Poetry News

Susan Howe and Charles Reznikoff on the Radio

Originally Published: November 29, 2011

howe

Jacket2 has just posted excerpts from Susan Howe's radio show, no baloney. Her WBAI (NY)/Pacifica Radio programs are available at PennSound as the result of a collaboration with the Archive for New Poetry at the University of California, San Diego; and as of two days ago, they've made a special recording available. Al Fireis writes: "On May 13, 1975, Howe went on the air with her guest Charles Reznikoff and the outcome of this session was a show titled 'Poems for the Jewish Holidays.'" The recording is now on Jacket2 in segments, one segment each for a poem or passage Reznikoff read, following Howe's introduction. Segments are as follows:

[] introduction by Susan Howe (1:11)
[] Fable ["Inscriptions No. 50"] (0:36)
[] “One of my sentinels, a tree” ["Inscriptions No. 3"] (0:11)
[] “I have not even been in the fields” ["Rhythms II No. 1"] (0:13)
[] “Blurred sight and trembling fingers” ["Inscriptions No. 48"] (0:18)
[] “Heart and Clock” [excerpt, from "Separate Way No. 1"] (1:03)
[] “Our nightingale, the clock” ["Jerusalem the Golden No. 61"] (0:12)
[] “The clock” ["Jerusalem the Golden No. 62"] (0:12)
[] “My hair was caught in the wheels of a clock” ["Jerusalem the Golden No. 63"] (0:08)
[] “Hardly a breath of wind” ["Inscriptions No. 12"] (0:17)
[] “After I had worked all day at what I earn my living” ["A Fifth Group of Verse No. 19"] (0:22)
[] “Te Deum” ["Inscriptions No. 22"] (0:28)
[] “The dogs that walk with me are now and here” ["Inscriptions No. 38"] (0:19)
[] “God saw Adam in a town” ["A Fifth Group of Verse No. 17"] (0:18)
[] “Look triumphantly” [from the original edition, "Rhythms No. 7"] (0:14)
[] “It was in my heart to give her wine and dainties” ["Jerusalem the Golden No. 57"] (0:31)
[] “The new janitor is a Puerto Rican” ["By the Well of Living and Seeing II, No. 10"] (1:48)
[] “This Puerto Rican, just an ordinary laborer” ["By the Well of Living and Seeing I, No. 22"] (0:12)
[] “During the Second World War, I was going home one night” ["By the Well of Living and Seeing II, No. 28"] (1:43)
[] “Most of the stock in the hardware store” ["By the Well of Living and Seeing II, No. 13"] (2:01)
[] “The Chinese girl in the waiting-room” ["By the Well of Living and Seeing II, No. 11"] (0:24)
[] “Would I write a letter for him?” ["By the Well of Living and Seeing II, No. 3"] (1:53)
[] “The company had advertised for men to unload a steamer across” ["Testimony I"] (2:07)
[] “Amelia was just fourteen and out of the orphan asylum; at her first job” ["Testimony II"] (1:23)
[] “Land of Refuge” [excerpt, from "New Nation" from "Separate Way No. 11"] (1:08)
[] “Brief History” [excerpt, from "New Nation" from "Separate Way No. 11"] (0:39)
[] “Brief History” [excerpt, from "New Nation" from "Separate Way No. 11"] (0:31)
[] “A Citizen” ["A Fifth Group of Verse No. 10"] (0:21)
[] “You are young and contemptuous” ["Inscriptions No. 5"] (0:12)
[] “A well-phrased eulogy, a low-itched dirge” ["Inscriptions No. 25"] (0:31)
[] “How grey you are! No, white!” ["Inscriptions No. 49"] (0:21)
[] “Now it is cold: where the snow was melting” ["Autobiography: New York VI" from "Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down"] (1:13)

Howe also talked with and had readings from Barbara Guest, Helen Adam, Maureen Owen, Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein, John Ashbery, May Sarton, and Elizabeth Bishop, among others. There goes our afternoon!