Speedway and Swan Poem Playlist for Episode 9, September 20, 2015, with guest co-host Joey Burns

 

Singer/songwriter Joey Burns, of Calexico, joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode that explores poetry and its methods by analogy to songwriting and painting. In celebration of Calexico’s new album, Edge of the Sun, the hour is also dedicated to the question of origins and influences and confluences, local and global. Featuring work by poets Richard Siken, Arielle Greenberg, Luís Alberto Urrea, Samaya Ramesh, Sean Singer, Norman Dubie, Rodrigo Corral, and David Berman.

And with musical selections by Calexico, Natalia Lafourcade, Villagers, Sonic Youth, Sparks, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, and more.

Richard Siken | “Still Life with Skulls and Bacon,” The War of the Foxes, Copper Canyon Press, 2015.

Samaya Ramesh | “And the Word Null,” Load Poems Like Guns, ed. Farzana Marie. Holy Cow Press, 2015.

Arielle Greenberg | “Sonic Youth,” Slice. Coconut Books, 2015.

David Berman | “Tulsa,” Actual Air. Open City Books, 1999.

Sean Singer | “Franz Kafka, Serious About Your Safety,” Honey and Smoke, Eyewear Books, 2015.

Norman Dubie | “About Infinity,” The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems, 1967-2001. Copper Canyon Press, 2001.

Eduardo Corral | “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” Slow Lightning. Yale University Press, 2012.

Luís Alberto Urrea | “Arizona Lamentation.” The Tijuana Book of the Dead. Soft Skull Press, 2015.

 

Speedway and Swan Poem Playlist for Episode 8, September 6, 2015, with guest co-host Karen Brennan

 

“Hart Crane called his parrot Attaboy.”

So begins a dicey little poem by the inimitable Stephen Rodefer, who passed away last week. This week poet and fiction writer Karen Brennan joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode that finds itself concerned with conscious homages and re-do’s, avatars, repetition and replication, mantra, and satire. Here and there bumping up against something like grace. Presentations of work by Rodefer, Laura Riding, Cole Swensen, Cathy Wagner, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Marianne Boruch, Elaine Kahn, Thalia Field, Jean Valentine, and Frank O’ Hara. Closing with a recorded performance by Caroline Bergvall.

And with musical selections by Timi Yuro, The Muffs, Elvis Costello & The Roots, Paolo Nutini, Inga Swearingen, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and more.

Frank O’Hara | “For Grace, After a Party,” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, University of California Press, 1995.

Laura Riding | “The Sad Boy,” A Selection of the Poems of Laura Riding. Persea Books, 1994.

Elaine Kahn | “Be a Friend,” Women in Public. City Lights Books, 2015.

Thalia Field and Abigail Lang | “Machine for What Counts,” A Prank of Georges. Essay Press, 2012.

Catherine Wagner | “Unclang,” Nervous Device, City Lights Books, 2012.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade | “The Time of Love,” Multitudinous Heart: the Selected Poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, tr. Richard Zenith. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015.

Jean Valentine | “Sex,” Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003. Wesleyan University Press, 2004.

Stephen Rodefer | “Hart Crane.” Call It Thought: Selected Poems. Carcanet, Press, 2008.

Marianne Boruch | “The Suffering of the Masters, Chekhov Wrote,” The Book of Hours. Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

Cole Swensen | “Here,” Try. University of Iowa Press, 1999.

Caroline Bergvall | from “Via” | Via: Poems, 1994-2004. Contemporary Poetic Research Centre. PennSound online archives.

Speedway and Swan Poem Playlist for Episode 7, August 23, 2015, with guest co-host Ander Monson

 

Poet, essayist, and literary editor Ander Monson joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode demonstrating the range of what contemporary poetry can do. Can and will do. With unlikely subjects (body checking in hockey, graphomania) and unlikely speakers (Lake Superior, Alice the Goon) and unlikely methodologies (Fibonacci sequencing, composition while lap swimming—flip-turns at linebreaks) the program features new work by Joanne Kyger, Aaron Kunin, and Anne Boyer, and poems by Inger Christensen, Thom Gunn, Richard Harrison, Catie Rosemurgy, Jason Bredle, and Paul Guest. Special voca archival performance by N. Scott Momaday from 1992.

With musical selections by Axel Krygier, The Ukrainians, Willie Nelson, Beck, and more.

Jason Bredle | “Planning a Career in Alternative Medicine,” A Twelve-Step Guide, New Michigan Press, 2004.

 

Anne Boyer | “Bon Pour Brûler,” Garments Against Women. City Lights Books, 2015.

 

Inger Christensen | from Alphabet. tr. Susanna Nied. New Directions, 2001.

 

Joanne Kyger | “Barely Viewed Lunar Eclipse,” On Time: Poems, 2005-2014. City Lights Books, 2015.

 

Thom Gunn | “My Sad Captains,” My Sad Captains, Faber and Faber, 1961.

 

Aaron Kunin | “Albert and David,” Cold Genius, Fence Books, 2014.

 

Catie Rosemurgy | “Lake Superior Confesses t the Shore of Keweenaw Bay,” My Favorite Apocalypse. Graywolf, 2001.
N. Scott Momaday | Three epitaphs: “The Minor Writer,” “On Chastity” and “The Death of a Ceramicist.” voca archive selection: Reading, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson, March, 1992.
Richard Harrison | “Using the Body,” Hero of the Play. Wolsak and Wynn, 1993.

 

Paul Guest | “The Last Words of Alice the Goon,” The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, New Issues Press, 2003.