[{"id":"1267","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["John Logan at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 26 January 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JOHN LOGAN I006/SR163\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-163\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Logan, John"],"creator_names_search":["Logan, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/85933786\",\"name\":\"Logan, John\",\"dates\":\"1923-1987\",\"notes\":\"Poet John Logan was born in Red Oak, Iowa. Logan earned a B.Sc. in zoology at Coe College and earned an M.A. in English at the University of Iowa. Later he pursued more graduate work at Georgetown University and at the University of Notre Dame. He taught English at St. John’s College in Maryland and at the University of Notre Dame, finally settling in as a professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo. He married, and fathered nine children but divorced later on in his life. His first of fourteen publications was Cycle for Mother Cabrini (Grove Press), published in 1955. Two collections followed, Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press) in 1960 and Spring of the Thief: Poems 1960-1962 (Knopf) in 1963. In 1969, Logan published a selection of his poems written since 1963 in The Zig-Zag Walk: Poems 1963-1968 (E.P. Dutton), and in 1973 The Anonymous Lover: New Poems (Liveright) came out. The bridge of change: poems, 1974-1980 (BOA Editions) was published in 1981, along with Only the dreamer can change the dream (Ecco Press, 1981), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize the following year. Logan’s prose was collected in A Bullet for the Ear: Interviews, Essays and Reviews (Ann Arbor, 1983) edited by A. Poulin, Jr. Logan received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Wayne State University’s Miles Modern Poetry Prize. He was the poetry editor of The Nation and Critic, and founded Choice magazine. John Logan died in 1987, and his poetry was published posthumously in The Collected Poems (BOA Editions) in 1989.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 1 26\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny (Supplemental material)\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["John Logan reads from Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1960) and The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968 (Dutton, 1969)."],"contents":["john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3\n\nJohn Logan\n00:00:00\nReads “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot” [recording begins abruptly].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:03:37\nNow, can you see over there? I'm still concerned about the situation of the lights. Light's one of the big problems in poetry. [Audience laughter]. This is \"Two Preludes for La Push\", and it’s dedicated to Michael Ross [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21280686]. It was written when I was teaching [Wetky's (?)] courses a couple of years ago in Seattle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5083] for a couple of quarters. The physical beauty of the North West got me very involved and I wrote a number of poems about it, of which this was the first. La Push [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q554902], Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1223] is a city on the coast--city, no it's a hamlet on the coast, very poverty stricken Indian populated, really a ruined community with dead cars lying around and houses falling apart, but in the summer many people come there because of its superb beauty. I found that I couldn't write about the Indian community, I wrote rather about the sea and myself.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:05:38\nReads \"Two Preludes for La Push\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:07:48\nI'm sorry it bothers me when people come in late, I'm temperamental about that, you'll just have to excuse me. It's not that they're late, you know, it has no respect for the poem, they could wait until it's over. I'll go back to the second part.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:08:13\nResumes reading \"Two Preludes for La Push\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:10:57\nThis is another poem about a superb place in the North West called Deception Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1181773], which is a pass really--a water pass between islands, Deception Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49636439] is the name of the poem which the poem takes its name.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:11:39\nReads \"The Pass\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:13:32\nI lived on a houseboat for a while, in Seattle, which I certainly think that everybody who considers going to Seattle ought to do. In fact, I was living on a houseboat when the tidal wave struck in the spring of that year. That is a marvelous thrill, it woke me up. I became friends with ducks there, I was living alone, and the poem is partly about that. \"Three Moves in Six Months\". You'll have to forgive me, I don't have this poem with me, I wanted to remember it, I'll see if I can.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:14:29\nReads \"Three Moves\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:15:45\nI'm sorry, I can't remember this poem now. I'll try it again in the second half of the program, I'm screwing it up. [Audience laughter]. I'll read you another poem, I'll try that one later. This is called \"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\". There are two epigraphs, one from a student of mine who said  \"I care more about strawberries than about death\", and one from Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483], who wrote \"Heir, es ist zeit\".\n \nJohn Logan\n00:16:43\nReads \"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:22:27\nI'll read one more poem then would like to take a break, and begin again. It's called \"Love Poem\". I said that as though it didn't matter that it's called that. It does.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:23:17\nReads \"Love Poem\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n\nAudience \n00:25:35 \nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n00:25:49\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nUnknown\n00:25:50\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nJohn Logan\n00:26:27\nI was just asked to read another, earlier poem, which I'm glad to do. Why not? I still like this poem. Then I'll come back and read some more recent things. Did we decide we'll try this without the lamp at all? I think we did, because it seems to get in the way of people. I think that people are more important than I am. Is that worse? Probably if you can't see me it should be marvelous. It’s called \"A Trip to Four or Five Towns\" and I dedicated it to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850], simply because he liked it. There's a reference toward the end of the poem to a visit to William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106], and there's also a reference to a story about e.e. cummings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703], told by Charles Norman in his biography of cummings about a long night spent at [Archebold (?)] and [unintelligible] with them living in France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], cummings was working for the New York Herald Tribune [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q532494], I think, perhaps another New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] paper, there aren't that many. But on the way back from the party, cummings had the urge to take a leak, and so he did so, but it was Champs-Élysées [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q550] or some extraordinary [audience laughter] place like that and the cops saw him. They brought him to jail, and they said, 'You piss on Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90]' [audience laughter]. He said, 'No ,it's not the point, I just had to take a leak', but they kept him there the whole night and when he finally got back to his office in the morning they had signs posted up around, which said--and I don't read French, I'm sorry because I know that many of you know French--but it was something like this, “[unintelligible] pisseur Americain”, which I guess translated \"Let the American pisser go\". [Audience laughter]. This was \"A Trip to Four or Five Towns”.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:29:01\nReads \"A Trip to Four of Five Towns\" [from Ghosts of the Heart]..\n \nJohn Logan\n00:38:34\nI realize reading the poem now how dated it is with the reference to the capital of [Viscount(?)] claim, which sold out some time ago to I don't know, somebody that sold out to somebody else. Williams by the way, did not read his Sixteen new poems, he had them, but he couldn't read them because he'd had a stroke and had never heard them. I visited him with Galway Kinnell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2425705], and he asked us to read the poems, and we did. But I thought that, you know, one of the great things about poetry is that you can make it the way that it should be, so I had him read the poems. This is \"Big Sur: Partington Cove\". I went with a couple of students to, well we were in the Big Sur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q859413], and this is a very hidden place, Partington Cove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21551591]. A marvelous place, accessible only by a tunnel shored up by ancient timbers, I feel I am sort of repeating the poem by telling you this, but there is such a cove, and you can only reach it through a tunnel, it's very beautiful. Smugglers used the cove and a cave nearby to hide booze during the prohibition, it was used for other purposes before and since, and there are--well why not? [Audience laughter]. But you can't get there at all now, I tried to revisit when I was back there last spring, but it's all roped off. And even the one time I did get to go there, there was a sign that was supposed to scare you away. The, one of the motivating things behind the poem was my understanding for the first time of what happens in some paintings that a friend of mine Jim Johnson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100239918] does, where he uses combinations of landscape and the human body. He will have for example, mountains coming off an arm, and the figure of a clown. I had an experience which this poem talks about that made me see for the first time the kind of rapport between body and landscape. It was important to me, and part of what happens to the poem.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:41:54\nReads \"Big Sur: Partington Cove\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n00:50:45\nReads \"Three Moves\" [in full, published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n\nAudience\n00:53:56 \nApplause. \n\nJohn Logan\n00:53:56\nI'm glad I finally read a poem you liked. [Laughter]. I'll read two more, they're both new, one is fairly long and one is fairly short. This one is called “Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)”. It's based on an experience of being in jail along the Erie Canal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459578]. The name of the town is Herkimer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3134036], New York [audience laughter] and I guess I won't go into the background of it, it's not that interesting. But it was written there. Not long ago.\n \nJohn Logan\n00:55:00\nReads \"Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n \nJohn Logan\n01:02:31\nAnd finally, read \"The Search\". Which is my most recent poem. If you knew how few poems there have been lately, that would mean more but...\n \nJohn Logan\n01:03:03\nReads \"The Search\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\n\nAudience \n01:07:31\nApplause.\n\nJohn Logan\n01:07:48\nThank you [audience applause continues throughout].\n\nIntroducer\n01:08:04\nThanks very much John [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6245151], just several announcements before we go. Fred Cogswell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5494855], who is visiting us this year, has been invited by the Sir George Williams Student Literary Society to read his poetry, next Friday evening, in the students' lounge on the sixth floor. Jorge Luis Borges [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q909], the distinguished--[audience laughter] you're not making it easier--the distinguished author will be coming here, to Sir George Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342], on Thursday February the 29th and I think I have this right. He's changed the title of his talk, it will be \"Beginnings of English Poetry\". Our next reading, John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356] and Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], two weeks from...\n\nUnknown\n01:09:05\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nUnknown\n01:09:06\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \n\nEND\n01:09:14\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, John Logan was an English Professor at State University New York in Buffalo. He was working on The Zig-Zag Walk: Poems 1963-1968, which was published in 1969.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nJohn Logan’s direct connection to Montreal or Sir George Williams University is unknown at this point. Logan was, however, an important and influential American poet and professor at State University of New York.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-logan-at-sgwu-1968/\",\"citation\":\"Charny, Marty. “Georgiantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 26 January 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghosts-of-the-heart/oclc/328409781?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Logan, John. Ghosts of the Heart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/zig-zag-walk/oclc/251231523?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Logan, John. The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968. New York: Dutton, 1969.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Logan, John\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Butscher, Edward. \\\"Logan, John\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/286\",\"citation\":\"“John Logan”. Poets.org: Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. The Academy of American Poets, 2009.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548833304576,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163 back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163 front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163 side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0163_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0163_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"John Logan Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:09:14\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"166.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"John Logan\\n00:00:00\\nReads “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot” [recording begins abruptly].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:03:37\\nNow, can you see over there? I'm still concerned about the situation of the lights. Light's one of the big problems in poetry. [Audience laughter]. This is \\\"Two Preludes for La Push\\\", and it’s dedicated to Michael Ross [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21280686]. It was written when I was teaching [Wetky's (?)] courses a couple of years ago in Seattle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5083] for a couple of quarters. The physical beauty of the North West got me very involved and I wrote a number of poems about it, of which this was the first. La Push [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q554902], Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1223] is a city on the coast--city, no it's a hamlet on the coast, very poverty stricken Indian populated, really a ruined community with dead cars lying around and houses falling apart, but in the summer many people come there because of its superb beauty. I found that I couldn't write about the Indian community, I wrote rather about the sea and myself.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:05:38\\nReads \\\"Two Preludes for La Push\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:07:48\\nI'm sorry it bothers me when people come in late, I'm temperamental about that, you'll just have to excuse me. It's not that they're late, you know, it has no respect for the poem, they could wait until it's over. I'll go back to the second part.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:08:13\\nResumes reading \\\"Two Preludes for La Push\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:10:57\\nThis is another poem about a superb place in the North West called Deception Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1181773], which is a pass really--a water pass between islands, Deception Island [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49636439] is the name of the poem which the poem takes its name.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:11:39\\nReads \\\"The Pass\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:13:32\\nI lived on a houseboat for a while, in Seattle, which I certainly think that everybody who considers going to Seattle ought to do. In fact, I was living on a houseboat when the tidal wave struck in the spring of that year. That is a marvelous thrill, it woke me up. I became friends with ducks there, I was living alone, and the poem is partly about that. \\\"Three Moves in Six Months\\\". You'll have to forgive me, I don't have this poem with me, I wanted to remember it, I'll see if I can.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:14:29\\nReads \\\"Three Moves\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:15:45\\nI'm sorry, I can't remember this poem now. I'll try it again in the second half of the program, I'm screwing it up. [Audience laughter]. I'll read you another poem, I'll try that one later. This is called \\\"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\\\". There are two epigraphs, one from a student of mine who said  \\\"I care more about strawberries than about death\\\", and one from Rilke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76483], who wrote \\\"Heir, es ist zeit\\\".\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:16:43\\nReads \\\"Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:22:27\\nI'll read one more poem then would like to take a break, and begin again. It's called \\\"Love Poem\\\". I said that as though it didn't matter that it's called that. It does.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:23:17\\nReads \\\"Love Poem\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n\\nAudience \\n00:25:35 \\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:25:49\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:25:50\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nJohn Logan\\n00:26:27\\nI was just asked to read another, earlier poem, which I'm glad to do. Why not? I still like this poem. Then I'll come back and read some more recent things. Did we decide we'll try this without the lamp at all? I think we did, because it seems to get in the way of people. I think that people are more important than I am. Is that worse? Probably if you can't see me it should be marvelous. It’s called \\\"A Trip to Four or Five Towns\\\" and I dedicated it to James Wright [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6145850], simply because he liked it. There's a reference toward the end of the poem to a visit to William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106], and there's also a reference to a story about e.e. cummings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703], told by Charles Norman in his biography of cummings about a long night spent at [Archebold (?)] and [unintelligible] with them living in France [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q142], cummings was working for the New York Herald Tribune [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q532494], I think, perhaps another New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] paper, there aren't that many. But on the way back from the party, cummings had the urge to take a leak, and so he did so, but it was Champs-Élysées [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q550] or some extraordinary [audience laughter] place like that and the cops saw him. They brought him to jail, and they said, 'You piss on Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90]' [audience laughter]. He said, 'No ,it's not the point, I just had to take a leak', but they kept him there the whole night and when he finally got back to his office in the morning they had signs posted up around, which said--and I don't read French, I'm sorry because I know that many of you know French--but it was something like this, “[unintelligible] pisseur Americain”, which I guess translated \\\"Let the American pisser go\\\". [Audience laughter]. This was \\\"A Trip to Four or Five Towns”.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:29:01\\nReads \\\"A Trip to Four of Five Towns\\\" [from Ghosts of the Heart]..\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:38:34\\nI realize reading the poem now how dated it is with the reference to the capital of [Viscount(?)] claim, which sold out some time ago to I don't know, somebody that sold out to somebody else. Williams by the way, did not read his Sixteen new poems, he had them, but he couldn't read them because he'd had a stroke and had never heard them. I visited him with Galway Kinnell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2425705], and he asked us to read the poems, and we did. But I thought that, you know, one of the great things about poetry is that you can make it the way that it should be, so I had him read the poems. This is \\\"Big Sur: Partington Cove\\\". I went with a couple of students to, well we were in the Big Sur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q859413], and this is a very hidden place, Partington Cove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21551591]. A marvelous place, accessible only by a tunnel shored up by ancient timbers, I feel I am sort of repeating the poem by telling you this, but there is such a cove, and you can only reach it through a tunnel, it's very beautiful. Smugglers used the cove and a cave nearby to hide booze during the prohibition, it was used for other purposes before and since, and there are--well why not? [Audience laughter]. But you can't get there at all now, I tried to revisit when I was back there last spring, but it's all roped off. And even the one time I did get to go there, there was a sign that was supposed to scare you away. The, one of the motivating things behind the poem was my understanding for the first time of what happens in some paintings that a friend of mine Jim Johnson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100239918] does, where he uses combinations of landscape and the human body. He will have for example, mountains coming off an arm, and the figure of a clown. I had an experience which this poem talks about that made me see for the first time the kind of rapport between body and landscape. It was important to me, and part of what happens to the poem.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:41:54\\nReads \\\"Big Sur: Partington Cove\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:50:45\\nReads \\\"Three Moves\\\" [in full, published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:53:56 \\nApplause. \\n\\nJohn Logan\\n00:53:56\\nI'm glad I finally read a poem you liked. [Laughter]. I'll read two more, they're both new, one is fairly long and one is fairly short. This one is called “Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)”. It's based on an experience of being in jail along the Erie Canal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459578]. The name of the town is Herkimer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3134036], New York [audience laughter] and I guess I won't go into the background of it, it's not that interesting. But it was written there. Not long ago.\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n00:55:00\\nReads \\\"Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n01:02:31\\nAnd finally, read \\\"The Search\\\". Which is my most recent poem. If you knew how few poems there have been lately, that would mean more but...\\n \\nJohn Logan\\n01:03:03\\nReads \\\"The Search\\\" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].\\n\\nAudience \\n01:07:31\\nApplause.\\n\\nJohn Logan\\n01:07:48\\nThank you [audience applause continues throughout].\\n\\nIntroducer\\n01:08:04\\nThanks very much John [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6245151], just several announcements before we go. Fred Cogswell [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5494855], who is visiting us this year, has been invited by the Sir George Williams Student Literary Society to read his poetry, next Friday evening, in the students' lounge on the sixth floor. Jorge Luis Borges [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q909], the distinguished--[audience laughter] you're not making it easier--the distinguished author will be coming here, to Sir George Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342], on Thursday February the 29th and I think I have this right. He's changed the title of his talk, it will be \\\"Beginnings of English Poetry\\\". Our next reading, John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356] and Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], two weeks from...\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:09:05\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:09:06\\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \\n\\nEND\\n01:09:14\\n\",\"notes\":\"John Logan reads from Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1960) and The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968 (Dutton, 1969).\\n\\n00:00- Begins mid-sentence “...sperm in the womb quickens to a man...” from “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot”\\n03:37- John Logan introduces “Two Preludes for La Push” [INDEX: Michael Ross, teaching Wetky’s class [?], North West, Seattle, La Push Washington, Indian]\\n05:38- Reads “Two Preludes for La Push”\\n10:57- Introduces “The Pass” [INDEX: Deception Pass, North West]\\n11:39- Reads “The Pass”\\n13:32- Introduces “Three Moves” [partial reading] [INDEX: houseboat, ducks, Seattle]\\n14:29- Reads “Three Moves”\\n15:45- Introduces “Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings (1896-1962)” [INDEX: explains epigraphs]\\n16:43- Reads “Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings (1896-1962)”\\n22:27- Introduces “Love Poem”\\n23:17- Reads “Love Poem”\\n25:52- Introduces “A Trip to Four or Five Towns” [INDEX: James Wright, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Charles Norman, Archebold [?], France, New York Herald        Tribune, Champs Elysees]\\n29:01- Reads “A Trip to Four or Five Towns”\\n38:34- Explains “A Trip to Four or Five Towns”, introduces “Big Sur, Partington Cove” [INDEX: Capital of Viscount, William Carlos Williams, Galway Kinnell,Partington Cove, prohibition, artist Jim Johnson, relationship between body and landscape]\\n41:54- Reads “Big Sur, Partington Cove”.\\n50:45.20- END OF RECORDING\\n\\n00:00- John Logan reads “Three Moves” in full.\\n03:10- Introduces “Lines on Locks, or Jail on the Erie Canal” [INDEX: Herkimer, New      York]\\n04:14- Reads “Lines on Locks, or Jail on the Erie Canal”\\n11:46- Introduces “The Search”\\n12:18- Reads “The Search”\\n17:19- Unknown male announces next readings [INDEX: Fred Cogswell, Sir George Williams Student Literary Society, Jorge Luis Borges, John Newlove, Joe Rosenblatt]\\n18:29.44- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-logan-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"1268","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Joe Rosenblatt and John Newlove at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 9 February 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JOE RESENBLATT I006/SR138\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. JOE RESENBLATT refers to Joe Rosenblatt. RESENBLATT is mispelled. \"I006-11-138\" written on sticker on the reel.\n\n\"JOHN NEWLOVE I006/S2143\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. I006-11-143 written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[I006-11-138, I006-11-143]"],"creator_names":["Rosenblatt, Joseph","Newlove, John"],"creator_names_search":["Rosenblatt, Joseph","Newlove, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/69752567\",\"name\":\"Rosenblatt, Joseph\",\"dates\":\"1933-\",\"notes\":\"Poet and artist Joe (Joseph) Rosenblatt was born in Toronto in 1933, where he attended Central Technical School, which he left in grade ten. After a decade of traveling across Canada, working labour jobs with the CPR, Rosenblatt published his first collection of poetry through a small press, called The voyage of the mood (Heinrich Heine Press, 1963). He received a Canada Council grant in 1963 to write and draw, and published The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966), which established Rosenblatt as a serious poet. Rosenblatt then began editing Jewish Dialog, a literary magazine, in 1969, which he continued until 1983. He then published The winter of the lunar moth (House of Anansi, 1968), a collection of drawings Greenbaum (Coach House Press, 1971), Bumblebee dithyramb (Press Porcepic, 1972), Dream craters (Press Porcepic, 1974), Virgins and vampires (McClelland and Stewart, 1975) and Top Soil (Press Porcepic, 1976) which won a Governor General’s Award. Rosenblatt continued to publish collections of drawings and poetry collections, including Doctor Anacoda’s solar fan club (Press Porcepic, 1978), Loosely tied hands: an experiment in punk (Black Moss Press, 1978), The sleeping lady (Exile Editions, 1979), Brides of the stream (Oolichan Books, 1983), a reconsidered history of Marxist government Beds and consenting dreamers (Oolichan Books, 1994) and The Joe Rosenblatt Reader (Exile Editions, 1995). Rosenblatt received the B.C. Book Prize in 1986 for Poetry Hotel (1986). Rosenblatt held several positions as writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario (1979-1980), as Visiting Lecturer at University of Victoria (1980-81), the Associate editor of the Malahat Review (1980-1982), the writer in residence at the Saskatoon Public Library (1985-86) and at the University of Rome and University of Bologna (1987). Rosenblatt also served as a literary consultant for Porcupine's Quill, Blackfish Press, McClelland and Stewart, the Canada Council and Oolichan Books. His collected works can be found in The voluptuous gardener: the collected art and writing of Joe Rosenblatt, 1973-1996 (Beach Holme Publishers, 1996). Rosenblatt lived in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, and during that time, also published Parrot fever (Exile Editions, 2002), The lunatic muse (Exile, 2007) and Dog (Mansfield Press, 2008). Rosenblatt died in 2019 after finishing work on Bite Me! Musings on Monsters and Mayhem (The Porcupine's Quill, 2019).\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/92277383\",\"name\":\"Newlove, John\",\"dates\":\"1938-2003\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet John Newlove was born on June 13, 1938 in Regina, and was raised in Kamsack, Saskatchewan. He graduated from Kamsack College in 1956, and completed one year at the University of Saskatoon before touring and working in many cities across Canada. Newlove has worked as a school teacher in Birtle, Manitoba, as a social worker in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, at a radio station in Weyburn and in Regina, and as a clerk at the University of British Columbia bookstore. His first book of poetry is titled Grave Sirs (Robert Reid & Takao Tanabe, Vancouver, 1962), and is followed by Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle, 1963), Moving in Alone (Contact Press, 1965), What They Say (Weed/Flower, 1967), Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart, 1968), The Cave (McClelland & Stewart, 1970), and Lies (McClelland & Stewart, 1972), which won a Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Newlove also worked as a writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library, the University of Toronto, at Montreal’s Loyola College, and as an editor with McClelland & Stewart Publishing in Toronto between 1970 and 1974. Newlove then edited the McClelland & Stewart anthology Canadian Poetry: the modern era (1977), and published his own poetry in The fat man: selected poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977), The green plain (Oolichan Books, 1981), The night the dog smiled (ECW Press, 1986) and Apology for absence: Selected poems 1962-1992 (Porcupine’s Quill, 1993). Newlove taught writing at the David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, B.C. and as an editor for the Federal Commission of Official Languages in Ottawa. Newlove won the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild Founders Award in 1984 and the Literary Press Group Award in 1986. Known and celebrated for bringing the Canadian Prairie into Canadian Literature, John Newlove died suddenly at the age of 65 on December 23, 2003.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 2 9\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Marty Charny (Supplemental material)\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Joe Rosenblatt reads from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968)] and The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966) and a few poems from unknown sources. John Newlove reads from Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart, 1968), What They Say (Weed/Flower, 1967), Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle Press, 1963) and poems later published in The Cave (McClelland & Stewart, 1970). Most of these poems have been collected in The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977)."],"contents":["joe_rosenblatt_i006-11-138.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nGood evening. Hello, Mr. Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. [Audience laughter]. Well, welcome to the sixth reading of our second series of evenings with Canadian and American poets. Tonight we have Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], and John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356], formerly of Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], now residing in Nova Scotia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1952]. Joe Rosenblatt will begin the reading, there will be an intermission, and John Newlove will follow. I'm going to quote largely from the copy in Joe Rosenblatt's book, The LSD Leacock, for I hope servient biographical information. It goes like this, he was born in Toronto on December the 26th, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. He says that he has suffocated in Toronto ever since then. He attended the Central Technical School [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5061898] and dropped out in Grade 10, he has worked as a grave-digger, plumber's helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope. He has attended the Provincial Institute of Trades where he acquired a diploma as a welder fitter, his favourite writers are Ambrose Biers, William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513], Emily Dickinson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441], and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027], and his favourite dream, is Cyclops turning up at a [nigh-bank (?)]. [Audience laughter]. His previous book of poems, which was probably printed in nineteen hundred and sixty-three, is called Voyage of the Mood. Joe Rosenblatt.\n \nAudience\n00:02:27\nApplause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:02:36\nWasn't that [unintelligible]. I'm just going to read, start off with a series of poems I had written about my uncle, who was a fishmonger. He had a habit of phyxiating and murdering fish, and slicing them, and slicing them, and...well, I'll start. This is called \"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:03:11\nReads \"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n\nAudience\n00:06:10\nApplause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:06:16\n\"Ichthycide\". Another poem about my uncle. It's funny, really. [Audience laughter].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:06:29\nReads \"Ichthycide\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nAudience\n00:08:05\nLaughter and applause .\n\nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:08:13\nThis is called \"A Shell Game\". Has to do with my uncle. [Audience laughter]. It's about his funeral.  Joke.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:08:27\nReads \"A Shell Game [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:09:42\nI wrote all kinds of poems. I was in Vancouver and I came across the god-awful logic of the zoo. It kinda scared the hell out of me. It was a bat. I've never seen a bat before. Met people who were bats. But this was the real McCoy, it was a fruit bat and it was hanging upside-down, you know, that's the way they live and they fornicate that way too, apparently, upside-down. So I wrote about bats. I have some more fish poems but I get tired of that after a while, you start hating it. And we'll begin with \"Bats\". While it's true the bat is a mammal, not a bird, there's all types of kinds of mythology based on prejudice about bats and which I've tried to embody in these poems. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:10:47\nReads \"Bats\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:11:32\nOutside of the bat poem there came a group of sound poetry. Because I tried to get the feeling of the bat in the air, you know the image of the bat and the way it, and the movements of the bat. And this is called \"The Fruit Bat\". First encounter with a bat.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:11:56\nReads \"The Fruit Bat\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:13:16\nThis is better. This is “The Bat Cage”.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:13:19\nReads “The Bat Cage” [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:14:39\nOh we're like bats to people. We used to have, I used to, when I was a kid I went to school and we had a music teacher who was a bit of a nut. She used to rap kids across the knuckles, you know, just to hear them singing. [Audience laughter]. I may have called her Mrs. Love, I can't recall, the trauma was too great. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:15:02\nReads “The Vampire” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nAudience\n00:15:48\nLaughter and applause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:15:55\n\"The Zombie\". Just whistle when you get tired of these bat poems. Do anything you wanna do. \"The Zombie\". By the way, bats are supposed to be unkosher according to Leviticus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41490]. It says all fowl that creep going upon all fours shall be an abomination unto you. But in other countries they're great appetizers, the fruit bat especially, and I have an interesting poem, not right now though. \"The Zombie\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:16:26\nReads \"The Zombie\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:17:59\nI'll read one more bat poem, it's the sound thing, an experimental thing which I later developed...too many of these bats here. I wrote a Christmas poem on bats, too. Maybe I should read it. Dedicated to somebody. I'll read the sound poem. It's more important. \"The Butterfly Bat\". There is a butterfly bat. Hm, found in the Orient, a very beautiful bat, orange apparently, very beautiful though. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:18:43\nReads \"The Butterfly Bat\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:20:02\nReads \"Orpheus in Stanley Park\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:20:50\n\"Sex and Death\". This poem's for a friend of mine. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:20:54\nReads \"Sex and Death\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:21:48\nI should read the egg poems, because I don't think many of you have heard them, and I'll do that. You'd probably like them better than the bats. More meaningful. This is called \"Egg Sonata\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:22:20\nReads \"Egg Sonata\" [from The LSD Leacock].\n \nAudience\n00:23:38\nLaughter and applause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:23:44\nReads [\"Let the egg live\" (?)].\n \nUnknown\n00:24:56\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:24:59\nReads \"It's in the egg, in the little round egg\" [from The LSD Leacock].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:26:57\nOne more egg poem. [Audience laughter and applause]. This is a prose poem. It's called \"The Easter I got for Passover\". [Audience laughter]. It has to do with an argument, whether the body of Christ did not go to heaven, the moderator of the United Church of Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q198745] said yesterday, Right Reverend Ernest Marshall Howes told a press conference that he does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus but does believe in a spiritual resurrection. That's from the Globe and Mail [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43148750], 23rd of April, '65.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:27:46\nReads \"The Easter I got for Passover\" [from The LSD Leacock].\n \nAudience\n00:30:02\nApplause. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:30:10\nDo you want to read, John? Where is he? [Audience laughter]. Do you want me to come here? Yeah, okay. I'm getting down to my dirty poems, what am I going to do? I wrote a whole bunch of pornographic poetry, right. I'll read that for the end when the time's up. I wrote a poem to Che Guevara [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5809], if I can find the thing now, because I really muddled everything up here, oh here it is. It's called \"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:30:52\nReads \"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:31:42\nA poem about a critic, “Fable”.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:31:47\nReads “Fable” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].  \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:32:37\nI wrote another one about a critic, a friend of mine. It's called \"The Crab Louse\". I'll read it. [Audience laughter]. I think some of you may recognize him. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:32:47\nReads \"The Crab Louse\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:33:25\nReads \"The Fire Bug Poet\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:34:29\n\"How Mice Make Love,\" how'd this get in here? \"How Mice Make Love\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:34:36\nReads \"How Mice Make Love\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:35:29\n\"The Electric Rose\".\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:35:34\nReads \"The Electric Rose\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nAudience\n00:37:13\nApplause.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:37:17\nShould I read on? Well this is a poem called \"Itch\". It's about that cat who, you know, in the world of the dead. And as usual I mucked up all the mythology, but it was too late to change the poem. So I said, what the hell. \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:37:44\nReads \"Itch\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:41:51\nThere's a loathsome typographical error in here. That's what happens.\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:41:56\nResumes reading \"Itch\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:43:20\n[Unintelligible] a more cheerful poem, if I can find one here. How about \"Cricket Love\"? I'll read one very early poem I wrote, \"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\". \n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:43:39\nReads \"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\n \nJoe Rosenblatt\n00:44:21\nThank you. \n \nAudience\n00:44:22\nApplause.\n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:44:35\nThere'll be a fifteen minute inter- [cut off abruptly]. \n \nEND\n00:44:37\n\n\njohn_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nWell, it gives me a very special kind of pleasure to introduce John Newlove. An old and dear friend. We met in the fall of '61 in Vancouver, and both of us had come from Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1989] to Vancouver. I think that some of John's most memorable early poems have to do with the fact of Saskatchewan.  It's perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the place does continue to haunt him, and hopefully that the exorcism is not complete and that we may get some more Saskatchewan poems. Subsequently, and this is still in Vancouver, we shared a studio, or rather, he shared my studio [audience laughter], for a period of little over a year. Now during this time, we played marathon games of chess, ate several hundred dozens of chocolate-coated Long Johns, scribbled poems, dribbled paint, drank cheap red wine...and read through at least a dozen five-foot shelves of great and lesser works of literature, not to mention the confusion of mice, drunken poets, women, painters, and assorted kooks who kept visiting us. Now, it was during this period that his first book, called Grave Sirs was printed, and I have in italics here \"more or less.\" If you want to know the history of that book, you can ask John. I think there must be fifty odd copies that are still unbound someplace. This was printed by Robert Reed. It was followed by a second, called Elephants, Mothers, and Others, done by Tak Tanabe, again in Vancouver, and subsequent to that, it was rumored that Robert Columbo had discovered John Newlove for Canadian poetry [audience laughter], when he collected some of his works together in an anthology called Poetry '64. Now. Following this, of course, Contact Press bought out his book, Moving in Alone, which was perhaps the book that brought him his first large-scale critical attention. Meanwhile, of course, I'd come here, and some time afterwards I received a book, a wee book, called...let's see. [Audience laughter]. Can't read my own printing here. What They Say. Yes, What They Say is a wee book of poems, it's made up of the rejects from his manuscript that he submitted to McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. McClelland and Stewart is to bring out his next book of poems called Black Night Window, when they get around to doing it. The manuscript has been in their hands for over twenty-four months. There has been much other activity which include three, two years and a third one coming up as poet in residence at Deep Springs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5250324] in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. I want to conclude this little preamble by saying that at the time that John moved out of our studio, I took over this room that he slept in and wrote poetry in. The mattress in this room was about sixteen inches from the floor, and on two sides, on the wall, there was copious scribbling.  Most of it were quotations from Heraclitus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41155] that he was reading at that time.\n \nAudience\n00:04:43\nApplause.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:04:51\nThey weren't quotations from whoever, whatever Greek name that was you just made up, [audience laughter], they were from Herodotus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26825]. And, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] might have mentioned that, while I suppose technically you could say I was sharing the studio, I was paying half the rent.  Almost half the rent. I was paying some rent. [Audience laughter]. And he never mentioned who won most of the chess games. I write a lot of...who's throwing things at me?  You didn't win any chess games. [Audience laughter]. And you weren't paying any rent, either. I write a lot of poems about dreams, one night I woke up with a dream about an Australian chief and I managed to write down most of it. It's called \"The Almost King\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:05:42\nReads \"The Almost King\" [audience laughter throughout].\n\nJohn Newlove\n00:08:32\nWell, when you have dreams like that, you don't really have much chance. I've a number of short poems, I'm told it's not good to give them at poetry readings because people don't listen fast enough or something. But. [Laughter]. This...Yes, that ashtray is stolen from the faculty club, George, and your wife stole it. [Audience laughter]. This one is called \"The Candle\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:09:07\nReads \"The Candle\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:09:19\nAgain a dream. This poem, misprinted in the Malahat Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567225], is one that I most like. It's called \"The Engine and the Sea\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:09:32\nReads \"The Engine and the Sea\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:11:26\nLove poems about sleep. And about dreams. This one is called \"Before Sleep\". I used to have a great deal of trouble going to sleep because I was afraid I would have nightmares.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:11:44\nReads \"Before Sleep\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:12:53\nAnd again another one about dreams, this one called \"The Dream Man”. Dreamed I once wrote a dream about somebody else's dream, but that's not fair, dreams are copyright. This was my own. [Audience laughter].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:13:09\nReads \"The Dream Man\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:14:35\nAccording to the rules, you're supposed to say things in between poems, but I can't really ever think of anything appropriate to say in between them, so. I used to have some nice Ed Sullivan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83807] routines, but I've forgotten them. This poem is called \"Burn\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:14:52\nReads \"Burn\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:15:16\nAnd this one, an old one, again fairly short. It's called \"No Song\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:15:25\nReads \"No Song\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:15:47\nI have a poem I wrote for and about a friend, but after the poem was finished as you may see, I showed it to him but I didn't tell him it was about him. He said it was a very good poem and very accurate, and so on. But he didn't know it was about himself. It's called, \"What do you want, what do you want?\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:16:06\nReads \"What do you want, what do you want?\" [from Black Night Window and later published in The Fat Man; audience laughter and applause throughout].\n  \nJohn Newlove\n00:17:01\nAfter he said it was such an accurate poem, I couldn't tell him it was about him. This one's called \"Strand by Strand\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:17:14\nReads \"Strand by Strand\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:17:56\nThis is the first time I've kept to a list of...because usually I decide that I don't want to read a particular poem and I get all confused, but I'm very pleased with myself when I keep right to the schedule. Everything organized, everything complete. This short poem in five naturally short pieces is called \"One Day\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:18:23\nReads \"One Day\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:18:55\nCharles Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124735] died in about 1953, he was an Englishman, originally Cockney. He wrote a number of what I think are very good poems, a number of detective novels, some theological deputation, I guess would be the right word. One of his detective novels is about finding the holy grail. It's called War in Heaven and it's out in Faber Paperback, go and buy it, it's really nice. This poem is for and from and about Charles Williams.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:19:35\nReads “For and From Charles Williams” [from What They Say].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:20:04\nNow my list has gone to pot, because I've got a poem down in a magazine that I didn't bring. So. One day some years ago, I was hitchhiking out to British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]. I got to a place called Golden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1020179], B.C. and I had to go up the Big Bend Highway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30253222], this would be before the Rogers Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q383051] was open. And I got a ride about thirty miles in on what I didn't know was an illegally-present logging truck, because the Big Bend Highway was not open to traffic for three more days. So I sat three days on the Big Bend Highway. This poem roughly...well, it's called \"Solitaire\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:20:47\nReads \"Solitaire\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:21:22\nThis short one called \"El Paso\" because El Paso was the place where it happens. It was ninety degrees outside in El Paso [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16562], and with the air conditioning, which I couldn't turn off, it was about thirty below. And I couldn't sleep, I had to get up in the middle of the night and get dressed and get under the blankets, and I caught terrible cold in that motel. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:21:41\nReads \"El Paso\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:21:56\nSince I've been out of Nova Scotia, I've written a couple of poems about or around Nova Scotia. The main thing I can't seem to get in a poem just yet is the difference between the Pacific Ocean [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98], in Vancouver, and the Atlantic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97]. There seems a tremendous difference that I can feel but that I can't seem yet to grasp in the fact. This poem is called \"God Bless You\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:22:24\nReads \"God Bless You\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nAudience\n00:22:43\nLaughter.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:22:47\nThe next piece is on the back of my list. I think this is about the only other ethnic Nova Scotia-type poem that I've got, but I was only there for about six months and I can't quite put out a book yet. This is called \"By the Grey Atlantic\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:23:04\nReads \"By the Grey Atlantic\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:23:31\nI think I'll read quickly a number of poems from this book. I'm anxious not to keep you too long, if anybody feels like walking out, I won't really be insulted if you'll [unintelligible]. These are all quite simple so I might as well just give the title in my school-class fashion and then go on to read them. This is called \"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\". I might see first that Veregin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7921203] is a town in Saskatchewan named after a leader of the Doukhobors [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5302215], they first came to that area after Peter the Lordly Verigin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4107818] [unintelligible] his palace, which is really just a gigantic farmhouse, it's outside the town. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:24:19\nReads \"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:25:04\nThis one, about a pregnant girl, it's called \"On Her Long Bed of Night”.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:25:09\nReads \"On Her Long Bed of Night\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:26:12\nSo, this one's about my father. Drowning kittens, in a lot of houses in Saskatchewan you keep a rain barrel on a corner of the house underneath a spout to get the fresh rainwater for washing and so on.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:26:27\nReads “My Daddy Drowned” [from Elephants, Mothers and Others and later published in The Fat Man].\n \nAudience\n00:27:09.11\nLaughter and applause.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:27:18\nThis one is called \"Half in Love\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:27:22\nReads \"Half in Love\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:02\nThis one is called \"Sister Cowen\". She used to run a mission in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096], and she had very good stew. She was a very violent woman. On Christmas Eve she used to give all the bums fifty cents, but she gave a particularly long sermon on Christmas Eve. She was very down on booze.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:25\nReads \"Sister Cowen\".\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:40\nLaughter.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:49\nThis one is set in Vancouver outside Roy Kiyooka's studio. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:28:58\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:29:30\nThe name of this book is Elephants, Mothers, and Others. I've read poems about others and one about my mother, and this is the elephant’s poem. \n \nJohn Newlove\n00:29:41\nReads “Elephants” from Elephants, Mothers, and Others [and published later in The Fat Man; audience laughter throughout].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:30:01\nI think I've gone on too long, there is a longish poem called \"The Fat Man\", which I want to read, so I'll skip the rest of the stuff I thought I was going to read and just do this one.\n \nAnnotation\n00:30:18\nReads \"The Fat Man\" [published later in The Fat Man].\n \nAudience\n00:34:47\nApplause.\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:34:48\nIt's not finished, you see, it's not...[Audience laughter].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:34:52\nResumes reading \"The Fat Man\" [published later in The Fat Man].\n \nJohn Newlove\n00:36:33\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:36:35\nApplause.\n \nEND\n00:36:55\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, Rosenblatt published his third collection of poetry, The winter of the lunar moth (House of Anansi).\\n\\n In 1968, Newlove published Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart) and 3 Poems (Western P). The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977) collects poems written during this time.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nRosenblatt was an influential and up-and-coming Canadian poet in the mid 60’s and while there is no direct connection to Sir George Williams University, he was friends with and known by many in poetry circles.\\n\\nAs illustrated in the introduction to this reading, John Newlove was close friends with Roy Kiyooka (Professor at Sir George Williams and Reading Series Committee member) when they both lived in Vancouver. Newlove was also an important Canadian and Prairie poet.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, introduction, research, and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs> 2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Besner, Neil. \\\"Rosenblatt, Joe (Joseph)\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/988192362&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George (ed). “John Newlove”. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology.         Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/john-newlove-at-sgwu-1968/\",\"citation\":\"Charny, Marty. “Georgantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 9 February 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960-ii-our-nature-our-voices/oclc/878901819&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “Joe Rosenblatt”. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960-ii-our-nature-our-voices/oclc/878901819&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “John Newlove”. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Rosenblatt, Joe\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-x2/oclc/40224711&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary. \\\"Newlove, John\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/newlove_john.html\",\"citation\":\"“John Newlove (1938-)”. One Zero Zero: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Press 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, York University. \"},{\"url\":\"https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/rosenblatt/index.htm\",\"citation\":\"“Joe Rosenblatt: Biography”. Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2000. \"},{\"url\":\"https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/newlove/index.htm\",\"citation\":\"“John Newlove: Biography”. Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2000.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/42678409&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). “Joe Rosenblatt”. Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal, Quebec: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/42678409&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). “John Newlove”. Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal:         McClelland & Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/apology-for-absence-selected-poems-1962-1992/oclc/751573535&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992. Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 1993.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-night-window/oclc/253373347&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. Black Night Window. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/cave/oclc/556837824&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. The Cave. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/fat-man-selected-poems-1962-1972/oclc/299451378&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/what-they-say/oclc/433815288&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Newlove, John. What They Say. Ontario: Weed/Flower Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=1871\",\"citation\":\"“Newlove, John”. ABC BookWorld, Simon Fraser University Library. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lsd-leacock-a-new-volume-of-poetry-by-joe-rosenblatt-with-20-drawings-by-r-daigneault-published-by-the-coach-house-press/oclc/1007418956&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rosenblatt, Joe. The LSD Leacock. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/lunatic-muse/oclc/1150303654&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rosenblatt, Joe. The Lunatic Muse. Holstein, Ontario: Exile Editions, 2007.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/winter-of-the-luna-moth/oclc/557044236&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rosenblatt, Joe. Winter of the Luna Moth. Toronto: Anansi Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. The Gazette. 14 September 1967, page 15. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Whalen, Terry. “Newlove, John (1938-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson & L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548835401728,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/john_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"john_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:36:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"88.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"john_newlove_i006-11-143.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nWell, it gives me a very special kind of pleasure to introduce John Newlove. An old and dear friend. We met in the fall of '61 in Vancouver, and both of us had come from Saskatchewan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1989] to Vancouver. I think that some of John's most memorable early poems have to do with the fact of Saskatchewan.  It's perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the place does continue to haunt him, and hopefully that the exorcism is not complete and that we may get some more Saskatchewan poems. Subsequently, and this is still in Vancouver, we shared a studio, or rather, he shared my studio [audience laughter], for a period of little over a year. Now during this time, we played marathon games of chess, ate several hundred dozens of chocolate-coated Long Johns, scribbled poems, dribbled paint, drank cheap red wine...and read through at least a dozen five-foot shelves of great and lesser works of literature, not to mention the confusion of mice, drunken poets, women, painters, and assorted kooks who kept visiting us. Now, it was during this period that his first book, called Grave Sirs was printed, and I have in italics here \\\"more or less.\\\" If you want to know the history of that book, you can ask John. I think there must be fifty odd copies that are still unbound someplace. This was printed by Robert Reed. It was followed by a second, called Elephants, Mothers, and Others, done by Tak Tanabe, again in Vancouver, and subsequent to that, it was rumored that Robert Columbo had discovered John Newlove for Canadian poetry [audience laughter], when he collected some of his works together in an anthology called Poetry '64. Now. Following this, of course, Contact Press bought out his book, Moving in Alone, which was perhaps the book that brought him his first large-scale critical attention. Meanwhile, of course, I'd come here, and some time afterwards I received a book, a wee book, called...let's see. [Audience laughter]. Can't read my own printing here. What They Say. Yes, What They Say is a wee book of poems, it's made up of the rejects from his manuscript that he submitted to McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. McClelland and Stewart is to bring out his next book of poems called Black Night Window, when they get around to doing it. The manuscript has been in their hands for over twenty-four months. There has been much other activity which include three, two years and a third one coming up as poet in residence at Deep Springs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5250324] in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. I want to conclude this little preamble by saying that at the time that John moved out of our studio, I took over this room that he slept in and wrote poetry in. The mattress in this room was about sixteen inches from the floor, and on two sides, on the wall, there was copious scribbling.  Most of it were quotations from Heraclitus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41155] that he was reading at that time.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:04:43\\nApplause.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:04:51\\nThey weren't quotations from whoever, whatever Greek name that was you just made up, [audience laughter], they were from Herodotus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26825]. And, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] might have mentioned that, while I suppose technically you could say I was sharing the studio, I was paying half the rent.  Almost half the rent. I was paying some rent. [Audience laughter]. And he never mentioned who won most of the chess games. I write a lot of...who's throwing things at me?  You didn't win any chess games. [Audience laughter]. And you weren't paying any rent, either. I write a lot of poems about dreams, one night I woke up with a dream about an Australian chief and I managed to write down most of it. It's called \\\"The Almost King\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:05:42\\nReads \\\"The Almost King\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nJohn Newlove\\n00:08:32\\nWell, when you have dreams like that, you don't really have much chance. I've a number of short poems, I'm told it's not good to give them at poetry readings because people don't listen fast enough or something. But. [Laughter]. This...Yes, that ashtray is stolen from the faculty club, George, and your wife stole it. [Audience laughter]. This one is called \\\"The Candle\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:09:07\\nReads \\\"The Candle\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:09:19\\nAgain a dream. This poem, misprinted in the Malahat Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567225], is one that I most like. It's called \\\"The Engine and the Sea\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:09:32\\nReads \\\"The Engine and the Sea\\\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:11:26\\nLove poems about sleep. And about dreams. This one is called \\\"Before Sleep\\\". I used to have a great deal of trouble going to sleep because I was afraid I would have nightmares.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:11:44\\nReads \\\"Before Sleep\\\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:12:53\\nAnd again another one about dreams, this one called \\\"The Dream Man”. Dreamed I once wrote a dream about somebody else's dream, but that's not fair, dreams are copyright. This was my own. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:13:09\\nReads \\\"The Dream Man\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:14:35\\nAccording to the rules, you're supposed to say things in between poems, but I can't really ever think of anything appropriate to say in between them, so. I used to have some nice Ed Sullivan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83807] routines, but I've forgotten them. This poem is called \\\"Burn\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:14:52\\nReads \\\"Burn\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:15:16\\nAnd this one, an old one, again fairly short. It's called \\\"No Song\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:15:25\\nReads \\\"No Song\\\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:15:47\\nI have a poem I wrote for and about a friend, but after the poem was finished as you may see, I showed it to him but I didn't tell him it was about him. He said it was a very good poem and very accurate, and so on. But he didn't know it was about himself. It's called, \\\"What do you want, what do you want?\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:16:06\\nReads \\\"What do you want, what do you want?\\\" [from Black Night Window and later published in The Fat Man; audience laughter and applause throughout].\\n  \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:17:01\\nAfter he said it was such an accurate poem, I couldn't tell him it was about him. This one's called \\\"Strand by Strand\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:17:14\\nReads \\\"Strand by Strand\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:17:56\\nThis is the first time I've kept to a list of...because usually I decide that I don't want to read a particular poem and I get all confused, but I'm very pleased with myself when I keep right to the schedule. Everything organized, everything complete. This short poem in five naturally short pieces is called \\\"One Day\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:18:23\\nReads \\\"One Day\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:18:55\\nCharles Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124735] died in about 1953, he was an Englishman, originally Cockney. He wrote a number of what I think are very good poems, a number of detective novels, some theological deputation, I guess would be the right word. One of his detective novels is about finding the holy grail. It's called War in Heaven and it's out in Faber Paperback, go and buy it, it's really nice. This poem is for and from and about Charles Williams.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:19:35\\nReads “For and From Charles Williams” [from What They Say].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:20:04\\nNow my list has gone to pot, because I've got a poem down in a magazine that I didn't bring. So. One day some years ago, I was hitchhiking out to British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1974]. I got to a place called Golden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1020179], B.C. and I had to go up the Big Bend Highway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30253222], this would be before the Rogers Pass [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q383051] was open. And I got a ride about thirty miles in on what I didn't know was an illegally-present logging truck, because the Big Bend Highway was not open to traffic for three more days. So I sat three days on the Big Bend Highway. This poem roughly...well, it's called \\\"Solitaire\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:20:47\\nReads \\\"Solitaire\\\" [from Black Night Window and published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:21:22\\nThis short one called \\\"El Paso\\\" because El Paso was the place where it happens. It was ninety degrees outside in El Paso [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16562], and with the air conditioning, which I couldn't turn off, it was about thirty below. And I couldn't sleep, I had to get up in the middle of the night and get dressed and get under the blankets, and I caught terrible cold in that motel. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:21:41\\nReads \\\"El Paso\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:21:56\\nSince I've been out of Nova Scotia, I've written a couple of poems about or around Nova Scotia. The main thing I can't seem to get in a poem just yet is the difference between the Pacific Ocean [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98], in Vancouver, and the Atlantic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97]. There seems a tremendous difference that I can feel but that I can't seem yet to grasp in the fact. This poem is called \\\"God Bless You\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:22:24\\nReads \\\"God Bless You\\\" [later published in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:22:43\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:22:47\\nThe next piece is on the back of my list. I think this is about the only other ethnic Nova Scotia-type poem that I've got, but I was only there for about six months and I can't quite put out a book yet. This is called \\\"By the Grey Atlantic\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:23:04\\nReads \\\"By the Grey Atlantic\\\" [published later in The Cave and in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:23:31\\nI think I'll read quickly a number of poems from this book. I'm anxious not to keep you too long, if anybody feels like walking out, I won't really be insulted if you'll [unintelligible]. These are all quite simple so I might as well just give the title in my school-class fashion and then go on to read them. This is called \\\"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\\\". I might see first that Veregin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7921203] is a town in Saskatchewan named after a leader of the Doukhobors [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5302215], they first came to that area after Peter the Lordly Verigin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4107818] [unintelligible] his palace, which is really just a gigantic farmhouse, it's outside the town. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:24:19\\nReads \\\"The Photograph my Mother Keeps\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:25:04\\nThis one, about a pregnant girl, it's called \\\"On Her Long Bed of Night”.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:25:09\\nReads \\\"On Her Long Bed of Night\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:26:12\\nSo, this one's about my father. Drowning kittens, in a lot of houses in Saskatchewan you keep a rain barrel on a corner of the house underneath a spout to get the fresh rainwater for washing and so on.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:26:27\\nReads “My Daddy Drowned” [from Elephants, Mothers and Others and later published in The Fat Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:27:09.11\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:27:18\\nThis one is called \\\"Half in Love\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:27:22\\nReads \\\"Half in Love\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:02\\nThis one is called \\\"Sister Cowen\\\". She used to run a mission in Edmonton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2096], and she had very good stew. She was a very violent woman. On Christmas Eve she used to give all the bums fifty cents, but she gave a particularly long sermon on Christmas Eve. She was very down on booze.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:25\\nReads \\\"Sister Cowen\\\".\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:40\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:49\\nThis one is set in Vancouver outside Roy Kiyooka's studio. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:28:58\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:29:30\\nThe name of this book is Elephants, Mothers, and Others. I've read poems about others and one about my mother, and this is the elephant’s poem. \\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:29:41\\nReads “Elephants” from Elephants, Mothers, and Others [and published later in The Fat Man; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:30:01\\nI think I've gone on too long, there is a longish poem called \\\"The Fat Man\\\", which I want to read, so I'll skip the rest of the stuff I thought I was going to read and just do this one.\\n \\nAnnotation\\n00:30:18\\nReads \\\"The Fat Man\\\" [published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:34:47\\nApplause.\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:34:48\\nIt's not finished, you see, it's not...[Audience laughter].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:34:52\\nResumes reading \\\"The Fat Man\\\" [published later in The Fat Man].\\n \\nJohn Newlove\\n00:36:33\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:36:35\\nApplause.\\n \\nEND\\n00:36:55\\n\",\"notes\":\"John Newlove reads from Black Night Window (McClelland & Stewart, 1968), What They Say (Weed/Flower, 1967), Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle Press, 1963) and poems later published in The Cave (McClelland & Stewart, 1970). Most of these poems have been collected in The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972 (McClelland & Stewart, 1977).\\n\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces John Newlove. [INDEX: friend, fall of 1961, Vancouver,        Saskatchewan, early poems, studio, chess, Long Johns, paint, wine, literature, mice,     drunken poets, women, Grave Sirs published in this period, Robert Reed, Elephants,      Mothers and Others, Tak Tanabe, Robert Columbo discovered John Newlove, Canadian        poetry, Poetry ’64, Contact Press, Moving in Alone, critical attention, What They Say \\t(Weed/Flower, 1967), rejected manuscripts submitted to McClelland and Stewart, new   book Black Night Window, manuscript, poet in residence at Deep Springs in California,    Heraclitus.]\\n04:51- John Newlove responds to Kiyooka’s introduction, and introduces “The Almost King”. [INDEX: Herodotus, studio, Roy Kiyooka, rent, chess games, poems about dreams, Australian chief; from unknown source.]\\n05:42- Reads “The Almost King”.\\n08:32- Introduces “The Candle”. [INDEX: drams, short poems, poetry readings, listening, ashtray, faculty club, George (Bowering), Angela (Bowering); from unknown source.]\\n09:07- Reads “The Candle”.\\n09:19- Introduces “The Engine in the Sea”. [INDEX: dream, misprinted in the Malahat Review, favourite poem, supposed to be ‘and the Sea’; first printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n09:32- Reads “The Engine and the Sea”.\\n11:26- Introduces “Before Sleep”. [INDEX: love poems about sleep, dreams, problems sleeping, nightmares; first printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n11:44- Reads “Before Sleep”.\\n12:53- Introduces “The Dream Man”. [INDEX: dreams, dream about someone else’s dream, copyright; from unknown source.]\\n13:09- Reads “The Dream Man”.\\n14:35- Introduces “Burn”. [INDEX: reading ‘rules’, extra-poetic speech, Ed Sullivan routines; from unknown source.]\\n14:52- Reads “Burn”.\\n15:16- Introduces “No Song”. [INDEX: old poem, short poem; published first in Black Night Window (McClelland and Stewart, 1968), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n15:25- Reads “No Song”.\\n15:47- Introduces “What do you want?” [INDEX: wrote for and about a friend; originally    printed in Black Night Window (McClelland and Stewart, 1968), collected in The Fat       Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n16:06- Reads “What do you want?”.\\n17:01- Introduces “Strand by Strand”. [INDEX: from unknown source.]\\n17:14- Reads “Strand by Strand”.\\n17:56- Introduces “One Day”. [INDEX: list of poems to read, poem in five short parts; from unknown source.]\\n18:23- Reads “One Day”.\\n18:55- Introduces first line “For and From Charles Williams”. [INDEX: Charles Williams   \\tdeath in 1953, Englishman, Cockney, detective novels, poems, theological disputation,   holy grail, War in Heaven Faber Paperback; published in What they Say (Weed/flower     Press, 1967).]\\n19:35- Reads first line “For and From Charles Williams”.\\n20:04- Introduces “Solitaire”. [INDEX: list, magazine, hitchhiking in British Columbia, Golden, B.C, Big Bend Highway, Rogers Pass, ride, illegally-present logging truck; originally printed in Black Night Window (McClelland and Stewart, 1968), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n20:47- Reads “Solitaire”.\\n21:22- Introduces “El Paso”. [INDEX: ninety degrees, air conditioning, thirty below, sleep, cold, motel; from unknown source.]\\n21:41- Reads “El Paso”.\\n21:56- Introduces “God Bless You”. [INDEX: Nova Scotia, poem, difference between Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, Vancouver; later printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n22:24- Reads “God Bless You”.\\n22:47- Introduces “By the Grey Atlantic”. [INDEX: list, Nova-Scotia-type poem, six months, unfinished book; later printed in The Cave (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n23:04- Reads “By the Grey Atlantic”.\\n23:31- Introduces “The Photograph my Mother Keeps”. [INDEX: reading poems from book (unknown), title, school-class fashion, Verrigan, Saskatchewan, named after the leader of the Doukhabors, Peter the Lordly Verrigan, farmhouse; from unknown source.]\\n24:19- Reads “The Photograph my Mother Keeps”.\\n25:04- Introduces “On Her Long Bed of Night”. [INDEX: pregnant girl; from unknown        source.]\\n25:09- Reads “On Her Long Bed of Night”.\\n26:12- Introduces “My Daddy Drowned”. [INDEX: father, kittens, houses in Saskatchewan, rain barrel, house, fresh rainwater; published Elephants, Mothers and Others (Periwinkle, 1963), collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n26:27- Reads “My Daddy Drowned”.\\n27:18- Reads “Half in Love”.\\n28:02- Introduces “Sister Cowen”. [INDEX: Sister Cowen, mission in Edmonton, stew, violent woman, Christmas eve, homeless men, fifty cents, alcohol, sermon; from unknown source.]\\n28:27- Reads “Sister Cowen”.\\n28:49- Introduces first line “The obnoxiously-generated neon suspense...”. [INDEX: Roy        Kiyooka’s studio; from unknown source.]\\n28:58- Reads first line “The obnoxiously-generated neon suspense...”.\\n29:30- Introduces first line “Elephants ”. [INDEX: from Elephants, Mothers and Others        (Periwinkle, 1963) later collected in The Fat Man (McClelland and Stewart, 1977),       \\tmother, others, elephant poem.]\\n29:41- Reads first line “Elephants”.\\n30:01- Introduces “The Fat Man”. 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Hello, Mr. Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. [Audience laughter]. Well, welcome to the sixth reading of our second series of evenings with Canadian and American poets. Tonight we have Joe Rosenblatt [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1691575], Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], and John Newlove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6250356], formerly of Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639], now residing in Nova Scotia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1952]. Joe Rosenblatt will begin the reading, there will be an intermission, and John Newlove will follow. I'm going to quote largely from the copy in Joe Rosenblatt's book, The LSD Leacock, for I hope servient biographical information. It goes like this, he was born in Toronto on December the 26th, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. He says that he has suffocated in Toronto ever since then. He attended the Central Technical School [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5061898] and dropped out in Grade 10, he has worked as a grave-digger, plumber's helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope. He has attended the Provincial Institute of Trades where he acquired a diploma as a welder fitter, his favourite writers are Ambrose Biers, William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513], Emily Dickinson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441], and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027], and his favourite dream, is Cyclops turning up at a [nigh-bank (?)]. [Audience laughter]. His previous book of poems, which was probably printed in nineteen hundred and sixty-three, is called Voyage of the Mood. Joe Rosenblatt.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:27\\nApplause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:02:36\\nWasn't that [unintelligible]. I'm just going to read, start off with a series of poems I had written about my uncle, who was a fishmonger. He had a habit of phyxiating and murdering fish, and slicing them, and slicing them, and...well, I'll start. This is called \\\"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:03:11\\nReads \\\"Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:06:10\\nApplause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:06:16\\n\\\"Ichthycide\\\". Another poem about my uncle. It's funny, really. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:06:29\\nReads \\\"Ichthycide\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:08:05\\nLaughter and applause .\\n\\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:08:13\\nThis is called \\\"A Shell Game\\\". Has to do with my uncle. [Audience laughter]. It's about his funeral.  Joke.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:08:27\\nReads \\\"A Shell Game [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:09:42\\nI wrote all kinds of poems. I was in Vancouver and I came across the god-awful logic of the zoo. It kinda scared the hell out of me. It was a bat. I've never seen a bat before. Met people who were bats. But this was the real McCoy, it was a fruit bat and it was hanging upside-down, you know, that's the way they live and they fornicate that way too, apparently, upside-down. So I wrote about bats. I have some more fish poems but I get tired of that after a while, you start hating it. And we'll begin with \\\"Bats\\\". While it's true the bat is a mammal, not a bird, there's all types of kinds of mythology based on prejudice about bats and which I've tried to embody in these poems. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:10:47\\nReads \\\"Bats\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:11:32\\nOutside of the bat poem there came a group of sound poetry. Because I tried to get the feeling of the bat in the air, you know the image of the bat and the way it, and the movements of the bat. And this is called \\\"The Fruit Bat\\\". First encounter with a bat.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:11:56\\nReads \\\"The Fruit Bat\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:13:16\\nThis is better. This is “The Bat Cage”.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:13:19\\nReads “The Bat Cage” [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:14:39\\nOh we're like bats to people. We used to have, I used to, when I was a kid I went to school and we had a music teacher who was a bit of a nut. She used to rap kids across the knuckles, you know, just to hear them singing. [Audience laughter]. I may have called her Mrs. Love, I can't recall, the trauma was too great. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:15:02\\nReads “The Vampire” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:15:48\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:15:55\\n\\\"The Zombie\\\". Just whistle when you get tired of these bat poems. Do anything you wanna do. \\\"The Zombie\\\". By the way, bats are supposed to be unkosher according to Leviticus [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41490]. It says all fowl that creep going upon all fours shall be an abomination unto you. But in other countries they're great appetizers, the fruit bat especially, and I have an interesting poem, not right now though. \\\"The Zombie\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:16:26\\nReads \\\"The Zombie\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:17:59\\nI'll read one more bat poem, it's the sound thing, an experimental thing which I later developed...too many of these bats here. I wrote a Christmas poem on bats, too. Maybe I should read it. Dedicated to somebody. I'll read the sound poem. It's more important. \\\"The Butterfly Bat\\\". There is a butterfly bat. Hm, found in the Orient, a very beautiful bat, orange apparently, very beautiful though. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:18:43\\nReads \\\"The Butterfly Bat\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:20:02\\nReads \\\"Orpheus in Stanley Park\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:20:50\\n\\\"Sex and Death\\\". This poem's for a friend of mine. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:20:54\\nReads \\\"Sex and Death\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:21:48\\nI should read the egg poems, because I don't think many of you have heard them, and I'll do that. You'd probably like them better than the bats. More meaningful. This is called \\\"Egg Sonata\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:22:20\\nReads \\\"Egg Sonata\\\" [from The LSD Leacock].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:23:38\\nLaughter and applause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:23:44\\nReads [\\\"Let the egg live\\\" (?)].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:24:56\\nSilence [cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:24:59\\nReads \\\"It's in the egg, in the little round egg\\\" [from The LSD Leacock].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:26:57\\nOne more egg poem. [Audience laughter and applause]. This is a prose poem. It's called \\\"The Easter I got for Passover\\\". [Audience laughter]. It has to do with an argument, whether the body of Christ did not go to heaven, the moderator of the United Church of Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q198745] said yesterday, Right Reverend Ernest Marshall Howes told a press conference that he does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus but does believe in a spiritual resurrection. That's from the Globe and Mail [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43148750], 23rd of April, '65.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:27:46\\nReads \\\"The Easter I got for Passover\\\" [from The LSD Leacock].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:30:02\\nApplause. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:30:10\\nDo you want to read, John? Where is he? [Audience laughter]. Do you want me to come here? Yeah, okay. I'm getting down to my dirty poems, what am I going to do? I wrote a whole bunch of pornographic poetry, right. I'll read that for the end when the time's up. I wrote a poem to Che Guevara [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5809], if I can find the thing now, because I really muddled everything up here, oh here it is. It's called \\\"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:30:52\\nReads \\\"The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth]. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:31:42\\nA poem about a critic, “Fable”.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:31:47\\nReads “Fable” [from Winter of the Luna Moth].  \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:32:37\\nI wrote another one about a critic, a friend of mine. It's called \\\"The Crab Louse\\\". I'll read it. [Audience laughter]. I think some of you may recognize him. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:32:47\\nReads \\\"The Crab Louse\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:33:25\\nReads \\\"The Fire Bug Poet\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:34:29\\n\\\"How Mice Make Love,\\\" how'd this get in here? \\\"How Mice Make Love\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:34:36\\nReads \\\"How Mice Make Love\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:35:29\\n\\\"The Electric Rose\\\".\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:35:34\\nReads \\\"The Electric Rose\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:37:13\\nApplause.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:37:17\\nShould I read on? Well this is a poem called \\\"Itch\\\". It's about that cat who, you know, in the world of the dead. And as usual I mucked up all the mythology, but it was too late to change the poem. So I said, what the hell. \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:37:44\\nReads \\\"Itch\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:41:51\\nThere's a loathsome typographical error in here. That's what happens.\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:41:56\\nResumes reading \\\"Itch\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:43:20\\n[Unintelligible] a more cheerful poem, if I can find one here. How about \\\"Cricket Love\\\"? I'll read one very early poem I wrote, \\\"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\\\". \\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:43:39\\nReads \\\"Better She Dressed in a Black Garment\\\" [from Winter of the Luna Moth].\\n \\nJoe Rosenblatt\\n00:44:21\\nThank you. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:44:22\\nApplause.\\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:44:35\\nThere'll be a fifteen minute inter- [cut off abruptly]. \\n \\nEND\\n00:44:37\\n\",\"notes\":\"Joe Rosenblatt reads from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968)] and The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966) and a few poems from unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Joe Rosenblatt. [INDEX: George Bowering, sixth reading, second series, Canadian and American poets, Toronto, John Newlove of Vancouver/Nova Scotia, Joe Rosenblatt as first reader, The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966), biographical information, born in Toronto Dec. 26, 1933, Central Technical School, dropped out in grade 10, grave-digger, plumber’s helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope, Provincial Institute of Trades, diploma as a welder fitter, Ambrose Biers, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, A.M. Klein, dream of cyclops turned up at nigh-bank [?], previous book of poems Voyage of the Mood (Heinrich Heine Press, 1963).]\\n02:36- Joe Rosenblatt introduces “Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green” [INDEX series of poems about his uncle, fishmonger, fish, slicing \\tfish; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n03:11- Reads “Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green”.\\n06:16- Introduces “Ichthycide”. [INDEX: poem about uncle, funny; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n06:29- Reads “Ichthycide”\\n08:13- Introduces “A Shell Game” [INDEX: uncle, funeral, joke; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n08:27- Reads “A Shell Game”.\\n09:42- Introduces “Bats”. [INDEX: all kinds of poems, Vancouver, zoo, scared, bat, fruit bat, fornicate, fish poems, mammal, bird, mythology, prejudice about bats; most likely from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n10:47- Reads “Bats”.\\n11:32- Introduces “The Fruit Bat”. [INDEX: bat poem, group of sound poetry, feeling of the bat, first encounter; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n11:56- Reads “The Fruit Bat”.\\n13:16- Introduces “The Bat Cage”. [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n13:19- Reads “The Bat Cage”.\\n14:39- Introduces “The Vampire”. [INDEX: bats, people, kid, school, music teacher,  \\ttrauma; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n15:02- Reads “The Vampire”.\\n15:55- Introduces “The Zombie”. [INDEX: bat poem, unkosher, Levictis, fowl, appetizers; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n16:26- Reads “The Zombie”.\\n17:59- Introduces “The Butterfly Bat”. [INDEX: bat poem, experimental, Christmas poem, dedication, sound poem, Orient, orange bat; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n18:43- Reads “The Butterfly Bat”.\\n20:02- Reads “Orpheus in Stanley Park”. [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi, 1968).]\\n20:50- Introduces “Sex and Death”. [INDEX: for a friend; from Winter of the Luna Moth       (Anansi, 1968).]\\n20:54- Reads “Sex and Death”.\\n21:48- Introduces “Egg Sonata”. [INDEX: egg poem, meaning; from The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966).]\\n22:20- Reads “Egg Sonata”.\\n23:44- Reads unknown poem, first line “Let the egg live...”. [INDEX: from unknown source]\\n24:59- Reads “It’s in the egg, the little round egg” [INDEX: from The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966).]\\n27:08- Introduces “The Easter I got for Passover”. [INDEX: prose poem, argument, the body of Christ, moderator of the United Church of Canada, Right Reverend Earnest Marshall Hows, press conference, disbelief in the physical resurrection of Jesus, spiritual resurrection, Globe and Mail, April 23, 1965; from The LSD Leacock (Coach House Press, 1966).]\\n27:46- Reads “The Easter I got for Passover”.\\n30:02- Introduces “The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara” [INDEX: John Newlove, dirty poems, pornographic poems, Che Guevara; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).] \\n30:52- Reads “The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara”.\\n31:42- Introduces “Fable” [INDEX: critic, fable; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n31:47- Reads “Fable”.\\n32:37- Introduces “The Crab Louse”. [INDEX: critic, friend; from unknown source]\\n32:47- Reads “The Crab Louse”.\\n33:25- Reads “The Fire Bug Poet”. [INDEX: from unknown source\\n34:29- Introduces “How Mice Make Love”. [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n34:36- Reads “How Mice Make Love”.\\n35:29- Reads “The Electric Rose” [INDEX: from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press,      1968).]