In response to a panel discussion titled Poets and Their Work: Poetry as Its Own Biography (personal I vs. poetic eye), John Ashbery delivers a "mini-lecture" on so-called confessional poetry and the work of Elizabeth Bishop. At the conclusion of the lecture, Ashbery reads his "Soonest Mended" (1966), from The Double Dream of Spring, inspired, he tells us, by Bishop's "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance."
This is the (unpublished) lecture cited in Eugene Richie's introduction to Ashbery's Selected Prose. An excerpt:
It's only when I feel compelled to write poetry that is all of a piece, that I feel uncomfortable. Poetry bloweth where it listeth. It should never be thought of as a practical solution to life's mess. Its value is in its total uselessness. It's the roses we are always being urged to stop and smell.
Elizabeth Bishop is a poet in whom the two kinds of I/eye are fully, and beautifully, fused. We do not read her to discover the details of her biography, yet I feel that we end up knowing her— and I feel it all the more intensely in Key West, every time I walk past that little house, tucked behind the pandanus bush— better than many poets who set out to inform us about the particulars of their lives.
(12:04) / 5.4 MB
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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 John Ashbery.
Billy Collins was in his second term as U.S. Poet Laureate at the time of this reading, in January 2003. He reads a selection of poems, including "Shoveling Snow With Buddha," "Monday," "Flock," "Creatures," "The Lanyard," "The Country," "Surprise," "No Time," "Love," "Sonnet," "Japan," "Forgetfulness," "Consolation," "On Turning Ten," and "Nightclub."
(30:31) / 14 MB
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As part of a panel discussion in 2003, we asked Robert Creeley to read and comment upon one of his favorite poems. It was no surprise when he selected a poem by his great friend and comrade, Charles Olson. Creeley reads passages from his introduction to Olson's Selected Poems, and reads the latter half of Olson's "Maximus, to Gloucester," which concludes:
John White had seen it
in his eye
but fourteen men
of whom we know eleven
twenty-two eyes
and the snow flew
where gulls now paper
the skies
where fishing continues
and my heart lies
(5:14) / 2.4 MB
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Creeley photo is by Elsa Dorfman. You can see more of her portraits of Creeley here. Olson photo is from the Olson archives at the University of Connecticut.
Current U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic reads and comments upon his poems "White Room," "Mirrors at 4 a.m.," and "The Friends of Heraclitus." From the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar. (7:32)
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1992 Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott reads passages from his then-unpublished book-length poem, "The Prodigal." Of it, he explains: "I think the book is about another kind of colonization— of the intellect, and maybe even of the soul— colonization that came from visiting Europe. For a long time, I refused the seduction of Europe. Because of its history, and because of the the pride Europe took in its culture and the obscenity of its history. But I have been going often, and in spite of furious attempts to resist that seduction, I am falling for it." This was Walcott's first public reading from "The Prodigal." A passage from it echoes the title of the Seminar that year, borrowed from Richard Wilbur's 1947 poem, "The Beautiful Changes:" the beautiful changes of rain in which the hills faded into cloud and the hulls of the yacht seemed anchored in a field of fast flowers. (50:26)
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James Tate, half stand-up comic, half great American poet, reads a selection from his work, including "Of Whom Am I Afraid," "A Sound Like Distant Thunder," "The Animists," "The Rally," "Silver Queen," "The Rules," and "The Special Guest." His offbeat humor and superb comedic timing keep the crowd in stitches. From KWLS 2003: The Beautiful Changes. (21:04)
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Sharon Olds reads a selection of poems from her body of work, including 1987's "On the Subway," "Animal Crackers," "When I Left Her" (work in progress), "Stag's Leap," "Wooden Ode," "When She Slept In," and "A Week Later." From the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar: The Beautiful Changes. (19:12)
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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 John Ashbery.
