[{"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":1.6060258},{"id":"1273","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["George Oppen at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 25 November 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"(GEORGE) G OPPEN Poetry Oct 25/68 I086-11-040\" written on the spine of the tape's box. \"G. OPPEN Poetry I086-11-040\" also written on sticker on the reel. \"RT 523\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 3"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Oppen, George"],"creator_names_search":["Oppen, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/98097764\",\"name\":\"Oppen, George\",\"dates\":\"1908-1984\",\"notes\":\"Poet George Oppen was born on April 24, 1908 in New Rochelle, New York. Spending much of his childhood in San Francisco, Oppen enrolled in the Agricultural College at Corvallis (now University of Oregon) in 1926. He met his future wife, Mary Colby there, and they married in 1928. Oppen attended a prep school in Oakland in the hopes of enrolling at the University at Berkeley, but instead the couple made their way to New York in the hopes of meeting Ezra Pound.  In New York City, they met Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky, and in 1931 they formed the Objectivist movement. Having finally met Ezra Pound, Oppen’s poetry was published in his Active Anthology in 1933 (Faber and Faber). Oppen’s first collection of poetry, written in 1929, Discrete Series, was published by the Objectivist Press in 1934 and opened with a preface by Ezra Pound. From that point onwards, Oppen stopped writing poetry. The Depression had hit and the Oppens spent their time in the 30’s and 40’s organizing the unemployed in Brooklyn. Oppen served for the U.S. Army from 1943-1945 and received a Purple Heart among other honours. After the war, his family moved to Los Angeles, until 1950 when they were harassed by the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee for their affiliations with Communism. They fled to Mexico and resided there for eight years. By the time the Oppen family moved back to New York in 1958, Oppen had taken up poetry again. In 1962, Oppen published his second collection of poems, The Materials (New Directions Press), followed in 1965 with This In Which and Of Being Numerous in 1968 (New Directions Press), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1969. Seascape: Needle’s Eye was published in 1972 (Sumac Press), and in 1975 Oppen compiled his previously published material with new poems in Collected Poems (New Directions). His final collection of poetry, Primitive was published in 1978 (Black Sparrow Press). George Oppen died in July 1984.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Poor\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 11 25\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the spine of the tape's box. Previous researcher statest the Gazette published the date of the reading as March 8, 1968 but may have been changed subsequently\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building\",\"notes\":\"Exact venue unknown\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\" 45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\" -73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["George Oppen reads his long poem “The Route” from Of Being Numerous (New Directions Press, 1968). "],"contents":["george_oppen_i086-11-040.mp3\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nThis evening, we're having George Oppen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3101810], who is going to start off the third series, now I want to keep this introduction to George very succinct, and I'm going to quote a part of the letter that he sent to us, regarding his activities, I think it adequately, perhaps, sums up what he's been about. It goes like this: \"A bibliography, in so far as my memory will produce it. Objectivist Issue of Poetry, Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297], circa 1932. A book, Discrete Series, Objectivist Press, 1934, re-issued by Asphodel Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2089201], 463 The Arcade, Cleveland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37320], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. Pound's Active Anthology, 1936, a number of little magazines during 33, 34, Hound and Horn, I believe, Lion and Crown, etc. There it is, you'll see, 25 year gap. Touched on in some of the poems including “Pro Nobis” in This In Which. A forthcoming book, Of Being Numerous, New Directions [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27474] scheduled for the spring of 1968.\" And he ends by saying, \"If there is a moral it is one has in fact a great deal of triumph, and then, recently, he has had the following books done: This in Which, by New Directions, 1957, The Materials, New Directions again, 1962, Of Being Numerous, 1968. Now if there's any a book of poems, Discrete Series, there is a long preface by Ezra Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366], I'd like to quote a segment of that, which goes like this: \"I salute a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man's sensibility, and which is not been got out of other man's books.\" Ladies and gentlemen, George Oppen.\n\nUnknown \n00:02:47\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nGeorge Oppen\n00:02:48\nI think I will, I plan to read two of the longer poems in the last volume, so I will just read the poems. Without pleasantries and so on. We can easily make a conversation if you want afterwards, but I think I better just read the books, read the poems, and I'll make a few intermissions, it's a great deal of poetry both for you and for me, at a single sitting, and we'll make intermissions as however you think, however I think. I'll start with the poem in Of Being Numerous, called \"The Route\". That's r-o-u-t-e, route.\n \nGeorge Oppen\n00:03:37\nReads \"The Route\" from Of Being Numerous.\n \nUnknown\n00:18:45\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\n \nGeorge Oppen\n00:18:58\nResumes reading “The Route’\n \nUnknown\n00:22:14\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n \nEND\n00:40:12\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nIn 1968, George Oppen published Of Being Numerous (New Directions Press, 1968).\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nThe direct connection between Oppen and Montreal or Sir George Williams University is unknown. Oppen was an important American poet, forming with Charles Reznikoff (also in this series) and Louis Zukofsky the Objectivist movement, and working with both William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Oppen, George\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/of-being-numerous/oclc/462091047?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Oppen, George. Of Being Numerous. New York: New Directions Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. Montreal: The Gazette. 14September 1967, page 15. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Sutton, Mark. “Oppen, George”. Literature Online Biography. H.W. Wilson Company, Proquest, 2002. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548870004736,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0040_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0040_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"George Oppen Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/george_oppen_i086-11-040.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"george_oppen_i086-11-040.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:40:12\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"96.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Roy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nThis evening, we're having George Oppen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3101810], who is going to start off the third series, now I want to keep this introduction to George very succinct, and I'm going to quote a part of the letter that he sent to us, regarding his activities, I think it adequately, perhaps, sums up what he's been about. It goes like this: \\\"A bibliography, in so far as my memory will produce it. Objectivist Issue of Poetry, Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297], circa 1932. A book, Discrete Series, Objectivist Press, 1934, re-issued by Asphodel Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2089201], 463 The Arcade, Cleveland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37320], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. Pound's Active Anthology, 1936, a number of little magazines during 33, 34, Hound and Horn, I believe, Lion and Crown, etc. There it is, you'll see, 25 year gap. Touched on in some of the poems including “Pro Nobis” in This In Which. A forthcoming book, Of Being Numerous, New Directions [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27474] scheduled for the spring of 1968.