\\n37:17- Introduces “Itch”. [INDEX: Cat, world of the dead, mythology from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n37:44- Reads “Itch”. [INDEX: interrupts poem with admission of a typographical error]\\n43:20- Introduces “Better She Dressed in a Black Garment”. [INDEX: early poem, “Cricket Love”; from Winter of the Luna Moth (Anansi Press, 1968).]\\n43:39- Reads “Better She Dressed in a Black Garment”.\\n44:35- Introducer (Roy Kiyooka) introduces 15 minute intermission.\\n44:37.30- END OF RECORDING.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/joe-rosenblatt-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"1269","cataloger_name":["Bindu,Reddy"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Earle Birney at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 23 February 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"EARLE BIRNEY Recorded February 23, 1968 3.75 ips, on 1/2 track on 1 mil. tape\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"EARLE BIRNEY i006/SR18\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-018\" also written on sticker on the reel.\n"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Birney, Earle"],"creator_names_search":["Birney, Earle"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/97679781\",\"name\":\"Birney, Earle\",\"dates\":\"1904-1955\",\"notes\":\"Poet Earle Birney was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1904, when it was still part of the Northwest Territories. Birney spent his early years on a remote farm, until his family moved to Banff in 1911, and then again in 1916 to Creston, British Columbia. Upon graduation from high-school, Birney worked odd jobs as a bank clerk, a farm labourer and as a general labourer at national parks in B.C. before enrolling at the University of British Columbia, in chemistry, in 1922. He quickly switched into english literature and became the associate editor and subsequently editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Ubyssey. Birney graduated in Honours English in 1926, and completed a Master’s Degree from the University of Toronto in 1927. Birney pursued further graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, until leaving in 1930 for the University of Utah to become a lecturer for two years. He returned to Toronto to complete his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and became a party organizer for the Trotskyist branch of the Communist Party. Birney received a fellowship to the University of London, England to study and thus traveled to Norway to interview Leon Trotsky. In 1938, with Ph.D. in hand, Birney taught at the University of Toronto and became the editor of the Canadian Forum until 1940. After enlisting in the Canadian Army, he published his first volume of poetry, David (Ryerson Press, 1942) which won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Birney then shipped off to serve in the Second World War, returning with a manuscript for Now is time (Ryerson Press, 1945), which also won a Governor General’s Award. Birney was editor of The Canadian Poetry Magazine (1946-48) and a professor at the University of British Columbia (1948-62). There, Birney created the very first department of creative writing in Canada. His subsequent publications include The strait of Anian (Ryerson Press, 1948), Trial of a city (Ryerson Press,1952) which was later published with its original title, The damnation of Vancouver (McClelland and Stewart, 1957), Ice cod bell or stone (McClelland and Stewart, 1962). Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, his poetry became more innovative and radical, publishing Near false creek mouth (McClelland and Stewart, 1964), a collaboration with bp Nichol, Pnomes, jukollages & other stunzas (Ganglia Press, 1969), Rag and bone shop (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), What’s so big about green? (McClelland and Stewart, 1973), The rugging and the moving times (Black Moss Press, 1976), Alphbeings and other seasyours (Pikadilly Press, 1976), and Fall by fury (McClelland and Stewart, 1978). Along with poetry, Birney published two prose novels, Turvey  (McClelland and Stewart, 1949) and Down the long table (McClelland and Stewart, 1955), a collection of stories Big bird in the bush (Mosaic Press, 1978), non fiction The creative writer (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1966), and The cow jumped over the moon (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972) among others. Birney’s poems have been collected in Selected poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1966), The poems of Earle Birney (McClelland and Stewart, 1969), Collected poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), and his last volume, Last makings (McClelland and Stewart, 1991). Birney received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Earle Birney died in 1995.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Bowering, George"],"contributors_names_search":["Bowering, George"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Series_organizer_name":["Bowering, George"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"06:00:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 2 23\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on tape box\",\"source\":\"Accompanying material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Sir George Williams University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1455  Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455  Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal"],"Venue":["Sir George Williams University"],"content_notes":["Earle Birney reads from Near False Creek Mouth (McClelland and Stewart, 1964) and Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966), as well as poems later collected in Rag & Bone Shop (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), and Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1977)."],"contents":["earle_birney_i006-11-018.mp3\n\nGeorge Bowering\n00:00:00\nI think it's, it's either redundant or futile to do anything more than the formality of introducing Earle Birney [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3046415] who's probably the most famous poet we've ever had and who you will see described on those pieces of paper, pink that flit around, as always as a, the Dean of Canadian Poetry, though I prefer to think of him as the federal Minister for Poetry, and the times he has been a semi-official courier of Canadian poetry around the world. Sadly enough, as he tells me, the only book of his still generally in print is the Selected Poems of 1966, which we do have on sale outside the door and of which, I should remind you, he gets a cut from his publisher. [Audience laughter]. Luckily there, I have, have heard that there will be a couple of Birney books within the next little while, one of them published in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] and the other one by the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585], presuming always that there will be a Coach House Press in the next little while. I would just like to mention that my association with Earle Birney has always been very, a good one, for me, and I wouldn't be here today to be talking about him unless I happened to be a member of the Poetry Committee, and, except that if it hadn't been for him, and the fact that both he and I were in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] at one time, I probably wouldn't have been writing any poems at all. Either that, or he would be writing mine. So without any further ado, and probably to our great delectation, I would like to introduce Earle Birney. \n \nAudience\n00:02:15 \nApplause.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:02:26\nThank you very much, George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. I should, in all fairness to George, say that he actually wrote all this information about me and probably a good number of the poems, which I will be reading under my own name tonight. I would also like to say that I have, was recently corresponding with a man who had just resigned as president of a University to become a Dean of another University and had said, well, at least I will show them that if a Dean is a mouse in training to be a rat, then some rats can revert to being mice. Now, if we apply this to the world of poetry, I would say that I am a mouse in training to be less than a mouse, to be something in another category--I think I'd like to be Bursar of Canadian Poetry. But nobody has really set me up for that. I'm going to start by making sure that I read one good poem tonight by reading a poem of W. B. Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] [audience laughter] called \"A Prayer for Old Age\", which has, I think, I'm afraid, more and more pertinence to my condition. He wrote it at 69. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:04:10\nReads \"A Prayer for Old Age\"  by W. B. Yeats.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:04:54\nThat I will use as an excuse for some of the poems I now shall read you, if I can find my list. The last thing. Ah yes, here it is. Now there's no mic and I want to make sure that everyone is hearing me. If I'm not talking loud enough, those that cannot hear, would you please put a hand up now. I'm very sorry, I'm very sorry--well, you will have to go to the back and then somebody who's standing can come here. I'm sorry there aren't, that some of you have to stand, and I'll try to make it as fast as possible so we can all get out of here. [Audience laughter]. I'm going to begin with some poems that are, alas, too well known to my fellow poets, most of them in this room, but I had planned it this way and I'm stuck with it now and so are they. I'm going to begin with a series that came out, some members of a series that came out in Ice Cod Bell or Stone, and later others in, Near False Creek Mouth, that have to do with wandering around the global village, and this one begins in, well it since begins in Vancouver, but it's about Honolulu [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18094]. I got a fellowship to go to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and I was in Vancouver and I discovered that it only cost me two hundred dollars and some odd cents more to go to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] and back to Vancouver by way of going around the world, you know, just heading west. The air tickets were accommodating me that way. So I decided to go west, and my first stop, I noticed, was Honolulu, and I began to get a bit of a temperature about that, and I thought, how 'bout, I might as well live it up, I'm going to Honolulu tomorrow morning, going to be there tomorrow night, and so I will engage a room in Hawaiian Village Hotel for the one night, because first night, I know I have a little money. After that, God knows what's going to happen to me because I intend to stay in a lot of places before I get to London. So I did this, I reserved a room before I left Vancouver, not realizing that this had put me in a bit of a box, because this is one of the Kaiser-Hilton hotels on Waikiki Beach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q254861], and they have a special greeter who meets all the planes, just for people coming to them. And it happened, through another mischance, that I was the only one for that hotel, and this unsettled me so much I had to write about it. [Audience laughter]. Something which I call \"Twenty-Third Flight\" for reasons, well, the poem is imitative of another poet, much older, much greater, by the name of David. Not the one that I pushed off the cliff [audience laughter], the one who was a harpist.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:08:39\nReads \"Twenty-Third Flight\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\n \nAudience\n00:10:58\nApplause and laughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:11:06\nThank you very much, I hesitate to look as if I anticipated more applause, but I would much prefer it if you'd just let me rattle ahead here, for one thing it's getting hotter in here and more and more uncomfortable and as I say, let me get ahead with it, and so if at the end, of course, if anybody is still here with enough energy left, fine. Is there anybody who knows where water is available, any water hole out there in those vast cement deserts?\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:11:50\nThere should be some beside you, there.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:11:52\nUh, well, there's a water pitcher, and a water glass…[audience laughter]. I'll prove it... [audience laughter].\n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:12:05\nIf I drink it, it's okay.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:12:06\nYeah! ...Well, while George is away I'll read one of his poems. This one is called \"Honolulu\" and follows immediately after the other, but in between was about forty, twenty-four hours, I guess, in which I visited the very famous outdoor aviary, one of the world's famous aviaries, and also the aquarium and so on, and I also encountered a type, a Honolulu type of sorts. So this poem, which is perhaps about the involvement of people with animals through self-projection, and the involvement of human animals with each other. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:13:05\nReads \"Honolulu\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:14:41\nThen I went to Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and I want to read you one little poem, this is my Zen poem, I guess. [Audience laughter]. Every poet has to have a Zen poem. Thank you, George. \n \nGeorge Bowering\n00:14:54\nOh ho, I could give you a Zen greeting. Alright. It's really cold. I tried to get it out of the Coke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2813] machine but it just didn't work. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:15:03\nGood gin, thank you. \"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\"--you know these little glass-leave things, which one expects to see in Japan, but not suddenly to hear when you're all alone in an old ruin. Some left up in the rafters.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:15:31\nReads \"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:16:12\nBut I think I'm going to leave Asia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48] for the moment, and get on to Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], briefly, been around to Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], at any rate. I was sitting, more or less minding my own business, on a plaza in Madrid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2807] one morning, having my coffee, and something happened, which again I felt I should chronicle. Desmond Pacey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5264782] says I'm a chronicler, and so I, having learned that, I now use the word [audience laughter] to explain what I'm doing. I renamed the plaza, it had a rather dull name, I call it Plaza de Inquisicion. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:17:09\nReads “Plaza de Inquisicion” [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:17:44\nI also went to the Prado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160112] of course, and saw, for the first time, the original of one of the three studies by El Greco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q301] of The Espolio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q52301456], or the taking-off and rending of Christ's garments, which was one of El Greco's themes. And I was struck, as I had never been really before, I suppose because I never had really looked at these paintings properly, I had looked at them in small illustrations--I was struck by the extraordinary amount of space which had been taken up, which El Greco had devoted to the carpenter who was making the holes in the cross preparatory to having Christ nailed to the cross. In fact, the whole lower third of the canvas is devoted to him in one of these three versions, and not only that but he is, they're facing us, with his back to Christ, and on the right and left are two of the Marys, whose eyes are on him. I felt that perhaps El Greco was trying to say something here, apart from what he was saying about the actual scene of the crucifixion, in a symbolic way, perhaps about something that happened to do, really, with this religion, but with, whatever we'd call it, religion, whatever we'd call it, of art. Or if not of art, but craft. It's a little, perhaps, exaggerated, to call the carpenter an artist, but it's obvious that he'd been very much at that moment a craftsman. And so I wrote \"El Greco: Espolio\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:20:04\nReads \"El Greco: Espolio\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:22:29\nWhen I come to Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], now, I'm going to kind of sneak in on the side by reading you a poem that has to do with a very remote, I suppose the most remote part of Canada, in fact, the piece of land that is even nearer to the North Pole [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q934] than Greenland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q223] or anything the Russians have, Ellesmereland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q146841]. And I will read it first of all in English, and then, more or less for the hell of it, I'm going to read it in a translation into Spanish, but anyway, because I think I like the sound of it in Spanish. It's short, so I've practiced my Spanish on it, and maybe I won't make too many boobs.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:23:30\nReads \"Ellesmereland\" in English [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:24:10\nReads \"Ellesmereland\" in Spanish.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:24:59\nWell I'll get down and turn to more familiar territory. \"Canada Case History\". This is a poem written quite a long time ago, in 1945, in fact, when I'd just got back from World War Number Two [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], I always have to be careful to name which one it is, people getting confused about how far back I go now. And I found that in 1967 I had to do a little patching and changing of this, because history had not only caught up with me, it had changed me. But here, first of all is the original. No, I don't think, I can't, I don't think I can bear to read the original, I think I'll just read you what, what happened to this poem in 1967 in the centennial year.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:26:09\nReads \"Canada: Case History\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:28:15\nWell now I'm going to read you other various scrappy things about Canadian literature which have never been published and never will be, I think, sneak them out like this once in a while. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:28:38\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nAudience \n00:29:20\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:29:29\nThen there's John, Jean Cabot, as I think my school teacher, trying very hard to be bilingual, made us say, but it turns out he wasn't French at all, but Italian. His name was Giovanni Caboto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85642]. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:29:48\nReads \"John Cabot\" [published later as “giovanni caboto - john cabot” in Rag & Bone Shop].\n \nAudience\n00:30:27\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:30:36\nThis is something to my publisher, when they brought out a book of mine, Ice Cod Bell or Stone, full of beautiful artwork, except that the man in charge of the artwork had never read the little poem, the \"Klein Ellesmereland\" that I've just read to you, and so never discovered that when I was talking about bells, I was talking about harebells, or flowers, and he put very large iron church bells into all the illustrations. [Audience laughter]. I had asked to see the artwork in advance and was told that the authors, that this was not the custom to show authors the artwork in advance, so I didn't see it. So all I could do at the end was write something. \"To the reader”, which was not included in the volume.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:31:45\nReads \"To the reader\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:32:39\nI went to spend a weekend a couple of years ago for the first time with Al Purdy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4704621] in his shack in Ameliasburg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4742321], and I had read a lot of his Ameliasburg poems before, and I knew Al, but this was a new experience to be actually in the country of the poet, particularly as it was so well staked out--nobody else has ever written about Ameliasburg and the country north of there. Or ever will, I think. But Al has used it, and the country, and developed it into part of the remarkable fineness of his poetry. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:33:33\nReads \"In Purdy's Ameliasburg\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop]. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:37:13\nNow a poem about another part of Canada. Still Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], part of the north. This is a poem about driving west with somebody else, another guy, and...well there it is. It's called \"Way to the West\". Summertime.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:37:46\nReads \"Way to the West\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:41:45\nWell, I'm going to get out to the West Coast very briefly. I'm going to read you something toward the end of a long poem. The trouble with long poems is, you could never dare to read the whole thing to any audience. So I'll read you, it's toward the end of the thing called \"November walk near False Creek mouth\". The last page.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:42:26\nReads final section of \"November walk near False Creek mouth\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEND\n00:45:06\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:45:07\nI'm going to read you a few odd things which are to some extent experimental, I suppose. Most of these have not been published, and some of them I haven't read before. This one is called a \"Swahili Serenade\" and I'll tell you about it after I read it. It's Swahili Found Serenade, really. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:45:44\nReads \"Swahili Serenade\" [published later as “found swahili serenade” in Rag & Bone Shop; audience laughter throughout].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:46:13\nWell, as some of you have already perceived, already noticed, this is made up, each line is a juke-box tune, it's just a very easy kind of poem to make up; I offer it to you as a formula for quick poetry, just sit down by a jukebox and pick off some titles. [Audience laughter]. Five minute poem. Here's another kind of found poem of a different sort, called, I call it \"Space Conquest\". That's about all that I've contributed to it. \"Space Conquest\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:46:56\nReads \"Space Conquest\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:47:33\nWell those ten lines, each of five syllables, came out of a computer at the University of Waterloo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1049470] last week, into which we had programmed a hundred and eleven, the one hundred and eleven words of George Meredith's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90238] \"Lucifer in Starlight,\" and the last thirty-three words of Archibald MacLeish's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q633354] \"The End of the World.\" Don't ask me why we picked those two poems, I had nothing to do with the picking of the poems. But some of us, two linguists, two linguist-isists, a mathematician, and myself, and masses of computers are producing this sort of poetry. It took point eight-three seconds, not even one second, to produce the hundred-some-odd lines, out of which I chose those ten. So you can see it doesn't take very long, once you've programmed the machine, to find the, you know, the entire text of Hamlet [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41567], but this is what we have done so far, we haven't put too much time on it yet. Some things that I haven't had computers write for me, although perhaps I might have, or should have. This one's called \"Kooks of the Monk\". \n \nEarle Birney\n00:49:24\nReads \"Kooks of the Monk\".\n \nAudience\n00:49:37\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:49:39\nThat is sometimes called \"concrete\". Fun anyway, to do. This is something that I may not be able to finish, but I'll try it. It's the train from Cardiff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10690] to London. English trains sound different, of course. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:50:03\nPerforms \"Train from Cardiff to London\".\n \nAudience\n00:50:53\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:50:59\nThis is a found collage from one issue of the Toronto Daily Star [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067299], called \"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\", and this is only a small part of the poem which has no beginning or end, it goes on forever if you read the whole of the Star.  \n \nEarle Birney\n00:51:22\nReads \"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:53:26\nA series of poems with reference back to the Yeats poem I read at the beginning, perhaps. \n \nEarle Birney\n00:53:36\nReads \"Like an eddy\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\n\nEarle Birney\n00:55:42\nAnd, two short haikus.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:55:47\nReads [two of three haikus from “hokkai in the dew line snow”, published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:56:16\nReads [\"BUILDINGS\", published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n00:56:50\nAnd, a poem that is written in kind of an attempt to write something to express a tiny little bit of the pleasure I've had, through most of my life, in reading Chaucer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5683]. Called \"I'm always going back to Chaucer\".\n \nEarle Birney\n00:57:20\nReads \"I'm always going back to Chaucer\" in Middle English.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:59:06\nNow something that has to do with my Shetland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47134] grand-aunt. Tea with my Shetland grand-aunt. This is a little, slightly different dialect. And there's a kind of an opposition of styles going on here. It's a very old poem, refurbished.\n \nEarle Birney\n00:59:32\nReads \"Tea at my Shetland Aunt’s\" in a Shetland dialect [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n\n \nEarle Birney\n01:01:21\nWell now I'm going to turn back to older poems. To conclude. Hum...I'm going to read two or three poems that, who have some relationship to California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99] and Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824]. First of all, a poem that, when I wrote it, I wrote it on the day of its date. I thought the date was going to be very significant. August the seven, 1964, Florence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862740], Oregon. And that was because on that day, the American fleet moved into the coast and shelled the coast of North Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881], against the international agreements into which the United States had entered some years before. And I thought that this would surely go down in living memory, as a deed of aggression and perfidy. But there have been so many since, almost every day, that everybody has forgotten about that first shelling of the shore from the Gulf of Tonkin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212428]. But I happened to be on the shore of the Pacific [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98] almost directly across from the Gulf of Tonkin, in fact, the waves that were coming in perhaps had their pulsing first on the other side. And this, one couldn't get it out of one's mind, having seen the morning papers and heard the radio, and I went, I had gone fishing with an American poet and his two boys. The salmon were running, coming in, but I have got less and less interested in killing even fish as I get older and softer, and I soon gave up even wanting to cook fish, and left it to the others, and I went up, because I had nothing to do then, I went up and I sat on a cliff, and started thinking about the sea out there, and cormorants fishing, and once in a while the flash of a seal coming up, also fishing, and I also suddenly realized I was sitting there just staring out at the sea and I began to think, I remembered Frost's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q168728] poem about how odd human beings are, you know, they go down to the sea and they sit and they all, they always look out at the sea, although they can't look very far out or very far in. And I thought that was exactly what I was feeling, the whole thing. But I thought well it's not really Frost's ocean, this is Robinson Jeffers' [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q734955] ocean, and here is this great eye of indifference, so I began my poem, called \"Looking from Oregon\" with a line from Robinson Jeffers about the Pacific: \"And what it watches is not our wars\".\n \nEarle Birney\n01:04:54\nReads \"Looking from Oregon\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:06:20\nAnd another little poem which is really a video poem, and I should put it on a screen but I forgot to bring my slides. Brought them as far as the hotel, but I forgot to bring them up here.  o you'll just have to visualize a poem shaped like a pair of stairs but coming up at you, and visualize yourself at the top of these stairs with your back against the side of a theatre, a campus theatre at the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145], with signs of last week's shows, this one to go on tonight, that I'm waiting to go into, waiting for my friends, who have the tickets, and watching people come up these steps, the cars coming by and discharging people. \"Campus Theatre Steps\". Summertime, a beautiful summer night. \n \nEarle Birney\n01:07:14\nReads \"Campus Theatre Steps\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:08:04\nThen I was driving along the coast, a long time, and I was confronted with a sign that hadn't been there before. A billboard, with the same message multiplied up and down the coast and everywhere I went, since the last time I was there. Now I, this is my favourite state of the American Union, Oregon, absolutely beautiful, still, despite whatever, all the attempts of man to un-beautify it, there's still this great volcanic, snow-covered mountains, such, shaped a bit like Fujiyama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39231], there is also all those beautiful rocks and sea-lion caves and the pounding surf and the rhododendrons, the whole works. And there's these, this sign saying, \"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice, Courtesy of Oregon Chamber of Commerce\". I brooded about this, and being alone, I couldn't get the answer. What is the philosophy behind this? So I invented a hitchhiker, and I picked him up, and he told me, and this is what he said. This poem is dated 61-62, and Khruschev [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35314] is still in power in Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159]. \n \nEarle Birney\n01:09:36\nReads \"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:11:42\nWell, I think we'll slip down into Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] for a moment before we wind this show up. There's a very short little thing called Irapuato [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q816845]. Well it's all part, it's like, poetry is like guidebooks, you know, guidebooks are always pointing out irrational connections between things, and so is poetry, so sometimes they get together, and in this case the guidebook had told me that there were two things, sort of, that this place was famous for, and I had discovered they were right.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:12:29\nReads \"Irapuato\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:13:06\nReads \"Memory No Servant\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:14:20\nA poem addressed to friend and writer George Lamming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1340511], who's perhaps best known for his autobiography of his child as a poor negro boy on the island of Barbados [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q244]. George Lamming who wrote In the Castle of My Skin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23307454], and who happened to be in Jamaica [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766] when I went there, and was extremely hospitable to me, and so were all his friends. And when I left I wrote him this poem, which had to do with a split-second feeling, something, thing happening inside me, an internal happening, the night of the last party, the last night of the last party. \n \nEarle Birney\n01:15:18\nReads \"For George Lamming\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:16:32\nWell just in case you would think that I am soft about this and I'm going to like anybody if their skin is darker than mine, I'll read you a counter-poem that happened to come out of the island of Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128323], out of some little external happening, perhaps in part, perhaps really just an internal happening.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:17:20\nReads \"Meeting of Strangers\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:19:06\nAnd then a very brief little, Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289]-type poem from Curacao [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25279]. Very much a...very pallid compared with Irving's, I must say.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:19:22\nReads \"Curacao\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\n \nAudience\n01:19:45\nLaughter.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:19:54\nNow I'm going to conclude with two pieces. One is about the farthest back of these poems. Although some things I've read tonight began earlier but have been revised, this one has not been particularly revised. It's called \"The Road to Nijmegen\" and was written in Holland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55] in January of 1945, the last winter of the war. Which was the coldest winter, and in this part of Holland, first the Germans in coming and then in retreating had cut down every tree anywhere around. The trees were used for fuel and for mine props and...And then we had come in, and if there were any trees left, we'd got them. And in fact, it was no longer a matter of trees, it was a matter of trying to find bits and pieces of coal and getting the coal working and getting the coal out of the hands of black marketeers. And meantime the people were cold, even colder than we were, and they also lacked food. This is a letter home to a friend.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:22:10\nReads \"The Road to Nijmegen\" [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:24:38\nAnd finally, “From The Hazel Bough”.\n \nEarle Birney\n01:24:48\nReads \"From the Hazel Bough\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966 and collected ater in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\n \nEarle Birney\n01:25:41\nThank you very much.\n \nAudience\n01:25:43\nApplause.\n \nGeorge Bowering\n01:26:12\nI guess you've already said it for us, and I can only repeat, thanks very much, Earle.\n \nEND\n01:26:25\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1968, Birney left for Australia on a trip financed by a Canada Council Medal and Award. He also went on a Canadian reading tour, which this reading might have been part of (see Elspeth Cameron’s Earle Birney: A Life, pg 492). Birney was also working on Pnomes, jukollages & other stunzas (Ganglia Press, 1969), a collaboration with bp Nichol.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nEarle Birney was an influential poet and professor at the University of British Columbia thus influencing a younger generation of poets like Frank Davey, George Bowering, Daphne Marlatt, David Bromige, Phyllis Webb, John Newlove, Joe Rosenblatt, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Michael Ondaatje, bill bissett and Lionel Kearns among many others during the early 60’s. Birney was also connected to poets like A.J.M. Smith, Irving Layton, Al Purdy and Robert Creeley. *On an interesting note, a trip to Montreal to read at Sir George Williams in 1970 was cancelled due to a car accident Birney was involved in. (Elspeth Cameron’s Earle Birney: A Life (Viking Press, 1994), page 498).\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Adam, Ian. “Birney, Earle (1904-). Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ice-cod-bell-or-stone-new-poems/oclc/61536179&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Ice Cod Bell or Stone. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/near-false-creek-mouth-new-poems/oclc/301604488&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Near False Creek Mouth. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/rag-bone-shop/oclc/877159326&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Rag & Bone Shop. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghost-in-the-wheels-selected-poems/oclc/906091320&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-of-earle-birney-volume-1/oclc/941923628&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-1940-1966/oclc/256837965&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Birney, Earle. Selected Poems 1940-1966. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/earle-birney-a-life/oclc/30973945&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cameron, Elspeth. Earle Birney: A Life. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/earle-birney-at-sgwu-1968/#reading1\",\"citation\":\"Charney, Marty. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 23 February 1968.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Birney, Earle\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-x2/oclc/40224711&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary. “Earle Birney (b. 1904)”. Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/807465072&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"New, W.H. \\\"Birney, (Alfred) Earle\\\". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapersid=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. Montreal: The Gazette, 14 September 1967, page 15. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Freeland, Petra. “Birney, Earle, 1904-1995”. Literature Online Biography.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548842741760,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0018_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0018_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0018_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0018_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0018_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Earle Birney Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/earle_birney_i006-11-018.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"earle_birney_i006-11-018.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:26:25\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"207.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"George Bowering\\n00:00:00\\nI think it's, it's either redundant or futile to do anything more than the formality of introducing Earle Birney [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3046415] who's probably the most famous poet we've ever had and who you will see described on those pieces of paper, pink that flit around, as always as a, the Dean of Canadian Poetry, though I prefer to think of him as the federal Minister for Poetry, and the times he has been a semi-official courier of Canadian poetry around the world. Sadly enough, as he tells me, the only book of his still generally in print is the Selected Poems of 1966, which we do have on sale outside the door and of which, I should remind you, he gets a cut from his publisher. [Audience laughter]. Luckily there, I have, have heard that there will be a couple of Birney books within the next little while, one of them published in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] and the other one by the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585], presuming always that there will be a Coach House Press in the next little while. I would just like to mention that my association with Earle Birney has always been very, a good one, for me, and I wouldn't be here today to be talking about him unless I happened to be a member of the Poetry Committee, and, except that if it hadn't been for him, and the fact that both he and I were in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639] at one time, I probably wouldn't have been writing any poems at all. Either that, or he would be writing mine. So without any further ado, and probably to our great delectation, I would like to introduce Earle Birney. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:02:15 \\nApplause.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:02:26\\nThank you very much, George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280]. I should, in all fairness to George, say that he actually wrote all this information about me and probably a good number of the poems, which I will be reading under my own name tonight. I would also like to say that I have, was recently corresponding with a man who had just resigned as president of a University to become a Dean of another University and had said, well, at least I will show them that if a Dean is a mouse in training to be a rat, then some rats can revert to being mice. Now, if we apply this to the world of poetry, I would say that I am a mouse in training to be less than a mouse, to be something in another category--I think I'd like to be Bursar of Canadian Poetry. But nobody has really set me up for that. I'm going to start by making sure that I read one good poem tonight by reading a poem of W. B. Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213] [audience laughter] called \\\"A Prayer for Old Age\\\", which has, I think, I'm afraid, more and more pertinence to my condition. He wrote it at 69. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:04:10\\nReads \\\"A Prayer for Old Age\\\"  by W. B. Yeats.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:04:54\\nThat I will use as an excuse for some of the poems I now shall read you, if I can find my list. The last thing. Ah yes, here it is. Now there's no mic and I want to make sure that everyone is hearing me. If I'm not talking loud enough, those that cannot hear, would you please put a hand up now. I'm very sorry, I'm very sorry--well, you will have to go to the back and then somebody who's standing can come here. I'm sorry there aren't, that some of you have to stand, and I'll try to make it as fast as possible so we can all get out of here. [Audience laughter]. I'm going to begin with some poems that are, alas, too well known to my fellow poets, most of them in this room, but I had planned it this way and I'm stuck with it now and so are they. I'm going to begin with a series that came out, some members of a series that came out in Ice Cod Bell or Stone, and later others in, Near False Creek Mouth, that have to do with wandering around the global village, and this one begins in, well it since begins in Vancouver, but it's about Honolulu [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18094]. I got a fellowship to go to England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and I was in Vancouver and I discovered that it only cost me two hundred dollars and some odd cents more to go to London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] and back to Vancouver by way of going around the world, you know, just heading west. The air tickets were accommodating me that way. So I decided to go west, and my first stop, I noticed, was Honolulu, and I began to get a bit of a temperature about that, and I thought, how 'bout, I might as well live it up, I'm going to Honolulu tomorrow morning, going to be there tomorrow night, and so I will engage a room in Hawaiian Village Hotel for the one night, because first night, I know I have a little money. After that, God knows what's going to happen to me because I intend to stay in a lot of places before I get to London. So I did this, I reserved a room before I left Vancouver, not realizing that this had put me in a bit of a box, because this is one of the Kaiser-Hilton hotels on Waikiki Beach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q254861], and they have a special greeter who meets all the planes, just for people coming to them. And it happened, through another mischance, that I was the only one for that hotel, and this unsettled me so much I had to write about it. [Audience laughter]. Something which I call \\\"Twenty-Third Flight\\\" for reasons, well, the poem is imitative of another poet, much older, much greater, by the name of David. Not the one that I pushed off the cliff [audience laughter], the one who was a harpist.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:08:39\\nReads \\\"Twenty-Third Flight\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:10:58\\nApplause and laughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:11:06\\nThank you very much, I hesitate to look as if I anticipated more applause, but I would much prefer it if you'd just let me rattle ahead here, for one thing it's getting hotter in here and more and more uncomfortable and as I say, let me get ahead with it, and so if at the end, of course, if anybody is still here with enough energy left, fine. Is there anybody who knows where water is available, any water hole out there in those vast cement deserts?\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:11:50\\nThere should be some beside you, there.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:11:52\\nUh, well, there's a water pitcher, and a water glass…[audience laughter]. I'll prove it... [audience laughter].\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:12:05\\nIf I drink it, it's okay.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:12:06\\nYeah! ...Well, while George is away I'll read one of his poems. This one is called \\\"Honolulu\\\" and follows immediately after the other, but in between was about forty, twenty-four hours, I guess, in which I visited the very famous outdoor aviary, one of the world's famous aviaries, and also the aquarium and so on, and I also encountered a type, a Honolulu type of sorts. So this poem, which is perhaps about the involvement of people with animals through self-projection, and the involvement of human animals with each other. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:13:05\\nReads \\\"Honolulu\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:14:41\\nThen I went to Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and I want to read you one little poem, this is my Zen poem, I guess. [Audience laughter]. Every poet has to have a Zen poem. Thank you, George. \\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n00:14:54\\nOh ho, I could give you a Zen greeting. Alright. It's really cold. I tried to get it out of the Coke [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2813] machine but it just didn't work. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:15:03\\nGood gin, thank you. \\\"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\\\"--you know these little glass-leave things, which one expects to see in Japan, but not suddenly to hear when you're all alone in an old ruin. Some left up in the rafters.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:15:31\\nReads \\\"Windchimes in a Temple Ruin\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:16:12\\nBut I think I'm going to leave Asia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48] for the moment, and get on to Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], briefly, been around to Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], at any rate. I was sitting, more or less minding my own business, on a plaza in Madrid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2807] one morning, having my coffee, and something happened, which again I felt I should chronicle. Desmond Pacey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5264782] says I'm a chronicler, and so I, having learned that, I now use the word [audience laughter] to explain what I'm doing. I renamed the plaza, it had a rather dull name, I call it Plaza de Inquisicion. