directions, 1949. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/speed-of-darkness-2-print/oclc/468799078&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rukeyser, Muriel. The speed of darkness. New York: Random House, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/waterlily-fire-poems-1935-1962/oclc/468799083?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Rukeyser, Muriel. Waterlily Fire. New York: Macmillan, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems/oclc/924905547?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Rukeyser, Muriel. Collected Poems. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Rukeyser, Muriel\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Rukeyser, Muriel, 1913-”. Literature Online Biography. H.W. Wilson Company. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548872101888,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0162_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0162 back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Muriel Rukeyser 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_0162_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0162 front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Muriel Rukeyser 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_0162_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0162 side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Muriel Rukeyser 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_0162_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0162_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Muriel Rukeyser 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/muriel_rukeyser_i006-11-162.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"muriel_rukeyser_i006-11-162.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:51:24\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"123.4 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Introducer\\n00:00:00\\n...Introduction mention that she has published ten volumes of poetry which include such books as The Green Wave, The Turning Wind, Beast in View, U.S. 1, Theory of Flight, Body of Waking, Waterlily Fire, The Speed of Darkness, amongst others. She has published essays, biography, she's working on a biography now, she has published a novel called The Orgy, she has published translations of the Mexican writer Octavio Paz [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46739], and the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q366311], she has published a number of children's books and what else can I say? She's a New Yorker, she was born in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], she lives in New York, and so forth. I now introduce Muriel Rukeyser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735177].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:40\\nApplause. \\n\\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:00:49\\nThank you. It sounds peculiar when it's said that way, you know. It just means that I've been writing poems all along, and that sometimes there's been some prose or something film, prose, whatever it is, that spills into the poems that feeds into the poems. And they lie all the time about the poems to us, you know, about all of our poems they say it's something very odd and rare, that people who do it are very odd, if a man does it, he's sexually questionable, if a woman does it she's sexually questionable, besides, very few people do it [audience laughter]. And it's all lies, you know. There's a company in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] that's made a fortune, on the premise that everybody takes a snapshot at some time or other, and I would like to ask you, and this is apart from all critical standards, all criteria, all faculty and institutions, apart from any of that. I would like to ask a question, how many of you here has ever written a poem, would you put up your hands please? [Audience laughter]. Thank you. I'm always nervous before I ask the question, I ask the question now in all rooms, no matter how few or many people there are and if the universities would generally look around to see if the basketball team is there, but there's always the moment of silence, and looking around first, and generally, quite slowly, almost all the hands go up, maybe four or five do not put up their hands and if I wait around afterwards, and with any luck and favorable wins, the four or five people come up to me and will say something like, I was 15, it was a love poem, it stank. [Audience laughter]. But the thing is it's a human activity. We all do it. We lie about it, you know, and they lie about it to us. And thanks now to the young, the poets maybe, a few other people one could name together, maybe we don't lie so much as we used to, maybe we don't lie about this anymore. Maybe we don't lie about sex, maybe we don't lie about poetry, they seem to lie a great deal about politics instead, it seems to shift around. There are these, and the fact is, we all write poems, it is something we do, we come to this part of experience, as you get a very rainy, rainy evening, why do people come and listen to poems? Or you've got some marvelous summer night, why do people come and listen to poems? Alright, it's partly out of curiosity and looking at the person and I go to see what is that breathing behind, what is that heartbeat, the breathing goes against the heartbeat and these rhythms are set up, and the involuntary muscles and you see the person do it but beyond that, something is what we call shared, something is arrived at, we come to something with almost unmediated, that is the poem among us, between us, there, we're reaching each other, you giving me whatever silence you are giving me and it comes to me with great strength, your silence. Somebody said prima donna, you know, or I'm going to give this to the audience and the conductor says that's what you think, you're going to get it from the audience. That's where it comes from in a funny way. So this mediation, it is not a description, it is not only the music and it, although certainly the reinforcement of sound. The sound climbing up and finally reaching a place, the last word, the sound that begins with the first breathing, the breath of the title. Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083] doing Ode to a Nightingale [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3349126], we hardly ever say ode, nobody says nightingale, but Keats having said that, never has to say it again, it's a bird. You find it in these things, but from the beginning, from the first moment, that is the first breath, the thing that is made as, suggestion, breath, what my life has been, whatever that--what your lives have been. This is a very short one called \\\"Song\\\".\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:06:50\\nReads \\\"Song\\\" [from Waterlily Fire and collected later in Collected Poems].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:07:36\\nThis is another very short one, I wanted to start with these and see what happened. I called it \\\"In Our Time\\\", it's very--it's four lines.\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:07:50\\nReads \\\"In Our Time\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:08:12\\nThis is called \\\"The Poem As Mask\\\". It's for another poem, a big Orpheus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q174353] poem that I wrote a long time ago and it had the acting out the women on the mountain after the murder, the pieces of the man scattered about the top of the mountain. The slow coming together of the pieces as God. And I realized, long after, when I came to this newest book, Speed of Darkness, that this was a mask that I did not want anymore of this. You know how it is--it happens to undergraduates, say, it happens to the thing that was just before, and you see these girls acting very childish, and trading on it, and thinking they're still thirteen and able to influence their father, and it's been used up, used up, it served its purpose back there, but it isn't that anymore. And these, phases of being, \\\"The Poem As Mask\\\" for Orpheus.\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:09:25\\nReads \\\"The Poem As Mask\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:10:42\\nReads \\\"Air\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:11:43\\nReads \\\"Poem\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:13:57\\nReads \\\"Anemone\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:14:46\\nReads \\\"For My Son\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:17:15\\nReads \\\"Orgy\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:19:14\\nThis is called \\\"Bunk Johnson Blowing\\\", if you know the early jazz men, the New Orleans [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34404] jazz men, you'll know Bunk Johnson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q487021] and his trumpet. This is years later in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]. \\\"Bunk Johnson Blowing\\\" and the dedication is in memory of Lead Belly [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q314310], and his house on 59th Street, that's New York.\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:19:45\\nReads \\\"Bunk Johnson Blowing\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:21:19\\nReads \\\"Endless\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:22:53\\nThis last one of the first group is called \\\"Clues\\\", it's a Canadian, British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974] poem, is--how it is among the Thompson River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2143805] Indians, or how it was in the anthropological moment, that flash of moment before it was broken up by this civilization, and we have caught up to some of this, without know what the hell it was, what this is. We are full of body painting, tattooing, emblems painted on ourselves, this is further. \\\"Clues\\\".\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:23:56\\nReads \\\"Clues\\\" [from The Speed of Darkness].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:25:55\\nHere's one piece of a long poem, it's the last of a group called \\\"Elegies\\\", which one hardly dares name anything anymore. It's called \\\"Elegy in Joy\\\" and this is just a beginning piece, I wanted to do it tonight this way, I've never cut it up.\\n \\n Muriel Rukeyser\\n00:26:17\\nReads \\\"Elegy in Joy\\\" [from Elegies and collected later in Collected Poems].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:28:26\\nI thought of that very much at the beginning of this month in Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96], and yesterday when I heard a story. It's a story of what happened at Christmas time, I was in Mexico, I wonder whether you saw it, I heard of it yesterday in New York, as a little, three line story, in the back page of the New York Times [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9684], saying that the largest underground bomb test was about to be held in Nevada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1227] in the States, and to that test, the day before, came five scientists, in Utah [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q829], in the States, to protest, to picket, to try to stop it. And another person who protested, was Howard Hughes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q189081], who owns most of Las Vegas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23768] at this point, and had his own reasons for protesting. These protests did not stop the testing. The test was made. It was the largest underground made yet. Do you know this story? There was a crack, a crack in the earth, big enough, they said, the way we talk, big enough that the Empire State Building [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9188]. There's a crack there, and deep under the crust there's a three foot crack of some kind, and the rocks are still falling, and they say there will be earthquakes in various parts, unpredictable parts of the world as a result of the shift of the under-crust. Now, last night, before I came here, on TV, late news in New York, they said that there'd been a quake in the Fiji Islands [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24570183]. I have no idea what the relations between these things are, I give it to you simply, that something has happened to shift the under-crust there will be unpredictable results. This is under the ground, the way we are bound to each other, we are all so bound to each other through the air and the fall out has come over Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], this is also a part of the story that I heard yesterday, and you, I can see by your nods, you know this part of the story. People were saying one thing, and then the other about why don't we do this, why don't they do that, part of the story is that maybe nothing will fall because the Russians also wish to make underground tests. It's part of the ways in which we are bound to each other. I'll give you that. In Mexico, we are bound, under the ground, over the ground, in every way there is. In Mexico, though the stories of what really happened to the students in October, and the stories of people--of many students were killed and the police were among the crowd, and the police wore one white glove or tied a handkerchief around their right hand, and when the helicopters came over, these white hands were put up that said \\\"don't shoot us, we're police\\\". Many students were shot and they say in Mexico City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1489] that the bodies were incinerated and no reports were made and no count was made, and these are the ways in which we are bound too. And yes, I have been translating Octavio Paz, and Ekelof is another such poet, but Paz, the end of one of Octavio's poems, was printed on this issue of the University Students' Journal of the University of Mexico, with the account of September, October, November, December. And the poem ends like this in English, it's not as good, I warn you, these translations are a folly on a madness on a stupidity and at the same time one has to do it, as work to which one is driven, out of love and gratitude, and also out a motive not so noble as any of that, during the times in which one cannot write poems, it is wonderful to have something one cares about out in front of one, and work with it that way, and it's the thing, not spinning out of oneself, in those times, but having something out in front. This is the end of the, of a great poem of Octavio Paz's called \\\"A Broken Jar\\\", and jar, of course, water jar, is something quite different in Mexico, we say 'jar', 'jug', something like that, it isn't in the thing we use every day, in Mexico, it's every day, it's that kind of broken jar.\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:33:33\\nReads translation of \\\"A Broken Jar\\\" by Octavio Paz in English.\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:34:35\\nThese are some poems, since my last book, and I don't know whether they are finished, they may be finished. The next book that these will be in will be called Breaking Open. This is a short one called \\\"Martin Luther King\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8027].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:34:56\\nReads \\\"Martin Luther King\\\" [published later as “Martin Luther King, Malcolm X” in Breaking Open and collected in Collected Poems].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:35:45\\nThis is a poem, I found a long time ago, you probably have found it in the same way, it's on the back of a one of the Gauguin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37693] watercolours, it's a piece of poem without any heading, without any signature, I didn't know what it was, and it stopped me, and it stayed in me, and I tried to turn it into English, and I couldn't do it. And I finally found out what it was and I finally turned it into English, it's a poem by Charles Morice [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2959857], who is hardly read, now, you know him? No, he's one of those people around Gauguin, and I said well, you can't print anything like that, people, and then 2001 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q835341] was written and released, and 2001 has stargate, starbaby, the whole thing, and I put the name \\\"Next\\\" on this and I'm reading it to you partly for itself, but partly because one line of it is something I used in a poem I wrote when the same thing happened to many of us, the Olympics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5389] committee wrote to us and asked for poems, you know, for the games, or for the times of the games, or for something. And one wasn't exactly going to do that, but there was something that could be said, and so on. Anyway, this is the Morice, and I've called it \\\"Next\\\".\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:37:25\\nReads \\\"Next\\\", an English translation of an unnamed poem by Charles Morice [published later in Breaking Open and collected in Collected Poems].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:38:19\\nAnd this poem, using one line of that was what I sent to Mexico, it's called \\\"Voices\\\".\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:38:30\\nReads \\\"Voices\\\" [published later in Breaking Open and collected in Collected Poems].\\n \\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:40:00\\nThe last poem I'll read this evening is a group, the group is called \\\"The Speed of Darkness\\\". They're short poems, and I'll just pause between poems, there should be numbers going up in back of me, 1, 2, 3 [audience laughter]. I'll just pause. \\\"The Speed of Darkness\\\".\\n\\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:40:27\\nReads \\\"The Speed of Darkness\\\" from The Speed of Darkness. \\n\\nMuriel Rukeyser\\n00:46:11\\nThank you very much.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:46:14\\nApplause.\\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:46:37\\nWe wish to announce that the next reading will be by F.R. Scott [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656], and that will be on February 14, at the same time, in the theatre in the basement of this building. Thank you.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:46:58\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nEND\\n00:51:24\\n\",\"notes\":\"Muriel Rukeyser reads largely from her book The Speed of Darkness (Random House, 1968) as well as a few poems from Elegies (New Directions, 1949) and Waterlily Fire (Macmillan, 1962) and others published later in Breaking Open (Random House, 1973).  Most of the poems read were also later collected in Collected Poems (McGraw-Hill, 1978).\\n\\n00:00- Unknown Introducer introduces Muriel Rukeyser [INDEX: The Green Wave, The Turning Wind, Beast and View, U.S. 1, Theory of Flight, The speed of darkness]\\n00:49- Muriel Rukeyser introduces “Song” [INDEX: writing poetry, poet John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”]\\n06:50- Reads “Song”\\n07:36- Introduces “In Our Time”\\n07:50- Reads “In Our Time”\\n08:12- Introduces “The Poem as a Mask” [INDEX: Orpheus, Greek Myth, The speed of darkness]\\n09:25- Reads “The Poem as a Mask”\\n10:42- Reads “Air”\\n11:43- Reads “Poem”\\n13:57- Reads “Anemone”\\n14:46- Reads “For My Son”\\n17:15- Reads “Orgy”\\n19:14- Introduces “Bunk Johnson Blowing” [INDEX: Musician Bunk Johnson, San Francisco, Lead Belly, house on 59th Street in NYC]\\n19:45- Reads “Bunk Johnson Blowing”\\n21:19- Reads “Endless”\\n22:53- Introduces “Clues” [INDEX: Thompson River Indians (the Nlaka'pamux of Southern British Columbia)]\\n23:56- Reads “Clues”\\n25:55- Introduces “Elegy in Joy”\\n26:17- Reads “Elegy in Joy”\\n28:26- Introduces “A Broken Jar” [INDEX: Biggest underground bomb testing in Nevada, Student protest killings on October 2, 1968 in Mexico City, Poet Octavio Paz, Surrealist poet Gunnar Ekelof]\\n33:33- Reads “A Broken Jar”\\n34:35- Introduces “Martin Luther King” [INDEX: Breaking Open: Upcoming novel, poet Charles Maurice and artist Paul Gauguin, 2001: A Space Odyssey]\\n34:56- Reads “Martin Luther King”\\n35:45- Introduces “Next” [Howard Fink List: “Poem by C. Maurice”]\\n37:35- Reads “Next”\\n38:19- Introduces “Voices”\\n38:30- Reads “Voices”\\n40:00- Introduces “The speed of darkness”\\n40:27- Reads “The speed of darkness”\\n51:24.74- END OF RECORDING\\n \\nHoward Fink List of Poems\\n“Muriel Rukeyser”\\n1/24/69\\nreel information\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/muriel-rukeyser-at-sgwu-1969/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1275","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":["F.R. Scott at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 22 February 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"R.F. SCOTT - 1 I006/SR117.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. R.F. SCOTT refers to F.R. SCOTT. R.F. is mispelled. \"I006-11-112.1\" written on sticker on the reel\n\n\"R.F. SCOTT - 2 I006/SR117.2\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. R.F. SCOTT refers to F.R. SCOTT. R.F. is mispelled. \"I006-11-112.2\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 3"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-112.1, I006-11-112.2]"],"creator_names":["Scott, Francis Reginald"],"creator_names_search":["Scott, Francis Reginald"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/108944267\",\"name\":\"Scott, Francis Reginald\",\"dates\":\"1899-1985\",\"notes\":\"Francis (Frank) Reginald Scott (F.R. Scott) was born in Quebec City, in 1899. Educated at Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, and then at Oxford University where he received his B.A. in 1922, and his B.Litt in 1923 on a Rhodes scholarship. In 1926 he graduated from McGill University in Montreal with a Law degree. It was at McGill, after meeting A.J.M. Smith, that he became interested in the current poetry scene. With Smith and Leon Edel, Scott founded The McGill fortnightly review (1925-1927), which then became The Canadian Mercury (1928-1929). After practicing law for a year, he returned to teach at McGill in 1928. In 1936 he and Smith co-edited the first anthology of modern Canadian poetry, New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors (Macmillan, 1936), and he was subsequently involved in many influential literary journals and anthologies of Canadian poetry. Preview begun with the help of Scott, A.M. Klein and P.K. Page in 1942, and in 1945 it merged with First Statement to become the Northern Review (1945-1956). Scott also was an advising editor of The Tamarack Review in 1956. Scott’s first collection of poems was Overture (Ryerson Press), published in 1945, delayed by the Depression, but was followed by Events and signals (Ryerson Press, 1954), The eye of the needle (Contact Press, 1957), Signature (Klanak Press and McGill University Press, 1964) and Selected poems (Oxford University Press, 1966). Scott became the dean of law at McGill in 1961 until 1964, retiring in 1968. Not only was Scott an important figure in Canadian poetry, he was heavily involved with politics, law and the translation of French literature. Scott was the President of the League for Social Reconstruction in 1935-7. He was the national chairman of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation from 1942 to 1950. Scott helped to found the New Party in the 60‘s, what is known as the New Democratic Party today. He also worked several high-priority civil rights cases, Switzman v. Elbing (1957) and Roncarelli v. Duplessis (1958) in front of the Supreme Court. F.R. Scott was awarded the Lorne Piece Medal for distinguished service to Canadian literature in 1962. He received the Canada Council Translation Prize for Poems of French Canada (Blackfish press, 1977), a Governor General’s Award for Essays on the constitution: aspects of Canadian law and politics (University of Toronto Press, 1977) as well as a second Governor General’s Award for The collected poems of F.R. Scott (McClelland and Stewart) in 1981. F.R. Scott died in 1985.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 2 22\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"In previous recording, announcement is made for F.R. Scott's reading to take place on February 14, 1969. Perhaps date changed subsequently.\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location announced in previous recording\",\"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":["F.R. Scott reads from a large selection of his poetry, most of which was collected much later in The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott (McClelland and Stewart, 1981). Scott most likely did not read from one book, but from his own manuscripts, but many of the poems were already published in F.R. Scott: Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1966) at the time of the reading."],"contents":["fr_scott_i006-11-112-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nF.R. Scott\n00:00:00\nLadies and gentleman, the poems I'm going to read stretch over a period, it seems hard to believe, of about 45 years, and the writing of poetry has changed quite as much in that time as the world has changed, and probably for the same reason. Some of the poems I start with, you are actually going to hear a rhyme, and they're going to be structured. And you won't appreciate it, but some are going to vary the rhyme form in a way which, when they were written, seemed really quite daring. And I have witnessed, and as poets go on, it will always happen, this continuous evolution of the method--the method of expression and the forms of expression, that the poet, like any other artist, uses. I'm going to start at the beginning of my writing, I was born in Quebec City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2145], grew up there. The Laurentian mountains [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q75596] are ten miles away, my father was a great lover of nature, we went into the country for picnics all the time, he used to put me at the edge of the mountains and say \"Frank, look North, there's nothing between you and the North Pole\". And after I'd been three and a half years at Oxford [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34433] and in Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], soaking up nothing up but human history, the background and fundamentals of our civilization, I came back to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], which seemed an incredibly ugly, empty, valueless city. The one thing that matched the power of the European tradition was this North land. It's emptiness, it's waiting. So I remember poems touching upon that feeling, and I will read first, this poem is really 45 years old, \"New Names\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:02:31\nReads \"New Names\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:03:26\nReads \"Old Song\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems]..\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:04:17\n\"Trees In Ice\", we've all seen trees in ice.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:04:26\nReads \"Trees In Ice\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:05:21\nReads \"Snow Drift\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:05:47\nReads \"North Stream\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:06:29\nAnd then, \"Stone\", and I'm thinking of one of these marvelous artifacts that find on the shores of the northern rivers, and what it tells us.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:06:55\nReads \"Stone\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:08:09\nAnd in the same vein, here is a street cry modeled on the street cries of London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] when they were selling--women were selling on the streets--\"Street Cry\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:08:34\nReads \"Street Cry\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:09:03\nOne sees this north land, subject to man's invasion. This is called \"Laurentian Shield\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76034], which as you know, the name of the geological formation that covers most of the northern part of this country.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:09:41\nReads \"Laurentian Shield\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:12:27\nAnd \"Flying to Fort Smith\". I went down the Mackenzie river [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3411] and flew from Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] to Fort Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q686415] over the Peace River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2220] and these other rivers underneath which wind through the flat plain.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:12:53\nReads \"Flying to Fort Smith\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:14:14\nHere's a fairly recent poem to be published shortly. It's called \"T.V. Weatherman\" and it's dedicated to Percy Saltzman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7167559].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:14:41\nReads \"T.V. Weatherman\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:16:30\n\"Trans Canada\" this is my first flight, Regina [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2123] to Montreal one night.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:16:42\nReads \"Trans Canada\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:19:19\nHere's another recent poem, called \"On the Terrace, Quebec\". You imagine yourself on the terrace of Chateau Frontenac [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q745964] looking at the basin.\n \n \nF.R. Scott\n00:19:41\nReads \"On the Terrace, Quebec\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:21:28\n\"A Grain of Rice\", a poem I wrote in Burma [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q836], thinking of the Korean war [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8663], seeing the monsoon rains, reflecting on man and the universe in which he lives. \"A Grain of Rice\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:22:04\nReads \"A Grain of Rice\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:24:25\nReads \"The Bird\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:26:40\nHere's another version of an old story. It's called \"Eden\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:26:57\nReads \"Eden\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:29:25\nAnd now, one or two more found poems. The first is from the Canadian Indian Pavilion at Expo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1344988]. And it is found in this way, and those of you that saw that pavilion remember that they had these various rooms and in each room they had one or two lines of statements, up on the wall, about themselves and their relations with the white man. And all I did was to collect these various statements from a number of rooms and put them together to make a single poem, and it goes like this, I call it \"The Indians Speak at Expo 67\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:30:24\nReads \"The Indians Speak at Expo 67\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:31:44\nIn one of those rooms, there was a treaty between the British Crown and some Indian Chiefs. These treaties all had one purpose: they were to transfer valuable lands to Indians to the white man. And the treaties I may say always succeeded. This treaty was written out in a very formal manuscript, and the Indians had got hold of the original parchment, or whatever it was on, and they had blown it up to a great big thing they had up on the wall. The treaty was signed by two chiefs, signed--that is to say--the chiefs could not sign their names and presumably could not read the treaty, but they made little drawings, marks, to indicate that they had approved, and this what part of the treaty contains. There was a signature at the top, Chief Ningaram and at the bottom, Chief Wobumingwam.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:32:56\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:34:07\nAnd about 30,000 acres of the richest land in Southern Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904] went for a song to the chiefs who couldn't sign their names. And I just came across the other day, in a book that I picked up, another thing I think I could call a 'found poem', also by the Indians, it's in The Life of McGillivray, the great fur trader of Montreal and his North West Company [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1142049], you know in the early part of the last century, around 1810-20. This is an account of the North West Company, describing how they relate themselves to the Indians, and you will see the philanthropy.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:34:54\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nEND\n00:35:32\n\n\nfr_scott_i006-11-112-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nF.R. Scott\n00:00:00\nHere's a poem, some poems of sentiment, a poem called \"Will to Win\". It's full of the imagery, it came out of the resistance movement in France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], during WW2 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], the Marquis hiding, having supplies dropped to them etc., etc.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:00:25\nReads \"Will to Win\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:01:50\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:02:48\nReads \"Girl Running Down Hill\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:04:00\nReads \"Upon Watching Margaret Dying\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:05:39\nHere's a translation from Jacques Boraux [sp?], it's in his recent book that won the Prix de France. The poem is called \"Connaissance, Knowing\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:06:00\nReads \"Connaissance, Knowing”.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:07:31\nAnd here's a translation from Pierre Trottier [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3387180] It's called \"Time Corrected\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:07:50\nReads \"Time Corrected\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:09:27\nReads \"Vision\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:11:40\n\"Last Rites\". This was written at the death of my father in hospital.\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:11:50\nReads \"Last Rites\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:15:23\nAnd finally, a poem called \"A l'ange avant-gardien\". It seems strange, but I was brought up to believe there was a guardian angel, un ange gardien, looking after me, so you felt a little more secure. As you know, there are certain places in this province called l'ange gardien. So I thought of the avant, l'ange avant-gardien. Stevens had a necessary angel, which to him was reality. Many people have angels, but this challenging avant-garde angel always asking you to be in the avant=garde, seems to me what I was thinking about. \"A l'ange avant-gardien\".\n \nF.R. Scott\n00:16:53\nReads \"A l'ange avant-gardien\".\n \nEND\n00:18:01\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1969, Scott was working on Dialogue sur la traduction, with Anne Hebert, published in 1970 (Bibliotheque Quebecoise). He had retired from teaching at McGill the previous year.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nSince the 1920’s, Scott surrounded himself with poets, socializing with Dudek, Layton, Souster, Klein, Sutherland, D.G. Jones, Webb, Bowering, Newlove, Livesay, Mandel. Layton and Scott organized many infamous get-togethers and parties at their houses. He no doubt had many connections to Sir George Williams University through its professors, by association to McGill and from his prominence in the Montreal poetry scene.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>CD>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fr-scott-une-vie-biographie/oclc/1132465721&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Djwa, Sandra. F.R. Scott: Une Vie, bibliographie. Florence Bernard (translation). Montreal: Boreal, 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/803224830&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Djwa, Sandra. \\\"Scott, F.R.\\\"  The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-v-2/oclc/847425506&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Trehearne, Brian. “Scott, F.R. (1899-1985)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial    Literatures in English. Eugene Benson, L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/900052866&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Scott, F.R. F.R. Scott: Selected Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1966.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-of-fr-scott/oclc/240862769&referer=brief_results>\",\"citation\":\"Scott, F.R. The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548875247616,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0112-1_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0112-1_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"F.R. 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Scott Tape Box 1 - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0112-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0112-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"F.R. 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Scott Tape Box 2 - 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_0112-2_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0112-2_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"F.R. Scott Tape Box 2 - 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_0112-2_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0112-2_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"F.R. Scott Tape Box 2 - 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_0112-2_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0112-2_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"F.R. Scott Tape Box 2 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/fr_scott_i006-11-112-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"fr_scott_i006-11-112-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:35:32\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"85.3 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"fr_scott_i006-11-112-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nF.R. Scott\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and gentleman, the poems I'm going to read stretch over a period, it seems hard to believe, of about 45 years, and the writing of poetry has changed quite as much in that time as the world has changed, and probably for the same reason. Some of the poems I start with, you are actually going to hear a rhyme, and they're going to be structured. And you won't appreciate it, but some are going to vary the rhyme form in a way which, when they were written, seemed really quite daring. And I have witnessed, and as poets go on, it will always happen, this continuous evolution of the method--the method of expression and the forms of expression, that the poet, like any other artist, uses. I'm going to start at the beginning of my writing, I was born in Quebec City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2145], grew up there. The Laurentian mountains [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q75596] are ten miles away, my father was a great lover of nature, we went into the country for picnics all the time, he used to put me at the edge of the mountains and say \\\"Frank, look North, there's nothing between you and the North Pole\\\". And after I'd been three and a half years at Oxford [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34433] and in Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], soaking up nothing up but human history, the background and fundamentals of our civilization, I came back to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], which seemed an incredibly ugly, empty, valueless city. The one thing that matched the power of the European tradition was this North land. It's emptiness, it's waiting. So I remember poems touching upon that feeling, and I will read first, this poem is really 45 years old, \\\"New Names\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:02:31\\nReads \\\"New Names\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:03:26\\nReads \\\"Old Song\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems]..\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:04:17\\n\\\"Trees In Ice\\\", we've all seen trees in ice.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:04:26\\nReads \\\"Trees In Ice\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:05:21\\nReads \\\"Snow Drift\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:05:47\\nReads \\\"North Stream\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:06:29\\nAnd then, \\\"Stone\\\", and I'm thinking of one of these marvelous artifacts that find on the shores of the northern rivers, and what it tells us.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:06:55\\nReads \\\"Stone\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:08:09\\nAnd in the same vein, here is a street cry modeled on the street cries of London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] when they were selling--women were selling on the streets--\\\"Street Cry\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:08:34\\nReads \\\"Street Cry\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:09:03\\nOne sees this north land, subject to man's invasion. This is called \\\"Laurentian Shield\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76034], which as you know, the name of the geological formation that covers most of the northern part of this country.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:09:41\\nReads \\\"Laurentian Shield\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:12:27\\nAnd \\\"Flying to Fort Smith\\\". I went down the Mackenzie river [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3411] and flew from Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] to Fort Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q686415] over the Peace River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2220] and these other rivers underneath which wind through the flat plain.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:12:53\\nReads \\\"Flying to Fort Smith\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:14:14\\nHere's a fairly recent poem to be published shortly. It's called \\\"T.V. Weatherman\\\" and it's dedicated to Percy Saltzman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7167559].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:14:41\\nReads \\\"T.V. Weatherman\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:16:30\\n\\\"Trans Canada\\\" this is my first flight, Regina [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2123] to Montreal one night.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:16:42\\nReads \\\"Trans Canada\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:19:19\\nHere's another recent poem, called \\\"On the Terrace, Quebec\\\". You imagine yourself on the terrace of Chateau Frontenac [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q745964] looking at the basin.\\n \\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:19:41\\nReads \\\"On the Terrace, Quebec\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:21:28\\n\\\"A Grain of Rice\\\", a poem I wrote in Burma [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q836], thinking of the Korean war [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8663], seeing the monsoon rains, reflecting on man and the universe in which he lives. \\\"A Grain of Rice\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:22:04\\nReads \\\"A Grain of Rice\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:24:25\\nReads \\\"The Bird\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:26:40\\nHere's another version of an old story. It's called \\\"Eden\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:26:57\\nReads \\\"Eden\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:29:25\\nAnd now, one or two more found poems. The first is from the Canadian Indian Pavilion at Expo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1344988]. And it is found in this way, and those of you that saw that pavilion remember that they had these various rooms and in each room they had one or two lines of statements, up on the wall, about themselves and their relations with the white man. And all I did was to collect these various statements from a number of rooms and put them together to make a single poem, and it goes like this, I call it \\\"The Indians Speak at Expo 67\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:30:24\\nReads \\\"The Indians Speak at Expo 67\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:31:44\\nIn one of those rooms, there was a treaty between the British Crown and some Indian Chiefs. These treaties all had one purpose: they were to transfer valuable lands to Indians to the white man. And the treaties I may say always succeeded. This treaty was written out in a very formal manuscript, and the Indians had got hold of the original parchment, or whatever it was on, and they had blown it up to a great big thing they had up on the wall. The treaty was signed by two chiefs, signed--that is to say--the chiefs could not sign their names and presumably could not read the treaty, but they made little drawings, marks, to indicate that they had approved, and this what part of the treaty contains. There was a signature at the top, Chief Ningaram and at the bottom, Chief Wobumingwam.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:32:56\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:34:07\\nAnd about 30,000 acres of the richest land in Southern Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904] went for a song to the chiefs who couldn't sign their names. And I just came across the other day, in a book that I picked up, another thing I think I could call a 'found poem', also by the Indians, it's in The Life of McGillivray, the great fur trader of Montreal and his North West Company [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1142049], you know in the early part of the last century, around 1810-20. This is an account of the North West Company, describing how they relate themselves to the Indians, and you will see the philanthropy.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:34:54\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nEND\\n00:35:32\\n\",\"notes\":\"F.R. Scott reads from a large selection of his poetry, most of which was collected much later in The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott (McClelland and Stewart, 1981). Scott most likely did not read from one book, but from his own manuscripts, but many of the poems were already published in F.R. Scott: Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1966) at the time of the reading.\\n\\n00:00- Introduces his reading and “New Names” [INDEX: changes of poetry over 45 years, evolution of method of expression, Quebec City, Laurentian Mountains, Nature, F.R. Scott’s father, Oxford University, human history, Montreal, Northern Landscape]\\n02:31- Reads “New Names”\\n03:26- Reads “Old Song”\\n04:17- Introduces “Trees in Ice”\\n04:26- Reads “Trees in Ice”\\n05:21- Reads “Snow Drift”\\n05:47- Reads “North Stream”\\n06:29- Introduces “Stone” [INDEX: artifacts of the Northern rivers]\\n06:55- Reads “Stone”\\n08:09- Introduces “Street Cry” [INDEX: female street vendors of London, read from unknown  source]\\n08:34- Reads “Street Cry”\\n09:03- Introduces “Laurentian Shield”\\n09:41- Reads “Laurentian Shield”\\n12:27- Introduces “Flying to Fort Smith” [INDEX: MacKenzie River, flight from Edmonton to Fort Smith, Peace River]\\n12:53- Reads “Flying to Forth Smith”\\n14:14- Introduces “T.V. Weatherman” [INDEX: Percy Saltzman, read from unknown source]\\n14:41- Reads “T.V. Weatherman”\\n16:30- Introduces “Trans Canada” [INDEX: flight from Regina to Montreal]\\n16:42- Reads “Trans Canada”\\n19:19- Introduces “On the Terrace, Quebec” [INDEX: Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, read from unknown source]\\n19:41- Reads “On the Terrace, Quebec”\\n21:28- Introduces “A Grain of Rice”\\n22:04- Reads “A Grain of Rice”\\n24:25- Reads “The Bird”\\n26:40- Introduces “Eden”\\n26:57- Reads “Eden”\\n29:25- Introduces “The Indians Speak at Expo ’67” [INDEX: Found poems, Canadian Indian Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal]\\n30:24- Reads “The Indians Speak at Expo ’67”\\n31:44- Introduces unknown ‘treaty’ found poem [Howard Fink first line: “We the     \\tundersigned chiefs...”] [INDEX: British Crown treaty with Indian Chiefs Ningaram and      Chief Wabuminguam to transfer valuable lands, Expo 67, reading from unknown source]\\n32:56- Reads unknown ‘treaty’ found poem\\n34:07- Introduces unknown poem about the life of MacGillivray [Howard Fink first line      “While the trade is confined to a...”] [INDEX: Southern Ontario lands, The Life of         \\tMacGillivray, fur trader of Montreal and the NorthWest Company, 1810-1820, reading    \\tfrom unknown source]\\n35:27- Reads unknown poem\\n35:27- Introduces “Will to Win” [INDEX: World War II, Marquis of France, resistance   movement]\\n36:21- Reads “Will to Win”\\n37:46- Reads “Heart”\\n38:44- Reads “Girl Running Down Hill”\\n39:56- Reads “Upon Watching Margaret Dying”\\n41:35- Introduces “Connaissance, Knowing” [Howard Fink first line: “I have in my mouth...”] [INDEX: translation from Jacques Borraux [sp?], Prix de France, read from unknown source]\\n41:56- Reads “Connaissance, Knowing”\\n43:27- Introduces “Time Corrected” [INDEX: Translation from Pierre Trottier [sp?]]\\n43:46- Reads “Time Corrected”\\n45:23- Reads “Vision”\\n47:36- Introduces “Last Rites” [INDEX: death of F.R. Scott’s father]\\n47:46- Reads “Last Rites”\\n51:19- Introduces “A l’ange avantgardien” [Howard Fink first line: “We must leave the        handrails...”] [INDEX: guardian angels, brother Stevens Scott]\\n52:49- Reads “A l’ange avantgardien”\\n53:57.79- END OF RECORDING.\\n\\nHoward Fink list of poems\\n“R.F. Scott” *note mistake\\n22/2/69\\nreel info\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/f-r-scott-at-sgwu-1969/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/fr_scott_i006-11-112-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"fr_scott_i006-11-112-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:18:01\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"44.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"fr_scott_i006-11-112-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nF.R. Scott\\n00:00:00\\nHere's a poem, some poems of sentiment, a poem called \\\"Will to Win\\\". It's full of the imagery, it came out of the resistance movement in France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], during WW2 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], the Marquis hiding, having supplies dropped to them etc., etc.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:00:25\\nReads \\\"Will to Win\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:01:50\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:02:48\\nReads \\\"Girl Running Down Hill\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:04:00\\nReads \\\"Upon Watching Margaret Dying\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:05:39\\nHere's a translation from Jacques Boraux [sp?], it's in his recent book that won the Prix de France. The poem is called \\\"Connaissance, Knowing\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:06:00\\nReads \\\"Connaissance, Knowing”.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:07:31\\nAnd here's a translation from Pierre Trottier [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3387180] It's called \\\"Time Corrected\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:07:50\\nReads \\\"Time Corrected\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:09:27\\nReads \\\"Vision\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:11:40\\n\\\"Last Rites\\\". This was written at the death of my father in hospital.\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:11:50\\nReads \\\"Last Rites\\\" [from F.R. Scott: Selected Poems].\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:15:23\\nAnd finally, a poem called \\\"A l'ange avant-gardien\\\". It seems strange, but I was brought up to believe there was a guardian angel, un ange gardien, looking after me, so you felt a little more secure. As you know, there are certain places in this province called l'ange gardien. So I thought of the avant, l'ange avant-gardien. Stevens had a necessary angel, which to him was reality. Many people have angels, but this challenging avant-garde angel always asking you to be in the avant=garde, seems to me what I was thinking about. \\\"A l'ange avant-gardien\\\".\\n \\nF.R. Scott\\n00:16:53\\nReads \\\"A l'ange avant-gardien\\\".\\n \\nEND\\n00:18:01\\n\",\"notes\":\"F.R. Scott reads from a large selection of his poetry, most of which was collected much later in The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott (McClelland and Stewart, 1981). Scott most likely did not read from one book, but from his own manuscripts, but many of the poems were already published in F.R. Scott: Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1966) at the time of the reading.