\\\" And he ends by saying, \\\"If there is a moral it is one has in fact a great deal of triumph, and then, recently, he has had the following books done: This in Which, by New Directions, 1957, The Materials, New Directions again, 1962, Of Being Numerous, 1968. Now if there's any a book of poems, Discrete Series, there is a long preface by Ezra Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366], I'd like to quote a segment of that, which goes like this: \\\"I salute a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man's sensibility, and which is not been got out of other man's books.\\\" Ladies and gentlemen, George Oppen.\\n\\nUnknown \\n00:02:47\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nGeorge Oppen\\n00:02:48\\nI think I will, I plan to read two of the longer poems in the last volume, so I will just read the poems. Without pleasantries and so on. We can easily make a conversation if you want afterwards, but I think I better just read the books, read the poems, and I'll make a few intermissions, it's a great deal of poetry both for you and for me, at a single sitting, and we'll make intermissions as however you think, however I think. I'll start with the poem in Of Being Numerous, called \\\"The Route\\\". That's r-o-u-t-e, route.\\n \\nGeorge Oppen\\n00:03:37\\nReads \\\"The Route\\\" from Of Being Numerous.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:18:45\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nGeorge Oppen\\n00:18:58\\nResumes reading “The Route’\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:22:14\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nEND\\n00:40:12\\n\",\"notes\":\"George Oppen reads his long poem “The Route” from Of Being Numerous (New Directions Press, 1968). \\n\\n00:00- Introducer (George Bowering?) introduces George Oppen [INDEX: Objectivist Issue of Poetry, 1932, Discreet Series, Objectivist Press, 1934, re-issued by Asphodel press, 462 Arcade, Cleveland Ohio: with long preface from Ezra Pound, Active Anthology ed. Ezra Pound 1936, Hound and Horn Magazine, Lion and Crown Magazine, Of Being Numerous, New Directions Press, 1968- [One year after recording won the Pulitzer Prize], The Materials, New Directions Press, 1962, This In Which, New Directions Press, 1957]\\n02:48- George Oppen introduces “The Route”.\\n03:37- Reads “The Route”. [INDEX: “The Route” in Of Being Numerous : partly about WWII, Alcace, German Nazi Soldiers]\\n40:12.69- END OF RECORDING\\n \\nFrom the Howard Fink list of poems:\\n25/11/68\\none 5” mono, single track reel, @ 3 3/4 ips, lasting 40 min.\\n1. “The Route”.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/george-oppen-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.6060258},{"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":1.6060258},{"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":1.6060258},{"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":1.6060258},{"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":1.6060258},{"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":1.6060258},{"id":"1303","cataloger_name":["Ali,Barillaro"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["James Wright at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 December 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"I006/SR157 JAMES WRIGHT\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape box. \"I006-11-157\" written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 3"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Wright, James"],"creator_names_search":["Wright, James"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/12322205\",\"name\":\"Wright, James\",\"dates\":\"1927-1980\",\"notes\":\"American poet James Arlington Wright was born on December 13, 1927 in Martins Ferry, Ohio, an industrial town along the Ohio River. He began writing sonnets as a young child, was encouraged by his teachers to continue writing, though he suffered from a nervous breakdown in 1943. After graduation in 1946, Wright joined the U.S. Army, serving in Japan until 1948 when he returned to Ohio and enrolled in Kenyon College (where the influential John Crowe Ransom was teaching). His poetry was published in the Kenyon Review, Poetry (Chicago) and in The New Yorker.  In 1952 he married a high school classmate Liberty Kardules and spent the next year on a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Vienna. His first child, Franz, was born in 1953, and Wright enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, where his teachers were Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. His first book, The Green Wall (Yale University Press, 1958) was published because of his submission to the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, which W.H. Auden was judging. His second book, published in 1959 was Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press), the same year he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on Charles Dickens. During the next few years, Wright’s marriage failed, and he was denied tenure at the University of Minnesota. Wright’s next publication, The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963) proved to be groundbreaking, and was followed by Shall We Gather at the River (1968). Wright spent a few years at the Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and was then awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965-66. Wright moved again, to New York City and took up a position at Hunter College in 1966. He met his second wife, Edith Anne Runk that same year. Wright was awarded both a Rockefeller Foundation Grant and an Ingram Merrill Foundation award for the publication of Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University) in 1969. Wright was able to publish his Collected Poems (Wesleyan University, 1971) which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, and was followed by Two Citizens (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973) and To a Blossoming Pear Tree (Farrer, Straus and Giroux, 1977). Wright was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue, and died four months later, in New York City on March 25, 1980. This Journey (Random House, 1982), Collected Prose (University of Michigan Press, 1983) and Above the River: The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992) were all published posthumously.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 12 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date referenced in \\\"Howard Fink Print Catalogue\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building\",\"notes\":\"Exact venue location unknown \",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["James Wright reads from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963), Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), and from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968)."],"contents":["james_wright_ i086-11-157.mp3\n\nJames Wright\n00:00:00\nWell, I feel about poetry in a curious way, I guess. I have a very strong classical streak in me, I think, I like poems that are very regular, and poems that rhyme, and poems that are passionately intellectual, and I think that I feel this way because the poems that are the most passionately intellectual have a way of spilling over into something which is completely free in its feeling. Oh here's a little poem by Ben Jonson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q193857]. It's called \"On My First Sonne\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7091055]. A little elegy. \n \nJames Wright\n00:00:52\nReads \"On My First Sonne\" by Ben Jonson.\n \nJames Wright\n00:01:55\nPoor old Ben Jonson, in a pig's eye. The next poem I would like to say is by an American poet, W.S. Merwin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q680368], who has just published his selected translations, and of course in addition to the very beautiful poems of his own that Merwin has, he's been a prolific translator, and he, he really does know the languages. I've loved his poetry always because he has such a beautiful ear, it was very interesting to me when I saw him in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] a few weeks ago, when he said that his Selected Translations were about to appear. I asked him if he remembered the transla--well of course he remembered, I just told him I always liked very much the poem he had translated, a later poem by Garcia Lorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41408]called \"Gacela of Unforseen Love\". What a weird thing! He didn't remember that he had done it. And it's not in his book. Well, I wish it were. \"Gacela of Unforseen Love\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:03:35\nReads \"Gacela of Unforseen Love\" by Federico Garcia Lorca and translated in English by W.S. Mervin.