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:17:09\\nReads “Plaza de Inquisicion” [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:17:44\\nI also went to the Prado [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q160112] of course, and saw, for the first time, the original of one of the three studies by El Greco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q301] of The Espolio [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q52301456], or the taking-off and rending of Christ's garments, which was one of El Greco's themes. And I was struck, as I had never been really before, I suppose because I never had really looked at these paintings properly, I had looked at them in small illustrations--I was struck by the extraordinary amount of space which had been taken up, which El Greco had devoted to the carpenter who was making the holes in the cross preparatory to having Christ nailed to the cross. In fact, the whole lower third of the canvas is devoted to him in one of these three versions, and not only that but he is, they're facing us, with his back to Christ, and on the right and left are two of the Marys, whose eyes are on him. I felt that perhaps El Greco was trying to say something here, apart from what he was saying about the actual scene of the crucifixion, in a symbolic way, perhaps about something that happened to do, really, with this religion, but with, whatever we'd call it, religion, whatever we'd call it, of art. Or if not of art, but craft. It's a little, perhaps, exaggerated, to call the carpenter an artist, but it's obvious that he'd been very much at that moment a craftsman. And so I wrote \\\"El Greco: Espolio\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:20:04\\nReads \\\"El Greco: Espolio\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:22:29\\nWhen I come to Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], now, I'm going to kind of sneak in on the side by reading you a poem that has to do with a very remote, I suppose the most remote part of Canada, in fact, the piece of land that is even nearer to the North Pole [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q934] than Greenland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q223] or anything the Russians have, Ellesmereland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q146841]. And I will read it first of all in English, and then, more or less for the hell of it, I'm going to read it in a translation into Spanish, but anyway, because I think I like the sound of it in Spanish. It's short, so I've practiced my Spanish on it, and maybe I won't make too many boobs.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:23:30\\nReads \\\"Ellesmereland\\\" in English [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:24:10\\nReads \\\"Ellesmereland\\\" in Spanish.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:24:59\\nWell I'll get down and turn to more familiar territory. \\\"Canada Case History\\\". This is a poem written quite a long time ago, in 1945, in fact, when I'd just got back from World War Number Two [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362], I always have to be careful to name which one it is, people getting confused about how far back I go now. And I found that in 1967 I had to do a little patching and changing of this, because history had not only caught up with me, it had changed me. But here, first of all is the original. No, I don't think, I can't, I don't think I can bear to read the original, I think I'll just read you what, what happened to this poem in 1967 in the centennial year.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:26:09\\nReads \\\"Canada: Case History\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:28:15\\nWell now I'm going to read you other various scrappy things about Canadian literature which have never been published and never will be, I think, sneak them out like this once in a while. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:28:38\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nAudience \\n00:29:20\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:29:29\\nThen there's John, Jean Cabot, as I think my school teacher, trying very hard to be bilingual, made us say, but it turns out he wasn't French at all, but Italian. His name was Giovanni Caboto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85642]. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:29:48\\nReads \\\"John Cabot\\\" [published later as “giovanni caboto - john cabot” in Rag & Bone Shop].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:30:27\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:30:36\\nThis is something to my publisher, when they brought out a book of mine, Ice Cod Bell or Stone, full of beautiful artwork, except that the man in charge of the artwork had never read the little poem, the \\\"Klein Ellesmereland\\\" that I've just read to you, and so never discovered that when I was talking about bells, I was talking about harebells, or flowers, and he put very large iron church bells into all the illustrations. [Audience laughter]. I had asked to see the artwork in advance and was told that the authors, that this was not the custom to show authors the artwork in advance, so I didn't see it. So all I could do at the end was write something. \\\"To the reader”, which was not included in the volume.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:31:45\\nReads \\\"To the reader\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:32:39\\nI went to spend a weekend a couple of years ago for the first time with Al Purdy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4704621] in his shack in Ameliasburg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4742321], and I had read a lot of his Ameliasburg poems before, and I knew Al, but this was a new experience to be actually in the country of the poet, particularly as it was so well staked out--nobody else has ever written about Ameliasburg and the country north of there. Or ever will, I think. But Al has used it, and the country, and developed it into part of the remarkable fineness of his poetry. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:33:33\\nReads \\\"In Purdy's Ameliasburg\\\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop]. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:37:13\\nNow a poem about another part of Canada. Still Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], part of the north. This is a poem about driving west with somebody else, another guy, and...well there it is. It's called \\\"Way to the West\\\". Summertime.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:37:46\\nReads \\\"Way to the West\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:41:45\\nWell, I'm going to get out to the West Coast very briefly. I'm going to read you something toward the end of a long poem. The trouble with long poems is, you could never dare to read the whole thing to any audience. So I'll read you, it's toward the end of the thing called \\\"November walk near False Creek mouth\\\". The last page.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:42:26\\nReads final section of \\\"November walk near False Creek mouth\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEND\\n00:45:06\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:45:07\\nI'm going to read you a few odd things which are to some extent experimental, I suppose. Most of these have not been published, and some of them I haven't read before. This one is called a \\\"Swahili Serenade\\\" and I'll tell you about it after I read it. It's Swahili Found Serenade, really. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:45:44\\nReads \\\"Swahili Serenade\\\" [published later as “found swahili serenade” in Rag & Bone Shop; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:46:13\\nWell, as some of you have already perceived, already noticed, this is made up, each line is a juke-box tune, it's just a very easy kind of poem to make up; I offer it to you as a formula for quick poetry, just sit down by a jukebox and pick off some titles. [Audience laughter]. Five minute poem. Here's another kind of found poem of a different sort, called, I call it \\\"Space Conquest\\\". That's about all that I've contributed to it. \\\"Space Conquest\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:46:56\\nReads \\\"Space Conquest\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:47:33\\nWell those ten lines, each of five syllables, came out of a computer at the University of Waterloo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1049470] last week, into which we had programmed a hundred and eleven, the one hundred and eleven words of George Meredith's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90238] \\\"Lucifer in Starlight,\\\" and the last thirty-three words of Archibald MacLeish's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q633354] \\\"The End of the World.\\\" Don't ask me why we picked those two poems, I had nothing to do with the picking of the poems. But some of us, two linguists, two linguist-isists, a mathematician, and myself, and masses of computers are producing this sort of poetry. It took point eight-three seconds, not even one second, to produce the hundred-some-odd lines, out of which I chose those ten. So you can see it doesn't take very long, once you've programmed the machine, to find the, you know, the entire text of Hamlet [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41567], but this is what we have done so far, we haven't put too much time on it yet. Some things that I haven't had computers write for me, although perhaps I might have, or should have. This one's called \\\"Kooks of the Monk\\\". \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:49:24\\nReads \\\"Kooks of the Monk\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:49:37\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:49:39\\nThat is sometimes called \\\"concrete\\\". Fun anyway, to do. This is something that I may not be able to finish, but I'll try it. It's the train from Cardiff [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10690] to London. English trains sound different, of course. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:50:03\\nPerforms \\\"Train from Cardiff to London\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n00:50:53\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:50:59\\nThis is a found collage from one issue of the Toronto Daily Star [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067299], called \\\"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\\\", and this is only a small part of the poem which has no beginning or end, it goes on forever if you read the whole of the Star.  \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:51:22\\nReads \\\"Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:53:26\\nA series of poems with reference back to the Yeats poem I read at the beginning, perhaps. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:53:36\\nReads \\\"Like an eddy\\\" [published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\\n\\nEarle Birney\\n00:55:42\\nAnd, two short haikus.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:55:47\\nReads [two of three haikus from “hokkai in the dew line snow”, published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:56:16\\nReads [\\\"BUILDINGS\\\", published later in Rag & Bone Shop and collected in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:56:50\\nAnd, a poem that is written in kind of an attempt to write something to express a tiny little bit of the pleasure I've had, through most of my life, in reading Chaucer [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5683]. Called \\\"I'm always going back to Chaucer\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:57:20\\nReads \\\"I'm always going back to Chaucer\\\" in Middle English.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:59:06\\nNow something that has to do with my Shetland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47134] grand-aunt. Tea with my Shetland grand-aunt. This is a little, slightly different dialect. And there's a kind of an opposition of styles going on here. It's a very old poem, refurbished.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n00:59:32\\nReads \\\"Tea at my Shetland Aunt’s\\\" in a Shetland dialect [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:01:21\\nWell now I'm going to turn back to older poems. To conclude. Hum...I'm going to read two or three poems that, who have some relationship to California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99] and Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824]. First of all, a poem that, when I wrote it, I wrote it on the day of its date. I thought the date was going to be very significant. August the seven, 1964, Florence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862740], Oregon. And that was because on that day, the American fleet moved into the coast and shelled the coast of North Vietnam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881], against the international agreements into which the United States had entered some years before. And I thought that this would surely go down in living memory, as a deed of aggression and perfidy. But there have been so many since, almost every day, that everybody has forgotten about that first shelling of the shore from the Gulf of Tonkin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212428]. But I happened to be on the shore of the Pacific [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98] almost directly across from the Gulf of Tonkin, in fact, the waves that were coming in perhaps had their pulsing first on the other side. And this, one couldn't get it out of one's mind, having seen the morning papers and heard the radio, and I went, I had gone fishing with an American poet and his two boys. The salmon were running, coming in, but I have got less and less interested in killing even fish as I get older and softer, and I soon gave up even wanting to cook fish, and left it to the others, and I went up, because I had nothing to do then, I went up and I sat on a cliff, and started thinking about the sea out there, and cormorants fishing, and once in a while the flash of a seal coming up, also fishing, and I also suddenly realized I was sitting there just staring out at the sea and I began to think, I remembered Frost's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q168728] poem about how odd human beings are, you know, they go down to the sea and they sit and they all, they always look out at the sea, although they can't look very far out or very far in. And I thought that was exactly what I was feeling, the whole thing. But I thought well it's not really Frost's ocean, this is Robinson Jeffers' [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q734955] ocean, and here is this great eye of indifference, so I began my poem, called \\\"Looking from Oregon\\\" with a line from Robinson Jeffers about the Pacific: \\\"And what it watches is not our wars\\\".\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:04:54\\nReads \\\"Looking from Oregon\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:06:20\\nAnd another little poem which is really a video poem, and I should put it on a screen but I forgot to bring my slides. Brought them as far as the hotel, but I forgot to bring them up here.  o you'll just have to visualize a poem shaped like a pair of stairs but coming up at you, and visualize yourself at the top of these stairs with your back against the side of a theatre, a campus theatre at the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145], with signs of last week's shows, this one to go on tonight, that I'm waiting to go into, waiting for my friends, who have the tickets, and watching people come up these steps, the cars coming by and discharging people. \\\"Campus Theatre Steps\\\". Summertime, a beautiful summer night. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:07:14\\nReads \\\"Campus Theatre Steps\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:08:04\\nThen I was driving along the coast, a long time, and I was confronted with a sign that hadn't been there before. A billboard, with the same message multiplied up and down the coast and everywhere I went, since the last time I was there. Now I, this is my favourite state of the American Union, Oregon, absolutely beautiful, still, despite whatever, all the attempts of man to un-beautify it, there's still this great volcanic, snow-covered mountains, such, shaped a bit like Fujiyama [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39231], there is also all those beautiful rocks and sea-lion caves and the pounding surf and the rhododendrons, the whole works. And there's these, this sign saying, \\\"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice, Courtesy of Oregon Chamber of Commerce\\\". I brooded about this, and being alone, I couldn't get the answer. What is the philosophy behind this? So I invented a hitchhiker, and I picked him up, and he told me, and this is what he said. This poem is dated 61-62, and Khruschev [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35314] is still in power in Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159]. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:09:36\\nReads \\\"Billboards Build Freedom of Choice\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:11:42\\nWell, I think we'll slip down into Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96] for a moment before we wind this show up. There's a very short little thing called Irapuato [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q816845]. Well it's all part, it's like, poetry is like guidebooks, you know, guidebooks are always pointing out irrational connections between things, and so is poetry, so sometimes they get together, and in this case the guidebook had told me that there were two things, sort of, that this place was famous for, and I had discovered they were right.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:12:29\\nReads \\\"Irapuato\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:13:06\\nReads \\\"Memory No Servant\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:14:20\\nA poem addressed to friend and writer George Lamming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1340511], who's perhaps best known for his autobiography of his child as a poor negro boy on the island of Barbados [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q244]. George Lamming who wrote In the Castle of My Skin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23307454], and who happened to be in Jamaica [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766] when I went there, and was extremely hospitable to me, and so were all his friends. And when I left I wrote him this poem, which had to do with a split-second feeling, something, thing happening inside me, an internal happening, the night of the last party, the last night of the last party. \\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:15:18\\nReads \\\"For George Lamming\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:16:32\\nWell just in case you would think that I am soft about this and I'm going to like anybody if their skin is darker than mine, I'll read you a counter-poem that happened to come out of the island of Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q128323], out of some little external happening, perhaps in part, perhaps really just an internal happening.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:17:20\\nReads \\\"Meeting of Strangers\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:19:06\\nAnd then a very brief little, Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289]-type poem from Curacao [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25279]. Very much a...very pallid compared with Irving's, I must say.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:19:22\\nReads \\\"Curacao\\\" [from Near False Creek Mouth and collected later in Selected Poems 1940-1966].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:19:45\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:19:54\\nNow I'm going to conclude with two pieces. One is about the farthest back of these poems. Although some things I've read tonight began earlier but have been revised, this one has not been particularly revised. It's called \\\"The Road to Nijmegen\\\" and was written in Holland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55] in January of 1945, the last winter of the war. Which was the coldest winter, and in this part of Holland, first the Germans in coming and then in retreating had cut down every tree anywhere around. The trees were used for fuel and for mine props and...And then we had come in, and if there were any trees left, we'd got them. And in fact, it was no longer a matter of trees, it was a matter of trying to find bits and pieces of coal and getting the coal working and getting the coal out of the hands of black marketeers. And meantime the people were cold, even colder than we were, and they also lacked food. This is a letter home to a friend.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:22:10\\nReads \\\"The Road to Nijmegen\\\" [published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:24:38\\nAnd finally, “From The Hazel Bough”.\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:24:48\\nReads \\\"From the Hazel Bough\\\" [from Selected Poems 1940-1966 and collected ater in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1].\\n \\nEarle Birney\\n01:25:41\\nThank you very much.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:25:43\\nApplause.\\n \\nGeorge Bowering\\n01:26:12\\nI guess you've already said it for us, and I can only repeat, thanks very much, Earle.\\n \\nEND\\n01:26:25\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Earle Birney reads from Near False Creek Mouth (McClelland and Stewart, 1964) and Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966), as well as poems later collected in Rag & Bone Shop (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), and Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).\\n\\n00:00- George Bowering introduces Earle Birney. [INDEX: most famous poet, flyers for readings, ‘Dean of Canadian Poetry’, Selected Poems of 1966, publisher, sale of book at reading, United States, Coach House Press, SGWU Poetry Committee, inspiration for  writing poems, Vancouver.]\\n02:26- Earle Birney introduces reading. [INDEX: George Bowering’s introduction, university Dean, ‘Bursar of Canadian Poetry’.]\\n03:41- Introduces W.B. Yeats poem “A Prayer for Old Age”. [INDEX: good poem, old age, written at age 69.]\\n04:10- Reads W.B. Yeats poem “A Prayer for Old Age”.\\n04:54- Introduces “Twenty-Third Flight” [INDEX: no microphone at reading, other poets in the room, well-known poems, reading plan, series that came out in Ice Cod Bell or Stone near False Creek mouth, wandering around a global village, Vancouver, Honolulu, fellowship to go to England, traveling West around the world, Hawaiian Village Hotel, Kaiser-Hilton hotels on Wakiki Beach, greater poet named David, push off a cliff,       harpist; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n08:39- Reads “Twenty-Third Flight”.\\n11:06- Thanks audience for applause, asks for water\\n12:06- Introduces “Honolulu”. [INDEX: George Bowering, twenty-four hours after previous poem’s action, outdoor aviary, aquarium, Honolulu, people and animals, self-projection, involvement of human animals with each other; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n13:05- Reads “Honolulu”.\\n14:41- Introduces “Wind Chimes in a Temple Ruin”. [INDEX: Japan, Zen poem, George        Bowering; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).] \\n14:54- George Bowering brings Earle Birney a cold drink from a vending machine. [INDEX: Zen greeting, Coke Machine.]\\n15:03- Birney continues introducing “Wind Chimes in a Temple Ruin”. [INDEX: Japan, old ruins, chimes left in rafters.]\\n15:31- Reads “Wind Chimes in a Temple Ruin”.\\n16:12- Introduces “Plaza de Inquisicion”. [INDEX: Leave Asia, Europe, Spain, plaza in        Madrid, coffee, Desmond Pacey, chronicler, renaming plaza; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n17:09- Reads “Plaza de Inquisicion”.\\n17:44- Introduces “El Greco: Espolio”. [INDEX: Prado, one of the three studies by El Greco of the Espolio, Christs’ garments, El Greco’s themes, struck by the painting, amount of space, carpenter making the holes in the cross, Virgin Mary, religion of art, craft, carpenter as artist; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n20:04- Reads “El Greco: Espolio”.\\n22:29- Introduces “Ellesmereland”. [INDEX: Canada, remotest part of Canada, nearest to the North Pole, Greenland, Russians, English, translation into Spanish, sound of poem in Spanish; found in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975).]\\n23:30- Reads “Ellesmereland”.\\n24:10- Reads “Ellesmereland” in Spanish.\\n24:59- Introduces “Canada Case History”. [INDEX: familiar territory, written in 1945, Birney’s return from WWII, edited the poem in 1967 because history had ‘changed’       \\tBirney, original, 1967 Centennial year; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n26:09- Reads “Canada Case History”.\\n28:15- Introduces unknown poem, first line “Our forefathers literary...”. [INDEX: Canadian literature, poems never published.]\\n28:38- Reads unknown poem, first line “Our forefathers literary...”.\\n29:29- Introduces “John Cabot”. [INDEX: Jean Cabot, schoolteacher, bilingual, French, Italian, Giovanni Cabotto; from unknown source.]\\n29:48- Reads “John Cabot”.\\n30:36- Introduces “To the Reader Who Was Not Included in the Volume”. [INDEX:   publisher, Ice Cod Bell or Stone, artwork, artist never read “Ellesmereland”, didn’t    \\tknow that bells were harebells or flowers, church bells, authors barred from viewing art \\tbefore publication, poem as a result; unknown source.]\\n31:45- Reads “To the Reader...”\\n32:39- Introduces “In Purdy’s Ameliasburg”. [INDEX: weekend spent with Al Purdy, shack in Ameliasburg, Ameliasburg poems, country of the poet; unknown source.]\\n33:33- Reads “In Purdy’s Ameliasburg”.\\n37:13- Introduces “Way to the West”. [INDEX: poem about Canada, north Ontario, driving west, summertime; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).] 37:46- Reads “Way to the West”.\\n41:45- Introduces selection from “November Walk Near False Creek Mouth”. [INDEX: West Coast, end of a long poem, problems reading long poems, audience, last page of the poem; unknown source; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart,    1966).]\\n42:26- Reads selection from “November Walk Near False Creek Mouth”.\\n45:06.96- END OF RECORDING.\\n\\n00:00- Earle Birney introduces second part of reading and “Swahili Serenade”. [INDEX:        experimental poems, not been published, never read, “Swahili Found Serenade”;   unknown source.]\\n00:37- Reads “Swahili Serenade”.\\n01:06- Explains “Swahili Serenade”, introduces  “Space Conquest”. [INDEX: poem composed of line from a juke-box tune, formula for quick poetry, five minute poem, found poem, title; unknown source.]\\n01:49- Reads “Space Conquest”.\\n02:26- Explains “Space Conquest”, introduces “Kooks of the Monk”. [INDEX: ten lines, five syllables, constraint poetry, computer at the University of Waterloo, programmed 111 words of George Meredith’s “Lucifer in Starlight”, 33 words from Archibald MacLeish’s “The End of the World”, random poems; linguists, mathematician, computers composed poem; 0.83 seconds to compose, chose ten lines, entire text of Hamlet; unknown source]\\n04:17- Reads “Kooks of the Monk”. [INDEX: list, wordplay, onomatopaeic, nonsense poem.]\\n04:32- Explains “Kooks of the Monk”, introduces “Train from Cardiff to London”. [INDEX:        concrete poetry; Cardiff, London, English trains, sound of train; unknown source.]\\n04:56- Reads “Train from Cardiff to London”. [INDEX: sound poem.] \\n05:52- Introduces “Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings”. [INDEX: found collage poem, issue of the Toronto Daily Star “Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings”, small part of the poem, no beginning   or end, goes on forever; unknown source.]\\n06:15- Reads “Toronto Daily Tele-Starlings”.\\n08:19- Introduces unknown poem, “Like an eddy, my words move...”. [INDEX: reference to Yeats poem “A Prayer for Old Age”; published in Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).]\\n08:29- Reads unknown poem, “Like an eddy, my words move...”.\\n10:35- Introduces haiku “To sleep under real stars...”\\n10:40- Reads “To sleep under real stars...” [INDEX: Haiku; unknown source]\\n10:53- Reads “A north door opens...” [INDEX: Haiku; unknown source]\\n11:09- Reads “Walls”. [INDEX: unknown source]\\n11:43- Introduces “I’m always going back to Chaucer”. [INDEX: poem an attempt to express pleasure of reading Chaucer; unknown source.]\\n12:13- Reads “I’m always going back to Chaucer”. [INDEX: written and read in Middle      English.]\\n13:59- Introduces “Tea with my Shetland Grand-Aunt” [INDEX: dialect, opposition of styles, old poem ‘refurbished’; published later as “Tea at my Shetland Aunt’s” in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975).]\\n14:25- Reads “Tea with my Shetland Grant-Aunt”. [INDEX: read in voice of aunt in a rolling Shetland dialect.]\\n16:15- Introduces “Looking from Oregon”. [INDEX: older poems, California, oregon, date, August 7, 1964; Florence, Oregon; American fleet shelled the coast of North Vietnam, international agreements, United States, deed of aggression, living memory, forgetting, shelling of the Gulf of Tonkin, Pacific Ocean, morning papers, radio, fishing with an American poet, salmon, killing fish, old age, cormorants fishing, seal, Robert Frost poem, Robinson Jeffers line “And what it watches is not our wars”; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n19:47- Reads “Looking from Oregon”.\\n21:13- Introduces “Campus Theatre Steps” [INDEX: video poem, screen, slides, hotel, visualize poem shaped like a pair of stairs, theatre, campus, University of Oregon, shows, friends, tickets, cars, people, summertime, nighttime; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n22:07- Reads “Campus Theatre Steps”.\\n22:57- Introduces unknown poem “Billboards Build Freedom of Choice”. [INDEX: driving along coast, billboard, Oregon, man, volcanic snow-covered mountains, Fujiyama, sea-lion caves, surf, rhododendrons, sign says “Billboards Build Freedom of Choice, Courtesy of Oregon Chamber of Commerce”, philosophy, invented hitchhiker, poem dated 61-62, Khruschev in power in Russia; from Selected Poems 1940-1966        \\t(McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n24:29- Reads “Billboards Build Freedom of Choice”\\n26:35- Introduces “Irapuato” [INDEX: Mexico, Irapuato, poetry like a guidebook, irrational connections; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n27:22- Reads “Irapuato”.\\n27:59- Reads “Memory No Servant”. [INDEX: from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n29:13- Introduces “For George Lamming”. [INDEX: George Lamming, autobiography of        childhood, poor boy on the island of Barbados, book In the Castle of my Skin, Jamaica, the last night of the last party; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n30:11- Reads “For George Lamming”.\\n31:25- Introduces “Meeting of Strangers”. [INDEX: race issues, Trinidad, external/internal ‘happenings’; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n33:59- Introduces “Curacao”. [INDEX: Irving Layton poem; from Selected Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n34:15- Reads “Curacao”.\\n34:47- Introduces “The Road to Nijmegen”. [INDEX: oldest poem, not revised, written in     Holland in January 1945, last winter of the war, Germans invading and then retreating,   \\tcut down trees, used for fuel and mine props, coal, lacked food, letter home to a friend,   published later in The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, Vol 1 (McClelland and Stewart, 1975).]\\n36:54- Reads “The Road to Nijmegen”.\\n39:31- Introduces “From the Hazel Bough” [INDEX: from Selected Poems 1940-1966   (McClelland and Stewart, 1966).]\\n39:41- Reads “From the Hazel Bough”.\\n41:05- George Bowering thanks Earle Birney for the reading.\\n41:18.21- END OF RECORDING\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/earle-birney-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"1270","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Joseph Langland at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 8 March 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"JOSEPH LANGLAND I006/SR126\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-126\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Langland, Jospeh"],"creator_names_search":["Langland, Jospeh"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/92023235\",\"name\":\"Langland, Jospeh\",\"dates\":\"1917-2007\",\"notes\":\"American poet Joseph Langland was born on February 16, 1917, in Spring Grove, Minnesota. He grew up on his family’s farm in Iowa, which had been in his family since 1877. He attended Santa Ana College of California, then the University of Iowa, from which he received his Bachelor’s degree in 1940. A year later, the University of Iowa also awarded him his Master’s degree. Langland taught English during 1941 and 1942 at Dana College in Nebraska. Langland enlisted in the U.S. Infantry from 1942-1946, where he served in Europe during the Second World War. On his trips back to the U.S., Langland married Judith Gail Wood, and had three children. After the war, he served with the Military Government in Bavaria, going on to liberate the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald. By the time Langland left the military in 1946, he had risen to the position of Captain. Langland self-published his first collection of poetry, For Harold  in 1945 while still in Germany. He then taught at the University of Iowa from 1946-1948, at the University of Wyoming from 1948-1959, then to the University of Massachusets, Amherst from 1959-1979 as a Professor Emeritus and as the founder and Director of the Masters of Fine Arts writing program from 1964-1970 and from 1978-1979. Langland published more collections of poetry, including The Green Town (Scribner Press, 1956), The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963), An Interview and Fourteen Poems (GOB Press, 1973), The Sacrifice Poems (1975), co-edited The Short Story (Macmillan, 1956), and Poet’s Choice with Paul Engel (Dial Press, 1962), co-translated Poetry From the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973). Langland was awarded many honours, including the Ford Fellowship in Humanities in 1953 from the Harvard-Columbia Universities, the Amy Lowell Fellowship in Poetry in 1966, the Melville Can Prize for Poetry from the Poetry Society of America in 1964, an honorary doctorate from Luther College in 1974, and the Living Art Treasure in Literature from the New England Arts Biennial in 1985. He also traveled to guest lecture at the University of Washington, The University of British Columbia and at San Francisco State University. His last publications include Any Body’s Song (Doubleday, 1980), A Dream of Love (Pleiades Press, 1986), Twelve Preludes and Postludes (Adastra Press, 1988) and Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press,1991). Joseph Langland died at 90 years old on April 9, 2007.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968 3 8\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\" 45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\" -73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Joseph Langland reads from The Green Town (Scribner, 1956) and The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963), as well as poems published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973), Any Body’s Song (Doubleday, 1980), and Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991)."],"contents":["joseph_langland_i006-11-126.mp3\n\nUnknown\n00:00:00\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nUnknown\n00:00:03\n[Cut or edit made in tape, Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nIntroducer\n00:00:06\nThis evening, Joseph Langland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6284810]reads. Mr. Langland was born in Spring Grove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203865], Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527], and attended the public schools of Minnesota and Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1546], attended the State University of Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q182973]. He has taught at the University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], the University of Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q219563], the San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] Poetry Center, and so forth. He has been a professor of English at the University of Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1326975], and he is presently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1061122]. And he has been associated with the Massachusetts Review as a member of its editorial board. His publications: For Harold, a collection of memorial poems for a younger brother killed in World War II [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362] and published in Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] in 1945, The Green Town, which was published in 1956 by Scribner’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q845617] and nominated for the National Book Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572316] in Poetry in 1957, and The Wheel of Summer published in 1963 by Dial Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5270470], and winner of the Melville Kane Poetry Award. He has also published two anthologies, Poet's Choice, co-edited with Paul Engle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7150503], published in 1952, and The Short Story, published in 1956 and co-edited with James B. Hall [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q95328740], published by Macmillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217]. He has forthcoming a volume, a small volume called Adlai Stevenson, which is to be published in Iowa City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q487977] by the Stonewall Press, and is, will contain one long memorial poem and two lyrics. And also a larger volume, to appear perhaps next year, called Songs and Half-Songs. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and have appeared in such journals as Poetry Chicago, Hudson Review, Chicago Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5095765], Paris Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3988628], London Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2154323], Nation, and so forth. He has written lyrics for songs by Morton Gould [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1352656], Phillip Esantzen, Elliot Schwartz, and also lyrics and music for folk songs. He has been recorded by FolkWays [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1435522], Scholastic Records, reading eight of his poems, and he has held a number of grants. In 1953-54 he was, he held a Ford Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, in 1955 and 56, an Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, and in 1966, or last year, rather, a National Council of Arts Grant in Poetry, and in this period, he gave a series of readings at universities throughout Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], in Glasgow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4093], London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], Sussex [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23346], Munich [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1726], Oslo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q585], and University College in Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1068258]. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Joseph Langland. \n \nAudience\n00:03:03\nApplause. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:03:19\nSo much of that sounds irrelevant. So I will begin by reading a poem which was really written in answer to a critic. I've written two poems in answers to critics. And this is one of them. I call it \"Desperate Equations\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:03:47\nReads \"Desperate Equations\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:04:33\nThen I would like to go to, from that to a newer poem, one which I call \"Natures\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:04:44\nReads \"Natures\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:06:54\nAnd I'd like to just simply move from that to a poem which is called, \"Dandelion\". It's a poem that, well, the daughter of a famous poet likes it very much, and she recently said so, and so consequently I'm very fond of it at the moment. I think this is a kind of procedure among artists. They tend to like very much, at least for a little while, something that someone else likes. It's a poem which I say partially for my wife, it's a poem of affection, but I wouldn't just simply say \"for\" my wife, it's for all of you, too. \"Dandelion\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:07:40\nReads \"Dandelion\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:09:26\nI visited once a grotto in the southern coast of Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], the Amalfi [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80563] grotto, and it's typical of a whole series of such places. It's completely enclosed. You enter it...well actually, I was there a year ago, and it's a little disappointing, because, to sort of accommodate the tourist trade, they've blown out a little section of the wall, and they've hung a flapping canvas cloth over it. But eleven years ago this wasn't so, and you descend in an elevator into this inner room, and it's an absolutely magic place, it's explained to you, for instance, that about sixteen feet under the level of the sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38882], there's a large hole in the cave, and the sunlight, particularly in the morning, you come there about 11 in the morning, it's a good time, the sun filters down these sixteen feet and through this huge hole and then comes up inside the cafe. And the effect of this is absolutely eerie because it's completely enclosed, it's like darkness, but you get in there, and you adjust, and everything is just luminous with light, water, everything. You pick up, and you dip your hands in water and pick them up, you know, drops of water fall from your fingers from the orb-blades that splash, the orb is simply just a whole splash of light that goes up, like that. It's magic, see. And I want to believe in the magic, but in this sense I want to believe in this way in poetry. We shouldn't, I think, just simply deceive ourselves, but....so we can talk about what is, but somehow it's a responsibility to do a little bit more than what is, and so I've written this poem, and of course it's about the Amalfi Grotto, it's about our own behaviour, an attitude toward many things, and it's also, for me, a poem about poetry. \"The Amalfi Grotto\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:11:38\nReads \"The Amalfi Grotto\" [from The Wheel of Summer; later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:12:53\nI would go from that to a poem for my brother. I call the poem \"War\". This was a brother who was killed in the Philippines [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928] in World War II. I was in Europe at the time. I wrote thirty poems, at least, for him, following this. And finally I wrote this poem. This was...about eleven years afterwards when I got to this poem. And with this poem I knew I was, I was through writing those poems. It's also a poem that's had a very curious history. The history of poems is something that's difficult to predict. I was in Germany at the time, I suppose the next German soldier I met I would have shot. But this poem has been seen, or was seen a few years ago by a former infantry officer in the German Army, who at that moment was a captive at Stalingrad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q914]. He's come into the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] now and teaches music in an American university, not the one I'm in. And so he set it to music. And so it's a strange irony. I started the whole sequence, see, but, see art pays no attention to that kind of enmity whatsoever. And so it's been set to music by a former infantry officer in the German army. Also, just this past week, actually two days ago, I got a notice it's been published in a Japanese anthology, and it's been translated into Italian, and so all the axis powers have translated it, and then somehow, I don't, still don't know how, it found its way after the Hungarian Revolution [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164348] into Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781] in '56, and got translated there, I understand a very poor translation into Hungarian, but nevertheless it's happened. This is just part of its history. And other things have been happening to it strangely like this. I just mention this because, see, at a certain point the thing is out of your control completely, and you sort of are, I feel a bit humbled by what happens to them, and the uses that people put these things to. I wrote poems in all sorts of forms for my brother, and I finally, there're some subjects...well, I'd heard William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] give a reading at the Lexington Y in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] in 1954, and so I said, okay, I was still dealing with the same poem, and I was in an apartment up in 96th Street, and it was a very foggy night coming home, and I heard all these great foghorns coming off over the lower bay, over Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] and so forth. And I wrote another poem, \"A Seachange for Harold\", which I'm not going to read, except just the beginning.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:16:22\nReads the beginning of \"A Seachange: For Harold\" [fromThe Green Town and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:16:40\nWell that's, I wrote that thing first, and then I came back to this other poem, in which I just said, okay I'll put it down the way it was, but there's some subjects that by their very nature you can't do much about. Except, of course, the whole dry feeling associated with it led me to all kinds of selections. If there seem to be an excess of family in the poem, I just simply say I am one of nine children. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:17:15\nReads \"War\" [from The Green Town and later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:18:43\nI would go from that to some poems I'm trying to write now. Some of these poems are songs, and I've been writing music for them, also, but, and this is such a song. I call it \"A Hard Song to Sing\", and it's really about the contemporary condition of war and civil rights problems which threaten to just overwhelm the United States. And almost the entire poem is monosyllabic, but it just seemed like it had to be that way. So. I...and actually, the tune that goes with this thing is...well, I know for instance that I could come in right on pitch on it. I once fell in love with--I don't have absolute pitch, but I fell in love with a song by Edward Grieg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80621], and all I have to do is remember this song and I can always begin singing in A flat. But, it's, sometimes I think that maybe this is what I mean by being so right with your subject that you finally say the right thing about it. Somehow the resonance, just the resonance of the idea set up in my body brings me in on pitch, see. Well, I'll just read it. \"The clear, cold night\"...oh I'll sing, I'll sing the one stanza. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:20:24\nSings the beginning of \"A Hard Song to Sing\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:20:42.79\nAnd it repeats itself in various ways, the melody varies. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:20:47\nReads \"A Hard Song to Sing\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:21:48\nI...when I spent some time in Europe, among other people I met Ralph Ellison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q299965]. And he and his wife, Fanny, and my wife, Judy, and I, we spent several very fine noons on a beach of a small Italian fishing town, and ever since then I've been trying to write a poem for him. He's been relatively silent, at least, he's not taken a very aggressive role in the whole civil rights movement, although he has published significant essays in that whole thing. Many of you will know his great novel The Invisible Man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1784288]. And I've written a poem, I call it \"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\", I'm reading it, I have to send it to him. I have not sent it out to be published anywhere, either. You probably do know he used to be a jazz player, he played the trumpet, he was a photographer and so forth and he did live in some sort of cellar that he had brilliantly lit for a while, but in The Invisible Man there are aspects of this kind of background, too. So I just wanted to address--I started writing him a letter. And then I got interested in writing in the letter and quit the letter and wrote the poem instead, but that's the way it'd be. It was \"Dear Ralph\", you know but just, now the poem begins, \"Ralph...\"\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:23:16\nReads \"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\" [published later in The Massachusetts Review vol. 40, n.4].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:27:02\nWell, I will move from that to a poem on Thoreau [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131149]. Actually, I'm doing a whole book of these things. But one...actually, the first time I ever went to Walden Pond [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2023853], things turned out like an art farm. There were certain people there, and I met people in certain sequences, and of course I've told all sorts of people that, when they write poetry, you know, just to say that this is the way it happened, or this is the way it was, you know, that's no guarantee that it will be art at all. But in this case, something else had happened, see, Thoreau himself plays influence and just simply organized, you know, a hundred years later, certain people who would be there. And this happened just this way, and so I, almost to defend myself against all the things I'd ever said to people, I called the poem, \"How It, So Help Me, Was\". And that's the title of the poem. I end with a, the blue-grey twilight, because it was 1963, and it was, or '62 when I went there, and it was, you know, a hundred years after the war between the North and the South in the United States, the blue and the grey. And I felt that whole shadow, and even, in a curious way, it's on the west end of the pond, actually, I'd gone swimming in it, it's illegal, but then the shadow was coming off the hill and it was just sort of beginning to cover, to cover me, and it was a blue-grey shadow, you see, I'm not making that up. And, but...I suppose that's a kind of selection you take out of what is made available to you at a certain point. So \"How It, So Help me, Was\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:29:04\nReads \"How It, So Help Me, Was\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and published later as “Walden” in Any Body’s Song].