Edmund White talks about finding a style and a mode of expression to approach the gay subject matter which has been his life's work. Discussing social, professional, and aesthetic attitudes toward gays and "gay literature," White reveals his experience as an emerging writer in the 1960s, reactions to gay lifestyles at institutions like Time and The Nation, and the varied attitudes among writers he's known, including Susan Sontag, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ashbery. Along the way, White discusses several of his books, including The Joy of Gay Sex, States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, A Boy's Own Story, and Hotel du Dream.
From 2008: New Voices. (41:31) includes 16 min. Q&A.
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Uzodinma Iweala reads from a nonfiction work-in-progress about people living with HIV/AIDS in northern Nigeria. Set in and around a rural hospital in northern Nigeria, the excerpt focuses on a young man named Ifanye, and his struggle with "the something" with which he is infected. From 2008: New Voices (13:35).
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Elisabeth Scharlatt, publisher of Algonquin Books, and Manuel Muñoz, author of The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, discuss the hurdles and biases Muñoz encountered along his way to publication. Muñoz's roots in California's Central Valley and his concern with voicing the stories of the Valley shed light on his process and work.
From KWLS 2008, New Voices. (45:13) includes 5 minute Q&A. Muñoz reads briefly from Lindo y Querido at (8:14-11:20).
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A wonderful conversation about the Southern voice in writing with Lee Smith, Tayari Jones and Silas House.
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Silas House reads from his in-progress novel, Yvonna Darling, "about a woman who kidnaps her own child after custody is unfairly taken away from her." Ominously full of the slow summer sounds of cicadas, willow trees, and the song of a whippoorwill, this desperate passage is brought to vivid life by House's rich, Appalachian baritone. (12:03)
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As KWLS Board Member Bob Richardson says in his introduction, Maggie Nelson is "intimately acquainted with the night". Nelson reads from and discusses her books "Jane: A Murder" and "The Red Parts: A Memoir". Both concern Jane, who was Nelson's mother's younger sister. Jane was murdered shortly before Nelson's birth, and the books are harrowing explorations of the circumstances surrounding her death in prose and poetry, as well as soulful imaginings of the aunt she never met. Right click on link and choose save as:
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In a seminar devoted to New Voices, an interesting perspective was that of Daniel Menaker, who for many years was a fiction editor at The New Yorker. His job was to find those new voices. He spoke warmly and knowledgeably about the challenge for fiction writers: "You must create an appetite for your writing in people who had no idea that they were hungry for it," he said. "And to do that, there must be something new and different in your voice." In this talk from the 2008 seminar, he spoke about how he recognized talented new writers, using as examples some early stories from now-established writers like George Saunders ("old new voices," he called them). Menaker discusses the craft and the art of these stories in a talk that is technical but highly accessible. Right click on link and choose save as:
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NEW VOICES SPECIAL: Vestal McIntyre read at the 2008 Seminar from his collection of short stories, "You Are Not The One". In "ONJ.com" a woman is delighted with her new sophisticated and witty gay friend, but during a night of progressive party-crashing it becomes clear that he is not as wonderful as she had initially thought.
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Lee Smith gave the annual John Hersey Memorial Address to open the second session of the 2008 Seminar. In a talk that was both extremely funny and unexpectedly moving, Smith recounted her development as a writer when, as a young girl, she would write herself into Nancy Drew and Bobsie Twins adventures. Smith talks about how, after her initial obligatory autobiographical efforts, she discovered that she could find her voice though the creation of the wide variety of characters that she would imagine and create. Smith goes on to talk about the consolation and the re-birth that writing offered in the aftermath of terrible personal loss. Lee's subtle balancing of humor and pain, leavened by her warmth and her sturdy, both-feet-on-the-ground sensibility, is truly affecting--this one kicked off the session with a lot of energy and soul.
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As a bonus track, we went back to Lee’s talk from the 2005 Seminar on Humor. Smith’s tale of her high school English class re-enactment of Huckleberry Finn and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi (in a raft of their own construction which they built in a lumber yard in Paduka, Kentucky) and became outlaws, folk heroes and local media celebrities is astonishing, absurd, inspiring and altogether delightful.
