Archive by Author

Gibson, Regie 1999

Wednesday, January 27, 1999
Mixed Bag Series – 5 Chicago Performance Poets
with Nina Corwin, Kent Foreman, Maria McCray, and Marvin Tate

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Amazon of song
valkyrie riding astride blue horses
of chanted mystery
you who assassinate
the killer of your
children’s dreams

– Regie Gibson, “Poet Woman”

Broadside of "Poet Woman" by Regie Gibson.

Broadside of “Poet Woman” by Regie Gibson.

Buy this broadside in the Mixed Bag Series⇒

You came through a fissure in the night    Federico
framed in a coat of thorns    Federico
Your frail body a tilde of light
Your body    thin as a bull’s horn

– Regie Gibson, “Federico”

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Listen to this interview with Regie Gibson from Radio Boston:

The Poetry Of Regie Gibson Meets The Saxophone Of Stan Strickland

Boston-based slam poet Regie Gibson performs with saxophonist Stan Strickland.

Watch Regie Gibson perform at TEDxBoston:

Cry havoc | Regie Gibson | TEDxBoston

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. To Thine Own Self Be Hip: a response from Hamlet to young men who have contemplated suicide Former National Poetry Slam Champion Regie Gibson has lectured and performed widely in the U.S., Cuba and Europe and is a recipient of the Absolute Poetry Award.

More info on Regie Gibson⇒

Updike, John

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At night–the light turned off, the filament
Unburdened of its atom-eating charge,
His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low
To touch a swampy source–he thought of death.

– John Updike, “Burning Trash”

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Read this interview with John Updike from the Paris Review:

The Art of Fiction No. 43

John Updike, ca. 1968. In 1966, when John Updike was first asked to do a Paris Review interview, he refused: “Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and weep. Also, I…

How long will our bewildered heirs
marooned in possessions not theirs
puzzle at disposing of these three
cunning feignings of hard candy in glass–
the striped little pillowlike mock-sweets,
the flared end-twists as of transparent paper?

– John Updike, “Venetian Candy”

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Watch John Updike in conversation with the New York Times:


More info on John Updike⇒

Sze, Arthur 1999

Wednesday, February 24, 1999
with Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge and Marilyn Chin

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Meandering across a field with wild asparagus,
I write with my body the characters for grass,
water, transformation, ache to be one with spring.

– Arthur Sze, “Crisscross”

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Read this interview with Arthur Sze from The Drunken Boat:

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Redwinged blackbirds in the cattail pond–
today I kicked and flipped a wing
in the sand and saw it was a sheared
off flicker’s. Yesterday’s rain has left

– Arthur Sze, “Morning Antlers”

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Watch Arthur Sze discuss the influence of American poetry in China as part of American Poets Abroad:

Arthur Sze: American Poets Abroad

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More info on Arthur Sze⇒

Chin, Marilyn 1999

Wednesday, February 24, 1999
with Mei-Mei Berssenbrugger and Arthur Sze

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Yellow gold is meaningless
Learning is better than pearls
A woman without brilliance
Leaves nothing but dim children

– Marilyn Chin, “from Two Inch Fables”

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Read this interview with Marilyn Chin from the Los Angeles Review of Books:

Elegies, Allergies, and Other Elusions: Marilyn Chin Talks Hard Love | Los Angeles Review of Books

To “make it new” might just mean a Chinese American woman poet writing some badass polyvocal poems to take on the Modernists….

My shadow followed me to San Diego
silently, she never complained.
No green card, no identity pass,
she is wedded to my fate.

– Marilyn Chin, “Get Rid of the X”

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Watch Marilyn Chin read her poetry at the Zalaznick Reading Series:

Reading by Poet and Writer Marilyn Chin – Thursday, November 12, 2015

Marilyn Chin reads poetry from her award-winning collection,_Hard Love Province_, as well as selections from her fiction work, as part of the Fall 2015 Zalaznick Reading Series. Cornell University Dept. of English, Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall

Marilyn Chin begins speaking at 6:21 minutes.

More info on Marilyn Chin⇒

Rich, Adrienne

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Spirit like water
moulded by unseen stone
and sandbar, pleats and funnels
according to its own
submerged necessity –

– Adrienne Rich, “At Willard Brook”

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Read this interview with Adrienne Rich on her poetry collection, “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve,” from the Paris Review:

Adrienne Rich on ‘Tonight No Poetry Will Serve’ – The Paris Review

Adrienne Rich needs no introduction. One of the twentieth century’s most exhaustively celebrated poets and essayists, she counts among her many honors a National Book Award, a Book Critics Circle Award, and the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. Robert Hass has ascribed to her work the qualities of salt and darkness, praising its “relentless need to …

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon’s eyelid
later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

– Adrienne Rich, “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve”

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Watch Adrienne Rich read her poem, “What Kind of Times Are These,” from Poetry Everywhere:

Poetry Everywhere: “What Kind of Times Are These” by Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich reads her poem “What Kind of Times Are These.” Part of the Poetry Everywhere project airing on public television. Produced by David Grubin Productions and WGBH Boston, in association with the Poetry Foundation. Filmed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. For more information, visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/.