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:29:29\nThat's a little poem he's written that's on the hearth there, about the smoke rising.\n\nJoseph Langland\n00:30:04\nResumes reading “How it, So Help Me, Was”. \n\nJoseph Langland\n00:32:10\nI know at a time like this I keep thinking all the time in poetry, you know, what does it mean in poetry to somehow keep alive, or...to keep the whole body open, and I wanted to write a poem about that. I call this one \"Still to be Man\". Because sort of in an animal way, we have to be able to continue to take in all sorts of things. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:32:44\nReads \"Still to be Man\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:32:51\nI can remember when I was, the morning I was trying to write this poem because I was home alone, I stepped out the kitchen door and as I stepped out I felt I didn't even have to land on the earth itself, I would just step out into the air. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:33:04\nResumes reading \"Still to be Man\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:34:10\nLast year, I spent, with my family, a half a year in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q220], and I got acquainted with a certain kind of syndrome among some of the Roman women. They sort of get trapped, in a society which seems free and easy and open, there's an extreme conservatism. For instance, I know, well, a person who teaches art in an American university, he and his wife were adopting some children in Italy a few years ago, and he could not have children and she could. It was proved by tests in this country, and they went to adopt two children in Italy. But you cannot adopt children in Italy on this basis because by law, no man in Italy can be sterile. [Audience laughter]. And this is a law. And so they had to go to Naples [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2634] and be tested all over again, officially, by a doctor in Naples, and a lawyer had to follow this, and they discovered after the tests that she was sterile and she was not [audience laughter], and they got this all certified and they adopted the children and they now have them and are living happily with them. But there's some, there's another side to this coin, too. And so, we lived next to a high school called the church, or the school of the Adorazione, and I'd see this women, you know, they're so beautiful when they're young, and then when they get married they start dressing in black and start cooking spaghetti and having children, and something awful happens, and then their husbands lose interest in them and then they have to find other lovers and then, you know, it's an awful thing. [Audience laughter]. It's \"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:36:12\nReads \"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:37:24\nWell then, another kind of thing that happens in our society, I think it happens to many people, I've been writing a series of half-songs. I call them half-songs, they're at half-pitch, half-singing pitch, where we talk and we don't talk together. You know, we say something and someone answers and it goes, you know, we keep going past each other. And so I've written a poem that, it has two separate parts, both parts rhyme all the way but you won't hear this at all, I was talking about that with the class here, today, it may be aesthetically valid for myself alone. And it's one, it's called \"Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song\", and the first part is called \"He and Her\". You see, \"he\" is the noun and \"her\" is the object. And the next part is called, \"She and Him\". \"She\" is the noun and \"him\" is the object. And they're talking. Or, we're talking about them. And so, in a sense they should be printed facing each other on the page, and I can't read them together, so I have to read first \"He and Her\", then I might, they talk back and forth to each other all the way through the poem. \"He and Her.\"\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:38:44\nReads \"Not Quite a Conversation: He and Her\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:39:40\nAnd the other, \"She and Him\". As I say, it rhymes all the way, and triad by triad it answers. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:39:47\nReads \"Not Quite a Conversation: She and Him\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:40:59\nI guess we take a break in the program. \n \nUnknown\n00:41:05\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nUnknown\n00:41:24\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].  \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:41:25\nAnd, I will read just one or two of these. And once again, I make no particular claim as to the validity of this, and probably in the long run it’s not even a fruitful thing. All my grandparents were born in Norway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20], my name is Langeland. You know, they dropped the 'e' and called it Langland. And I have been back there a couple of times, I might go again this summer and work with a Norwegian poet, Paul Brekke, and maybe another one, on some translations from the Norwegian  I don't know much Norwegian, he knows a lot of English. [Audience laughter]. But when I was going through there a year ago, I got two, two poems. First this one, \"Singing in Late Summer\". When my father died they played a folk song, \"Den store hvide Flok\", \"The Great White Host\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10468796], at his funeral. And I'd sort of shipped my children off to jobs, I had, you know, I had a fourteen-year-old boy working on a ranch in Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1214], and a twelve-year-old son working on a farm in Iowa, and a daughter who'd gone off to work in-- who was what, fifteen, sixteen, to a hotel in Switzerland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39], and my wife was in Provincetown [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49154], painting [audience laughter], and I was at home writing. Which is what I wanted to do all the time, in any case. \"Singing in Late Summer\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:43:03\nReads \"Singing in Late Summer\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:44:17\nAnd then, traveling through Norway, all these rivers, you know, they just...they're tumbling all over, rushing everywhere, and falling off the tops of mountains, you know, it just seemed endless, going from Oslo to Bergen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26793] and Trondheim [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25804] and down to Oslo and so forth. Or down to the Island of Store [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1636366] along the west coast of Norway. And so, I was thinking of a phrase I'd heard an old, an older woman in my own area say about the younger generation. She would always say, \"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\". And so I saw these rivers, and every time I saw them I kept saying, \"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\". [Laughter]. And so then I started thinking of all of these Norwegian immigrants that just came, you know, more of them over here than there are over there...and...so I, it's about the rivers, it's called \"Norwegian Rivers\", and it's about the people, the younger people, and it's about the immigrants, and the older immigrants, everything like that, I guess.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:45:22\nReads \"Norwegian Rivers\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and collected later in Any Body’s Song and in Selected Poems].\n\nJoseph Langland\n00:48:08\nWell, there's several like that. But I want to do some other things, so I'll just leave them alone. I'm...you know, I'm translating from the Russian, and no pretense about it, I have two great friends, Thomas Axel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23565070], who was press agent for Imre Nagy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q177917] for eleven days, before, at the time of the Hungarian Revolution, and then he escaped to Austria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40]. He teaches at my university, he's a very fine poet, he used to be a director of theatre in Budapest, of the State Theatre. And then Laszlo Ticosz, he teaches in the German-Russian department at the university. They both, for years, have been collecting from the underground poems by relatively unknown poets, student poets and so forth, from Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159], and they have a magnificent collection of these things. They give me, absolutely literal cribbed translations, and then I work with them, and there're some magnificent things coming, and I'm as certain as I stand here that the moment these things are sent into a publisher, not because of what I'm doing, but because of the nature of the thing, that it'll be just snapped up. This is relative, totally fresh new material, no one else has it, they have, through their own channels in the underground, they are being fed this. And so I find it very exciting, and as I said to someone today, I have to sort of take it through my own experience, which included...I won't say poverty, that's not the right word, but absolutely no money, not poverty because we could milk the cow and, you know, raise the garden vegetables and shear our sheep and make our own blankets and, you know, we had food, clothing, and shelter. And then the war in Europe, and I was in well, concentration camps, I wasn't in them, but I was, at Nordhausen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7033], I sort of participated in the burial of five thousand people in one day in open trenches, and was with a headquarters unit a few days after and captured Buchenwald [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152802], and it...I won't say it's these things that pulled together, I was in Weimar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3955] when it was turned over to the Russians, I remember going out of there, you know, it was half the German population in their carts going toward Eisenach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7070], to the west, and the Russian cavalry coming in, meeting it from the east...lots of things, but so that's simply what this material comes through, and so I have some sympathy for it. This is a poem \"Drowning\", by a person named Sergei Chudakov [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4517600]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:51:23\nReads \"Drowning\" by Sergei Chudakov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:51:31\nSee, in the original it says, \"bright as a house\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:51:36\nResumes reading \"Drowning\" by Sergei Chudakov.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:06\nThis is \"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\" by Joseph Brodsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:12\nReads \"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\" by Joseph Brodsky.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:32\nSee the poem says, \"lie musicians, lawyers, businessmen, and revolutionaries\". I'm very certain in this case that, you know, I felt great when I thought of saying it in this other way. Makes it better. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:52:47\nResumes reading \"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\" by Joseph Brodsky.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:54:03\nFor instance, the original translation was that this whole thing is \"one hour by foot FROM the nearest bus stop\" And as far as I'm concerned, saying \"to\" is apt, a crucial difference, \"and the crooked faces of the plywood\", see, \"are one hour by foot TO the nearest bus stop\". Wanted the whole sense that they might all get up and walk and haunt us, see, coming the other way. Here's a poem about conditions by Artyemy Mikhailov. These names may be just be relatively anonymous, although some of them are among the friends that have been defending Sinyavsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q468267] and Daniel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q435770]. His idea about conditions. And it was a pretty rigid, stiff poem and I had to try to get movement in it and so forth. And it's whole, if, if you've, if your dearest friend has not been trapped and dragged to a camp, if, if, if, the entire way through.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:55:01\nReads “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikahilov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:56:07\nHere once again, there's so many of these, I just, here's one in the older style but it's one that's full of an elegant, lyric despair, \"Now that I know\", by Vladimir Kovshin.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:56:21\nReads \"Now that I Know\" by Vladimir Kovshin [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:57:01\nThis is a poem called \"After the War\" by Gleb Garbovsky. I just completed this this previous weekend, these I'm reading from now. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:57:11\nReads \"After the War\" by Gleb Garbovsky [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:58:54\nIncidentally, I used the phrase \"called back\" because that's on Emily Dickinson's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441]  tomb in Amherst [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49164], Massachusetts. Just an example of how you get your own little allegiance and locality into something else. \n \nJoseph Langland\n00:59:08\nResumes reading \"After the War\" by Gleb Garbovsky.\n \nJoseph Langland\n00:59:27\nHere's one, \"Keeping up with the Humanskys\". It's a poem about keeping up with the Joneses. [Audience laughter]. I had a lieutenant in the army who said his name was Humansky, and he said his, that man, I'll never forget it because he said that means \"son of the fields\" but I've been called worse names. I remember him saying that [audience laughter]. And so I...Son of the fields, I thought, that's great, you know, I was looking for a Russian name that would be like the Joneses, only this is like the serfs, son of the fields, of the soil. Couldn't be better. \"Keeping up with the Humanskys\". So, see, that's my good luck out of a little piece of experience that came to me when I needed it. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:00:06\nReads \"Keeping up with the Humanskys\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:01:33\nThen there's one about a march from Russia to Siberia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5428]. And, \"Etape\". There's no title in the original, there's a footnote, which was, these were sent to Axel and Ticosz from Russia, this poem. Neither the name nor the fate of its author is known. The phrase \"Marching in Etape\" originates from the nineteenth century. One stretch of the Long March from Russia to Siberia was called Etape, and it was in a ballad stanza form, so that's the way I did it. It's...little old style, but.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:02:07\nReads \"Etape\" by an unknown author.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:03:57\nThen \"The Garbage Collector,\" a poem that...\n \nUnknown\n01:04:03\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nJoseph Langland\n01:04:04\nReads \"The Garbage Collector” [begins abruptly; audience laughter throughout].\n \nAudience\n01:04:27\nLaughter.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:04:30\nI'm very proud of that too, because you know in the old Renaissance things there's always these, an infinitely wise Christ Child, you know, at the mother's breast but his eyes are looking out elsewhere, and he's pointing like this, you know, and it's, so I thought, you know, that's not quite the translation but it's mine [audience laughter]. \n\nJoseph Langland\n01:04:46\nResumes reading “The Garbage Collector”.\n\nJoseph Langland\n01:05:32\nWell, these are, you know, poems out of new, unknown--\n \nUnknown\n01:05:36\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:05:37\nI've sort of been threatening to sing something, and the trouble is, I'm...as I...I wouldn't play the piano if there were one here, and I don't play the guitar, and if I play this thing, it's locked stuff, I'm tied to it, and, I haven't played this tape that's accompanying me, you know, for at least three weeks, and I haven't sung a note since I left Amherst, except the notes I sang here, so, that's all right. These are songs of all sorts. So this is my accompaniment. I hope it works, if it doesn't I'll just stop it. \n \nUnknown\n01:06:17\nAmbient Sound [music; recorded track]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:06:22\nListen here, just a song called \"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:06:37\nPerforms \"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\" [published later in Any Body’s Song] accompanied by recorded track.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:08:02\nThis next is a song called \"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\". Sometimes I wonder, just trying to remember it here, whether I'm supposed to start singing now, and I'll get to the end of the song and I won't have accompaniment for the last dance. [Audience laughter].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:08:31\nPerforms \"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\" accompanied by recorded track [published later as \"Song At Evening” in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems] \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:10:23\nThis is a song called \"Jump on my Back\". It's about Iowa and Wyoming. But since Wyoming didn't work, I had to say Idaho [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1221]. [Audience laughter].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:10:45\nPerforms \"Jump on my Back\" accompanied by recorded track.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:11:25\nThis next one is called \"A Hiroshima Lullaby\". There's an infinitely sad story. In Hiroshima [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34664] when the bomb fell, in 1945, there was a little girl, Sadako Sasaki [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q231997], two years old, some of you may know of her. She was a mile and a half from the centre of the blast and apparently unharmed. She was a very gay and popular girl, and her classmates loved her. And she was in the sixth grade or the equivalent, age twelve, in Hiroshima, Hiroshima, however you pronounce it.  And she developed leukemia, which is of course, as many of you know, a latent effect of many people exposed to radiation, so she was, after all, a victim. And she, well she finally became so ill she had to go to the hospital. And her friends came to visit her. And among other things, they told her, and that she knew, that there's an old Japanese legend about herons. I've been writing poem about herons and cranes and I have some in my book, one on a sandhill crane, and I told some people today that I'm going to the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145] in June to speak in their summer Academy of the Arts, and I heard of a person who works in wildlife out in Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824], and so because of the poem about the crane he's invited me to visit his wildlife refuge, about two or three hours east of Eugene [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q171224], where he has a refuge among other things for sandhill cranes, you know these water birds are simple. And so I'm going to visit him. I look forward to it. Not because of a poem, see, it's nice. And so, Sadako Sasaki in the hospital, she heard that if you fold a thousand paper cranes in this Japanese folding technique, this will protect your health and save you. So she started folding them. And the tale has two sides. She reached 964 and she died. Her classmates were so, at the centre so involved they completed the thousand, they formed them in a chain. They went around gathering the equivalent of pennies, around Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and when they got enough they asked a sculptor from Tokyo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1490] to make a statue of this girl, and so he made a statue showing...you'll surely see pictures of this if you haven't. It's a young, twelve year-old girl, you know, still with a girl's body, she's standing up like this....and she stands in the Peace Park in Hiroshima now. And over her, made out of gold, the folded crane. And so, I wanted to write a poem for her. And so just using the fifth in the bass, and then using the five notes, black keys, I wrote a little ballad and I'll probably sing one stanza maybe, and then read the rest. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:15:03\nPerforms the beginning of \"A Hiroshima Lullaby\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:15:38\nReads the continuation of “A Hiroshima Lullaby\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:16:49\nI wanted to write a civil rights song, something that you could march to in Madison Square Garden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q186125]. And that's, you know, it's a marching song. That's like that. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:17:15\nPerforms unnamed song accompanied by recorded track. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:18:00\nStops recorded track. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:18:00\nWell, there are a lot more of these songs and I'm just going to stop the tape at this time because...I haven't even begun reading you my favourite poems, [audience laughter], and I know it's about to end but maybe, maybe I can read for fifteen minutes or so. If you have to go, just get up and go. But. When I was in Italy in 1954, I read in Marcus Cunliffe's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6758114] The Literature of the United States, \"New York is the intellectual centre of the United States.\"  That made my blood boil [audience laughter] because it's a marketplace, so I just simply took his own book, The Literature of the United States, took all his authors, and lined them up, and all the places where they were born, where they grew up, and where they wrote from, and sent them the chart, which proves, out of his own book, that in literature, creative ideas, there have been three great centres and then two subordinate ones. New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389], the Midwest, and the South, and then as subordinate ones, they're the West Coast, and then the mid-Atlantic, New York area. That's in literature [audience laughter]. And we got in an argument...the result of it all was that I invited him to come and teach at my university [audience laughter]. So he came and he gave an address, and in one of his speeches he said, “Americans are overly given to haruspication and scrying” [audience laughter]. Well, you know, when someone comes out of England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and says, gives, delivers a lecture to an American audience and says that, among other things you have to look up the words. [Audience laughter]. And, so...so I looked them up and I discovered \"haruspication\", the Haruspects were Roman and Etruscan pagan priests who examined the entrails of sacrificial animals [audience laughter] to predict natural phenomena and the future. So I started thinking about that. I grew up on a general farm, we had about a hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, a hundred head of cattle, twenty milk cows, a thousand chickens, about one hundred turkeys, twelve goats, you know [audience laughter], anywhere from twenty to fifty cats, and all sorts of wild animals, and I had seen bulls gored to death, I had seen flocks of sheep driven over limestone cliffs by dogs, I'd seen hawks that'd ripped little lambs and chickens, I'd seen skunks that had eaten them up, I'd butchered all of these things, I'd castrated, you know, I myself have castrated maybe three thousand pigs, and [laughter]..and...so, I thought okay. In fact, some of you may know that \"The Wheel of Summer\", the title poem, is about the castration of one hundred pigs, by three teenage boys [audience laughter], and as I was introduced in England once, he said it's probably the most distinguished poem in English about the castration of a hundred pigs. [Audience laughter]. But I started thinking about all of this and I thought, well, okay, I have a philosophy of life too, and it's been based with the whole business of producing food for you. You know, that's the end of it, the end of it all. And I participated in an awful lot of killing and...routine, it’s a way of life. And you know, if you eat meat, well you too. So I said, well okay, I've been haruspicating for a long time. And I gradually went up from age six to age eighteen, and meantime I achieved some kind of maturity, and I'm going to write my own poems. So I wrote all these poems, and the titles are, you know, like \"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\", \"Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\", but I'm going to read you the ultimate titles, which aren't in the book. Just running from age six on up to age eighteen, or when we got all old enough and we all went off to the war, as the last poem said.  But these say, you know, that's what these poems are really about.  \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:22:38\n\"The Clarity of Innocence: Sacrifice of a Trout\". “The Loss of Early Innocence: Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\". \"The Plunder of Idealism: Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\". \"The Sickle among the Flowers\"...I quit making the equation...\"The Sickle Among the Flowers\". \"The Decline of Heroic Voices\"--that's the goring to death of a bull. \"The Suffocations of Love\"--that's the killing a pet chick by over-affection. \"The Attritions of Man\". \"The Unhousing of Beneficent God\". \"The Seeming, the Necessary and Beneficial Perversions of Love\"--that's my sacrifice of a gunny sack of cats. \"The Subtleties of Violent Revenge: Sacrifice of an old Sow\". \"The Sweet Solace of Evil\". \"The Absurdities of Fact\". \"The Pitfalls of Group Action: Sacrifice of a Flock of Sheep\"--they ran over this cliff, twelve of them died at once, and people say you shouldn't write villanelles, but that's the way sheep act, so I wrote a villanelle, you know, they repeat. \"The Catechism of Human Culpability\"--that's Eric, a suicide of a man. \"The Oddities of Affection\". \"The Sacred Violence of Purity\". \"The Bounties of Natural Law\". \"The Winter of the Cold War: Sacrifice of a Grey Wolf\". \"The Decline of Natural Instincts: Sacrifice of Three Wild Geese\". \"The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas\"--that's a sacrifice of a red squirrel. \"A Dream of the Ultimate Holocaust: Sacrifice of a Hill of Ants\" and \"The Warfare of the Sensuous Past: Sacrifice of My Aunt Marie\".  And then it all culminates in the longer narrative poem, \"The Wheel of Summer\". Which is just simply coming to maturity as a man. Well I'll, I'll read a few of these. \"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\" has no music, but I oftentimes start singing when I'm reading it, but I'm not going to now, I've done that. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:24:43\n\"Suddenly\"--this is six years old, you know.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:24:46\nReads \"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:25:42\nI'll skip the lamb and read the owl. I wanted to just talk--\"We strung our wind-up rooster dead on a post\"--see, it can't be any flatter than that. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:25:52\nReads \"Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:27:39\nI'll read the one of the neighbors. No one can live on a, in a farm area without seeing over a period of years, people lose fingers, toes, arms, legs, in various ways. It's...I was on a reading tour, actually, when Kennedy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9696] was killed. And I was actually in an auditorium about to start reading these poems, when it was cancelled, because of the announced death of the president. I couldn't have read them, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I was just sitting there, and five minutes from starting time. But this is \"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:28:20\nReads \"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:28:39\nThat was my brother.\n\nJoseph Langland\n01:28:42\nResumes reading “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:31:02\n\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\". I read it in New York City, I didn't know that the officers of the Society for the Friends of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were sitting in the audience. After I went back to Amherst I got a letter from them, saying that every year there are twenty-five million unwanted pets born in the United States [audience laughter] and we secure funds to get the females spayed and the males castrated, and your poem, \"The Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\" is perfect for our purposes for our annual appeal, and, could we...[audience laughter.]..could we use it, please. I thought, my God, you know, I just, I read this poem, like all of these things out of a great affection, and this is the thing, you'll have to forgive me but this is what occurred to me, you know. I just had this great affectionate conception of the whole thing, and now they wanted to turn it into a kind of contraceptive. [Audience laughter]. And...and then I thought, well, okay, what can I do at this point? And so, showing this charming little picture, you know, it's a dog, and a little puppy dog [audience laughter], little kitten and laying their heads against each other and saying \"Annual Appeal\" and on the back of it was my \"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\" and...I, you know, when I travel around the United States even now, I often like wonder in what town did I do in this poor little male cat or this female, you know, cooperating in one way or another, it's like, you know, I have to refuse to pay your taxes...you don't know what you're maiming at a certain point. But that's an example. I wanted to start from the most ordinary thing and see how I could carry it, and this is the \"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\".\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:33:13\nReads \"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:36:23\nOne hard poem about the old sow, which is, says something about this world. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:36:31\nReads \"Sacrifice of an Old Sow\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:37:48\nWell that's the way we do it. Then one, pretty hard poem, too, it's about Eric, but it's really about us, and then I'll read the squirrel poem, and then leave these alone. That...okay, actually this, I had in mind an uncle, a favourite uncle. Very talented, frustrated.\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:38:19\nReads [\"The Sacrifice of Eric” from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:41:09\nAlright, and then the squirrel. Actually, I...last week, I had a letter from some fellow in Kansas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1558], I never, of course I don't know him at all. He wants to set the thing to music, I don't know what he's going to do with it, but...he plays the guitar, and so I said, fine. And just about anybody who gets caught in a rut...I must say that after this I'm going to read one little ballad on Adlai Stevenson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q311719], but...\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:41:47\nReads [\"The Sacrifice of a Red Squirrel\" from The Wheel of Summer]. \n \nJoseph Langland\n01:44:25\nLittle ballad for Stevenson, and I don't have it with me, but I know it. The state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1204] is the oak, the cardinal, and the violet. That's green, red, and violet. It struck me, that's half a rainbow. That seemed like Adlai Stevens' life. A great theoretical life, unfinished, has to be completed by someone else. I asked, what's the other half, they're yellow, orange, and blue, and his home at Libertyville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1787181], Illinois, you can't improve on that for the title, \"Libertyville\", it has a river the Des Plaines River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8637], that's before it enters the Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] drainage system, it's a nice blue stream out of the Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1537] woods, that's blue, the sky is blue, the light by day is orange, and by night yellow. That's the full rainbow. \"There's a fountain in the wood\"...It's called \"Libertyville\" and past that, a little epigraph about the state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois, and I wanted to, for the schoolchildren of Illinois...\n \nJoseph Langland\n01:45:27\nReads \"Libertyville\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\n \nAudience\n01:47:02\nApplause.\n \nEND\n01:47:35\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nJoseph Langland was a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and had founded the Masters of Fine Arts writing program during the 1960’s.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nConnections between Joseph Langland and Sir George Williams University or Montreal are unknown, however Langland had taught at the University of British Columbia, and played an important role in the founding of the Master of Fine Arts writing program at the University of Massachusetts.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, intro and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GYIuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AqAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2474,42252&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Joseph Langland To Read At Next SG Poetry Night”.  Montreal: The Gazette. 1 March 1968, page 8. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/any-bodys-song/oclc/1148022872&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. Any Body’s Song. New York: Doubleday, 1980. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/green-town-poems/oclc/74670391&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph, The Green Town. New York: Scribner, 1956.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poetry-from-the-russian-underground-a-bilingual-anthology/oclc/568758531&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. Poetry from the Russian Underground. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/wheel-of-summer/oclc/2693715&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. The Wheel of Summer. New York: Dial Press, 1963. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/27191429&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. Selected Poems. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25091591\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. “For Ralph Ellison: Then and Now”. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter, 1999/2000), pp. 614-416.\"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25086942\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. “How It, so Help Me, Was”. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 4, No. 1, (Autumn, 1962), pp. 53-54. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25088573\",\"citation\":\"Langland, Joseph. “Norwegian Rivers”. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1975), pp. 567-568.\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/joseph-langland-at-sgwu-1968/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry at S.G.W.U”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 February 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Joseph Langland: Poet, Teacher, Friend”. Luther College Archives: Biography. Iowa, 2010. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548850081792,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0126_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0126_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Joseph Langland Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/joseph_langland_i006-11-126.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"joseph_langland_i006-11-126.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:47:35\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"258.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Unknown\\n00:00:00\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:00:03\\n[Cut or edit made in tape, Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nIntroducer\\n00:00:06\\nThis evening, Joseph Langland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6284810]reads. Mr. Langland was born in Spring Grove [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203865], Minnesota [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1527], and attended the public schools of Minnesota and Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1546], attended the State University of Iowa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q182973]. He has taught at the University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], the University of Washington [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q219563], the San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62] Poetry Center, and so forth. He has been a professor of English at the University of Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1326975], and he is presently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1061122]. And he has been associated with the Massachusetts Review as a member of its editorial board. His publications: For Harold, a collection of memorial poems for a younger brother killed in World War II [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q362] and published in Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] in 1945, The Green Town, which was published in 1956 by Scribner’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q845617] and nominated for the National Book Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572316] in Poetry in 1957, and The Wheel of Summer published in 1963 by Dial Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5270470], and winner of the Melville Kane Poetry Award. He has also published two anthologies, Poet's Choice, co-edited with Paul Engle [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7150503], published in 1952, and The Short Story, published in 1956 and co-edited with James B. Hall [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q95328740], published by Macmillan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217]. He has forthcoming a volume, a small volume called Adlai Stevenson, which is to be published in Iowa City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q487977] by the Stonewall Press, and is, will contain one long memorial poem and two lyrics. And also a larger volume, to appear perhaps next year, called Songs and Half-Songs. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and have appeared in such journals as Poetry Chicago, Hudson Review, Chicago Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5095765], Paris Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3988628], London Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2154323], Nation, and so forth. He has written lyrics for songs by Morton Gould [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1352656], Phillip Esantzen, Elliot Schwartz, and also lyrics and music for folk songs. He has been recorded by FolkWays [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1435522], Scholastic Records, reading eight of his poems, and he has held a number of grants. In 1953-54 he was, he held a Ford Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, in 1955 and 56, an Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, and in 1966, or last year, rather, a National Council of Arts Grant in Poetry, and in this period, he gave a series of readings at universities throughout Europe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46], in Glasgow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4093], London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84], Sussex [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23346], Munich [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1726], Oslo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q585], and University College in Dublin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1068258]. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Joseph Langland. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:03:03\\nApplause. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:03:19\\nSo much of that sounds irrelevant. So I will begin by reading a poem which was really written in answer to a critic. I've written two poems in answers to critics. And this is one of them. I call it \\\"Desperate Equations\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:03:47\\nReads \\\"Desperate Equations\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:04:33\\nThen I would like to go to, from that to a newer poem, one which I call \\\"Natures\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:04:44\\nReads \\\"Natures\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:06:54\\nAnd I'd like to just simply move from that to a poem which is called, \\\"Dandelion\\\". It's a poem that, well, the daughter of a famous poet likes it very much, and she recently said so, and so consequently I'm very fond of it at the moment. I think this is a kind of procedure among artists. They tend to like very much, at least for a little while, something that someone else likes. It's a poem which I say partially for my wife, it's a poem of affection, but I wouldn't just simply say \\\"for\\\" my wife, it's for all of you, too. \\\"Dandelion\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:07:40\\nReads \\\"Dandelion\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:09:26\\nI visited once a grotto in the southern coast of Italy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38], the Amalfi [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80563] grotto, and it's typical of a whole series of such places. It's completely enclosed. You enter it...well actually, I was there a year ago, and it's a little disappointing, because, to sort of accommodate the tourist trade, they've blown out a little section of the wall, and they've hung a flapping canvas cloth over it. But eleven years ago this wasn't so, and you descend in an elevator into this inner room, and it's an absolutely magic place, it's explained to you, for instance, that about sixteen feet under the level of the sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38882], there's a large hole in the cave, and the sunlight, particularly in the morning, you come there about 11 in the morning, it's a good time, the sun filters down these sixteen feet and through this huge hole and then comes up inside the cafe. And the effect of this is absolutely eerie because it's completely enclosed, it's like darkness, but you get in there, and you adjust, and everything is just luminous with light, water, everything. You pick up, and you dip your hands in water and pick them up, you know, drops of water fall from your fingers from the orb-blades that splash, the orb is simply just a whole splash of light that goes up, like that. It's magic, see. And I want to believe in the magic, but in this sense I want to believe in this way in poetry. We shouldn't, I think, just simply deceive ourselves, but....so we can talk about what is, but somehow it's a responsibility to do a little bit more than what is, and so I've written this poem, and of course it's about the Amalfi Grotto, it's about our own behaviour, an attitude toward many things, and it's also, for me, a poem about poetry. \\\"The Amalfi Grotto\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:11:38\\nReads \\\"The Amalfi Grotto\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer; later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:12:53\\nI would go from that to a poem for my brother. I call the poem \\\"War\\\". This was a brother who was killed in the Philippines [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928] in World War II. I was in Europe at the time. I wrote thirty poems, at least, for him, following this. And finally I wrote this poem. This was...about eleven years afterwards when I got to this poem. And with this poem I knew I was, I was through writing those poems. It's also a poem that's had a very curious history. The history of poems is something that's difficult to predict. I was in Germany at the time, I suppose the next German soldier I met I would have shot. But this poem has been seen, or was seen a few years ago by a former infantry officer in the German Army, who at that moment was a captive at Stalingrad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q914]. He's come into the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] now and teaches music in an American university, not the one I'm in. And so he set it to music. And so it's a strange irony. I started the whole sequence, see, but, see art pays no attention to that kind of enmity whatsoever. And so it's been set to music by a former infantry officer in the German army. Also, just this past week, actually two days ago, I got a notice it's been published in a Japanese anthology, and it's been translated into Italian, and so all the axis powers have translated it, and then somehow, I don't, still don't know how, it found its way after the Hungarian Revolution [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164348] into Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781] in '56, and got translated there, I understand a very poor translation into Hungarian, but nevertheless it's happened. This is just part of its history. And other things have been happening to it strangely like this. I just mention this because, see, at a certain point the thing is out of your control completely, and you sort of are, I feel a bit humbled by what happens to them, and the uses that people put these things to. I wrote poems in all sorts of forms for my brother, and I finally, there're some subjects...well, I'd heard William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] give a reading at the Lexington Y in New York City [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] in 1954, and so I said, okay, I was still dealing with the same poem, and I was in an apartment up in 96th Street, and it was a very foggy night coming home, and I heard all these great foghorns coming off over the lower bay, over Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] and so forth. And I wrote another poem, \\\"A Seachange for Harold\\\", which I'm not going to read, except just the beginning.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:16:22\\nReads the beginning of \\\"A Seachange: For Harold\\\" [fromThe Green Town and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:16:40\\nWell that's, I wrote that thing first, and then I came back to this other poem, in which I just said, okay I'll put it down the way it was, but there's some subjects that by their very nature you can't do much about. Except, of course, the whole dry feeling associated with it led me to all kinds of selections. If there seem to be an excess of family in the poem, I just simply say I am one of nine children. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:17:15\\nReads \\\"War\\\" [from The Green Town and later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:18:43\\nI would go from that to some poems I'm trying to write now. Some of these poems are songs, and I've been writing music for them, also, but, and this is such a song. I call it \\\"A Hard Song to Sing\\\", and it's really about the contemporary condition of war and civil rights problems which threaten to just overwhelm the United States. And almost the entire poem is monosyllabic, but it just seemed like it had to be that way. So. I...and actually, the tune that goes with this thing is...well, I know for instance that I could come in right on pitch on it. I once fell in love with--I don't have absolute pitch, but I fell in love with a song by Edward Grieg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80621], and all I have to do is remember this song and I can always begin singing in A flat. But, it's, sometimes I think that maybe this is what I mean by being so right with your subject that you finally say the right thing about it. Somehow the resonance, just the resonance of the idea set up in my body brings me in on pitch, see. Well, I'll just read it. \\\"The clear, cold night\\\"...oh I'll sing, I'll sing the one stanza. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:20:24\\nSings the beginning of \\\"A Hard Song to Sing\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:20:42.79\\nAnd it repeats itself in various ways, the melody varies. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:20:47\\nReads \\\"A Hard Song to Sing\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:21:48\\nI...when I spent some time in Europe, among other people I met Ralph Ellison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q299965]. And he and his wife, Fanny, and my wife, Judy, and I, we spent several very fine noons on a beach of a small Italian fishing town, and ever since then I've been trying to write a poem for him. He's been relatively silent, at least, he's not taken a very aggressive role in the whole civil rights movement, although he has published significant essays in that whole thing. Many of you will know his great novel The Invisible Man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1784288]. And I've written a poem, I call it \\\"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\\\", I'm reading it, I have to send it to him. I have not sent it out to be published anywhere, either. You probably do know he used to be a jazz player, he played the trumpet, he was a photographer and so forth and he did live in some sort of cellar that he had brilliantly lit for a while, but in The Invisible Man there are aspects of this kind of background, too. So I just wanted to address--I started writing him a letter. And then I got interested in writing in the letter and quit the letter and wrote the poem instead, but that's the way it'd be. It was \\\"Dear Ralph\\\", you know but just, now the poem begins, \\\"Ralph...\\\"\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:23:16\\nReads \\\"An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison\\\" [published later in The Massachusetts Review vol. 40, n.4].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:27:02\\nWell, I will move from that to a poem on Thoreau [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131149]. Actually, I'm doing a whole book of these things. But one...actually, the first time I ever went to Walden Pond [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2023853], things turned out like an art farm. There were certain people there, and I met people in certain sequences, and of course I've told all sorts of people that, when they write poetry, you know, just to say that this is the way it happened, or this is the way it was, you know, that's no guarantee that it will be art at all. But in this case, something else had happened, see, Thoreau himself plays influence and just simply organized, you know, a hundred years later, certain people who would be there. And this happened just this way, and so I, almost to defend myself against all the things I'd ever said to people, I called the poem, \\\"How It, So Help Me, Was\\\". And that's the title of the poem. I end with a, the blue-grey twilight, because it was 1963, and it was, or '62 when I went there, and it was, you know, a hundred years after the war between the North and the South in the United States, the blue and the grey. And I felt that whole shadow, and even, in a curious way, it's on the west end of the pond, actually, I'd gone swimming in it, it's illegal, but then the shadow was coming off the hill and it was just sort of beginning to cover, to cover me, and it was a blue-grey shadow, you see, I'm not making that up. And, but...I suppose that's a kind of selection you take out of what is made available to you at a certain point. So \\\"How It, So Help me, Was\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:29:04\\nReads \\\"How It, So Help Me, Was\\\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and published later as “Walden” in Any Body’s Song].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:29:29\\nThat's a little poem he's written that's on the hearth there, about the smoke rising.\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n00:30:04\\nResumes reading “How it, So Help Me, Was”. \\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n00:32:10\\nI know at a time like this I keep thinking all the time in poetry, you know, what does it mean in poetry to somehow keep alive, or...to keep the whole body open, and I wanted to write a poem about that. I call this one \\\"Still to be Man\\\". Because sort of in an animal way, we have to be able to continue to take in all sorts of things. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:32:44\\nReads \\\"Still to be Man\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:32:51\\nI can remember when I was, the morning I was trying to write this poem because I was home alone, I stepped out the kitchen door and as I stepped out I felt I didn't even have to land on the earth itself, I would just step out into the air. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:33:04\\nResumes reading \\\"Still to be Man\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:34:10\\nLast year, I spent, with my family, a half a year in Rome [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q220], and I got acquainted with a certain kind of syndrome among some of the Roman women. They sort of get trapped, in a society which seems free and easy and open, there's an extreme conservatism. For instance, I know, well, a person who teaches art in an American university, he and his wife were adopting some children in Italy a few years ago, and he could not have children and she could. It was proved by tests in this country, and they went to adopt two children in Italy. But you cannot adopt children in Italy on this basis because by law, no man in Italy can be sterile. [Audience laughter]. And this is a law. And so they had to go to Naples [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2634] and be tested all over again, officially, by a doctor in Naples, and a lawyer had to follow this, and they discovered after the tests that she was sterile and she was not [audience laughter], and they got this all certified and they adopted the children and they now have them and are living happily with them. But there's some, there's another side to this coin, too. And so, we lived next to a high school called the church, or the school of the Adorazione, and I'd see this women, you know, they're so beautiful when they're young, and then when they get married they start dressing in black and start cooking spaghetti and having children, and something awful happens, and then their husbands lose interest in them and then they have to find other lovers and then, you know, it's an awful thing. [Audience laughter]. It's \\\"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:36:12\\nReads \\\"La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:37:24\\nWell then, another kind of thing that happens in our society, I think it happens to many people, I've been writing a series of half-songs. I call them half-songs, they're at half-pitch, half-singing pitch, where we talk and we don't talk together. You know, we say something and someone answers and it goes, you know, we keep going past each other. And so I've written a poem that, it has two separate parts, both parts rhyme all the way but you won't hear this at all, I was talking about that with the class here, today, it may be aesthetically valid for myself alone. And it's one, it's called \\\"Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song\\\", and the first part is called \\\"He and Her\\\". You see, \\\"he\\\" is the noun and \\\"her\\\" is the object. And the next part is called, \\\"She and Him\\\". \\\"She\\\" is the noun and \\\"him\\\" is the object. And they're talking. Or, we're talking about them. And so, in a sense they should be printed facing each other on the page, and I can't read them together, so I have to read first \\\"He and Her\\\", then I might, they talk back and forth to each other all the way through the poem. \\\"He and Her.\\\"\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:38:44\\nReads \\\"Not Quite a Conversation: He and Her\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:39:40\\nAnd the other, \\\"She and Him\\\". As I say, it rhymes all the way, and triad by triad it answers. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:39:47\\nReads \\\"Not Quite a Conversation: She and Him\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:40:59\\nI guess we take a break in the program. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:41:05\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:41:24\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].  \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:41:25\\nAnd, I will read just one or two of these. And once again, I make no particular claim as to the validity of this, and probably in the long run it’s not even a fruitful thing. All my grandparents were born in Norway [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20], my name is Langeland. You know, they dropped the 'e' and called it Langland. And I have been back there a couple of times, I might go again this summer and work with a Norwegian poet, Paul Brekke, and maybe another one, on some translations from the Norwegian  I don't know much Norwegian, he knows a lot of English. [Audience laughter]. But when I was going through there a year ago, I got two, two poems. First this one, \\\"Singing in Late Summer\\\". When my father died they played a folk song, \\\"Den store hvide Flok\\\", \\\"The Great White Host\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10468796], at his funeral. And I'd sort of shipped my children off to jobs, I had, you know, I had a fourteen-year-old boy working on a ranch in Wyoming [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1214], and a twelve-year-old son working on a farm in Iowa, and a daughter who'd gone off to work in-- who was what, fifteen, sixteen, to a hotel in Switzerland [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39], and my wife was in Provincetown [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49154], painting [audience laughter], and I was at home writing. Which is what I wanted to do all the time, in any case. \\\"Singing in Late Summer\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:43:03\\nReads \\\"Singing in Late Summer\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:44:17\\nAnd then, traveling through Norway, all these rivers, you know, they just...they're tumbling all over, rushing everywhere, and falling off the tops of mountains, you know, it just seemed endless, going from Oslo to Bergen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q26793] and Trondheim [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25804] and down to Oslo and so forth. Or down to the Island of Store [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1636366] along the west coast of Norway. And so, I was thinking of a phrase I'd heard an old, an older woman in my own area say about the younger generation. She would always say, \\\"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\\\". And so I saw these rivers, and every time I saw them I kept saying, \\\"[inaudible phrase in Norwegian]\\\". [Laughter]. And so then I started thinking of all of these Norwegian immigrants that just came, you know, more of them over here than there are over there...and...so I, it's about the rivers, it's called \\\"Norwegian Rivers\\\", and it's about the people, the younger people, and it's about the immigrants, and the older immigrants, everything like that, I guess.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:45:22\\nReads \\\"Norwegian Rivers\\\" [published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1 and collected later in Any Body’s Song and in Selected Poems].\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n00:48:08\\nWell, there's several like that. But I want to do some other things, so I'll just leave them alone. I'm...you know, I'm translating from the Russian, and no pretense about it, I have two great friends, Thomas Axel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23565070], who was press agent for Imre Nagy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q177917] for eleven days, before, at the time of the Hungarian Revolution, and then he escaped to Austria [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40]. He teaches at my university, he's a very fine poet, he used to be a director of theatre in Budapest, of the State Theatre. And then Laszlo Ticosz, he teaches in the German-Russian department at the university. They both, for years, have been collecting from the underground poems by relatively unknown poets, student poets and so forth, from Russia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159], and they have a magnificent collection of these things. They give me, absolutely literal cribbed translations, and then I work with them, and there're some magnificent things coming, and I'm as certain as I stand here that the moment these things are sent into a publisher, not because of what I'm doing, but because of the nature of the thing, that it'll be just snapped up. This is relative, totally fresh new material, no one else has it, they have, through their own channels in the underground, they are being fed this. And so I find it very exciting, and as I said to someone today, I have to sort of take it through my own experience, which included...I won't say poverty, that's not the right word, but absolutely no money, not poverty because we could milk the cow and, you know, raise the garden vegetables and shear our sheep and make our own blankets and, you know, we had food, clothing, and shelter. And then the war in Europe, and I was in well, concentration camps, I wasn't in them, but I was, at Nordhausen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7033], I sort of participated in the burial of five thousand people in one day in open trenches, and was with a headquarters unit a few days after and captured Buchenwald [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152802], and it...I won't say it's these things that pulled together, I was in Weimar [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3955] when it was turned over to the Russians, I remember going out of there, you know, it was half the German population in their carts going toward Eisenach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7070], to the west, and the Russian cavalry coming in, meeting it from the east...lots of things, but so that's simply what this material comes through, and so I have some sympathy for it. This is a poem \\\"Drowning\\\", by a person named Sergei Chudakov [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4517600]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:51:23\\nReads \\\"Drowning\\\" by Sergei Chudakov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:51:31\\nSee, in the original it says, \\\"bright as a house\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:51:36\\nResumes reading \\\"Drowning\\\" by Sergei Chudakov.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:06\\nThis is \\\"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\\\" by Joseph Brodsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:12\\nReads \\\"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\\\" by Joseph Brodsky.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:32\\nSee the poem says, \\\"lie musicians, lawyers, businessmen, and revolutionaries\\\". I'm very certain in this case that, you know, I felt great when I thought of saying it in this other way. Makes it better. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:52:47\\nResumes reading \\\"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad\\\" by Joseph Brodsky.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:54:03\\nFor instance, the original translation was that this whole thing is \\\"one hour by foot FROM the nearest bus stop\\\" And as far as I'm concerned, saying \\\"to\\\" is apt, a crucial difference, \\\"and the crooked faces of the plywood\\\", see, \\\"are one hour by foot TO the nearest bus stop\\\". Wanted the whole sense that they might all get up and walk and haunt us, see, coming the other way. Here's a poem about conditions by Artyemy Mikhailov. These names may be just be relatively anonymous, although some of them are among the friends that have been defending Sinyavsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q468267] and Daniel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q435770]. His idea about conditions. And it was a pretty rigid, stiff poem and I had to try to get movement in it and so forth. And it's whole, if, if you've, if your dearest friend has not been trapped and dragged to a camp, if, if, if, the entire way through.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:55:01\\nReads “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikahilov [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:56:07\\nHere once again, there's so many of these, I just, here's one in the older style but it's one that's full of an elegant, lyric despair, \\\"Now that I know\\\", by Vladimir Kovshin.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:56:21\\nReads \\\"Now that I Know\\\" by Vladimir Kovshin [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:57:01\\nThis is a poem called \\\"After the War\\\" by Gleb Garbovsky. I just completed this this previous weekend, these I'm reading from now. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:57:11\\nReads \\\"After the War\\\" by Gleb Garbovsky [published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:58:54\\nIncidentally, I used the phrase \\\"called back\\\" because that's on Emily Dickinson's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4441]  tomb in Amherst [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49164], Massachusetts. Just an example of how you get your own little allegiance and locality into something else. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:59:08\\nResumes reading \\\"After the War\\\" by Gleb Garbovsky.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n00:59:27\\nHere's one, \\\"Keeping up with the Humanskys\\\". It's a poem about keeping up with the Joneses. [Audience laughter]. I had a lieutenant in the army who said his name was Humansky, and he said his, that man, I'll never forget it because he said that means \\\"son of the fields\\\" but I've been called worse names. I remember him saying that [audience laughter]. And so I...Son of the fields, I thought, that's great, you know, I was looking for a Russian name that would be like the Joneses, only this is like the serfs, son of the fields, of the soil. Couldn't be better. \\\"Keeping up with the Humanskys\\\". So, see, that's my good luck out of a little piece of experience that came to me when I needed it. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:00:06\\nReads \\\"Keeping up with the Humanskys\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:01:33\\nThen there's one about a march from Russia to Siberia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5428]. And, \\\"Etape\\\". There's no title in the original, there's a footnote, which was, these were sent to Axel and Ticosz from Russia, this poem. Neither the name nor the fate of its author is known. The phrase \\\"Marching in Etape\\\" originates from the nineteenth century. One stretch of the Long March from Russia to Siberia was called Etape, and it was in a ballad stanza form, so that's the way I did it. It's...little old style, but.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:02:07\\nReads \\\"Etape\\\" by an unknown author.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:03:57\\nThen \\\"The Garbage Collector,\\\" a poem that...\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:04:03\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:04:04\\nReads \\\"The Garbage Collector” [begins abruptly; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:04:27\\nLaughter.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:04:30\\nI'm very proud of that too, because you know in the old Renaissance things there's always these, an infinitely wise Christ Child, you know, at the mother's breast but his eyes are looking out elsewhere, and he's pointing like this, you know, and it's, so I thought, you know, that's not quite the translation but it's mine [audience laughter]. \\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:04:46\\nResumes reading “The Garbage Collector”.\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:05:32\\nWell, these are, you know, poems out of new, unknown--\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:05:36\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:05:37\\nI've sort of been threatening to sing something, and the trouble is, I'm...as I...I wouldn't play the piano if there were one here, and I don't play the guitar, and if I play this thing, it's locked stuff, I'm tied to it, and, I haven't played this tape that's accompanying me, you know, for at least three weeks, and I haven't sung a note since I left Amherst, except the notes I sang here, so, that's all right. These are songs of all sorts. So this is my accompaniment. I hope it works, if it doesn't I'll just stop it. \\n \\nUnknown\\n01:06:17\\nAmbient Sound [music; recorded track]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:06:22\\nListen here, just a song called \\\"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:06:37\\nPerforms \\\"All the Lovers that You Ever Knew\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song] accompanied by recorded track.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:08:02\\nThis next is a song called \\\"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\\\". Sometimes I wonder, just trying to remember it here, whether I'm supposed to start singing now, and I'll get to the end of the song and I won't have accompaniment for the last dance. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:08:31\\nPerforms \\\"Alone the Evening Falls on Me\\\" accompanied by recorded track [published later as \\\"Song At Evening” in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems] \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:10:23\\nThis is a song called \\\"Jump on my Back\\\". It's about Iowa and Wyoming. But since Wyoming didn't work, I had to say Idaho [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1221]. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:10:45\\nPerforms \\\"Jump on my Back\\\" accompanied by recorded track.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:11:25\\nThis next one is called \\\"A Hiroshima Lullaby\\\". There's an infinitely sad story. In Hiroshima [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34664] when the bomb fell, in 1945, there was a little girl, Sadako Sasaki [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q231997], two years old, some of you may know of her. She was a mile and a half from the centre of the blast and apparently unharmed. She was a very gay and popular girl, and her classmates loved her. And she was in the sixth grade or the equivalent, age twelve, in Hiroshima, Hiroshima, however you pronounce it.  And she developed leukemia, which is of course, as many of you know, a latent effect of many people exposed to radiation, so she was, after all, a victim. And she, well she finally became so ill she had to go to the hospital. And her friends came to visit her. And among other things, they told her, and that she knew, that there's an old Japanese legend about herons. I've been writing poem about herons and cranes and I have some in my book, one on a sandhill crane, and I told some people today that I'm going to the University of Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q766145] in June to speak in their summer Academy of the Arts, and I heard of a person who works in wildlife out in Oregon [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q824], and so because of the poem about the crane he's invited me to visit his wildlife refuge, about two or three hours east of Eugene [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q171224], where he has a refuge among other things for sandhill cranes, you know these water birds are simple. And so I'm going to visit him. I look forward to it. Not because of a poem, see, it's nice. And so, Sadako Sasaki in the hospital, she heard that if you fold a thousand paper cranes in this Japanese folding technique, this will protect your health and save you. So she started folding them. And the tale has two sides. She reached 964 and she died. Her classmates were so, at the centre so involved they completed the thousand, they formed them in a chain. They went around gathering the equivalent of pennies, around Japan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17], and when they got enough they asked a sculptor from Tokyo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1490] to make a statue of this girl, and so he made a statue showing...you'll surely see pictures of this if you haven't. It's a young, twelve year-old girl, you know, still with a girl's body, she's standing up like this....and she stands in the Peace Park in Hiroshima now. And over her, made out of gold, the folded crane. And so, I wanted to write a poem for her. And so just using the fifth in the bass, and then using the five notes, black keys, I wrote a little ballad and I'll probably sing one stanza maybe, and then read the rest. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:15:03\\nPerforms the beginning of \\\"A Hiroshima Lullaby\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:15:38\\nReads the continuation of “A Hiroshima Lullaby\\\" [published later in Any Body’s Song and collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:16:49\\nI wanted to write a civil rights song, something that you could march to in Madison Square Garden [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q186125]. And that's, you know, it's a marching song. That's like that. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:17:15\\nPerforms unnamed song accompanied by recorded track. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:18:00\\nStops recorded track. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:18:00\\nWell, there are a lot more of these songs and I'm just going to stop the tape at this time because...I haven't even begun reading you my favourite poems, [audience laughter], and I know it's about to end but maybe, maybe I can read for fifteen minutes or so. If you have to go, just get up and go. But. When I was in Italy in 1954, I read in Marcus Cunliffe's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6758114] The Literature of the United States, \\\"New York is the intellectual centre of the United States.\\\"  That made my blood boil [audience laughter] because it's a marketplace, so I just simply took his own book, The Literature of the United States, took all his authors, and lined them up, and all the places where they were born, where they grew up, and where they wrote from, and sent them the chart, which proves, out of his own book, that in literature, creative ideas, there have been three great centres and then two subordinate ones. New England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18389], the Midwest, and the South, and then as subordinate ones, they're the West Coast, and then the mid-Atlantic, New York area. That's in literature [audience laughter]. And we got in an argument...the result of it all was that I invited him to come and teach at my university [audience laughter]. So he came and he gave an address, and in one of his speeches he said, “Americans are overly given to haruspication and scrying” [audience laughter]. Well, you know, when someone comes out of England [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21] and says, gives, delivers a lecture to an American audience and says that, among other things you have to look up the words. [Audience laughter]. And, so...so I looked them up and I discovered \\\"haruspication\\\", the Haruspects were Roman and Etruscan pagan priests who examined the entrails of sacrificial animals [audience laughter] to predict natural phenomena and the future. So I started thinking about that. I grew up on a general farm, we had about a hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, a hundred head of cattle, twenty milk cows, a thousand chickens, about one hundred turkeys, twelve goats, you know [audience laughter], anywhere from twenty to fifty cats, and all sorts of wild animals, and I had seen bulls gored to death, I had seen flocks of sheep driven over limestone cliffs by dogs, I'd seen hawks that'd ripped little lambs and chickens, I'd seen skunks that had eaten them up, I'd butchered all of these things, I'd castrated, you know, I myself have castrated maybe three thousand pigs, and [laughter]..and...so, I thought okay. In fact, some of you may know that \\\"The Wheel of Summer\\\", the title poem, is about the castration of one hundred pigs, by three teenage boys [audience laughter], and as I was introduced in England once, he said it's probably the most distinguished poem in English about the castration of a hundred pigs. [Audience laughter]. But I started thinking about all of this and I thought, well, okay, I have a philosophy of life too, and it's been based with the whole business of producing food for you. You know, that's the end of it, the end of it all. And I participated in an awful lot of killing and...routine, it’s a way of life. And you know, if you eat meat, well you too. So I said, well okay, I've been haruspicating for a long time. And I gradually went up from age six to age eighteen, and meantime I achieved some kind of maturity, and I'm going to write my own poems. So I wrote all these poems, and the titles are, you know, like \\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\", \\\"Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\\\", but I'm going to read you the ultimate titles, which aren't in the book. Just running from age six on up to age eighteen, or when we got all old enough and we all went off to the war, as the last poem said.  But these say, you know, that's what these poems are really about.  \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:22:38\\n\\\"The Clarity of Innocence: Sacrifice of a Trout\\\". “The Loss of Early Innocence: Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\\\". \\\"The Plunder of Idealism: Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\\\". \\\"The Sickle among the Flowers\\\"...I quit making the equation...\\\"The Sickle Among the Flowers\\\". \\\"The Decline of Heroic Voices\\\"--that's the goring to death of a bull. \\\"The Suffocations of Love\\\"--that's the killing a pet chick by over-affection. \\\"The Attritions of Man\\\". \\\"The Unhousing of Beneficent God\\\". \\\"The Seeming, the Necessary and Beneficial Perversions of Love\\\"--that's my sacrifice of a gunny sack of cats. \\\"The Subtleties of Violent Revenge: Sacrifice of an old Sow\\\". \\\"The Sweet Solace of Evil\\\". \\\"The Absurdities of Fact\\\". \\\"The Pitfalls of Group Action: Sacrifice of a Flock of Sheep\\\"--they ran over this cliff, twelve of them died at once, and people say you shouldn't write villanelles, but that's the way sheep act, so I wrote a villanelle, you know, they repeat. \\\"The Catechism of Human Culpability\\\"--that's Eric, a suicide of a man. \\\"The Oddities of Affection\\\". \\\"The Sacred Violence of Purity\\\". \\\"The Bounties of Natural Law\\\". \\\"The Winter of the Cold War: Sacrifice of a Grey Wolf\\\". \\\"The Decline of Natural Instincts: Sacrifice of Three Wild Geese\\\". \\\"The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas\\\"--that's a sacrifice of a red squirrel. \\\"A Dream of the Ultimate Holocaust: Sacrifice of a Hill of Ants\\\" and \\\"The Warfare of the Sensuous Past: Sacrifice of My Aunt Marie\\\".  And then it all culminates in the longer narrative poem, \\\"The Wheel of Summer\\\". Which is just simply coming to maturity as a man. Well I'll, I'll read a few of these. \\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\" has no music, but I oftentimes start singing when I'm reading it, but I'm not going to now, I've done that. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:24:43\\n\\\"Suddenly\\\"--this is six years old, you know.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:24:46\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:25:42\\nI'll skip the lamb and read the owl. I wanted to just talk--\\\"We strung our wind-up rooster dead on a post\\\"--see, it can't be any flatter than that. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:25:52\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:27:39\\nI'll read the one of the neighbors. No one can live on a, in a farm area without seeing over a period of years, people lose fingers, toes, arms, legs, in various ways. It's...I was on a reading tour, actually, when Kennedy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9696] was killed. And I was actually in an auditorium about to start reading these poems, when it was cancelled, because of the announced death of the president. I couldn't have read them, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I was just sitting there, and five minutes from starting time. But this is \\\"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:28:20\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of my Neighbors\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:28:39\\nThat was my brother.\\n\\nJoseph Langland\\n01:28:42\\nResumes reading “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:31:02\\n\\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\". I read it in New York City, I didn't know that the officers of the Society for the Friends of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were sitting in the audience. After I went back to Amherst I got a letter from them, saying that every year there are twenty-five million unwanted pets born in the United States [audience laughter] and we secure funds to get the females spayed and the males castrated, and your poem, \\\"The Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\" is perfect for our purposes for our annual appeal, and, could we...[audience laughter.]..could we use it, please. I thought, my God, you know, I just, I read this poem, like all of these things out of a great affection, and this is the thing, you'll have to forgive me but this is what occurred to me, you know. I just had this great affectionate conception of the whole thing, and now they wanted to turn it into a kind of contraceptive. [Audience laughter]. And...and then I thought, well, okay, what can I do at this point? And so, showing this charming little picture, you know, it's a dog, and a little puppy dog [audience laughter], little kitten and laying their heads against each other and saying \\\"Annual Appeal\\\" and on the back of it was my \\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\" and...I, you know, when I travel around the United States even now, I often like wonder in what town did I do in this poor little male cat or this female, you know, cooperating in one way or another, it's like, you know, I have to refuse to pay your taxes...you don't know what you're maiming at a certain point. But that's an example. I wanted to start from the most ordinary thing and see how I could carry it, and this is the \\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\".\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:33:13\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of the Gunnysack of Cats\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:36:23\\nOne hard poem about the old sow, which is, says something about this world. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:36:31\\nReads \\\"Sacrifice of an Old Sow\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and later collected in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:37:48\\nWell that's the way we do it. Then one, pretty hard poem, too, it's about Eric, but it's really about us, and then I'll read the squirrel poem, and then leave these alone. That...okay, actually this, I had in mind an uncle, a favourite uncle. Very talented, frustrated.\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:38:19\\nReads [\\\"The Sacrifice of Eric” from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:41:09\\nAlright, and then the squirrel. Actually, I...last week, I had a letter from some fellow in Kansas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1558], I never, of course I don't know him at all. He wants to set the thing to music, I don't know what he's going to do with it, but...he plays the guitar, and so I said, fine. And just about anybody who gets caught in a rut...I must say that after this I'm going to read one little ballad on Adlai Stevenson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q311719], but...\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:41:47\\nReads [\\\"The Sacrifice of a Red Squirrel\\\" from The Wheel of Summer]. \\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:44:25\\nLittle ballad for Stevenson, and I don't have it with me, but I know it. The state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1204] is the oak, the cardinal, and the violet. That's green, red, and violet. It struck me, that's half a rainbow. That seemed like Adlai Stevens' life. A great theoretical life, unfinished, has to be completed by someone else. I asked, what's the other half, they're yellow, orange, and blue, and his home at Libertyville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1787181], Illinois, you can't improve on that for the title, \\\"Libertyville\\\", it has a river the Des Plaines River [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8637], that's before it enters the Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] drainage system, it's a nice blue stream out of the Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1537] woods, that's blue, the sky is blue, the light by day is orange, and by night yellow. That's the full rainbow. \\\"There's a fountain in the wood\\\"...It's called \\\"Libertyville\\\" and past that, a little epigraph about the state tree, bird, and flower of Illinois, and I wanted to, for the schoolchildren of Illinois...\\n \\nJoseph Langland\\n01:45:27\\nReads \\\"Libertyville\\\" [from The Wheel of Summer and collected later in Selected Poems].\\n \\nAudience\\n01:47:02\\nApplause.\\n \\nEND\\n01:47:35\\n\",\"notes\":\"Joseph Langland reads from The Green Town (Scribner, 1956) and The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963), as well as poems published later in Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973), Any Body’s Song (Doubleday, 1980), and Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).\\n\\n00:06- Unknown introducer introduces Joseph Langland. [INDEX: Spring Grove, Minnesota, public schools, Iowa, State University of Iowa, University of British Columbia, University of Washington, San Francisco Poetry Center, University of Wyoming, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Review, editorial board, books For Harold, memorial poems for brother, WWII, published in Germany in 1945, The Green Town published by Scribner’s in 1956, nominated for the National Book Award for poetry in 1957, The Wheel of Summer, (Dial Press, 1963), winner of the Melville Kane Poetry Award, anthologies Poet’s Choice co-edited with Paul Engle (1952), The Short Story (Macmillan, 1956) co-edited with James B. Hall, forthcoming books: Adlai Stevenson, Iowa City, Stonewall Press [unknown actual publication], long memorial poem, lyric poems, Songs and Half-Songs [unknown actual publication], poetry anthologies, Poetry Chicago, Hudson Review, Chicago Review, Paris Review, London Magazine, Nation magazine, song lyrics, Morton Gould, Phillip Esantzen, Elliot Schwartz, folk songs, Folk Ways Scholastic Records, grants, 1953-4 Ford Faculty Fellowship in Humanities, 1955 and 1956 Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, 1966 National Council of Arts Grant in Poetry, readings at universities in Europe, Glasgow, London, Sussex, Munich, Oslo, University College in Dublin.]\\n03:19- Joseph Langland introduces “Desperate Equations”. [INDEX: written in answer to a critic; from The Wheel of Summer (1963).]\\n03:47- Reads “Desperate Equations”.\\n04:33- Introduces “Natures”. [INDEX: newer poem]\\n04:44- Reads “Natures”.\\n06:54- Introduces “Dandelion”. [INDEX: daughter of famous poet, procedure among  \\tartists, wife, poem of affection.]\\n07:40- Reads “Dandelion”.\\n09:26- Introduces “The Amalfi Grotto”. [INDEX: grotto in the southern coast of Italy, tourist trade, magical place, sea level, Tyrrhenian Sea, cave, sunlight, morning, cafe, water, orb, poetry, poem about poetry; from The Wheel of Summer (1963).]\\n11:38- Reads “The Amalfi Grotto”.\\n12:53- Introduces “War” and “A Seachange for Harold”. [INDEX: poem for brother, killed in the Philippines in WWII, Europe, wrote thirty poems for him, history, Germany,     \\tGerman soldier, former infantry officer of the German Army, captive at Stalingrad, United States, teaches music, American university, irony, sequence, art, enmity, published in Japanese anthology, translated into Italian, axis powers, Hungarian Revolution, Budapest in 1956, Hungarian, history, humbled, forms, subjects, Williams Carlos Williams, reading at the Lexington Y in NYC in 1954, 96th Street, foghorns, Manhattan, beginning of poem “A Seachange for Harold”.; from The Wheel of Summer (1963)]\\n16:22- Reads beginning of “A Seachange for Harold”.\\n16:40- Introduces “War”. [INDEX: subjects, family, nine children; from The Wheel of  Summer (1963).]\\n17:15- Reads “War”.\\n18:43- Introduces “A Hard Song to Sing”. [INDEX: music for poems, song, contemporary condition of war, civil rights, United States, monosyllabic, pitch, love, Edward Grieg, A flat, resonance, body.]\\n20:24- Sings “A Hard Song to Sing”.\\n21:48- Introduces “An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison”. [INDEX: Ralph Ellison and his wife   Fanny, Langland’s wife Judy, beach on small Italian fishing town, civil rights movement,        Ellison’s essays, The Invisible Man, poem not published, jazz player, trumpet,      \\tphotographer, cellar, background, letter; published later in The Massachusetts Review Vol. 40, n.4, (Winter, 1999/2000).]\\n23:16- Reads “An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison”.\\n27:02- Introduces “How It, So Help Me, Was”. [INDEX: Thoreau, book of letters to famous people, Walden Pond, art farm, title, 1963/1962, 100 years after the Civil War, blue, grey, shadow, pond, illegal; published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1, (Autumn, 1962).]\\n29:04- Reads “How It, So Help Me, Was”.\\n32:10- Introduces “Still to be Man”. [INDEX: poetry, alive, body, animal.]\\n32:44- Reads “Still to be Man”.’\\n32:51- Interrupts with explanation. [INDEX: writing a poem, home, kitchen, land on the earth, air.]\\n33:04- Continues reading “Still to be Man”.\\n34:10- Introduces “La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey”. [INDEX: family, Rome, syndrome,      Roman women, trapped in society, extreme conservatism, teacher of art at an American    university, adopting child in Italy, law, sterile men, Naples, doctor, lawyer, certified, high    school, Adorazione (school), beautiful and young women, married, dressing in black,   \\tspaghetti, children, husbands, lovers.]\\n36:12- Reads “La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey”.\\n37:24- Introduces “He and Her”. [INDEX: society, series of half-songs, half-pitch, half- singing, talk, two parts, rhyme, class (at Sir George Williams University), aesthetic value, \\t“Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song”, first part is “He and Her”, noun, object,    second part “She and Him”, talking, printed, page.]\\n38:44- Reads “Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song, part 1: He and Her”.\\n39:60- Introduces “She and Him”. [INDEX: triad, rhyme, answers.]\\n39:47- Reads “Not Quite a Conversation: A Half-Song, part 2: She and Him”\\n40:59- Langland announces break.\\n41:25- Introduces second part of reading and “Singing in Late Summer”. [INDEX:     \\tvalidity, grandparents, Norway, name ‘Langeland’, Norwegian poet Paul Brekke,    translations, Norwegian, two poems written in Norway, death of his father, folk song   \\t“Den store hvide Flok”/ “The Great White Host”, funeral, children’s jobs, farm in Iowa,       ranch in Wyoming, hotel in Switzerland, Provincetown, painting, writing; published later  in Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).]\\n43:03- Reads “Singing in Late Summer”.\\n44:17- Introduces “Norwegian Rivers”. [INDEX: traveling through Norway, rivers,    \\tmountains, Oslo, Bergen, Trodheim, Island of Store, west coast of Norway, older  \\twoman, younger generation, Norwegian immigrants; published first in The       \\tMassachusetts Review, Vol. 4, n.1, (Autumn, 1962); later in Selected Poems       \\t(University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).]\\n45:22- Reads “Norwegian Rivers”.\\n48:08- Introduces “Drowning” by Sergey Chudakov. [INDEX: translation from Russian,     friends Thomas Axel, press agent for Imre Nagy, Hungarian Revolution, escape to        \\tAustria, teaches at university, poet, director of theatre in Budapest, State Theatre, Laszlo Ticosz, teaches in the German-Russian department at the university, collecting   underground poems from unknown poets from Russia, collection of poems, literal \\ttranslations, not sent to a publisher, new material, channels in the underground, war in   Europe, concentration camps, Nordhaussen, burial of five thousand people in one day in open trenches, captured Buchenwald, Weimar, Russians, German population Eisenach, Russian cavalry; from Poetry from the Russian Underground  (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n51:23- Reads “Drowning” by Sergey Cuchadakov.\\n52:06- Reads “The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad” by Joseph Brodsky. [INDEX:   \\tprobably intended for Poetry from the Russian Underground but was never published.]\\n52:32- Interrupts reading with explanation. [INDEX: translation changes.]\\n52:47- Continues reading “The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad” by Joseph Bordsky.\\n54:03- Explains “The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad” translations, introduces first line         “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikhailov. [INDEX: conditions, defending Sinyavsky and    Daniel, trapped, dragged to camp; from Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n55:01- Reads first line “Conditions” by Artyemy Mikhailov.\\n56:07- Introduces “Now that I Know” by Vladimir Kovshin. [INDEX: older style, elegant    lyric despair; from Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n56:21- Reads “Now that I Know” by Vladimir Kovshin.\\n57:01- Introduces “After the War” by Gleb Garbovsky. [INDEX: newest poem; from Poetry from the Russian Underground (Harper & Row, 1973).]\\n57:11- Reads “After the War” by Gleb Garbovsky.\\n58:54- Interrupts reading with explanation. [INDEX: Emily Dickinson’s tomb in Amherst        Massachusetts, locality.]\\n59:08- Continues reading “After the War” by Gleb Garbovsky.\\n59:27- Introduces “Keeping up with the Humansky’s”. [INDEX: Joneses, lieutenant in the army, son of the fields, Russian name, serfs, experience.]\\n1:00:06- Reads “Keeping up with the Humansky’s”.\\n1:01:33- Introduces “Etape”. [INDEX: march from Russia to Siberia, original, title,     \\tfootnote, Axel, Ticosz, author unknown, nineteenth century, part of the long March from   Russia called Etape, ballad stanza form.]\\n1:02:07- Reads “Etape”.\\n1:03:57- Begins to Introduce “The Garbage Collector”, but recording ends suddenly.\\n1:04:03.32- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nRachel Kyne has tracked poem times and durations:\\n \\nTitle                                                                        \\tTime           \\tDuration (mins)\\nFIRST CD:\\n“Desperate Equations”                                           \\t00:03:47      \\t00:45\\n“Natures”                                                                \\t00:04:44      \\t02:09\\n“Dandelion”                                                            \\t00:07:40      \\t01:43\\n“The Amalfi Grotto”                                              \\t00:11:38      \\t01:14\\n“War”                                                                      \\t00:17:15      \\t01:27\\n“A Hard Song to Sing” (one stanza sung)              \\t00:20:24      \\t00:17\\n“A Hard Song to Sing” (read)                                \\t00:20:47      \\t01:00\\n“An Open Letter to Ralph Ellison”                        \\t00:23:16      \\t03:45\\n“How It, So Help Me, Was”                                   \\t00:29:04      \\t00:24\\n“Still to be Man”                                                    \\t00:32:44      \\t01:24\\n“La Donna a Roma, an Odyssey”                           \\t00:36:12      \\t01:11\\n“He and Her”                                                          \\t00:38:44      \\t00:56\\n“She and Him”                                                        \\t00:39:47      \\t01:10\\n“Singing in Late Summer”                                     \\t00:43:03      \\t01:13\\n“Norwegian Rivers”                                               \\t00:45:22      \\t02:44\\n“Drowning”                                                            \\t00:51:23      \\t00:42\\n“The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad”                    \\t00:52:12      \\t01:55\\n“Conditions”                                                           \\t00:55:01      \\t01:05\\n“Now That I Know”                                               \\t00:56:21      \\t00:40\\n“After the War”                                                      \\t00:57:11      \\t02:09\\n“Keeping up with the Humanskys”                        \\t01:00:06      \\t01:26\\n“Etape”                                                                   \\t01:02:07      \\t01:48\\n  \\n00:00- Reads “The Garbage Collector”.