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Pulitzer finalist James Gleick and theoretical physicist-cum-novelist Janna Levin discuss the tensions between science and art evidenced by her novel, "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines." Why stray from the "facts," Gleick wonders, in telling a story of Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel, two of the 20th century's greatest abstract thinkers? Because, answers Levin, "there is something about the process of thinking on the absolute periphery of what's connected to ordinary human life that you can't describe just by stating the facts." Levin takes Gleick's incisive, nuanced, fraught questions and responds with a grace and power akin, commented Junot Diaz, to "Babe Ruth bombing home runs out the park." Levin fans will also enjoy her archived Colbert Report interview here. (41:30)
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Edmund White, Maggie Nelson, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Patrick Ryan discuss "newness" in authorial voice, using Harold Bloom's idea of "the anxiety of influence" as a jumping-off point. Nguyen's theory of "the Asian once-over," Ryan's "Impostor Syndrome," and Nelson's notion of the "intoxicating" influence of another writer joust toward an agreement that writers must both escape from, and surround themselves with, other voices in order to attain their own.
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Junot Diaz reads from his 2007 novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," and, in far-ranging comments, addresses the danger inherent in a dominant authorial voice. "No matter how many ruses I use," Junot says, "I'm the only one speaking." Junot goes on to connect this danger, "the way a story silences other stories," to the dictatorial regime of Trujillo in his native Dominican Republic, to U.S. militaristic pride, and, on the other hand, to the often-frustrated desire of readers to understand each component of his stories.Right click on link and choose save as:
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The first session of the 2008 Seminar kicked off in fine form with a John Hersey Memorial Address from the marvelous poet Mark Doty.
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Pico Iyer delivered the annual John Hersey Memorial Address that kicked off the 2006 Seminar on The Literature of Travel, Adventure and Discovery. The talk, entitled "A New Kind of Travel for a New Kind of World: Stillness and Movement on a Fast-Turning Globe" was a dazzling, head-spinning example of Iyer's trademark verbal pyrotechnics.
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Gary Trudeau and Roger Rosenblatt had been travelling together for two days when they sat down to have their scheduled conversation at the 2005 Seminar, and Trudeau kicks it off by asserting that they're all talked out. They weren't. The consensus was that these two should start a talk show-and they could dispense with guests. Brilliant and hilarious. Right click on link and choose save as:
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On January 14th, Siri Hustvedt
spoke on the topic of "A writer's adventures in psychiatry and
neuro-science". It was a complex and bracing piece of writing and an
intense talk. Hustvedt said afterwards that she was contemplating
putting together a book of her essays on science; we certainly hope she
does.
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Steve Stern spoke
at the 2007 Seminar on January 14th, on the topic of "Memories of
Amnesia: Jewish Folklore and the Mystery of Identity". In Stern's hands
this was a funnier topic than the title might lead you to believe; he
had them rolling in the aisles, leading one attendee to pronounce him
"the next Woody Allen".
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Another podcast from the 2005: Humor Seminar features Wendy Wasserstein "Shiksa Goddess: Or, How I Spent My Forties". The panel that immediately
preceded Wasserstein that afternoon had concluded that writers must mask
the identities of family members who were the basis for comic characters
in their work. Wassertstein discussed her play "The Sisters Rosensweig"
which featured a character named "Gorgeous", who was remarkably similar
to Wendy's own sister. "When your sister is named Gorgeous, and you're
named Wendy, I think you get to talk about it," she laughed.
Sadly, Wendy Wasserstein, a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning
playwright who chronicled the triumphs and travails of modern American
women, died a year later in Jan. 2006, of lymphoma.
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At the 2005 Seminar on Humor, Bruce Jay Friedman read his short story "A Change of Plan", originally published in Esquire Magazine. Friedman talked about how the story made the journey to the screen with the 1972 Elaine May-helmed "The Heartbreak Kid" (just remade starring Ben Stiller). It's a great tale of a young writer's seduction by Hollywood, the now-quaint notion of "prostituting yourself" and the consoling power of room service.
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