\\n\\n00:00- Introduces his reading and “New Names” [INDEX: changes of poetry over 45 years, evolution of method of expression, Quebec City, Laurentian Mountains, Nature, F.R. Scott’s father, Oxford University, human history, Montreal, Northern Landscape]\\n02:31- Reads “New Names”\\n03:26- Reads “Old Song”\\n04:17- Introduces “Trees in Ice”\\n04:26- Reads “Trees in Ice”\\n05:21- Reads “Snow Drift”\\n05:47- Reads “North Stream”\\n06:29- Introduces “Stone” [INDEX: artifacts of the Northern rivers]\\n06:55- Reads “Stone”\\n08:09- Introduces “Street Cry” [INDEX: female street vendors of London, read from unknown  source]\\n08:34- Reads “Street Cry”\\n09:03- Introduces “Laurentian Shield”\\n09:41- Reads “Laurentian Shield”\\n12:27- Introduces “Flying to Fort Smith” [INDEX: MacKenzie River, flight from Edmonton to Fort Smith, Peace River]\\n12:53- Reads “Flying to Forth Smith”\\n14:14- Introduces “T.V. Weatherman” [INDEX: Percy Saltzman, read from unknown source]\\n14:41- Reads “T.V. Weatherman”\\n16:30- Introduces “Trans Canada” [INDEX: flight from Regina to Montreal]\\n16:42- Reads “Trans Canada”\\n19:19- Introduces “On the Terrace, Quebec” [INDEX: Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, read from unknown source]\\n19:41- Reads “On the Terrace, Quebec”\\n21:28- Introduces “A Grain of Rice”\\n22:04- Reads “A Grain of Rice”\\n24:25- Reads “The Bird”\\n26:40- Introduces “Eden”\\n26:57- Reads “Eden”\\n29:25- Introduces “The Indians Speak at Expo ’67” [INDEX: Found poems, Canadian Indian Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal]\\n30:24- Reads “The Indians Speak at Expo ’67”\\n31:44- Introduces unknown ‘treaty’ found poem [Howard Fink first line: “We the     \\tundersigned chiefs...”] [INDEX: British Crown treaty with Indian Chiefs Ningaram and      Chief Wabuminguam to transfer valuable lands, Expo 67, reading from unknown source]\\n32:56- Reads unknown ‘treaty’ found poem\\n34:07- Introduces unknown poem about the life of MacGillivray [Howard Fink first line      “While the trade is confined to a...”] [INDEX: Southern Ontario lands, The Life of         \\tMacGillivray, fur trader of Montreal and the NorthWest Company, 1810-1820, reading    \\tfrom unknown source]\\n35:27- Reads unknown poem\\n35:27- Introduces “Will to Win” [INDEX: World War II, Marquis of France, resistance   movement]\\n36:21- Reads “Will to Win”\\n37:46- Reads “Heart”\\n38:44- Reads “Girl Running Down Hill”\\n39:56- Reads “Upon Watching Margaret Dying”\\n41:35- Introduces “Connaissance, Knowing” [Howard Fink first line: “I have in my mouth...”] [INDEX: translation from Jacques Borraux [sp?], Prix de France, read from unknown source]\\n41:56- Reads “Connaissance, Knowing”\\n43:27- Introduces “Time Corrected” [INDEX: Translation from Pierre Trottier [sp?]]\\n43:46- Reads “Time Corrected”\\n45:23- Reads “Vision”\\n47:36- Introduces “Last Rites” [INDEX: death of F.R. Scott’s father]\\n47:46- Reads “Last Rites”\\n51:19- Introduces “A l’ange avantgardien” [Howard Fink first line: “We must leave the        handrails...”] [INDEX: guardian angels, brother Stevens Scott]\\n52:49- Reads “A l’ange avantgardien”\\n53:57.79- END OF RECORDING.\\n\\nHoward Fink list of poems\\n“R.F. Scott” *note mistake\\n22/2/69\\nreel info\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/f-r-scott-at-sgwu-1969/#2\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1276","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":["Eli Mandel and D.G. Jones at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 7 March 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JONES & MANDEL I006/SR43\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. JONES & MANDEL refers to D.G. Jones and Eli Mandel. \"I006-11-043\" written on sticker on the reel\n\n\"Poetry - 7th Mar/69 Eli Mandel & Jones -1 I086-11-034\" written on the spine of the tape's box. Jones refers to D.G. Jones. \"1 Mandel I086-11-034\" written on sticker on the reel. \"RT 510\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box and written on the back 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":["[I006-11-043, I086-11-034]"],"creator_names":["Jones, Douglas Gordon","Mandel, Eli"],"creator_names_search":["Jones, Douglas Gordon","Mandel, Eli"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/41883605\",\"name\":\"Jones, Douglas Gordon\",\"dates\":\"1929-2016\",\"notes\":\"Poet and critic Douglas Gordon (D.G.) Jones was born in Bancroft Ontario in 1929. He completed his B.A. at McGill University in 1952 and an M.A. at Queen’s University in 1954, writing a thesis on Ezra Pound. Jones’ first poems were encouraged by Louis Dudek and Raymond Souster in his publications in Contact Press and Delta. His first collection of poetry, Frost on the Sun (Contact Press, 1957) was followed by The Sun is Axeman (University of Toronto Press, 1961), Phrases from Orpheus (Oxford University Press, 1967) and a winner of a Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Under the Thunder of the Flowers Light Up the Earth (Coach House Press, 1977), A Throw of Particles (General Publishing Company, 1983), Balthazar (Coach House Press, 1988) and The floating garden (Coach House Press, 1995). Jones taught first at the Royal Military College from 1954-5, the Ontario Agricultural College from 1955-1961, he moved to Quebec and taught at Bishop’s University from 1961-1963, and finally at the Universite de Sherbooke, from 1963-1994. His book, Butterfly on rock: a study of themes and images in Canadian literature (University of Toronto Press, 1970) on Canadian criticism has proven to be important in the shaping of that field's literature. He founded Ellipse in 1969, the only Canadian magazine in which both English and French poetry was reciprocally translated. Jones’ own translations include Paul-Marie Lapointe’s The terror of the snows (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), The march to love: Selected poems of Gaston Miron (International Poetry Forum, 1986), Normand de Bellefeuille’s Categorics, one, two & three (Coach House Press, 1992) which won the Governor General’s Award for translation and Emile Martel’s For orchestra and solo poet (Muses’ Co, 1996). D.G. Jones was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2007. Jones died in 2016. \",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/59095399\",\"name\":\"Mandel, Eli\",\"dates\":\"1922-1992\",\"notes\":\"Poet, critic and editor Eli Mandel was born Elias Wolf Mandel in Estevan, Saskatchewan in 1922. He grew up in Regina, until the Second World War when he joined the Army Medical Corps. Upon his return, he studied at the University of Saskatchewan, earning his B.A. in 1949, going on to complete his M.A. in 1950. Mandel then moved east, where he received a Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Toronto. His early poetry was published in magazines like CIV/N and Contact, and in 1954 Contact Press published his collection “Minotaur poems” in Trio with Gael Turnbull and Phyllis Webb. Mandel taught English at College Militaire Royal de Saint Jean, University of Alberta and York University in Toronto, as well as serving as visiting professor and writer-in-residence later on in his career. He also wrote many important essays on Canadian literature, art and society, promoting Canadian writers. Poetry 62 (Ryerson Press, 1961), Mandel’s first anthology, co-edited with Jean-Guy Pilon, collected the works of (then) little-known writers Al Purdy, Milton Acorn, D.G. Jones, Alden Nowlan, Leonard Cohen and John Robert Colombo. His second collection of poems was published in Fuseli Poems (Contact Press, 1960), followed by Black and Secret Man (Ryerson Press, 1964), and An Idiot Joy (Hurtig Press, 1967), which won the Governor General’s award. A collection of eight essays by Mandel that had been presented as radio talks for CBC was published in Criticism: the silent-speaking words in 1966 (CBC). His later anthologies include Five modern Canadian poets (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), English poems of the twentieth century (Macmillan, 1971), Contexts of Canadian Criticism (University of Chicago Press, 1971), Eight more Canadian poets (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), and Poets of contemporary Canada: 1960-1970 (Macmillan, 1972) which published Joe Rosenblatt and bill bissett’s first collections of poetry. Mandel’s other works include Stony Plain (Porcepic Press, 1973), Crusoe (Anansi, 1973), Out of Place (Porcepic Press, 1977), the long poem Mary Midnight (Coach House Press, 1979), Life Sentence (Porcepic Press, 1981), Dreaming backwards: selected poems (General Publishing, 1981), the collections of essays Another Time (Porcepic, 1977), and The family romance (Turnstone, 1986) as well as a book-length study of his colleague, Irving Layton called The Poetry of Irving Layton (Coles, 1969). An important figure in Canadian literature, Eli Mandel died in Toronto on September 3, 1992.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Unspecified","Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Unspecified","Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Unspecified \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Recordist\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Bowering, George"],"Recordist_name":["Unspecified "],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"First part of the tape is repeated from the end of I086-11-034\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 3 7\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"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":["Eli Mandel reads from An Idiot Joy (Hurtig, 1967), Black and Secret Man (1964), Trio:  First Poems (Contact Press, 1954), as well as poems later published in Crusoe: Poems Selected and New (Anansi, 1973). D.G. Jones reads from Phrases from Orpheus (Oxford University Press, 1967), as well as a few that were published later in Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth (Coach House Press, 1977) and an unnamed long poem that may have been published in Poetry 62 (Ryerson Press 1961)."],"contents":["eli_mandel_i086-11-034.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\n...start with the poesy, I've been asked to announce that on Friday, i.e., what's this the seventh? Two weeks from tonight, March the 21st at 9 o’clock. in Room 653, [Barnes (?)] willing, there will be a program, I guess within the auspices of the Fine Arts department, the Ira Cohen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1097790], New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] film maker, and poet will be showing three of his films, as far as I know for the first time in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340]. That's two weeks tonight at 9 in 653. When I was asked to introduce Eli Mandel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3050883], and D.G. Jones [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5203595], I said, 'that's ridiculous', Canadian poetry being the way it is, they already know each other. And after the moment of hilarity I was brought to my senses, and I began to think that it really did make a lot of sense that we do have Doug Jones and Eli Mandel reading on the same program. I can remember in 1961 when Poetry 62 came out, Canadian poetry being the way it is [audience laughter], Poetry 62 was edited by Jean-Guy Pilon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3166089] I believe and Eli Mandel, being a bilingual book, and at the time the poem that struck me as the most interesting was the long poem by D.G. Jones, the most interesting in that anthology, and I therefore, felt kind of warm, without having them, to both of them to Doug's poem and Eli's great taste for putting it in the anthology. And then I thought that there was this kind of confluence going on and I began to see all kinds of other things happening too, for instance, they both had their first books published by Contact Press, that published the first books of most of the important Canadian poets, and they now have seen their careers sort of criss-cross one another in a kind of a funny way because they each have three books, except that Eli has three and a third, which is also kind of Canadian, and I thought it was kind of interesting because not only is there a kind of parallel going on, and they both in 1967, for instance, turned out very good books of poetry, but there's a kind of uh, they'll be kind of an interesting contrast I think in tonight's program because I've always considered that Doug Jones is sort of the best of the Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904] Wasp poets [audience laughter], and Eli Mandel is the best of the Western Jewish poets and they both deal with essential problems that seem to expose their two opposing and therefore contrary and conjugal, you might almost say, attitudes towards the business of writing poems. So we're going to start off with Eli's reading, and then have something like a ten minute break, and then we'll have Doug Jones' reading. I should mention that of those two books, Eli's is called An Idiot Joy and it shared the Governor General's Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256] given in 1968, and published by Hurtig, Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] publisher, who is very pleased to get the Governor General's Award, and Doug Jones' book is Phrases from Orpheus, published by Oxford Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217595], two books that would be well worth investing both your heaven, forbid, money and your imagination upon. I'm probably not going to say anything before D.G. Jones comes to read, so I'm not expecting to come up here and spout for five or ten minutes before he reads and I'm not going to spout any longer before Eli reads. So I'd first like to introduce to you Mr. Eli Mandel.\n\nAudience\n00:05:01\nApplause. \n \nEli Mandel\n00:05:29\nI think George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] might have carried the parallel of contrasts and comparisons a little further had he wanted to, or chosen to, or had he known about certain very intimate details about Doug's life and my life. But I don't propose to go into those myself right now either [audience laughter]. Instead, I'm going to read, primarily from An Idiot Joy, but also from Black and Secret Man, which was an earlier book and also from one or two manuscript poems that I've been working on recently. I want to start with a poem called \"Signatures\" and although I can say a lot about a number of poems that I've written, I'm not sure I can say much about this except that as will be obvious to you I think, the imagery is drawn from the Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881] conflict, though I don't know that the poem is necessarily about that. Can you hear me with this mic? Some people at the back are saying 'no'. Can you hear me now?\n \nEli Mandel\n00:07:00\nReads \"Signatures\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:09:27\nThis poem is called \"Neither Here Nor There\".\n \nEli Mandel\n00:09:33\nReads \"Neither Here Nor There\" [published later in Crusoe: Poems Selected and New].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:10:28\nThis is a poem from Black and Secret Man and it's called \"The Direction is North Until the Pole\", and I suppose it's one of the few poems I've written that I would call a Canadian poem, that is to say it draws on a number of specific images from the Canadian landscape and therefore I have to annotate this poem. I have to tell you that the Fleming mentioned in the last line of the poem was once a Minister of Finance in the federal government, that just proves how transient political poems really are. I think all the rest of this should be clear, hockey is a game that's played in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:11:16\nReads \"The Direction is North Until the Pole\" from Black and Secret Man.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:13:24\nThis is one of my prophetic poems. I think I've written a lot of really prophetic poems. This poem is called \"Departure\" and it tells about leaving Edmonton. Everybody who has read the poem believes that I wrote it when I decided to leave Edmonton, either for the first time or the second time, I've left there twice, as a matter of fact, I didn't write it when I decided to leave in Edmonton, I wrote it when I arrived in Edmonton.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:13:53\nReads \"Departure\" [from Black and Secret Man].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:14:37\nA little poem about one of my perversions, this is about making love to pregnant women, I think, I'm not sure if there's a technical name for that but the perversion appears in the poem. The poem's called \"Cassandra\" and it's about a prophetess, Cassandra [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170779], you'll remember was the woman that Agamemnon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128176]  brought home with him to his wife, Clytemnestra [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131157], and this, so angered Clytemnestra, aside from the fact that Agamemnon had killed one of their daughters, that she killed Agamemnon, but Cassandra was a Prophetess, like Prophetesses, was given the power to tell the truth and was never believed. Some of the imagery in this poem is taken from the story of Cassandra, and the rest from my perversions.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:15:39\nReads \"Cassandra\" [from Black and Secret Man].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:17:00\nReads \"The Madness of our Polity\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:17:46\n\"Whence Cometh Our Help?\", the title is taken from the Psalms [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41064], and there are a number of images of the Psalms, in the poem. Or images from the Psalms.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:18:04\nReads \"Whence Cometh Our Help?\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:19:03\nThis poem is called \"Manner of Suicide\", and it's the closest thing I've come to writing a found poem, in that all the material in the poem, the words are taken from two sources, except for the first line. One is Karl Menninger's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3080926] Man Against Himself and the other, the Jewish Daily Prayer Book. There are twenty-six ways listed here of committing suicide, they're all ways that Menninger lists and documents, and he lists them in the order in which I give them here, and this list, which I give, is then followed by some comments he makes about those ways of committing suicide and a passage from the prayer book.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:20:11\nReads \"Manner of Suicide\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:23:24\nIn An Idiot Joy I wrote a number of poems which were, which used two primary images, the image of the moon and the image of the sea, and these are love poems. I suppose the interesting thing in them to me, aside from the personal sense that I feel about them, is that with each of the poems, whether it's with the image of the moon or the image of the sea, or both, I keep trying different technical things in the poetry, and so far as I'm concerned, I've done some more interesting technical things in this than anywhere else, but primarily, the poems talk about the moon and the sea, and seabirds and women and a woman.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:24:30\nReads \"Woman in the Moon\" from An Idiot Joy.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:26:12\nReads \"The Explanations of the Moon” [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:27:32\nThis is one of the sea poems, in the sequence, called \"Listen, the Sea\", and the title comes from King Lear [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181598], though actually, I had become aware of it of course when I knew that Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083] had written a sonnet using this, but the technique is neither Shakespearean nor Keatsean, nothing of the kind.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:28:00\nReads \"Listen, the Sea\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:29:01\nAnd \"Marina\", who is a daughter of the sea.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:29:09\nReads \"Marina\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:30:46\nWell something quite different. I think I should dedicate this to George Bowering, because I wrote the poem after I had been…\n\nUnknown\n00:30:56\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nEli Mandel\n00:30:57\nAnd I would have to apologize for this, but the last thing in the world that I wanted to do was apologize, I'd prefer anything but that, I mean this is pretty simple-minded simplistic psychology, of the worst order I suppose, I just--I'm writing a poem about how stupid I felt at that particular moment.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:31:17\nReads \"The Apology\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:34:34\nThis is the poem I like to think of as the one that one would put in a time capsule, it's called \"Letter to be Opened Later\" and presumably each one of us wants to immortalize oneself, and imagine, you know, two thousand years later the time capsule being opened and then they can read your letter. This is my letter, to be opened later.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:35:12\nReads \"Letter to be Opened Later\" [published later in Crusoe: Poems Selected and New ].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:36:09\nI'm going to read a lyric, it's a very short poem, but I'd like to read this one anyhow. It's called \"To My Children\" and it's based upon both an odd and rather terrifying coincidence in my life and a curious Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition is that you name a child after the nearest dead relative, the relative who has died most recently and who is closest to one, and it so happened that my mother died, my daughter was born, my father died and my son was born. And I wrote this poem about the naming of the children. It's called \"To My Children\".\n \nEli Mandel\n00:37:08\nReads \"To My Children\" [from Black and Secret Man].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:38:00\nNow I'm going to finish this reading with two poems, one is called \"The Meaning of the I Ching\" and the other \"Cosmos: the Giant Rose\"--three poems, I'm sorry. I'm going to read \"Pictures in an Institution\" as well. \"The Meaning of the I Ching\", the I Ching [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181937] as you probably know is a book of divination, it's the oldest book of divination known, and when I first heard about it, I looked at the book before I opened it and I wondered about the very simple notion of a book that old telling my future. How could I be contained in this ancient book? And I wrote this poem. Now it seems to me that there is something remarkable here, it's one claim I will make for the poem, at least, in the poem, is the first time I used the phrase \"earth upon earth\" and the very first hexagram that I cast when I opened the book. The book tells fortunes with what are called hexagrams and hexagrams are given various names, the very first one that I cast was the hexagram \"earth upon earth\" and that's simply something that happened whether it means that the poem is prophetic or magical, I don't know.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:39:36\nReads \"The Meaning of the I Ching\" [from An Idiot Joy].\n \nEli Mandel\n00:43:18\nI'm going to finish now reading \"Pictures in an Institution\". This is the most personal poem I've ever written, and I don't want to read anything after that, so I'm going to finish with this. \"Pictures in an Institution\". I think all I need to say about this is that it plays off notices against some personal experiences and I think that'll be plain enough.\n \nEli Mandel\n00:43:43\nReads \"Pictures in an Institution\" [from Trio: First Poems by Gael Turnbull, Phyllis Webb, and Eli Mandel].\n\nEli Mandel\n00:47:40\nThank you.\n\nAudience\n00:47:41\nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n00:47:51\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nUnknown\n00:47:53\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:48:22\nI'd like to help you welcome now, D.G. Jones.\n \nAudience\n00:48:27\nApplause.\n\nD.G. Jones\n00:48:60\nI'm going to do this because I'm thirsty. It's a little disturbing but I've had a suspicion that this was becoming true for some time, in the last few years, that pretty soon you won't be able to tell the Jew from the Wasp, anyway [audience laughter]. It's getting more disconcerting all the time how similar certain things are between me and Eli Mandel [audience laughter]. I just hope he's a very good person and lives a long life and has great success in the future [audience laughter]. The main thing I want to read tonight is a little bit like Eli's last poem [audience laughter]. But it takes a lot more time to get itself said, for good or ill, and I'd like to read a few, a couple shorter poems anyway, before starting that longer poem which takes up a fair amount of the time. I'll read the first book from the, I mean...[laughter], I'll read the first poem from the book which old oriental George Bowering told you about at the beginning of the program. This poem's called \"The Perishing Bird\".\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:51:12\nReads \"The Perishing Bird\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:53:16\nA poem called \"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\".\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:53:34\nReads \"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:54:41\nWell, this reads well. It starts with a Latin title, it's a kind of letter, actually written in reply to a letter to somebody who accused me of being rather complacent when ironically enough, I felt anything but that at that time. Accused me of being one of the people who didn't have any troubles in life, or not only me but somebody else too, when we had quite a few of our own that were not too dissimilar from those that the other person was talking about. It's about marriage. It's called, to avoid looking too obvious, \"De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum''. It's a serious poem though, more or less.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:55:56\nReads \"De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\n \nEND\n01:01:57\n\n\ndg-jones_i006-11-04-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nI'd like to help you welcome now, D.G. Jones.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:00:13\nI'm going to do this because I'm thirsty. It's a little disturbing but I've had a suspicion that this was becoming true for some time, in the last few years, that pretty soon you won't be able to tell the Jew from the Wasp, anyway. It's getting more disconcerting all the time how similar certain things are between me and Eli Mandel. I just hope he's a very good person and lives a long life and has great success in the future. [Audience laughter]. The main thing I want to read tonight is a little bit like Eli's last poem. [laughter]. But it takes a lot more time to get itself said, for good or ill, and I'd like to read a few, a couple shorter poems anyway, before starting that longer poem which takes up a fair amount of the time. I'll read the first book, I mean...[laughter], I'll read the first poem from the book which old oriental George Bowering told you about at the beginning of the program. This poem's called \"The Perishing Bird\".\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:02:53\nReads \"The Perishing Bird\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:05:05\nA poem called \"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\" .\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:05:20\nReads \"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\".\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:06:35\nWell, this reads well. It starts with a Latin title, it's a kind of letter, actually written in reply to a letter to somebody who accused me of being rather complacent when ironically enough, I felt anything but that at that time. Accused me of being one of the people who didn't have any troubles in life, or not only me but somebody else too, when we had quite a few of our own that were not too dissimilar from those that the other person was talking about. It's about marriage. It's called, to avoid looking too obvious, \"De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum''. It's a serious poem though, more or less.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:07:49\nReads “De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum” [from Phrases from Orpheus].\n \nUnknown\n00:13:55\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nD.G. Jones\n00:13:56\n...features of it, particularly carved doors or doors with glass panels carved, and a fountain, whoops. Wrong poem [audience laughter], same person [audience laughter]. The other one was written without any picture, this was written with a picture, \"On a Picture of Your House\".\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:14:49\nReads \"On a Picture of Your House\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:16:44\nThis poem is the long poem I referred to, it's a kind of confessional poem, it's only about, I suppose, ten years behind Robert Lowell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q981448] and the other American poets who have been writing what the critics now call confessional poetry, which is about par, I suppose. This poem was more or less actually complete several years ago, but I got so many things into the poem I wasn't sure how I was going to get out. And I've dickied around with it and possibly added a few more things, and finally I kept what I had in the end anyway, which was simply a way of ducking out I suspect. Though I hope there's some kind of peculiar relationship to the end, and everything else. I haven't been able to find a title for it. \"Night Thoughts\", might do, but somebody used that. But it's something along this line: the situation, the scheme is to present a kind of series of reminiscences, mediations, memories which disintegrate and become a little more peculiar as time goes on. Then suddenly stops, breaks off with morning. And it's set more or less around my cottage that I had, in Ontario, which wasn't far from where I was born. This is written in sections but I won't bother reading all the numbers, I'll just pause and go on.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:19:00\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:41:22\nExcuse me, I'll read the last point, I was almost there, but I think I'll skip that part.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:41:30\nResumes reading unnamed poem.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:42:35\nExcuse me, I didn't feel I was reading that very well. Sorry, it is perhaps a little long. I'll finish quickly. I'd like to just read something a little different. I'll read two poems, one called \"Spring Flowers\", which will be the first.\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:43:22\nReads \"Spring Flowers\" [published later in Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth]\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:43:56\nI seem to be running out of steam. There's one here that's short enough I should be able to get all the way through it. It's called \"Under the Thunder\", and that's the first line.\n\nD.G. Jones\n00:44:15\nReads \"Under the Thunder\" [poem read is the title of a later publication, Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth].\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:44:21\nI'll try one more [audience laughter]. This was written for a number of people who got together--to form a society of a somewhat antiquated name, The League of Canadian Poets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6509004], who met in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] in October 1968. It's called \"To Certain Poets Who Met in Toronto, October 1968\" [audience laughter].\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:45:03\nReads \"To Certain Poets Who Met in Toronto, October 1968\".\n \nD.G. Jones\n00:46:40\nI think I'm sorry, I've run out of steam but...\n \nEND\n00:46:49\n[Cut off abruptly].\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1969, Mandel was a professor at York University in Toronto, and he had published The Poetry of Irving Layton. He was also working on an anthology Five Modern Canadian Poets, published in 1970.\\n\\nIn 1969, D.G. Jones had founded Ellipse, and was teaching at the Universite de Sherbrooke.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nThough no direct connections to Sir George Williams University are known, Eli Mandel’s work has been essential and influential in promoting the work of Canadian authors and poets, through his anthologizing and editing, his essay writing as well as his poetry.\\n\\nD.G. Jones has had a very influential role in Canadian and in specific Quebec poetry, as a leader in the translations of both English and French poetry. His criticism of Canadian literature places him with Margaret Atwood and Northrop Frye in shaping Canada’s literary canon and its literature. Jones was associated with poets such as Bowering, Dudek and Layton and F.R. Scott.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/douglas-gordon-jones\",\"citation\":\"Blodgett, E.D. “Jones, Douglas Gordon”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica-Dominion, 2008. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/476332314&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/eli-mandel\",\"citation\":\"Boyd, Colin. “Mandel, Eli”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica-Dominion, 2008.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Mandel, Eli\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fr-scott-une-vie-biographie/oclc/1132465721&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Djwa, Sandra. F.R. Scott: Une Vie, biographie. Montreal: Boreal, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-x2/oclc/40224711&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary. Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol2/oclc/1156824609&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Harrison, James. “Jones, Douglas Gordon (1929-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial  Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; Conolly, L.W. (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/phrases-from-orpheus-by-jones/oclc/503359867&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Jones, D.G.. Phrases From Orpheus. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/under-the-thunder-the-flowers-light-up-the-earth/oclc/3901520&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Jones, D.G.. Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1977. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/idiot-joy/oclc/468767134?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli. An Idiot Joy. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-and-secret-man/oclc/247643578?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli. Black and Secret Man. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1964.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/crusoe-poems-selected-and-new/oclc/1419679&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli. Crusoe: Poems Selected and New. Toronto: Anansi, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/trio/oclc/224515443&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli., Turnbull, Gael., and Phyllis Webb. Trio: First Poems. Toronto: Contact Press, 1954\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poetry-62/oclc/5110944&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli and Jean-Guy Pilon. Poetry 62. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1961.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol2/oclc/1156824609&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stubbs, Andrew. “Mandel, Eli (1922-1992)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial    Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; Connolly, L.W. (eds). London: Routledge, 1994.      2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Woodcock, George. \\\"Jones, D.G.\\\"  The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye. Oxford University Press 2001. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548880490496,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0034_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0025_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mandel and Jones Tape Box 2 - 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_0034_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0025_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mandel and Jones Tape Box 2 - 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/dg-jones_i006-11-043-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"dg-jones_i006-11-04-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:46:49\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"112.4 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"dg-jones_i006-11-04-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nI'd like to help you welcome now, D.G. Jones.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:00:13\\nI'm going to do this because I'm thirsty. It's a little disturbing but I've had a suspicion that this was becoming true for some time, in the last few years, that pretty soon you won't be able to tell the Jew from the Wasp, anyway. It's getting more disconcerting all the time how similar certain things are between me and Eli Mandel. I just hope he's a very good person and lives a long life and has great success in the future. [Audience laughter]. The main thing I want to read tonight is a little bit like Eli's last poem. [laughter]. But it takes a lot more time to get itself said, for good or ill, and I'd like to read a few, a couple shorter poems anyway, before starting that longer poem which takes up a fair amount of the time. I'll read the first book, I mean...[laughter], I'll read the first poem from the book which old oriental George Bowering told you about at the beginning of the program. This poem's called \\\"The Perishing Bird\\\".\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:02:53\\nReads \\\"The Perishing Bird\\\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:05:05\\nA poem called \\\"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\\\" .\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:05:20\\nReads \\\"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\\\".\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:06:35\\nWell, this reads well. It starts with a Latin title, it's a kind of letter, actually written in reply to a letter to somebody who accused me of being rather complacent when ironically enough, I felt anything but that at that time. Accused me of being one of the people who didn't have any troubles in life, or not only me but somebody else too, when we had quite a few of our own that were not too dissimilar from those that the other person was talking about. It's about marriage. It's called, to avoid looking too obvious, \\\"De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum''. It's a serious poem though, more or less.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:07:49\\nReads “De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum” [from Phrases from Orpheus].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:13:55\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nD.G. Jones\\n00:13:56\\n...features of it, particularly carved doors or doors with glass panels carved, and a fountain, whoops. Wrong poem [audience laughter], same person [audience laughter]. The other one was written without any picture, this was written with a picture, \\\"On a Picture of Your House\\\".\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:14:49\\nReads \\\"On a Picture of Your House\\\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:16:44\\nThis poem is the long poem I referred to, it's a kind of confessional poem, it's only about, I suppose, ten years behind Robert Lowell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q981448] and the other American poets who have been writing what the critics now call confessional poetry, which is about par, I suppose. This poem was more or less actually complete several years ago, but I got so many things into the poem I wasn't sure how I was going to get out. And I've dickied around with it and possibly added a few more things, and finally I kept what I had in the end anyway, which was simply a way of ducking out I suspect. Though I hope there's some kind of peculiar relationship to the end, and everything else. I haven't been able to find a title for it. \\\"Night Thoughts\\\", might do, but somebody used that. But it's something along this line: the situation, the scheme is to present a kind of series of reminiscences, mediations, memories which disintegrate and become a little more peculiar as time goes on. Then suddenly stops, breaks off with morning. And it's set more or less around my cottage that I had, in Ontario, which wasn't far from where I was born. This is written in sections but I won't bother reading all the numbers, I'll just pause and go on.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:19:00\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:41:22\\nExcuse me, I'll read the last point, I was almost there, but I think I'll skip that part.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:41:30\\nResumes reading unnamed poem.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:42:35\\nExcuse me, I didn't feel I was reading that very well. Sorry, it is perhaps a little long. I'll finish quickly. I'd like to just read something a little different. I'll read two poems, one called \\\"Spring Flowers\\\", which will be the first.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:43:22\\nReads \\\"Spring Flowers\\\" [published later in Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth]\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:43:56\\nI seem to be running out of steam. There's one here that's short enough I should be able to get all the way through it. It's called \\\"Under the Thunder\\\", and that's the first line.\\n\\nD.G. Jones\\n00:44:15\\nReads \\\"Under the Thunder\\\" [poem read is the title of a later publication, Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth].\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:44:21\\nI'll try one more [audience laughter]. This was written for a number of people who got together--to form a society of a somewhat antiquated name, The League of Canadian Poets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6509004], who met in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] in October 1968. It's called \\\"To Certain Poets Who Met in Toronto, October 1968\\\" [audience laughter].\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:45:03\\nReads \\\"To Certain Poets Who Met in Toronto, October 1968\\\".\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:46:40\\nI think I'm sorry, I've run out of steam but...\\n \\nEND\\n00:46:49\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\" D.G. Jones reads from Phrases from Orpheus (Oxford University Press, 1967), as well as a few that were published later in Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth (Coach House Press, 1977) and an unnamed long poem that may have been published in Poetry 62 (Ryerson Press 1961).\\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces D.G Jones [for full introduction, see I006-11-043.1 or I086-11-34]\\n00:13- D.G. Jones introduces “The Perishing Bird” [INDEX: Eli Mandel, George Bowering, Phrases from Orpheus; not on Howard Fink List of Poems]\\n02:53- Reads “The Perishing Bird”\\n05:20- Reads “Summer is a Poem by Ovid” [INDEX: not on Howard Fink List of Poems]\\n06:35- Introduces “De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum” [INDEX: not on Howard Fink List of Poems.]\\n13:56- [CUT] Introduces “On a Picture of Your House”\\n14:49- Reads “On a Picture of Your House”\\n16:44- Introduces untitled poem, first line “The night is mild and the young moon...” [INDEX: confessional poem, Robert Lowell, process of writing, Ontario]\\n19:00- Reads first line “The night is mild and the young moon...”\\n42:35- Interrupts poem, introduces “Spring Flowers”\\n43:22- Reads “Spring Flowers”\\n43:56- Introduces “Under the Thunder”\\n44:15- Reads “Under the Thunder”\\n44:21- Introduces “To Certain Poets Who Met in Toronto, October 1968” [INDEX: The     \\tLeague of Canadian Poets meeting in Toronto, October 1968]\\n45:49- Reads “To Certain Poets Who Met in Toronto, October 1968”\\n46:49- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/douglas-gordon-d-g-jones-at-sgwu-1969-george-bowering/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/eli_mandel_i086-11-034.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"eli_mandel_i086-11-034.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:01:57\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"148.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"eli_mandel_i086-11-034.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:00\\n...start with the poesy, I've been asked to announce that on Friday, i.e., what's this the seventh? Two weeks from tonight, March the 21st at 9 o’clock. in Room 653, [Barnes (?)] willing, there will be a program, I guess within the auspices of the Fine Arts department, the Ira Cohen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1097790], New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] film maker, and poet will be showing three of his films, as far as I know for the first time in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340]. That's two weeks tonight at 9 in 653. When I was asked to introduce Eli Mandel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3050883], and D.G. Jones [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5203595], I said, 'that's ridiculous', Canadian poetry being the way it is, they already know each other. And after the moment of hilarity I was brought to my senses, and I began to think that it really did make a lot of sense that we do have Doug Jones and Eli Mandel reading on the same program. I can remember in 1961 when Poetry 62 came out, Canadian poetry being the way it is [audience laughter], Poetry 62 was edited by Jean-Guy Pilon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3166089] I believe and Eli Mandel, being a bilingual book, and at the time the poem that struck me as the most interesting was the long poem by D.G. Jones, the most interesting in that anthology, and I therefore, felt kind of warm, without having them, to both of them to Doug's poem and Eli's great taste for putting it in the anthology. And then I thought that there was this kind of confluence going on and I began to see all kinds of other things happening too, for instance, they both had their first books published by Contact Press, that published the first books of most of the important Canadian poets, and they now have seen their careers sort of criss-cross one another in a kind of a funny way because they each have three books, except that Eli has three and a third, which is also kind of Canadian, and I thought it was kind of interesting because not only is there a kind of parallel going on, and they both in 1967, for instance, turned out very good books of poetry, but there's a kind of uh, they'll be kind of an interesting contrast I think in tonight's program because I've always considered that Doug Jones is sort of the best of the Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904] Wasp poets [audience laughter], and Eli Mandel is the best of the Western Jewish poets and they both deal with essential problems that seem to expose their two opposing and therefore contrary and conjugal, you might almost say, attitudes towards the business of writing poems. So we're going to start off with Eli's reading, and then have something like a ten minute break, and then we'll have Doug Jones' reading. I should mention that of those two books, Eli's is called An Idiot Joy and it shared the Governor General's Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256] given in 1968, and published by Hurtig, Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] publisher, who is very pleased to get the Governor General's Award, and Doug Jones' book is Phrases from Orpheus, published by Oxford Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217595], two books that would be well worth investing both your heaven, forbid, money and your imagination upon. I'm probably not going to say anything before D.G. Jones comes to read, so I'm not expecting to come up here and spout for five or ten minutes before he reads and I'm not going to spout any longer before Eli reads. So I'd first like to introduce to you Mr. Eli Mandel.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:05:01\\nApplause. \\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:05:29\\nI think George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] might have carried the parallel of contrasts and comparisons a little further had he wanted to, or chosen to, or had he known about certain very intimate details about Doug's life and my life. But I don't propose to go into those myself right now either [audience laughter]. Instead, I'm going to read, primarily from An Idiot Joy, but also from Black and Secret Man, which was an earlier book and also from one or two manuscript poems that I've been working on recently. I want to start with a poem called \\\"Signatures\\\" and although I can say a lot about a number of poems that I've written, I'm not sure I can say much about this except that as will be obvious to you I think, the imagery is drawn from the Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881] conflict, though I don't know that the poem is necessarily about that. Can you hear me with this mic? Some people at the back are saying 'no'. Can you hear me now?\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:07:00\\nReads \\\"Signatures\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:09:27\\nThis poem is called \\\"Neither Here Nor There\\\".\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:09:33\\nReads \\\"Neither Here Nor There\\\" [published later in Crusoe: Poems Selected and New].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:10:28\\nThis is a poem from Black and Secret Man and it's called \\\"The Direction is North Until the Pole\\\", and I suppose it's one of the few poems I've written that I would call a Canadian poem, that is to say it draws on a number of specific images from the Canadian landscape and therefore I have to annotate this poem. I have to tell you that the Fleming mentioned in the last line of the poem was once a Minister of Finance in the federal government, that just proves how transient political poems really are. I think all the rest of this should be clear, hockey is a game that's played in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:11:16\\nReads \\\"The Direction is North Until the Pole\\\" from Black and Secret Man.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:13:24\\nThis is one of my prophetic poems. I think I've written a lot of really prophetic poems. This poem is called \\\"Departure\\\" and it tells about leaving Edmonton. Everybody who has read the poem believes that I wrote it when I decided to leave Edmonton, either for the first time or the second time, I've left there twice, as a matter of fact, I didn't write it when I decided to leave in Edmonton, I wrote it when I arrived in Edmonton.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:13:53\\nReads \\\"Departure\\\" [from Black and Secret Man].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:14:37\\nA little poem about one of my perversions, this is about making love to pregnant women, I think, I'm not sure if there's a technical name for that but the perversion appears in the poem. The poem's called \\\"Cassandra\\\" and it's about a prophetess, Cassandra [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170779], you'll remember was the woman that Agamemnon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128176]  brought home with him to his wife, Clytemnestra [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131157], and this, so angered Clytemnestra, aside from the fact that Agamemnon had killed one of their daughters, that she killed Agamemnon, but Cassandra was a Prophetess, like Prophetesses, was given the power to tell the truth and was never believed. Some of the imagery in this poem is taken from the story of Cassandra, and the rest from my perversions.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:15:39\\nReads \\\"Cassandra\\\" [from Black and Secret Man].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:17:00\\nReads \\\"The Madness of our Polity\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:17:46\\n\\\"Whence Cometh Our Help?\\\", the title is taken from the Psalms [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41064], and there are a number of images of the Psalms, in the poem. Or images from the Psalms.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:18:04\\nReads \\\"Whence Cometh Our Help?\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:19:03\\nThis poem is called \\\"Manner of Suicide\\\", and it's the closest thing I've come to writing a found poem, in that all the material in the poem, the words are taken from two sources, except for the first line. One is Karl Menninger's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3080926] Man Against Himself and the other, the Jewish Daily Prayer Book. There are twenty-six ways listed here of committing suicide, they're all ways that Menninger lists and documents, and he lists them in the order in which I give them here, and this list, which I give, is then followed by some comments he makes about those ways of committing suicide and a passage from the prayer book.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:20:11\\nReads \\\"Manner of Suicide\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:23:24\\nIn An Idiot Joy I wrote a number of poems which were, which used two primary images, the image of the moon and the image of the sea, and these are love poems. I suppose the interesting thing in them to me, aside from the personal sense that I feel about them, is that with each of the poems, whether it's with the image of the moon or the image of the sea, or both, I keep trying different technical things in the poetry, and so far as I'm concerned, I've done some more interesting technical things in this than anywhere else, but primarily, the poems talk about the moon and the sea, and seabirds and women and a woman.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:24:30\\nReads \\\"Woman in the Moon\\\" from An Idiot Joy.