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Featured resources

From "Down To Write You This Poem Sat" at the Oakville Gallery

Contemporary
  1. Charles Bernstein, "Phone Poem" (2011) (1:30): MP3
  2. Caroline Bergvall, "Love song: 'The Not Tale (funeral)' from Shorter Caucer Tales (2006): MP3
  3. Christian Bôk, excerpt from Eunoia, from Chapter "I" for Dick Higgins (2009) (1:38):  MP3
  4. Tonya Foster, Nocturne II (0:40) (2010) MP3
  5. Ted Greenwald, "The Pears are the Pears" (2005) (0:29): MP3
  6. Susan Howe, Thorow, III (3:13) (1998):  MP3
  7. Tan Lin, "¼ : 1 foot" (2005) (1:16): MP3
  8. Steve McCaffery, "Cappuccino" (1995) (2:35): MP3
  9. Tracie Morris, From "Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful" (2002) (3:40): MP3
  10. Julie Patton, "Scribbling thru the Times" (2016) (5:12): MP3
  11. Tom Raworth, "Errory" (c. 1975) (2:08): MP3
  12. Jerome Rothenberg, from "The First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell: 4-Voice Version" (c. 1975) (3:30): MP3
  13. Cecilia Vicuna, "When This Language Disappeared" (2009) (1:30): MP3
Historical
  1. Guillaume Apollinaire, "Le Pont Mirabeau" (1913) (1:14): MP3
  2. Amiri Baraka, "Black Dada Nihilismus" (1964) (4:02):  MP3
  3. Louise Bennett, "Colonization in Reverse" (1983) (1:09): MP3
  4. Sterling Brown, "Old Lem " (c. 1950s) (2:06):  MP3
  5. John Clare, "Vowelless Letter" (1849) performed by Charles Bernstein (2:54): MP3
  6. Velimir Khlebnikov, "Incantation by Laughter" (1910), tr. and performed by Bernstein (:28)  MP3
  7. Harry Partch, from Barstow (part 1), performed by Bernstein (1968) (1:11): MP3
  8. Leslie Scalapino, "Can’t’ is ‘Night’" (2007) (3:19): MP3
  9. Kurt Schwitters, "Ur Sonata: Largo" performed by Ernst Scwhitter (1922-1932) ( (3:12): MP3
  10. Gertrude Stein, If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1934-35) (3:42): MP3
  11. William Carlos Willliams, "The Defective Record" (1942) (0:28): MP3
  12. Hannah Weiner, from Clairvoyant Journal, performed by Weiner, Sharon Mattlin & Rochelle Kraut (2001) (6:12): MP3

Selected by Charles Bernstein (read more about his choices here)

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In Memoriam: Lou Rowan (1942–2025)

Posted 4/4/2025

We wrap up this week by saying farewell to Lou Rowan, who passed away at the age of 83 on March 25th. Beyond his own writing, Rowan was perhaps best known as the editor of Golden Handcuffs Review. A tribute posted by the UK press Reality Street notes that "neglected graduate school to participate in the independent presses, little magazines and readings flourishing in New York’s Lower East Side during the late 60s. He earned his living as a teacher, and then an institutional investor – the latter taking him to the Northwest United States, where he worked on his fictions and edited Golden Handcuffs Review for many years, until moving to Nice, France with his partner Andrea Auge."

While we don't have a proper author page for Rowan, you can listen to his two appearances on Leonard Schwartz's Cross Cultural Poetics on our series page for the program. Rowan was first featured on Episode #170, "Sharma/Zolf/Rowan," in 2008, reading from his then-latest release, Sweet Potatoes (AhaDada Books). He returned in 2011 for Episode #229, "McElroy's Trail," in conversation with fiction writer Joseph McElroy about the latest issue of Golden Handcuffs Review, which included a feature focusing on McElroy's work. You'll find both programs here.


Happy Birthday, Anne Waldman

Posted 4/2/2025

PennSound sends birthday greetings to the one and only Anne Waldman, who turns 80 today. It is staggering to think of the myriad ways in which Waldman has shaped contemporary poetics for seven decades and counting, starting with her prolific output, which, while always evolving, still feels immediately and unmistakably recognizable. As an editor for Angel Hair and United Artists all the way up to her present guidance of Fast Speaking Music, she has made space for voices that would otherwise get lost in the shuffle and broadened our worldview. Finally, her fostering presence as an early Artistic Director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project and her co-founding of Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics has created vital communities that span generations.

PennSound's Anne Waldman author page provides a thorough survey of the poet's long and fruitful career, provides a thorough survey, with recordings from 1969 ("Three Minutes of My Life" from the LP anthology Tape Poems) all the way up to a 2017 reading at the Dia Art Foundation. There are numerous full readings for Belladonna*, the Bowery Poetry Club, the Naropa Institute, the Sue Scott Gallery, the CUNY Graduate Center, Zinc Bar, the St. Mark's Poetry Project, and our own Kelly Writers House, along with a number of complete album releases and myriad individual tracks, talks, radio interviews, films, and more. There's no better way to celebrate this legendary poet on her birthday than to share some of her work. Click here to start browsing and listening!


For April Fool's Day: PigeonSound

Posted 4/1/2025

As is our usual April Fool's Day tradition, we revisit the 2009 announcement of our PigeonSound ™ service, which sadly never got off the ground given — among other things — global warming, habitat destruction, and mites of various types. While cassette tapes are the new vinyl and high schoolers proudly use dumb phones, sadly this retro-enthusiasm could not be rekindled for avian poetry delivery, and so our fleet coos in waiting for more genteel and discerning times.

Here's our original announcement, which, in true April Fool's Day fashion, came a month early, alongside the unveiling of our Twitter account:
It's been less than 24 hours since we launched our PennSound Twitter page, and already we have 50 followers. Sign up to follow our feed to get micro-updates — from co-directors Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein, and managing editor Michael S. Hennessey — highlighting changes to the site, new additions and favorite recordings from our archives. Recent tweets have featured Bernadette Mayer & Lee Ann Brown, Tracie Morris, the PennSound Podcast series and our video page. 

Are you getting the most out of your PennSound experience? Aside from Twitter, don't forget all of the other ways in which you can keep up to date with the site through the web or your cell phone: first, there's the PennSound Daily newsfeed, which automatically delivers entries like this one to your iGoogle page, Google Reader, or favorite feed reader.PennSound is also on FaceBook, along with pages for our sister sites, including the Kelly Writers House and the Electronic Poetry Center. One additional option is the Kelly Writers House's Dial-a-Poem service: just dial 215-746-POEM (7636), and aside from news on upcoming KWH events, you can also hear a recording from a past reading, courtesy of the PennSound archives.

Finally, for those of you who feel overwhelmed by all this new technology, and liked the world a lot more before it Twittered, Tumblred and Bloggered, we're currently beta-testing yet another, more traditional means of transmission. Utilizing homing pigeons equipped with state-of-the-art (well, state-of-the-art circa WWI) wire recording technology, PigeonSound ™ (see prototype at right) will be able to deliver three minutes of telephone-quality audio up to several hundred miles from our home base at UPenn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (our apologies to the rest of the world). Though there have been numerous unfortunate setbacks to date, we hope to have the program up and running by the first of next month with our inaugural offering: The Selected Poems of Ern Malley (read by the author himself). From sites that tweet to birds that tweet, we have all of your poetry options covered at PennSound.



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