I learned just today that I was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. The Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, has some amazing members, activities, and events. So this is exciting. Also elected this year: Rosalind Krauss, Marjorie Garber, Richard Serra, Gerhard Richter….
For the next two weeks, Joe and I will be touring and speaking in China, with stops in Guangzhou, Xiangyang City, and Wuhan, as well as a special birthday celebration.
We are looking forward to the trip and are grateful to our hosts Li Zhimin and Zhang Guangkui; Li Dingqing, Dean of School of Literature at Xiangfang University; and Nie Zhenzhao, professor of Central China Normal University.
Our tour includes the following lectures:
Guangzhou Canton Tower, sanfamedia.com, Flickr
While in Wuhan, I will be taking part in the 1st Convention of the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics, which includes lectures by an array of Chinese and American scholars and some good friends. For more information about CAAP, see the CAAP page at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Marjorie Perloff & Nie Zhenzhao at CAAP 2008
Here is the complete conference agenda:
Registration
Guiyuan Hotel, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
(Phone: 86-27-6786 3418)
8:10-8:50 Opening Ceremony
Chair:
Nie Zhenzhao, Prof. of Central CCNU, Vice President of CAAP
Speakers:
Ma Min, President of Central China Normal University (CCNU)
Marjorie Perloff, Prof of Stanford Univ, President of CAAP
Charles Bernstein, Prof of Univ of Pennsylvania, Vice President of CAAP
Chen Zhongyi, Director of Institute for Foreign Literature, CASS
Hu Yamin, Prof and Dean of School of Humanities, CCNU
9:00-9:10 Group Photo
9:20-11:50 Plenary Sessions 1-2
9:20-10:20 Plenary Session 1
Chair: Ou Hong (Prof of Sun Yat-sen University)
Keynote Speaker: Marjorie Perloff (Prof of Stanford Univ, President of CAAP)
Title: Becoming a Critic: An Academic Memoir
10:20-11:50 Plenary Session 2
Chairs: Yang Jincai (Prof of Nanjing University)
Kenneth Goldsmith (American Poet)
Keynote Speakers:
10:20—10:50 Jed Rasula（Distinguished Prof of University of Georgia, USA）
Title: The Condition of Poetry When Everybody Is a Poet
10:50—11:20 Chung Ling (Prof and Dean, Hong Kong Baptist University)
Title: Jane Hirshfield’s Poetry and Zen Buddhism
11:20—11:50 Luo Lianggong (Prof of Central China Normal University)
Title: A Poetic Dialog between Langston Hughes and T. S. Eliot
12:00-13:30 Welcoming Banquet
(in honor of Prof Marjorie Perloff’s 80th Birthday)
Place: Guiyuan Hotel, CCNU
Chair: Nie Zhenzhao (Prof of CCNU, Vice President of CAAP)
14:00-17:40 Panel Sessions
Place: School of Foreign Languages Building
14:00-15:40 Panel Session 1
15:40-16:00 Tea Break
16:00-17:40 Panel Session 2
18:00-19:00 Dinner
19:30-21:00 Concert (Place: Concert Hall, CCNU)
Chairs & Speakers: Zang Yibing (Prof and Dean of School of Music, CCNU)
Su Hui (Prof and Vice Dean, School of Humanities, CCNU)
8:00-11:40 Panel Sessions
Place: School of Foreign Languages Building
8:00-9:40 Panel Session 3
9:40-10:00 Tea Break
10:00-11:40 Panel Session 4
12:00-13:30 Banquet (Place: Guiyuan Hotel, CCNU)
Chair: Zhang Weiyou (Prof and Dean of School of Foreign Languages, CCNU)
14:00-17:40 Plenary Sessions 3-5
Place: Concert Hall, CCNU
14:00—15:30 Plenary Session 3
Chairs: Tomiyama Hidetoshi (Prof of Meiji Gakuin University, Japan)
Chen Hong (Prof of School of Foreign Languages, CCNU)
Keynote Speakers:
14:00—14:30 Charles Bernstein (Prof of Univ of Pennsylvania, Vice President of CAAP)
Title: Attack of the Difficult Poems: Towards a More Perfect Invention
14:30—15:00 He Huibin (Prof of Zhejiang University, China)
Title: The Language Poetry: A Utopia Made of Signifiers
15:00—15:30 Terry Gifford（Prof, Bath Spa Univ, UK; Prof, University of Alicante, Spain）
Title: The Challenge of Ecopoetry: The Case of Ted Hughes
15:30—15:45 Tea Break
15:45—17:15 Plenary Session 4
Chairs: John Zheng (Prof of Valley State University, USA)
Young Suck Rhee (Hanyang University, Korea)
Keynote Speakers:
15:45-16:15 Jerry Ward (Distiguished Prof of Dillard University, USA)
Title: The Tonal Drawings of Asili Ya Nadhiri: Temporality and Musicality
16:15-16:45 Steven Tracy (Prof of University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Title: The Blues Terrain of “J. Alfred Prufrock”
16:45-17:15 Youngmin Kim (Prof of Dongguk Univ, Korea)
Title: Transnationalism and Cultural Translation: Language, Poetry, and Poetics
17:15-17:50 Plenary Session 5—Open-Mic Speeches
Chairs: Ning Yizhong (Prof of Beijing Language and Culture University)
Peter Huang (Associate Prof of Taiwan Tamkang University)
18:00-19:00 Dinner (Place: Guiyuan Hotel, CCNU)
19:30—21:00 Poem-Reading Party
Chairs: Charles Bernstein (Prof of Univ of Pennsylvania, USA)
Li Zhimin (Prof of Sun Yat-sen University, China)
Wang Zhuo (Shandong Jinan University, China)
21:00-21:10 Closing Ceremony
Place: Concert Hall, CCNU
Chair: Luo Lianggong (Prof of CCNU; Executive Director of CAAP)
Speakers:
Marjorie Perloff (President of CAAP)
Charles Bernstein (Vice President of CAAP)
Nie Zhenzhao (Vice President of CAAP)
On June 14 I I was lucky enough to lecture in Rio as part of the magnificent series Forma E Sentido: Poesia Contemporano, organized by Gil Lopes and Antonio Cicero. The series included talks by Tzvetan Todorov, Michel Deguy, and José Miguel Wisnik.