\n \nJames Wright\n00:04:30\nCan't imagine doing that in English and then forgetting that you've done it. Maybe it was frightening. Here in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] I've been thinking about what in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] we hear about Montreal, about the English background, and the French background, and the Canadian, all of which are very vital and alive, but what do you make of the Irish up here? Are there any Irishmen in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16]? [pauses for response]. Just on March 17th. Only on March 17th, fine. My own family background is kind of complicated. I'm an Ohioan, which is a kind of hell in itself [audience laughter]. But both sides of my family have roots in the south, but they have a strong streak of Irish behind them; it wasn't until I was quite old that I found out about some of Irish literature, of course we've all of us read Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. The son of a bitch. He not only did everything first but he did it best. We all feel that. But really he didn't do it all first. He may have done it best but there are some Irish things that I found that perhaps he grew out of it. Do you know for example, the poems of, of all people, Jonathan Swift [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41166]? Jonathan Swift is a wonderful poet. He published Gulliver's Travels [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181488] in 1725, and I found a little poem of his called \"On Burning a Dull Poem\". Of 1729. And it has a, it's a wonderful expression of the Irish art of the curse. I shouldn't lean on this. I don't mean the poem, I mean the lectern. [Audience laughter]. But it's a wonderful example of the Irish art of the curse, what is supposed to be very regular and it's almost like a prayer. The art here is that you should decide first of all whether or not what you feel annoyed by really is worthy of a curse. And then if it is, you should not come out and blast it directly, but exercise some indirection on it. So here we have Swift, \"On Burning a Dull Poem\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:07:29\nReads  \"On Burning a Dull Poem\" by Jonathan Swift.\n \nJames Wright\n00:08:25\nI can't help bringing that a little closer to our own time. We all know the very beautiful plays of John Millington Synge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q213447]. Perhaps people haven't so widely enjoyed his poems. He didn't write a great many, but to my mind he wrote enough. He also, he made a translation of Petrarch [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1401] into the same language as those people, as those women on the Aran Islands [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212893] who used to clean his room. He said he learned something about the rhythm of his language just by listening to them. So that in the sound of the Petrarch after Laura is dead and is appearing in heaven, and the angels are astonished by her beauty, the sestet of that sonnet, in Synge's translation, the angels see Laura and suddenly say, \"What rare beauty is that now? What rare beauty at all.\" So that those old women who cleaned his room on the Aran Islands have the voices of the angels. Well, after The Playboy of the Western World [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q451517] was first produced, he was criticized and he wanted to write something about the criticism. He didn't know whether the, who the critic was, really, he didn't know anything about him, he didn't know whether or not the critic had a sister. But there was the poem, and since he realized, as Aristotle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q868] said, that “poetry is a higher and more philosophical thing than history”--history being limited to what is or was, and poetry having available to it what ought to be, what might be...Synge invented a sister, and he wrote a little poem called \"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\". [Audience laughter]. This is a prayer. [Audience laughter]. And blasphemy also is a very delicate art. \"Lord\"...no I have to say, that you have to understand, really what \"Mountjoy\" is. Mountjoy is a place on the edge of Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1761], a kind of charity place where the Skid Rowers go.  \n \nJames Wright\n00:11:06\nReads \"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\" by John Millington Synge.\n \nAudience\n00:11:32\nLaughter.\n \nJames Wright\n00:11:43\nI came to like those Irish poets, so much, because they enjoyed poetry. My God, you've got to do something, life is a mess. Well, alright, I want to say one more poem that I care about. I know I'm going on too long with this business. One more. Let me say it in English first, and you can't say that I'm translating at sight, but perhaps by ear, and it'll be very awkward, but it's not awkward in the German. When--it's a poem that doesn't have a title. I don't think I'll tell you who wrote it. The poem goes: \"When the clocks nearby strike as if their own hearts were beating, and things--that is, material objects-things, with hesitant voices say to me softly, ‘Are you there?’ Then I am not the same man who woke this morning, for the night has sent me a name which no one to whom I spoke by daylight can listen to without being deeply frightened. Every door in me opens, and then I know that nothing dies, neither gesture, nor prayer. Things are too heavy for that. My whole childhood stands always around me. I am never alone. Many who live before me, and many who spring forth from me”--which I would also, I suppose, translate as ‘many who spring forth out of my body'--”wove, wove into my being. And if I sit down opposite you and say, lightly, I have been suffering, do you hear? Who knows? Who murmurs that voice with me?\"\n\nJames Wright\n00:14:19\nReads untitled poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in German.\n \nJames Wright\n00:15:28\nOh, no that's corny, of course it's by Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483]. I mean it's corny to hold back the name. It's one of those lyrics that Rilke wrote between those New Poems [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7011009] and the big terrible ones, the Duino Elegies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q688426] and the Sonnets. Well, let me proceed now to some poems of my own. The first one I think I will read is a poem called \"A Note left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\". I've been thinking about that poem a little bit recently for a lot of reasons. I think I should tell you something about what's behind it. There was an old guy called Minnegan Leonard who, or maybe Francis Leonard, who grew up--no, [laughter] I mean he was old, I grew up--he was already there [audience laughter]. Back in Martins Ferry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1018313], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. The story about him was that he had been a very well-educated man and he sort of deteriorated, everyone said. One night, a couple of friends and I found him in the, when the snow was starting to fall. And his, he wore a pair of overalls, the ones that cross behind, and they were too big, my friends and I helped him get home. We were very much afraid of his brother, Jimmy. Minnegan had drunk so much that his brain was practically gone, and he had nothing left to say to the universe except \"God bless my soul.\" We were stupid, we were afraid of his brother Jimmy, because his brother Jimmy, although drunk, was still mean. He still had some of his humanity left. And we were afraid of him. I thought about this poem as being spoken by a boy, I was about twelve years old. I also wanted to see if I could get away with swearing in a poem, and give the word, give the profanity some of its true force. The only thing that I deplore about the open use of profanity is that very soon, when the four-letter words are used commonly, they start to lose touch with their old, magical, dark force. When I was in the army, twenty years ago, I realized that this happened. You couldn't say \"fuck\" to refer to anything dark or anything interesting. It became a musical notation. Merely a musical notation, like a comma, when you were having chow. [Audience laughter]. But then there came those necessary moments when one absolutely needs to curse, and what does one do then? Then I saw all sorts of people around me, floundering, turning to what Wordsworth would have called the \"poetic diction,\" and finding that to say \"fuck\" had about as much effect on the release of one's feelings as the Finney crew had on anybody who was trying to read about fish in the end of the 18th century. Then I met a poetic genius named Mark W. Patrick from Crafton, Alabama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173], who was not hobbled by this. Someone asked him once, no he had invention, true invention. He knew how to swear. My wife has heard this before. Alright, I'll say it again. Someone said to him, \"Where are you from?\" And he said, \"I come from so far back in the country, they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making.” [Audience laughter]. No, wait a minute, you didn't hear the rest of the conceit. Now listen to this carefully and think of it as in Shakespearian. \"I come from so far back in the country they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making ring-tailed biscuits.\" [Audience laughter]. I thought, let us somehow rescue through invention our power to curse. Well this poem is called, \"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\". It's about taking Minnegan Leonard home when he was helpless in the snow.\n \nJames Wright\n00:21:07\nReads \"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\" [from Saint Judas].