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:26:12\\nReads \\\"The Explanations of the Moon” [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:27:32\\nThis is one of the sea poems, in the sequence, called \\\"Listen, the Sea\\\", and the title comes from King Lear [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181598], though actually, I had become aware of it of course when I knew that Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083] had written a sonnet using this, but the technique is neither Shakespearean nor Keatsean, nothing of the kind.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:28:00\\nReads \\\"Listen, the Sea\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:29:01\\nAnd \\\"Marina\\\", who is a daughter of the sea.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:29:09\\nReads \\\"Marina\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:30:46\\nWell something quite different. I think I should dedicate this to George Bowering, because I wrote the poem after I had been…\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:30:56\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nEli Mandel\\n00:30:57\\nAnd I would have to apologize for this, but the last thing in the world that I wanted to do was apologize, I'd prefer anything but that, I mean this is pretty simple-minded simplistic psychology, of the worst order I suppose, I just--I'm writing a poem about how stupid I felt at that particular moment.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:31:17\\nReads \\\"The Apology\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:34:34\\nThis is the poem I like to think of as the one that one would put in a time capsule, it's called \\\"Letter to be Opened Later\\\" and presumably each one of us wants to immortalize oneself, and imagine, you know, two thousand years later the time capsule being opened and then they can read your letter. This is my letter, to be opened later.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:35:12\\nReads \\\"Letter to be Opened Later\\\" [published later in Crusoe: Poems Selected and New ].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:36:09\\nI'm going to read a lyric, it's a very short poem, but I'd like to read this one anyhow. It's called \\\"To My Children\\\" and it's based upon both an odd and rather terrifying coincidence in my life and a curious Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition is that you name a child after the nearest dead relative, the relative who has died most recently and who is closest to one, and it so happened that my mother died, my daughter was born, my father died and my son was born. And I wrote this poem about the naming of the children. It's called \\\"To My Children\\\".\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:37:08\\nReads \\\"To My Children\\\" [from Black and Secret Man].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:38:00\\nNow I'm going to finish this reading with two poems, one is called \\\"The Meaning of the I Ching\\\" and the other \\\"Cosmos: the Giant Rose\\\"--three poems, I'm sorry. I'm going to read \\\"Pictures in an Institution\\\" as well. \\\"The Meaning of the I Ching\\\", the I Ching [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181937] as you probably know is a book of divination, it's the oldest book of divination known, and when I first heard about it, I looked at the book before I opened it and I wondered about the very simple notion of a book that old telling my future. How could I be contained in this ancient book? And I wrote this poem. Now it seems to me that there is something remarkable here, it's one claim I will make for the poem, at least, in the poem, is the first time I used the phrase \\\"earth upon earth\\\" and the very first hexagram that I cast when I opened the book. The book tells fortunes with what are called hexagrams and hexagrams are given various names, the very first one that I cast was the hexagram \\\"earth upon earth\\\" and that's simply something that happened whether it means that the poem is prophetic or magical, I don't know.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:39:36\\nReads \\\"The Meaning of the I Ching\\\" [from An Idiot Joy].\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:43:18\\nI'm going to finish now reading \\\"Pictures in an Institution\\\". This is the most personal poem I've ever written, and I don't want to read anything after that, so I'm going to finish with this. \\\"Pictures in an Institution\\\". I think all I need to say about this is that it plays off notices against some personal experiences and I think that'll be plain enough.\\n \\nEli Mandel\\n00:43:43\\nReads \\\"Pictures in an Institution\\\" [from Trio: First Poems by Gael Turnbull, Phyllis Webb, and Eli Mandel].\\n\\nEli Mandel\\n00:47:40\\nThank you.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:47:41\\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:47:51\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:47:53\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:48:22\\nI'd like to help you welcome now, D.G. Jones.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:48:27\\nApplause.\\n\\nD.G. Jones\\n00:48:60\\nI'm going to do this because I'm thirsty. It's a little disturbing but I've had a suspicion that this was becoming true for some time, in the last few years, that pretty soon you won't be able to tell the Jew from the Wasp, anyway [audience laughter]. It's getting more disconcerting all the time how similar certain things are between me and Eli Mandel [audience laughter]. I just hope he's a very good person and lives a long life and has great success in the future [audience laughter]. The main thing I want to read tonight is a little bit like Eli's last poem [audience laughter]. But it takes a lot more time to get itself said, for good or ill, and I'd like to read a few, a couple shorter poems anyway, before starting that longer poem which takes up a fair amount of the time. I'll read the first book from the, I mean...[laughter], I'll read the first poem from the book which old oriental George Bowering told you about at the beginning of the program. This poem's called \\\"The Perishing Bird\\\".\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:51:12\\nReads \\\"The Perishing Bird\\\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:53:16\\nA poem called \\\"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\\\".\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:53:34\\nReads \\\"Summer is a Poem by Ovid\\\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:54:41\\nWell, this reads well. It starts with a Latin title, it's a kind of letter, actually written in reply to a letter to somebody who accused me of being rather complacent when ironically enough, I felt anything but that at that time. Accused me of being one of the people who didn't have any troubles in life, or not only me but somebody else too, when we had quite a few of our own that were not too dissimilar from those that the other person was talking about. It's about marriage. It's called, to avoid looking too obvious, \\\"De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum''. It's a serious poem though, more or less.\\n \\nD.G. Jones\\n00:55:56\\nReads \\\"De Profundis Conjugii Vox et Responsum\\\" [from Phrases from Orpheus].\\n \\nEND\\n01:01:57\\n\",\"notes\":\"Eli Mandel reads from An Idiot Joy (Hurtig, 1967), Black and Secret Man (1964), Trio:  First Poems (Contact Press, 1954), as well as poems later published in Crusoe: Poems Selected and New (Anansi, 1973).\\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces Eli Mandel and D.G. Jones [INDEX: announces other event: Ira Cohen film showing. Poetry 62 ed. by Eli Mandel and Jean-Guy Pilon: contains long poem by D.G. Jones, Contact Press, D.G. Jones- “Ontario Wasp Poet”/ Eli Mandel-“Western Jewish Poet”, Eli Mandel: An Idiot Joy published by Hurtig press, won Governor General Award, Eli Mandel: Black and Secret Man, D.G. Jones: Phrases from Orpheus Oxford Press]\\n05:08- Eli Mandel introduces “Signatures”\\n07:00- Reads “Signatures”\\n09:27- Reads “Neither Here Nor There”\\n10:28- Introduces “The Direction is North Until the Pole” [INDEX: Canadian Landscapes, Fleming- Minister of Finance of Federal Government, Political poems]\\n11:16- Reads “The Direction is North Until the Pole”\\n13:24- Introduces “Departure” [INDEX: leaving Edmonton]\\n13:53- Reads “Departure”\\n14:37- Introduces “Cassandra” [INDEX:  Cassandra, Prophetess, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon]\\n15:39- Reads “Cassandra”\\n17:00- Reads “The Madness of our Polity”\\n17:46- Introduces “Whence Cometh Our Help” [INDEX: psalms]\\n18:04- Reads “Whence Cometh Our Help”\\n19:03- Introduces “Manner of Suicide” [INDEX:  Karl Mennenger’s Man Against Himself,   Jewish Daily Prayer Book, Found Poem]\\n20:11- Reads “Manner of Suicide”\\n23:24- Introduces “Woman in the Moon” [INDEX: image: moon and sea]\\n24:30- Reads “Woman in the Moon”\\n26:12- Reads “The Explanations of the Moon”\\n27:32- Introduces “Listen, the Sea” [INDEX: King Lear, Keats Sonnet]\\n28:00- Reads “Listen, the Sea”\\n29:01- Reads “Marina”\\n30:46- Introduces “The Apology” [INDEX: George Bowering]\\n31:17- Reads “The Apology”\\n34:34- Introduces “Letter to be Opened Later” [INDEX: time capsule]\\n35:12- Reads “Letter to be Opened Later”\\n36:09- Introduces “To My Children” [INDEX: lyric poetry, Jewish naming tradition]\\n37:08- Reads “To My Children”\\n38:00- Introduces “The Meaning of the I Ching” [INDEX: hexagram ‘earth upon earth’]\\n39:36- Reads “The Meaning of the I Ching”\\n43:18- Introduces “Pictures in an Institution”\\n43:43- Reads “Pictures in an Institution”\\n47:47- George Bowering introduces D.G. Jones\\n48:35- D.G. Jones introduces “The Perishing Bird”\\n51:12- Reads “The Perishing Bird”\\n53:16- Reads “Summer is a Poem by Auden”\\n54:41- Introduces “De Profundis Con Yugie Voxette Responsem”\\n55:56- Reads “De Profundis Con Yugie Voxette Responsem”\\n01:01:57.14- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nFrom the Howard Fink list of Poems:\\n7/2/69\\none 5” reel, 3 3/4 one track, mono, 1/2 hour\\nreadings are from Mandel’s books An Idiot Joy and Black and Secret Man\\n\\n1. “Signature”\\n2. “Neither Here Nor There”\\n3. “The Direction is North Until the Pole”\\n4. “Departure”\\n5. “Cassandra”\\n6. first line “Being savages, we learn”\\n7. “Whence Cometh Our Help”\\n8. “Manner of Suicide”\\n9. “Woman on the Moon”\\n10. “The Explanation of the Moon”\\n11. “Listen, the Sea”\\n12. “Marina”\\n*note: list of poems not complete.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/eli-mandel-at-sgwu-1969-d-g-jones-george-bowering/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1277","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":["Robin Blaser at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 28 March 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Robin Blaser Mar. 28/69 1\" 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":["Blaser, Robin"],"creator_names_search":["Blaser, Robin"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/17240199\",\"name\":\"Blaser, Robin\",\"dates\":\"1925-2009\",\"notes\":\"Poet, essayist and professor Robin Blaser was born on May 18, 1925 in Denver, Colorado, but spent most of his early years in rural Idaho. He moved to California where he received his B.A. in 1952, his M.A. in 1955 and a M.L.S. in 1956 from the University of California at Berkeley. Here he met poets Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, the three playing major roles in the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Blaser, however, next to the dominant figures of Spicer and Duncan, was hesitant to identify himself as a poet and only began publishing his poetry close to twenty years later despite the fact that he was writing poetry already. His work appeared in smaller presses and received restricted attention because of this. After graduating from Berkley, Blaser worked at a number of libraries across the country, including the Widener Library in Boston where he met other East Coast poets, such as Charles Olson and John Wieners. His first larger publication was The Moth Poem (Open Space, 1964). In 1966, he moved to Vancouver, to teach at the Simon Fraser University, and became a Canadian Citizen in 1974. There, Blaser became a strong mentor and influence on the younger poets of the emerging Vancouver Poetry scene of the 60’s, influencing Daphne Marlatt, bp Nichol, Erin Mouré, and Steve McCaffery. His next collections of poetry followed, with Cups (Four Seasons Foundation, 1968), Image Nations 1-12; and The Stadium of the Mirror (Ferry Press, 1974), Image Nations 13 &14 (Cobblestone Press, 1975), Image Nation 15: The Lacquerhouse (W. Hoffer, 1981), Syntax (Talonbooks, 1983) and his most popular publication nominated for a Governor General’s Award, The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993). Blaser was also an essayist, and published important essays such as “The Fire” (1967), “The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead” (1983), “Robert Duncan, The ‘Elf’ of It” (1992), “The Recovery of the Public World” (1993), “Preface to the Early Poems of Robert Duncan” (1995), most of which are collected in The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser (University of California Press, 2006). Blaser became a Professor of Emeritus at Simon Fraser University and retired in 1986. Blaser was honoured the Order of Canada in 2005, and the Griffin Poetry prize for lifetime achievement in 2006, the Griffin Prize for poetry in 2008, as well as an honourary doctorate by Simon Fraser University in March 2009. After a battle with cancer, Robin Blaser died in Vancouver on May 7th, 2009.\",\"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":[1969],"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\":\"1969 3 28\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the reel\",\"source\":\"Accompanying 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":["Robin Blaser reads poems from Cups (Four Seasons Press, 1968), The Moth Poem (Open Space, 1964) and his essay “The Fire”, collected later in The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser (University of California Press, 2006), as well as poems collected later in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993)."],"contents":["robin_blaser_i086-11-005.mp3\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nIt's my pleasure this evening to introduce to you Robin Blaser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2115003], recently of Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], and a little bit before that, from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] and elsewhere. Can you hear me? Can you all hear me? Okay. Well, I haven't really a great deal to say, I wanted to say simply that I met Robin Blaser in June of 1964, the occasion was the usual round of parties and a rather un-memorable reading, and a marvelous day out into the countryside, and I also had on that occasion the pleasure of meeting two very close friends of his, Stan Persky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2330087] and Jack Spicer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3805658]. I'll read you this little sort of resume of his career. He was born in Idaho [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1221], and he studied at Northwestern [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q309350] and Berkeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q168756], and was a librarian at Harvard [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13371] from 1955 to '59. He now teaches in exile at Simon Fraser University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201603], has made an important contribution to the San Francisco poetry renaissance in the '50's and the '60's, and was one of a triumvirate, with Duncan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q964391] and Spicer, that fulminated the serial poem on the poetry scene. Among his own serial poems are “The Faerie Queene” and “Image-Nation”. His verse has been published in a number of contemporary poetry anthologies. They include, among many, Donald Allen's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5293963] The New American Poetry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7753501], the Penguin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3374730] New Writing in the United States, and A Controversy of Poets. And among his volumes of poetry are The Boston Poems 1956-58, The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, and Cups. He is the editor of a West Coast magazine called the Pacific Nation. Now, Robin? Please read for us.\n \nAudience\n00:02:56\nApplause.\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:03:00\nThe marvelous thing about that list of books is that The Boston Poems, in fact, I think I will read one of those, was published and I decided I didn't like the book so there's one copy in the world and I own that copy. So I'm not sure it's fair, to call that a book. I don't think I--but I think I will read, open with that, it now dates back so many years, back to the Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100] world, when [Jack] Spicer, and [John] Wieners [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1702153] and I were there together, and a very different scene from anything. [Charles] Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978] was at Black Mountain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2413277], and Wieners in the centre at Boston. This poem is \"The Hunger of Sound\", and the date of it would be 1956. \n \nRobin Blaser\n00:03:54\nReads \"The Hunger of Sound\" from The Boston Poems [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n\nRobin Blaser\n00:10:38\nNow I, I'm a little confused because I've changed the reading now because it was very nice to have people ask for things, so I think I'll read \"Cups\", which is a...I've worked since 1960 on a book called The Holy Forest and that is composed of several serial poems, the first of which is \"Cups\", and that is followed by one called \"The Park\", and one called \"The Faerie Queen\", then \"The Moth Poem\", and then the, then there is a group, translated from Gérard de Nerval [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q191305], \"Les Chimeres\", which is also a serial poem, and finally a group called \"The Holy Forest\", an unfinished group, and I thought I would read \"Cups\" and then a section, do a little thing on my poetics, an intermission, and then read, if you still are with me, the section I've just finished, called \"The Holy Forest\". This is \"Cups\".\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:11:47\nReads \"Cups\" [from Cups]. \n\nRobin Blaser\n00:22:58\nNow I'm going to move to my essay called \"The Fire\", which is meant to, is meant to talk about what people call poetics, I guess. It certainly talks about what I intend to do, what I am doing. \n \nRobin Blaser\n00:23:28\nReads \"The Fire\" [published later in The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser].\n \nUnknown\n00:31:57\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nRobin Blaser\n00:31:58\nResumes reading \"The Fire\". \n \nRobin Blaser\n00:43:29\nI won't go on to the rest of the essay, I think that's enough. Now...should we have a break, for a minute? Is it the right time for a break? Do you want a break? Because the next section has thirty-two poems, and not great long ones, but it's a move through the...\n \nUnknown\n00:43:57\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nRobin Blaser\n00:43:58\nReads “In A Dark” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n\nRobin Blaser\n00:44:17\nReads “The Prints” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:44:47\nReads “Love” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:45:18\nReads \"The Private I\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:46:18\nReads \"Song\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:46:52\nReads \"Translation\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:47:23\nReads \"1st Tale: Over\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:48:09\nReads \"2nd Tale: Returned\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:49:48\nReads \": At Last\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:50:29\nReads \"Aphrodite of the Leaves\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:51:02\nReads \"Winter Words\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:51:39\nReads \"The Stories\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:52:23\nReads \"The City\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:53:12\nReads \"The Translator: A Tale\" [from The Moth Poem].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:54:31\nReads [“Sophia Nichols,” published later in The Holy Forest].\n\nRobin Blaser\n00:56:34\nReads \"A Gift: Homage to Creeley\" [published later as “A Gift” in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:57:30\nReads \"Bottom's Dream\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:58:18\nReads \"The Finder” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n00:59:35\nReads \"Out of the Window,\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n01:00:45\nReads \"Merlin\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n01:01:44\nReads \"The Cry of Merlin\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\n\nUnknown\n01:03:55\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nRobin Blaser\n01:03:57\nI stood between the two in the marriage ceremony and replaced the psalms that are given, at one point, that was my gift as well as my blessing, and this is the poem I wrote for that wedding. \"Image-Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff Anston\".\n \nRobin Blaser\n1:04:15\nReads \"Image-Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff Anston\" [published later as “Image-Nation 6 (epithalamium)” in The Holy Forest].\n \nRobin Blaser\n01:05:27\nThank you.\n\nAudience\n01:05:28\nApplause [cut off]. \n\nEND\n01:05:30\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nThis reading most likely took place in 1969. Blaser was teaching at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and was most likely working on Image Nations 1-12; and The Stadium of the Mirror which was published much later in 1974.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAs stated in the introduction of this reading, Robin Blaser was an important poet involved in the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1960’s, but was connected to other important poets like Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Stan Persky among many others. Stanton Hoffman, a Sir George Williams University English Professor and Reading Committee Member met Robin Blaser in 1964 in Vancouver, where Blaser was teaching. He no doubt met with George Bowering at the same time.\",\"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\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/cups/oclc/4506227&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Blaser, Robin. Cups. San Francisco: Four Seasons Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/holy-forest/oclc/971211126&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Blaser, Robin. The Holy Forest. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1993.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fire-collected-essays-of-robin-blaser/oclc/237064008&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Blaser, Robin. The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser. Miriam Nichols (ed). Berkley: University of California Press, 2006. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/988192362&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Thesen, Sharon. “Blaser, Robin”. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.sfu.ca/retirees-forum/msg01139.html\",\"citation\":\"“Blaser- Robin Francis, 1925-2009”. The Vancouver Sun. Saturday, May 9, 2009. Page F14.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Blaser, Robin”. Literature Online Biography. Proquest Inc, 2008.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548883636224,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0005_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"Robin Blaser 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\":\"I0086_11_0005_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"Robin Blaser 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\":\"I0086_11_0005_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"Robin Blaser 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_0005_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0005_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robin Blaser 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/robin_blaser_i086-11-005.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"robin_blaser_i086-11-005.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:05:30\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"157.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Roy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nIt's my pleasure this evening to introduce to you Robin Blaser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2115003], recently of Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], and a little bit before that, from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] and elsewhere. Can you hear me? Can you all hear me? Okay. Well, I haven't really a great deal to say, I wanted to say simply that I met Robin Blaser in June of 1964, the occasion was the usual round of parties and a rather un-memorable reading, and a marvelous day out into the countryside, and I also had on that occasion the pleasure of meeting two very close friends of his, Stan Persky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2330087] and Jack Spicer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3805658]. I'll read you this little sort of resume of his career. He was born in Idaho [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1221], and he studied at Northwestern [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q309350] and Berkeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q168756], and was a librarian at Harvard [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13371] from 1955 to '59. He now teaches in exile at Simon Fraser University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201603], has made an important contribution to the San Francisco poetry renaissance in the '50's and the '60's, and was one of a triumvirate, with Duncan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q964391] and Spicer, that fulminated the serial poem on the poetry scene. Among his own serial poems are “The Faerie Queene” and “Image-Nation”. His verse has been published in a number of contemporary poetry anthologies. They include, among many, Donald Allen's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5293963] The New American Poetry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7753501], the Penguin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3374730] New Writing in the United States, and A Controversy of Poets. And among his volumes of poetry are The Boston Poems 1956-58, The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, and Cups. He is the editor of a West Coast magazine called the Pacific Nation. Now, Robin? Please read for us.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:56\\nApplause.\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:03:00\\nThe marvelous thing about that list of books is that The Boston Poems, in fact, I think I will read one of those, was published and I decided I didn't like the book so there's one copy in the world and I own that copy. So I'm not sure it's fair, to call that a book. I don't think I--but I think I will read, open with that, it now dates back so many years, back to the Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100] world, when [Jack] Spicer, and [John] Wieners [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1702153] and I were there together, and a very different scene from anything. [Charles] Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978] was at Black Mountain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2413277], and Wieners in the centre at Boston. This poem is \\\"The Hunger of Sound\\\", and the date of it would be 1956. \\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:03:54\\nReads \\\"The Hunger of Sound\\\" from The Boston Poems [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n\\nRobin Blaser\\n00:10:38\\nNow I, I'm a little confused because I've changed the reading now because it was very nice to have people ask for things, so I think I'll read \\\"Cups\\\", which is a...I've worked since 1960 on a book called The Holy Forest and that is composed of several serial poems, the first of which is \\\"Cups\\\", and that is followed by one called \\\"The Park\\\", and one called \\\"The Faerie Queen\\\", then \\\"The Moth Poem\\\", and then the, then there is a group, translated from Gérard de Nerval [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q191305], \\\"Les Chimeres\\\", which is also a serial poem, and finally a group called \\\"The Holy Forest\\\", an unfinished group, and I thought I would read \\\"Cups\\\" and then a section, do a little thing on my poetics, an intermission, and then read, if you still are with me, the section I've just finished, called \\\"The Holy Forest\\\". This is \\\"Cups\\\".\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:11:47\\nReads \\\"Cups\\\" [from Cups]. \\n\\nRobin Blaser\\n00:22:58\\nNow I'm going to move to my essay called \\\"The Fire\\\", which is meant to, is meant to talk about what people call poetics, I guess. It certainly talks about what I intend to do, what I am doing. \\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:23:28\\nReads \\\"The Fire\\\" [published later in The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:31:57\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nRobin Blaser\\n00:31:58\\nResumes reading \\\"The Fire\\\". \\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:43:29\\nI won't go on to the rest of the essay, I think that's enough. Now...should we have a break, for a minute? Is it the right time for a break? Do you want a break? Because the next section has thirty-two poems, and not great long ones, but it's a move through the...\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:43:57\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:43:58\\nReads “In A Dark” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n\\nRobin Blaser\\n00:44:17\\nReads “The Prints” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:44:47\\nReads “Love” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:45:18\\nReads \\\"The Private I\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:46:18\\nReads \\\"Song\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:46:52\\nReads \\\"Translation\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:47:23\\nReads \\\"1st Tale: Over\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:48:09\\nReads \\\"2nd Tale: Returned\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:49:48\\nReads \\\": At Last\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:50:29\\nReads \\\"Aphrodite of the Leaves\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:51:02\\nReads \\\"Winter Words\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:51:39\\nReads \\\"The Stories\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:52:23\\nReads \\\"The City\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:53:12\\nReads \\\"The Translator: A Tale\\\" [from The Moth Poem].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:54:31\\nReads [“Sophia Nichols,” published later in The Holy Forest].\\n\\nRobin Blaser\\n00:56:34\\nReads \\\"A Gift: Homage to Creeley\\\" [published later as “A Gift” in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:57:30\\nReads \\\"Bottom's Dream\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:58:18\\nReads \\\"The Finder” [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n00:59:35\\nReads \\\"Out of the Window,\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n01:00:45\\nReads \\\"Merlin\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n01:01:44\\nReads \\\"The Cry of Merlin\\\" [collected later in The Holy Forest].\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:03:55\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n01:03:57\\nI stood between the two in the marriage ceremony and replaced the psalms that are given, at one point, that was my gift as well as my blessing, and this is the poem I wrote for that wedding. \\\"Image-Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff Anston\\\".\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n1:04:15\\nReads \\\"Image-Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff Anston\\\" [published later as “Image-Nation 6 (epithalamium)” in The Holy Forest].\\n \\nRobin Blaser\\n01:05:27\\nThank you.\\n\\nAudience\\n01:05:28\\nApplause [cut off]. \\n\\nEND\\n01:05:30\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Robin Blaser reads poems from Cups (Four Seasons Press, 1968), The Moth Poem (Open Space, 1964) and his essay “The Fire”, collected later in The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser (University of California Press, 2006), as well as poems collected later in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).\\n\\n00:00- Stanton Hoffman introduces Robin Blaser [INDEX: Vancouver, San Francisco, June 1964, meeting, reading, countryside, Stan Persky, Jack Spicer, Idaho, Northwestern University, Berkeley University, librarian at Harvard from 1955-59, exile, teaches, Simon Fraser University, San Francisco Poetry Renaissance in the 1950’s and 1960’s, triumvirate with Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, serial poem, “The Faerie Queene”, “Image Nation”, poetry anthologies, Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry (Grove Press, 1960), The Penguin New Writing [most likely Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1960 or 1970], A controversy of poets (Doubleday/ Anchor Books, 1965), poetry volumes The Boston Poems 1956-58 (self published?), The Moth Poem (Open Space, 1964), Les Chimeres (White Rabbit Press, 1965), Cups (Four Seasons Foundation, 1968), editor of The Pacific Nation.]\\n03:00- Robin Blaser introduces “The Hunger of Sound”. [INDEX: The Boston Poems, one copy in the world, dislike for the book, Boston, Jack Spicer, John Wieners, Charles       Olson, Black Mountain, 1956; from The Boston Poems (unknown publishing info) later collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n03:54- Reads “The Hunger of Sound” [INDEX: serial poem, poetry, child, image, star, hunger, tree, time, sound, poem, man, wife, house, boy, Dante, book, German, gun, work, chaos, joy.]\\n10:38- Introduces “Cups”. [INDEX: order of reading, requested poems, working The Holy Forest since 1960, serial poems, “The Park”, “The Faerie Queene”, “The Moth Poem”, translations from Gerard de Nerval “Les Chimeres”, The Holy Forest as unfinished, poetics, intermission; from Cups (Four Seasons Foundation, 1968).]\\n11:47- Reads “Cups”.  [INDEX: serial poem, cup, nature, iris, flower, tree, poem, poetry,       window, sex, Dante, love, spring, truck, goat, father, hunter, blood, dark, semen, skin,     \\twhistle, sound]\\n22:58- Introduces essay “The Fire”. [INDEX: poetics; written in 1967, collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993)]\\n23:28- Reads essay “The Fire”. [INDEX: poetry, poetics, sight, sound, intellect, Louis    Zukofsky, San Francisco, invisibility, emotion, body, earth, god, reality, conceptual,     \\tdifficulty, image, conceptual, [Stan] Persky, imagination, language, Charles Olson,       \\t[Thoreau’s?] Walden, [Herman] Melville, [Ezra] Pound, narrative, Jack Spicer, Ovid]\\n31:57- END OF RECORDING (mid-sentence, continues on next CD I086-11-005.2)\\n\\n00:00- Robin Blaser continues reading “The Fire” essay.  [INDEX: family, idiom, English,        American, French, Orphic, Orpheus, Dionysus, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, imagery,  \\tLeibniz, Spinoza, Francis Yeats, monads, Nerval; written in 1967, collected in The Holy \\tForest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n11:31- Robin Blaser stops reading essay, introduces intermission [INDEX: break, next section, thirty-two poems, not long poems]\\n12:00- Cut in tape, unknown amount of time elapsed\\n12:00- Robin Blaser reads line “...the drive to the spring mountains...” recording starts mid-poem [INDEX: nature, drive, tree, heart, love, stone, song, star, forest, fire, night,       translation; from unknown source.]\\n12:20- Reads “The Prints”. [INDEX: Nerval, prince, tree, fantasy, heart; from Charms    (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n12:50- Reads “Love”. [INDEX: water, love, night; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n13:21- Reads “The Private I” [IMAGE: dog, moon, wind, white, black, earth, water, wind; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n14:21- Reads \\\"Song\\\" [INDEX:  Nerval, song, night, horse; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n14:55- Reads \\\"Translation\\\" [INDEX: ash, Mount St. Helen's, fire, tree; from Charms    (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n15:26- Reads \\\"1st Tale, Lost\\\"  [INDEX: sweet, child, tale, bird, sound; from Charms \\t(1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n16:11- Reads \\\"2nd Tale, Returned\\\"  [INDEX: brother, sister, child, fear, story, water, love,  magic, air, found; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n17:50- Reads \\\":At Last\\\" [INDEX: place, tree, story, youth, body; from Charms (1964-1968) \\tcollected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n18:32- Reads \\\"Aphrodite of the Leaves\\\"  [INDEX: city, light, Aphrodite, place from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n19:05- Reads \\\"Winter Words\\\" [INDEX: fountain, silence, cold, invisible; from Charms       (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993)]\\n19:42- Reads \\\"The Stories\\\" [INDEX: table, supper, sound, imagination, taste, radio from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n20:25- Reads \\\"The City\\\" [INDEX: lover, city, Wandering Jew, voice, water, radio, light,       fountain from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press,   1993).]\\n21:15- Reads \\\"The Translator: A Tale\\\" [INDEX: water, circle, tale, translation, shadow, sex, moth, flight; from The Moth Poem (Open Space, 1964).]\\n22:34- Reads unknown poem first line [\\\"...and returns, it is easy to personify\\\"]\\t[INDEX: head, personification, woman, love, disease, nature, moon, Blake, star, city, place, Odyssey, story, night, word]\\n24:37- Reads \\\"A Gift: Homage to Creeley\\\" [INDEX: room, house, table, soul, city, language, Wells Fargo, poet, love; published as “A Gift”, from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n25:33- Reads \\\"Bottom's Dream\\\"  [INDEX: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream,        Bottom, solitude, translation, city, love, glass; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n26:21- Reads \\\"The Finder\\\" [INDEX: tree, window, English Bay, Vancouver, ship, body, blood, intellect, violence, death, glass; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n27:37- Reads \\\"Out of the Window\\\" [INDEX: nature, earth, sea, fire, heart, city, building, loss, invisible; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n28:48- Reads \\\"Merlin\\\" [INDEX: action, blackbird, glass, companion, house, window, tree, unity, poetry, city, future, movement; from Charms (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n29:47- Reads \\\"The Cry of Merlin\\\" (unfinished reading on recording) [INDEX: stone, blue,  spiritual, image, man, room, story, sea, sex, body, love, radio, Daphne;  from Charms     (1964-1968) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993).]\\n31:58- Break/distortion in tape; recording recommences mid-phrase as Blaser introduces his last work.\\n32:00- Introduces “Image Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff      Anston” [INDEX: marriage ceremony, psalms, gift, blessing, wedding, Gladys    \\tHindmarch, Cliff Anston; published in Image Nations 5-14 (1967- 1974) collected in The Holy Forest (Coach House Press, 1993)]\\n32:18- Reads “Image Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff  \\tAnston” [INDEX: marriage, tree, Gladys Hindmarch, Cliff Anston, vision, gift, occasional poem, ring, unity, image, invisible.]\\n33:30- Robin Blaser thanks audience.\\n33:33.03- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robin-blaser-at-sgwu-1969/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1278","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":["Robert Duncan at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 19 April 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"ROBERT DUNCAN -1 Recorded Spring 1970 3.75 ips, 1/2 track on 1 mil. tape ONE OF TWO TAPES\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"ROBERT DUNCAN -1 I006/SR96.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. I006-11-096.1 written on sticker on the reel.\n\n\"ROBERT DUNCAN -2 Recorded, Spring, 1970 3.75 ips, 1/2 track on 1 mil. tape THE SECOND OF TWO TAPES\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"ROBERT DUNCAN -2 I006/SR96.2\" written on sticker on the spine 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":["[I006-11-096.1 , I006-11-096.2]"],"creator_names":["Duncan, Robert"],"creator_names_search":["Duncan, Robert"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/105142281\",\"name\":\"Duncan, Robert\",\"dates\":\"1919-1988\",\"notes\":\"American poet Robert Duncan was born on January 7, 1919 in Oakland, California. At birth, he was given his father’s name: Edward Howard Duncan. In 1920 and after his mother’s death shortly after childbirth, Duncan was adopted into another family and re-named. But he adopted the name Robert Duncan when he started publishing his early poems. These poems were published in magazines during his studies at University of California at Berkeley between 1936-1938. He edited the Experimental Review the year following. Duncan then moved to New York where he joined a group of writers which included Anais Nin, George Barker, Henry Miller, and Kenneth Patchen. The poems that he wrote in this period were collected in 1966 for The Years as Catches: First Poems 1939-1946 (Oyez Press) and in 1968 for The First Decade: Selected Poems 1940-1950 (Fulcrum Press). From 1946 to 1950, Duncan moved to San Francisco, where he met and was influenced by poet Jack Spicer. His first collection of published poems was Heavenly and Earthly City (Bern Porter Press, 1947), followed by Poems 1948-49 (Berkeley Miscellany Editions, 1949). In 1948 he enrolled in classes in Medieval and Renaissance Civilization, taught by Ernst Kantorowicz, after which he published Medieval Scenes (Centaur Press) in 1950. The next year he met and began a lifelong relationship with the painter Jess Collins, and by 1955 he published Caesar’s Gate Poems 1949-1950 with Collages by Jess (Divers Press), a collection of poems from the early 50’s. Fragments of a Disordered Devotion was published privately in 1952, only to be re-printed by Toronto’s Island Press in 1966. During this time he also was deeply influenced by the poems of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov. Duncan taught at the Black Mountain College in 1956, and published Derivations (1968), poems collected from 1950 to 1956. After spending a year in Mallorca, his play Medea at Kolchis: The Maiden Head was performed at Black Mountain College. Duncan then moved back to San Francisco as the assistant director of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University.  His most popular collection of poems, The Opening of the Field (Grove Press) was published in 1960, and was re-printed in London by Jonathan Cape in 1969 and in New York by New Directions in 1973. He was associated with the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of British Columbia in 1963, and he held a Guggenheim Fellowship until 1964. Duncan became one of the most vocal poets writing against the Vietnam war, and some of his anti-war poetry was published in pamphlets, collected later in Ground Work: Before the War printed privately in 1971. His later collections include, but are not limited to Roots and Branches, (Scribners, 1964, reprinted by New Directions, 1968, and Johnathan Cape, 1970), Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968), his last collection of poetry, Ground Work II: In the Dark (New Directions, 1987), and several books of essays including Fictive Certainties (New Directions, 1985). He was the recipient of National Endowment of the Arts grants, the National Poetry Award as well as other honours. Robert Duncan died in 1988, and several of his collections of poetry were published posthumously.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\" 1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Bowering, George"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"Box is Scotch brand, tape is BASF\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 4 19\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Please note that the Howard Fink list states the reading took place in “Spring 1970”, while the interview states another (perhaps separate) reading took place on April 19, 1969.\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"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":["Robert Duncan reads from The Opening of the Field (Grove Press, 1960), Roots and Branches (New Directions, 1964), and Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968)."],"contents":["robert_duncan_i006-11-096-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2] \n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\n...say anything about Robert Duncan's credentials, so I'll make this as brief as possible. M.L. Rosenthal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6723336] said, a little while ago in the Reporter that Duncan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q57421163] was the best of the poets in the experimental tradition and Warren Tolman says he's the best poet writing in the English Language, and I'd probably go further than that. And it's the reading we've been waiting for, most of us, all year, so I'd like to give him as much time as there possibly is. Robert Duncan.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:00:44\nIn the early 50's, I belonged to a, not a group, because as a matter of fact we were scattered, some in Europe and some in America and didn't know each other, but we were all reacting to a, we all had response of a feeling of poetic responsibility and also a poetic mission, arising out of our response to the publication of Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \"Pisan Cantos\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and the publication that came year after year of the parts of William Carlos Williams's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] \"Paterson\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7017378] but in the same period in magazines, some of the poetry of the later William Carlos Williams was appearing. And it does interest me, although the command of the Modernists had been to write in a natural speech, that in response to features that were appearing in Williams more than Pound, because Pound's lines are all syntactic utterances, but in Williams there's a kind of enjambment and there was a juncture appearing at the end of lines. And we, we took that juncture over and imposed it upon the language, but even in imposing it, found that we had arrived at something that's quite common indeed in our English speech, the stutter is at one end of it, but it is one of the forms we have when we are emotionally excited and things are broken up into phrases and words become almost painful and impossible to say, and this encounter we explored for some time. Later, I'm going to be reading, in passages, which will bring into question radically something related to his. My poetry developed along lines that I began to see as allied to the collage, things that were appearing in American painting, that is whole elements and bits would be taken from anywhere, and very early, at the time, as a matter of fact that I was writing The Opening of the Field, I viewed myself as a kind of jackdaw of poetry and gave up entirely worrying about if I had any originality or had a voice of my own. I was much more attracted picking up things and building them into something, so I was a weaver, I felt in some ways, almost before I was a speaker, and I was a weaver of voices and did not care, or- I decided well, I happen to be the one who is doing this, so certainly that's one thing that I don't have to have an effort about. There's nothing else that's going to be moving out from here. In passages, you'll find a new feature about that collage, but it's already contained in the thing I was suggesting that we took over- the juncture, Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620] for instance built a whole personal style from that juncture and by making its articulation radical, and forcing it into a depth of an emotional statement, and of course of an intellectual statement, because the whole framework of thought changes. Very striking to us in the very beginning was that form was the content, not, it was very hard to determine it, you could say that it even determined content, there was no cause to effect relationship for us, between form and content. Structure determined the nature of what was to thought, like the structure of a body is to what we are, and we didn't think of them as divided, so we were incarnationists in that sense. I feel very strongly that you'll find that repeatedly a theme of my poetry the incarnation of Christ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q302], the incarnation of spirit and the body, that spirit, that the divine world is manifest and incarnate, and that in its- led us back to the poem as the incarnation and place in which- the spirit doesn't enter poetry, incarnate, it exists. But it was also a collage and you will hear Greek and French entering this world of a collage, and it will be as reformed as the American language is when it enters my collage. And reformed to American contours, the contours of French, and the contours of Greek disappear, forced back into an American stress system, which I find analogous. The French poets were extremely disturbed when Stravinsky set them, she could not bear to hear [Persephone (?)] and because they all came out, French all came out to be Russian in its entire tonation and the French not very happy when the French language turns up in an intonation. I'm thinking of the Parisian, but no Frenchman's very happy about the French language turning up, turning out to be American or Russian. Now my poetry doesn't turn out to be exactly American either, it turns out to be strictly forced back to conform to my poetic patterns, and Greek is not intoned but is forced into a stress pattern. However, with Greek I'm in for free because there's no man who can say what you do with it anyway. In America, we have one system, in Germany, they have another system, and in England, they have, still, a third system of what to do with vowels and what to do with the whole thing. And there's a controversy about whether you do have pitch or whether you do have stress and that arises from the fact that the Hellenistic Greeks [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q428995] already couldn't figure out exactly what you did with those Greek choruses, and they had to put those marks in to instruct their readers what to do, and we don't know what those marks meant for sure [audience laughter]. But they certainly didn't know what it had been like 500 years before. They did poorer, I take it, than the poorest, and that would include me, informed of us do with Middle English [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36395], and I guess we're nearer to it than they were. Okay, well, we'll just start out and I want to take a path, I'm going to take a path through beginning with a small group of poems from The Opening of the Field.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:07:46\nReads \"The Law I Love is Major Mover” from The Opening of the Field.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:10:44\nWhen I was about 30, a great Medieval Historian was teaching at the University of California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q184478], where I made my living teaching, typing thesis and term papers when I was really hard out of luck and the rumour was very thick indeed that something extraordinary had happened, I think, and my impression is that Universities kill off scholars today much faster than they- they certainly don't kill off poets, they give them very handsome fees to come for a week or so, but they certainly kill off scholars, but the existence- perhaps only the World War with its refugee professors from Europe brought this kind of scholarship onto the scene at the University of California and I returned to school to take up Medieval Studies. One of the, clearly, in my work I, the one course, and I studied with that man until he left for the Princeton Institute of Advanced Learning, studied for him--with him for two and a half years, the course that most changed my poetry was a course on Medieval law, and the growth of constitutional law, because the very basis of poetry I think is a- of art, is the discovery of laws, the laws that finally we can trace through from those Medieval concepts of law and constant meditations upon law so I'm going to read a couple of more poems of our- in which this concept of law moves. This is \"Structure of Rime XIII\" and it's part of an open construct that is a construct that has nothing in its concept, does not belong to a world of cause or effect. It has a chronology, but its chronology is like our chronological time, that is seen by contemporary physics as an anomaly within a time--within a physical time that cannot possibly have the character of a chronological sequence. The best they can explain is that we must inhabit a thread that is suspended in actual time, because actual physical time cannot really be one directional, and we experience one directional time because we are really caught in some isolated thread, in the medium of time. So in \"Structure of Rime\" I conceive of myself not in a chronology, although I experience it, being human as such, but as entering such a domain in which real law exists and real time exists, and the real form to which the poem refers and from which it derives its form. The real form has no beginning or end, and is much faster, is universal, so the--in writing the poem I do not create a form, but participate in a form which is of the nature that we believe the physical world to be and I am much for a convert of Whitehead's process and reality in which we believe the spiritual world to be. And that's where \"The Structure of Rime\" takes place. When I say 'thirteen',  that's of course, in my own sequence then and I conceive of that sequence as actually existing in a part of the mosaic that does not have the character of sequence.