Archive / 1970-1979

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Walcott, Derek 1977

Friday, October 7, 1977
Vintage poster of Derek Walcott's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago on Friday, October 7, 1977.

Vintage poster of Derek Walcott’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago on Friday, October 7, 1977.

The dialect of the scrub in the dry season
withers the flow of English. Things burn for days
without translation, with the heat
of the scorched pastures and their skeletal cows.

– Derek Walcott, “from The Prodigal: 11″

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Read this interview with Derek Walcott from the Paris Review:

The Art of Poetry No. 37

Derek Walcott, ca. 2012. Photograph Jorge Mejía Peralta I went to visit Derek Walcott on his home island of St. Lucia in mid-June, 1985. St. Lucia is one of the four Windward Islands in the eastern Caribbean, a small mountainous island that faces the Atlantic Ocean on one side and th…

Then all the nations of birds lifted together
the huge net of the shadows of this earth
in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
stitching and crossing it. They lifted up
the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes,
the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets,
the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill–

– Derek Walcott, “The Season of Phantasmal Peace”

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Watch Derek Walcott discuss his life and work at Hart House Theater:

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott on his life and work

English professor, Christian Campbell, interviews Caribbean poet and playwright, Derek Walcott, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. Walcott discusses issues of identity, culture, and language in this illuminating conversation, filmed at Hart House Theatre on November 23, 2010.

More info on Derek Walcott⇒

Talarico, Ross 1979

Friday, December 14, 1979
with Elizabeth Libby

IMG_00501-e1363987627768

This crack
Runs up the wall, continues
Through the upstairs window,
Splits the sky.
It has divided the statue.
It is a ripple in water.
I try not to go on
But it cuts through my voice
And my words break
And settle, unevenly, on the page;
It is the margin of a poem.

– Ross Talarico, “The Perfect Flaw”

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Read this review of Ross Talarico’s novel, Sled Run:

http://www.thecoastnews.com/2013/03/22/thievery-and-charity-in-ross-talaricos-newest-novel-sled-run/

More info on Ross Talarico⇒

Goldbarth, Albert 1977; 2004

1977
Wednesday, September 29, 2004

albert-goldbarth

It isn’t enough we know this pain
down the ganglionic stem to its roots,
its intercellular ratchets and tufts, it
isn’t even enough the doctor mumbojumbos
various possible treatments, oh an entire
thriving industry of pills and saw-toothed pincers,
no what we want is a name

– Albert Goldbarth, “Finely Written Labels”

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Albert Goldbarth on why he turns down interviews:

DIVEDAPPER // Albert Goldbarth

“My poems are pretty much all I care to offer the world.”

Sleep, sleep–then the kitchen trap
snaps, and my brain like the bait brie
leaps and lands spinning. Now morning
means a mess to sweep and a similarly
skewed conscience to tidy, so all night,
for the jumpy remainder of night, it’s
hazy half-dreams of Mickey from somewhere
out of a childhood Saturday, manly

– Albert Goldbarth, “Reel Estate”

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Listen to Albert Goldbarth at the 2013 National Book Festival:

More info on Albert Goldbarth⇒

Stryk, Lucien 1979; 1995

Friday, February 16, 1979
with John Knoepfle
Two Midwest Poets
February, 1995
with Roger Mitchell

lucien-stryk

The casket under the rose
in the funeral paror is not
where you live, my mother.

– Lucien Stryk, “Rooms”

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Listen to Lucien Stryk’s 1995 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:

Hungry-eyed fogies,
gargoyles in full cry
above the ruck and tumble

– Lucien Stryk, “Gargoyles”

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Vintage poster of Two Midwest Poets: John Knoepfle and Lucien Stryk reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Two Midwest Poets: John Knoepfle and Lucien Stryk reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

More info on Lucien Stryk ⇒

Stafford, William 1979

Friday, May 11, 1979

william stafford

 

According to the silence, winter has arrived—
a special kind of winter. I, its inventor,
watch it freeze in calendars and stare
out of clocks. I do not feel its cold.

– William Stafford, “Shepard”

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Vintage poster of William Stafford's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of William Stafford’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

William Stafford's poem, "Captive," from "Traveling through the Dark," handwritten.

William Stafford’s poem, “Captive,” from “Traveling through the Dark,” handwritten.

Watch William Stafford read some of his work:

More info on William Stafford ⇒

Petrakis, Harry Mark 1978

Friday, April 7, 1978
Vintage poster of Harry Mark Petrakis's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Harry Mark Petrakis’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

…I will burrow once more into the cloisters of my life, exhume the spirits of those I loved. I will revisit the neighborhoods of my youth; call up the visages of old friends and in Homer’s words, “Look both before and after.”

– Harry Mark Petrakis, “Song of My Life”

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Read an interview with Harry Mark Petrakis from Poets&Writers:

An Interview With Fiction Writer Harry Mark Petrakis

The ninth novel and eighteenth book by Harry Mark Petrakis, who turns 80 on June 5, will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in the same month. Twilight of the Ice is set in the Chicago railyards, in the blue-collar, industrial neighborhoods of the early 1950s.

