Thursday, February 13, 2014

Pierre Joris on Paul Celan's Shoah

New PennSound podcast: 20-minute excerpt of my discussion with Pierre Joris on Paul Celan's experience of the Shoah: https://jacket2.org/podcasts/pierre-joris-celan-and-shoah-20-minutes


Paul Auster recording

Paul Auster at PennSound performs the first two pages from "The Book of Illusions": http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Auster/Auster-Paul_03_1st-2-pgs-Bk-of-Illusions_UPenn_4-11-01.mp3

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Goldsmith says Shia LaBeouf isn't a good plagiarist

http://entertainment.time.com/2014/02/12/shia-labeouf-plagiarism-performance-art-scandal/#ixzz2tAVkA6Uq - Shia LaBeouf Isn’t a Very Good Plagiarist, Says the Plagiarist He’s Been Plagiarizing. MoMA poet laureate Kenneth Goldsmith: "If he were in my class, he would have gotten a very bad grade."


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

student responses to Elie Weisel's "Night"

Here are excerpts from two students’ responses to reading Elie Wiesel’s Night in my course called “Representations of the holocaust”:

I guess my frustration comes from my confusion about what my relationship should be towards this book. I feel a little out of sorts as a reader. I think of a memoir as closer in relationship to a novel than a textbook, and so I’ve been expecting of it some of the attention and creativity of form that a novel shows. But is that wrong of me? Is a holocaust memoir addressing something too sacrosanct to employ the same devices that a novel or creative memoir about another topic does? I really don’t know, and I feel disappointed with myself for feeling disappointed by the form of the narrative.

Some events initially seemed too perfectly metaphorical to be reality. But I had to remind myself that such things did happen. In such extreme circumstances, there is no metaphor and there is not the unimaginable—we are forced to accept that it is reality and we are forced to imagine the unimaginable, as terrible as it is, for that is the only way we can attempt to empathize.

Monday, February 10, 2014

experimental radio host/producer featured in new podcast

Benjamen Walker featured in new Kelly Writers House podcast: https://jacket2.org/commentary/benjamen-walker-and-year-sound . Part of the University of Pennsylvania's "year of sound."


PennSound podcasts

PennSound podcasts: http://jacket2.org/podcasts/pennsound-podcasts


Sunday, February 09, 2014

PennSound roundtable on Tuesday Feb 11 at noon

PennSound roundtable - noon - Tuesday, Feb 11.  in the Meyerson Conference Center, 2nd floor of Van Pelt Library, Penn.  http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/13-14/dhf_pennsound.shtml


video of Jackson Mac Low's 75th

The Jackson Mac Low 75th Birthday Festschrift, September 20, 1997 - video of the event - has now been added to PennSound's Jackson Mac Low page: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Mac-Low.php


Rachel Blau DuPlessis with her new book

Rachel Blau DuPlessis with her new book, "Interstices": http://www.amazon.com/Interstices-Rachel-Blau-Duplessis/dp/1930068646


Monday, January 13, 2014

Dottie Lasky on Sylvia Plath, a poem

Thanks to the work of Anna Zalokostas, PennSound’s Dorothea Lasky page now includes poem-by-poem segments of several readings Lasky has given in the past few years. One of these readings — a Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club on October 30, 2010 — included a poem called “Death and Sylvia Plath”: MP3. Here is a link to Lasky's Jacket2 profile, her Columbia University bio, her Poetry Foundation bio page, her Tumblr, and here is one of her blogs.  Here is a review by Sophie Sills of Lasky’s Black Life. And here is her "press kit" for her "tiny tour" reading series.