\n \nUnknown\n00:22:43\nAmbient Sound. \n \nJames Wright\n00:22:58\nNow for a while I think I would like to read from my new book. There are a couple of city poems in this new book, well, more than a couple, and many of the things that I had written before were about the country, more or less, in Ohio, and in Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527]. But I developed a certain feeling about cities, I guess, and...I didn't have a very happy time in Minneapolis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36091] and St. Paul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28848], but I lived there for about eight years, and before I left I thought I ought to say farewell, somehow. I couldn't think of a title for this poem that would convey or suggest what I really felt, and the true title came to me. I wanted it to be a poem about, not only about Minneapolis but about many American cities, and what has been happening in them. Minneapolis is my favourite because I lived there for quite a while, and they had a very big Skid Row there, and the Skid Row was cleared out by the city administration, the last, the most recent one. It was a very big Skid Row, between the Great Northern Railroad Station and the Mississippi River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1497], right a strip across there, several blocks wide. And they sort of flattened it. They put up an insurance building and the rest were parking lots. And it never occurred to them that the people who lived there would...well, even existed. And I know where those people went, they went down Nickolet Avenue, scattered down there. It's a very strange thing. Spiro T. Agnew [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203433], our new American Vice-President said, during the campaign, \"The reasons the slums are so over-crowded is that there are too many people in them.\" [Audience laughter]. Well, this is my city poem. It's called \"The Minneapolis Poem\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:26:11\nReads \"The Minneapolis Poem\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:30:39\nThe next poem is called, \"In Terror of Hospital\"-- [cut or edit in tape] \"In Terror of Hospital Bills\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:30:51\nReads \"In Terror of Hospital Bills\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].   \n \nJames Wright\n00:32:36\nThis poem is called \"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\". It's about leaving Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297]. I went down there for a long Thanksgiving weekend to visit a man whose poetry I had seen, I had never met him, I admired it very much. His name is Bill Mott. He has finally published a first book. He lived in an area down there where there were some sort of poor people...I don't mean poor people in the sense of being savagely poor, really really put down, but just sort of drifters, the guys who go into the, who go in on Thanksgiving and get a dinner there from the Salvation Army [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q188307] and look at it and then sweep up and leave. \n \nJames Wright\n00:33:53\nReads \"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:35:43\nYou know, George Orwell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3335] remarked in Down and Out in Paris and London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1355487] that when he got back to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] from France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142] where he'd been a dishwasher, he had so little money that he realized that he would have to beg, only somehow his clothes, ratty as they were, were still too good to beg with. And so he, he sold what clothes he had, or traded them, rather, for a really crummy suit of clothes, and when he got those old, really poor man's clothes on, he noticed all sorts of strange things. The way people looked at him. The way women looked at him. As well as other men. And the fact that he was poor had an effect on the way people's souls were shaped, somehow. I only had a very slight experience of that in my life, and I don't want any more of it. Because it's not very romantic. For a while I had a sort of, an account at a department store in Minneapolis, and I was behind in my payments. At that time I had an old green coat my father had given me, it didn't quite fit but a coat is a coat. So I had it, and I was, in order to keep myself going one way or another, I went up to the cashier's office at this department store and tried to cash a small cheque for twenty dollars, or something like that. There was a very beautiful girl there, the cashier, and she looked at me, and she disappeared for a moment and she came back with a fellow who had a crew cut. And he evidently was the Grand Vizier, or something. Well, they were about a foot and a half away from my face while I waited, and they talked about me, without paying any attention to me. And I realized something I had never realized before. That I'm, I am content simply to think about it, I don't want it to happen to me again  I thought, Jesus Christ, there are millions of people in this country who are treated like things, every single intimate moment of their lives. And it's not pretty. Well. \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\". The poem is in different parts and I think I'll indicate the numbers. \n \nJames Wright\n00:38:45\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 1 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:39:17\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 2 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:39:44\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 3 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:40:20\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store”, Part 4 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:40:38\nReads \"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\", Part 5 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:41:11\nI think that I'll read a couple of nature poems. Nature, in poetry and song. One of the parts of the United States that I like very much...I came to like, I've spoken kind of harshly about Minneapolis, and I have harsh feelings about that city, but actually I love the West, out at the edge of Minnesota, you have, there's Minnesota, North Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1207], and South Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1211], and that part of the country there is sort of the, it's not really flat, it's a little rolling, but it's the beginning of the prairie, and the prairie is a beautiful thing. I spent a summer up around Fargo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34109], North Dakota, and I like Fargo, I like to walk there in the summer evenings, I would go even out to the other end of town, and, well it really is a real city, there are about eighty-thousand people, but you could walk out to the edge of town, and just a little beyond the town the prairie would begin. There is something about that sudden opening that I like.  his is called, \"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:42:45\nReads \"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:43:07\nNo, may I start the poem again, I miss, I made a mistake. \n \nJames Wright\n00:43:11\nReads \"Outside Fargo, North Dakota” [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:44:04\nNow this one is called \"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\". I love those old trains, we were talking about this earlier, there's a certain thing about trains, especially in the West, west of Chicago. It's not true in the East. One of these days somebody's going to get a train from New York to Connecticut [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q779] or something and that train will never return, it'll keep coming back, every forty years with ghosts on it, flying Dutchmen. But it's different in the West, and...there's a discontinued railroad station. \n \nJames Wright\n00:44:53\nReads \"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\n \nJames Wright\n00:46:30\nI think I'll read...I think I'll read just a few more very short poems, perhaps two or three, and they're kind of nature poems, I guess. Nature indeed, one of them is a love poem. This is called \"A Light in the Hallway\". \n \nJames Wright\n00:47:07\nReads \"A Light in the Hallway\" [published as “The Lights in the Hallway” in Shall We Gather at the River]. \n \nJames Wright\n00:48:06\nAnd then a couple out of my previous book. This poem is called \"Mary Bly\", it's for my goddaughter, and I stood up there in the church and they said, well, I went through the ceremony and I am her godfather, Mary Bly, it's the first child of my old friend, my old friends, Robert and Carol Bly. I feel very proud of this poem, but it's one of those times that, it signifies one of those times in my life when I really thought of something nice to do and did it. So many things I want to do that would be nice, and usually they turn out to be something either asinine or too late, or something. But I wrote this poem for little Mary's christening, and I had it, it's the only time I've ever done this, I had it specially printed on very nice paper and print and had it put in a little silver frame, and gave it to her mother, on the day of the christening. What a calm thing to pull on an audience, how can you help but like it. [Audience laughter]. If you don't like it, it means you don't like motherhood or small children, no. \"Mary Bly\".