More info on Harry Mark Petrakis⇒

Padgett, Ron 1979; 2002; 2004

Friday, June 1, 1979
with Ted Berrigan
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
with Anselm Hollo

I don’t mind Walt Whitman’s saying”I contain multitudes,” in fact I like it,
but all I can imagine myself saying is
“I contain a sandwich and some coffee and a throb.”

– Ron Padgett, “Embraceable You”

Broadside of “Embraceable You” by Ron Padgett

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Listen to Ron Padgett’s 2004 reading with Anselm Hollo at the Poetry Center of Chicago:

Ron Padgett begins at 35:15 minutes.

I bang into the water pail,
blue in the morning light,
though to tell the truth
I am blue in any light,

– Ron Padgett, “Mir”

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Vintage poster of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett giving a poetry reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett giving a poetry reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

 

Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Billy Collins, Andrei Codrescu, Ron Padgett, Lucille Clifton, Mark Perlberg, Li-Young Lee, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anne Waldman, Yusuf Komunyakaa, Lisel Mueller, Ted Kooser, Paul Carroll, Jorie Graham, and Paul Hoover.

Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Billy Collins, Andrei Codrescu, Ron Padgett, Lucille Clifton, Mark Perlberg, Li-Young Lee, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anne Waldman, Yusuf Komunyakaa, Lisel Mueller, Ted Kooser, Paul Carroll, Jorie Graham, and Paul Hoover.

Buy this audio recording featuring Ron Padgett⇒

More info on Ron Padgett⇒

Notley, Alice 1975; 1984

Friday, April 18, 1975
An Homage to Frank O’Hara
Friday, November 30, 1984
with Paul Carroll

What I lose you let me, accusation
always gets one in. But I want to talk like the dead
remember that town where we went or
how do I know when I’m just a soul – not
when I’m leading?

– Alice Notely, “My Sea”

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Watch a Alice Notley read her work at the University of Chicago:

No Title

The Renaissance Society and Poem Present co-presented this reading by Alice Notley on November 17, 2011. Notley has published over 25 books of poetry, including Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 (2006), awarded the Lenore Marhsall Poetry Prize; Disobedience (2001), awarded the Griffin International Poetry Prize; Mysteries of a Small House (1998); The Descent of Alette (1996); Close to me & Closer .

An old woman of indeterminate race, in white hat
and scarf, no teeth staring back at me.
He sounded brittle and superior last night, do the
dead do that; Grandma had a plethora of tones of voice
compared to anyone in this anthology…

– Alice Notley, “The Anthology”

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Read an interview with Alice Notely from the Boston Review:

“At the Mercy of My Poetic Voice”: An Interview with Alice Notley – Boston Review

Collaged fan. Image provided by Alice Notley. Talking with Alice Notley, I was equally struck by her ferocious integrity-her insistence, for

More info on Alice Notely⇒

Moss, Stanley 1979

Friday, March 16, 1979

When you said that you wanted to be useful
as the days of the week, I said, “God bless you.”
Then you said you would not trade our Mondays,
useful for two thousand years,
for the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

– Stanley Moss, “An Argument”

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Watch Stanley Moss read some of his poetry:

Stanley Moss reads ‘Song of Alphabets’, ‘Paper Swallow’, and ‘Pslam’

American poet Stanley Moss reads three of his poems from his collection No Tear is Commonplace, published by Carcanet Press (2013). Available here http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847772503 The poems collected in No Tear is Commonplace stage a passionate, curious, and often combative relationship with the world and the forces that shape human life and death.

Some of the self-containment of my old face
has been sandblasted away. The “yellow wind”
is blowing and my mouth and face burn
from the Gobi dust that scorches the city
after its historic passage over the Great Wall.
When I was young, I hosed the Atlantic salt
off my body, the salt was young too.

– Stanley Moss, “April, Beijing”

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Read an article on Stanley Moss:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/22761/the-joke%E2%80%99s-on-god

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Logan, John 1978

Friday, February 17, 1978

Cold dawn Harrow-On-the-Hill.
The unquiet curtain is too
White this hour, the candles
Too drawn their flames rest–
Less ruddying the cup
Of thin breads with its thin
Hands not yet bodied

– John Logan, “The Death of Southwell”

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Read John Logan’s review of E.E. Cummings:

Six of One and Six Hundred of the Other by John… | Poetry Magazine

September 1955 | Vernon Watkins, Roy Campbell, Dannie Abse, Nelson Bentley, Allen Curnow, Paul Goodman, Don Gordon, Phyllis Haring, Roger Hecht, W. Johnson, Marcia Masters, Stanley Moss, Ned O’Gorman, William Pillin, James Schevill, Reed Whittemore, Harold Witt, James Wright, John Logan, John Meyer

The guards sleep they breathe uneven
Conversation with the
Trees the sharp cicadas
And knots of pine the flames
Have stirred to talk: their light

– John Logan, “A Pathological Case in Pliny”

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More info on John Logan⇒

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