Photographs and videos of my talk on Marcel Duchamp, which was offered with simultaneous Portuguese translation, are available through the website.
My gratitude to the organizers and the audience, who provided thoughtful and engaging questions.
Visit Jacket2 for a video of my talk on Duchamp at the Kelly Writers House this past week.
Here is Al Filreis’s description:
Marjorie Perloff visited the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia for most of four days this week – as a Kelly Writers House Fellow. For three hours on Monday, she met with 21 undergraduates in the so-called Writers House Fellows Seminar; they had read and discussed her writings for the previous five weeks. That evening – April 25, 2011 – she gave a 55-minute talk that, in part, offered the full context for Marcel Duchamp’s attempt to exhibit his pseudonymous readymade, “Fountain” (1917). At the time Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists, and submitted the piece under the name R. Mutt to the group’s 1917 exhibition, which, it had been proclaimed, would show all work submitted. After consternated discussion by members of the board about whether “Fountain” was art, it was decided that the work should not be shown. Perloff looked at many of the thousands of paintings and sculptures that were on display at the exhibit, and researched some of the mostly unknown exhibiting artists – and offers us a series of surprising contextualizations, including at least one connection that might provide a pleasant shock.
An audio recording of the talk is also available for streaming and download.
Unoriginal Genius is now available from the University of Chicago press and Amazon. You can see the contents on the Books page and view more information on Facebook.
From Al Filreis:
We at PennSound have just segmented an interview with Marjorie Perloff conducted by Aldon Nielsen for the Incognito Lounge in Palo Alto, CA, November 12, 1991. Here are the clips:
introduction by A.L. Nielsen (0:51): MP3
work on Frank O’Hara (7:13): MP3
“The Futurist Moment, poetic movements, and marginalized works (7:47): MP3
“The Poetics of Indeterminacy” and John Cage (15:02): MP3
the avant-garde and post-modernism (7:57): MP3
“The Radical Artifice,” poetic language, and authentic speech (13:16): MP3
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets (7:42): MP3
Wittenstein and Gertrude Stein (6:52): MP3 And the complete interview (1:06:36): MP3. Here is the link to PennSound’s Perloff page.
My new book Unoriginal Genius: Poetry By Other Means in the New Century is due out from the University of Chicago Press in November.
I’ll be teaching at the Eliot Summer School, U of London from July 10-17 and staying at the Montague Hotel in Bloomsbury in case you would like to reach me.
On November 11, 2009, Marjorie Perloff spoke with Charles Bernstein on Close Listening. Their conversation and a reading from The Vienna Paradox have been archived at Pennsound.You will also find links at Charles Bernstein’s blog and Ron Silliman’s blog. Click through directly to the audio files at Pennsound below.
Close Listening
readings and conversations at Art International Radio
Clocktower Studio, New York, November 11, 2009
Program One:Vienna Paradox reading
Perloff reads from her memoir Vienna Paradox (New Directions, 2004) about growing up in Vienna, and her subsequent move, just before the holocaust, to Riverdale.
Complete Program (26:49): 
MP3
Program Two: Conversation with Charles Bernstein
Perloff talks about Vienna Paradox, the influence of her experience as a refugee on her literary criticism, her perspective on being a second-language writer of English, the unknown 1950s, her graduate school days with the Christian Brothers at Catholic University of America, irony and Jewish identity, the importance of Karl Kraus and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the pernicious influence of Martin Heidegger on postwar thought.
Complete Program (27:21) :MP3
Program Three: Conversation with Charles Bernstein
Perloff talks about a set of schisms that seem to divide 20th century poetry: Yeats versus Futurism; Robert Lowell versus Frank O’Hara; and Wallace Stevens versus Ezra Pound. She reflects on the ongoing legacies of radical modernism for contemporary poetry.
Complete Program (29:27): MP3
Close Listening produced by Charles Bernstein for Art International Radio
Studio Engineer: Jeannie Hooper:
© 2009 Marjorie Perloff and Charles Bernstein
The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound, edited by Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin and containing twenty-two essays has just been published by the University of Chicago Press. It is also available on Amazon. For more information, see under Books.