\n \nJames Wright\n00:49:51\nReads \"Mary Bly\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\n\nJames Wright\n00:50:42\nAnd I think I will conclude with a poem which is just a description. There were some other descriptive poems in my last book which, for some weird reason, drove some reviewers to distraction. For example, in one poem, there was a poem about being at a bus stop at a place in Ohio and looking out the window and seeing a farmer at the beginning of a rain calling his cows in, and one reviewer got terribly upset about this and said, how...he's only stopping there on the bus, how did he know that there were a hundred black and white Holsteins. [Audience laughter]. And Robert Bly urged me and urged me to send the reviewer a postcard. I never did it, I wish I had. It was to have said, \"I counted the tits and divided by four.\" [Audience laughter]. Well, no but, just, I just want to present this poem. It's called \"A Blessing\", and for what it is, it's just a description of something. \n \nJames Wright\n00:52:28\nReads \"A Blessing\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\n \nJames Wright\n00:54:02\nThank you. \n \nAudience\n00:54:03\nApplause. \n \nIntroducer\n00:54:21\nI'd just like to express all our thanks to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850] for sharing his poetry and his curses and blessings with us tonight, and to remind you that the next reading in the series is by Muriel Rukeyser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735177] on Friday, January 24th. \n \nEND\n00:54:38\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nWright was teaching at the Uptown Branch of Hunter College and published Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan Press) in 1968.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nJames Wright often taught summer courses at universities across the country, and he taught at Sir George Williams University sometime between 1967 and 1972.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction, and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-encyclopedia-of-american-literature/oclc/769478515&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cambridge, Gerry. \\\"Wright, James”. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (ed). Oxford University Press 2004.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/wild-perfection-the-selected-letters-of-james-wright/oclc/56085881?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Wright, Anne & Saundra Rose Maley & Johnathan Blunk (eds). A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-james-wright/oclc/1097023113&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Collected Poems. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/branch-will-not-break-poems-3-print/oclc/469778489&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. The Branch Will Not Break. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1963. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/saint-judas-poems/oclc/898904265&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Saint Judas. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/shall-we-gather-at-the-river/oclc/492204830&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Shall We Gather at the River. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/two-citizens/oclc/795309054&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Wright, James. Two Citizens. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Wright, James [Arlington]\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548966473728,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0025_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0025_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Tape\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I0006_11_0157_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0157_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Side\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I0006_11_0157_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0157_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Front\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I0006_11_0157_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0157_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"James Wright Box 1- Back\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/james_wright_i006-11-157.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"james_wright_ i086-11-157.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:54:38\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"131.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"James Wright\\n00:00:00\\nWell, I feel about poetry in a curious way, I guess. I have a very strong classical streak in me, I think, I like poems that are very regular, and poems that rhyme, and poems that are passionately intellectual, and I think that I feel this way because the poems that are the most passionately intellectual have a way of spilling over into something which is completely free in its feeling. Oh here's a little poem by Ben Jonson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q193857]. It's called \\\"On My First Sonne\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7091055]. A little elegy. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:00:52\\nReads \\\"On My First Sonne\\\" by Ben Jonson.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:01:55\\nPoor old Ben Jonson, in a pig's eye. The next poem I would like to say is by an American poet, W.S. Merwin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q680368], who has just published his selected translations, and of course in addition to the very beautiful poems of his own that Merwin has, he's been a prolific translator, and he, he really does know the languages. I've loved his poetry always because he has such a beautiful ear, it was very interesting to me when I saw him in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] a few weeks ago, when he said that his Selected Translations were about to appear. I asked him if he remembered the transla--well of course he remembered, I just told him I always liked very much the poem he had translated, a later poem by Garcia Lorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41408]called \\\"Gacela of Unforseen Love\\\". What a weird thing! He didn't remember that he had done it. And it's not in his book. Well, I wish it were. \\\"Gacela of Unforseen Love\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:03:35\\nReads \\\"Gacela of Unforseen Love\\\" by Federico Garcia Lorca and translated in English by W.S. Mervin.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:04:30\\nCan't imagine doing that in English and then forgetting that you've done it. Maybe it was frightening. Here in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] I've been thinking about what in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] we hear about Montreal, about the English background, and the French background, and the Canadian, all of which are very vital and alive, but what do you make of the Irish up here? Are there any Irishmen in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16]? [pauses for response]. Just on March 17th. Only on March 17th, fine. My own family background is kind of complicated. I'm an Ohioan, which is a kind of hell in itself [audience laughter]. But both sides of my family have roots in the south, but they have a strong streak of Irish behind them; it wasn't until I was quite old that I found out about some of Irish literature, of course we've all of us read Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. The son of a bitch. He not only did everything first but he did it best. We all feel that. But really he didn't do it all first. He may have done it best but there are some Irish things that I found that perhaps he grew out of it. Do you know for example, the poems of, of all people, Jonathan Swift [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41166]? Jonathan Swift is a wonderful poet. He published Gulliver's Travels [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q181488] in 1725, and I found a little poem of his called \\\"On Burning a Dull Poem\\\". Of 1729. And it has a, it's a wonderful expression of the Irish art of the curse. I shouldn't lean on this. I don't mean the poem, I mean the lectern. [Audience laughter]. But it's a wonderful example of the Irish art of the curse, what is supposed to be very regular and it's almost like a prayer. The art here is that you should decide first of all whether or not what you feel annoyed by really is worthy of a curse. And then if it is, you should not come out and blast it directly, but exercise some indirection on it. So here we have Swift, \\\"On Burning a Dull Poem\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:07:29\\nReads  \\\"On Burning a Dull Poem\\\" by Jonathan Swift.