\\n00:27- Interrupts poem with explanation, then continues reading.  [INDEX: Renaissance, Christ Child, mother’s breast, translation”.\\n01:33- Introduces song “All the Lovers that You Ever Knew”. [INDEX: piano, singing,       guitar, Amherst, recorded tape.]\\n02:14- Plays recorded piano accompaniment.\\n02:33- Sings “All the Lovers that You Ever Knew”.\\n03:59- Introduces “Alone the Evening Falls on Me”. [INDEX: recording, singing, song,        last dance”; most likely from Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press,    1991).]\\n04:28- Sings “Alone the Evening Falls on Me”.\\n06:20- Introduces “Jump on my Back”. [INDEX: Iowa, Wyoming, Idaho.]\\n06:41- Sings “Jump on my Back”.\\n07:22- Introduces “A Hiroshima Lullaby”. [INDEX: sad story, Hiroshima bomb, 1945, little girl named Sadako Saki, unharmed, leukemia, hospital, Japanese legend about herons,       cranes, sandhill crane, University of Oregon in June, Summer Academy of the Arts,       wildlife refuge, Oregon, Eugene, fold a thousand paper cranes, health, sculptor from        Tokyo, statue, Peace Park, five notes, black keys, fifth in the bass, sing, stanza; published later in Selected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).]\\n11:00- Plays and Sings “A Hiroshima Lullaby”.\\n12:46- Introduces first line “I long to walk in the promised land”, [INDEX: Civil rights        \\tsong, march in Madison Square Garden, marching song.]\\n13:12- Sings first line “I long to walk in the promised land”.\\n13:57- Introduces The Wheel of Summer (Dial Press, 1963). [INDEX: Italy in 1954, Marcus Cunliffe’s The Literature of the United States, authors, New England, Midwest, South, West Coast and mid-Atlantic New York area, literature, speech, England, Haruspects, Roman/ Etruscan pagan priests, sacrificial animals, natural phenomena, farm animals, “The Wheel of Summer” title poem, titles “Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout”, “Sacrifice of my Pet Lamb”, poem titles that aren’t in the book.]\\n18:34- Reads poem titles from The Wheel of Summer. [INDEX: \\\"The Clarity of   Innocence: Sacrifice of a Trout.”, “The Loss of Early Innocence: Sacrifice of My Pet Lamb\\\", \\\"The Plunder of Idealism: Sacrifice of the Golden Owl\\\", \\\"The Sickle among the Flowers\\\", \\\"The Sickle Among the Flowers\\\", \\\"The Decline of Heroic Voices\\\",  \\\"The Suffocations of Love\\\", \\\"The Attrition of Man\\\", \\\"The Unhousing of Beneficent God,\\\" \\\"The Seeming, the Necessary and Beneficial Perversions of Love\\\", \\\"The Subtleties of Violent Revenge: Sacrifice of an old Sow\\\", \\\"The Sweet Solace of Evil\\\", \\\"The Absurdities of Fact”,  \\\"The Pitfalls of Group Action: Sacrifice of a Flock of Sheep\\\", \\\"The Catechism of Human Culpability\\\", \\\"The Oddities of Affection”,  \\\"The Sacred Violence of Purity\\\", \\\"The        Bounties of Natural Law\\\", \\\"The Winter of the Cold War: Sacrifice of a Grey Wolf\\\", \\\"The    Decline of Natural Instincts: Sacrifice of Three Wild Geese\\\", \\\"The Tyranny of Fixed   Ideas\\\", \\\"A Dream of the Ultimate Holocaust: Sacrifice of a Hill of Ants\\\", \\\"The Warfare of  \\tthe Sensuous Past: Sacrifice of My Aunt Marie”, longer narrative poem, \\\"The Wheel of     Summer\\\",\\\"Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout\\\"; titles from The Wheel of Summer.]\\n20:43- Reads “Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout”. [INDEX: from The Wheel of Summer, (Dial   Press, 1963).]\\n21:38- Introduces “Sacrifice of a Golden Owl”. [INDEX: lamb, owl, from The Wheel of        Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n21:49- Reads “Sacrifice of a Golden Owl”.\\n23:36- Introduces “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”. [INDEX: farm, lost body parts, death of       President Kennedy, reading tour, auditorium, poems, cancelled; from The Wheel   \\tof Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n24:17- Reads “Sacrifice of my Neighbors”.\\n26:58- Introduces “Sacrifice of the Gunny-Sack of Cats”. [INDEX: read in New York City, officers of the Society for the Friends of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Amherst,    letter, unwanted animals, United States, cat spaying, contraceptive, Annual Appeal, taxes;  from The Wheel of Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n29:10- Reads “Sacrifice of the Gunny-Sack of Cats”.\\n32:19- Introduces “Sacrifice of an Old Sow”. [INDEX: old sow, hard poem, world; from       The Wheel of Summer, (Dial Press, 1963).]\\n32:28- Reads “Sacrifice of an Old Sow”.\\n33:45- Introduces “The Catechism of Human Culpability”. [INDEX: hard poem, Eric, squirrel poem, uncle.]\\n34:15- Reads “The Catechism of Human Culpability”.\\n37:05- Introduces “The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas”. [INDEX: squirrel, letter, Kansas, music,    guitar, ballad on Adlai Stevens.]\\n37:44- Reads “The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas”.\\n40:21- Introduces “Libertyville”. [INDEX: Stevens, ballad, state tree, bird, flower,      \\tIllinois, oak, cardinal, violet, red, green, violet, rainbow, theoretical life, yellow, orange,       blue, Libertyville Illinois, Des Plaines River, Chicago drainage system, Winsconsin   woods, blue, sky, light, epigraph, school children.]\\n41:24- Reads “Libertyville”.\\n43:32.33- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nSECOND CD:\\n“The Garbage Collector”                                        \\t00:00:00      \\t01:27\\n“All the Lovers that You Ever Knew” (song)        \\t00:02:33      \\t01:25\\n“Alone the Evening Falls on Me” (song)               \\t00:04:28      \\t01:45\\n“Jump on my Back” (song)                                    \\t00:06:41      \\t00:40\\n“A Hiroshima Lullaby” (song and reading)           \\t00:11:00      \\t01:45\\n[“I long to walk in the Promised Land”]                \\t00:13:12      \\t00:44\\n“Sacrifice of a Rainbow Trout”                              \\t00:20:43      \\t00:57\\n“Sacrifice of the Golden Owl”                               \\t00:21:49      \\t01:15\\n“Sacrifice of my Neighbours”                                \\t00:24:17      \\t02:30\\n“Sacrifice of the Gunny-Sack of Cats”                  \\t00:29:10      \\t03:08\\n“Sacrifice of an Old Sow”                                      \\t00:32:28      \\t01:18\\n“The Catechism of Human Culpability”                \\t00:34:15      \\t02:45\\n“The Tyranny of Fixed Ideas”                                         00:37:44      \\t02:44\\n“Libertyville”                                                         \\t00:41:24      \\t01:35\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/joseph-langland-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.0},{"id":"1271","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Michael McClure and George Montana at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 22 March 1968"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MICHAEL McCLURE I006/SR160\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-160\" written on sticker on the reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["McClure, Michael","Montana, George"],"creator_names_search":["McClure, Michael","Montana, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/71493269\",\"name\":\"McClure, Michael\",\"dates\":\"1932-\",\"notes\":\"American poet, playwright, essayist, novelist and teacher Michael McClure was born on October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas. After his parents divorced, he went to live with his grandfather in Seattle, who influenced McClure’s early interests in the natural world. McClure attended several universities in Kansas and Arizona before completing his Bachelor degree at the San Francisco State College in 1955. McClure met his first wife, Joanna Kinnison, and married her in 1954. They later had one daughter, Katherine Jane (b. 1956), but divorced in 1986. While at San Francisco State College, he took a course with poet Robert Duncan, and was influenced by Charles Olson, William Blake and Walt Whitman’s poetries as well as Jackson Pollock’s paintings. McClure received instant fame when he participated in the infamous Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco with Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder and Philip Lamantia. McClure was thus associated with the Beat movement, and began publishing in what became a prolific writing career. In 1956, with poet and publisher Jonathan Williams and James Harmon, McClure published the work of both Black Mountain school poets and San Francisco Beat poets in Ark II/Moby I review; it was published in 1957. Jonathan Williams then published McClure’s first book of poetry, Passage (Jargon Book Series, 1956). McClure subsequently published many collections of poetry, including For Artaud (Totem Press, 1959), Hymns to St. Geryon and Other Poems (Auerhahn Press, 1959), Dark Brown (Auerhahn Press, 1961), The New Book/ A Book of Torture (Grove Press, 1961), Meat Science Essays (City Lights Books, 1963), Love Lion Lioness (Privately printed, 1963), Ghost Tantras (Privately printed, 1964), 13 Mad Sonnets (Privately printed, 1965), The Beard (Several publishers between 1965-7), The Sermons of Jean Harlow and the Curses of Billy the Kid (Four Seasons press, 1968), The Mammals (Cranium Press, 1972), Jaguar Skies (New Directions, 1975), Scratching the Beat Surface (North Point Press, 1982), Selected Poems (New Directions, 1986), and Rebel Lions (New Directions, 1991). McClure also wrote many plays, including !The Feast! (San Francisco, Batman Gallery, 22 December 1960), The Blossom; or Billy the Kid (New York, American Theatre for Poets, 1964), the controversial play The Beard (San Francisco, Encore Theatre, Encore Theare, December 18, 1965), Gorf (San Francisco, Magic Theare,1976) and Josephine the Mouse Singer (New York, WPA Theatre, November 20, 1978), recipient of two Off-Broadway Theatre Awards. In 1963, McClure became a professor at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, where he taught for more than 40 years, eventually becoming a professor emeritus. McClure was awarded numerous honours, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967 and 1974, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974, a Pushcart Prize for Poetry in 1991 and a Lifetime Achievement Poetry Award from the National Poetry Society in 1993. More recently, McClure published Simple Eyes (New Directions, 1992), Love Lion Video (with Ray Manzarek, Mystic Fire Video, 1993), The Mad Club (Blue Moon Books, 1995), Rain Mirror (New Directions, 1999),  There’s a Word! audio recording with Ray Manzarek (Rare Angel Music 2001), and Plum Stones: Cartoons of No Heaven (O Books, 2002). In 1997, McClure married a sculptor, Amy Evans. Michael McClure continues to perform and write from the San Francisco Bay Area\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Montana, George\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"3/22/1968\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in written announcement \\\"Poetry at S.G.W.U.\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\" -73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Michael McClure reads poems collected in The Beards (Coyote, 1967), Star (Grove Press, 1970), Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969), and Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967). McClure also performs a number of songs with George Montana."],"contents":["michael_mcclure_george_montana_i006-11-160.mp3\n \nIntroducer\n00:00:00\nLadies and gentlemen, Michael McClure [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1390054], George Montana. \n\nAudience\n00:00:05\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:00:29\nThat was [unintelligible]. Star is a four letter word, s-t-a-r. Now, in case I read, I--is this on right? In case I read something here tonight with a four letter word in it, which I'm liable to cause I might start off be reading part of The Beard, um, [unintelligible] if anyone would be offended, it would be a good thing if they got their money back, right now. It's their right to do so.\n\nAudience\n00:01:07\nApplause.\n\nMichael McClure\n00:01:22\nThe Beard is a poem of mine in the form of a play that's just been arrested fifteen nights in a row by Los Angeles [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65] police and a state law has been passed against it being performed in the state colleges in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. These are the trials and tribulations. And right now we're waiting for a panel of three federal judges to come and see it and decide if it has redeeming special significance. [Audience laughter]. And if they don't think it is, we'll take it to the Supreme Court [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11201] and see what they think. And, the play has two characters in it, Billy the Kid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44200] and Jean Harlow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q105719]. And they're together in a blue velvet eternity, they both are wearing little beards made out of torn white tissue paper. They're--they only thing on the set with them is a table and two chairs covered with furs and Harlow is wearing a blue gown and she has a purse with her and a mirror and the Kid is dressed in a costume appropriate to his costume--I mean appropriate to his career. And when the curtain opens, there's an orange light shining on him which goes up after the first, about the first thirty seconds. And being that this is a poem in the form of a play, I can only read it, I can't read it properly, I can't be two people, I can't be Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow I can only be the author so I'll have to read it that way where it's actually meant to be a poem and acted by me on a stage, on a shelf with lights. We have a shelf with lights, but that's the best I can do.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:03:41\nReads selection from The Beard.\n\nAudience\n00:10:29\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:11:02\nUm, I'm going to read two more tonight. I want to read for a while and then have an intermission and then I'd like to come back on and play some musical pieces that my music guru George Montana has been working on with me and we've been writing some songs together, but I'd like to read poems for maybe half an hour or so first. I want to read some poems called \"Mad Sonnets\" and I imagine a lot of you know what sons are, what known as sons are, fourteen lines with a legitimate rhyme scheme, and these are not quite exactly like that...Does this microphone sound right? If I stand right here is that okay so that I don't have to lean into it?\n \nMichael McClure\n00:12:25\nReads \"Mad Sonnet\" [from Star].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:14:08\nAnother \"Mad Sonnet\", kind of ecological.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:14:23\nReads [\"Mad Sonnet 3\" from Star].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:16:03\nHere's a--I live in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], but here's a \"Mad Sonnet\" that I started in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], I went to Wall Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11690] on a Saturday morning, I guess you can imagine what it's like during the weekdays, it's a narrow street, buildings stretching up like cliffs on each side of them and on Saturday morning it's cold and empty and you can feel the crush and vibrations from the previous part of the week.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:16:32\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 13” from Star, published later as “Cold Saturday Mad Sonnet” in Selected Poems].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:17:58\nI never thought of those signs--they told me I can't smoke up here. It's my life. I'll do what I want, [unintelligible]. [Audience laughter]. The work--I think-are we all, I think I'm waiting for, this technology with which we live in, which is wonderful enough in it's own way, is also costly and [unintelligible], eating up the planet, and I think I'm waiting for an all-chemical science, by means in which we can manifest ourselves through the universe and I guess we'll have to tinker toys like rocket ships and space ships to begin it, but I don't think that's how we'll really do it. And it's become kind of tradition to write songs to science, so I guess I had to do one too.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:19:20\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 5” from Star].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:20:48\nI've got a book of poems in a language I call Beast Language, they're about half in English and half in this invented language. The book is called Ghost Tantras, ghost like the German word \"gist\", g-i-s-t, which means spirit, and I just said \"ghost\". Why can't ghost be a spirit, why can't we use that in English? And tantra, t-a-n-t-r-a, which is a Hindu form of poetry, it's poetry written in an invented language for magical purposes to bring about changes in the universe. I felt these poems, I felt these poems coming on, and I felt like I had a ball of silence within myself, within my body and I heard these sounds within that ball of silence, and I wrote them down phonetically, so kind of like Marvel comics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173496], you know where it says \"keee\" or \"rash\", k-e-e-e, or r-a-s-h. And I see later that things like this have been done in gnostic Bizantine chants too, which also, is like Marvel comics. \"Ka-pow\". And some of them were written in San Francisco, some of them were written in airplanes, on the way to Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. I was going to Mexico to bring back cultures of [unintelligible] Mexicana, the sacred [salsavie (?)] mushroom which were grown by scientists in Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419]. And, then upon my return I finished from there. I finished these \"Mad Sonnets\", there are 99 of them and I don't think you've probably heard anything like them before, and I guess all you can do is just relax. I like to start with one that starts with English because it's not so strange, they're about a third English or half English maybe.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:23:15\nBegins to perform unnamed sound poem.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:23:19\nNo, that's not it...Where'd George go? George? [Audience laughter].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:24:00\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #51” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:25:42\nHere's another one that starts in English, it starts in Spanish. Just went to Spanish, [unintelligible] George is.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:25:57\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #54” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:27:45\nI just had a lot of microphone trouble in Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435] too. I don't know what. It's alright?\n \nMichael McClure\n00:27:55\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #69” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:29:45\nHere's one, this was written the day after Marilyn Monroe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4616] died, August 6, 1962.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:30:11\nReads \"Ghost Tantra #39\" [published later in Ghost Tantras].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:31:37\nYou've got a tourist card in the back of the room [(?)] Is everybody relaxed? Cause I'm not. Eddie in [unintelligible] was dismissed recently and I guess this poem had something to do with it. And, the poem is the ending of, it's the sexual ending of a very long poem called \"Dark Brown\" I see nothing wrong in taking any sexual part of the poem from any other part of the poem, and the sexual writing today will be viewed in fifty years or a hundred years much the way we view nature poetry today in the 19th century, because some [unintelligible] classes we kept bringing up the fact that for our [unintelligible] today if you were to look at the atmosphere or the air we breathe, the primary part of our environment is either other human bodies or concrete and we choose human bodies rather than the concrete which seems to be a pretty good choice. I think that given the changes that are going on today, I believe we won't be able to say anything. If we can say anything now. If we can say anything anytime but I mean, I think this will be looked upon as [unintelligible] Nature poetry, Shelley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q93343] and Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083]were pulling cockney school in their day, which of course was all there is for Shelley since he was a [unintelligible] and probably some of Keats although it was worse since he was a cockney. [Audience laughter]. They were insulted for their new nature poetries, and this too. I'd like to read some like, preliminary stanzas of that poem, and then read part of the longer section which seems to have to do with the [unintelligible]. In Eddie's defense I'll say that the London Times [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50008] literary supplement found that this is [unintelligible]. The poem is written in independent stanzas, I'd like to think of the stanzas as being independent in the way an organism is, and the totality of the poem in the totality in a way an--the way a primitive--and this is a primitive organism is comprised of [unintelligible] individuals to make up its [unintelligible] of being. The poem is called \"Dark Brown\" and I've just opened it to the page I wanted to. The stanza I wanted to.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:35:21\nReads \"Dark Brown\" from Dark Brown.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:37:48\nReads [\"The black black black damned and undreamy odem the undersoul\" from Dark Brown].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:40:00\nAnother poem. Okay, have I justified enough? Now's your chance to go home. I'm going to read the tough part.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:40:23\nReads [“Fuck Ode” from Dark Brown].\n \nAudience\n00:50:00\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:50:15\nI'll take a break. George and I are going to play, George Montana and I, and I won't guarantee anything about it as my fingers are feeling very clumsy tonight. I'll be playing an instrument but I know George will play for us, so if you hear any faults in the playing, it's me not George. I want to take like, at least, I want to take a ten minute break and anybody who'd like to stay is welcome to stay, and if you'd like to go, go, and if you want to leave during the music if you don't like the music for god's sake go. Thank you. \n \nUnknown\n00:51:09\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:12\nI'm kind of nervous, us going through it again.\n \nGeorge Montana\n00:51:19\n[IUnintelligible].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:23\nSure, let's see if it picks up.\n \nGeorge Montana\n00:51:24\nI think it's picking up\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:25\nYeah?\n \nGeorge Montana\n00:51:26\nYeah.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:27\nCan you hear us whispering?\n \nAudience\n00:51:28\nYes.\n \nUnknown\n00:51:30\nAmbient Sound [music].\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:41\nLet's see what it sounds like.\n \nMichael McClure\n00:51:43\nIs it picking up? Can you hear in the back? Can you hear in the back row? Yeah, I think I lost that pic already. Christ. \n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n00:52:17\nPerform unnamed song.\n \nAudience\n01:01:41\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:01:56\nUm, I don't think I can sing. Do you want to do that one?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:02:00\nAh, okay.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:02:04\nShall we tell them it's a new song? Why don't you tell them?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:02:07\nThis is a song that Michael and I just have done, so I don't know the words by heart yet. So here it is.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:02:19\nAnd I haven't learned this melody very well yet. Let's get coordinated together. You set the [unintelligible]. You wanna sing it through three times? \n\nUnknown\n01:02:41\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:02:57\nIs this picking up alright? Can you hear it clear, loud enough? No? [Audience laughter]. Get out. [Audience laughter].\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:03:24\nPerform unnamed song.\n \nAudience\n01:10:50\nApplause.\n \nUnknown\n01:10:59\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:11:39\nThese are called technical difficulties. By the way we can smoke on the stage now because the lights are off in the auditorium. That's the fire alarm. [Audience laughter].\nWant to play the “Bells of Moscow”?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:12:22\nHow about the other [unintelligible].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:12:31\nI don't think I'm up to...\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:12:40\nWe're going to try to do the Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] \"For President Walt\".\n \nMichael McClure\n01:12:43\nI think I'm too scared to. We'll try it. I might be too--can you hear alright? I might be too scared. This isn't very complicated, isn't it a two chord one?\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:13:04\nPerform \"For President Walt\" by Allen Ginsberg.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:13:20\nI can't remember the words.\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:13:31\nPerform \"For President Walt\" by Allen Ginsberg.\n \nAudience\n01:16:29\nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n01:16:39\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:16:45\nI was just thinking you'd play it your way fast. No, let's do a non-vocal.\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:17:03\nOkay, which one.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:17:05\nWhat about \"The Bells of Moscow\"?\n \nGeorge Montana\n01:17:06\nThat one?\n \nUnknown\n01:17:11\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \n\nGeorge Montana\n01:17:15\nWe'll play for you a little instrumental one it's called \"The Bells of Moscow\".\n \nMichael McClure\n01:17:20\nNamed today.\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:17:56\nPerform \"The Bells of Moscow\".\n \nAudience\n01:23:06\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:23:17\nI don't think that was picking up here. Alright. Or I was too close. More music lovers are leaving. I don't know, we could try the [unintelligible] thing. \n\nUnknown\n01:23:40\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nMichael McClure\n01:24:12\nGeorge and I usually do this in my front room. With no light but a candle and the incense, but we can smoke there of course. This is a song by William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513].\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:24:59\nPerform \"How sweet I roam’d from field to field\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19049519] by William Blake.\n \nAudience\n01:30:25\nApplause.\n \nMichael McClure\n01:30:46\nHow about, um, Dvořák’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7298] 43rd auto-harp duet? Which one is that?\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:31:44\nBegin to perform unnamed song.\n \nMichael McClure and George Montana\n01:31:58\nPerform unnamed song.\n \nAudience\n01:35:52\nApplause. \n\nUnknown\n01:35:57\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nMichael McClure\n01:36:12\nGood night.\n \nAudience \n01:36:28\nApplause. \n \nEND\n01:37:00\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nUnknown date-around 1970. McClure was teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. He was publishing prolifically, often printing his own work in pamphlets and chap books.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nThe connection between McClure and Sir George Williams University is unknown, however as a member of the Beat movement, McClure was certainly a poet of interest for Canadians. McClure read his poetry often and his performances were also a part of his poetics. \",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction, and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dictionary-of-literary-biography-vol-16-the-beats-literary-bohemians-in-postwar-america-edited-by-ann-charters-parts-1-2/oclc/59250319&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"King, William R. “Michael (Thomas) McClure”. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar  America. Ann Charters (ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dark-brown/oclc/69024444?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Dark Brown. San Francisco: Dave Haselwood Books, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghost-tantras/oclc/923460319&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Ghost Tantras. San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/beard/oclc/561713511&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. The Beard. San Francisco: Coyote Books, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-book-a-book-of-torture/oclc/918221317&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. The New Book: A Book of Torture. New York City: Grove Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/916271510?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Selected Poems. New York City: New Directions Books, 1986. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/star-poems/oclc/462091780&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"McClure, Michael. Star. New York City: Grove Press, 1970. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-american-literature/oclc/54356940&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"\\\"McClure, Michael (Thomas)\\\". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart, ed., rev. Phillip W. Leininger. Oxford University Press 1995. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Camlot, Jason. “Mammals and Machines: Michael McClure’s Embodying Poetics”. Atenea, 23, no.1; June 2003.\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Michael McClure” Literature Online Biography. Literature Online, 2008.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670548858470400,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0160_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0160_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0160_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0160_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0160_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"McClure and Montana Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/michael_mcclure_george_montana_i006-11-160.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"michael_mcclure_george_montana_i006-11-160.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:37:00\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"232.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Introducer\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and gentlemen, Michael McClure [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1390054], George Montana. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:05\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:00:29\\nThat was [unintelligible]. Star is a four letter word, s-t-a-r. Now, in case I read, I--is this on right? In case I read something here tonight with a four letter word in it, which I'm liable to cause I might start off be reading part of The Beard, um, [unintelligible] if anyone would be offended, it would be a good thing if they got their money back, right now. It's their right to do so.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:01:07\\nApplause.\\n\\nMichael McClure\\n00:01:22\\nThe Beard is a poem of mine in the form of a play that's just been arrested fifteen nights in a row by Los Angeles [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65] police and a state law has been passed against it being performed in the state colleges in California [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99]. These are the trials and tribulations. And right now we're waiting for a panel of three federal judges to come and see it and decide if it has redeeming special significance. [Audience laughter]. And if they don't think it is, we'll take it to the Supreme Court [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11201] and see what they think. And, the play has two characters in it, Billy the Kid [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44200] and Jean Harlow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q105719]. And they're together in a blue velvet eternity, they both are wearing little beards made out of torn white tissue paper. They're--they only thing on the set with them is a table and two chairs covered with furs and Harlow is wearing a blue gown and she has a purse with her and a mirror and the Kid is dressed in a costume appropriate to his costume--I mean appropriate to his career. And when the curtain opens, there's an orange light shining on him which goes up after the first, about the first thirty seconds. And being that this is a poem in the form of a play, I can only read it, I can't read it properly, I can't be two people, I can't be Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow I can only be the author so I'll have to read it that way where it's actually meant to be a poem and acted by me on a stage, on a shelf with lights. We have a shelf with lights, but that's the best I can do.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:03:41\\nReads selection from The Beard.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:10:29\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:11:02\\nUm, I'm going to read two more tonight. I want to read for a while and then have an intermission and then I'd like to come back on and play some musical pieces that my music guru George Montana has been working on with me and we've been writing some songs together, but I'd like to read poems for maybe half an hour or so first. I want to read some poems called \\\"Mad Sonnets\\\" and I imagine a lot of you know what sons are, what known as sons are, fourteen lines with a legitimate rhyme scheme, and these are not quite exactly like that...Does this microphone sound right? If I stand right here is that okay so that I don't have to lean into it?\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:12:25\\nReads \\\"Mad Sonnet\\\" [from Star].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:14:08\\nAnother \\\"Mad Sonnet\\\", kind of ecological.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:14:23\\nReads [\\\"Mad Sonnet 3\\\" from Star].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:16:03\\nHere's a--I live in San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62], but here's a \\\"Mad Sonnet\\\" that I started in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60], I went to Wall Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11690] on a Saturday morning, I guess you can imagine what it's like during the weekdays, it's a narrow street, buildings stretching up like cliffs on each side of them and on Saturday morning it's cold and empty and you can feel the crush and vibrations from the previous part of the week.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:16:32\\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 13” from Star, published later as “Cold Saturday Mad Sonnet” in Selected Poems].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:17:58\\nI never thought of those signs--they told me I can't smoke up here. It's my life. I'll do what I want, [unintelligible]. [Audience laughter]. The work--I think-are we all, I think I'm waiting for, this technology with which we live in, which is wonderful enough in it's own way, is also costly and [unintelligible], eating up the planet, and I think I'm waiting for an all-chemical science, by means in which we can manifest ourselves through the universe and I guess we'll have to tinker toys like rocket ships and space ships to begin it, but I don't think that's how we'll really do it. And it's become kind of tradition to write songs to science, so I guess I had to do one too.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:19:20\\nReads [“Mad Sonnet 5” from Star].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:20:48\\nI've got a book of poems in a language I call Beast Language, they're about half in English and half in this invented language. The book is called Ghost Tantras, ghost like the German word \\\"gist\\\", g-i-s-t, which means spirit, and I just said \\\"ghost\\\". Why can't ghost be a spirit, why can't we use that in English? And tantra, t-a-n-t-r-a, which is a Hindu form of poetry, it's poetry written in an invented language for magical purposes to bring about changes in the universe. I felt these poems, I felt these poems coming on, and I felt like I had a ball of silence within myself, within my body and I heard these sounds within that ball of silence, and I wrote them down phonetically, so kind of like Marvel comics [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173496], you know where it says \\\"keee\\\" or \\\"rash\\\", k-e-e-e, or r-a-s-h. And I see later that things like this have been done in gnostic Bizantine chants too, which also, is like Marvel comics. \\\"Ka-pow\\\". And some of them were written in San Francisco, some of them were written in airplanes, on the way to Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. I was going to Mexico to bring back cultures of [unintelligible] Mexicana, the sacred [salsavie (?)] mushroom which were grown by scientists in Brooklyn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18419]. And, then upon my return I finished from there. I finished these \\\"Mad Sonnets\\\", there are 99 of them and I don't think you've probably heard anything like them before, and I guess all you can do is just relax. I like to start with one that starts with English because it's not so strange, they're about a third English or half English maybe.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:23:15\\nBegins to perform unnamed sound poem.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:23:19\\nNo, that's not it...Where'd George go? George? [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:24:00\\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #51” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:25:42\\nHere's another one that starts in English, it starts in Spanish. Just went to Spanish, [unintelligible] George is.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:25:57\\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #54” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:27:45\\nI just had a lot of microphone trouble in Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435] too. I don't know what. It's alright?\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:27:55\\nPerforms “Ghost Tantra #69” [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:29:45\\nHere's one, this was written the day after Marilyn Monroe [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4616] died, August 6, 1962.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:30:11\\nReads \\\"Ghost Tantra #39\\\" [published later in Ghost Tantras].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:31:37\\nYou've got a tourist card in the back of the room [(?)] Is everybody relaxed? Cause I'm not. Eddie in [unintelligible] was dismissed recently and I guess this poem had something to do with it. And, the poem is the ending of, it's the sexual ending of a very long poem called \\\"Dark Brown\\\" I see nothing wrong in taking any sexual part of the poem from any other part of the poem, and the sexual writing today will be viewed in fifty years or a hundred years much the way we view nature poetry today in the 19th century, because some [unintelligible] classes we kept bringing up the fact that for our [unintelligible] today if you were to look at the atmosphere or the air we breathe, the primary part of our environment is either other human bodies or concrete and we choose human bodies rather than the concrete which seems to be a pretty good choice. I think that given the changes that are going on today, I believe we won't be able to say anything. If we can say anything now. If we can say anything anytime but I mean, I think this will be looked upon as [unintelligible] Nature poetry, Shelley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q93343] and Keats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q82083]were pulling cockney school in their day, which of course was all there is for Shelley since he was a [unintelligible] and probably some of Keats although it was worse since he was a cockney. [Audience laughter]. They were insulted for their new nature poetries, and this too. I'd like to read some like, preliminary stanzas of that poem, and then read part of the longer section which seems to have to do with the [unintelligible]. In Eddie's defense I'll say that the London Times [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50008] literary supplement found that this is [unintelligible]. The poem is written in independent stanzas, I'd like to think of the stanzas as being independent in the way an organism is, and the totality of the poem in the totality in a way an--the way a primitive--and this is a primitive organism is comprised of [unintelligible] individuals to make up its [unintelligible] of being. The poem is called \\\"Dark Brown\\\" and I've just opened it to the page I wanted to. The stanza I wanted to.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:35:21\\nReads \\\"Dark Brown\\\" from Dark Brown.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:37:48\\nReads [\\\"The black black black damned and undreamy odem the undersoul\\\" from Dark Brown].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:40:00\\nAnother poem. Okay, have I justified enough? Now's your chance to go home. I'm going to read the tough part.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:40:23\\nReads [“Fuck Ode” from Dark Brown].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:50:00\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:50:15\\nI'll take a break. George and I are going to play, George Montana and I, and I won't guarantee anything about it as my fingers are feeling very clumsy tonight. I'll be playing an instrument but I know George will play for us, so if you hear any faults in the playing, it's me not George. I want to take like, at least, I want to take a ten minute break and anybody who'd like to stay is welcome to stay, and if you'd like to go, go, and if you want to leave during the music if you don't like the music for god's sake go. Thank you. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:51:09\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:12\\nI'm kind of nervous, us going through it again.\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n00:51:19\\n[IUnintelligible].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:23\\nSure, let's see if it picks up.\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n00:51:24\\nI think it's picking up\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:25\\nYeah?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n00:51:26\\nYeah.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:27\\nCan you hear us whispering?\\n \\nAudience\\n00:51:28\\nYes.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:51:30\\nAmbient Sound [music].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:41\\nLet's see what it sounds like.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n00:51:43\\nIs it picking up? Can you hear in the back? Can you hear in the back row? Yeah, I think I lost that pic already. Christ. \\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n00:52:17\\nPerform unnamed song.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:01:41\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:01:56\\nUm, I don't think I can sing. Do you want to do that one?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:02:00\\nAh, okay.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:02:04\\nShall we tell them it's a new song? Why don't you tell them?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:02:07\\nThis is a song that Michael and I just have done, so I don't know the words by heart yet. So here it is.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:02:19\\nAnd I haven't learned this melody very well yet. Let's get coordinated together. You set the [unintelligible]. You wanna sing it through three times? \\n\\nUnknown\\n01:02:41\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:02:57\\nIs this picking up alright? Can you hear it clear, loud enough? No? [Audience laughter]. Get out. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:03:24\\nPerform unnamed song.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:10:50\\nApplause.\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:10:59\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:11:39\\nThese are called technical difficulties. By the way we can smoke on the stage now because the lights are off in the auditorium. That's the fire alarm. [Audience laughter].\\nWant to play the “Bells of Moscow”?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:12:22\\nHow about the other [unintelligible].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:12:31\\nI don't think I'm up to...\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:12:40\\nWe're going to try to do the Allen Ginsberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711] \\\"For President Walt\\\".\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:12:43\\nI think I'm too scared to. We'll try it. I might be too--can you hear alright? I might be too scared. This isn't very complicated, isn't it a two chord one?\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:13:04\\nPerform \\\"For President Walt\\\" by Allen Ginsberg.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:13:20\\nI can't remember the words.\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:13:31\\nPerform \\\"For President Walt\\\" by Allen Ginsberg.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:16:29\\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:16:39\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:16:45\\nI was just thinking you'd play it your way fast. No, let's do a non-vocal.\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:17:03\\nOkay, which one.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:17:05\\nWhat about \\\"The Bells of Moscow\\\"?\\n \\nGeorge Montana\\n01:17:06\\nThat one?\\n \\nUnknown\\n01:17:11\\nAmbient Sound [voices]. \\n\\nGeorge Montana\\n01:17:15\\nWe'll play for you a little instrumental one it's called \\\"The Bells of Moscow\\\".\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:17:20\\nNamed today.\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:17:56\\nPerform \\\"The Bells of Moscow\\\".\\n \\nAudience\\n01:23:06\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:23:17\\nI don't think that was picking up here. Alright. Or I was too close. More music lovers are leaving. I don't know, we could try the [unintelligible] thing. \\n\\nUnknown\\n01:23:40\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:24:12\\nGeorge and I usually do this in my front room. With no light but a candle and the incense, but we can smoke there of course. This is a song by William Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513].\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:24:59\\nPerform \\\"How sweet I roam’d from field to field\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19049519] by William Blake.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:30:25\\nApplause.\\n \\nMichael McClure\\n01:30:46\\nHow about, um, Dvořák’s [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7298] 43rd auto-harp duet? Which one is that?\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:31:44\\nBegin to perform unnamed song.\\n \\nMichael McClure and George Montana\\n01:31:58\\nPerform unnamed song.\\n \\nAudience\\n01:35:52\\nApplause. \\n\\nUnknown\\n01:35:57\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nMichael McClure\\n01:36:12\\nGood night.\\n \\nAudience \\n01:36:28\\nApplause. \\n \\nEND\\n01:37:00\\n\",\"notes\":\"Michael McClure reads poems collected in The Beards (Coyote, 1967), Star (Grove Press, 1970), Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969), and Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967). McClure also performs a number of songs with George Montana.\\n\\n00:00- Unknown male introduces Michael McClure and George Montana.\\n00:29- Michael McClure introduces the reading, and selection from “The Beards”. [INDEX: four-letter words, offended audience, poem in the form of a play, arrested, Los Angeles Police, state laws, state colleges in California, federal judges, Supreme Court, Billy the Kid, Jean Harlow, set of the play/poem, character’s costumes, stage.]\\n03:41- Michael McClure reads selection from “The Beards”. [INDEX: selection begins on first page of the play/poem, The Beards (Coyote, 1967).]\\n11:02- Introduces “Mad Sonnet 1” series, first line “The plumes of love are black...”. [INDEX: reading arrangement, intermission, musical pieces, George Montana, songs,       “Mad Sonnets”, fourteen lines, rhyme scheme; from The New Book / A Book of Torture  \\t(Grove, 1961) and collected in Star (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n12:25- Reads “Mad Sonnet 1” first line “The plumes of love are black...”