Podcasts: September 2008 Archives

Ann Beattie is the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the University of Virginia's Department of English and Creative Writing. A short story writer and a novelist, she has received critical acclaim for her body of work and has been called "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form" by The Washington Post. In this recording from 2008, Beattie reads from a virtuosic essay-in-progress on the subject of ambient sound in works of literature. Beginning with accounts of poet John Ashbery's "managed chance" method of composing, the noises of drunken Parrotheads in Key West, and a discussion of clichés "whose repetition deadens language," Beattie arrives at a luxuriant analysis of technique in the fiction of James Joyce ("The Dead"), Raymond Carver ("Are These Actual Miles?"), and Richard Yates ("The Best of Everything").

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (31:42) / 14.5 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 Ann Beattie. Used with generous permission from Ann Beattie.

Maggie Nelson reads two long poems, "The Mute Story of November" and "The Halo Over the Hospital," from her book Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007). In a brief introduction, Nelson gives credit for the title of her book to Annie Dillard, whose essay "Seeing" refers to Marius van Senden's 1932 Sight and Space, about previously blind persons returned to sight.

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (15:10) / 6.9 MB

To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'

This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Maggie Nelson. Used with generous permission from Maggie Nelson.

This 2008 reading features poet Kevin Young reading a selection of then-recent work, including "Aunties," "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "Black Cat Blues," "Hang Dog Blues," "Flash Flood Blues," "Ode To The Hotel Near The Children's Hospital," "Farm Team," "I Walk The Line (for Johhny Cash)," "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," and four odes to food, including "To Chicken," "To Homemade Wine," "To Catfish," and "To Boudin."

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (21:51) / 10 MB

To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'

This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Kevin Young. Used with generous permission from Kevin Young.

We are proud to announce a collaboration with PennSound, the digital poetry archive project at the University of Pennsylvania. PennSound, founded by Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis as part of UPenn's center for contemporary writing, maintains perhaps the finest collection of audio recordings by 20th century poets on the web. Among the more than 1,500 recordings on their site are such rarities as Jack Spicer's 1956 Vancouver lectures; a 1967 recording of George Oppen reading his masterpiece "Of Being Numerous" in its entirety; James Schuyler reading "Hymn to Life" from the Chelsea Hotel in 1986; several recordings of Gertrude Stein in the 1930s; and major collections of readings by Robert Creeley and John Ashbery. We've been working with managing editor Michael S. Hennessey for the past month developing PennSound's KWLS page, which debuts with KWLS readings by John Ashbery, Meghan O'Rourke, James Tate, and Charles Simic. You can read Hennessey's blog post announcing the page here. You'll find the complete list of PennSound recordings, indexed by author, here. And you can read the PennSound manifesto here. Many thanks to Hennessey and all the good people at PennSound for their work in making KWLS recordings part of this important online collection.