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:08:25\\nI can't help bringing that a little closer to our own time. We all know the very beautiful plays of John Millington Synge [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q213447]. Perhaps people haven't so widely enjoyed his poems. He didn't write a great many, but to my mind he wrote enough. He also, he made a translation of Petrarch [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1401] into the same language as those people, as those women on the Aran Islands [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212893] who used to clean his room. He said he learned something about the rhythm of his language just by listening to them. So that in the sound of the Petrarch after Laura is dead and is appearing in heaven, and the angels are astonished by her beauty, the sestet of that sonnet, in Synge's translation, the angels see Laura and suddenly say, \\\"What rare beauty is that now? What rare beauty at all.\\\" So that those old women who cleaned his room on the Aran Islands have the voices of the angels. Well, after The Playboy of the Western World [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q451517] was first produced, he was criticized and he wanted to write something about the criticism. He didn't know whether the, who the critic was, really, he didn't know anything about him, he didn't know whether or not the critic had a sister. But there was the poem, and since he realized, as Aristotle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q868] said, that “poetry is a higher and more philosophical thing than history”--history being limited to what is or was, and poetry having available to it what ought to be, what might be...Synge invented a sister, and he wrote a little poem called \\\"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\\\". [Audience laughter]. This is a prayer. [Audience laughter]. And blasphemy also is a very delicate art. \\\"Lord\\\"...no I have to say, that you have to understand, really what \\\"Mountjoy\\\" is. Mountjoy is a place on the edge of Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1761], a kind of charity place where the Skid Rowers go.  \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:11:06\\nReads \\\"Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy\\\" by John Millington Synge.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:11:32\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:11:43\\nI came to like those Irish poets, so much, because they enjoyed poetry. My God, you've got to do something, life is a mess. Well, alright, I want to say one more poem that I care about. I know I'm going on too long with this business. One more. Let me say it in English first, and you can't say that I'm translating at sight, but perhaps by ear, and it'll be very awkward, but it's not awkward in the German. When--it's a poem that doesn't have a title. I don't think I'll tell you who wrote it. The poem goes: \\\"When the clocks nearby strike as if their own hearts were beating, and things--that is, material objects-things, with hesitant voices say to me softly, ‘Are you there?’ Then I am not the same man who woke this morning, for the night has sent me a name which no one to whom I spoke by daylight can listen to without being deeply frightened. Every door in me opens, and then I know that nothing dies, neither gesture, nor prayer. Things are too heavy for that. My whole childhood stands always around me. I am never alone. Many who live before me, and many who spring forth from me”--which I would also, I suppose, translate as ‘many who spring forth out of my body'--”wove, wove into my being. And if I sit down opposite you and say, lightly, I have been suffering, do you hear? Who knows? Who murmurs that voice with me?\\\"\\n\\nJames Wright\\n00:14:19\\nReads untitled poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in German.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:15:28\\nOh, no that's corny, of course it's by Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483]. I mean it's corny to hold back the name. It's one of those lyrics that Rilke wrote between those New Poems [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7011009] and the big terrible ones, the Duino Elegies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q688426] and the Sonnets. Well, let me proceed now to some poems of my own. The first one I think I will read is a poem called \\\"A Note left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\\\". I've been thinking about that poem a little bit recently for a lot of reasons. I think I should tell you something about what's behind it. There was an old guy called Minnegan Leonard who, or maybe Francis Leonard, who grew up--no, [laughter] I mean he was old, I grew up--he was already there [audience laughter]. Back in Martins Ferry [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1018313], Ohio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1397]. The story about him was that he had been a very well-educated man and he sort of deteriorated, everyone said. One night, a couple of friends and I found him in the, when the snow was starting to fall. And his, he wore a pair of overalls, the ones that cross behind, and they were too big, my friends and I helped him get home. We were very much afraid of his brother, Jimmy. Minnegan had drunk so much that his brain was practically gone, and he had nothing left to say to the universe except \\\"God bless my soul.\\\" We were stupid, we were afraid of his brother Jimmy, because his brother Jimmy, although drunk, was still mean. He still had some of his humanity left. And we were afraid of him. I thought about this poem as being spoken by a boy, I was about twelve years old. I also wanted to see if I could get away with swearing in a poem, and give the word, give the profanity some of its true force. The only thing that I deplore about the open use of profanity is that very soon, when the four-letter words are used commonly, they start to lose touch with their old, magical, dark force. When I was in the army, twenty years ago, I realized that this happened. You couldn't say \\\"fuck\\\" to refer to anything dark or anything interesting. It became a musical notation. Merely a musical notation, like a comma, when you were having chow. [Audience laughter]. But then there came those necessary moments when one absolutely needs to curse, and what does one do then? Then I saw all sorts of people around me, floundering, turning to what Wordsworth would have called the \\\"poetic diction,\\\" and finding that to say \\\"fuck\\\" had about as much effect on the release of one's feelings as the Finney crew had on anybody who was trying to read about fish in the end of the 18th century. Then I met a poetic genius named Mark W. Patrick from Crafton, Alabama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173], who was not hobbled by this. Someone asked him once, no he had invention, true invention. He knew how to swear. My wife has heard this before. Alright, I'll say it again. Someone said to him, \\\"Where are you from?\\\" And he said, \\\"I come from so far back in the country, they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making.” [Audience laughter]. No, wait a minute, you didn't hear the rest of the conceit. Now listen to this carefully and think of it as in Shakespearian. \\\"I come from so far back in the country they have to fan the coon-farts out of the kitchen to keep from making ring-tailed biscuits.\\\" [Audience laughter]. I thought, let us somehow rescue through invention our power to curse. Well this poem is called, \\\"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\\\". It's about taking Minnegan Leonard home when he was helpless in the snow.\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:21:07\\nReads \\\"A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack\\\" [from Saint Judas].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:22:43\\nAmbient Sound. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:22:58\\nNow for a while I think I would like to read from my new book. There are a couple of city poems in this new book, well, more than a couple, and many of the things that I had written before were about the country, more or less, in Ohio, and in Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527]. But I developed a certain feeling about cities, I guess, and...I didn't have a very happy time in Minneapolis [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36091] and St. Paul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28848], but I lived there for about eight years, and before I left I thought I ought to say farewell, somehow. I couldn't think of a title for this poem that would convey or suggest what I really felt, and the true title came to me. I wanted it to be a poem about, not only about Minneapolis but about many American cities, and what has been happening in them. Minneapolis is my favourite because I lived there for quite a while, and they had a very big Skid Row there, and the Skid Row was cleared out by the city administration, the last, the most recent one. It was a very big Skid Row, between the Great Northern Railroad Station and the Mississippi River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1497], right a strip across there, several blocks wide. And they sort of flattened it. They put up an insurance building and the rest were parking lots. And it never occurred to them that the people who lived there would...well, even existed. And I know where those people went, they went down Nickolet Avenue, scattered down there. It's a very strange thing. Spiro T. Agnew [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203433], our new American Vice-President said, during the campaign, \\\"The reasons the slums are so over-crowded is that there are too many people in them.