More info on Adrienne Rich⇒

Pollitt, Katha

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On every page a hero shakes his fist
while women on tractors chant deliriously “Take me!”,
hydroelectric dams, of their own free will,
produce a cascade of roses and bicycles

– Katha Pollitt, “An Anthology of Socialist Verse”

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Read this interview with Katha Pollitt from Katonah Poetry:

http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-with-katha-pollitt/

Everything happens at once: court ladies pick iris,
nobles hunt pheasant, poets walk in the snow.
In a dragon-prowed boat, under a canopy of flowers,
Prince Genji, the great lover,
sails in triumph from bedroom to bedroom: in each
a woman flutters like a tiny jewelled fan.

– Katha Pollit, “A Screen Depicting the Fifty-Four Episodes of the Tale of Genji on a Background of Gold Leaf”

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Watch Katha Pollitt discuss writing at the NYS Writing Institute:

Katha Pollitt at The NYS Writers Institute in 2015

Katha Pollitt, influential voice of American feminism and long-time columnist for The Nation, is the author of the much-talked-about book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (2014). Publishers Weekly described it as “an impassioned, persuasive case for understanding abortion in its proper context.”

More info on Katha Pollitt⇒

Percy, Walker

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There is a great deal of difference between an alienated commuter riding a train and this same commuter reading a book about an alienated commuter riding a train… the nonreading commuter exists in true alienation, which is unspeakable; the reading commuter rejoices in the speakability of his alienation and in the new triple alliance of himself, the alienated character, and the author. His mood is affirmatory and glad: Yes! That is how it is!

– Walker Percy, “Man on Train”

Read this interview with Walker Percy from the Paris Review:

The Art of Fiction No. 97

Walker Percy and Patrick Samway, S.J., at the Percy home in Covington, LA. ca. 1978. This interview was conducted by mail, from May to October, 1986, at an enormous geographical distance; but the interviewer does cherish the memory of a personal meeting. It was on May 4, 1973, a warm Louisi…

Watch Walker Percy give his Notre Dame commencement speech in 1989:

Walker Percy at Notre Dame

Walker Percy receives the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame at their 1989 Commencement. His address to the graduates is quintessential Percy–and a “primer” not only for his work but for understanding the work of the Catholic novelist.

Walker Percy begins speaking at 4:00 minutes.

More info on Walker Percy⇒

Naylor, Gloria

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Language is the subject. It is the written form with which I’ve managed to keep the wolf away from the door and, in diaries, to keep my sanity. In spite of this, I consider the written word inferior to the spoken, and much of the frustration experienced by novelists is the awareness that whatever we manage to capture in even the most transcendent passages falls far short of the richness of life. Dialogue achieves its power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment of sight, sound, smell, and touch.

– Gloria Naylor, “The Meanings of a Word”

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Listen to an interview with Gloria Naylor on NPR:

More info on Gloria Naylor⇒

Morgan-Hubbard, Sage Xaxua

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Listen to an interview with Sage Xaxua Morgan-Hubbard from Rhymes And Reasons:

Watch the trailer for Sage Xaxua Morgan-Hubbard’s two-woman show with Stacy Rene Erenberg, “Mixed Mamas Remix Vol. 1:”

Mixed Mamas Remix Vol 1. trailer

Sage Morgan-Hubbard and Stacy Rene Erenberg present a two-women show that explores how race, class, gender and sexuality have and continues to intersect and inform their lives as Black and Jewish multi-racial mamas.

More info on Sage Xaxua Morgan-Hubbard⇒

Hughes, Ted

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Bloody Mary’s venomous flames can curl;
They can shrivel sinew and char bone
Of foot, ankle, knee, thigh, and boil
Bowels, and drop his heart a cinder down;
And her soldiers can cry, as they hurl
Logs in the red rush: “This is her sermon.”

– Ted Hughes, “The Martyrdom of Bishop Ferrar”

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Read this interview with Ted Hughes from the Paris Review:

The Art of Poetry No. 71

Ted Hughes lives with his wife, Carol, on a farm in Devonshire. It is a working farm-sheep and cows-and the Hugheses are known to leave a party early to tend to them. “Carol’s got to get the sheep in,” Hughes will explain. He came to London for the interview,…

Farmers in the fields, housewives behind steamed windows,
Watch the burning aircraft across the blue sky float,
As if a firefly and a spider fought,
Far above the trees, between the washing hung out.
They wait with interest for the evening news.

– Ted Hughes, “The Casualty”

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Watch Ted Hughes discuss and read his work:

Ted Hughes interview and a reading from The Iron Man

Subscribe to Iconic: http://bit.ly/zVEuIY Ted Hughes speaking about putting his stories to music and he reads an extract from The Iron Man.

More info on Ted Hughes⇒

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