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:14:29\nReads \"Structure of Rime XIII\" from The Opening of the Field. \n \nRobert Duncan\n00:16:59\nSome time shortly after The Opening of the Field was published, I was invited up to Portland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6106] by a lawyer and his wife to talk to a small group and I learned in correspondence that he had been attracted to my poetry because of the concepts of law as they move through poems, and so I wrote, for them, the poem called \"The Law\", a series and variation.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:17:35\nReads \"The Law\" [from Roots and Branches].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:23:27\nWhen Adams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11806] said, “the which”, meaning, he said, \"Democracy, the which requires the continual exercise of virtue beyond the reach of human infirmity, even in its best estate\" he was writing to Jefferson and talking about something that was absolutely necessary, he did not mean that we could escape from what required what was impossible. We had to live in the impossible, which is where I found myself entirely in concord with certainly a poet understands what it is to live in the impossible. He speaks in the first place in a voice which is impossible for himself to speak in, and before which he must always be a flunk out and in some sense, a political- a poetical failure in relation to what everywhere's own poetics is to point out what is necessary. Let me in relation to the law again, read the opening of a poem that I will be later be reading entire, but I want to bring it in context with these poems and the law, and close it with a John Adams that I discovered only a passage of John Adams that I discovered for myself, only about what, it's two or three years ago, two years ago. \"Reading on Myth\", this was from a book called I think it's called 18th Century Against the Gods, or confronts--The 18th Century Confronts the Gods and the chapter on John Adams's mythology was a fascinating chapter, and this passage of the poem is built up entirely with no interpolations at all of--it's built up to the place where I cease to read it, with no interpolations at all of passages of the marginalia that John Adams writes in an Encyclopedia of Mythology.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:25:32\nReads [\"John Adams’s Marginalia...\"].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:26:53\nMove back to another early poem in The Opening of the Field that was formative to, throughout my work and the last I guess it must be, each one of these is about three, this is the last ten years. The Field began in 1956, so it must be the last 14 years. And this poem is written in 1956. Take my coat off. In articulating the line, we were opening up- Pound had very early said [unintelligible] by the musical phrase and as I said, since his phrases were identical with syntactic utterances, with sentence utterances, the phrase is- the phrase is simpler than the phrases we use, where often they are enjambed, where often they disturb the meaning of the sentence and suspend elements so that they operate in various parts we did not want what was called an ambiguity by Mr. [Adams (?)], we wanted a multi-phasic area of meanings which is something very different. We wanted all parts to operate within all other parts. And I think this is a crucial difference from what let's say fascinated the metaphysicals of the post-Eliot [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] period in their idea of ambiguities. We wanted one meaning operating within another meaning and they wanted one meaning secretly giving another meaning, I may have such things too, but I mean it's a very different feeling for us. Certainly they did not have to come to articulate as we did, and with these poems, when I get to, as you'll see in passages, when I get into rhythmic articulations where only my body is intelligent enough to keep them, so I have to throw them back into my hands and to my body, a dance can carry them and a dance is really in a sense, the poem in which I moved straight forward and realized how un-literary this was and not exactly song either, and that this dance centre was going to be for whole sections of poems. So, there's a key poem.\n\nRobert Duncan\n00:29:27\nReads \"The Dance\" [from The Opening of the Field].\n\nUnknown\n00:31:32\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n\nRobert Duncan\n00:31:33\nResumes reading \"The Dance\" [from The Opening of the Field].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:32:09.\nSomeone said this evening I probably wouldn't read The Pindar poems, I will. Oh let me sing a song for you, songs, I have a couple of songs that are in books. Songs for me are not that quaint form that, a few of them are like the night nurse's songs, the song the night nurse sang. But a song of the old order and some of the other songs are actual songs, that means when I was writing them, a tune came. And they had only one voice to be in, mine, and we could even say unhappily, but there they were. And startled I was when, this is I think, one of the first songs that came that really belonged in a book of poetry. I had early had some songs in Faust Foutu in a sort of a long play that would never get performed in my mind so I was able to whatever I wanted to in it, and- which is a great kind of play to write, because you don't have to worry about anyone else solving any problems, you can name it, they can be on the moon, or whatever, have no stage dimension problems, but also of course I had no song dimension problems but when I wrote this song, \"Gee, I know I'm going to have to get up and sing it\", well of course now you'll get away with it because how rare you'd hear a poet's voice, unless a poet's already like your happy rock-n-roll singer, which I ain't as you will hear. My idea of song is exceedingly primitive indeed, my impression is very, I think you will hear it in this song, it comes from a brief period in which to much the horror of my theosophical parents, but because we were living in a small town and all your friends went to a Sunday School, I went for several years to a Methodist Sunday school and somebody along the line gave me the hint that hymns would come out much better if I just moved my mouth and didn't join in, happily, the lovely music that was going on and so of course I always wanted to write a hymn and there's something in the Methodist hymnal for sure in the song I'm going to sing. \"A Song of the Old Order\". It's not strictly Methodist in theology, but I meant that it's something of the Methodist hymn. However, I will sing also, by following another song that is certainly Calvinist [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q101849], it's a Halloween song, and like only the scotch can possibly dig out of there- the Calvinist counter hymnal.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:34:52\nSings \"A Song of the Old Order\" [from The Opening of the Field].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:38:05\nThat was considerably higher than I've ever tried to do it before. [Audience laughter]. But, like a poem, when you're writing it, when you're in it, you're in for it. You can't re-model it to something you think you might get through with. So I will now do the Pindar poem. That somewhat determines what long poem we're going to do. And since this is the first time I've read here in Montreal, some other places I read, I try and give them new stuff, but I take it outside of some tapes that might be available, you haven't really heard these poems. And this will be the last one from The Opening of the Field. I'll pick up a couple from Roots and Branches and then I will be reading from the current, the Bending the Bow and then after the break I'll read some of the new poems that I've written since Bending the Bow. [Take off Biney's Law (?).] No, this is not the beginning of a Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] round [laughter.] \"Beginning with a Line by Pindar\", I am ending up with an exhibition by Ginsberg, [laughter.] We've gotten so [unintelligible] in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] since all barriers of all kinds were down you really couldn't compete with the show, so you've got, I mean what to do. Common, ordinary people are just left out, you've got to be somebody extraordinary now to [audience laughter], and poetry has to be my extraordinary thing. Believe me, the rest of me is just me. \"A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar\".\n\nRobert Duncan\n00:40:17\nReads \"A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar\" [from The Opening of the Field].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:54:15\nI'll read two poems from--that were requested from Roots and Branches.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:54:30\nReads [\"Risk”] from Roots and Branches.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:59:22\nThe other poem I will read from Roots and Branches is \"The Continent\". My poetic thought continuously arises from the ground of my happy and, believe me, wildly misunderstanding readings of contemporary science. And the one real poetic source I have is not a literary magazine but Scientific American [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39379] which I avidly read. So I'm more likely to be studying language than I am to be studying poems and more likely to be studying the world, than I am to be- well, I can't say that, language and the world get even treatment. The poem \"The Continent\" came from the re-assertion that has come in recent years of evidence which has rebuilt the picture of the continental drift. And I was happy at the coordinates to find that Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978], who also ransacks the same magazine, but does not have the same misunderstandings of the magazine by any means, we have quite a, we sometimes come to [loggerheads (?) ] in our very positively taken misunderstandings of what is. He also had built sections of “Maximus [Poems]” on the continental drift. I love puns of course right away, and so does he, and if you get my drift in poetry, you will see something of what is revealed when we begin to get the drift of those continents and the fittingness of poetry is of course the logic whereby we identify that the continents originally fitted together and identified the sequence of things that happened. They do fit together, but they must have- I mean, the universe- the Neo-plateness, [unintelligible], well no, it isn't a neo-plate, well, it's a near neo-plate, and it's [unintelligible] Judas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81018] refers to the masterpiece which is the Universe, that's the only masterpiece and the rest of us compose masterpieces because we are children of the universe, although we may not recognize that that's what we are doing. Some of us don't have entire respect for what we belong to. \"The Continent\".\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:01:49\nReads \"The Continent\" from Roots and Branches.\n \nUnknown\n01:03:39\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nRobert Duncan\n01:03:40\nResumes reading \"The Continent\" from Roots and Branches.\n\nRobert Duncan\n01:06:16\n[Unintelligible] break in tone I'll sing that song I mentioned, the second one that comes from a Calvinist anti-hymnal. It's a song from my Halloween masque. And it's “A Country Wife’s Song”, the country husband is lying in bed, snoring away and the wife rises silently, puts a stick in the bed and a stone on the pillow and sings the following song.\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:07:50\nPerforms “A Country Wife’s Song” [from Roots and Branches].\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:09:38\nWe seem to be close to 10:30 so I'm going to just--I won't read--well, I'd like to read one passage before the intermission and I would also like to read the poem \"Epilogos\", then we'll have a break, I would suggest about 10 minutes and I will then read in the second part, I will be reading from \"Passages\", well let me add one more poem to this first part because I want to give you a sample of what I've been--so there will be one \"Passages\", so those of you with great relief run out into the world will at least have been subject to something of what \"Passages\" is like, and I will read \"Epilogos\" and then I will read one of the poems that I have written, post-Bending the Bow and then you will have a sample of everything and you won't be missing a thing if you don't stay for the second part. [Audience laughter]. Okay, well a few things, but you might be missing them anyway.\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:10:39\nReads \"Transgressing the Real, Passages 27\" [from Bending the Bow].\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:14:14\nReads \"Epilogos\" [from Bending the Bow].\n\nRobert Duncan\n01:20:57\nNow the one poem from, poetry I've written since then, a poem called \"Achilles' Song\". One note before I read it, the island that we would ordinarily in American call ‘Leuke’ a [unintelligible], like in Leukemia--leuke. In Greek would be ‘Lay-okay’ and so I was very alarmed indeed when in this poem, as I was writing it came out ‘Loy-kay’ and it took me quite some time of sheer stage fright and horror at the mis-pronunciation recall the ‘Lauke’ in German is the [unintelligible] and so forth in German, and that I have had for years now, for some years now a tape of H.D. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q236469] reading from her \"Helen in Egypt\", a poem which is really the mother poem of this poem, and not too much hidden in the poem, for those who know of  my closeness to H.D. who was certainly a surrogate mother for me. Thetis of the poem would certainly be the poetess H.D. and in that tape, H.D. who had lived for most of her life from the 20's on in Switzerland, uses the German pronunciation throughout, ‘Aloike’ and that's how I heard it in association with this poem. So I've finally recognized where it came from but it's an example of the fact that you cannot correct things in poems because it's sewn into a rhyme and absolutely belongs in the music here. Play it differently--I mean, it's what fits a poem not what fits some other system outside the poem that the poem must adhere to. Okay, \"Achilles' Song\".\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:22:44 \nReads \"Achilles' Song\".\n\nUnknown\n01:25:05\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nAudience\n01:25:06\nApplause.\n\nRobert Duncan\n01:25:16\nSo we'll take a break of ten minutes and then I'm going to read a rather short section because we're almost at 11 and that would seem, I want to read as many, something like four passages to give you of a feeling of moving through that and that would give you something like Passages are like.\n\nUnknown\n01:25:44\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nRobert Duncan\n01:25:45\nTwo aspects of the art, seem particularly mysteries to me as I've been working at the art of poetry since I was 19 and it's now 30 years. In relation to that thing we call rhyme, meter and so forth, I have come to think more and more that it's ratios and numbers that may be the heart of the matter. And at the same time as I begin to feel that at the heart of the matter, as one begins to, as one does with mysteries, be fearful about approaching the question. Some years ago, two years ago or so, with the poet Zukofsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q975481], who knows much more than I do of the art, and performs really awesomely in it, I said it had begun, I said \"Zuk,” I said, “I had begun to feel that it isn't a question about syllables or stresses and so forth, it's a question of numbers\". And he said \"Yes, I've decided by now I ought to, certainly if I don't know syllables and stresses and so forth, by now, I mean know them only in my hand, I certainly shouldn't be thinking about them. And I am now only dealing with 8's. All of these lines are 8's, straight through. I have not yet really phased the initiations of the question of numbers but I know that this is central as one moves into the period of working in the art that I'm in.\" The other thing, and that is that I have indicated it earlier, is that the nature of the time of the art is increasingly mysterious, the one thing I'm sure of it cannot be, positive absolutely defined in one area, for a long time I was doing happily enough with the formula that Christians made for themselves of time and eternity and their term of eternity which is the very present moment of any work of art and is also of course somehow containing the ensemble of all of the things created must also be like that time that physics talks about. That makes them puzzle why in the world our own time goes from a thing we call the past to the future. Whitehead [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183372] solves it in Process and Reality by suggesting that we create, in every moment that we live a past and a future, and we live in a history consequently because that's what we create what we are, is pastness and future, and sum it up in a material, that is still persuasive. But a mystery is when none of the answers are answers and as long as they're not answers the artist has them as really, forces that move as art. Now I make this remark because, well I said something about chronologies I, in the past I have not read these two poems as they appear in the book, in readings, but I want to read them today and I'm going to just underline the transition I want you to see and share with me at this point. I arranged, for all that what I've said about chronologies, I arranged the poems in my volumes chronologically and largely because it seems to me a mystery as they go and the rhymes appear from one to the other, and one poem will be an announcement of a succeeding poem or themes will flow out of it. The one I'm going to read first is not a “Passages\" it's called \"Reflections\" and at the close, and as a theme of it, you will find the old man, who is as a matter of fact, I structure rhyme preceding it had a fire master appearing, who seems very close indeed to the master of fire, and the poem that came next, it may have been in a couple of weeks of so, this was a very productive period, concludes with a figure of an old man tuning a drum between a bowl of fire and a bowl of water, and it was followed by a \"Passages\" which is called \"The Fire\", and from it we can learn that the fire that you see in \"Passages\" which is catastrophic, and is held in a polarity with an ideogram with the natural world, that that which may have indeed be--is indeed a bowl of water, as you will see, I mean it's a stream of water that the fire is composed between a world of water and its own world of fire, but that fire that looks like a catastrophe you will find is the creative fire--if you go under \"Reflections\" and let the reflections that came first reflect into the poem following. Now these are things that you realize afterwards, in your own chronology. I am one of those poets who has the characteristic I find in my study of Whitman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81438] in the last three years that Whitman certainly was another poet who studied himself all the time. We have a great prohibition in our contemporary world against studying yourself, but I am not short on the world of ego, so I'm not really very disturbed about the fact that I study myself in the poetry. But the one thing I search to find is not something we would ordinarily call ourselves, I study the poet, the thing that the poems are creating in order for them to come into being. That I can sharply distinguish from myself. As sharply as you can do it, it takes office, the idea of office, and this again I got from my Medieval Studies. Okay, I'm going to read \"Reflections\" and then I'm going to read \"The Fire\" and then I will, the poems I will be reading from then on will be \"Passages\", \"Fire\" is one of \"Passages\". And \"Passages\" is as I explained, an open form that exists in these other universe of time, of something, like, you call eternity.\n \nRobert Duncan\n01:32:07\nReads \"Reflections\" [from Bending the Bow].\n \nEND\n01:34:38\n\n\nrobert_duncan_i006-11-096-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] \n\nRobert Duncan\n00:00:00\nReads [“The Fire, Passages 13 from Bending the Bow; recording begins abruptly].\n \nUnknown\n00:13:11\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n\nRobert Duncan\n00:13:12\n...beginning with a poem called \"Soldiers\", a poem in which, um, let's see, right, some lines of Victor Hugo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q535] enter, I decided I should, well, I guess, lets see, no I don't want to read too late, and soldiers is rather long again, so I want- certain themes that are moving in \"Soldiers\" will reappear. In \"Soldiers\", a recurring line was one from a poem of Victor Hugo's, \"Dieu dans [unintelligible] reve\", which is a line really quite in tune with my own poetics, \"God, oh creator the- or the creator for us too in oneself whose dream, whose work goes much further than our dreams\" and so it's combined with a scene that's Vietnam and it's combined in the Soldiers with the theme of the recognition that in some mystery of that work that goes further than our dreams the soldiers in Vietnam most of them, have just there, and they're 19 or 18 and so forth, they have only there in which to make their lives. And they have only there in which to, to take their souls in the war, as the followers of Orpheus take soul in the poem. The wood to take fire from that dirty flame. A recognition that that is their field in which they must reach life's epiphany and its thing. And the line of Victor Hugo carried me forward to and returned me to grand themes of Victor Hugo's but it also took me back to Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881] and I wanted to give, before I read \"The Kao Dai\" a little sketch of that. There's a theme of Victor Hugo, by the way, of the fall of Lucifer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q185498] in which, Lucifer's falling into his own denial of God and in falling he opens the univ- creation, and but in his falling a feather breaks loose from his wings and is floating mid-air, and the sight of God descending falls upon the feather and it becomes light and it turns into an angel and that angel is Liberty and that angel's entire message is to transform the rage and wrathful light that had fallen upon it into the reunion and resurrection of Satan, but of course both Satan and God must be called from their wrath, to reconciliation, so this angel, Liberty and Freedom is also the angel of reconciliation and Victor Hugo knew that also there must be some explanation for the fact that the desire and yearning for freedom and liberty has always been wrathful. Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] is puzzled by the same thing and I think that today, when all over the world, not only in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], but in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], and in China [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29520], and Yugoslavia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36704] and Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159] the wrath of Liberty is rising and it is the wrath of God against the civilization to its very roots which we know in our hearts are Godless. But that wrath must be reconciled, because it is itself that it's rising against and there's some mystery in this, so my poetry has begun to take up the figure of that angel and the angel comes into it. Now, in Vietnam, one of the strongest forces in the Viet Cong, not a communist group but a religious group, the Cao Dai [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q470364] and in order to read more in deeper into the Cao Dai, I wisely, I think, went back to sources to the early thirties before Vietnam was quite the cause it is today, and found this story and it came quite in line with my kooky family and my own poetry because it was at a medium's table in 1925 on Christmas Eve, when Christ descended and speaking in French, as I usually put it when I read my, something worse than American French, a French man would feel that that was blasphemy, but I'm after all repeating Christ's words in his own voice so that might be more serious yet that that voice was being attempted. Christ came into the medium and renounced in my birth day for the spirit is descending upon Vietnam and when we remember what happened to the very first generation of Christians who were burned in rows as torches, what the promise of Christ meant to his immediate blessing, the powers of martyrdom. The promise of Christ in 1925 was amply fulfilled to his new disciples. So amply, as a matter of fact, the Cao Dai had more than come to my mind, because the cathedral town of Cao Dai, which is [unintelligible] indeed exactly like a Catholic nunnery or convent, or a Buddhist nunnery or convent is Communist, is the province of Tay Ninh [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36608], and the Cathedral city of Tay Ninh, now it is been repeated over and over in American papers that when those planes were returning for missions in North Vietnam and hadn't dumped their missions, you're not supposed to return any bombs, you gotta dump them somewhere, so they'd dump them on Tay Ninh, you'd just go over the side and dump them on Tay Ninh, because this particular religious group was stubborn indeed in its inherences. Now, also interesting to me was this particular religious group had as its patron Saint Victor Hugo, and the first place that the French are, that the Vietnamese have French as their deepest religious and literary language and so Christ talked in French so Victor Hugo gave the whole line, it's Victor Hugo's Christ who talked to them at the medium tables in French, and they of course had their medium tables in the line of the tradition of Victor Hugo's own medium tables in the Isle of Jersey. So Victor Hugo becomes patron saint for these passages. In the passage, by the way, a passage called \"Orders\" and I will read a passage from it in which I am actually translating from Victor Hugo quite directly but it's a very long poem and keeping in tune with that master of the sublime is very difficult for us in the modern period. Here we are, the passage, wait a minute, it isn't in that poem, I always think it's in \"Orders\", but it's actually in place of a passage 22, that has the passage with Victor Hugo. I have been working on it for years, and it's mainly trying to keep in tune, I go over and over and over it again and then I find it very difficult to deal with 19th century poetry. But this is a passage straight translation, as literal as I could from Victor Hugo, but really, massive poem.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:21:11\nReads \"The Soldiers\" [from Bending the Bow].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:22:14\nCharming little poem called the \"Twentieth Century\", in case you want to know where we are.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:22:22\nReads \"Twentieth Century\" [published as “The Light, Passages 28” in Bending the Bow].\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:30:27\nI'll close with \"Stage Directions\".\n \nUnknown\n00:30:32\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nRobert Duncan\n00:30:33\nReads [“Stage Directions, Passages 30” from Bending the Bow; begins mid-poem].\n \nAudience\n00:37:53\nApplause.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:38:12\nI'll add one more poem which has not been read aloud except at home today, this is one--I hope I've got the right note--this is a \"Structure of Rime\" that was composed on April Fool's day but it doesn't mean it isn't serious, I mean April 1st.\n \nRobert Duncan\n00:38:32\nReads \"Structure of Rime\" [unnumbered].\n \nAudience\n00:39:54\nApplause.\n \nEND\n00:40:06\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nAt the time of this reading (1970), Robert Duncan had published Tribunals Passages 31-35 (Black Sparrow Press), a broadside called Poetic Disturbances (Cody’s Books) and A Selection of 65 Drawings from the One Drawing-Book 1952-1956 (Black Sparrow Press, 1970).  He was working on Ground Work (privately printed, 1971) and Robert Duncan: An Interview by George Bowering & Robert Hogg (The Coach House Press, 1971).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n \\nDuncan’s first Canadian reading, in  Vancouver by invitation of Warren Tallman at University of British Columbia, occurred in 1961- to an audience of Bowering, Fred Wah and Frank Davey. These readings inspired the creation of Tish magazine[1]. Robert Duncan and George Bowering have corresponded with each other after this reading.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Sarah McDonnell and Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>3 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/robert-duncan-an-interview-april-19-1969/oclc/963367366&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George and Robert Hogg. Robert Duncan: an interview by George Bowering &       \\tRobert Hogg. Montreal: A Beaver Kosmos Folio, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/bending-the-bow/oclc/612189355&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. Bending the Bow. New York: New Directions, 1968.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/caesars-gate-poems-1949-1950/oclc/270147363&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. Caesar’s Gate: Poems, 1949-1950. Divers Press, 1955.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/first-decade-selected-poems-1940-1950/oclc/500569831&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. First Decade: Selected Poems 1940-1950. Fulcrum, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ground-work-before-the-war-in-the-dark/oclc/62509155&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bertholf, Robert; Duncan, Robert; Maynard, James. Ground Work II: Before the War, In the Dark. New York: New Directions, 1985.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/heavenly-city-earthly-city/oclc/639710248&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. Heavenly and Earthly City. Berkeley: Miscellany Editions, 1949. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/opening-of-the-field/oclc/926421653&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. The Opening of the Field. Grove Press, 1960.\"},{\"url\":\"<https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Duncan, Robert [Edward]\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed),        Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/roots-and-branches/oclc/926421654&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. Roots and Branches. New York: Scribners, 1964.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-release-from-oyez-the-years-as-catches-first-poems-1939-1946-by-robert-duncan-with-an-introduction-and-bibliography-by-the-author/oclc/62513361&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Duncan, Robert. The Years as Catches: First Poems. Berkeley: Oyez Press, 1966.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Patterson, Ian. “Duncan, Robert Edward 1919-”. Literature Online Biography. H.W. Wilson         \\tCompany, 2000. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548887830528,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0096-1_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0096-1_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Duncan Tape Box 1 - 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_0096-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0096-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Duncan Tape Box 1 - 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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_0096-2_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0096-2_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Duncan Tape Box 2 - 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_0096-2_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0096-2_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Duncan Tape Box 2 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/robert_duncan_i006-11-096-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"robert_duncan_i006-11-096-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:34:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"227.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"robert_duncan_i006-11-096-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2] \\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:00\\n...say anything about Robert Duncan's credentials, so I'll make this as brief as possible. M.L. Rosenthal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6723336] said, a little while ago in the Reporter that Duncan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q57421163] was the best of the poets in the experimental tradition and Warren Tolman says he's the best poet writing in the English Language, and I'd probably go further than that. And it's the reading we've been waiting for, most of us, all year, so I'd like to give him as much time as there possibly is. Robert Duncan.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:00:44\\nIn the early 50's, I belonged to a, not a group, because as a matter of fact we were scattered, some in Europe and some in America and didn't know each other, but we were all reacting to a, we all had response of a feeling of poetic responsibility and also a poetic mission, arising out of our response to the publication of Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \\\"Pisan Cantos\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and the publication that came year after year of the parts of William Carlos Williams's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] \\\"Paterson\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7017378] but in the same period in magazines, some of the poetry of the later William Carlos Williams was appearing. And it does interest me, although the command of the Modernists had been to write in a natural speech, that in response to features that were appearing in Williams more than Pound, because Pound's lines are all syntactic utterances, but in Williams there's a kind of enjambment and there was a juncture appearing at the end of lines. And we, we took that juncture over and imposed it upon the language, but even in imposing it, found that we had arrived at something that's quite common indeed in our English speech, the stutter is at one end of it, but it is one of the forms we have when we are emotionally excited and things are broken up into phrases and words become almost painful and impossible to say, and this encounter we explored for some time. Later, I'm going to be reading, in passages, which will bring into question radically something related to his. My poetry developed along lines that I began to see as allied to the collage, things that were appearing in American painting, that is whole elements and bits would be taken from anywhere, and very early, at the time, as a matter of fact that I was writing The Opening of the Field, I viewed myself as a kind of jackdaw of poetry and gave up entirely worrying about if I had any originality or had a voice of my own. I was much more attracted picking up things and building them into something, so I was a weaver, I felt in some ways, almost before I was a speaker, and I was a weaver of voices and did not care, or- I decided well, I happen to be the one who is doing this, so certainly that's one thing that I don't have to have an effort about. There's nothing else that's going to be moving out from here. In passages, you'll find a new feature about that collage, but it's already contained in the thing I was suggesting that we took over- the juncture, Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620] for instance built a whole personal style from that juncture and by making its articulation radical, and forcing it into a depth of an emotional statement, and of course of an intellectual statement, because the whole framework of thought changes. Very striking to us in the very beginning was that form was the content, not, it was very hard to determine it, you could say that it even determined content, there was no cause to effect relationship for us, between form and content. Structure determined the nature of what was to thought, like the structure of a body is to what we are, and we didn't think of them as divided, so we were incarnationists in that sense. I feel very strongly that you'll find that repeatedly a theme of my poetry the incarnation of Christ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q302], the incarnation of spirit and the body, that spirit, that the divine world is manifest and incarnate, and that in its- led us back to the poem as the incarnation and place in which- the spirit doesn't enter poetry, incarnate, it exists. But it was also a collage and you will hear Greek and French entering this world of a collage, and it will be as reformed as the American language is when it enters my collage. And reformed to American contours, the contours of French, and the contours of Greek disappear, forced back into an American stress system, which I find analogous. The French poets were extremely disturbed when Stravinsky set them, she could not bear to hear [Persephone (?)] and because they all came out, French all came out to be Russian in its entire tonation and the French not very happy when the French language turns up in an intonation. I'm thinking of the Parisian, but no Frenchman's very happy about the French language turning up, turning out to be American or Russian. Now my poetry doesn't turn out to be exactly American either, it turns out to be strictly forced back to conform to my poetic patterns, and Greek is not intoned but is forced into a stress pattern. However, with Greek I'm in for free because there's no man who can say what you do with it anyway. In America, we have one system, in Germany, they have another system, and in England, they have, still, a third system of what to do with vowels and what to do with the whole thing. And there's a controversy about whether you do have pitch or whether you do have stress and that arises from the fact that the Hellenistic Greeks [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q428995] already couldn't figure out exactly what you did with those Greek choruses, and they had to put those marks in to instruct their readers what to do, and we don't know what those marks meant for sure [audience laughter]. But they certainly didn't know what it had been like 500 years before. They did poorer, I take it, than the poorest, and that would include me, informed of us do with Middle English [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36395], and I guess we're nearer to it than they were. Okay, well, we'll just start out and I want to take a path, I'm going to take a path through beginning with a small group of poems from The Opening of the Field.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:07:46\\nReads \\\"The Law I Love is Major Mover” from The Opening of the Field.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:10:44\\nWhen I was about 30, a great Medieval Historian was teaching at the University of California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q184478], where I made my living teaching, typing thesis and term papers when I was really hard out of luck and the rumour was very thick indeed that something extraordinary had happened, I think, and my impression is that Universities kill off scholars today much faster than they- they certainly don't kill off poets, they give them very handsome fees to come for a week or so, but they certainly kill off scholars, but the existence- perhaps only the World War with its refugee professors from Europe brought this kind of scholarship onto the scene at the University of California and I returned to school to take up Medieval Studies. One of the, clearly, in my work I, the one course, and I studied with that man until he left for the Princeton Institute of Advanced Learning, studied for him--with him for two and a half years, the course that most changed my poetry was a course on Medieval law, and the growth of constitutional law, because the very basis of poetry I think is a- of art, is the discovery of laws, the laws that finally we can trace through from those Medieval concepts of law and constant meditations upon law so I'm going to read a couple of more poems of our- in which this concept of law moves. This is \\\"Structure of Rime XIII\\\" and it's part of an open construct that is a construct that has nothing in its concept, does not belong to a world of cause or effect. It has a chronology, but its chronology is like our chronological time, that is seen by contemporary physics as an anomaly within a time--within a physical time that cannot possibly have the character of a chronological sequence. The best they can explain is that we must inhabit a thread that is suspended in actual time, because actual physical time cannot really be one directional, and we experience one directional time because we are really caught in some isolated thread, in the medium of time. So in \\\"Structure of Rime\\\" I conceive of myself not in a chronology, although I experience it, being human as such, but as entering such a domain in which real law exists and real time exists, and the real form to which the poem refers and from which it derives its form. The real form has no beginning or end, and is much faster, is universal, so the--in writing the poem I do not create a form, but participate in a form which is of the nature that we believe the physical world to be and I am much for a convert of Whitehead's process and reality in which we believe the spiritual world to be. And that's where \\\"The Structure of Rime\\\" takes place. When I say 'thirteen',  that's of course, in my own sequence then and I conceive of that sequence as actually existing in a part of the mosaic that does not have the character of sequence.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:14:29\\nReads \\\"Structure of Rime XIII\\\" from The Opening of the Field. \\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:16:59\\nSome time shortly after The Opening of the Field was published, I was invited up to Portland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6106] by a lawyer and his wife to talk to a small group and I learned in correspondence that he had been attracted to my poetry because of the concepts of law as they move through poems, and so I wrote, for them, the poem called \\\"The Law\\\", a series and variation.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:17:35\\nReads \\\"The Law\\\" [from Roots and Branches].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:23:27\\nWhen Adams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11806] said, “the which”, meaning, he said, \\\"Democracy, the which requires the continual exercise of virtue beyond the reach of human infirmity, even in its best estate\\\" he was writing to Jefferson and talking about something that was absolutely necessary, he did not mean that we could escape from what required what was impossible. We had to live in the impossible, which is where I found myself entirely in concord with certainly a poet understands what it is to live in the impossible. He speaks in the first place in a voice which is impossible for himself to speak in, and before which he must always be a flunk out and in some sense, a political- a poetical failure in relation to what everywhere's own poetics is to point out what is necessary. Let me in relation to the law again, read the opening of a poem that I will be later be reading entire, but I want to bring it in context with these poems and the law, and close it with a John Adams that I discovered only a passage of John Adams that I discovered for myself, only about what, it's two or three years ago, two years ago. \\\"Reading on Myth\\\", this was from a book called I think it's called 18th Century Against the Gods, or confronts--The 18th Century Confronts the Gods and the chapter on John Adams's mythology was a fascinating chapter, and this passage of the poem is built up entirely with no interpolations at all of--it's built up to the place where I cease to read it, with no interpolations at all of passages of the marginalia that John Adams writes in an Encyclopedia of Mythology.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:25:32\\nReads [\\\"John Adams’s Marginalia...\\\"].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:26:53\\nMove back to another early poem in The Opening of the Field that was formative to, throughout my work and the last I guess it must be, each one of these is about three, this is the last ten years. The Field began in 1956, so it must be the last 14 years. And this poem is written in 1956. Take my coat off. In articulating the line, we were opening up- Pound had very early said [unintelligible] by the musical phrase and as I said, since his phrases were identical with syntactic utterances, with sentence utterances, the phrase is- the phrase is simpler than the phrases we use, where often they are enjambed, where often they disturb the meaning of the sentence and suspend elements so that they operate in various parts we did not want what was called an ambiguity by Mr. [Adams (?)], we wanted a multi-phasic area of meanings which is something very different. We wanted all parts to operate within all other parts. And I think this is a crucial difference from what let's say fascinated the metaphysicals of the post-Eliot [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] period in their idea of ambiguities. We wanted one meaning operating within another meaning and they wanted one meaning secretly giving another meaning, I may have such things too, but I mean it's a very different feeling for us. Certainly they did not have to come to articulate as we did, and with these poems, when I get to, as you'll see in passages, when I get into rhythmic articulations where only my body is intelligent enough to keep them, so I have to throw them back into my hands and to my body, a dance can carry them and a dance is really in a sense, the poem in which I moved straight forward and realized how un-literary this was and not exactly song either, and that this dance centre was going to be for whole sections of poems. So, there's a key poem.\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n00:29:27\\nReads \\\"The Dance\\\" [from The Opening of the Field].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:31:32\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n00:31:33\\nResumes reading \\\"The Dance\\\" [from The Opening of the Field].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:32:09.\\nSomeone said this evening I probably wouldn't read The Pindar poems, I will. Oh let me sing a song for you, songs, I have a couple of songs that are in books. Songs for me are not that quaint form that, a few of them are like the night nurse's songs, the song the night nurse sang. But a song of the old order and some of the other songs are actual songs, that means when I was writing them, a tune came. And they had only one voice to be in, mine, and we could even say unhappily, but there they were. And startled I was when, this is I think, one of the first songs that came that really belonged in a book of poetry. I had early had some songs in Faust Foutu in a sort of a long play that would never get performed in my mind so I was able to whatever I wanted to in it, and- which is a great kind of play to write, because you don't have to worry about anyone else solving any problems, you can name it, they can be on the moon, or whatever, have no stage dimension problems, but also of course I had no song dimension problems but when I wrote this song, \\\"Gee, I know I'm going to have to get up and sing it\\\", well of course now you'll get away with it because how rare you'd hear a poet's voice, unless a poet's already like your happy rock-n-roll singer, which I ain't as you will hear. My idea of song is exceedingly primitive indeed, my impression is very, I think you will hear it in this song, it comes from a brief period in which to much the horror of my theosophical parents, but because we were living in a small town and all your friends went to a Sunday School, I went for several years to a Methodist Sunday school and somebody along the line gave me the hint that hymns would come out much better if I just moved my mouth and didn't join in, happily, the lovely music that was going on and so of course I always wanted to write a hymn and there's something in the Methodist hymnal for sure in the song I'm going to sing. \\\"A Song of the Old Order\\\". It's not strictly Methodist in theology, but I meant that it's something of the Methodist hymn. However, I will sing also, by following another song that is certainly Calvinist [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q101849], it's a Halloween song, and like only the scotch can possibly dig out of there- the Calvinist counter hymnal.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:34:52\\nSings \\\"A Song of the Old Order\\\" [from The Opening of the Field].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:38:05\\nThat was considerably higher than I've ever tried to do it before. [Audience laughter]. But, like a poem, when you're writing it, when you're in it, you're in for it. You can't re-model it to something you think you might get through with. So I will now do the Pindar poem. That somewhat determines what long poem we're going to do. And since this is the first time I've read here in Montreal, some other places I read, I try and give them new stuff, but I take it outside of some tapes that might be available, you haven't really heard these poems. And this will be the last one from The Opening of the Field. I'll pick up a couple from Roots and Branches and then I will be reading from the current, the Bending the Bow and then after the break I'll read some of the new poems that I've written since Bending the Bow. [Take off Biney's Law (?).] No, this is not the beginning of a Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] round [laughter.] \\\"Beginning with a Line by Pindar\\\", I am ending up with an exhibition by Ginsberg, [laughter.] We've gotten so [unintelligible] in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] since all barriers of all kinds were down you really couldn't compete with the show, so you've got, I mean what to do. Common, ordinary people are just left out, you've got to be somebody extraordinary now to [audience laughter], and poetry has to be my extraordinary thing. Believe me, the rest of me is just me. \\\"A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar\\\".\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n00:40:17\\nReads \\\"A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar\\\" [from The Opening of the Field].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:54:15\\nI'll read two poems from--that were requested from Roots and Branches.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:54:30\\nReads [\\\"Risk”] from Roots and Branches.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:59:22\\nThe other poem I will read from Roots and Branches is \\\"The Continent\\\". My poetic thought continuously arises from the ground of my happy and, believe me, wildly misunderstanding readings of contemporary science. And the one real poetic source I have is not a literary magazine but Scientific American [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39379] which I avidly read. So I'm more likely to be studying language than I am to be studying poems and more likely to be studying the world, than I am to be- well, I can't say that, language and the world get even treatment. The poem \\\"The Continent\\\" came from the re-assertion that has come in recent years of evidence which has rebuilt the picture of the continental drift. And I was happy at the coordinates to find that Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978], who also ransacks the same magazine, but does not have the same misunderstandings of the magazine by any means, we have quite a, we sometimes come to [loggerheads (?) ] in our very positively taken misunderstandings of what is. He also had built sections of “Maximus [Poems]” on the continental drift. I love puns of course right away, and so does he, and if you get my drift in poetry, you will see something of what is revealed when we begin to get the drift of those continents and the fittingness of poetry is of course the logic whereby we identify that the continents originally fitted together and identified the sequence of things that happened. They do fit together, but they must have- I mean, the universe- the Neo-plateness, [unintelligible], well no, it isn't a neo-plate, well, it's a near neo-plate, and it's [unintelligible] Judas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81018] refers to the masterpiece which is the Universe, that's the only masterpiece and the rest of us compose masterpieces because we are children of the universe, although we may not recognize that that's what we are doing. Some of us don't have entire respect for what we belong to. \\\"The Continent\\\".\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:01:49\\nReads \\\"The Continent\\\" from Roots and Branches.\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:03:39\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n01:03:40\\nResumes reading \\\"The Continent\\\" from Roots and Branches.