Archive / 1970-1979

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Brodsky, Joseph (Josip) 1975

Friday, February 21, 1975
Slavic Poetry
with Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Djordje Nikolic, and John Rezek

Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one his own king, his own camel.

– Joseph Brodsky, “December 24, 1971” 

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Vintage poster of Slavic Poetry, featuring Josip Brodsky, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Djordje Nikolic, and John Rezek at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Slavic Poetry, featuring Joseph Brodsky, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Djordje Nikolic, and John Rezek at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

The Wise Men will unlearn your name.
Above your head no star will flame.
One weary sound will be the same–
the hoarse roar of the gale.
The shadows fall from your tired eyes
as your lone bedside candle dies,
for here the calendar breeds nights
till stores of candles fail.

– Joseph Brodsky, “1 January 1965”

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Read this interview with Joseph Brodsky from the Paris Review:

The Art of Poetry No. 28

Joseph Brodsky, ca. 1988. Photograph by Anefo/Croes, R.C. Joseph Brodsky was interviewed in his Greenwich Village apartment in December, 1979. He was unshaven and looked harried. He was in the midst of correcting the galley proofs for his book-A Part of Speech-and he said that he had al…

More info on Joseph Brodsky⇒

Bly, Robert 1977; 2007

Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Friday, November 4, 1977
Vintage poster of Robert Bly's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Robert Bly’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.

– Robert Bly, “Waking from Sleep” 

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Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Tom Raworth, Diane di Prima, Kimiko Hahn, Eugene Gloria, Patricia Smith, Luis Rodriguez, Robert Bly, Brian Turner, Bruce Weigl, Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Arielle Greenberg, Billy Corgan, Franz Wright, Czeslaw Milosz, Louise Glück, and Alicia Ostriker.

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In the deep fall, the body awakes,
And we find lions on the sea-shore–
Nothing to fear.
The wind rises, the water is born,
Spreading white tomb clothes on a rocky shore,
Drawing us up
From the bed of the land.

– Robert Bly, “Poem in Praise of Solitude”

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Listen to Robert Bly present on The Art of Longing at the 1995 Minnesota Men’s Conference:

Robert Bly Lecture: The Art of Longing (1995)

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Berrigan, Ted 1979

Friday, June 1, 1979
with Ron Padgett
The Poetry Center at the Museum of Contemporary Art
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.

I woke up today just in time
to introduce a poet
then to hear him read his rhymes
so unlike mine           & not bad
as I’d thought another time

– Ted Berrigan, “Hall of Mirrors”

Listen to Ted Berrigan reading “Hall of Mirrors:”

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Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow
as like make me tired as not. I go my
myriad ways blundering, bombastic, dragged
by a self that can never be still, pushed
by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.

– Ted Berrigan, “Words for Love”

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Vintage poster of Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Paul Carroll, Alice Notley, and Peter Kostakis givnig a poetry reading in honor of Frank O'Hara at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Paul Carroll, Alice Notley, and Peter Kostakis givnig a poetry reading in honor of Frank O’Hara at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Winter in the country, Southampton, pale horse
as the soot rises, then settles, over the pictures
The birds that were singing this morning have shut up
I thought I saw a couple kissing, but Larry said no
It’s a strange bird.

– Ted Berrigan, “Frank O’Hara” 

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Vintage poster of Poetry in Motion: a film by Ron Mann with Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, John Cage, Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima, Kenward Elmslie, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Ed Sanders, Gary Snyder, Tom Waits, Anne Waldman at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Poetry in Motion: a film by Ron Mann with Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, John Cage, Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima, Kenward Elmslie, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Ed Sanders, Gary Snyder, Tom Waits, Anne Waldman at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

More info on Ted Berrigan⇒

Bellow, Saul 1976

Friday, February 6, 1976
Francis Parker School
Vintage poster of Saul Bellow's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Saul Bellow’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

I am an American, Chicago born–Chicago, that somber city–and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

– Saul Bellow, “The Adventures of Augie March”

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Read this interview with Saul Bellow from the Paris Review:

The Art of Fiction No. 37

Drawing by Rosalie Seidler. The interview “took place” over a period of several weeks. Beginning with some exploratory discussions during May of 1965, it was shelved during the summer, and actually accomplished during September and October. Two recording sessions were held, tota…

Listen to Saul Bellow read from “Humboldt’s Gift:”

Saul Bellow Reads from “Humboldt’s Gift” and “Henderson the Rain King,” October 10, 1988 by The Paris Review

Bellow reads from “Humboldt” and then “Henderson,” with audience Q/A starting at about 50:55.

More info on Saul Bellow⇒

Ashbery, John 1977

Friday, April 15, 1977
The Poetry Center at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Vintage poster of John Ashbery's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of John Ashbery’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

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Never mind, dears, the afternoon
will fold you up, along with preoccupations
that now seem so important, until only a child
running around on a unicycle occupies center stage. 

– John Ashbery, “Like A Sentence”
Read this interview with John Ashbery from the Paris Review:

Ahead, starting from the far north, it wanders.
Its radish-strong gasoline fumes have probably been
Locked into your sinuses while you were away.
You will have to deliver it.
The flowers exist on the edge of breath, loose,
Having been laid there.
One gives pause to the other,
Or there will be a symmetry about their movements
Through which each is also an individual.

– John Ashbery, “Flowering Death”
Watch John Ashbery discuss poetry with TIME Magazine:

Atwood, Margaret 1976

Friday, January 16, 1976
The Poetry Center at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Vintage poster of Margaret Atwood's reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Vintage poster of Margaret Atwood’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

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Made with blood, with coloured
dirt, with smoke, not meant
to be seen but to remain
there hidden, potent
in the dark…

– Margaret Atwood, “For Archeologists”

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Read this interview with Margaret Atwood from the Paris Review:

The Art of Fiction No. 121

The manuscript of “Frogless,” a poem that appears in this issue, by Margaret Atwood. Ms. Atwood wrote the poem on an SAS Hotel’s bedside notepad while she was in Gothenburg, Sweden last September for the Nordic Book Fair. “I’ve written quite a lot under those…

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

– Margaret Atwood, “Morning in the Burned House”

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Watch Margaret Atwood discuss writing for PEN America:

Dialogue Series: Margaret Atwood on the Writers’ Mind and the Digital Otherworld

With Margaret Atwood and Amy Grace Loyd What does it mean to write with the Web? How does our constant access to information and ideas affect the landscape of imagination? What are the ramifications on the craft?

More info on Margaret Atwood⇒

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