\\\" [Audience laughter]. Well, this is my city poem. It's called \\\"The Minneapolis Poem\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:26:11\\nReads \\\"The Minneapolis Poem\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:30:39\\nThe next poem is called, \\\"In Terror of Hospital\\\"-- [cut or edit in tape] \\\"In Terror of Hospital Bills\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:30:51\\nReads \\\"In Terror of Hospital Bills\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].   \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:32:36\\nThis poem is called \\\"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\\\". It's about leaving Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297]. I went down there for a long Thanksgiving weekend to visit a man whose poetry I had seen, I had never met him, I admired it very much. His name is Bill Mott. He has finally published a first book. He lived in an area down there where there were some sort of poor people...I don't mean poor people in the sense of being savagely poor, really really put down, but just sort of drifters, the guys who go into the, who go in on Thanksgiving and get a dinner there from the Salvation Army [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q188307] and look at it and then sweep up and leave. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:33:53\\nReads \\\"The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:35:43\\nYou know, George Orwell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3335] remarked in Down and Out in Paris and London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1355487] that when he got back to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] from France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142] where he'd been a dishwasher, he had so little money that he realized that he would have to beg, only somehow his clothes, ratty as they were, were still too good to beg with. And so he, he sold what clothes he had, or traded them, rather, for a really crummy suit of clothes, and when he got those old, really poor man's clothes on, he noticed all sorts of strange things. The way people looked at him. The way women looked at him. As well as other men. And the fact that he was poor had an effect on the way people's souls were shaped, somehow. I only had a very slight experience of that in my life, and I don't want any more of it. Because it's not very romantic. For a while I had a sort of, an account at a department store in Minneapolis, and I was behind in my payments. At that time I had an old green coat my father had given me, it didn't quite fit but a coat is a coat. So I had it, and I was, in order to keep myself going one way or another, I went up to the cashier's office at this department store and tried to cash a small cheque for twenty dollars, or something like that. There was a very beautiful girl there, the cashier, and she looked at me, and she disappeared for a moment and she came back with a fellow who had a crew cut. And he evidently was the Grand Vizier, or something. Well, they were about a foot and a half away from my face while I waited, and they talked about me, without paying any attention to me. And I realized something I had never realized before. That I'm, I am content simply to think about it, I don't want it to happen to me again  I thought, Jesus Christ, there are millions of people in this country who are treated like things, every single intimate moment of their lives. And it's not pretty. Well. \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\". The poem is in different parts and I think I'll indicate the numbers. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:38:45\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 1 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:39:17\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 2 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:39:44\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 3 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:40:20\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store”, Part 4 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:40:38\\nReads \\\"Before a Cashier's Window in a Department Store\\\", Part 5 [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:41:11\\nI think that I'll read a couple of nature poems. Nature, in poetry and song. One of the parts of the United States that I like very much...I came to like, I've spoken kind of harshly about Minneapolis, and I have harsh feelings about that city, but actually I love the West, out at the edge of Minnesota, you have, there's Minnesota, North Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1207], and South Dakota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1211], and that part of the country there is sort of the, it's not really flat, it's a little rolling, but it's the beginning of the prairie, and the prairie is a beautiful thing. I spent a summer up around Fargo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34109], North Dakota, and I like Fargo, I like to walk there in the summer evenings, I would go even out to the other end of town, and, well it really is a real city, there are about eighty-thousand people, but you could walk out to the edge of town, and just a little beyond the town the prairie would begin. There is something about that sudden opening that I like.  his is called, \\\"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:42:45\\nReads \\\"Outside Fargo, North Dakota\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:43:07\\nNo, may I start the poem again, I miss, I made a mistake. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:43:11\\nReads \\\"Outside Fargo, North Dakota” [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:44:04\\nNow this one is called \\\"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\\\". I love those old trains, we were talking about this earlier, there's a certain thing about trains, especially in the West, west of Chicago. It's not true in the East. One of these days somebody's going to get a train from New York to Connecticut [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q779] or something and that train will never return, it'll keep coming back, every forty years with ghosts on it, flying Dutchmen. But it's different in the West, and...there's a discontinued railroad station. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:44:53\\nReads \\\"A Poem Written under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota\\\" [from Shall We Gather at the River].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:46:30\\nI think I'll read...I think I'll read just a few more very short poems, perhaps two or three, and they're kind of nature poems, I guess. Nature indeed, one of them is a love poem. This is called \\\"A Light in the Hallway\\\". \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:47:07\\nReads \\\"A Light in the Hallway\\\" [published as “The Lights in the Hallway” in Shall We Gather at the River]. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:48:06\\nAnd then a couple out of my previous book. This poem is called \\\"Mary Bly\\\", it's for my goddaughter, and I stood up there in the church and they said, well, I went through the ceremony and I am her godfather, Mary Bly, it's the first child of my old friend, my old friends, Robert and Carol Bly. I feel very proud of this poem, but it's one of those times that, it signifies one of those times in my life when I really thought of something nice to do and did it. So many things I want to do that would be nice, and usually they turn out to be something either asinine or too late, or something. But I wrote this poem for little Mary's christening, and I had it, it's the only time I've ever done this, I had it specially printed on very nice paper and print and had it put in a little silver frame, and gave it to her mother, on the day of the christening. What a calm thing to pull on an audience, how can you help but like it. [Audience laughter]. If you don't like it, it means you don't like motherhood or small children, no. \\\"Mary Bly\\\".\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:49:51\\nReads \\\"Mary Bly\\\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\\n\\nJames Wright\\n00:50:42\\nAnd I think I will conclude with a poem which is just a description. There were some other descriptive poems in my last book which, for some weird reason, drove some reviewers to distraction. For example, in one poem, there was a poem about being at a bus stop at a place in Ohio and looking out the window and seeing a farmer at the beginning of a rain calling his cows in, and one reviewer got terribly upset about this and said, how...he's only stopping there on the bus, how did he know that there were a hundred black and white Holsteins. [Audience laughter]. And Robert Bly urged me and urged me to send the reviewer a postcard. I never did it, I wish I had. It was to have said, \\\"I counted the tits and divided by four.