Talk About Poetry: Recent Episodes
Talk About Poetry
Talk About Poetry, where several working poets get together to talk about poems they like, are interested in, engaged by, or are annoyed by. Totally unscripted so anything can be said -- and frequently is!
Leslie Ullman reads selections from her book The You That All Along Has Housed You: A Sequence.
The editors discuss poems that moved them as starting artists and changed their views of poetry.
Georgia Popoff reads and discusses poems from her new book of poetry, Psychometry (Tiger Bark Press).
A terrific reading by six poets from the le Moyne creative Writing program, plus the director, David Lloyd. Also reading were Nine Mile co-editor Steve Kuusisto and Diane Wiener, whose books The Golem Verses is out from Nine Mile books. The reading also featured the winners of the Newhouse awards in poetry, Meghan Lees and Alyssa Goudy.
Dylan Krieger reading her poems at Bird Library at Syracuse University on November 30, 2018
Readings by Patrick Williams and Bob Herz at SU's Bird Library Lunchtime Poetry Series.
A reading by Jackie Warren-Moore and Stephen Kuusisto at SU's Bird Library, the first of the Lunch Time Poems program.
We discuss poems by the late great Bill Knott, an eccentric, interesting, brilliant poet.
Discussion with Dylan Krieger about her work, her poems, her book Giving Godhead. With Steve Kuusisto and Bob Herz, editors and publishers of Nine Mile Magazine and Nine Mile books.
Discussion of the work of the brilliant late poet James Tate, focusing on two of his poems, "The Lost Pilot" and "The Wheelchair Butterfly." The discussion is led by four working poets, Stephen Kuusisto, Bob Herz, Paul Memmer, and Georgia Popoff.
Dylan Krieger reads from Giving Godhead, her recent book from Delete Press, and discusses the background of the poems and of her life.
Jackie Warren-Moore reading from her book Where I Come From, at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse, NY on October28, 2016.
An interview with Andrea Scarpino on her work, focusing especially on her brilliant book, What The Willow Said As It Fell. Interviewers were Bob Herz and Stephen Kuusisto, editors of Nine Mile Magazine. The quality and volume are a little irregular as this was a phone interview.
A reading by Emma Vallelunga and Christopher Costello, two of the young authors at the Syracuse YMCA Downtown Writers Center Young Authors Academy. The picture is of the several young authors at our session.
Close reading of several Gwendolyn Brooks poems by working poets Georgia Popoff, Stephen Kuusisto, and Bob Herz, and the last of Ms. Brooks' proteges, Quraysh Ali Lansana.
Discussion of the life and significance of Gwendolyn Brooks with one of her proteges, the poet Quraysh Ali Lansana, and working poet colleagues Georgia Popoff, Stephen Kuusisto, and Bob Herz.
Jeffrey Harrison reads his poems at the Downtown Writers Center at the Greater Syracuse YMCA.
Reading by Christopher Citro at the Greater Syracuse YMCA's Downtown Writers Center in October 2015. Mr. Citro's first book of poetry was published by Steel Toe Books in March , 2015. He won the 2015 Poetry Writing Competition at Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art (judged by Beth Ann Fennelly) and has a poem included in Best New Poets 2014. His poetry was an honorable mention for the 2015 River Styx International Poetry Prize, shortlisted for the 2015 Booth Poetry Prize, a semifinalist for the 2015 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2015 Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. He currently lives in Syracuse, NY where he teaches creative writing classes at the Downtown Writer’s Center. He is the Poetry Editor for the online literary magazine decomP.
Discussion with Marvin Bell by working poets Stephen Kuusisto, Phil member, Georgia Popoff, Jasmine Bailey, and Bob Herz. Focus on the early part of Bell's career. t
Sam Pereira reading poems, including several from his new book, Bad Angels, published by Nine Mile Press, which is also the sponsor of these podcasts. Several of the poems have as a site places in and around Iowa City, a remembrance of the time when Sam attended the renowned Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Discussion of the poems of Jasmine Bailey, with a focus on her latest book, Alexandria.
Discussion of Georgia Popoff's Psalter: The Agnostic's Book of Common Curiosities, with a focus on two poems, Name: Inconsequential, and The Agnostic Parses It Out.
Georgia Popoff reading from her extraordinary new book of poems, Psalter: The Agnostic's Book of Common Curiosities, published by Tiger Bark Press (www.tigerbarkpress.com ).
Ken Weisner is a poet, teacher, and editor living in Santa Cruz, California. He read at the Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse in March 2015.
Weiner has published widely in national journals including The Antioch Review, Seneca Review, The Brooklyn Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and others; recent poems have appeared in The Music Lovers Poetry Anthology from Persea Books, Sam Hamill's "Poet's Against the War" website, and on Garrison Keillor's The Writers Almanac.
His first full length collection, The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians, was published in 2002 by Hummingbird Press. His 2010 volume, Anything on Earth, was also published by Hummingbird.
About Weisner's most recent book, Stephen Kuusisto has said, "Poetry is the physicality of music--not in drumming, but in the mind. With Anything on Earth, Ken Weisner gives us poems conveying what is doubly good: our instruments and the ardent notes we make with them."
Poetry reading by Andrea Scarpino at the Downtown Writers center at the YMCA of Greater Syracuse in Syracuse, NY. Ms. Scarpino is author of Once, Then, from Red Hen Press. This reading is underwritten by the Downtown Writers Center at the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, the NYS Council on the Arts, and by the Honors Program at Syracuse University.
Kenneth Rexroth's erotic poem "Floating" discussed by the Talk About Poetry poets—Bob Herz, Phil Memmer, and Stephen Kuusisto.
Part 2 of our discussion of Ginsberg's amazing Wichita Vortex Sutra. See delve deeper into its mode of composition, the structuring of its parts, and its relevance for today.
Discussion of Marvin Bell's About the Dead man and Your Hands by poets Bob Herz, Phil Memmer, Stephen Kuusisto, and Georgia Popoff.
Discussion of Stephen Kuusisto's poems "Sand" and "They Say."
Stephen Kuusisto was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. Blind since birth, he attended Hobart College where he earned a BA and the University of Iowa, where he earned an MFA. He is the author of Only Bread, Only Light: Poems (2000) and the award-winning memoir, Planet of the Blind. Kuusisto has received a number of awards and honors ranging from a poetry fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council and a Fulbright fellowship to a distinguished Teaching Award from Hobart & William Smith Colleges.
Participants in the discussion are: Phil Memmer, Executive Director of the Syracuse YMCA Downtown Writer’s Center (DWC); Georgia Popoff (of course), a Community Poet in Syracuse and teacher at the DWC, Stephen Kuusisto, Director of the Syracuse University Honors Program / Professor of Disability Studies for the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies in the School of Education, and me, Bob Herz, founder & editor of Nine Mile Magazine, and publisher-editor of the W.D. Hoffstadt & Sons press.
Discussion of Robert Bly's "Old Boards," with poets Phil Memmer, Georgia Popoff, Stephen Kuusisto, and Bob Herz, editor of Nine Mile Magazine.
Part 1 of our discussion of Allen Ginsberg's powerful anti-war poem Wichita Vortex Sutra, with poets Bob Herz, Phil Memmer, and Stephen Kuusisto. Many thanks to the Ginsberg estate for allowing us to use recordings of Allen Ginsberg reading the poem. The estate's website is here: http://allenginsberg.org/#!/.
Also thanks to PennSound and its wonderful Allen Ginsberg page, from which these recordings are drawn, and which contains many others. The page is here: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ginsberg.php
Music for this discussion was supplied by the brilliant Bob Perry, from his song, "Slip Up."