\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n01:06:16\\n[Unintelligible] break in tone I'll sing that song I mentioned, the second one that comes from a Calvinist anti-hymnal. It's a song from my Halloween masque. And it's “A Country Wife’s Song”, the country husband is lying in bed, snoring away and the wife rises silently, puts a stick in the bed and a stone on the pillow and sings the following song.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:07:50\\nPerforms “A Country Wife’s Song” [from Roots and Branches].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:09:38\\nWe seem to be close to 10:30 so I'm going to just--I won't read--well, I'd like to read one passage before the intermission and I would also like to read the poem \\\"Epilogos\\\", then we'll have a break, I would suggest about 10 minutes and I will then read in the second part, I will be reading from \\\"Passages\\\", well let me add one more poem to this first part because I want to give you a sample of what I've been--so there will be one \\\"Passages\\\", so those of you with great relief run out into the world will at least have been subject to something of what \\\"Passages\\\" is like, and I will read \\\"Epilogos\\\" and then I will read one of the poems that I have written, post-Bending the Bow and then you will have a sample of everything and you won't be missing a thing if you don't stay for the second part. [Audience laughter]. Okay, well a few things, but you might be missing them anyway.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:10:39\\nReads \\\"Transgressing the Real, Passages 27\\\" [from Bending the Bow].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:14:14\\nReads \\\"Epilogos\\\" [from Bending the Bow].\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n01:20:57\\nNow the one poem from, poetry I've written since then, a poem called \\\"Achilles' Song\\\". One note before I read it, the island that we would ordinarily in American call ‘Leuke’ a [unintelligible], like in Leukemia--leuke. In Greek would be ‘Lay-okay’ and so I was very alarmed indeed when in this poem, as I was writing it came out ‘Loy-kay’ and it took me quite some time of sheer stage fright and horror at the mis-pronunciation recall the ‘Lauke’ in German is the [unintelligible] and so forth in German, and that I have had for years now, for some years now a tape of H.D. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q236469] reading from her \\\"Helen in Egypt\\\", a poem which is really the mother poem of this poem, and not too much hidden in the poem, for those who know of  my closeness to H.D. who was certainly a surrogate mother for me. Thetis of the poem would certainly be the poetess H.D. and in that tape, H.D. who had lived for most of her life from the 20's on in Switzerland, uses the German pronunciation throughout, ‘Aloike’ and that's how I heard it in association with this poem. So I've finally recognized where it came from but it's an example of the fact that you cannot correct things in poems because it's sewn into a rhyme and absolutely belongs in the music here. Play it differently--I mean, it's what fits a poem not what fits some other system outside the poem that the poem must adhere to. Okay, \\\"Achilles' Song\\\".\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:22:44 \\nReads \\\"Achilles' Song\\\".\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:25:05\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:25:06\\nApplause.\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n01:25:16\\nSo we'll take a break of ten minutes and then I'm going to read a rather short section because we're almost at 11 and that would seem, I want to read as many, something like four passages to give you of a feeling of moving through that and that would give you something like Passages are like.\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:25:44\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n01:25:45\\nTwo aspects of the art, seem particularly mysteries to me as I've been working at the art of poetry since I was 19 and it's now 30 years. In relation to that thing we call rhyme, meter and so forth, I have come to think more and more that it's ratios and numbers that may be the heart of the matter. And at the same time as I begin to feel that at the heart of the matter, as one begins to, as one does with mysteries, be fearful about approaching the question. Some years ago, two years ago or so, with the poet Zukofsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q975481], who knows much more than I do of the art, and performs really awesomely in it, I said it had begun, I said \\\"Zuk,” I said, “I had begun to feel that it isn't a question about syllables or stresses and so forth, it's a question of numbers\\\". And he said \\\"Yes, I've decided by now I ought to, certainly if I don't know syllables and stresses and so forth, by now, I mean know them only in my hand, I certainly shouldn't be thinking about them. And I am now only dealing with 8's. All of these lines are 8's, straight through. I have not yet really phased the initiations of the question of numbers but I know that this is central as one moves into the period of working in the art that I'm in.\\\" The other thing, and that is that I have indicated it earlier, is that the nature of the time of the art is increasingly mysterious, the one thing I'm sure of it cannot be, positive absolutely defined in one area, for a long time I was doing happily enough with the formula that Christians made for themselves of time and eternity and their term of eternity which is the very present moment of any work of art and is also of course somehow containing the ensemble of all of the things created must also be like that time that physics talks about. That makes them puzzle why in the world our own time goes from a thing we call the past to the future. Whitehead [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183372] solves it in Process and Reality by suggesting that we create, in every moment that we live a past and a future, and we live in a history consequently because that's what we create what we are, is pastness and future, and sum it up in a material, that is still persuasive. But a mystery is when none of the answers are answers and as long as they're not answers the artist has them as really, forces that move as art. Now I make this remark because, well I said something about chronologies I, in the past I have not read these two poems as they appear in the book, in readings, but I want to read them today and I'm going to just underline the transition I want you to see and share with me at this point. I arranged, for all that what I've said about chronologies, I arranged the poems in my volumes chronologically and largely because it seems to me a mystery as they go and the rhymes appear from one to the other, and one poem will be an announcement of a succeeding poem or themes will flow out of it. The one I'm going to read first is not a “Passages\\\" it's called \\\"Reflections\\\" and at the close, and as a theme of it, you will find the old man, who is as a matter of fact, I structure rhyme preceding it had a fire master appearing, who seems very close indeed to the master of fire, and the poem that came next, it may have been in a couple of weeks of so, this was a very productive period, concludes with a figure of an old man tuning a drum between a bowl of fire and a bowl of water, and it was followed by a \\\"Passages\\\" which is called \\\"The Fire\\\", and from it we can learn that the fire that you see in \\\"Passages\\\" which is catastrophic, and is held in a polarity with an ideogram with the natural world, that that which may have indeed be--is indeed a bowl of water, as you will see, I mean it's a stream of water that the fire is composed between a world of water and its own world of fire, but that fire that looks like a catastrophe you will find is the creative fire--if you go under \\\"Reflections\\\" and let the reflections that came first reflect into the poem following. Now these are things that you realize afterwards, in your own chronology. I am one of those poets who has the characteristic I find in my study of Whitman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81438] in the last three years that Whitman certainly was another poet who studied himself all the time. We have a great prohibition in our contemporary world against studying yourself, but I am not short on the world of ego, so I'm not really very disturbed about the fact that I study myself in the poetry. But the one thing I search to find is not something we would ordinarily call ourselves, I study the poet, the thing that the poems are creating in order for them to come into being. That I can sharply distinguish from myself. As sharply as you can do it, it takes office, the idea of office, and this again I got from my Medieval Studies. Okay, I'm going to read \\\"Reflections\\\" and then I'm going to read \\\"The Fire\\\" and then I will, the poems I will be reading from then on will be \\\"Passages\\\", \\\"Fire\\\" is one of \\\"Passages\\\". And \\\"Passages\\\" is as I explained, an open form that exists in these other universe of time, of something, like, you call eternity.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n01:32:07\\nReads \\\"Reflections\\\" [from Bending the Bow].\\n \\nEND\\n01:34:38\\n\",\"notes\":\"Robert Duncan reads from The Opening of the Field (Grove Press, 1960), Roots and Branches (New Directions, 1964), and Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968).\\n\\nI006-11-096.1=AC.1\\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces Robert Duncan [INDEX: M.L. Rosenthall, Warren Tallman [sp?], The Reporter, experimental poetry]\\n00:44- Robert Duncan speaks about his poetry, introduces reading. [INDEX: Ezra Pound’s       \\t“Pisan Cantos”, William Carlos William’s “Paterson” and other poetry, impact of the   \\tmodernist tradition, natural speech, syntactic utterances, enjambment in the line, collage,      \\tAmerican Painting, The Opening of the Field, voice, Robert Creeley, form of content,      \\tincarnation of Christ,  Greek and French languages, Igor Stravinsky, Middle English]\\n07:46- Reads “The Law I Love is Major Mover” from The Opening of the Field [all poems to   follow are from this book]\\n10:44- Introduces “The Structure of Rime XIII”. [INDEX: Medieval Historian teaching at         \\tUniversity of California, World War refugee Professors migrating from Europe, Princeton         \\tInstitute for Advanced Learning, Medieval Law, discovery of laws, open construct poem,         \\tchronological time]\\n14:29- Reads “The Structure of Rime XIII”\\n16:59- Introduces “The Law”\\n17:35- Reads “The Law”\\n23:27- Introduces first line “John Adams Marginalia...” [INDEX: John Adams, Democracy, \\tThomas Jefferson, The 18th Century Confronts the Gods by Frank E. Manuel, Encyclopedia of Mythology]\\n25:32- Reads first line “John Adams Marginalia...”\\n25:53- Introduces “The Dance” and discusses his poetry [INDEX: The Opening of the Field,   \\tEzra Pound, phrases and lines, enjambments, disturb meaning of sentences, multi-phasic      \\tarea of meanings, Mr. Adamson [?], metaphysics of the post-Eliot period, rhythmic      \\tarticulations, dance]\\n29:27- Reads “The Dance” [recording is cut and then resumes at 31:33.90]\\n32:09- Introduces “A Song of the Old Order” [INDEX: Songs, process of writing songs, Faust Foutu An Entertainment in Four parts (play), Methodist Sunday School, Methodist   hymnal, Calvinist counter hymnal]\\n34:52- Sings “A Song of the Old Order”\\n38:05- Introduces “A Poem Beginning with the Line by Pindar”, outlines the rest of the       \\treading. [INDEX: Roots and Branches, Bending the Bow, new poems, Allen Ginsberg    \\t‘show’, San Francisco]\\n40:17- Reads “A Poem Beginning with the Line by Pindar”\\n54:15.78- END OF RECORDING\\n \\nI006-11-096.1=AC.2\\n \\n00:00- Robert Duncan introduces “Risk” [INDEX:Roots and Branches]\\n00:14- Reads first line “Risk”\\n05:06- Introduces “The Continent” [INDEX: poetry from contemporary science, Scientific     \\tAmerican magazine, continental drift, Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, neo-plates]\\n07:33- Reads “The Continent”\\n12:00- Introduces “Song”\\n12:49- Sings “Song”\\n15:22- Introduces series of poems [INDEX: “Epilogos”, Of the War: Passages 22-27,   \\tBending the Bow]\\n16:23- Reads “Transgressing the Real”\\n19:58- Reads “Epilogos”\\n26:41- Introduces “Achilles' Song” [INDEX: mispronunciation of Greek Island Leuke, H.D.   \\treading “Helen in Egypt”, Switzerland, German]\\n28:28- Reads “Achilles' Song”\\n31:00- Introduces poems read after the break\\n31:29- Introduces “Reflections” and talks about his poetry [INDEX: Rhyme, meter, ratios and    numbers, Louis Zukofsky, time and eternity, Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality, chronology, Of the War: Passages 22-27, “The Fire”, “Reflections”]\\n37:51- Reads “Reflections”\\n40:23.12- END OF RECORDING\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-duncan-at-sgwu-1970/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/robert_duncan_i006-11-096-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"robert_duncan_i006-11-096-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:40:06\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"96.3 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"robert_duncan_i006-11-096-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] \\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n00:00:00\\nReads [“The Fire, Passages 13 from Bending the Bow; recording begins abruptly].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:13:11\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n00:13:12\\n...beginning with a poem called \\\"Soldiers\\\", a poem in which, um, let's see, right, some lines of Victor Hugo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q535] enter, I decided I should, well, I guess, lets see, no I don't want to read too late, and soldiers is rather long again, so I want- certain themes that are moving in \\\"Soldiers\\\" will reappear. In \\\"Soldiers\\\", a recurring line was one from a poem of Victor Hugo's, \\\"Dieu dans [unintelligible] reve\\\", which is a line really quite in tune with my own poetics, \\\"God, oh creator the- or the creator for us too in oneself whose dream, whose work goes much further than our dreams\\\" and so it's combined with a scene that's Vietnam and it's combined in the Soldiers with the theme of the recognition that in some mystery of that work that goes further than our dreams the soldiers in Vietnam most of them, have just there, and they're 19 or 18 and so forth, they have only there in which to make their lives. And they have only there in which to, to take their souls in the war, as the followers of Orpheus take soul in the poem. The wood to take fire from that dirty flame. A recognition that that is their field in which they must reach life's epiphany and its thing. And the line of Victor Hugo carried me forward to and returned me to grand themes of Victor Hugo's but it also took me back to Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881] and I wanted to give, before I read \\\"The Kao Dai\\\" a little sketch of that. There's a theme of Victor Hugo, by the way, of the fall of Lucifer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q185498] in which, Lucifer's falling into his own denial of God and in falling he opens the univ- creation, and but in his falling a feather breaks loose from his wings and is floating mid-air, and the sight of God descending falls upon the feather and it becomes light and it turns into an angel and that angel is Liberty and that angel's entire message is to transform the rage and wrathful light that had fallen upon it into the reunion and resurrection of Satan, but of course both Satan and God must be called from their wrath, to reconciliation, so this angel, Liberty and Freedom is also the angel of reconciliation and Victor Hugo knew that also there must be some explanation for the fact that the desire and yearning for freedom and liberty has always been wrathful. Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] is puzzled by the same thing and I think that today, when all over the world, not only in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], but in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], and in China [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29520], and Yugoslavia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36704] and Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159] the wrath of Liberty is rising and it is the wrath of God against the civilization to its very roots which we know in our hearts are Godless. But that wrath must be reconciled, because it is itself that it's rising against and there's some mystery in this, so my poetry has begun to take up the figure of that angel and the angel comes into it. Now, in Vietnam, one of the strongest forces in the Viet Cong, not a communist group but a religious group, the Cao Dai [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q470364] and in order to read more in deeper into the Cao Dai, I wisely, I think, went back to sources to the early thirties before Vietnam was quite the cause it is today, and found this story and it came quite in line with my kooky family and my own poetry because it was at a medium's table in 1925 on Christmas Eve, when Christ descended and speaking in French, as I usually put it when I read my, something worse than American French, a French man would feel that that was blasphemy, but I'm after all repeating Christ's words in his own voice so that might be more serious yet that that voice was being attempted. Christ came into the medium and renounced in my birth day for the spirit is descending upon Vietnam and when we remember what happened to the very first generation of Christians who were burned in rows as torches, what the promise of Christ meant to his immediate blessing, the powers of martyrdom. The promise of Christ in 1925 was amply fulfilled to his new disciples. So amply, as a matter of fact, the Cao Dai had more than come to my mind, because the cathedral town of Cao Dai, which is [unintelligible] indeed exactly like a Catholic nunnery or convent, or a Buddhist nunnery or convent is Communist, is the province of Tay Ninh [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36608], and the Cathedral city of Tay Ninh, now it is been repeated over and over in American papers that when those planes were returning for missions in North Vietnam and hadn't dumped their missions, you're not supposed to return any bombs, you gotta dump them somewhere, so they'd dump them on Tay Ninh, you'd just go over the side and dump them on Tay Ninh, because this particular religious group was stubborn indeed in its inherences. Now, also interesting to me was this particular religious group had as its patron Saint Victor Hugo, and the first place that the French are, that the Vietnamese have French as their deepest religious and literary language and so Christ talked in French so Victor Hugo gave the whole line, it's Victor Hugo's Christ who talked to them at the medium tables in French, and they of course had their medium tables in the line of the tradition of Victor Hugo's own medium tables in the Isle of Jersey. So Victor Hugo becomes patron saint for these passages. In the passage, by the way, a passage called \\\"Orders\\\" and I will read a passage from it in which I am actually translating from Victor Hugo quite directly but it's a very long poem and keeping in tune with that master of the sublime is very difficult for us in the modern period. Here we are, the passage, wait a minute, it isn't in that poem, I always think it's in \\\"Orders\\\", but it's actually in place of a passage 22, that has the passage with Victor Hugo. I have been working on it for years, and it's mainly trying to keep in tune, I go over and over and over it again and then I find it very difficult to deal with 19th century poetry. But this is a passage straight translation, as literal as I could from Victor Hugo, but really, massive poem.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:21:11\\nReads \\\"The Soldiers\\\" [from Bending the Bow].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:22:14\\nCharming little poem called the \\\"Twentieth Century\\\", in case you want to know where we are.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:22:22\\nReads \\\"Twentieth Century\\\" [published as “The Light, Passages 28” in Bending the Bow].\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:30:27\\nI'll close with \\\"Stage Directions\\\".\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:30:32\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nRobert Duncan\\n00:30:33\\nReads [“Stage Directions, Passages 30” from Bending the Bow; begins mid-poem].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:37:53\\nApplause.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:38:12\\nI'll add one more poem which has not been read aloud except at home today, this is one--I hope I've got the right note--this is a \\\"Structure of Rime\\\" that was composed on April Fool's day but it doesn't mean it isn't serious, I mean April 1st.\\n \\nRobert Duncan\\n00:38:32\\nReads \\\"Structure of Rime\\\" [unnumbered].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:39:54\\nApplause.\\n \\nEND\\n00:40:06\\n\",\"notes\":\"Robert Duncan reads from The Opening of the Field (Grove Press, 1960), Roots and Branches (New Directions, 1964), and Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968).\\n\\n00:00- Recording starts mid-sentence, reading “The Fire”\\n13:12- Introduces “Soldiers” [INDEX: lines by Victor Hugo, Vietnam, Orpheus, “The Kao Dai”,        Lucifer, Satan and God, Liberty and Freedom, William Blake, Canada, U.S., China,     Yugoslavia, Russia, Viet Cong, Province of Tay Ninh, U.S. dumping bombs, Isle of Jersey, passage “Orders”]\\n21:11- Reads “Soldiers”\\n22:14- Introduces “Twentieth Century”\\n22:22- Reads “Twentieth Century”\\n30:27- Reads “Stage Directions”\\n38:12- Introduces “Structure of Rime”, first line “Away from the green fist of the sleeping     \\tchild”\\n38:32- Reads “Structure of Rime”, first line “Away from the green fist of the sleeping child”\\n40:06.70- END OF TRANSCRIPT\\n \\n1.  “The Law I Love” from the “Opening of the Seal”\\nPlease note that the Howard Fink list states the reading took place in “Spring 1970”, while the interview states another (perhaps separate) reading took place on April 19, 1969.\\n\\n2 reels: 30 min 3 3/4ips, 1/4” 5” reel\\n60 min 3 3/4 ips, 1/4” 7”reel\\nPopped strands in tape 1\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-duncan-at-sgwu-1970/#2\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1279","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":["Jerome Rothenberg at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 17 October 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JEROME ROTHENBERG Recorded October 16, 1969 3.75 ips, 1/2 track on 1 mil. tape 43 minutes\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"JEROME ROTHENBERG I006/SR95\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-095\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 4"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Rothenberg, Jerome"],"creator_names_search":["Rothenberg, Jerome"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109302361\",\"name\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome\",\"dates\":\"1931-\",\"notes\":\"American poet, teacher, translator, performance artist and editor Jerome Rothenberg was born in New York City in 1931. He received his B.A. in 1952 from the City College of New York and his M.A. in 1953 from the University of Michigan. Directly after graduation, Rothenberg enrolled in the military and served until 1955. He then worked on additional graduate work at Columbia University from 1956-1959. Rothenberg’s first collection of poetry, White Sun Black Sun (1960) was published through the small press Hawk’s Well Press, which he founded in 1958 to promote the works of young poets. He also edited the magazine Poems from a Floating World which ran from 1959-1964. At that time, Rothenberg began a long and influential career as a teacher of both Literature and Visual Arts; he worked at the City College of New York (1960-61), the Mannes College of Music (1961-1970), the University of California, San Diego (1971), and at the New School for Social Research (1971-72). Along with his poetry, Rothenberg translated the works of German postwar poets Paul Celan, Gunter Grass and Ingeborg Bachman; the translations influenced many of the poets of the Beat movement. Rothenberg then published his own poetry in The Seven Hells of the Jigoku Zoshi (Trobar, 1962), Sightings (Hawk’s Well, 1964), The Gorky Poems (El Corno Emplumado, 1966), Between: 1960-1963 (Fulcrum, 1967), Poland/1931, Part I (Unicorn Press, 1969), Poems for the Game of Silence (Dial, 1970), Seneca Journal, Midwinter (Singing Bone, 1975) and his popular anthology Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas (Doubleday, 1972). Rothenberg then taught at the University of Wisconsin (1974-77), the University of California, San Diego (1977-85), the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany in 1986 and at Binghamton from 1986-1988, and finally at the University of California, San Diego. More of his poetry collections include Narratives and Realtheater Pieces (Braad, 1978), Poems for the Society of the Mystic Animals (Tetrad, 1979), Abulafia’s Circles (Membrane, 1979), Vienna Blood (New Directions, 1983), Altar Piece (Station Hill, 1982), That Dada Strain (New Directions, 1983), Khurbn & Other Poems (New Directions, 1989), Lorca Variations (New Directions, 1993) which won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award in 1994, Seedings (New Directions, 1996) and A Paradise of Poets (New Directions, 1999). Rothenberg has won, among many other honors, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research grant in 1968, fellowships fro the Guggenheim Foundation in 1974 and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1976. His first collection of essays on poetics, Pre-Faces (New Directions, 1982) won the American Book Award that same year. Rothenberg continues to teach in the Visual Arts and Literature Departments, as a Professor Emeritus at the University of California at San Diego.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"performer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 10 17\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box.\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Jerome Rothenberg reads poems published later in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972) and from Poland/1931 (Unicorn Press, 1969)."],"contents":["jerome_rothenberg_i006-11-095.mp3\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nI'm glad we got this room. Welcome back to the first night of the fourth year of our series. And for those of you who are here for the first time, welcome you too. I'm really glad that we could start off with Jerome Rothenberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1775056], especially from my own personal viewpoint, because while Jerome Rothenberg is one of the names that I've paid a lot of attention to, and one of the names that poets have paid attention to over the last decade, this'll be the first time that I've been able to hear him read, too. Usually when, often when us people from the West think about the new American poetry, we tend to think of it in terms of people from outposts such as New Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1522], and Utah, [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q829] and San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], and so on. And we forget that New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] is one of the centre-place, central-places, so that it can produce poets such as Joel Oppenheimer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6213806] who will be here in the following spring, and Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388], who was here a couple of years ago. Jerome Rothenberg has always been the centre, in the centre of that scene, and not only as one of the principal poets, but as editor, and publisher, and so on and so forth, especially with a very important magazine of the 1960's called some--oblique thing [some/thing]. And he's especially interesting to me too because of the kind of work that produced a book such as Technicians of the Sacred, a compilation of the poetries from various oral traditions around the world, and a similar sort of impulse has always been at the centre of his work too. I'd also like to correct a mistake on the little printed page that wasn't really mine, that I picked up from somewhere else and couldn't quite believe myself, that said that Jerome Rothenberg was born in 1921. All I can say is that he was born sometime between the death of Lord Byron [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5679] and now. [Laughter]. But I'm pretty certain that he wasn't around in 1921. So I'd like you to give a welcome to Jerome Rothenberg.\n \nAudience\n00:02:53\nApplause.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:02:58\nThe birthdate'll come clearer in the second part of the reading. I'll read in two parts. And in the first set, what I'll be reading are translations and re-workings of American Indian poetry, which have been important to me over the last five or six years. And I'll start with some which are based on earlier translations, re-workings of material previously translated, and then as I get into it, some translations that result from direct contact and direct experience of American Indian poetry. This is an Aztec poem. The first four or five, six poems will be Aztec or Mexican in origin, and the theme will be flowers.  \"Offering Flowers\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:04:24\nReads \"Offering Flowers\" [from Technicians of the Sacred].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:07:37\nThis is Aztec, too, in origin, translated through the Spanish.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:07:52\nReads “A Song of Chalco” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:09:53\nAnd it doesn't die out, even with the destruction that follows, and flowers are picked up again, this in a series of translations, again through the Spanish, of a series of Peyote songs, from the Huichol Indians of central Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. The name Wirikuta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8026952] is the name given to the place of the gods, and the spiritual place of the Peyote. The Peyote is described as the rose, it's described as the corn, the maize, it's described under a number of images, and through the figure, the mythological figure of one called the Blue Stag. This is the first Huichol, Peyote song.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:10:46\nReads “First Peyote Song” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:11:46.19\n\"Song of an Initiate\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:11:51\nReads \"Song of an Initiate\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:12:25\nAnd this is a poem called \"How the Violin Was Born: A Peyote Account”.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:12:35\nReads \"How the Violin was Born: A Peyote Account” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:13:24\nThese are a few short Indian pieces. Not poems but part of what's connected with the whole activity of poetry, among the tribal peoples. Which is more than an activity of words; which goes beyond language. And these are the events that accompany the words. And the first is an Iroquois dream event. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:13:58\nReads [\"Dream Event 1\", published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:14:08\nThese are a series of vision events. The first two are Eskimo.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:14:14\nReads \"Vision Event I\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n\nJerome Rothenberg\n00:14:25\nReads \"Vision Event 2\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:14:39\nAnd this is a Sioux Indian vision event.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:14:43\nReads \"Vision Event 3\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:15:01\nThis is a Kwakiutl Indian gift event. All the words are from Kwakiut'l Indians. It's either spoken in English or translated into English. The Kwakiut'l, like other Northwest Coast people, celebrate the potlatch, you know, which is not always terrible or distasteful in its consequences. This is benevolent gift-giving. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:15:26\nReads \"Gift Event [2]\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:16:32\nThese are a series of seven Navajo animal songs. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:16:42\nReads \"Navajo Animal Songs\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:17:49\nThe next few are from a series of translations I've been doing, are called, well, it's the Seneca Indian word for one of their major curing ceremonies, a term for a major curing ceremony, \"Shaking the Pumpkin\", because the pumpkin rattle, the big pumpkin rattle is the major instrument used in this. Or it's got a more ornate name, it's called \"The Society of the Mystic Animals\". The man, Richard Johnny John, Indian, who is working with me on this, explained it's a serious ceremony, he said, but if everything's alright, the one who says the prayer tells them, I leave it up to you, folks, and if you want to have a good time, have a good time. Well everything's alright in the translations, you know, so one eases up there. The translations are done trying to follow everything in the Seneca, including the meaning of the sounds, the hey-ya and the way-oh-hey, that are very common in Indian poetry. Basically the way I do it is to present them visually on the page, and I can't do this in reading them, so I'm just going to select out of these poems that read easily. The purpose is curing, and well-being. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:19:34\nReads [\"Caw Caw the Crows Caw Caw\" published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:19:49\nReads \"Two more about a crow, in the manner of Zukofsky\" [later published in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:05\nThree poems about the owl, on the page, the vocables, the sounds, make the figure of an owl, even as in the singing of the song, the sound of the owl comes through. But here are just the words.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:19\nReads \"The Owl: One\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:25\nReads \"The Owl: Two\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:32\nReads \"The Owl: Three\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:40\n\"A Song of My Song, In Three Parts”.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:45\nReads \"A Song of My Song, In Three Parts\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:20:59\nReads “Three Ways to Screw Up on Your Way to the Doings” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:21:16\nBuckets are important, to bring back soup and...The last one from this series.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:21:31\nReads “Where the Song Went Where She Went & What Happened When they Met” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:22:15\nThe next are a little harder to do, but I hope I make it. The Senecas don't use many words. It's a kind of minimal poetry and the power is in the compression. The Navajos use more words, the poetry gets dense, and in addition they use many many non-verbal sounds. And in addition, they distort many of the words in the singing. So that if you translate just for the meaning, you're only getting a small part of what the Navajo is doing. And then in addition, everything is sung in the Navajo. So I began to translate a series called, because that's what they are, \"The Seventeen Horse Songs of Frank Mitchell\". Seventeen horse-blessing, horse-curing songs that were the property of a Navajo medicine man named Frank Mitchell. And the problem that came up for me, I couldn't translate just for meaning, I wanted to, you know, consider all of the factors that went into the poem. So I began to insert sounds corresponding to the sound of the English words as the Navajo had the meaning of the sounds, and to distort the words. And then it seemed to me that it was necessary to carry this further, to begin to sing the songs as well. Which came to me with great difficulty. But I've gotten through a number of them now, and what I'll do is sing one, the \"Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell,\" and then do a tape for three voices of another one of the horse songs. You'll notice the words are rather similar from one to another, the melody changes. In this, and the Navajos of course would know this, the hero, Enemy-Slayer, has gone to the house of his father, the sun up there, to bring back horses for the people. And in this Tenth Horse Song, it's mostly the father, the sun, speaking, telling him to bring the horses back to the house of his mother, you know, who everybody understands to be Changing Woman. Bring it back to the earth. And sometimes the voice of Enemy-Slayer comes into it.  But the basic refrain is to \"go to the woman, go to her.\" \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:25:24\nPerforms \"Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell\" [from The 17 Horse-Songs of Frank Mitchell]. \n \nAudience\n00:31:25\nApplause.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:31:38\nThe next one, and I guess the last piece in the first set, is the \"Twelfth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell\". The melody changes. Some of the distortions change. The burden changes, and now Enemy-Slayer contemplates the horses coming back to earth with him, in the same sequence. This is done on tape, with three voices. I think that's about all there is to say about it. Three voices.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:32:23\nPlays recording of \"Twelfth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell\", sung by three voices [from The 17 Horse-Songs of Frank Mitchell and published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nAudience\n00:39:42\nApplause.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:39:48\nIn fact, let me end this set with a live poem, I don't want to end with a machine. This is another Aztec poem called \"The Flight of Quetzalcoatl\". The plumed serpent, bird-snake man. In which he discovers that he's become old, and leaves and goes on a long journey, and is reborn as the morning star.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:40:39\nReads \"The Flight of Quetzalcoatl\" [later published in Shaking the Pumpkin].\n \nAudience\n00:47:17\nApplause. \n \nUnknown\n00:47:20\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:47:20\nOkay, we'll hold for about ten minutes, and open the doors and get cool, and then come back. \n \nUnknown\n00:47:27\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:47:28\nThe second set will be a straight reading, whatever that means, from a long series of poems called \"Poland/1931\". A series of ancestral poems. So Poland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36] is where the ancestors come from, for some number, hundreds of years. And that is Jewish Poland. And 1931, rather than 1921, is the year of my birth. And it's in a sense, though I don't keep to it too strictly, everything before that. To try to build up a world that I really don't know.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:48:29\nReads \"Poland/1931: The Wedding\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:50:46\nReads \"The King of the Jews\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:51:52\nThe next one's called \"The Key of Solomon\". It's the name of a medieval, a series of medieval magical books that were supposed to go back to the times of Solomon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37085]. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:57:07\nReads \"The Key of Solomon\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:53:42\n\"The Beadle's Testimony.\" Because beadles were a demon.\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:53:47\nReads \"The Beadle's Testimony\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:54:53\nTwo poems called \"Soap\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:54:57\nReads \"Soap \" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:55:56\nReads \"Soap II” [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:57:37\nReads \"The Rabbi's Testimony\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n00:59:08\nReads \"The Connoisseur of Jews\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:00:38\nReads \"The Beards\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:03:32\nReads \"The Mothers I\" [from Poland/1931]. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:04:08\nReads \"The Mothers II\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:04:43\nReads \"The Mothers III\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:05:19\nReads \"Milk & Honey I\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:06:00\nReads \"Milk & Honey II\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:06:31\nReads \"Ancestral Scenes\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:07:09\nReads \"The Fathers\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:09:10\nThis one is called \"Portrait of the Jew, Old Country Style\".\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:09:16\nReads \"Poland, 1931: Portrait of the Jew, Old Country Style\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:11:51\nThis is a longer one, called \"The Student's Testimony\"\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:12:04\nReads \"The Student's Testimony\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:17:49\nA somewhat shorter one, and then another long one, and then a quite short one and that's...that's it. \n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:17:58\nReads \"The Brothers\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:20:10\nReads \"The Steward's Testimony\" [from Poland/1931].\n\nAudience\n01:25:15\nLaughter and applause [faint].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:25:20\nNow, I'll end it with, I'll end it with two poems. \"A Poem for the Christians\". It's partly to...[Audience laughter]...it's a found poem from the prayer book. But you can see where there are changes, you know. [Audience laughter].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:25:42\nReads \"A Poem for the Christians\" [from Poland/1931].\n \nJerome Rothenberg\n01:26:45\nReads \"Fish and Paradise\".\n \nEND\n01:27:32\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nJerome Rothenberg published Poland/1931 (Unicorn Press, 1969) and The Directions (Tetrad Press, 1969) with Tom Phillips and was teaching at the Mannes College for Music.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nDirect connection to Sir George Williams University is unknown. Jerome Rothenberg was an influential member of contemporary American poetry, and had correspondences with other members of the poetry reading series, such as Robert Creeley, Paul Blackburn, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Kelly, Jackson Mac Low, bp Nichol, Gary Snyder and Diane Wakoski (please see Rothenberg’s papers for correspondences).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, introduction 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\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/954547274&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gilbert, Roger. \\\"Rothenberg, Jerome\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton. Oxford University Press, 1996.\"},{\"url\":\"https://visarts.ucsd.edu/people/emeriti-faculty/jerome-rothenberg.html?_ga=2.257346699.1600795371.1609275761-1945262426.1609275761\",\"citation\":\"“Jerome Rothenberg”. Faculty Description. University of California at San Diego. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/jerome-rothenberg-at-sgwu-1969/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series, First Reading”. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.oac.cdlib.org/data/13030/gk/tf0n39n7gk/files/tf0n39n7gk.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Register of the Jerome Rothenberg Papers, 1944-1985”. Online Archives of California.   University of California, San Diego.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/17-horse-songs-of-frank-mitchell-nos-x-xiii-total-translations-from-the-navaho-indian/oclc/976986882&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome. The 17 Horse-Songs of Frank Mitchell. London: Tetrad Press, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"http://d7.drunkenboat.com/db3/rothenberg/rothenberg.html\",\"citation\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome. “Pre-Face to a Symposium on Ethnopoetics (1975)”. Drunken Boat Online Journal of the Arts, Issue 3: Fall/Winter 2001-2002.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/shaking-the-pumpkin-traditional-poetry-of-the-indian-north-americas/oclc/1131195375&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome. Shaking the Pumpkin. New York: Doubleday, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/seneca-journal/oclc/898040552&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome. A Seneca Journal. New York: New Directions, 1971.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/technicians-of-the-sacred-a-range-of-poetries-from-africa-america-asia-europe-and-oceania/oclc/1005090292&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred. New York: Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poems-1964-1967/oclc/869018006&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rothenberg, Jerome. Poems 1964-1967. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Rothenberg, Jerome, 1931-”. Literature Online Biography. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 2000. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548893073408,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0095_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Jerome Rothenberg 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_0095_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0095_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Jerome Rothenberg 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_0095_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0095_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Jerome Rothenberg 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_0095_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0095_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Jerome Rothenberg 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/jerome_rothenberg_i006-11-095.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"jerome_rothenberg_i006-11-095.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:27:32\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"210.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"George Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nI'm glad we got this room. Welcome back to the first night of the fourth year of our series. And for those of you who are here for the first time, welcome you too. I'm really glad that we could start off with Jerome Rothenberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1775056], especially from my own personal viewpoint, because while Jerome Rothenberg is one of the names that I've paid a lot of attention to, and one of the names that poets have paid attention to over the last decade, this'll be the first time that I've been able to hear him read, too. Usually when, often when us people from the West think about the new American poetry, we tend to think of it in terms of people from outposts such as New Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1522], and Utah, [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q829] and San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], and so on. And we forget that New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] is one of the centre-place, central-places, so that it can produce poets such as Joel Oppenheimer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6213806] who will be here in the following spring, and Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388], who was here a couple of years ago. Jerome Rothenberg has always been the centre, in the centre of that scene, and not only as one of the principal poets, but as editor, and publisher, and so on and so forth, especially with a very important magazine of the 1960's called some--oblique thing [some/thing]. And he's especially interesting to me too because of the kind of work that produced a book such as Technicians of the Sacred, a compilation of the poetries from various oral traditions around the world, and a similar sort of impulse has always been at the centre of his work too. I'd also like to correct a mistake on the little printed page that wasn't really mine, that I picked up from somewhere else and couldn't quite believe myself, that said that Jerome Rothenberg was born in 1921. All I can say is that he was born sometime between the death of Lord Byron [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5679] and now. [Laughter]. But I'm pretty certain that he wasn't around in 1921. So I'd like you to give a welcome to Jerome Rothenberg.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:53\\nApplause.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:02:58\\nThe birthdate'll come clearer in the second part of the reading. I'll read in two parts. And in the first set, what I'll be reading are translations and re-workings of American Indian poetry, which have been important to me over the last five or six years. And I'll start with some which are based on earlier translations, re-workings of material previously translated, and then as I get into it, some translations that result from direct contact and direct experience of American Indian poetry. This is an Aztec poem. The first four or five, six poems will be Aztec or Mexican in origin, and the theme will be flowers.  \\\"Offering Flowers\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:04:24\\nReads \\\"Offering Flowers\\\" [from Technicians of the Sacred].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:07:37\\nThis is Aztec, too, in origin, translated through the Spanish.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:07:52\\nReads “A Song of Chalco” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:09:53\\nAnd it doesn't die out, even with the destruction that follows, and flowers are picked up again, this in a series of translations, again through the Spanish, of a series of Peyote songs, from the Huichol Indians of central Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. The name Wirikuta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8026952] is the name given to the place of the gods, and the spiritual place of the Peyote. The Peyote is described as the rose, it's described as the corn, the maize, it's described under a number of images, and through the figure, the mythological figure of one called the Blue Stag. This is the first Huichol, Peyote song.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:10:46\\nReads “First Peyote Song” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:11:46.19\\n\\\"Song of an Initiate\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:11:51\\nReads \\\"Song of an Initiate\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:12:25\\nAnd this is a poem called \\\"How the Violin Was Born: A Peyote Account”.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:12:35\\nReads \\\"How the Violin was Born: A Peyote Account” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:13:24\\nThese are a few short Indian pieces. Not poems but part of what's connected with the whole activity of poetry, among the tribal peoples. Which is more than an activity of words; which goes beyond language. And these are the events that accompany the words. And the first is an Iroquois dream event. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:13:58\\nReads [\\\"Dream Event 1\\\", published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:14:08\\nThese are a series of vision events. The first two are Eskimo.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:14:14\\nReads \\\"Vision Event I\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n\\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:14:25\\nReads \\\"Vision Event 2\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:14:39\\nAnd this is a Sioux Indian vision event.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:14:43\\nReads \\\"Vision Event 3\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:15:01\\nThis is a Kwakiutl Indian gift event. All the words are from Kwakiut'l Indians. It's either spoken in English or translated into English. The Kwakiut'l, like other Northwest Coast people, celebrate the potlatch, you know, which is not always terrible or distasteful in its consequences. This is benevolent gift-giving. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:15:26\\nReads \\\"Gift Event [2]\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:16:32\\nThese are a series of seven Navajo animal songs. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:16:42\\nReads \\\"Navajo Animal Songs\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:17:49\\nThe next few are from a series of translations I've been doing, are called, well, it's the Seneca Indian word for one of their major curing ceremonies, a term for a major curing ceremony, \\\"Shaking the Pumpkin\\\", because the pumpkin rattle, the big pumpkin rattle is the major instrument used in this. Or it's got a more ornate name, it's called \\\"The Society of the Mystic Animals\\\". The man, Richard Johnny John, Indian, who is working with me on this, explained it's a serious ceremony, he said, but if everything's alright, the one who says the prayer tells them, I leave it up to you, folks, and if you want to have a good time, have a good time. Well everything's alright in the translations, you know, so one eases up there. The translations are done trying to follow everything in the Seneca, including the meaning of the sounds, the hey-ya and the way-oh-hey, that are very common in Indian poetry. Basically the way I do it is to present them visually on the page, and I can't do this in reading them, so I'm just going to select out of these poems that read easily. The purpose is curing, and well-being. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:19:34\\nReads [\\\"Caw Caw the Crows Caw Caw\\\" published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:19:49\\nReads \\\"Two more about a crow, in the manner of Zukofsky\\\" [later published in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:05\\nThree poems about the owl, on the page, the vocables, the sounds, make the figure of an owl, even as in the singing of the song, the sound of the owl comes through. But here are just the words.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:19\\nReads \\\"The Owl: One\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:25\\nReads \\\"The Owl: Two\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:32\\nReads \\\"The Owl: Three\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:40\\n\\\"A Song of My Song, In Three Parts”.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:45\\nReads \\\"A Song of My Song, In Three Parts\\\" [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:20:59\\nReads “Three Ways to Screw Up on Your Way to the Doings” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:21:16\\nBuckets are important, to bring back soup and...The last one from this series.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:21:31\\nReads “Where the Song Went Where She Went & What Happened When they Met” [published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:22:15\\nThe next are a little harder to do, but I hope I make it. The Senecas don't use many words. It's a kind of minimal poetry and the power is in the compression. The Navajos use more words, the poetry gets dense, and in addition they use many many non-verbal sounds. And in addition, they distort many of the words in the singing. So that if you translate just for the meaning, you're only getting a small part of what the Navajo is doing. And then in addition, everything is sung in the Navajo. So I began to translate a series called, because that's what they are, \\\"The Seventeen Horse Songs of Frank Mitchell\\\". Seventeen horse-blessing, horse-curing songs that were the property of a Navajo medicine man named Frank Mitchell. And the problem that came up for me, I couldn't translate just for meaning, I wanted to, you know, consider all of the factors that went into the poem. So I began to insert sounds corresponding to the sound of the English words as the Navajo had the meaning of the sounds, and to distort the words. And then it seemed to me that it was necessary to carry this further, to begin to sing the songs as well. Which came to me with great difficulty. But I've gotten through a number of them now, and what I'll do is sing one, the \\\"Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell,\\\" and then do a tape for three voices of another one of the horse songs. You'll notice the words are rather similar from one to another, the melody changes. In this, and the Navajos of course would know this, the hero, Enemy-Slayer, has gone to the house of his father, the sun up there, to bring back horses for the people. And in this Tenth Horse Song, it's mostly the father, the sun, speaking, telling him to bring the horses back to the house of his mother, you know, who everybody understands to be Changing Woman. Bring it back to the earth. And sometimes the voice of Enemy-Slayer comes into it.  But the basic refrain is to \\\"go to the woman, go to her.\\\" \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:25:24\\nPerforms \\\"Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell\\\" [from The 17 Horse-Songs of Frank Mitchell]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:31:25\\nApplause.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:31:38\\nThe next one, and I guess the last piece in the first set, is the \\\"Twelfth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell\\\". The melody changes. Some of the distortions change. The burden changes, and now Enemy-Slayer contemplates the horses coming back to earth with him, in the same sequence. This is done on tape, with three voices. I think that's about all there is to say about it. Three voices.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:32:23\\nPlays recording of \\\"Twelfth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell\\\", sung by three voices [from The 17 Horse-Songs of Frank Mitchell and published later in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:39:42\\nApplause.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:39:48\\nIn fact, let me end this set with a live poem, I don't want to end with a machine. This is another Aztec poem called \\\"The Flight of Quetzalcoatl\\\". The plumed serpent, bird-snake man. In which he discovers that he's become old, and leaves and goes on a long journey, and is reborn as the morning star.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:40:39\\nReads \\\"The Flight of Quetzalcoatl\\\" [later published in Shaking the Pumpkin].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:47:17\\nApplause. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:47:20\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:47:20\\nOkay, we'll hold for about ten minutes, and open the doors and get cool, and then come back. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:47:27\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:47:28\\nThe second set will be a straight reading, whatever that means, from a long series of poems called \\\"Poland/1931\\\". A series of ancestral poems. So Poland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36] is where the ancestors come from, for some number, hundreds of years. And that is Jewish Poland. And 1931, rather than 1921, is the year of my birth. And it's in a sense, though I don't keep to it too strictly, everything before that. To try to build up a world that I really don't know.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:48:29\\nReads \\\"Poland/1931: The Wedding\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:50:46\\nReads \\\"The King of the Jews\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:51:52\\nThe next one's called \\\"The Key of Solomon\\\". It's the name of a medieval, a series of medieval magical books that were supposed to go back to the times of Solomon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37085]. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:57:07\\nReads \\\"The Key of Solomon\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:53:42\\n\\\"The Beadle's Testimony.\\\" Because beadles were a demon.\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:53:47\\nReads \\\"The Beadle's Testimony\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:54:53\\nTwo poems called \\\"Soap\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:54:57\\nReads \\\"Soap \\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:55:56\\nReads \\\"Soap II” [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:57:37\\nReads \\\"The Rabbi's Testimony\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n00:59:08\\nReads \\\"The Connoisseur of Jews\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:00:38\\nReads \\\"The Beards\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:03:32\\nReads \\\"The Mothers I\\\" [from Poland/1931]. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:04:08\\nReads \\\"The Mothers II\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:04:43\\nReads \\\"The Mothers III\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:05:19\\nReads \\\"Milk & Honey I\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:06:00\\nReads \\\"Milk & Honey II\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:06:31\\nReads \\\"Ancestral Scenes\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:07:09\\nReads \\\"The Fathers\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:09:10\\nThis one is called \\\"Portrait of the Jew, Old Country Style\\\".\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:09:16\\nReads \\\"Poland, 1931: Portrait of the Jew, Old Country Style\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:11:51\\nThis is a longer one, called \\\"The Student's Testimony\\\"\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:12:04\\nReads \\\"The Student's Testimony\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:17:49\\nA somewhat shorter one, and then another long one, and then a quite short one and that's...that's it. \\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:17:58\\nReads \\\"The Brothers\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:20:10\\nReads \\\"The Steward's Testimony\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:25:15\\nLaughter and applause [faint].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:25:20\\nNow, I'll end it with, I'll end it with two poems. \\\"A Poem for the Christians\\\". It's partly to...[Audience laughter]...it's a found poem from the prayer book. But you can see where there are changes, you know. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:25:42\\nReads \\\"A Poem for the Christians\\\" [from Poland/1931].\\n \\nJerome Rothenberg\\n01:26:45\\nReads \\\"Fish and Paradise\\\".\\n \\nEND\\n01:27:32\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Jerome Rothenberg reads poems published later in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972) and from Poland/1931 (Unicorn Press, 1969).\\n\\nRachel has indexed poems.\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces Jerome Rothenberg. [INDEX: room, first night of fourth year of the series, poets, West, New American Poetry, New Mexico, Utah, San Francisco, New York City, Joel Oppenheimer, Paul Blackburn, editor, publisher, Some CH Oblique Thing [unknown 1960’s magazine], Technicians of the Sacred, oral traditions worldwide, pamphlet mistake: Rothenberg not born in 1921, Lord Byron.]\\n02:58- Jerome Rothenberg introduces reading and “Offering Flowers”. [INDEX: birthdate, two-part reading, translations or re-workings of American Indian poetry, direct contact, direct experience with American Indians, Aztec poem, Mexican, theme of flowers; unknown source.]\\n04:24- Reads “Offering Flowers”. [INDEX: translation, Aztec, Mexico, flower, feast, offering, morning, temple, spiritual, god, dance, repetition, anaphora, food, drink, word]\\n07:37- Introduces “A Song of Chalco”. [INDEX: Aztec in origin, translated to Spanish; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n07:52- Reads “A Song of Chalco”. [INDEX: rose, fire, god, house, bird, thrush,   song, poet, forest, flower, dance, lust, father, prince, joy, son, body, river.]\\n09:53- Introduces first line “First Peyote Song”. [INDEX: die out, destruction, flowers, translations, Spanish, Peyote songs, Huichol Indians of central Mexico, Wiricota, gods,        spiritual place of the Peyote, rose, the corn, the maize, images, mythological figure called Blue Stag, Huichol; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n10:46- Reads first line “First Peyote Song” . [INDEX: rose, birth, flower, wind, eternal, god, mountain, mother, house, heart, Peyote, Blue Stag, rain, maize, earth, Aztec, Mexico, song.]\\n11:46- Reads “Song of an Initiate”. [INDEX: rose, song, god, stair, sky, silence; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n12:25- Introduces “How the Violin Was Born: A Peyote Account”. [INDEX: peyote account; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n12:35- Reads “How the Violin Was Born”. [INDEX: music, violin, wood, cedar, stone, tree, heart, soul, Big Stag, bird, song, wind.]\\n13:24- Introduces “Dream Event I”. [INDEX: Indian pieces, whole activity of poetry, tribal peoples, activity of words, beyond language, events that accompany words, Iroquois dream-event; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n13:58- Reads “Dream Event I\\\". [INDEX: aboriginal, dream, community,         \\tinterpretation, theatre.]\\n14:08- Introduces “Vision Event I”. [INDEX: ‘Eskimo’; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n14:14- Reads “Vision Event I”. [INDEX: aboriginal, Eskimo, solitude, stone, circle, place, time, ritual.]\\n14:25- Reads “Vision Event II”. [INDEX: aboriginal, Eskimo, vision, hanging, sight; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n14:39- Introduces “Vision Event III”. [INDEX: Sioux Indian.]\\n14:43- Reads “Vision Event III”. [INDEX: American Indian, aboriginal, vision, crying, sight; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n15:01- Introduces “Gift Event” [INDEX: Kwakiut’l Indian gift event, English, translation,        Northwest Coast people, celebrate the potlatch, consequences, benevolent; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n15:26- Reads “Gift Event”. [INDEX: Kwakiut'l, giving, gift, potlatch, Northwest, coast, aboriginal, animal, ritual, house, sound, value, name.]\\n16:32- Introduces “Seven Navajo Animal Songs”.\\n16:42- Reads “Seven Navajo Animal Songs”. [INDEX: animal, chipmunk, action, movement, mole, sex, wildcat, water, turkey, madness, scatological, pinion jay, bird; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n17:49- Introduces “Caw Caw the Crows Caw”. [INDEX: Seneca Indian word, curing ceremony “Shaking the pumpkin”, instrument, “The Society of the Mystic Animals”, Richard Johnny-John Indian, serious ceremony, prayer, translations, meanings of sounds, Indian poetry, visual presentation of sound, curing, well-being; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n19:34- Reads “Caw Caw the Crows Caw”.  [INDEX: Seneca, aboriginal, crow, movement; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n19:49- Reads  “Two more about a crow, in the manner of Zukofsky...”.  [INDEX: Louis Zukofsky, sound, Seneca, aboriginal later published in Shaking the Pumpkin      (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n20:05- Introduces “The Owl: One”. [INDEX: page, vocables, sounds, figure, singing of song, \\tsound of the owl.]\\n20:19- Reads “The Owl: One”. [INDEX: Seneca, aboriginal, owl, home, tree, hemlock]\\n20:25- Reads “The Owl: Two”.  [INDEX: Seneca, aboriginal, cure, sickness, poison, owl]\\n20:32- Reads “The Owl: Three”. [INDEX: Seneca, aboriginal, owl, tree, sound, whistle.]\\n20:40- Reads “A Song of My Song”. [INDEX: three parts, song, distance, circle, room,   proximity, sound; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n20:59- Reads “Three Ways to Screw Up on Your Way to the Doings”. [INDEX: later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972)\\n21:16- Introduces “Where the Song Went Where She Went & What Happened When they Met”. [INDEX: buckets, soup, last of series; later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n21:31- Reads “Where the Song Went Where She Went & What Happened When they Met”\\n22:15- Introduces “Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell”. [INDEX: Senecas, words, minimal poetry, power in compression, Navajo poetry, non-verbal sounds, distort words when sung, translation, meaning, series, horse-blessing, horse-curing songs, Navajo medicine man Frank Mitchell, problem translating, insert sounds, English, sing, tape of three voices of horse song, melody, hero, Enemy-Slayer, father’s house, sun, people, mother, Changing Woman, earth, refrain “go to the woman, go to her”.]\\n25:24- Reads/Sings “Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell”.\\n31:38- Introduces “Twelfth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell”. [INDEX: melody change, distortions change, burden changes, Enemy-Slayer, horses, earth, sequence, three voices, later published in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n32:23- Plays recording of “Twelfth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell”.\\n39:48- Introduces “The Flight of the Quetzalcoatl”. [INDEX: live poem, machine, Aztec poem, plumed serpent, bird-snake-man, old, long journey, morning star; published later in Shaking the Pumpkin (Doubleday, 1972).]\\n40:39- Reads “The Flight of the Quetzalcoatl”.\\n47:20- George Bowering introduces break.\\n47:27.02- END OF RECORDING.\\n\\n00:00- Jerome Rothenberg introduces long poem “Poland 1931”. [INDEX: long poem, ancestral poems, Jewish Poland, year of Rothenberg’s birth, world unknown.]\\n01:02- Reads “Poland, 1931: The Wedding”.\\n03:19- Reads “Poland, 1931: The King of Jews”.\\n04:25- Introduces “Poland, 1931: The Key of Solomon”. [INDEX: medieval magical books.]\\n04:40- Reads “Poland, 1931: The Key of Solomon”.\\n06:15- Introduces “Poland, 1931: The Beetle’s Testimony”. [INDEX: beetles, demon.]\\n06:20- Reads “Poland, 1931: The Beetle’s Testimony”.\\n07:26- Introduces “Poland, 1931: Soap”. [INDEX: two poems called “Soap”.]\\n07:30- Reads “Poland, 1931: Soap I”.\\n08:29- Reads “Poland, 1931: Soap II”.\\n10:10- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Rabbi's Testimony\\\"\\n11:41- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Connoisseur of Jews\\\"\\n13:11- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Beards\\\"\\n16:05- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Mothers I\\\"  \\n16:41- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Mothers II\\\"\\n17:16- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Mothers III\\\"\\n17:52- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: Milk and Honey I\\\"\\n18:33- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: Milk and Honey II\\\"\\n19:04- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: Ancestral Scenes\\\"\\n19:42- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Fathers\\\"\\n21:43- Introduces \\\"Poland, 1931: Portrait of the Jew, Old Country Style\\\"\\n21:49- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: Portrait of the Jew, Old Country Style\\\"\\n24:24- Introduces \\\"Poland, 1931: The Student's Testimony\\\"\\n24:37- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Student's Testimony\\\"\\n30:31- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Brothers\\\"\\n32:43- Reads \\\"Poland, 1931: The Steward's Testimony\\\"\\n37:53- Introduces “A Poem for the Christians”. [INDEX: found poem in prayer book.]\\n38:15- Reads \\\"A Poem for the Christians\\\"\\n39:18- Reads \\\"Fish and Paradise\\\"\\n00:40:05.58- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/jerome-rothenberg-at-sgwu-1969/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1280","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":["bill bissett at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 31 October 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"BILL BISSETT Recorded October 31, 1969 3.75 ips, on 1 mil. tape, 1/2 track\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"BILL BISSETT I006/SR83\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-083\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 4"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Bissett, Bill"],"creator_names_search":["Bissett, Bill"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/96127023\",\"name\":\"Bissett, Bill\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"Poet, artist, painter and editor bill bissett was born in Halifax in 1939, but was most actively associated with the Vancouver poetry renaissance of the 60s. He has often been associated with bpNichol as a founder of the concrete poetry movement and a sound poetry practitioner. bissett has published dozens of collections of poems over thirty years, many of them self-published with his own art on the cover. A selection of his titles include we sleep inside each other all published in 1966 by Island press, which was followed by awake in the red desert (TalonBooks, 1968), selected poems: nobody owns th earth (House of Anansi Press, 1971), pomes for yoshi (blewointmentpress,1972), Medicine my mouths on fire (Oberon Press, 1974), Sailor (TalonBooks, 1978), Seagull on Yonge Street (TalonBooks, 1983), Canada gees mate for life (TalonBooks, 1985), Animal uproar (TalonBooks, 1987), Hard 2 beleev (TalonBooks, 1990), Th last photo uv th human soul (TalonBooks, 1993), Th influenza uv logik (TalonBooks, 1995). bissett founded Vancouver’s blewointmentpress in 1963. His poetry and alternative lifestyle often caused bissett to have legal problems, which rallied support from his community. what we have (TalonBooks, 1988) won the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award in 1989, and much of his art and activism privileges the democracy of poetry. He is most famous for his poetry readings, as his printed text lifts off the page through chanting, visual and sound poetry techniques. bissett currently lives in London, Ontario.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 10 31\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box.\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Possibly, Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in previous written announcement \\\"Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series,\\\" but not confirmed\",\"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":["Possibly, Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["bill bissett reads and performs poems from Awake in th red desert! (1968),\nOf Th Land Divine Service (Weed/Flower Press, 1968), lost angel mining company (Blew Ointment Press, 1969), Liberating Skies (1969), and Nobody Owns th Earth (House of Anansi Press, 1971), some of which were later collected in Selected Poems: Beyond Even Faithful Legends (Talonbooks, 1980)."],"contents":["bill_bisset_i006-11-083.mp3\n\nbill bissett\n00:00:00\nReads “3. i have evn herd uv thee” [from Of Th Land Divine Service]. \n\nbill bissett\n00:01:12\nPerforms “4” [from Of Th Land Divine Service]. \n\nbill bissett\n00:04:44\nReads \"The molecular robbery\" [from lost angel mining company]. \n\nbill bissett\n00:11:09\nReads unnamed poem.\n\nbill bissett\n00:13:40\nReads \"Killer Whale\" [from lost angel mining company].\n\nbill bissett\n00:18:04\nPerforms “5. And that light is in thee is in thee and” [from Of Th Land Divine Service].\n\nbill bissett\n00:19:20\nPerforms “6. And in all things did even as Adam had done” [from Of Th Land Divine Service].\n\nbill bissett\n00:20:48\nPerforms “and the green wind is mooving thru th summr trees” [from awake in th red desert]. \n\nbill bissett\n00:22:54\nReads “Circles in th Sun” [from lost angel mining company].\n\nbill bissett\n00:24:13\nPerforms “Walrus Song” [from lost angel mining company].\n\nbill bissett\n00:33:09\nReads unnamed poem [from lost angel mining company].\n\nbill bissett\n00:37:14\nReads [“the flaming end: 8 beautiful people on a bus”].\n\nUnknown\n00:47:44\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nbill bissett\n00:47:44\nResumes reading [possibly still “the flaming end: 8 beautiful people on a bus”].\n\nbill bissett\n00:50:25\nReads unnamed poem.\n\nbill bissett\n00:51:09\nReads [\"Another 100 warrants issued\" from Nobody Owns th Earth].\n\nbill bissett\n00:53:36\nPerforms \"th water falls in yr mind nd yu get wet tooo\" [from liberating skies].\n\nbill bissett\n00:58:25\nPerforms unnamed poem.\n\nbill bissett\n01:02:02\nReads unnamed poem.\n\nbill bissett\n01:02:32\nPerforms “tarzan collage” [from drifting into war]. \n\nAudience\n01:04:37\nApplause.\n\nbill bissett\n01:05:08\nJust as you leave I'll just do this little thing, just keep going though.  \n\nbill bissett\n01:05:11\nPerforms unnamed poem.\n\nbill bissett\n01:06:18\nPerforms [“moss song” from Of Th Land Divine Service].\n\nEND\n01:14:13\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1969, bissett published Liberating Skies (Blewointment Press), Lost Angel Mining Company (Blewointment Press), and Sunday Work? (Blewointment Press). He was working on S the Story I to (Blewointment Press, 1970), Blew Trewz, Nobody Owns th Earth both published by Blewointment Press in 1971, along with Dragonfly (Weed/Flower Press, 1971), Drifting into War (Talonbooks, 1971), I.B.M. (Blewointment Press, 1971), Tuff Shit: Love Pomes (Bandit/Black Moss Press, 1971), and Rush (Blewointmeint Press, 1971).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:  \\n\\nbissett’s blewointment press and its magazine has published (then) up-and-coming Vancouver poets Gerry Gilbert and Maxine Gadd. His own work was first published by Eli Mandel, and anthologized by Margaret Atwood and Dennis Lee. Though his poetry was radical and a rejection of conventional styles, bissett has become an important figure in Canada’s literary history. He was also connected to George Bowering from Sir George Williams University through the Vancouver poetry scene in the early 1960’s.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) and Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/liberating-skies/oclc/1053976136?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill. Liberating skies. Vancouver: Blew Ointment Press, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-beyond-even-faithful-legends/oclc/7717248&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill. Selected Poems: Beyond Even Faithful Legends. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1980. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lost-angel-mining-company/oclc/7247222&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill. lost angel mining company. Vancouver: Blew Ointment Press, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/nobody-owns-th-sic-earth/oclc/490387389&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill. Nobody Owns th Earth. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/of-th-sic-land-divine-service-poems/oclc/25235&referer=brief_results>\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill. Of Th Land Divine Service. Toronto: Weed/Flower Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/829314798&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"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. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960, Our Nature-Our Voices II. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canda-1960-1970/oclc/644860849?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1972.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/865265719&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stephen Scobie \\\"Bissett, Bill\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition. Eugene Benson and William Toye. Oxford University Press, 2006.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/awake-in-the-red-desert/oclc/1019165132&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill. Awake in th[e] red desert! Vancouver: Talon Books, 1968. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548895170560,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I006_11_0083_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I006_11_0083_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"bill bissett 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/I006_11_0083_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I006_11_0083_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"bill bissett 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/I006_11_0083_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I006_11_0083_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"bill bissett 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/I006_11_0083_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I006_11_0083_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"bill bissett 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/bill_bisset_i006-11-083.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"bill_bisset_i006-11-083.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:14:13\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"178.1MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"bill bissett\\n00:00:00\\nReads “3. i have evn herd uv thee” [from Of Th Land Divine Service]. \\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:01:12\\nPerforms “4” [from Of Th Land Divine Service]. \\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:04:44\\nReads \\\"The molecular robbery\\\" [from lost angel mining company]. \\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:11:09\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:13:40\\nReads \\\"Killer Whale\\\" [from lost angel mining company].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:18:04\\nPerforms “5. And that light is in thee is in thee and” [from Of Th Land Divine Service].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:19:20\\nPerforms “6. And in all things did even as Adam had done” [from Of Th Land Divine Service].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:20:48\\nPerforms “and the green wind is mooving thru th summr trees” [from awake in th red desert]. \\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:22:54\\nReads “Circles in th Sun” [from lost angel mining company].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:24:13\\nPerforms “Walrus Song” [from lost angel mining company].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:33:09\\nReads unnamed poem [from lost angel mining company].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:37:14\\nReads [“the flaming end: 8 beautiful people on a bus”].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:47:44\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:47:44\\nResumes reading [possibly still “the flaming end: 8 beautiful people on a bus”].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:50:25\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:51:09\\nReads [\\\"Another 100 warrants issued\\\" from Nobody Owns th Earth].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:53:36\\nPerforms \\\"th water falls in yr mind nd yu get wet tooo\\\" [from liberating skies].\\n\\nbill bissett\\n00:58:25\\nPerforms unnamed poem.\\n\\nbill bissett\\n01:02:02\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n\\nbill bissett\\n01:02:32\\nPerforms “tarzan collage” [from drifting into war]. \\n\\nAudience\\n01:04:37\\nApplause.\\n\\nbill bissett\\n01:05:08\\nJust as you leave I'll just do this little thing, just keep going though.  \\n\\nbill bissett\\n01:05:11\\nPerforms unnamed poem.\\n\\nbill bissett\\n01:06:18\\nPerforms [“moss song” from Of Th Land Divine Service].\\n\\nEND\\n01:14:13\\n\",\"notes\":\"bill bissett reads and performs poems from Awake in th red desert! (1968),\\nOf Th Land Divine Service (Weed/Flower Press, 1968), lost angel mining company (Blew Ointment Press, 1969), Liberating Skies (1969), and Nobody Owns th Earth (House of Anansi Press, 1971), some of which were later collected in Selected Poems: Beyond Even Faithful Legends (Talonbooks, 1980).\\n\\nTRANSCRIPTION NOTES: Initially transcribed as two separate parts; this digital file combines two recordings. Timestamps reflect the single recording. \\n\\nList of Poems Read and Time Stamps [Part 1]\\n00:00 - Recording starts mid-sentence, reading “3. i have evn herd uv thee” [INDEX: from OF TH LAND DIVINE SERVICE,  line “...I had even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee...”]\\n01:12 - Reads “4” [INDEX: from OF TH LAND DIVINE SERVICE, first line “a chain of gold which art of the children...”.]\\n04:44 - Reads “The molecular robbery” [INDEX: from lost angel mining company]\\n11:09 - Reads first line “Sung to the tune of Michael rowed his boat ashore...”\\n13:40 - Reads “Killer Whale”\\n18:04 - Reads “5. And that light is in thee is in thee and” [INDEX: from OF TH LAND DIVINE SERVICE.]\\n19:20 - Reads “6. And in all things did even as Adam had done” [INDEX: from OF TH LAND DIVINE SERVICE.]\\n20:48 - Reads “and the green wind is mooving thru th summr trees” [INDEX: from lost angel mining company and from OF TH LAND DIVINE SERVICE.]\\n22:36 - Reads “Circles in th Sun” [INDEX: from lost angel mining company, first line “In the mushroom village, all the little children, brightly smiling...”]\\n24:13 - Reads “Walrus Song” [INDEX: from lost angel mining company, first line “Drink all the lime you can...”.]\\n33:09 - Reads first line “So that even yourself becomes a serene stranger...”\\n37:14.17 - END OF RECORDING\\n\\nList of Poems Read and Time Stamps [Part 2]\\n00:00 - Reads first line “The flaming end, eight beautiful people on a bus...”\\n10:30 - [CUT] continues reading “...absolutely nothing there but to do with living...”\\n13:11 - Reads first line “Could we grow [inaudible] in the bomb shelter?...”\\n13:55 - Reads “Another 100 warrants issued” from NOBODY OWNS TH EARTH\\n16:21 - Reads first line “The water falls in your mind and you get wet too...”\\n21:11 - Reads  first line “The moon is [inaudible] she screamed, listen closely she said...”\\n24:48 - Reads first line “Sparrows dream of the endless sun...”\\n25:17- Reads “tarzan collage” from drifting into war, first line “Speaking, speaking, speaking, the I is speaking...”\\n27:48 - Reads first line “Bright, yellow, sky...”\\n29:04 - Reads “moss song” from OF TH LAND DIVINE SERVICE , first line “See the berries ripen in the trees...”\\n36:59 - END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/bill-bissett-at-sgwu-1969/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1281","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":["Allen Ginsberg at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 7 November 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"ALAN GINSBERG -1 Recorded November 7, 1969 3.75 ips on 1 mil. tape, 1/2 track\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. ALAN GINSBERG refers to Allen Ginsberg. ALAN is mispelled. \"PERMISSION FROM HOWARD FINK TO REPRODUCE THIS TAPE\" also written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"ALAN GINSBERG-1 I006/SR33.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-033.1\" written on sticker on the reel.\n\n\"ALAN GINSBERG -2 Recorded November 7, 1969 3.75 ips on 1 mil. tape, 1/2 track\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. ALAN GINSBERG refers to Allen Ginsberg. ALAN is mispelled. \"PERMISSION FROM HOWARD FINK TO REPRODUCE THIS TAPE\" also written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"ALAN GINSBERG-1 I006/SR33.2\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"ALAN GINSBERG-1 I006-11-033.2\" written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 4"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-033.1, I006-11-033.2]"],"creator_names":["Ginsberg, Irwin Allen"],"creator_names_search":["Ginsberg, Irwin Allen"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/108417923\",\"name\":\"Ginsberg, Irwin Allen\",\"dates\":\"1926-1997 \",\"notes\":\"Poet, revolutionary, and Beat generation icon Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926 in Paterson, New Jersey, to Naomi, a radical communist, and Louis Ginsberg, teacher and lyric poet. In his early life, Ginsberg’s mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, a condition that would forever shape her son’s life. After graduation from high school, Ginsberg was accepted to Columbia University on scholarship to study labor law. However, after meeting Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling, Ginsberg turned to English and poetry. It was also at this time when he met Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady who would eventually form the ‘Beat Generation’. In 1948, Ginsberg had a vision of poet William Blake entering his apartment window, an event which would influence the rest of his life, attempting to recapture the image. In 1949, Ginsberg had a few minor run-ins with the law and he was committed to the Columbia-Presbyterian Psychiatric Institution. There he met his future publisher and life-long friend, Carl Solomon, a troubled intellectual. After serving in the merchant marines, and spending several months in Mexico, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco, where he met poets Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder and Peter Orlovsky, who would become his life-long partner. After composing his first major notable poem, “Howl”, in 1955, he and Rexroth organized a reading of it at the Six Gallery, featuring Snyder and Michael McClure, with Lawrence Ferlenghetti (who later published the poem) and Kerouac in attendance. Ginsberg’s first collection of poetry was published in 1956, but with its second printing in 1957, Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Books, 1956) was seized by U.S. Customs for being ‘obscene’. However, after a trial, the book was deemed to have literary merit, which propelled Ginsberg and the Beat group of poets into instant fame, giving Ginsberg the opportunity to promote Kerouac’s On the Road and Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. In 1956, Ginsberg received news that his mother had died, which compelled him to write the poems “Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!” and “The Lion for Real”, and Kaddish and Other Poems (City Lights Books, 1961) as well as Empty Mirror: Early Poems (Corinth Books, 1961). During the 1960s Ginsberg traveled widely with Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Snyder to Paris, India, Tangier, Prague (where he was deported for being a corrupting influence). He published  Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960 (City Lights Books, 1963), The Yage Letters with William Burroughs (City Lights Books, 1963), TV Baby Poems (Beach Books, 1968), Angkor Wat (Fulcrum Press, 1968), Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968), and Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals (City Lights Books, 1969). The years of 1968 and 1969 were filled with mourning for Ginsberg, as he learned of the death of both Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. The 1970s saw Ginsberg publish a number of collections, including The Fall of America: Poems of These States (City Lights, 1972), which won the National Book Award in 1974, The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948-1952 (Grey Fox, 1972), Iron Horse (City Lights, 1974), First Blues: Rags, Ballads and Harmonium Songs, 1971-1974 (Full Court Press, 1975), Mind Breaths: Poems (City Lights, 1977), Poems All Over the Place: Mostly Seventies (Cherry Valley Editions, 1978). In 1976, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman were invited to create a writing program at the Naropa Institute in Colorado, which they named the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ginsberg published Plutonian Ode and Other Poems, 1977-1980 (City Lights, 1982), White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985 (Harper & Row, 1986), Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems, 1986-1992 (HarperCollins,1994), Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 1996), Death & Fame: Last Poems, 1993-1997 (HarperFlamingo, 1999). Until his death, Ginsberg used his fame and poetry to speak out against censorship, the Vietnam War and drug prohibition, and for gay rights. Allen Ginsberg died in New York City, on April 4th, 1997.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Bowering, George"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"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\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 11 7\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box.\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-110\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-110"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Allen Ginsberg reads from Angkor Wat (Fulcrum Press, 1968), Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968), as well as pieces that were published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States (City Lights Books, 1973). Ginsbger also performs musical versions of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience (MGM, 1970). "],"contents":["allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n \nUnnamed Performers and Audience\n00:00:00\nSing and chant accompanied by music . \n \nUnknown\n00:16:38\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:16:41\nWelcome to the...welcome to the fourth—third week of the fourth series of our readings here at Sir George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342] and this one is a special one, partly in that it was, it is being presented by a combination of the daytime Arts Student Association and the evening Arts Student Association, and not simply on the normal schedule. I'm certain that you don't have to be told who Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] is, and you might think on how lucky it is that you happen to be in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] and he is here at the same time. Last night he was at York University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q849751] in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], and tomorrow he's going to be in Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930], and we're going to sap an awful lot of his energy. Allen is, I think, the most noted poet we've had over the last couple of decades, in the world, and as you're going to find out and as you already know, one of the super-poets in terms of writing poetry, as well. I'd like to give you, without any more cogitation, Mr. Allen Ginsberg. \n\nAudience\n00:18:13\nApplause.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:18:23\nGeorge Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280], who I've known a long time, asked me to read a poem that I haven't read through but once before, called \"Angkor Wat\". So I'll try that. It's middle-sized, like, ten minutes, probably. What it is, is notations taken down in the course of one night in Cambodia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q424], in Siem Reap [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11711], which is outside of Angkor Wat [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43473], a town outside of the ruins.\n \nUnknown\n00:18:55\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:18:56\nReads \"Angkor Wat\" [from Angkor Wat]. \n \nAudience\n00:41:32\nApplause [cut off].\n \nUnknown\n00:41:37\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].  \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:41:45\nI want to read a couple poems from a book published in Toronto by Anansi Press, or one poem from that. This is written in Saigon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1854], so it's about a week, yes it's about...the same week, I think. Oh this is...a week before. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:42:19\nReads “Understand that this is a Dream” [from Airplane Dreams].\n \nUnknown\n00:49:28\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:49:36\nI've been working on Blake's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] Songs of Innocence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20644964] and Experience [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27890603], making tunes, or tuning the songs, so I'd like to sing some. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:49:48\nPerforms \"(a) Introduction / (b) The Shepherd”, accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:52:30\nSinging them in the order in Experience, that they're in the book, what follows is \"The Echoing Green\".\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:52:40\nPerforms \"The Echoing Green\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:54:29\n“The Little Boy Lost\" and \"The Little Boy Found\".\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:54:41\nPerforms \"The Little Boy Lost\" and \"The Little Boy Found\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:56:14\nPerforms \"The Blossom\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:57:16\nFrom Experience, the first song is \"Hear the Voice of the Bard\".\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:57:22\nPerforms \"Hear the Voice of the Bard\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “Introduction” on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:59:26\nAnd the last song in Experience...\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:59:33\nPerforms \"Introduction\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n01:00:47.46\nAnd last from Innocence, \"The Laughing Song\".\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n01:00:50\nPerforms \"The Laughing Song\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “b) Laughing Song” on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAudience\n01:01:48\nApplause [cut off].\n\nEND\n01:01:52\n\n\nallen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] \n\nAllen Ginsberg\n00:00:00\nReads \"Morning\" [from Planet News]. \n \nAudience\n00:02:17\nLaughter and applause.\n \nUnknown\n00:02:23\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:02:23\nReads \"Today\" [from Planet News]. \n \nAudience\n00:10:04\nApplause.\n \nUnknown\n00:10:07\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:10:08\nReads \"First party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels\" [from Planet News]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:11:22\nReads \"Uptown\" [from Planet News]. \n \nAudience\n00:12:20\nLaughter and applause\n \nUnknown\n00:12:29\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:12:30\nPerforms \"Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss\" [from Planet News]. \n \nAudience\n00:14:46\nApplause.\n \nUnknown\n00:14:52\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:14:59\nPerforms \"Hari Om Namah Shivaya” chant, accompanying himself on harmonium. \n \nAudience\n00:25:17\nApplause.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:25:22\nPerforms \"The Lamb\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:27:00\nPerforms \"The Little Black Boy\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:30:11\nPerforms \"Holy Thursday\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:31:37\nI'll finish the Blake with \"The Nurse's Song\". Get up a little closer to me.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:31:52\nPerforms\"The Nurse's Song\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “Nurses Song” on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:32:27\nNo...start again.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:32:32\nPerforms \"The Nurse's Song\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “Nurses Song” on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\n \nAudience\n00:35:58\nApplause.\n \nUnknown\n00:36:05\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:36:13\nThe continuation of a long poem on these dates. Some of those who are specialists, some of those who are specialists in poesy will know a text published in a book I've been reading from, Planet News [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7201132], called \"Wichita Vortex Sutra\". This is the continuation of the same long poem a year later, bringing the war, the mental war up to 1967. January, 1967. Related to the poem \"Wichita Vortex Sutra\" in that it's crossing the central part of the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] again, north of Kansas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1558] through Nebraska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1553], passing again by Lincoln [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28260], Nebraska. A trip between Wichita, Kansas and Lincoln, Nebraska two...a year and a half earlier having been the subject of the text \"Wichita Vortex Sutra\". This continuation.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:37:09\nReads [“Returning North of Vortex\", published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:43:12\nA continuation of the same poem, between Kansas City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41819] and St. Louis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38022]. Middle of the long poem on these dates.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:43:22\nReads [\"Kansas City to Saint Louis\", published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States].\n \nAudience\n00:52:41\nApplause.\n \nUnknown\n00:52:46\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:52:47\nReads \"Car Crash\" [published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States; audience laughter throughout].\n\nAllen Ginsberg\n00:58:17\nAnd July 4th, 1969. \"Orange hawkeye\"--Hawkeye is a New York state [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1384] flower, a flower that grows in New York state, very tiny, bright orange, eyeball with a tiny brown, brownish, purplish pupil.\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n00:58:35\nReads [\"Independence Day\", published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States]\n \nAllen Ginsberg\n01:00:49\nFinish with a mantra. Well or, read one last poem, which has been distributed by Dakota Broadsides, they're people from Logos, or connected with Logos, I think. Is that not right? Yeah. I'll pass these out, I think. It's a poem written in Grant Park [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159085] on August 28th, '68, during the Democratic Convention. Uh, Grant Park, the day after the election of, or the day after the nomination of Humphrey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q209989]. \n \nAllen Ginsberg\n01:01:27\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nAudience\n01:02:25\nApplause and laughter [cut off].\n \nEND\n01:02:31\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nIn 1969, Ginsberg had published Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals. In June of 1969, Ginsberg recorded a series of William Blake’s poetry set to music, which was released by MGM records in 1970. Close friend Jack Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, which prompted Allen to write his long elegy, “Memory Gardens”. In December, Ginsberg testified in court at the “Chicago Seven” trial of protesters in the 1968 Democratic National Convention.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAllen Ginsberg not only became a household name and a symbol for youth in North America during the 60’s and 70’s, he led the ‘Beat’ poetry movement, was a world traveler, a defender of civil and human rights, a teacher and spiritual guide. Ginsberg states in the recording that he had known George Bowering, who was a professor at Sir George Williams University, for “a long time” (I006-11-033.1).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"George Bowering published his reaction to Ginsberg’s poem, “Howl” in 1969, How I hear Howl (Montreal, Beaver kosmos folio, 1, 1969).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Stephen Morrissey has recollections of attending most of the readings in the series: <http://www.vehiculepoets.com/recollective_essay.htm>\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"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\":\"Butscher, Edward. \\\"Ginsberg, Allen\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton, ed. Oxford University Press, 1996.\\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Carlise, Chuck. \\\"Ginsberg, Allen\\\". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini, ed. Oxford University Press 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ankor-wat/oclc/17611&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Ginsberg, Allen. Angkor Wat. London: Fulcrum Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/planet-news-1961-1967/oclc/806341370&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Ginsberg, Allen. Planet News. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fall-of-america-poems-of-these-states-1965-1971/oclc/472756006&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Ginsberg, Allen. The Fall of America: Poems of These States. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1973.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20713959\",\"citation\":\"Ginsberg, Allen. Songs of Innocence and Experience. New York: MGM, 1970. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/ginsberg-fbi.html\",\"citation\":\"Mitgang, Herbert. Dangerous dossiers: exposing the secret war against America’s greatest authors. New York: D.I. Fine, 1988.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.allenginsberg.org\",\"citation\":\"Allen Ginsberg Project. The Allen Ginsberg Trust, 2010. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Duerden, Paul. “Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-”. Literature Online Biography. Proquest, 2008.   \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Nook: Ginsberg”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 12 November 1969, page 7.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548896219136,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0033-1_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0033-1_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Allen Ginsberg Tape Box 1 - 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_0033-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0033-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Allen Ginsberg Tape Box 1 - 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-1.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:01:52\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"148.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n \\nUnnamed Performers and Audience\\n00:00:00\\nSing and chant accompanied by music . \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:16:38\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:16:41\\nWelcome to the...welcome to the fourth—third week of the fourth series of our readings here at Sir George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342] and this one is a special one, partly in that it was, it is being presented by a combination of the daytime Arts Student Association and the evening Arts Student Association, and not simply on the normal schedule. I'm certain that you don't have to be told who Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] is, and you might think on how lucky it is that you happen to be in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] and he is here at the same time. Last night he was at York University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q849751] in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], and tomorrow he's going to be in Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930], and we're going to sap an awful lot of his energy. Allen is, I think, the most noted poet we've had over the last couple of decades, in the world, and as you're going to find out and as you already know, one of the super-poets in terms of writing poetry, as well. I'd like to give you, without any more cogitation, Mr. Allen Ginsberg. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:18:13\\nApplause.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:18:23\\nGeorge Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280], who I've known a long time, asked me to read a poem that I haven't read through but once before, called \\\"Angkor Wat\\\". So I'll try that. It's middle-sized, like, ten minutes, probably. What it is, is notations taken down in the course of one night in Cambodia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q424], in Siem Reap [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11711], which is outside of Angkor Wat [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43473], a town outside of the ruins.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:18:55\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:18:56\\nReads \\\"Angkor Wat\\\" [from Angkor Wat]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:41:32\\nApplause [cut off].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:41:37\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].  \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:41:45\\nI want to read a couple poems from a book published in Toronto by Anansi Press, or one poem from that. This is written in Saigon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1854], so it's about a week, yes it's about...the same week, I think. Oh this is...a week before. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:42:19\\nReads “Understand that this is a Dream” [from Airplane Dreams].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:49:28\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:49:36\\nI've been working on Blake's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] Songs of Innocence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20644964] and Experience [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27890603], making tunes, or tuning the songs, so I'd like to sing some. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:49:48\\nPerforms \\\"(a) Introduction / (b) The Shepherd”, accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:52:30\\nSinging them in the order in Experience, that they're in the book, what follows is \\\"The Echoing Green\\\".\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:52:40\\nPerforms \\\"The Echoing Green\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:54:29\\n“The Little Boy Lost\\\" and \\\"The Little Boy Found\\\".\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:54:41\\nPerforms \\\"The Little Boy Lost\\\" and \\\"The Little Boy Found\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:56:14\\nPerforms \\\"The Blossom\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:57:16\\nFrom Experience, the first song is \\\"Hear the Voice of the Bard\\\".\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:57:22\\nPerforms \\\"Hear the Voice of the Bard\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “Introduction” on Songs of Innocence and Experience]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:59:26\\nAnd the last song in Experience...\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:59:33\\nPerforms \\\"Introduction\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n01:00:47.46\\nAnd last from Innocence, \\\"The Laughing Song\\\".\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n01:00:50\\nPerforms \\\"The Laughing Song\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “b) Laughing Song” on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:01:48\\nApplause [cut off].\\n\\nEND\\n01:01:52\\n\",\"notes\":\"Allen Ginsberg reads from Angkor Wat (Fulcrum Press, 1968), Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968), as well as pieces that were published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States (City Lights Books, 1973). Ginsbger also performs musical versions of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience (MGM, 1970). \\n                                              \\n00:00- Recording begins with Hare Krishna chanting music.\\n16:41- George Bowering introduces Allen Ginsberg. [INDEX: Sir George Williams University, third week of the fourth series of readings, reading presented with both daytime and evening Arts Student Association, Ginsberg’s reading schedule: York University (Toronto), Ottawa.]\\n18:23- Introduces “Angkor Wat”. [INDEX: George Bowering, notations taken from one night in Siem Reap, Cambodia; from Angkor Wat (Fulcrum Press, 1968).]\\n18:56- Reads “Angkor Wat”.\\n41:45- Introduces “Understand That This is a Dream”. [INDEX: Published by Anansi Press, Toronto; found in Airplane Dreams (City Lights Books, 1969).]\\n42:19- Reads “Understand That This is a Dream”.\\n49:36- Introduces Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, poem beginning “Piping down the valleys wild”.\\n49:48- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “Piping down the valleys wild”.\\n51:20- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “How sweet is the shepherd’s sweet lot”.\\n52:30- Introduces “The Echoing Green” [INDEX: Blake’s Experience.]\\n52:40- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “The Echoing Green”.\\n54:29- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “The Little Boy Lost” and “The Little Boy Found”.\\n56:14- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “The Blossom”.\\n57:16- Introduces “Hear the Voice of the Bard” [INDEX: from Experience.]\\n57:22- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “Hear the Voice of the Bard”.\\n59:33- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “Youth of delight, come hither”.\\n1:00:47- Sings (with harmonium-style instrument) “The Laughing Song”\\n1:01:48.50- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/allen-ginsberg-at-sgwu-1969/#1\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-2.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"66.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"allen_ginsberg_i006-11-033-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] \\n\\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:00:00\\nReads \\\"Morning\\\" [from Planet News]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:17\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:02:23\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:02:23\\nReads \\\"Today\\\" [from Planet News]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:10:04\\nApplause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:10:07\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:10:08\\nReads \\\"First party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels\\\" [from Planet News]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:11:22\\nReads \\\"Uptown\\\" [from Planet News]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:12:20\\nLaughter and applause\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:12:29\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:12:30\\nPerforms \\\"Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss\\\" [from Planet News]. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:14:46\\nApplause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:14:52\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:14:59\\nPerforms \\\"Hari Om Namah Shivaya” chant, accompanying himself on harmonium. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:25:17\\nApplause.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:25:22\\nPerforms \\\"The Lamb\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:27:00\\nPerforms \\\"The Little Black Boy\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:30:11\\nPerforms \\\"Holy Thursday\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:31:37\\nI'll finish the Blake with \\\"The Nurse's Song\\\". Get up a little closer to me.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:31:52\\nPerforms\\\"The Nurse's Song\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “Nurses Song” on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:32:27\\nNo...start again.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:32:32\\nPerforms \\\"The Nurse's Song\\\", accompanying himself on harmonium [recorded later as “Nurses Song” on Songs of Innocence and Experience].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:35:58\\nApplause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:36:05\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:36:13\\nThe continuation of a long poem on these dates. Some of those who are specialists, some of those who are specialists in poesy will know a text published in a book I've been reading from, Planet News [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7201132], called \\\"Wichita Vortex Sutra\\\". This is the continuation of the same long poem a year later, bringing the war, the mental war up to 1967. January, 1967. Related to the poem \\\"Wichita Vortex Sutra\\\" in that it's crossing the central part of the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] again, north of Kansas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1558] through Nebraska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1553], passing again by Lincoln [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28260], Nebraska. A trip between Wichita, Kansas and Lincoln, Nebraska two...a year and a half earlier having been the subject of the text \\\"Wichita Vortex Sutra\\\". This continuation.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:37:09\\nReads [“Returning North of Vortex\\\", published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:43:12\\nA continuation of the same poem, between Kansas City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41819] and St. Louis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38022]. Middle of the long poem on these dates.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:43:22\\nReads [\\\"Kansas City to Saint Louis\\\", published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:52:41\\nApplause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:52:46\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:52:47\\nReads \\\"Car Crash\\\" [published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States; audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:58:17\\nAnd July 4th, 1969. \\\"Orange hawkeye\\\"--Hawkeye is a New York state [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1384] flower, a flower that grows in New York state, very tiny, bright orange, eyeball with a tiny brown, brownish, purplish pupil.\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n00:58:35\\nReads [\\\"Independence Day\\\", published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States]\\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n01:00:49\\nFinish with a mantra. Well or, read one last poem, which has been distributed by Dakota Broadsides, they're people from Logos, or connected with Logos, I think. Is that not right? Yeah. I'll pass these out, I think. It's a poem written in Grant Park [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159085] on August 28th, '68, during the Democratic Convention. Uh, Grant Park, the day after the election of, or the day after the nomination of Humphrey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q209989]. \\n \\nAllen Ginsberg\\n01:01:27\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:02:25\\nApplause and laughter [cut off].\\n \\nEND\\n01:02:31\\n\",\"notes\":\"Allen Ginsberg reads from Angkor Wat (Fulcrum Press, 1968), Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968), as well as pieces that were published later in The Fall of America: Poems of These States (City Lights Books, 1973). Ginsbger also performs musical versions of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, recorded later on Songs of Innocence and Experience (MGM, 1970). \\n\\n00:00- Recording begins, Ginsberg reads “Morning”. [INDEX: from Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968).] \\n02:23- Reads “Today”. [INDEX: from Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968).] \\n10:08- Reads “First party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels”. [INDEX: from Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968).]\\n11:22- Reads “Uptown”. [INDEX: from Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968).]\\n12:30- Reads “Holy Ghost, on the Nod, over the Body of Bliss”. [INDEX: from Planet News (City Lights Books, 1968).]\\n13:50- Chants section of poem, first line “And Santa Barbara rejoices in the alleyways of        Brindaban...”.\\n14:59- Harmonium/music starts, Ginsberg sings “Hari Om Namo Shivaya...”\\n25:22- Sings “Little Lamb, Who Made Thee?” [INDEX: William Blake]\\n27:00- Sings \\\"My mother bore me in the southern wild\\\". [INDEX: William Blake.]\\n30:11- Sings “Twas on a Holy Thursday”. [INDEX: William Blake]\\n31:37- Introduces “The Nurse’s Song”. [INDEX: William Blake]\\n31:52- Sings “The Nurse’s Song”.\\n36:13- Introduces “Wichita Votex Sutra”. [INDEX: from Planet News (City Lights Books,   1968).]\\n37:09- Reads “Wichita Vortex Sutra”.\\n43:12- Introduces continuation of same poem, first line “Leaving K.C., MO...”\\n52:47- Reads “Car Crash”.\\n58:17- Introduces “July 4th, 1969”. [INDEX: hawkeye, New York State flower]\\n58:35- Reads “July 4th, 1969”.\\n1:00:49- Introduces unknown mantra, line “Green air, children sit under trees with the old...”\\n1:01:27- Reads unknown mantra, line “Green air, children sit under trees with the old...”\\n1:02:31.23- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/allen-ginsberg-at-sgwu-1969/#2\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1282","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":["Milton Kessler at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 14 November 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MILTON KESSLER Nov 14 69 I086-11-029\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"MILTON KESSLER I086-11-029\" written on sticker on the reel. \"RT 533\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box and on the back of the box. "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 4"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Kessler, Milton"],"creator_names_search":["Kessler, Milton"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/29094528\",\"name\":\"Kessler, Milton\",\"dates\":\"1930-2000 \",\"notes\":\"Milton Kessler was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. As a young man, he skipped school and wrote his own poetry instead. He completed a G.E.D. and married his high school sweetheart Sonia Berer in 1952. Kessler earned his undergraduate degree at University of Buffalo in English magna cum laude in 1957, and his master’s degree at the University of Washington in 1962 and continued further study towards a Ph.D. at Harvard and Ohio State University until 1963. He won the Robert Frost Fellowship in poetry in 1961. Kessler taught at Queens College of the City University of New York from 1963 to 1965. His first published collection of poetry came out in 1963, named A Road Came Once (Ohio State University Press). He was awarded several Yaddo fellowships from 1965 to 1976, as well as MacDowell Foundation fellowships in 1966 and 1979. Kessler has taught English and creative writing at many universities throughout the world, including State University of New York, University of Negev (1971-1972), University of Hawaii (1975), Haifa University (1973), Keio University Tokyo (1978) and Antioch International Writing Seminars at Oxford (1977, 1978). His other collections of poetry are Called Home (The Black Bird Press, 1967), Woodlawn North (1970), and Sailing Too Far (1973). Kessler’s poetry has been included in several anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (Penguin Books, 1972) and New York Times Book of Verse (Macmillan, 1970). The Grand Concourse: Poems (MSS State University of New York at Binghamton) was only published in 1990, decades after most of the poems were written. Milton Kessler died on April 17, 2000 in Binghamton, New York.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 11 14\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the spine of the tape's box. Date also specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series\\\"\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Milton Kessler reads poems published later in both Woodlawn North (Impressions Workshop, 1970) and Sailing Too Far (Harper & Row 1973)."],"contents":["milton_kessler_i086-11-029.mp3\n\nIntroducer\n00:00:00\nLadies and gentlemen, Mr. Milton Kessler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6861203], of the Bronx [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18426] and Binghamton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q213814], New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1384]. \n\nAudience\n00:00:08\nApplause.\n\nMilton Kessler\n00:00:13\nI'm going to read my most personal poems, and start with the things that mean the most to me. These are poems that will soon be published in a collection that I think it's going to be called The Grand Concourse, that some of you will know is the main street in the Bronx. When I find out what people think of the sight of the Grand Concourse who don't know that it's the main street in the Bronx, you know, they think I'm pretty pompous, but you know it's just another version of something like Flatbush Avenue or something like that. How they got this kind of name for the Bronx, I don't know. This is a poem called, by the way, I don't think I'm going to say too much in between these poems, I'm just going to read them, unless something happens that I will particularly want to say. \"Letter\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:01:39\nReads \"Letter\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:04:17\nThis one is called \"A Bombadier's Landscape\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:04:28\nReads \"A Bombadier's Landscape\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:05:54\nThis one is titled \"Called Home\" and it was the title of another collection of poems that I put together. \"Called Home\", I always liked this title, you know, and sort of found out later on what it meant, I always liked it, I wish I could have other titles that were sort of, that I liked as much.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:06:27\nReads \"Called Home\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:07:39\nReads \"Something\" [published later under a different title in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:08:06\nReads \"Lost Song\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:09:04\nThis is a little poem called \"Davey\" for my son, Davey.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:09:16\nReads \"Davey\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:10:14\nThis is a poem I recently finished, it's called \"The Quiet\", and it's his reply to me. Because you understand that, all of this weight of seriousness, is supposed to lift the whole scene, which is what it's all about, you know, just lift the whole thing. Not to go down, you know, but to just lift it. So this is his, I never read this one before, but this is his response to me.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:10:52\nReads \"The Quiet\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far]. \n \nMilton Kessler\n00:12:08\nThis one is called \"I Am No One Else\", which is very important to me, you know, I'm sort of a, I have a kind of involuntary independence and sometimes I would like to try to imitate somebody else's life or lifestyle, or anything but it's just a hopeless case and I can't ever manage it. This is \"I Am No One Else\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:12:41\nReads \"I Am No One Else\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:14:08\nI didn't read that too well, I really like that poem I don't want to mess it up, you know, but it's really very hard to be, to say a very, very tender kind of poem, because I'm not so tender, so I have a lot of trouble to be quiet, you know, because I can scream from here back to Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419] if I wanted to. This is the last of the poems in this particular part of the sequence. It's a little poem called \"Surprise\", I read it this afternoon. I've had the most amazing response sometimes, at places, when I go very often to the anti-war readings I read these poems, very often this one. And it always sort of surprises me you know, that it's alright. \"Surprise\". Let me tell you a little about this situation--but if I tell you too much about it then I'll read it, you know, I can talk more and it's a little poem. But it was after a big war-type reading at the Loeb Center in New York, and after that, everyone went out, you know, and roaming around all night, and then about 4 am or something like that I got on the subway and went out to my parents' place in Rockaway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62569], New York, on the ocean. And when I walked into the place, to their new house, I went to the--I walked in and saw that they were sleeping. And I had such a strong feeling, because when I was a kid, you know, and I used to come in late, either the door was locked, you know, the door was locked or there was this always this--come in after eleven, and you know, you won't get, you know, after eleven the door is locked, climb in through the fire escape or something. But here, you know, it was alright, and there it was and I stood and looked at them sleeping. They're both about 70. And by the way, extraordinarily happy. The poem is called \"Surprise\".\n\nMilton Kessler\n00:16:53\nReads \"Surprise\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:18:05\nNow I have these three poems that I call the “Willow Poems”. One of them isn't finished, because the last two lines of the middle one are just, I got into a kind of pleasure in saying \"O\", you know, “Oh, Joy, Oh”, and like that and sometimes I just enjoyed it so much I was just kind of, and then it didn't mean anything, it you know, I was just kind of enjoying it, which is great, you know, but it's great to enjoy it and also is maybe good, so you make them together like that, so here are the three \"Willow Songs\". This one, well here it is, it's perfectly clear.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:18:58\nReads \"Willow Songs\" [part 1, published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:19:53\nIt's just like that beautiful girl, and you know, if you teach some place, what do you do? The last thing you do is hang around the school, stay away from it, you know, and so here I stay around the house, and here, I'm around the house during the day, you know, and so is this beautiful fifteen year old girl, and I'm watching her walk back and forth, you know, of course this is a song of innocence, you understand, this what she's got to worry about is me. Well I won't read the second one because the end of it isn't any good. But here is a little lyric, it's one of the Willow poems. I've written, it seems to me, an unusual number of poems that have something to do with my family. And whenever there's ever any suggestion of that kind coming from the world of important poetry, I really feel like just smashing somebody's head right in, nothing bothers me more than that, you know. The implication that something is important to you really isn't important, you know, just do what you please, that's all. But nevertheless, I do notice that there's a certain--sometimes I write a lot of these things. Here's a lyric. This is the last of them. It's a little poem.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:21:38\nReads \"Willow Songs\" [part 3, published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:22:26\nNow this is a little different kind of series here. And this one is called, the first of these is called \"Summer's End\". This is a long poem that I wrote at a time, it's only some times that it's of any interest what these things develop out of, you know, but this one I think is kind of interesting. I had this very bad, I pulled a muscle in my calf, climbing a mountain, actually, in New Hampshire [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q759], where the mountains aren't too high, you know. And I was in a barn, I was at the MacDowell Colony [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3273867], and I was in a barn, and I couldn't get out, I couldn't move any place, I had one big jar, you know, next to the floor, sort of thing, and I just stayed there, and they would come around and bring me some food, finally about a week later I couldn't do anything and somebody--Hortense Calisher [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q436082]--I don't know if you know who she is, just finally came along and took my car, drove me to the airport, and that was that, kept the car. But while I was lying there, I said there's no big deal about it, but I have had asthma since I was seven, and the one thing about that, you know a little bit like Proust [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7199], if you just lie around, you just lie there and then you sort of, alright, so here you are. So you just do something I guess, so this poem, \"Summer's End\", there are a lot of things you do with these things lying around. I'll tell you--\"Summer's End\" alright, \"Summer's End\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:24:35\nReads \"Summer's End\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:28:20\nLittle poem, \"Russian Joke\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:28:26\nReads \"Russian Joke\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:29:02\n\"The Confusion: May 1969\". I’ve never read this one before, nor is it finished, nor is it any good, as far as I can tell.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:29:17\nReads \"The Confusion: May 1969\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:30:08\nThis one is called \"A Dream of Weeping\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:30:14\nReads \"A Dream of Weeping\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:31:24\nHere's a brand new one, this is the last poem I've written, this one. We could stop for a few minutes, you know, if you're tired. I'm really terrified usually before this begins, but once it's going, you know, then it's alright, it's really very good. It's called \"The Moment of No Recovery\". Excuse me, \"The Moment of No Recovery\". Maybe the first one is better than this one. \"The Moment of No Recovery\", \"The Moment of No Discovery\", no this is better. It has only the slightest bit to do, by the way, with a woman in my family who I've recently come to know about, her name is Minnie, she is an aunt, she's my father's sister, she's been in the Rockland State Hospital [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q22061059] for over forty years. Only recently did I find out about her existence. And I remember when I talked to Allen  [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711], oh a few months ago, and he said something, he was just talking about the kind of people who are locked up, and he said it's like mini, you know, like mini, and I said that's it! My aunt Minnie, I have this aunt, and he said, well, go, go and see her. You know, what's happening there, how many times she could have been alright, well of course, this is just a little bit to her maybe, but I think I may have been thinking about it a little. Other things too. \"The Moment of No Recovery\". I have to learn, I think, how to read this poem. \n \nMilton Kessler\n00:33:49\nReads \"The Moment of No Recovery\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:35:10\nI've written quite a lot about women, and I have read so many of those, I know, but here is one that is a poem about--titled \"Anne\". When I read this poem in a Pittsburgh [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1342] high school, about three weeks ago, the teacher decided to call the whole thing off. After I read it, after I read it, and somebody asked me about why I read it and I said I read it because I liked it very much and because I--it was about women, you know, and it was kind of a poem of praise about women, and at that point this woman got up and called and said we have to move the chairs into another room, that's actually what she said, we have to take some of these chairs into another room now, sorry. What a bitch. The worst I've ever seen, she was just unbelievable. Let's not have any doubts about her, it was the Langley High School [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15241542] in Pittsburgh. This poem is titled \"Anne\".\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:36:48\nReads \"Anne\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:38:55\nThis poem is titled \"Chad Gadya: One Little Goat\"--a Chad Gadya is a passover song and I assume it's a round that has its sense, the idea that God makes it right. It has just the tiniest little autobiographical fact about it, which is that my grandfather actually sold papers in Brooklyn, so this is the beginning of the thing.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:39:38\nReads \"Chad Gadya: One Little Goat\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:41:4\nThis one is titled \"The Voice of the Soldier\", no one's saying anything about it.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:42:00\nReads \"The Voice of the Soldier\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:43:00\nThat's a song of innocence. I remember I showed this poem to a student of mine who was in the Israeli army [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q58967], and he immediately said \"No, it's not like that, that's not--it's not like that\" and he described how someone had had his leg blown off and what he said, he didn't say anything like this at all, he said to me, he said something else, and so of course I didn't mean that's the way I thought war was. This is the last one I'm going to read and it's one I haven't read. It's called \"A Good Death\", and it's a poem for Henry Thoreau [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131149], it's \"A Good Death\" and it's for Henry Thoreau, and it's a century later. And it's the only time I tried, somebody just asked me, you know, it's to, to write something about Thoreau, which I thought would be absolutely impossible, but then as I started to read him, and I started to think of how I could never believe what he was saying, ever, like I could never believe so many affirmative, you know, things, and then I began to sort of see what--and I wrote this anyway. It was between Thoreau and me. You'll see what it sounds like.\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:44:51\nReads \"A Good Death\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\n \nMilton Kessler\n00:45:20\n--oh damn it. That's the trouble, that's the way I am, you know, make the last one you're going to read, you know, something you don't know.\n \nEND\n00:45:33\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nDuring 1969, Kessler was teaching at State University of New York. He was also working on Woodlawn North (Impressions Workshop), to be published in 1970.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nNo known direct connections to Sir George Williams University are known, however Kessler was an influential poet and professor in New York.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/grand-concourse-poems/oclc/610177332?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Kessler, Milton. The Grand Concourse. New York: MSS Paper Book, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/called-home-a-sequence-of-poems-1964-66/oclc/11121618?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Kessler, Milton. Called Home. New York: The Black Bird Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/woodlawn-north-a-book-of-poems/oclc/121704&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kessler, Milton. Woodlawn North. Boston: Impressions Workshop, 1970. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sailing-too-far-poems/oclc/729990397&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Kessler, Milton. Sailing Too Far. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/milton-kessler-at-sgwu-1969/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Special Reading”. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Milton Kessler.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Nook Book”. The Georgian. November 12, 1969: page 7.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548899364864,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0029_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0029_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Milton Kessler 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_0029_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0029_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Milton Kessler 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_0029_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0029_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Milton Kessler 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_0029_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0029_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Milton Kessler 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/milton_kessler_i086-11-029.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"milton_kessler_i086-11-029.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:45:33\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"109.3 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Introducer\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and gentlemen, Mr. Milton Kessler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6861203], of the Bronx [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18426] and Binghamton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q213814], New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1384]. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:08\\nApplause.\\n\\nMilton Kessler\\n00:00:13\\nI'm going to read my most personal poems, and start with the things that mean the most to me. These are poems that will soon be published in a collection that I think it's going to be called The Grand Concourse, that some of you will know is the main street in the Bronx. When I find out what people think of the sight of the Grand Concourse who don't know that it's the main street in the Bronx, you know, they think I'm pretty pompous, but you know it's just another version of something like Flatbush Avenue or something like that. How they got this kind of name for the Bronx, I don't know. This is a poem called, by the way, I don't think I'm going to say too much in between these poems, I'm just going to read them, unless something happens that I will particularly want to say. \\\"Letter\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:01:39\\nReads \\\"Letter\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:04:17\\nThis one is called \\\"A Bombadier's Landscape\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:04:28\\nReads \\\"A Bombadier's Landscape\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:05:54\\nThis one is titled \\\"Called Home\\\" and it was the title of another collection of poems that I put together. \\\"Called Home\\\", I always liked this title, you know, and sort of found out later on what it meant, I always liked it, I wish I could have other titles that were sort of, that I liked as much.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:06:27\\nReads \\\"Called Home\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:07:39\\nReads \\\"Something\\\" [published later under a different title in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:08:06\\nReads \\\"Lost Song\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:09:04\\nThis is a little poem called \\\"Davey\\\" for my son, Davey.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:09:16\\nReads \\\"Davey\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:10:14\\nThis is a poem I recently finished, it's called \\\"The Quiet\\\", and it's his reply to me. Because you understand that, all of this weight of seriousness, is supposed to lift the whole scene, which is what it's all about, you know, just lift the whole thing. Not to go down, you know, but to just lift it. So this is his, I never read this one before, but this is his response to me.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:10:52\\nReads \\\"The Quiet\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far]. \\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:12:08\\nThis one is called \\\"I Am No One Else\\\", which is very important to me, you know, I'm sort of a, I have a kind of involuntary independence and sometimes I would like to try to imitate somebody else's life or lifestyle, or anything but it's just a hopeless case and I can't ever manage it. This is \\\"I Am No One Else\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:12:41\\nReads \\\"I Am No One Else\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:14:08\\nI didn't read that too well, I really like that poem I don't want to mess it up, you know, but it's really very hard to be, to say a very, very tender kind of poem, because I'm not so tender, so I have a lot of trouble to be quiet, you know, because I can scream from here back to Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419] if I wanted to. This is the last of the poems in this particular part of the sequence. It's a little poem called \\\"Surprise\\\", I read it this afternoon. I've had the most amazing response sometimes, at places, when I go very often to the anti-war readings I read these poems, very often this one. And it always sort of surprises me you know, that it's alright. \\\"Surprise\\\". Let me tell you a little about this situation--but if I tell you too much about it then I'll read it, you know, I can talk more and it's a little poem. But it was after a big war-type reading at the Loeb Center in New York, and after that, everyone went out, you know, and roaming around all night, and then about 4 am or something like that I got on the subway and went out to my parents' place in Rockaway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62569], New York, on the ocean. And when I walked into the place, to their new house, I went to the--I walked in and saw that they were sleeping. And I had such a strong feeling, because when I was a kid, you know, and I used to come in late, either the door was locked, you know, the door was locked or there was this always this--come in after eleven, and you know, you won't get, you know, after eleven the door is locked, climb in through the fire escape or something. But here, you know, it was alright, and there it was and I stood and looked at them sleeping. They're both about 70. And by the way, extraordinarily happy. The poem is called \\\"Surprise\\\".\\n\\nMilton Kessler\\n00:16:53\\nReads \\\"Surprise\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:18:05\\nNow I have these three poems that I call the “Willow Poems”. One of them isn't finished, because the last two lines of the middle one are just, I got into a kind of pleasure in saying \\\"O\\\", you know, “Oh, Joy, Oh”, and like that and sometimes I just enjoyed it so much I was just kind of, and then it didn't mean anything, it you know, I was just kind of enjoying it, which is great, you know, but it's great to enjoy it and also is maybe good, so you make them together like that, so here are the three \\\"Willow Songs\\\". This one, well here it is, it's perfectly clear.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:18:58\\nReads \\\"Willow Songs\\\" [part 1, published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:19:53\\nIt's just like that beautiful girl, and you know, if you teach some place, what do you do? The last thing you do is hang around the school, stay away from it, you know, and so here I stay around the house, and here, I'm around the house during the day, you know, and so is this beautiful fifteen year old girl, and I'm watching her walk back and forth, you know, of course this is a song of innocence, you understand, this what she's got to worry about is me. Well I won't read the second one because the end of it isn't any good. But here is a little lyric, it's one of the Willow poems. I've written, it seems to me, an unusual number of poems that have something to do with my family. And whenever there's ever any suggestion of that kind coming from the world of important poetry, I really feel like just smashing somebody's head right in, nothing bothers me more than that, you know. The implication that something is important to you really isn't important, you know, just do what you please, that's all. But nevertheless, I do notice that there's a certain--sometimes I write a lot of these things. Here's a lyric. This is the last of them. It's a little poem.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:21:38\\nReads \\\"Willow Songs\\\" [part 3, published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:22:26\\nNow this is a little different kind of series here. And this one is called, the first of these is called \\\"Summer's End\\\". This is a long poem that I wrote at a time, it's only some times that it's of any interest what these things develop out of, you know, but this one I think is kind of interesting. I had this very bad, I pulled a muscle in my calf, climbing a mountain, actually, in New Hampshire [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q759], where the mountains aren't too high, you know. And I was in a barn, I was at the MacDowell Colony [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3273867], and I was in a barn, and I couldn't get out, I couldn't move any place, I had one big jar, you know, next to the floor, sort of thing, and I just stayed there, and they would come around and bring me some food, finally about a week later I couldn't do anything and somebody--Hortense Calisher [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q436082]--I don't know if you know who she is, just finally came along and took my car, drove me to the airport, and that was that, kept the car. But while I was lying there, I said there's no big deal about it, but I have had asthma since I was seven, and the one thing about that, you know a little bit like Proust [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7199], if you just lie around, you just lie there and then you sort of, alright, so here you are. So you just do something I guess, so this poem, \\\"Summer's End\\\", there are a lot of things you do with these things lying around. I'll tell you--\\\"Summer's End\\\" alright, \\\"Summer's End\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:24:35\\nReads \\\"Summer's End\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:28:20\\nLittle poem, \\\"Russian Joke\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:28:26\\nReads \\\"Russian Joke\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:29:02\\n\\\"The Confusion: May 1969\\\". I’ve never read this one before, nor is it finished, nor is it any good, as far as I can tell.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:29:17\\nReads \\\"The Confusion: May 1969\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:30:08\\nThis one is called \\\"A Dream of Weeping\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:30:14\\nReads \\\"A Dream of Weeping\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:31:24\\nHere's a brand new one, this is the last poem I've written, this one. We could stop for a few minutes, you know, if you're tired. I'm really terrified usually before this begins, but once it's going, you know, then it's alright, it's really very good. It's called \\\"The Moment of No Recovery\\\". Excuse me, \\\"The Moment of No Recovery\\\". Maybe the first one is better than this one. \\\"The Moment of No Recovery\\\", \\\"The Moment of No Discovery\\\", no this is better. It has only the slightest bit to do, by the way, with a woman in my family who I've recently come to know about, her name is Minnie, she is an aunt, she's my father's sister, she's been in the Rockland State Hospital [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q22061059] for over forty years. Only recently did I find out about her existence. And I remember when I talked to Allen  [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711], oh a few months ago, and he said something, he was just talking about the kind of people who are locked up, and he said it's like mini, you know, like mini, and I said that's it! My aunt Minnie, I have this aunt, and he said, well, go, go and see her. You know, what's happening there, how many times she could have been alright, well of course, this is just a little bit to her maybe, but I think I may have been thinking about it a little. Other things too. \\\"The Moment of No Recovery\\\". I have to learn, I think, how to read this poem. \\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:33:49\\nReads \\\"The Moment of No Recovery\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:35:10\\nI've written quite a lot about women, and I have read so many of those, I know, but here is one that is a poem about--titled \\\"Anne\\\". When I read this poem in a Pittsburgh [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1342] high school, about three weeks ago, the teacher decided to call the whole thing off. After I read it, after I read it, and somebody asked me about why I read it and I said I read it because I liked it very much and because I--it was about women, you know, and it was kind of a poem of praise about women, and at that point this woman got up and called and said we have to move the chairs into another room, that's actually what she said, we have to take some of these chairs into another room now, sorry. What a bitch. The worst I've ever seen, she was just unbelievable. Let's not have any doubts about her, it was the Langley High School [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15241542] in Pittsburgh. This poem is titled \\\"Anne\\\".\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:36:48\\nReads \\\"Anne\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:38:55\\nThis poem is titled \\\"Chad Gadya: One Little Goat\\\"--a Chad Gadya is a passover song and I assume it's a round that has its sense, the idea that God makes it right. It has just the tiniest little autobiographical fact about it, which is that my grandfather actually sold papers in Brooklyn, so this is the beginning of the thing.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:39:38\\nReads \\\"Chad Gadya: One Little Goat\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:41:4\\nThis one is titled \\\"The Voice of the Soldier\\\", no one's saying anything about it.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:42:00\\nReads \\\"The Voice of the Soldier\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:43:00\\nThat's a song of innocence. I remember I showed this poem to a student of mine who was in the Israeli army [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q58967], and he immediately said \\\"No, it's not like that, that's not--it's not like that\\\" and he described how someone had had his leg blown off and what he said, he didn't say anything like this at all, he said to me, he said something else, and so of course I didn't mean that's the way I thought war was. This is the last one I'm going to read and it's one I haven't read. It's called \\\"A Good Death\\\", and it's a poem for Henry Thoreau [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131149], it's \\\"A Good Death\\\" and it's for Henry Thoreau, and it's a century later. And it's the only time I tried, somebody just asked me, you know, it's to, to write something about Thoreau, which I thought would be absolutely impossible, but then as I started to read him, and I started to think of how I could never believe what he was saying, ever, like I could never believe so many affirmative, you know, things, and then I began to sort of see what--and I wrote this anyway. It was between Thoreau and me. You'll see what it sounds like.\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:44:51\\nReads \\\"A Good Death\\\" [published later in Woodlawn North and Sailing Too Far].\\n \\nMilton Kessler\\n00:45:20\\n--oh damn it. That's the trouble, that's the way I am, you know, make the last one you're going to read, you know, something you don't know.\\n \\nEND\\n00:45:33\\n\",\"notes\":\"Milton Kessler reads poems published later in both Woodlawn North (Impressions Workshop, 1970) and Sailing Too Far (Harper & Row 1973).\\n\\n00:00- Unidentified male introduces [INDEX: The Bronx, Binghamton New York]\\n00:13- Milton Kessler introduces The Grand Concourse poems [INDEX: The Grand Concourse]\\n01:39- Reads “Letter”\\n04:17- Reads “A Bombardier’s Landscape”\\n05:54- Introduces “Called Home”\\n06:27- Reads “Called Home”\\n07:39- Reads “Something”\\n08:06- Reads “Lost Song”\\n09:04- Reads “Davey” [INDEX: Poem for his son]\\n10:14- Introduces “The Quiet”\\n10:52- Reads “The Quiet”\\n12:08- Introduces \\\"I Am No One Else\\\"\\n12:41- Reads \\\"I Am No One Else\\\"\\n14:08- Introduces “Surprise” [INDEX: Anti-war readings, Loeb Center, New York]\\n16:53- Reads “Surprise”\\n18:05- Introduces “Willow Songs” (series of three, only reads two)\\n18:58- Reads “Willow Songs”\\n19:53- Introduces second poem of “Willow Songs” [INDEX: Lyric poem]\\n21:38- Reads second poem of “Willow Songs”\\n22:26- Introduces “Summer’s End” [INDEX: McDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Hortense Calisher, Proust]\\n24:35- Reads “Summer’s End”\\n28:20- Reads “Russian Joke”\\n29:02- Introduces “The Confusion: May 1969”\\n29:17- Reads “The Confusion: May 1969”\\n30:08- Reads “A Dream of Weeping”\\n31:24- Introduces “The Moment of No Recovery” [INDEX: Allen Ginsberg, Rockland State \\tHospital, New York]\\n33:49- Reads “The Moment of No Recovery”\\n35:10- Introduces “Anne” [INDEX: Langley High School, Pittsburgh]\\n36:48- Reads “Anne”\\n38:55- Introduces “Chad Gadya: One Little Goat” [INDEX: Passover Songs]\\n39:38- Reads “Chad Gadya: One Little Goat”\\n41:45- Reads “The Voice of the Soldier”\\n43:00- Explains “The Voice of the Soldier” and Introduces “A Good Death” [INDEX: Soldiers, war, Henry Thoreau]\\n44:51- Reads “A Good Death”\\n45:33.56- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n14/11/69\\nOn one 5”, single track, mono, reel, @ 3 3/4 ips, lasting 50 mins\\n \\n1.  “Letter”\\n2.  “A Bombardier’s Landscape\\n3.  “Called Home”\\n4.  “Something\\n5.  “Lost Song\\n6.  “Davey”\\n7.  “The Quiet”\\n8.  “I am no one else”\\n9.  “Surprise”\\n10. “Willow Poems”\\n11. “Summers End”\\n12. “Russian Joke”\\n13. “The Confusion: May 1969”\\n14.  “A Dream of Weeping”\\n15.  “The Moment of no Recovery”\\n16. “Anne”\\n17.  1st line: “Oh mister, I am your grandfather...”\\n18. “The Voice of the Soldier”\\n19.  “A Good Death”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/milton-kessler-at-sgwu-1969/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1283","cataloger_name":["Bindu,Reddy"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Gladys Hindmarch and Stan Persky at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 21 November 1969"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"GLADYS HINDMARCH I086-11-020\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box and on the reel. \"RT 511\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box and on the back of the box.\n\n\"STAN PERSKY Recorded November 21, 1969 3.75 ips, 1/2 track 1 mil. tape 55 minutes\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"STAN PERSKY I006/SR137\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-137\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 4"],"item_identifiers":["[I086-11-020, I006-11-137]"],"creator_names":["Hindmarch, Gladys","Persky, Stan"],"creator_names_search":["Hindmarch, Gladys","Persky, Stan"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/38164256\",\"name\":\"Hindmarch, Gladys\",\"dates\":\"1940-\",\"notes\":\"Gladys Maria Hindmarch was born on Vancouver Island in 1940. She completed her Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts at the University of British Columbia. There she met poets George Bowering, Frank Davey, David Dawson, James Reid, Fred Wah and critic and professor Warren Tallman and was influential in creating the Tish magazine in 1961. However, she never published her own work in the magazine as she wrote prose. Her first publication was Sketches, published by George Bowering via the English Department of Sir George Williams University in 1970. Hindmarch wrote two novels, The Peter Stories (Coach House Press, 1976) and A Birth Account (New Star Books, 1967), which was followed by Watery part of the world (Douglas & McIntyre, 1988). Hindmarch has taught at Langara College and Capilano Colleges and she continues to live and write in Vancouver.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/57448780\",\"name\":\"Persky, Stan\",\"dates\":\"1941-\",\"notes\":\"Writer, teacher, activist and critic Stan Persky was born in Chicago on January 19, 1941. Early on, he was influenced by the Beat Generation poets and decided he would pursue a career in letters. Persky enrolled in the US Navy, and then moved to San Francisco in the early 1960’s where he became involved with the writers of the San Francisco Renaissance, including Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan. Persky’s first publications include Les enfants du paradis (St-Denis Press, 1961) and Moss (Rabbit Mountain College, 1961). In 1966, Persky moved with Robin Blaser to Vancouver, where Persky received his BA and MA degrees from the University of British Columbia. Persky co-founded the Georgia Straight Writing Supplements in the late 60’s, which led to what is now known as New Star Books. Persky and other writers began to publish the works of Milton Acorn, Gerry Gilbert, Jack Spicer, George Bowering, Fred Wah, bill bisset and Daphne Marlatt along with many others. Persky has taught at the Northwest College, Malaspina College, Simon Fraser University and at the Capilano University. Persky published Lives of the French Symbolist poets (White Rabbit Press, 1967),  The Day (Georgia Straight Writing Supplement, 1971), George Bowering published An oral literary history of Vancouver in 1972 in the Beaver Kosmos Series, Slaves (New Star Books, 1974), and Wrestling the angel (Talonbooks, 1976). His first political-themed books, Son of Socred (New Star, 1979), The House That Jack Built (New Star, 1980) and Bennett II (New Star, 1983) gained wide-spread acclaim. His other many publications include At the Lenin Shipyard: Poland and the Rise of the Solidarity Trade Union (New Star, 1981), The Solidarity Sourcebook (New Star, 1981), he edited Flaunting It: A Decade of Gay Journalism From the Body Politic with Henry Flam (New Star, 1982), The Holy Forest with introductions by Robin Blaser and Robert Creeley (Coach Hosue Press, 1998), Buddy’s: Meditations on Desire (New Star Press, 1989) which won a Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize nomination, Then we Take Berlin: Stories from the Other Side of Europe (Knopf, 1995), On Kiddie Porn: Sexual Representation, Free Speech and the Robin Sharpe Case with John Dixon (New Star, 2001) and most recently Top Sentence: A Writer’s Education (New Star, 2007). He has been a media commentator for the CBC, and has written for The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, Saturday Night, The Tyee and dooneyscafe.com as well as other journals. Persky resides in Vancouver and Berlin and continues to lecture and write.