\\\" [Audience laughter]. Well, no but, just, I just want to present this poem. It's called \\\"A Blessing\\\", and for what it is, it's just a description of something. \\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:52:28\\nReads \\\"A Blessing\\\" [from The Branch Will Not Break].\\n \\nJames Wright\\n00:54:02\\nThank you. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:54:03\\nApplause. \\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:54:21\\nI'd just like to express all our thanks to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850] for sharing his poetry and his curses and blessings with us tonight, and to remind you that the next reading in the series is by Muriel Rukeyser [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735177] on Friday, January 24th. \\n \\nEND\\n00:54:38\\n\",\"notes\":\"James Wright reads from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963), Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), and from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).\\n\\n00:00- James Wright introduces reading and poem by Ben Jonson “On My First Son”. [INDEX: poetry, classical poetry, rhyme, passionately intellectual, free feeling, poem by  Ben Jonson, elegy.]\\n00:52- Reads poem by Ben Jonson, “On My First Son”.\\n01:55- Introuces poem translated by W.S. Merwin, by Frederico Garcia Lorca, “Garcela of Unforseen Love”. [INDEX: American poet, W.S. Merwin, translations, New York,     Selected Translations (Antheneum, 1979), poem by Garcia Lorca.]\\n03:35- Reads poem translated by W.S. Merwin, by Frederico Garcia Lorca “Garcela of        Unforseen Love”.\\n04:30- Introduces poem by Jonathan Swift, “On Burning a Dull Poem”. [INDEX: Montreal, United States, English and French, Canadian, Irish, March 17th, family background, Ohioan, hell, Southern roots, Irish literature, Yeats, Jonathan Swift published Gulliver’s Travels in 1725, poem, expression of the Irish art of the curse, lecturn, prayer.]\\n07:29- Reads poem by Jonathan Swift, “On Burning a Dull Poem”.\\n08:25- Introduces poem by John Millington Synge “Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy”. [INDEX: time, plays of John Millington Synge, poems, translation of Petrarch, of the women on Erin Islands who cleaned his room, learnt from listening to rhythm of language, Petrarch, Laura, heaven, angels, sestet of the sonnet, quote “What rare beauty is that now? What rare beauty at all”, play “The Playboy of the Western World” produced, criticism, wrote about criticism, critic’s sister, Aristotle quote ‘poetry is a higher and more philosophical thing than history’, prayer, blasphemy as a   \\tdelicate art, Mountjoy is a place on the edge of Dublin, skid row.]\\n11:06- Reads poem by John Millington Synge “Upon the Sister of the Critic who    \\tAttacked the Playboy”.\\n11:43- Introduces and reads poem by Rilke, first line “When the clocks nearby strike as if their own hearts were beating...”. [INDEX: Irish poet, English, German, awkward  \\ttranslation, untitled poem, reads entire poem.]\\n11:14- Reads in German poem by Rilke, first line “When the clocks nearby strike as if       their own hearts were beating...”.\\n15:28- Explains Rilke poem, introduces “A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack”. [INDEX: Minnegan Leonard, Francis Leonard, Martin’s Ferry Ohio, well educated man,  \\tdeteriorated, snow, overalls, afraid of his brother Jimmy, drunk, humanity, poem spoken      by twelve years old boy, swearing in a poem, army, swear word as a musical notation,     Wordsworth, ‘poetic diction’, Finney crew, fish, 18th Century, poetic genius, quote from Mark W. Patrick from Crafton, Alabama, power to curse; from Saint Judas (Wesleyan    Press, 1959).]\\n21:07- Reads “A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack”.\\n22:58- Introduces “The Minneapolis Poem”. [INDEX: read from new book, Ohio, Minnesota, St. Paul, lived for 8 years, poem about Minneapolis, American cities, skid row, Great Northern Railway Station, Mississippi River, Nickolet Avenue, Spiro T. Agneau American Vice-President,  quote, slums, city poem; from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n26:11- Reads “The Minneapolis Poem”.\\n30:39- Cut/edit in recording, sentence begins and then continues, repeated at lower quality sound, perhaps a tape change?\\n30:50- James Wright introduces “In Terror of Hospital Bills”. [INDEX: from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n30:51- Reads “In Terror of Hospital Bills”.\\n32:36- Introduces “The Poor Washed Up By Chicago Winter”. [INDEX: leaving Chicago,        Thanksgiving weekend, Bill Mott, published first book, Salvation Army; from Shall We  Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n33:53- Reads “The Poor Washed Up By Chicago Winter”.\\n35:34- Introduces “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store”. [INDEX: George  Orwell quote from Down and Out in Paris and London, France, dishwasher, beg, clothes too good to beg in, sold clothes, effects of being poor, not romantic, account at a  \\tdepartment store, Minneapolis, behind in payments, father’s coat, cheque for twenty    dollars, cashier, Grand Vizier, never wanting to feel poor again; from Shall We Gather at      the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).] \\n38:45- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part I”.\\n39:17- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part II”.\\n39:44- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part III”.\\n40:20- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part IV”.\\n40:38- Reads “Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store, Part V”.\\n41:11- Introduces “Outside Fargo, North Dakota” [INDEX: nature poems, poetry, song,       United States, West, North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, country, prairies, summer, city; from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n42:45- Reads “Outside Fargo, North Dakota”.\\n44:04- Introduces “A Poem Written Under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station, Fargo, North Dakota”. [INDEX: old trains, West, Chicago, East, New York, Conneticut, ghost train, flying Dutchmen; from Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n44:53- Reads “A Poem Written Under an Archway in a Discontinued Railway Station,     Fargo, North Dakota”.\\n46:30- Introduces “A Light in the Hallway”. [INDEX: nature poems, short poems, love poem; published as “The Lights in the Hallway” in Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan University Press, 1968).]\\n47:07- Reads “A Light in the Hallway”.\\n48:06- Introduces “Mary Bly”. [INDEX: from previous book, for his goddaughter, church,        ceremony, Robert and Carol Bly, first child, proud, christening, poem as a gift, audience,        motherhood, small children; from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University     Press, 1963).]\\n49:51- Reads “Mary Bly”.\\n50:42- Introduces “A Blessing”. [INDEX: description, reviewers, bus stop, Ohio, farmer, rain, cows, holsteins, Robert Bly, sent reviewer postcard; from The Branch Will Not Break \\t(Wesleyan University Press, 1963).]\\n52:28- Reads “A Blessing”.\\n54:02- Thanks audience\\n54:21- Unknown introducer thanks James Wright and introduces next reading, Mary-Lou Kaiser [?] on January 24th.\\n00:54:38.42- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nHoward Fink List of Poems: \\nJames Wright\\nI086-11-052=AC\\nInformation from the Howard Fink Print Catalogue, Concordia Archives:\\n \\nTitle: James Wright reading his own poetry at Sir George Williams University\\nDate: December 13, 1968    \\nSource: one two-track, mono, 5” reel, @ 3 ¾ ips, duration 1 hour\\n \\n1. a poem by Ben Jonson “On My First Son”\\n2. a poem by W. S. Merwin “Nobody understood the perfume…”\\n3. a poem by Jonathan Swift “On Burning a Dull Poem”\\n4. A poem by John Millington Sing “Upon the Sister of the Critic who Attacked the Playboy”\\n5. A poem by Rilke “When the clocks nearby…” (trans. James Wright)\\n6. Title: “Note left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack”\\n    first line: “Near the dry river’s watermark…”\\n7. Title: from his book Minneapolis Poems\\n    first line: “I wonder how many old men…”\\n8. Title: In Terror of Hospital Bills\\n    first line: “I still have some money…”\\n9. Title: The Poor Washed Up by Chicago Winter\\n    first line: “Well I still have a train ticket”\\n10. Title: Before a Cashier’s Window in a Department Store\\n      first line: “The beautiful cashier’s face…”\\n11. Title: Outside Fargo, North Dakota\\n      first line: “Along the…”\\n12. Title: A Poem Written Under an Archway in a Discontinued Rail Road Station\\n      first line: “Outside the great…”\\n13. Title: The Light in the Hallway\\n      first line: “The light in the hallway…”\\n14. Title: Mary Bly\\n      first line: “I sit here…”\\n15. Title: A Blessing “Just off the highway…”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/james-wright-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.6060258}]