Archive / 1970-1979

RSS feed for this section

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″

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Derek Walcott from the Paris Review:

Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 37, Derek Walcott

The Paris Review is a literary magazine featuring original writing, art, and in-depth interviews with famous writers.

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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

Thievery and charity in Ross Talarico’s newest novel, ‘Sled Run’

RANCHO SANTA FE – Drawing from his own experiences growing up in Rochester, N.Y., author Ross Talarico’s new novel “Sled Run,” is a modern day Robin Hood tale about a teenage boy Rosey who’s seduced by the dazzle (and 1959 candy-apple red Mercury convertible) of a local Mafioso, Carm Carlotta.

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Albert Goldbarth on why he turns down interviews:

DIVEDAPPER // Albert Goldbarth

This week, something a little different. A yearish ago when I was starting Divedapper, I sent Albert Goldbarth a postal letter (he doesn’t use email) soliciting an interview for the site. He replied quickly and said he didn’t want to do it, but his rationale for turning it down was as interesting and worthy of attention as any interview I could’ve hoped to conduct.

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem ⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem ⇒

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”

Continue reading this novel excerpt⇒

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

Buy this broadside⇒

Buy a signed copy of this broadside⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

 

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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

Alice Notley – Poetry Reading at UChicago

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The Renaissance Society and Poem Present co-presented this reading by Alice Notley on November 17, 2011.

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read an interview with Alice Notely from the Boston Review:

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

Collaged fan. Image provided by Alice Notley. -Lindsay Turner Talking with Alice Notley, I was equally struck by her ferocious integrity-her insistence, for example, that we avoid discussing poetry in terms of a “project,” a term that had initially appeared in my first question for her, or her assertion of her poetry’s disobedience “against all [her] contemporaries, both avant-garde and mainstream”-and by her generosity.

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read an article on Stanley Moss:

The Joke’s on God

In Rejoicing: New and Collected Poems, Stanley Moss’s recently published collection, Moss quotes Baudelaire’s sly aphorism: “God is the sole being who has no need to exist in order to reign.” For more than 40 years, Moss has been addressing that sole being without worrying whether He exists or…

More info on Stanley Moss⇒

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

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

September 1955 – Poetry Foundation

Find poems, poets, poetry news, articles, and book reviews. Browse for poems by Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Maya Angelou, John Keats, or search through 100 years of Poetry magazine in the archive.

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”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on John Logan⇒

Poetry Center of Chicago | Literacenter | 641 W. Lake Street, Suite 200 | Chicago, Illinois 60661