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Bowering, George"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1969],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1969 11 21\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on tape box for I006-11-137\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Room H-651\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Room H-651"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Gladys Hindmarch reads a series of short stories later published in The Watery Part of the World (Douglas & McIntyre, 1988). Stan Persky reads from Wrestling the Angel (Talonbooks, 1976) as well as a few unpublished poems."],"contents":["gladys_hindmarch_i086-11-020.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nAnother Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] night in the series, this will be, this is the final reading of the fall series, and will be picked up again in January. As you know from the propaganda sheets, we're presenting what I consider to be the centre of the Vancouver writing scene. Gladys Hindmarch has been in that scene for ten years, and was associated with all those people who've got all kinds of names over the last few years such as West Coast movement and the Tish movement and the New Wave Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] and that sort of business. And Stan Persky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2330087], was as much related if not more because he is also a sort of superstar of little magazines [audience laughter] in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], and made the usual move up to Vancouver, what, three years ago? And has now become the superstar of the Vancouver writing scene. What's going to happen is that the reading will be split into two pieces. At the beginning, Stan is going to introduce Gladys, and then there will be a break of about ten minutes, and then Gladys is going to introduce Stan. So, I'd like to give you \"Stan and Gladys Evening\".\n \nStan Persky\n00:01:43\n\"Beginning again and again is a natural thing, even when there is a series. Beginning again and again and again, explaining composition and time is a natural thing. It is understood by this time that everything's the same, except composition and time. Composition, and the time of the composition and the time in the composition. Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different, and always going to be different, everything is not the same. Everything is not the same as the time when, of the composition, and the time in the composition is different. The composition is different, that is certain.\" Gertrude Stein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q188385].\n \nGladys Hindmarch\n00:02:40\nWhen I whistle, just imagine that it's a very good whistler. \"They know what they're doing\".\n \nGladys Hindmarch\n00:02:53\nReads \"They know what they're doing\" [published later as “Callback” in The Watery Part of the World].\n \nGladys Hindmarch\n00:16:08\nThat's the third in a group of stories, or series of stories that I'm writing. [Audience laughter]. I haven't got a title for this one, it's still in the first day on the trip but it's the seventh story. I call it \"The [Salad (?)] Story\" in my head but I'll have to find a title for it.\n \nGladys Hindmarch\n00:16:54\nReads [\"Nothing is Simple\", published later in The Watery Part of the World].\n \nGladys Hindmarch\n00:33:30\nAnother, I've got lots of others, but I'm just going to read one other short one that's got a number of daydream passages that I don't think I--it's necessary to know which of the day--I mean you can, I think you can get it, it's just call it \"Number 12\" right now it also hasn't got a title. \"Outside deck scene\"--I guess that George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] didn't say, I used to work as a mess girl and a cook on a West Coast freighter called the Tahsis Prince, I worked on four or five of them because I was relief working, but the main one I worked on went up the west coast of Vancouver Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170479], and not, they have great difficulty getting women to go out there, maybe obvious reasons in these stories so I could almost get a job on it, whereas the other ones I could get jobs if nobody was available, but since on this particular boat, usually nobody was available. One time I was leaving shopping in the Army and Navy and a guy came down the hall and said, Look you know, they're trying to get a hold of you, you've gotta go up there. And I said, come on, now, and sort of walked me back to the hall. And one Christmas run there were fifty one men--lots of people don't want to go out at Christmas, but a lot of the seamen, just work in the summer, so if they can get a job for two weeks they take it. They had fifty one cards on the board and not one of them--and there was a call for a cook, which was a girl's job and a call for an able seaman, and not one of the fifty-one men would go out on the boat--they got a guy who hadn't registered yet went out. This is an end of summer trip, it's not rough at all.\n \nAnnotation\n00:35:42\nReads [\"How It Feels”, published later in The Watery Part of the World].\n \nEND\n00:45:52\n[Cut off abruptly].\n\nstan_persky_i006-11-137.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nGladys Hindmarch\n00:00:00\nStan and I both view Gertrude Stein as sort of eternal and I find that I can never read more than two pages of her at a time, like you just sort of become hypnotized, but she's pretty good to...like when I'm starting, trying to get into something to start to write and if I just read, you know just open one of her books at any sort of page, you know just at random and I just read two or three sentences, sometimes a paragraph, never more than that...and so I'm going to introduce Stan with a couple of Gertrude Stein sentences.  \"There's singularly nothing that makes a difference, a difference in beginning, and in middle, and in ending, except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations, and this is what makes everything different, otherwise they're all like, and everybody knows it because everybody says it.\" Stan Persky. \n \nStan Persky\n00:01:13\nYeah, I'm doing fine. The reading that I'm going to give is called \"The Day\", and what it is is pieces of everything that I'm onto right now, and so you have to bear with however unable to follow it out. And of course, like what we're trying to do is give you some sense of what it's like to be out where we are. \n\nStan Persky\n00:01:45\nReads \"Notebook, around August 20th, 1969\". \n \nStan Persky\n00:03:34.14\nIs that unbearably fast?\n \nStan Persky\n00:03:38.89\nReads \"Notebook, around August 25th, 1969\".\n \nStan Persky\n00:07:16\n\"Notebook, Sunday, August 29th or 30th, 1969\"  You can see the energy this takes, it's just...[laughter]. This is barely doing it. \"Jim and Franz...\" I'm going to try to read one of these a little more slowly, maybe.\n \nStan Persky\n00:07:42\nReads \"Notebook, Sunday, August 29th or 30th, 1969\".\n \nStan Persky\n00:11:45\nThis one's a longer pull if that's possible. \"The Marriage\". Angela, this is the gossip for you [laughter]. Coming in here, I was thinking, who's sitting in the room, and you'd like to hear your names [laughter]...Arnie...\"The Marriage\". \n \nStan Persky\n00:12:23\nReads \"The Marriage\". \n\nAudience\n00:19:00\nLaughter. \n\nStan Persky\n00:19:04\nTricky dick! [laughter].\n \nStan Persky\n00:19:10\nResumes reading \"The Marriage\".\n \nAudience\n00:27:54\nApplause [cut off]. \n\nUnknown\n00:27:55\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nStan Persky\n00:27:57\nReads \"To Gladys\".\n \nAudience\n00:34:54\nLaughter.\n \nStan Persky\n00:34:59\n\"October 24th, 1969\". Did I write this for this, did I write this reading? \n \nStan Persky\n00:35:08\nReads \"October 24th, 1969\".\n \nStan Persky\n00:36:46\nReads \"Jamie\". \n \nStan Persky\n00:39:49\nAnd the last three...\n \nUnknown\n00:39:52\n[Cut or edit made in tape here. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nStan Persky\n00:39:53\nReads \"Wednesday, November 5th, 1969, by Hunter's Creek\".\n \nStan Persky\n00:42:04\nReads \"Fred Study. Notebook, Friday, November 7th, 1969, Fred Study.\"\n \nStan Persky\n00:44:17\nAnd at last, to finish, as far as it's gone, or whatever it is, \"The Day\".\n \nStan Persky\n00:44:26\nReads \"The Day\".\n \nEND\n00:46:38\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nIn 1969, Gladys Hindmarch was writing and participating in the writing scene in Vancouver. No specific information could be found on Gladys Hindmarch during this year.\\n\\nIn 1969, Persky was living in Vancouver, was published in The Pacific Nation (Vancouver, 1969). He was working on a series of poems called “The Day”, published in Wrestling the Angel (Talonbooks, 1976).\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nGladys Hindmarch went to the University of British Columbia, where she met professor and Poetry Reading Series Committee Member George Bowering. Hindmarch was an integral part of the Vancouver poetry renaissance, and was connected to the important poets of the Vancouver ‘scene’.\\n\\nStan Persky met George Bowering and Stanton Hoffman (Faculty and Poetry Reading Series Committee members) when they were in Vancouver and at University of British Columbia during the same period of time, involved in the poetry scene. Please see The Oral Literary History of Vancouver: Stan Persky’s Section (Beaver Kosmos Folio, #5) for how Bowering and Persky met as well as Persky’s relationship to Gladys Hindmarch. Persky is also associated with Robin Blaser (who also read in 1969), Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, as well as many other local Vancouver writers in this series.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"I086-11-020:\\nOriginal transcript, print catalogue, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\\nI006-11-137:\\nOriginal transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, 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/oral-literary-history-of-vancouver-stan-perskys-section/oclc/85105672&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George and Brad Robinson (eds). An Oral Literary History of Vancouver: Stan Persky’s Section. Vancouver: Beaver Kosmos Folios, no. 5, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sketches/oclc/499435403&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hindmarch, Gladys. Sketches. Montreal: Beaver Kosmos Folios, no. 3, 198-?.\\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/watery-part-of-the-world/oclc/17479102&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Hindmarch, Gladys. The Watery Part of the World. Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.vancouverartinthesixties.com/people/189\",\"citation\":\"“People / Gladys (Maria) Hindmarch”. Ruins in the Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.vancouverartinthesixties.com/people/185\",\"citation\":\"“People / Stan Persky”. Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties. Vancouver: The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia and the grunt gallery.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/topic-sentence-a-writers-education/oclc/1151428685&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Persky, Stan. Topic Sentence: A Writer’s Education. Vancouver: New Star Books, 2007.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/wrestling-the-angel/oclc/3320699&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Persky, Stan. Wrestling the Angel. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://dooneyscafe.com/robin-blaser-1925-2009-deaths-duty/\",\"citation\":\"Persky, Stan. “Robin Blaser, 1925-2009: Death’s Duty”. dooneyscafe.com. 8 May 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/words-we-call-home-celebrating-creative-writing-at-ubc/oclc/923442804&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Svendsen, Linda. Words We Call Home: Celebrating Creative Writing at UBC. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=1850\",\"citation\":\"Twigg, Allen. “Persky, Stan”. BC BookWorld Canada. Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, 2007. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Nook Book”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 12  November 1969, page 7. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Stan Persky”. The Writers’ Union of Canada: Members’ Pages. The Writer’s Union of Canada, 2009.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548901462016,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0020_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0137_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Stan Persky 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_0020_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0137_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Stan Persky Tape Box - 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/gladys_hindmarch_i086-11-020.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"gladys_hindmarch_i086-11-020.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:45:52\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"110.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"gladys_hindmarch_i086-11-020.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nAnother Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] night in the series, this will be, this is the final reading of the fall series, and will be picked up again in January. As you know from the propaganda sheets, we're presenting what I consider to be the centre of the Vancouver writing scene. Gladys Hindmarch has been in that scene for ten years, and was associated with all those people who've got all kinds of names over the last few years such as West Coast movement and the Tish movement and the New Wave Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] and that sort of business. And Stan Persky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2330087], was as much related if not more because he is also a sort of superstar of little magazines [audience laughter] in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], and made the usual move up to Vancouver, what, three years ago? And has now become the superstar of the Vancouver writing scene. What's going to happen is that the reading will be split into two pieces. At the beginning, Stan is going to introduce Gladys, and then there will be a break of about ten minutes, and then Gladys is going to introduce Stan. So, I'd like to give you \\\"Stan and Gladys Evening\\\".\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:01:43\\n\\\"Beginning again and again is a natural thing, even when there is a series. Beginning again and again and again, explaining composition and time is a natural thing. It is understood by this time that everything's the same, except composition and time. Composition, and the time of the composition and the time in the composition. Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different, and always going to be different, everything is not the same. Everything is not the same as the time when, of the composition, and the time in the composition is different. The composition is different, that is certain.\\\" Gertrude Stein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q188385].\\n \\nGladys Hindmarch\\n00:02:40\\nWhen I whistle, just imagine that it's a very good whistler. \\\"They know what they're doing\\\".\\n \\nGladys Hindmarch\\n00:02:53\\nReads \\\"They know what they're doing\\\" [published later as “Callback” in The Watery Part of the World].\\n \\nGladys Hindmarch\\n00:16:08\\nThat's the third in a group of stories, or series of stories that I'm writing. [Audience laughter]. I haven't got a title for this one, it's still in the first day on the trip but it's the seventh story. I call it \\\"The [Salad (?)] Story\\\" in my head but I'll have to find a title for it.\\n \\nGladys Hindmarch\\n00:16:54\\nReads [\\\"Nothing is Simple\\\", published later in The Watery Part of the World].\\n \\nGladys Hindmarch\\n00:33:30\\nAnother, I've got lots of others, but I'm just going to read one other short one that's got a number of daydream passages that I don't think I--it's necessary to know which of the day--I mean you can, I think you can get it, it's just call it \\\"Number 12\\\" right now it also hasn't got a title. \\\"Outside deck scene\\\"--I guess that George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] didn't say, I used to work as a mess girl and a cook on a West Coast freighter called the Tahsis Prince, I worked on four or five of them because I was relief working, but the main one I worked on went up the west coast of Vancouver Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170479], and not, they have great difficulty getting women to go out there, maybe obvious reasons in these stories so I could almost get a job on it, whereas the other ones I could get jobs if nobody was available, but since on this particular boat, usually nobody was available. One time I was leaving shopping in the Army and Navy and a guy came down the hall and said, Look you know, they're trying to get a hold of you, you've gotta go up there. And I said, come on, now, and sort of walked me back to the hall. And one Christmas run there were fifty one men--lots of people don't want to go out at Christmas, but a lot of the seamen, just work in the summer, so if they can get a job for two weeks they take it. They had fifty one cards on the board and not one of them--and there was a call for a cook, which was a girl's job and a call for an able seaman, and not one of the fifty-one men would go out on the boat--they got a guy who hadn't registered yet went out. This is an end of summer trip, it's not rough at all.\\n \\nAnnotation\\n00:35:42\\nReads [\\\"How It Feels”, published later in The Watery Part of the World].\\n \\nEND\\n00:45:52\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Gladys Hindmarch reads a series of short stories later published in The Watery Part of the World (Douglas & McIntyre, 1988). \\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces reading. [INDEX: ‘Vancouver night’, final reading in fall series, January, ‘propaganda sheet’, centre of Vancouver writing scene, West Coast    movement, Tish movement, New Wave Canada, Stan Persky, little magazines, San Francisco, move to Vancouver, Stan introduces Gladys, intermission, Gladys introduces Stan.]\\n01:43- Stan Persky reads Gertrude Stein quote [INDEX: composition, series, composition, time.]\\n02:40- Gladys Hindmarch introduces “They Know What They’re Doing”. [INDEX: originally published in Writing (renamed GSWS) No.3, April 1970; and in Iron, No. 3 as recorded in The Watery Part of the World; perhaps later published as “Callback” in The Watery Part of the World (Douglas & McIntyre, 1988).]\\n02:53- Reads “They Know What They’re Doing”.\\n16:08- Introduces untitled story, dubbed “The Salad Story”, first line “Setting up supper is not nearly so slow...”. [INDEX: third in series of stories, untitled, trip; published later as “Nothing is Simple” in The Watery Part of the World (Douglas & McIntyre, 1988).]\\n16:54- Reads first line “Setting up supper is not nearly so slow...”.\\n33:30- Introduces first line “The sun on my eyes...” [INDEX: short story, daydream passages, preliminary titled “12”, George Bowering, mess cook on a West Coast freighter called “Tahsis Prince”, relief working, Vancouver Island, women, seamen, jobs, treatment of women, Army and Navy, Christmas, summer, cook; perhaps later published as “How it Feels” in The Watery Part of the World (Douglas & McIntyre, 1988).]\\n35:42- Reads first line “The sun on my eyes...”.\\n45:52.62- END OF RECORDING.\\n\\n“Howard Fink List of Poems Read”:\\nPrint catalogue page from archives contains the following information:\\n \\nTitle: Gladys Hindmarch reading her own poetry: Final Fall Reading 1969\\nSource: One 5” reel, 3 3/4 , mono lasting 45 mins.\\nDate: November 21, 1969\\n \\nIntroduction by Stan Persky\\n \\nSpeakers: Stan Persky, Gladys Hindmarch\\n \\n1.Title: They Know What They’re Doing\\nFirst Line: “Nobody is moving quickly…”\\n2. Title: untitled [is poem actually called “Untitled,” or is it just listed on archived print cat. as such?]\\nFirst Line: “Setting up for supper…”\\n3.Title: untitled\\nFirst Line: “The sun in my eye…”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/gladys-hindmarch-at-sgwu-1969/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/stan_persky_i006-11-137.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"stan_persky_i006-11-137.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"111.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"stan_persky_i006-11-137.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nGladys Hindmarch\\n00:00:00\\nStan and I both view Gertrude Stein as sort of eternal and I find that I can never read more than two pages of her at a time, like you just sort of become hypnotized, but she's pretty good to...like when I'm starting, trying to get into something to start to write and if I just read, you know just open one of her books at any sort of page, you know just at random and I just read two or three sentences, sometimes a paragraph, never more than that...and so I'm going to introduce Stan with a couple of Gertrude Stein sentences.  \\\"There's singularly nothing that makes a difference, a difference in beginning, and in middle, and in ending, except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations, and this is what makes everything different, otherwise they're all like, and everybody knows it because everybody says it.\\\" Stan Persky. \\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:01:13\\nYeah, I'm doing fine. The reading that I'm going to give is called \\\"The Day\\\", and what it is is pieces of everything that I'm onto right now, and so you have to bear with however unable to follow it out. And of course, like what we're trying to do is give you some sense of what it's like to be out where we are. \\n\\nStan Persky\\n00:01:45\\nReads \\\"Notebook, around August 20th, 1969\\\". \\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:03:34.14\\nIs that unbearably fast?\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:03:38.89\\nReads \\\"Notebook, around August 25th, 1969\\\".\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:07:16\\n\\\"Notebook, Sunday, August 29th or 30th, 1969\\\"  You can see the energy this takes, it's just...[laughter]. This is barely doing it. \\\"Jim and Franz...\\\" I'm going to try to read one of these a little more slowly, maybe.\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:07:42\\nReads \\\"Notebook, Sunday, August 29th or 30th, 1969\\\".\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:11:45\\nThis one's a longer pull if that's possible. \\\"The Marriage\\\". Angela, this is the gossip for you [laughter]. Coming in here, I was thinking, who's sitting in the room, and you'd like to hear your names [laughter]...Arnie...\\\"The Marriage\\\". \\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:12:23\\nReads \\\"The Marriage\\\". \\n\\nAudience\\n00:19:00\\nLaughter. \\n\\nStan Persky\\n00:19:04\\nTricky dick! [laughter].\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:19:10\\nResumes reading \\\"The Marriage\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:27:54\\nApplause [cut off]. \\n\\nUnknown\\n00:27:55\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:27:57\\nReads \\\"To Gladys\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:34:54\\nLaughter.\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:34:59\\n\\\"October 24th, 1969\\\". Did I write this for this, did I write this reading? \\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:35:08\\nReads \\\"October 24th, 1969\\\".\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:36:46\\nReads \\\"Jamie\\\". \\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:39:49\\nAnd the last three...\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:39:52\\n[Cut or edit made in tape here. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:39:53\\nReads \\\"Wednesday, November 5th, 1969, by Hunter's Creek\\\".\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:42:04\\nReads \\\"Fred Study. Notebook, Friday, November 7th, 1969, Fred Study.\\\"\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:44:17\\nAnd at last, to finish, as far as it's gone, or whatever it is, \\\"The Day\\\".\\n \\nStan Persky\\n00:44:26\\nReads \\\"The Day\\\".\\n \\nEND\\n00:46:38\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Stan Persky reads from Wrestling the Angel (Talonbooks, 1976) as well as a few unpublished poems.\\n\\n00:00- Gladys Hindmarch introduces Stan Persky. [INDEX: Gertrude Stein, reading Stein, Stein quote.]\\n01:13- Stan Persky introduces reading and the poem “Notebook, around August 20th, 1969”. [INDEX: reading called “The Day”, current work; published in Wrestling the Angel (Talonbooks, 1976), titled “It Starts with This”.]\\n01:45- Reads “Notebook, around August 20th, 1969”.\\n03:35- Stan asks audience about speed of his reading.\\n03:38- Reads “Notebook, around August 25th, 1969”.\\n07:16- Introduces “Notebook, around August 29th or 30th, 1969”. [INDEX: energy, Jim, Franz, reading more slowly.]\\n07:42- Reads “Notebook, around August 29th, or 30th, 1969”.\\n11:45- Introduces “The Marriage”. [INDEX: longer poem, Angela, gossip, audience, Arnie (random audience names); published in Wrestling the Angel (Talonbooks, 1976).]\\n12:23- Reads “The Marriage”.\\n18:56- Interrupts poem [INDEX: interruption, tricky dick.]\\n19:10- Continues “The Marriage”.\\n27:57- Reads “To Gladys”. [INDEX: Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Pound’s Canto 29, H.D. Warren Tallman.]\\n34:59- Introduces “October 24th, 1969”. [INDEX: write poem for reading.]\\n35:08- Reads “October 24th, 1969”. [INDEX: Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley.]\\n36:46- Reads “Jamie”. [INDEX: Tish magazine, James Reed.]\\n39:53- Reads “Wednesday, November 5th, 1969, by Hunter’s Creek”.\\n42:04- Reads “Fred Study. Notebook, Friday, November 7th, 1969”\\n44:26- Introduces “The Day”.\\n44:26- Reads “The Day”.\\n46:38.09- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/stan-persky-at-sgwu-1969/\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"id":"1302","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":["George Bowering, Home Recording, 3 March 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["Title does not follow the typical formula for this collection, as this reading did not take place at Sir George Williams University, but rather in Bowering's home."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Home recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Bowering, George"],"creator_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"Poet, novelist, anthologist and critic George Bowering was born in Penticton, British Columbia in 1935. In 1954 he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force until 1957, when he pursued a Bachelor’s degree in 1960 and a Master’s degree in 1963 from the University of British Columbia. With fellow poets Frank Davey, David Dawson, James Reid, Fred Wah and critic Warren Tallman, he founded Tish in 1961, a poetry newsletter which had monumental reverberations across Canada. This magazine, influenced by styles of the Black Mountain Poets and of the East Coast poetry of Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster and Irving Layton, brought a “new wave” of poetry to Canada. Bowering’s first collection of poetry began with Sticks and Stones (Tishbooks, 1962) with a preface written by Robert Creeley, and was followed by Points on the Grid (Contact Press, 1964) and Man in Yellow Boots (El Corno Emplumado, 1965). Bowering also founded the magazine Imago (1964-1974), which featured critical essays and poetry, and he also contributed to Open Letter as an editor. Bowering then moved eastwards, teaching at the University of Calgary from 1963-1966, enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Western Ontario. A year later, Bowering accepted a position as the writer-in-residence in 1967 at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, becoming a lecturer in 1967-1971. Bowering joined the Sir George Williams University Poetry Reading Series Committee in the fall of 1967, which was being run by Roy Kiyooka, Stanton Hoffman and Howard Fink. In 1972 he left Montreal and began a long career teaching at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He has published over fifty books of poetry, prose, short stories, essays, reviews, plays as well as pieces that combine and defy genres. A selection of his publications are as follows: Genève (Coach House Press, 1971), Autobiology (New Star Books, 1972), Curious (Coach House Press, 1973), In the Flesh (McClelland & Stewart, 1974), Allophanes (Coach House Press, 1976), Burning Water (Beaufort Books, 1980), Caprice (Penguin Books, 1988), Harry’s Fragments (Coach House Press, 1990), Rewriting my Grandfather (Nomados, 2005), Baseball Love (Talonbooks, 2006) and Shall I Compare: July 2006 (George Bowering, 2008). Bowering published his interview with Black Mountain poet Robert Duncan: An Interview, (Coach House Press, 1971), a book-length study on Canadian poet Al Purdy: Al Purdy (Copp Clark, 1970) along with editing several anthologies such as Vibrations: Poems from Youth (Cage, 1970), Fiction of Contemporary Canada (Coach House Press, 1980) and Likely Stories: A Postmodern Sampler (Coach House Oress, 1992). Bowering has won two Governor General Awards, for poetry in 1969 for Rocky Mountain Foot (McClelland & Stewart, 1968) and The Gangs Kosmos (Anasi, 1969); one for fiction in 1980 for Burning Water (Beaufort Books, 1980). George Bowering continues teaching, inspiring and writing at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 3 3\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date reference in \\\"Howard Fink List\\\"\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"\",\"notes\":\"Bowering's home at the time\",\"address\":\"\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}]"],"content_notes":["George Bowering reads from Points on the Grid (Contact, 1964), The Man in Yellow Boots (El Corno Emplumado, 1965) as well as one poem published later in Rocky Mountain Foot: a lyric, a memoir (1968). "],"contents":["George Bowering\n00:00:00\nFirst of all, my apologies for being so late with the tape, and a footnote that the noise in the background, if there is any, will be my wife making supper. \n\nUnknown\n00:00:12\nAmbient sound.\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:17\nFirst I'll read, first I'll read from my first book, Points on the Grid.\n\nUnknown\n00:00:27\n[Cut in tape].\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:32\nThis book published in 1964, by Contact Press. The first poem I'll read is the one called \"Trail\" [feedback sounds].\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:49\nReads \"Trail\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:01:36\n\"Locus Solus\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:01:40\nReads \"Locus Solus\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:02:42\nI might mention that the difference between this book and the other one is that more often you'll see on the page in this book that I've been working out certain ideas about poetics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q835023], certain ideas about syntax [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37437], ideas about how to get the page down on the poem, all the things the Tish poets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2384384] were working out in the early 1960s. As an example, the poem, \"Walking Poem\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:03:14\nReads \"Walking Poem\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:04:22\nI might mention, according to our poetics, or according to my poetics in that poem you'll see things operating such as a rhyme between the word 'shadow' and the word 'bashful'. \"Family\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:04:39\nReads \"Family\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:05:33\nThe following is the poem that I think is the best in the book, and that I think most people whom I've talked to agree this is the best poem in the book. \"Grandfather\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:05:47\nReads \"Grandfather\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:07:25\n\"For A.\".\n \nAnnotation\n00:07:28\nReads \"For A.\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:07:49\nOne thing that separates Western Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1145847] from Eastern Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q795077] is the Spanish names of Western Canada and the Spaniards [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160894] left their names all the way up the coast, not only in California and Oregon. This poem, set partly in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] and partly on the rest of the B.C. coast is called \"Spanish B.C.\".\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:08:11\nReads \"Spanish B.C\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:10:34\nI suppose I'd better read the title poem, \"Points on the Grid\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:10:42\nReads \"Points on the Grid\" from Points on the Grid.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:12:10\nI might mention, just for the record, that many of the things that I learned and tried to practice in that first book, I learned originally from poets such as Robert Duncan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q964391], Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978], all of whom visited Vancouver and helped the young poets in Vancouver out, very much, in learning about poetry. Now I plan to read from The Man in Yellow Boots, published this year, 1965, and in this book, I tend to move away from experimentation [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1384425], although I still retain many of the things that I tried to work out in the first book. In this book one of the things that I often do is turn to more social issues. First though, let me read the love poem that begins the book, this poem called \"To Cleave\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:13:14\nReads \"To Cleave\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:13:43\nThis book is a bilingual book, unfortunately not with French [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q150], but with Spanish [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1321] and just this once I'm going to see if I can read the Spanish version of the poem I just read. Spanish is called \"Penetrar\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:13:58\nReads \"Penetrar\" from The Man in Yellow Boots in Spanish.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:14:39\nIncidentally as a poetic note, some of that scratching and scrabbling noise in the background is my two small dogs beating each other up. This poem called \"Moon Shadow\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:14:54\nReads \"Moon Shadow\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:16:03\nThis then, is the other side of my poetry, this poem called \"Vox Crapulous\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:16:09\nReads \"Vox Crapulous\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:17:31\nFurther in that vein, this poem’s written October 16, 1964: a momentous day. This poem is called \"The Day Before the Chinese A-Bomb\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:17:46.49\nReads \"The Day Before the Chinese A-Bomb\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:18:29\nThis a longer poem, I think one of the two best poems in the book the other one being \"The Descent\", this poem's called \"For WCW\"\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:18:39\nReads \"For WCW\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:21:16\nThis poem, written during our visit to Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] in 1964, called \"Esta Muy Caliente\" and the reason it's not called \"Hace Mucho Calor\" is because of something inherent in the Spanish language that those that know will understand.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:21:35\nReads \"Esta Muy Caliente\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:23:09\nI think the following is the best poem in this book, it's called \"The Descent\", the title taken from a William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] poem of course.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:23:18.83\nReads \"The Descent\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:29:09\nAnd the last poem in the book, \"Breaking Up, Breaking Out\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:29:14\nReads \"Breaking Up, Breaking Out\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:30:03\nNow, some newer poems, while there's time. This newest one called \"The Oil\", written after a drive to Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] and back from Calgary [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36312].\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:30:14\nReads \"The Oil\" [published later in Rocky Mountain Foot: a lyric, a memoir].\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:32:03\nHere's a short poem called \"I Saw\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:32:07\nReads \"I Saw\".\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:32:20\nOkay, when I've just about come to the end of this side of the tape and I don't think I'll use the other side so that you can use it for somebody else, and once again I'm terribly sorry for being so late with this tape, and also if that does seem a loss, I'm sorry for not saying more things about poetry, I've been doing that less and less the further and further I've been getting away from Vancouver. So, Merry Christmas!\n \nEND\n00:32:58\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, George Bowering had been hired at Sir George Williams University and was on the Reading Series Committee. Bowering was also editing his magazine Imago in Montreal.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local connections:\\n\\nGeorge Bowering was very influential in promoting and enriching the Vancouver poetry scene in the early 1960s, through his magazines Tish and Imago as well as the hundreds of connections he made with other poets. His early connections with the Black Mountain Poets and the relationships he made with Canadian poets from Vancouver across Canada to Montreal  have been essential because he bridged the gap of distance and made new types of poetry available to young poets. Montrealer Louis Dudek wrote that Bowering’s “most important contribution to the new generation of Montreal poets was the institution of a series of readings at Sir George [Williams University] which exposed them to the diverse experimentation that was taking place across Canada and the U.S.”[1] . Bowering has anthologized many Canadian poets, as well as publishing over fifty books of his own writing, establishing himself as an important figure in Canadian poetry. \",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) & Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/rocky-mountain-foot-a-lyric-a-memoir/oclc/962929125&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George. Rocky Mountain Foot: a lyric, a memoir. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/concrete-island-montreal-poems-1967-1971/oclc/15849512&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George. The Concrete Island: Montreal poems, 1967-1971. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1977. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/points-on-the-grid/oclc/3391688&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George. Points on the Grid. Toronto: Contact Press, 1964. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/802667762&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George. (ed). The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/montreal-english-poetry-of-the-seventies/oclc/757254674&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Farkas, Andre & Ken Norris, ed. Montreal English Poetry of the Seventies. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970-edited-and-with-an-introduction-by-eli-mandel/oclc/1202953921&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-volume-1/oclc/636622714&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Miki, Roy. “Bowering, George (1935-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Ed. Benson, Eugene; Conolly, L.W. London: Routledge, 1994. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/record-of-writing-an-annotated-and-illustrated-bibliography-of-george-bowering/oclc/797558365&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Miki, Roy. A Record of Writing: an annotated and illustrated bibliography of George Bowering. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/canadian-writers-since-1960-first-series/oclc/883361320&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Quartermain, Peter and Meredith. \\\"George Bowering.\\\" Canadian Writers Since 1960: \\nFirst Series. Ed. William H. New. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 53. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960/oclc/962929534&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974 .\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-in-the-yellow-boots-el-hombre-de-las-botas-amarillas/oclc/1150284247&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George and Sergio Mondragon. The Man in Yellow Boots. Mexico: El Corno Emplumado, 1965. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548964376576,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:32:58\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"George Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nFirst of all, my apologies for being so late with the tape, and a footnote that the noise in the background, if there is any, will be my wife making supper. \\n\\nUnknown\\n00:00:12\\nAmbient sound.\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:17\\nFirst I'll read, first I'll read from my first book, Points on the Grid.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:00:27\\n[Cut in tape].\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:32\\nThis book published in 1964, by Contact Press. The first poem I'll read is the one called \\\"Trail\\\" [feedback sounds].\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:00:49\\nReads \\\"Trail\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:01:36\\n\\\"Locus Solus\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:01:40\\nReads \\\"Locus Solus\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:02:42\\nI might mention that the difference between this book and the other one is that more often you'll see on the page in this book that I've been working out certain ideas about poetics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q835023], certain ideas about syntax [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37437], ideas about how to get the page down on the poem, all the things the Tish poets [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2384384] were working out in the early 1960s. As an example, the poem, \\\"Walking Poem\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:03:14\\nReads \\\"Walking Poem\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:04:22\\nI might mention, according to our poetics, or according to my poetics in that poem you'll see things operating such as a rhyme between the word 'shadow' and the word 'bashful'. \\\"Family\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:04:39\\nReads \\\"Family\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:05:33\\nThe following is the poem that I think is the best in the book, and that I think most people whom I've talked to agree this is the best poem in the book. \\\"Grandfather\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:05:47\\nReads \\\"Grandfather\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:07:25\\n\\\"For A.\\\".\\n \\nAnnotation\\n00:07:28\\nReads \\\"For A.\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:07:49\\nOne thing that separates Western Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1145847] from Eastern Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q795077] is the Spanish names of Western Canada and the Spaniards [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160894] left their names all the way up the coast, not only in California and Oregon. This poem, set partly in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] and partly on the rest of the B.C. coast is called \\\"Spanish B.C.\\\".\\n\\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:08:11\\nReads \\\"Spanish B.C\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:10:34\\nI suppose I'd better read the title poem, \\\"Points on the Grid\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:10:42\\nReads \\\"Points on the Grid\\\" from Points on the Grid.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:12:10\\nI might mention, just for the record, that many of the things that I learned and tried to practice in that first book, I learned originally from poets such as Robert Duncan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q964391], Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978], all of whom visited Vancouver and helped the young poets in Vancouver out, very much, in learning about poetry. Now I plan to read from The Man in Yellow Boots, published this year, 1965, and in this book, I tend to move away from experimentation [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1384425], although I still retain many of the things that I tried to work out in the first book. In this book one of the things that I often do is turn to more social issues. First though, let me read the love poem that begins the book, this poem called \\\"To Cleave\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:13:14\\nReads \\\"To Cleave\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:13:43\\nThis book is a bilingual book, unfortunately not with French [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q150], but with Spanish [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1321] and just this once I'm going to see if I can read the Spanish version of the poem I just read. Spanish is called \\\"Penetrar\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:13:58\\nReads \\\"Penetrar\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots in Spanish.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:14:39\\nIncidentally as a poetic note, some of that scratching and scrabbling noise in the background is my two small dogs beating each other up. This poem called \\\"Moon Shadow\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:14:54\\nReads \\\"Moon Shadow\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:16:03\\nThis then, is the other side of my poetry, this poem called \\\"Vox Crapulous\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:16:09\\nReads \\\"Vox Crapulous\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:17:31\\nFurther in that vein, this poem’s written October 16, 1964: a momentous day. This poem is called \\\"The Day Before the Chinese A-Bomb\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:17:46.49\\nReads \\\"The Day Before the Chinese A-Bomb\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:18:29\\nThis a longer poem, I think one of the two best poems in the book the other one being \\\"The Descent\\\", this poem's called \\\"For WCW\\\"\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:18:39\\nReads \\\"For WCW\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:21:16\\nThis poem, written during our visit to Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] in 1964, called \\\"Esta Muy Caliente\\\" and the reason it's not called \\\"Hace Mucho Calor\\\" is because of something inherent in the Spanish language that those that know will understand.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:21:35\\nReads \\\"Esta Muy Caliente\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:23:09\\nI think the following is the best poem in this book, it's called \\\"The Descent\\\", the title taken from a William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] poem of course.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:23:18.83\\nReads \\\"The Descent\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:29:09\\nAnd the last poem in the book, \\\"Breaking Up, Breaking Out\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:29:14\\nReads \\\"Breaking Up, Breaking Out\\\" from The Man in Yellow Boots.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:30:03\\nNow, some newer poems, while there's time. This newest one called \\\"The Oil\\\", written after a drive to Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096] and back from Calgary [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36312].\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:30:14\\nReads \\\"The Oil\\\" [published later in Rocky Mountain Foot: a lyric, a memoir].\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:32:03\\nHere's a short poem called \\\"I Saw\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:32:07\\nReads \\\"I Saw\\\".\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:32:20\\nOkay, when I've just about come to the end of this side of the tape and I don't think I'll use the other side so that you can use it for somebody else, and once again I'm terribly sorry for being so late with this tape, and also if that does seem a loss, I'm sorry for not saying more things about poetry, I've been doing that less and less the further and further I've been getting away from Vancouver. So, Merry Christmas!\\n \\nEND\\n00:32:58\\n\",\"notes\":\"George Bowering reads from Points on the Grid (Contact, 1964), The Man in Yellow Boots (El Corno Emplumado, 1965) as well as one poem published later in Rocky Mountain Foot: a lyric, a memoir (1968). \\n\\nList of Poems Read and Time Stamps:\\n00:00 - George Bowering introduces reading [INDEX: Points on the Grid ]\\n00:49 - Reads “Trail”\\n01:36 - Reads “Locus Solus” [INDEX: not on Howard Fink list of poems]\\n02:42 - Introduces “Walking Poem” [INDEX: Points on the Grid, Man in Yellow Boots, poetics, syntax, Tish poets in the early 1960’s]\\n03:14 - Reads “Walking Poem”\\n04:22 - Introduces “Family” [INDEX: poetics: rhyme]\\n04:39 - Reads “Family”\\n05:33 - Introduces “Grandfather”\\n05:47 - Reads “Grandfather”\\n07:25 - Reads “For A.”\\n07:49 - Introduces “Spanish B.C.” [INDEX: differences between Eastern and Western Canada, Spaniards on West Coast of North America, Vancouver]\\n08:11 - Reads “Spanish B.C.”\\n10:34 - Reads “Points on the Grid”\\n12:10 - Introduces “To Cleave” [INDEX: Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, young poets in Vancouver, The Man in Yellow Boots, experimentation in poetry]\\n13:14 - Reads “To Cleave”\\n13:43 - Introduces “Penetrar” [INDEX: not on Howard Fink List.]\\n13:58 - Reads “Penetrar”\\n14:39 - Introduces “Moon Shadow”\\n14:54 - Reads “Moon Shadow”\\n16:03 - Introduces “Vox Crappulous”\\n16:09 - Reads “Vox Crappulous”\\n17:31 - Introduces “The Day Before the Chinese A-Bomb” [INDEX: October 16, 1964]\\n17:46 - Reads “The Day Before the Chinese A-Bomb”\\n18:29 - Introduces “For W.C.W.” [INDEX: “The Descent”, William Carlos Williams]\\n18:39 - Reads “For W.C.W.”\\n21:16 - Introduces “Esta Muy Caliente” [INDEX: written during trip to Mexico in 1964, Spanish language]\\n23:09 - Reads “Esta Muy Caliente”\\n23:09 - Introduces “The Descent” [INDEX: William Carlos Williams poem]\\n23:18 - Reads “The Descent”\\n29:09 - Introduces “Breaking Up, Breaking Out”\\n29:14 - Reads “Breaking Up, Breaking Out”\\n30:03 - Introduces “The Oil” [INDEX: drive from Edmonton to Calgary, poem from \\nunknown source]\\n32:03 - Reads “The Oil”\\n32:03 - Reads “I Saw” [INDEX: poem from unknown source]\\n32:20 - George Bowering closes the reading [INDEX: talking about poetry, being away from Vancouver, Merry Christmas!]\\n\\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n“George Bowering” reading his own poetry\\nMarch 3, 1967\\nreel info: one, 5” tape, 3 3/4 ips, mono, one track, lasting 25 mins.\\n*note: some poems are missing from this list*\\n“Steps of love” is noted as being between “Walking Poem” and “Family”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0006_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"George Bowering Tape Box 1 - 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\":\"I0086_11_0006_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"George Bowering Tape Box 1 - 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\":\"I0086_11_0006_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"George Bowering Tape Box 1 - 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\":\"I0086_11_0006_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"George Bowering Tape Box 1 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"score":2.1907105},{"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":2.1907105}]