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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This is the (unpublished) lecture cited in Eugene Richie's introduction to Ashbery's Selected Prose.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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Billy Collins.
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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author(s). © 2008 the estate of Robert Creeley. © 2008 the estate of Charles Olson.
Creeley photo is © 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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Charles Simic.
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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Derek Walcott.
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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 James Tate.
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 Sharon Olds.
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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.
The New York Times reported last week on the discovery of a sound recording made in 1860, nearly twenty years before Thomas Edison first captured the sound of the words "Mary had a little lamb" on a piece of tinfoil. Oddly, this recording, made by Parisian typesetter Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, was never intended to be heard. The idea of audio playback had not been conceived, let alone by Martinville, and his intent, to create a paper record of human speech, related more to stenography than to phonography. We have come, of course, a very long way; the in-your-ear-in-an-instant .mp3 which accompanies the Times article is proof of that.
When the Key West Literary Seminar began in 1983 as a program of the Friends of the Monroe County Library, audio recordings were ubiquitous in the average American home. Vinyl records had been around for a generation, and cassette technology had made it possible to listen to your favorite recordings in the car or anywhere you and your Walkman, invented by Sony in 1979, might travel. Furthermore, cassettes were easily recorded upon, easily recorded over. One could now, with a minimum of equipment, affordably create audio recordings of any event. The Key West Literary Seminar did not immediately pick up on the possibilities afforded by this technology. The early years' events were assembled on a nothing budget as a labor of love. Many of the organizers were remarkably young. Key West was a surface and a beneath-the-surface; an anonymity which implied assent toward myriad behaviors thrived and was prized. Posterity was on no one's mind.
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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Edmund White.
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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Uzodinma Iweala.
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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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author(s). © 2008 Manuel Muñoz. © 2008 Elizabeth Scharlatt.
Edmund White, Maggie Nelson, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Patrick Ryan (R to L) 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. Visit our podcast page to listen. --Arlo Haskell 
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. Click here to visit our podcast page and listen. --Arlo Haskell
Junot Díaz 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. --Arlo Haskell, KWLS Stage Manager Listen to Junot's reading.Littoral is the year-round online voice of the Key West Literary Seminar. We write about literature, about Key West, and especially about the authors who have been or will be part of our annual Seminar. Throughout the year on Littoral, you'll find podcasts from our growing audio archives, interviews, book reviews, news about the Seminar, links, commentary, and arcana. To submit a post or idea, to ask a question, please email our editor, Arlo Haskell, at arlohaskell@gmail.com.