.\\n14:08- Introduces “Mad Sonnet 3” first line “Tiny mammals walk on white between the    yellow...” [INDEX: ecological; from Star  (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n14:23- Reads  “Mad Sonnet 3” first line “Tiny mammals walk on white between the   yellow...”\\n16:03- Introduces “Mad Sonnet 13” first line “On cold Saturday I walked in the empty      \\tvalley of Wall Street...”. [INDEX: San Francisco, New York, Wall Street, Saturday        \\tmorning, buildings, cliffs; from Star (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n16:32- Reads “Mad Sonnet 13 ” first line “On cold Saturday I walked in the empty valley of Wall Street...”.\\n17:58- Introduces “To Science”, published as “Mad Sonnet 5”. [INDEX: no-smoking signs in auditorium, technology, planet, all-chemical science, universe, rocket ships, space ships, tradition, songs written for science; from Star (Grove Press, 1970)]\\n19:20- Reads “To Science”.\\n20:48- Introduces poem from Ghost Tantras “#51” first line “I love to think of the red-purple rose...”. [INDEX: book of poems, Beast Language, half English, half in invented language, Ghost Tantras, German word “gist”, ghost, spirit, English, tantra, Hindu form of poetry, magical poetry, changes in the universe, body, Marvel Comic strips, some written in San Francisco, some written in airplanes, Mexico, Mexicana, Mexican sacred mushroom, scientists in Brooklyn, “Mad Sonnets”, 99 poems; from Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969)]\\n23:15- Begins to read unknown poem in Beast language.\\n23:19- Stops reading unknown poem. [INDEX: wrong poem, George Montana.]\\n24:00- Reads poem “Ghost Tantara #51”\\n25:42- Introduces poem first line “The motion of cool air shudders my shoulders...”.   [INDEX: English, Spanish, George Montana; from unknown source]\\n25:57- Reads first line “The motion of cool air shudders my shoulders...”.\\n27:45- Talks about prior reading in Buffalo, New York. [INDEX: microphone problems, Buffalo, New York.]\\n27:55- Reads “Ghost Tantra #69” first line Ooor greeeooossshhh strato, butterfly, beaks and pants...”. [INDEX: from Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969)]\\n29:45- Introduces poem “Ghost Tantra #39 first line “Marilyn Monroe today...”. [INDEX: \\twritten the day after Marilyn Monroe’s death, August 6, 1962; from Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons, 1969)]\\n30:11- Reads “Ghost Tantra #39”\\n31:37- Introduces “Dark Brown”. [INDEX: Eddie [unknown reference], sexual ending, long poem, fifty years into the future, 19th century, nature poetry, atmosphere, air,   \\tenvironment, human bodies, concrete, changes, [Percy] Shelley, [John] Keats, cockney, stanzas, London Times literary supplement, independent stanzas, organism; from Dark    Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967)]\\n35:21- Reads “Dark Brown”.\\n37:48- Reads poem, first line “The black, black, black damned and un-dreamy...”. [INDEX: from Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967)]\\n40:00- Introduces poem, “(Fuck Ode)” first line “The huge figures fucking...”. [INDEX:       justification of poems, from Dark Brown (Dave Haselwood Books, 1967)]\\n40:23- Reads “(Fuck Ode)”.\\n50:15- Michael McClure introduces a break and the second part of the reading. [INDEX: George Montana, break, instruments, music.]\\n51:09.06- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\n00:00- Michael McClure and George Montana whisper to each other away from the microphone.\\n00:21- McClure and Montana begin to play unknown instruments, perhaps sitars.\\n00:33- Play first song. [Unknown song, no lyrics, only instrumental.]\\n10:47- McClure and Montana discuss which song to play next.\\n10:58- Montana introduces song. [INDEX: new song.]\\n11:10- McClure introduces song. [INDEX: melody, co-ordinated, singing.]\\n12:15- Play second song, George Montana sings. [Unknown song.]\\n19:50- McClure and Montana discuss playlist, inaudible to microphone.\\n20:30- McClure introduces the next song, “For President Walt” by Allen Ginsberg. [INDEX: smoking, auditorium, “Bells of Moscow”]\\n21:55- Plays song “For President Walt” by Allen Ginsberg, McClure sings.\\n25:35- McClure and Montana discuss next song, “The Bells of Moscow”.\\n26:46- Play song “The Bells of Moscow”.\\n32:08- McClure and Montana discuss next song, “Song: How sweet I roam’d from field to field” by William Blake [INDEX: practice at home, candles, incense, smoking.]\\n33:50- Play “Song: How sweet I roam’d from field to field” by William Blake.\\n39:37- McClure introduces song, first line “Takes a hundred sixty-five-thousand chicks to lay a railway from here to Chicago...”. [INDEX: Vorshack’s 43 auto-harp duet]\\n40:35- Play song, first line “Takes a hundred sixty-five-thousand chicks to lay a railway   from here to Chicago...”.\\n45:51.44- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/michael-mcclure-and-george-montana-at-sgwu-1968/\"}]"],"score":1.0},{"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":1.0},{"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":1.0},{"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":1.0},{"id":"4090","cataloger_name":["Megan,Butchart"],"partnerInstitution":["University of British Columbia, Okanagan"],"collection_source_collection":["Fred Wah fonds"],"source_collection_label":["Fred Wah fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb at UBCO"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_id":["2022.003"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["35. Charles Olson at Beloit College"],"item_title_source":["Title taken from back of box"],"item_title_note":["Title on box: 35.\n\nSide A title: n/a\n\nSide B title: n/a\n\nBack of box: Charles Olson at Beloit College (Tape for Poetry and Truth)\nSide 1A: Monday, March 25th, 1968\nSide 1B: Wednesday, March 27th\nSide 2A: Friday, March 29th\nSide 2B: Reading from Maximus Poems, Tuesday, March 26th\nSpeed: 3.75\n\nAccompanying information: n/a"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Olson, Charles"],"creator_names_search":["Olson, Charles"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/270911900\",\"name\":\"Olson, 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on box.\"},{\"date\":\"1968-03-26\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date of Charles Olson reading.\",\"source\":\"Date listed on box.\"},{\"date\":\"1968-03-27\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date of Charles Olson lecture.\",\"source\":\"Date listed on box.\"},{\"date\":\"1968-03-29\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date of Charles Olson lecture.\",\"source\":\"Date listed on box.\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3839806\",\"venue\":\"Beloit College\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"Beloit, Wisconsin, USA\",\"latitude\":\"42.5009819\",\"longitude\":\"-89.0157777411969\"}]"],"Address":["Beloit, Wisconsin, USA"],"Venue":["Beloit College"],"contents":["Recordings of Charles Olson lectures on March 25, 27, 29, 1968 and reading from Maximus poems \"March 26, 1968 at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Tape 35 in Fred Wah's catalogue.\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Olson, Charles. \\\"Maximus.\\\"\"}]"],"_version_":1853670550012952576,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.597Z","score":1.0},{"id":"4160","cataloger_name":["Megan,Butchart"],"partnerInstitution":["University of British Columbia, Okanagan"],"collection_source_collection":["George Bowering fonds"],"source_collection_label":["George Bowering fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb at UBCO"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_id":["2019.003"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["1968 Election Year - U.S.A."],"item_title_source":["Title written on cassette."],"item_title_note":["Title on case: n/a\n\nSide A title: 1968 Election Year - U.S.A.\n\nSide B title: n/a\n\nJ-card description: n/a"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Home recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Bowering, George","Bowering, Angela","Kiyooka, Roy"],"creator_names_search":["Bowering, George","Bowering, Angela","Kiyooka, Roy"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Recordist\",\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/93542147\",\"name\":\"Bowering, Angela\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"A & B\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/1114/UBCO_Bowering_2019_003_001_a.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Maxell Compact Cassette 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To be timestamped."],"contents":["Accompanying card reads: \n\"1 A 0-585 R. Duncan: Structures of Rhyme I-XXVIII SUNYAB Monday, July 15, 1968 \n1B 0-734 R. Duncan: Poetry reading. Buffalo Festival of the Arts Albright-Knox Art Gallery Auditorium March 6, 1968 Intro Robt. Creeley Passage 30, 31, & 32 have been deleted.\n2 A Reel R. Duncan: \nPassages /-30 May 1, 1967 SUNYAB, \nPassages 31-32 at Albright Knox March 6th 1968\n2B 0-707 \"The Earth\" - 32\""],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Stored in container with 2018.002.065 and 2018.002.067.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Digitized. Not transcribed.\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670550972399616,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:55.538Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5675","cataloger_name":["Kate,Moffatt"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Brother Antoninus reading at the Honors College, (Wesleyan University) on April 30, 1968 #658"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Everson, William"],"creator_names_search":["Everson, William"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/41848407/\",\"name\":\"Everson, William \",\"dates\":\"1912-1994\",\"notes\":\"Also known as Brother Antoninus\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/5855/Reading in BC_MsC199_658.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"Second generation from Reel-to-Reel\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Poor\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Excellent\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"658 side1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:45:29\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"43.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"658 side2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:45:26\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"44.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-04-30\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9212411\",\"venue\":\"Honors College ( Wesleyan University)\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, CT\",\"latitude\":\"41.5565\",\"longitude\":\"-72.6570\"}]"],"Address":["45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, CT"],"Venue":["Honors College ( Wesleyan University)"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"contents":["Side\tTrack\tNo.\tComments\nOne\t\t\tTime: 30.09 mins.\n\t\t000\t\n\t\t010\tTape begins in mid-reading: “The Way of Life & the Way of Death”\n\t\t128\t“First Meditation”\n\t\t233\t“Immortal Strangeness”\n\t\t760\t“Second Meditation”\n\t\t846\t“The Rose of Solitude”\n\t\t1011\tSide one ends\nTwo\t\t\tTime: 27.61 mins.\n\t\t000\t\n\t\t003\t“Third Meditation”\n\t\t036\t“From the Rock Untombed”\n\t\t142\t“The Raging of the Rose”\n\t\t408\t“Fourth Meditation”\n\t\t526\t“The face I know”\n\t\t767\t“Fifth Meditation” – More of a monologue against women\n\t\t\tOr so it seems\n\t\t846\t“The Afterglow of the Rose”\n\t\t930\tSide two ends\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553742737408,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.173Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5682","cataloger_name":["Ben,Joseph"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Tony Towle reading at the New York YM-YWHA on November 25, 1968 #529"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Towle, Tony"],"creator_names_search":["Towle, Tony"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/92742473\",\"name\":\"Towle, Tony\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/5863/529.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"Second generation from Reel-to-Reel\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Very Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"529-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:18:44\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"19.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"529-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:14:50\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"15.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-11-25\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3729655969\",\"venue\":\"YM-YWHA Poetry Center\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128, United States\",\"latitude\":\"40.78306\",\"longitude\":\"-73.95277\"}]"],"Address":["1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128, United States"],"Venue":["YM-YWHA Poetry Center"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"contents":["Side\tTrack\tNo.\tComments\nOne\t\t\tTony Towle reads selections from his poems\n\t\t000\tMcGraw-Hill warning against unauthorized use of poems on tape; introduction of the poet\n\t\t030\tTony Towle reads “George Towle”\n\t\t052\t“Poem: for Frank Lima”\n\t\t075\t“Poem: North”\n\t\t100\t“Poem” (“Today is Thursday…”)\n\t\t115\t“(For Bob, Diane, Henry, Irma and Myself)”\n\t\t142\t“Poets, Inc.: For Kenward Elmslie”\n\t\t160\t“For Irma During April”\n\t\t184\t“Daybreak”\n\t\t212\t“The Country Life”\n\t\t284\t“Occasional Poem”\n\t\t302\tSide one ends\nTwo\t\t000\t“Water Island: July 25, 1968”\n\t\t027\t“Poem” (“Custard voices and sunrise”)\n\t\t040\t“The City in the Throes of Despair”\n\t\t063\t“Untitled”\n\t\t102\t“Notes on Velasquez”\n\t\t116\t“Macy’s”\n\t\t142\t“Poem” (“Here we all are…”)\n\t\t152\t“The Allegorical Figure of Brooklyn\n\t\t162\t“Spring”\n\t\t185\t“Minutes Pass”\n\t\t195\t“November 25, 1968”\n\t\t215\t“Music”\n\t\t224\tEnd of reading"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Tony Towle Reading at The New York YM/YWHA November 25th, 1968\\nSide 1 18:20\\nSide 2 14:10\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553744834562,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.173Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5700","cataloger_name":["Ben,Joseph"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Dr. Ralph N. Maud lecture on Dylan Thomas at Fairleigh Dickinson University on March 20, 1968 #540a"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Maud, Ralph","Thomas, Dylan"],"creator_names_search":["Maud, Ralph","Thomas, Dylan"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66537561\",\"name\":\"Maud, Ralph\",\"dates\":\"1928-2014\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\",\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/73860698\",\"name\":\"Thomas, Dylan\",\"dates\":\"1914-1953\",\"notes\":\"Topic of Discussion\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/5994/Reading in BC_MsC199_540a.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"Second generation from Reel-to-Reel\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Very Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"540a-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:45:16\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"43.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"540a-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:48:29\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"46.4 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-03-20\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278082419\",\"venue\":\"Fairleigh Dickinson University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"Sagamore Avenue, West Englewood, Teaneck Township, Bergen County, New Jersey, 07666, United States of America\",\"latitude\":\"40.8980\",\"longitude\":\"-74.0303\"}]"],"Address":["Sagamore Avenue, West Englewood, Teaneck Township, Bergen County, New Jersey, 07666, United States of America"],"Venue":["Fairleigh Dickinson University"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"contents":["Side\tTrack\tNo.\tComments\nOne\t\t000\tIntroduction – how Maud became a “specialist” in D.Thomas’ poetry\n\t\t060\t“…words are paramount”, says Maud; reads “Especially when the November wind” (early version of “Especially when the October wind”), which clearly shows Thomas’ commitment to words, “imprisonment” by words\n\t\t108\tKnowledge of meaning of words of Thomas’ poems necessary before any generalizations can be made; that time has come\n\t\t128\tMaud’s vantage point on Thomas gained from association with other poets : Charles Olson, in particular (relates how he knows Olson)\n\t\t195\tMore on vantage point: Imagist Manifesto (1912) of Ezra Pound et al. ; focus on “direct treatment of the Thing”\n\t\t215\t“Objectivist Movement”: keep poet out of it; emphasize “The Thing”\n\t\t218\tReads from Olson’s “Human Universe” essay, which makes same point\n\t\t236\tDylan Thomas’ vantage point: technique, unlike Olson, et al., was to work from words to things\n\t\t249\tFrom Thomas’ letters: Thomas’ admission of being constrained by words, a “freak user of words, not a peot”\n\t\t285\tExamples of how Thomas’ conceits get, not to, but away from “the Thing”\n\t\t339\tProjected verse essay of Charles Olson: form, in poetry, should never be more than an extention of content, but Thomas was constrained by his own choice of forms, syllable counting, etc.\n\t\t375\tForm more important than content to Thomas, Maud says\n\t\t380\tThe “power” of modern poets, such as Ginsberg, Olson\n\t\t420\tNationalist movement in Wales\n\t\t440\tWhat Thomas felt about Wales (reads a 1949 piece by Thomas)\n\t\t500\tThomas “lets down” Maud by being too constrained by words, not being “political” enough, not relevant enough\n\t\t525\tThomas as a historical literary figure”, comparable to Donne\n\t\t558\tThomas as last representative of “age of European decadence”, “age of existentialism”\n\t\t591\tLines from Thomas’ last poem (which was to be called “In country heaven”), Maud’s comments on Thomas’ existentialism\n\t\t700\tQuestions from audience: Re Thomas\n\t\t759\tRe Olson\n\t\t780\tRe Thomas: Maud justifies judging Thomas on grounds that he wanted to be what he was not\n\t\t979\tThomas seems to use words to protect himself from painful/fearful emotions/ideas"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\",\"type\":\"\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553749028867,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.173Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5701","cataloger_name":["Ben,Joseph"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Dr. Ralph N. Maud reading of Charles Olson's Maximus Poems, [1968?] #540b"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Maud, Ralph","Olson, Charles","Oxner, Diane"],"creator_names_search":["Maud, Ralph","Olson, Charles","Oxner, Diane"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66537561\",\"name\":\"Maud, Ralph\",\"dates\":\"1928-2014\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\",\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/27091190\",\"name\":\"Olson, Charles\",\"dates\":\"1910-1970\",\"notes\":\"The topic of Discussion: reading from Olson's Maximus poems.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/313429207\",\"name\":\"Oxner, Diane \",\"dates\":\"1928-\",\"notes\":\"The Blue nose song \",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/5996/Reading in BC_MsC199_540b.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"Second generation from Reel-to-Reel\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Very Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"540b-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:38:06\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"39.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"540a-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:38:04\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"38.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Exact date and Location is uncertain: [1968?]\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}]"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"contents":["Two\t\t000\tLetter 10\n\t\t009\tLetter 10:1\n\t\t019\tLetter 10: Conant’s\n\t\t028\tLetter 10:3\n\t\t034\tLetter 10:4\n\t\t047\tMaximus, to Gloucester, Letter II\n\t\t061\tLetter II: 1\n\t\t075\tLetter II: 2\n\t\t091\tLetter II: 3\n\t\t100\tLetter 23\n\t\t133\tA Plantation a beginning\n\t\t167\tCapt. Christopher Levett (of York)\n\t\t224\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you\n\t\t228\tI.\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you: 1\n\t\t234\tI.\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you: 2\n\t\t243\tI.\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you: 3\n\t\t256\tI.\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you: 4\n\t\t262\tI.\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you: 5\n\t\t274\tI.\tMaximus of Gloucester, to you: 6\n\t\t288\tMaximus, to Gloucester Letter 2\n\t\t294\tLetter 2:1\n\t\t303\tLetter 2:2\n\t\t333\tLetter 2:3\n\t\t346\tLetter 2:4\n\t\t350\tLetter 3\n\t\t364\tLetter 3:1\n\t\t371\tLetter 3:2\n\t\t392\tLetter 3:3\n\t\t418\tLetter 3:4\n\t\t421\tThe Songs of Maximus, Song 1\n\t\t430\tSong 2\n\t\t436\tSong 3\n\t\t455\tSong 4\n\t\t465\tSong 5\n\t\t468\tSong 6\n\t\t472\tLetter 5\n\t\t494\tLetter 5:1\n\t\t504\tLetter 5:2\n\t\t519\tLetter 5:3\n\t\t542\tLetter 5:4\n\t\t562\tLetter 5:5\n\t\t588\tLetter 5:6\n\t\t599\tLetter 5:7\n\t\t609\tLetter 5:8\n\t\t634\tLetter 5:9\n\t\t640\tLetter 6\n\t\t722\tMaud briefly answers question, “What is ‘polis’?”\n\t\t742\tLetter 7\n\t\t756\tLetter 7:1\n\t\t791\tLetter 7:2\n\t\t819\tLetter 7:3\n\t\t832\tLetter 9:1\n\t\t843\tLetter 9:2 (fades out at “and these pages…”)\n\t\t850\tThe Blue nose song (Diane Oxner)"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\",\"type\":\"\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553750077440,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.173Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5760","cataloger_name":["Mozhgan,Nourafkan"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Robert Creeley lecturing and reading at SFU theater on February 9, 1968 #498"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Creeley, Robert"],"creator_names_search":["Creeley, Robert"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109562114\",\"name\":\"Creeley, Robert\",\"dates\":\"1926-2005\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/6067/Reading in BC_MsC199_498.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"498-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:38:07\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"37.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"498-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:37:58\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"37.3 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-02-09\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/102254132\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University \",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Dr, Burnaby, BC, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"49.2790\",\"longitude\":\"-122.9256\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Dr, Burnaby, BC, Canada"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University "],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\",\"type\":\"\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553958744067,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.384Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5799","cataloger_name":["Ben,Joseph"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["The Tenth Muse: Paul Mariah Reading from \"Concordance with Dali\" on July 3rd, 1968 #550"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_title_note":["First Drafts. One of 25 copies, This is Number 2"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Mariah, Paul"],"creator_names_search":["Mariah, Paul"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/60615411\",\"name\":\"Mariah, Paul\",\"dates\":\"1938-1996\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/6118/Reading in BC_MsC199_550.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Very Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"550-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:20:37\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"20.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"550-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:20:32\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"20.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-07-03\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/264779701\",\"venue\":\"\",\"notes\":\"That's the only location written on the J-card. It could be the location where the reading happened \",\"address\":\"789 Noe Street, San Francisco, California 98114\",\"latitude\":\"37.75647\",\"longitude\":\"-122.43215\"}]"],"Address":["789 Noe Street, San Francisco, California 98114"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Side 1 20 min\\nSide 2 15 min\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553971326978,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.384Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5816","cataloger_name":["Ben,Joseph"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["The Dial-A-Poem Poets: Big Ego, part 2 of 2 #560b"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Sanders, Ed","Burroughs, William S.","Schiff, Harris","Brown, Otis","Oppenheimer, Joel","The Fugs","Oldenburg, Claes","Levertov, Denise","Greenwald, Ted","Tropp, Steve","Tropp, Gloria","Brodey, Jim","Ashley, Robert","Adam, Helen","Waldman, Anne","Thomas, Lorenzo","Reed, Ishmael","Elmslie, Kenward","Heidsieck, Bernard","Hamilton, Steve","O'Hara, Frank","Padgett, Ron","Gnazzo, Anthony","Brooks, Eugene","Myles, Eileen","Johnson, Joe"],"creator_names_search":["Sanders, Ed","Burroughs, William S.","Schiff, Harris","Brown, Otis","Oppenheimer, Joel","The Fugs","Oldenburg, Claes","Levertov, Denise","Greenwald, Ted","Tropp, Steve","Tropp, Gloria","Brodey, Jim","Ashley, Robert","Adam, Helen","Waldman, Anne","Thomas, Lorenzo","Reed, Ishmael","Elmslie, Kenward","Heidsieck, Bernard","Hamilton, Steve","O'Hara, Frank","Padgett, Ron","Gnazzo, Anthony","Brooks, Eugene","Myles, Eileen","Johnson, Joe"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/22183708\",\"name\":\"Sanders, Ed\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/108916275\",\"name\":\"Burroughs, William S.\",\"dates\":\"1914-1997\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/55497495\",\"name\":\"Schiff, Harris\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/49478226\",\"name\":\"Brown, Otis\",\"dates\":\"1974-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/57449787\",\"name\":\"Oppenheimer, Joel\",\"dates\":\"1930-1988\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/5237155105825776320007\",\"name\":\"The Fugs\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/85806900\",\"name\":\"Oldenburg, Claes\",\"dates\":\"1929-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/9868894\",\"name\":\"Levertov, Denise\",\"dates\":\"1923-1997\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/1267338\",\"name\":\"Greenwald, Ted \",\"dates\":\"1942-2016\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Tropp, Steve \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Tropp, Gloria \",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/11344215\",\"name\":\"Brodey, 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him\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Recordist\"]},{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/61680324\",\"name\":\"Myles, Eileen\",\"dates\":\"1949-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Johnson, Joe\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/6136/Reading in BC_MsC199_560_2 (1).jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"Second generation from Reel-to-Reel\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Very Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"560_2-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:37:51\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"52.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"560_2-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:37:53\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"52.4 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-06-01\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Ed Sanders recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-04-09\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"W.S. Burroughs recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-05-18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Harris Schiff recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-10-28\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Otis Brown recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1976-10-06\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Joel Oppenheimer recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1976-04-19\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Claes Oldenburg recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-04-20\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Denise Levertov recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-04-27\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Ted Greenwald recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1975-01\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Anthony J Gnazzo recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1976-03-31\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Jim Brodey recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"(1977?)-05\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Robert Ashley recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-01-(5?)\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Helen Adam recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1974-07-30\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Anne Waldman recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-01-29\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Joe Johnson\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-03-02\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Lorenzo Thomas recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-01-29\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Ishmael Reed recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1978-01-29\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Kenward Elmslie recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1974-10-09\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Mona Da Vinci recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1976-12-22\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Steve Hamilton recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1987-09\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Frank O’Hara recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1978-02-08\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Ron Padgett recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-12-07\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Eileen Myles recording \",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1977-12\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Steve and Gloria Tropp recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1965\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Ed Sanders, The Fugs recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"},{\"date\":\"1976\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Bernard Heidsieck recording\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/359286999\",\"venue\":\"St. Marks Church\",\"notes\":\"Recording Location of:\\nPatti Smith, \\\"The Histories of the Universe\\\"\\nRobert Wilson & Christopher Knowles, \\\"A Letter to Queen Victoria: The Sundance Kid is Beautiful\\\"\\nMichael Lally, \\\"All of the Above\\\"\\nRobert Lowell: \\\"Ulysses and Circe\\\"\",\"address\":\"West Main Street, Port Leyden, Lewis County, New York, 13433, United States\",\"latitude\":\"41.22844\",\"longitude\":\"-73.12928\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/176290\",\"venue\":\"Fillmore East\",\"notes\":\"Ed Sanders performs there on June 1, 1968\",\"address\":\"Fillmore, Allegany County, New York, 14735, United States\",\"latitude\":\"42.4671\",\"longitude\":\"-78.1105\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278346578\",\"venue\":\"The Museum of Modern Art\",\"notes\":\"Glaes Oldenburg reading on April 19, 1976\",\"address\":\"11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States\",\"latitude\":\"40.76160\",\"longitude\":\"-73.97783\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2833530\",\"venue\":\"\",\"notes\":\"Anthony J. Gnazzo reading in January, 1975\",\"address\":\"Oakland City, California, USA\",\"latitude\":\"37.7789\",\"longitude\":\"-122.1954\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23566622\",\"venue\":\"Mills College\",\"notes\":\"Robert Ashley reading in May\",\"address\":\" 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94613, United States\",\"latitude\":\"37.7810\",\"longitude\":\"-122.1825\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/391232001\",\"venue\":\"Naropa University (Institute)\",\"notes\":\"Anne Waldman reading on July 30, 1974\",\"address\":\"2130 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder, CO 80302, United States\",\"latitude\":\"40.01406\",\"longitude\":\"-105.26694\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/357606922\",\"venue\":\"WBAI-FM (New York)\",\"notes\":\"Steve and Gloria Tropp reading in Dec, 1977 and Kenward Elmslie reading on January 29, 1977\",\"address\":\"New York City, USA\",\"latitude\":\"40.74844\",\"longitude\":\"-73.98570\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/170727\",\"venue\":\"\",\"notes\":\"Monda Da Vinci reading \",\"address\":\"Bloomfield, New Jersey\",\"latitude\":\"40.8128\",\"longitude\":\"-74.1872\"}]"],"Address":["West Main Street, Port Leyden, Lewis County, New York, 13433, United States","Fillmore, Allegany County, New York, 14735, United States","11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States","Oakland City, California, USA"," 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94613, United States","2130 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder, CO 80302, United States","New York City, USA","Bloomfield, New Jersey"],"Venue":["St. Marks Church","Fillmore East","The Museum of Modern Art","Mills College","Naropa University (Institute)","WBAI-FM (New York)"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"contents":["Two\n000\nEd Sanders “A Monologue” (the Fugs)\n023\nW.S. Burroughs excerpt from Naked Lunch : The Laboratory has been Locked for Three Hours Solid”\n047\nHarris Schiff “15 Years Passes”, “Dollar Bill”\n067\nOtis Brown “Boneless Chicken”\n087\nJoel Oppenheimer “Cities, This City”\n118\nThe Fugs “Saran Wrap” by Ed Sanders\n133\nClaes Oldenburg “June Was”, “Panodramdra”\n148\nDenise Levertov “Woman Alone” from “Homage to Pavese”\n190\nTed Greenwald “Friends”\n216\nAnthony J Gnaggo “Hisnia and Hernia”\n275\nSteve and Gloria Tropp “Snow White”\n289\nJim Brodey “Homeward Bound”\n314\nRobert Ashley “Interiors With Flash”\n358\nEileen Myles “Tuesday Brightness”\n370\nHelen Adam “Apartment on Twin Peaks”\n452\nAnne Waldman “Light and shadow”\n547\nJoe Johnson “Fly Ho”\n558\nLorenzo Thomas “Wonders”\n589\nIshmael Reed “Sky Diving”\n631\nKenward Elmslie “The Woolworth Song”\n676\nMona Da Vinci excerpt from “The Sacred Wood of Art : The Last Supper of Mona Da Vinci”\n731\nBernard Heidsieck “Canal Street No. 19”\n782\nSteve Hamilton”Promise”\n861\nFrank O’Hara “Poem”, “Poem”\n907\nRon Padgett “No title”"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\",\"type\":\"\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553975521280,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.384Z","score":1.0},{"id":"5823","cataloger_name":["Ben,Joseph"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. 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Smith”\n164\n“Where There Ain’t No Rain”\n184\n“for Charles Hassler & Sally Jo Knowles”\n225\n“my grandfather, who was also Irish”\n247\n“After The Rain & Before The Sun”\n310\n“Gang Bang/A Group Showing”\n368\n“How Many Maggots In Whose Brain???”\n406\n“O Dirty Bird Yr Gizzard’s Too Big & Full of Sand”\n448\n“Climb The Sides Of This World”\n484\n“salt water swirls at the stone”\n499\n“Poem On My Birthday – 1964”\n522\n“Poem after an unsuccessful foray into a pawnshop where”\n565\n“Poem beginning with a poem by Michael McClure”\n591\n“Did You Ever Wonder Why So Many People Don’t Have Children???”\n617\n“The Bears”\n637\n“The Wind Was Out Of The North”\n664\n“Rose Hips & Blackberries”\n684\n“A Wolf & a Bear"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"30 min\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553977618432,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:58.384Z","score":1.0},{"id":"6255","cataloger_name":["Mozhgan,Nourafkan"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Lionel Kearns reading his poems at the SFU Theater on January 18, 1968 #545"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Kearns, Lionel"],"creator_names_search":["Kearns, Lionel"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784380\",\"name\":\"Kearns, Lionel \",\"dates\":\"1937-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/7960/Reading in BC_MsC199_545.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"Second generation from Reel-to-Reel\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Very Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"545-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:30:14\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"30.3 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"545-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:30:18\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"30.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-01-18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/7587825763\",\"venue\":\"SFU Theater\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Dr, Burnaby, BC, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"49.27976\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91690\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Dr, Burnaby, BC, Canada"],"Venue":["SFU Theater"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\\nSide 3 36:15\\nSide 4 26:00\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670555060797440,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:59.437Z","score":1.0},{"id":"6231","cataloger_name":["Kate,Moffatt"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. 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he then reads from a book they wrote together\n\t\t429\tSide 1 ends\nTwo\t\t000\t\n\t\t001\tFreewheelin’ Frank continues his rading from the book he & Michael McClure wrote together\n\t\t014\tFreewheelin’ Frank discourses with an unidentified individual on the nature of the Hell’s Angels in America\n\t\t[013]?\tConversation cut off momentarily only to resume quickly\n\t\t080\tFrank talks about Hell’s Angels response to the war in Vietnam & the Angel’s in capitalist society\n\t\t197\tTape shifts to Charles Olson talking to a small group.  Only Olson’s voice is truly audible; the rest is a dark murmur\n\t\t233\tOlson cut off\n\t\t428\tSide two ends"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\",\"type\":\"\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670555070234624,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:59.437Z","score":1.0},{"id":"7370","cataloger_name":["Maya,Schwartz"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["SFU Archives Readings"],"source_collection_label":["SFU Archives Readings"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Archives and Records Management"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["A collection of poetry readings and panels that took place at SFU during the 1970s and are located in the SFU Archives. This group includes writers such as Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Livesay, Anne Marriott, Joy Kagawa, P. K. Page, and Irving Layton."],"collection_source_collection_id":["https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-1-2"],"persistent_url":["https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-1-2"],"item_title":["Stephen Black reading James Thurber, March 21, 1968"],"item_title_source":["archive entry, recording"],"item_title_note":["Information taken from https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-3"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Black, Stephen","Thurber, James"],"creator_names_search":["Black, Stephen","Thurber, James"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/9991168/#Black,_Stephen_A.\",\"name\":\"Black, Stephen\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\",\"Performer\",\"Presenter\"]},{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/22149445/#Thurber,_James,_1894-1961.\",\"name\":\"Thurber, James\",\"dates\":\"1894-1961\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"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"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"OBJ-263.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:52:39\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"18.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-03-21\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"archive entry\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=102254132&class=amenity\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Dr W, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Dr W, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670557011148800,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T15:00:01.298Z","score":1.0},{"id":"7371","cataloger_name":["Maya,Schwartz"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["SFU Archives Readings"],"source_collection_label":["SFU Archives Readings"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Archives and Records Management"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["A collection of poetry readings and panels that took place at SFU during the 1970s and are located in the SFU Archives. 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Page, and Irving Layton."],"collection_source_collection_id":["https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-1-2"],"persistent_url":["https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-1-2"],"item_title":["Helene Rosenthal: poets and writers, October 17, 1968"],"item_title_source":["archive entry, recording"],"item_title_note":["Information taken from https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-3"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Rosenthal, Helene"],"creator_names_search":["Rosenthal, Helene"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"https://viaf.org/viaf/187005300/#Rosenthal,_Helene\",\"name\":\"Rosenthal, Helene\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Reader\",\"Performer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"OBJ-264.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:31:42\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"15.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-10-17\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"archive entry\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=102254132&class=amenity\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Dr W, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Dr W, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670557011148801,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T15:00:01.298Z","score":1.0},{"id":"7368","cataloger_name":["Maya,Schwartz"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["SFU Archives Readings"],"source_collection_label":["SFU Archives Readings"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Archives and Records Management"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["A collection of poetry readings and panels that took place at SFU during the 1970s and are located in the SFU Archives. 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Page, and Irving Layton."],"collection_source_collection_id":["https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-1-2"],"persistent_url":["https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-1-2"],"item_title":["John Mills reading Number One, Congress St. March 14, 1968"],"item_title_source":["archive entry, recording"],"item_title_note":["Information taken from https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-231-3"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Mills, John"],"creator_names_search":["Mills, John"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Mills, John\",\"dates\":\"1930-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"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"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"OBJ-262.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:30:20\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"14.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-03-14\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"archive entry\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=102254132&class=amenity\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Dr W, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Dr W, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670557020585993,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T15:00:01.298Z","score":1.0},{"id":"8303","cataloger_name":["Leah,Van Dyk"],"partnerInstitution":["University of Calgary"],"collection_source_collection":["Alden Nowlan fonds"],"source_collection_label":["Alden Nowlan fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["University of Calgary, Archives and Special Collections"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_id":[""],"persistent_url":["https://searcharchives.ucalgary.ca/alden-nowlan-fonds"],"item_title":["Alden Nowlan - 03.29.’68 Acadia University"],"item_title_source":["Transcribed from the artifact"],"item_title_note":["Label on tape box: \"Alden Nowlan - 03.29.'68 Acadia University\"; label on tape, side A: \"Alden reading at Acadia Dolby B\""],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Classroom recording"],"item_identifiers":["[3.24]"],"rights":["The Public Domain Mark (PDM)"],"creator_names":["Cook, Gregory, M."],"creator_names_search":["Cook, Gregory, M."],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/230841225\",\"name\":\"Cook, Gregory, M.\",\"dates\":\"1942-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Interviewer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Nowlan, Alden"],"contributors_names_search":["Nowlan, Alden"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61671170\",\"name\":\"Nowlan, Alden\",\"dates\":\"1933-1983\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"performer_name":["Nowlan, Alden"],"author_name":["Nowlan, Alden"],"Performance_Date":[1968],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"A and B\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"3M\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Nowlan_MsC_301_3.24\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"T00:39:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"1.28 GB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1968-03-29\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Dates taken from container and/or accompanying material.\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/details.html?osmtype=W&osmid=203998377&class=amenity\",\"venue\":\"Acadia University\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"15 University Ave, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"[45.08824955]\",\"longitude\":\"[-64.36658994820328]\"}]"],"Address":["15 University Ave, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada"],"Venue":["Acadia University"],"content_notes":["Greagory Cooktesting mic at beginning\n- [00:00:18] “First Lesson in Theology”\n- [00:00:58] “For Jamil Baroody”\n- [00:04:04] “The Barmaid’s Daughter”\n- [00:04:45] “A Black Plastic Button and a Yellow Yoyo”\n- [00:05:59] “Police Beat”\n- [00:06:64] introduction and “Fireworks”\n- [00:07:44] “On the Nature of Human Compassion”\n- [00:08:43] “The Critic”\n- [00:09:03] “Pop Song”\n- [00:09:42] introduction and “State Visit”\n- [00:11:50] introduction and “The Writer in Residence Poem”\n- [00:13:39] comment from Greg Cook\n- [00:14:19] “Historical Footnote” - [unpublished] \n- [00:15:49] “Playing the Jesus Game”\n- [00:16:46] “The Men in Antonio’s Barber Shop”\n- [00:19:10] “Two Tasmanians” - [unpublished] \n- [00:19:50] “The Bearded Man’s Poem”\n- [00:20:32] “The Mysterious Naked Man”\n- [00:22:19] “The Atheist, Praying”\n- [00:22:49] “Witness to Murder”\n- [00:23:43] introduction and “A great man smells piss…” - [unpublished] \n- [00:25:38] “O’Sullivan’s World”\n- Poems from Bread, Wine and Salt: - [00:27:19] introduction and “Secret Life”; - [00:29:03] “Report from Ottawa”; - [00:30:06] “Verbal Transcription at the Legion Hall in Hartland, New Brunswick”; - [00:30:42] introduction and “A View from the Bridge”; - [00:33:31] “Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick”; - [00:34:37] “A Treaty to be Signed with Guests”\n- [00:35:06] comment from Greg Cook\n- [00:35:17] “A Mug’s Game”\n- [00:37:09] “A Dog Barking at Night”\n- [00:37:54] “Every Man Owes God a Debt”"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"\",\"type\":\"\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\"}]"],"_version_":1853670558519001090,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T15:00:02.734Z","score":1.0}]