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 Their conversation and a reading from The Vienna Paradox have been archived at Pennsound.You will also find links at Charles Bernstein’s blog and Ron Silliman’s blog.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 [...]
INTRODUCTION, 1997 From Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters new ed. U of Chicago Press, 1997 Marjorie Perloff When Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters was published twenty years ago, O’Hara was a coterie figure, adored by his New York School friends and acolytes, especially by the painters whose work he exhibited and wrote about–but otherwise regarded [...]
Song
Is it dirty
does it look dirty
that’s what you think of in the city
does it just seem dirty
that’s what you think of in the city
you […]
How does the flag sit with us, we who don’t give a hoot for Betsy Ross, who never think of tea as a cause for parties?
–John Cage, “Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas”[1]
In a sketchbook for 1964, Jasper Johns began to make notes for his paintings Watchman […]
–Good writers are those that keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. . . .
The fogged language of swindling classes serves only a temporary purpose. . . .
A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its
[…]
One of the most acclaimed poetry books of 1956 was Richard Wilbur’s The Things of This World, published by Harcourt, Brace. Here is the title poem:
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple.
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning […]