What is Poetry? (Just kidding, I know you know): Interviews from The Poetry Project Newsletter (1983 - 2009)

by Anselm Berrigan (Editor)

Overview

The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church was founded in 1966 for the overlapping circles of poets in the Lower East Side of New York. These interviews from The Poetry Project Newsletter form a kind of conversation over time between some of the late 20th century's most influential poets and artists, who have come together in this legendary venue over the past 50 years. Includes interviews with Charles North, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, David Rattray, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Harryette Mullen, Barbara Henning, David Henderson, Lisa Jarnot, Alice Notley, Ed Sanders, Samuel Delany, Harry Matthews, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Renee Gladman, Lorenzo Thomas, Fred Moten, Stan Brakhage, Alex Katz, Lewis Warsh, Ron Padgett, Maggie Nelson, Wayne Koestenbaum, Eileen Myles, and more.

"I find it one of the liveliest points of communication in the American poetry world. There is an incredible excitement to come to the church and read one's poems to the many other poets who congregate there, drawn to the church by its own energy and thrust."—Donald Hall

From the introduction, by Anselm Berrigan:

For the poets closely involved with the Poetry Project since, and subsequent to, its inception, the interviews were an opportunity to speak directly to a community one could perceive as known, imaginary, expanding, unwieldy, intermittent, formative, desperately necessary, and sometimes peculiarly unsatisfying all at once. Community being the kind of term that often implies everything and nothing simultaneously, with the bottom falling out of the word depending on who happens to be wielding it. Poets can be particularly adept at using and exposing such terms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940696393
Publisher:	Wave Books
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Anselm Berrigan is the author of seven books of poetry: Come In Alone (Wave Books, 2016), Primitive State (Edge, 2015), Notes from Irrelevance (Wave Books, 2011), Free Cell (City Lights Books, 2009), Some Notes on My Programming (Edge, 2006), Zero Star Hotel (Edge, 2002), and Integrity and Dramatic Life (Edge, 1999). He is also co-author of two collaborative books: Loading, with visual artist Jonathan Allen (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013), and Skasers, with poet John Coletti (Flowers & Cream, 2012). He is the current poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, and co-editor with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. California, 2005) and the Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. California, 2011). From 2003-2007 he was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, where he also hosted the Wednesday Night Reading Series for four years. He is Co-Chair, Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts interdisciplinary MFA program, and also teaches part-time at Brooklyn College. He was awarded a 2015 Process Space Residency by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and in 2014 he was awarded a Robert Rauschenberg Residency by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He was a New York State Foundation for the Arts fellow in Poetry for 2007, and has received three grants from the Fund for Poetry. He lives in New York City, where he also grew up.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Anselm Berrigan

The New York Poetry Scene / Short Form- Charles North

Talking with Red Grooms: An Interview by Anne Waldman

Translation as Puzzle and Performance: An Interview with Paul Schmidt (by Tim Dlugos)

The Colors of Consonance: Bernadette Mayer Talks....

Taking Risks Seriously: David Rattray Talks....

Allen Ginsberg & Kenneth Koch: From A Conversation

An Interview with Harryette Mullen by Barbara Henning

An Interview with David Henderson by Lisa Jarnot

An Interview with Alice Notley by Judith Goldman

An Interview with John Godfrey by Lisa Jarnot

An Interview with Ed Sanders by Lisa Jarnot

An Interview with Victor Hernandez Cruz by Sheila Alson

An Interview with Bernadette Mayer by Lisa Jarnot

An Interview with Kenneth Koch by Daniel Kane

A Silent Interview with Samuel R. Delany

To Buffalo and Back with Renee Gladman: Interview by Magdalena Zurawski

A Conversation with Lorenzo Thomas by Dale Smith

An Interview with Fred Moten by Ange Mlinko

Lisa Jarnot interviews Stan Brakhage

Interview with Charles North by Ange Mlinko

“Surprise Each Other”: Anne Waldman on Collaboration by Lisa Birman

Interview with Alex Katz by Vincent Katz

Adventures in Poetry: An Interview with Larry Fagin

Tina Darragh interviewed by Marcella Durand

Lewis Warsh interviewed by Peter Bushyeager

Jack Collom talks Spandrels, Foxez, and Receding Paths with Marcella Durand

Anne Waldman Talks Poetry Infrastructure, Safe “Zones”, and Other Versions of the World with Marcella Durand

Edwin Torres Talks Interactive Eclecticism, Banana Peels, and Walking in Your Calling with Marcella Durand

Harry Mathews Reveals the Inside Story to Marcella Durand

Brenda Coultas Tells the Truth to Marcella Durand

Akilah Oliver Talks to Rachel Levitsky

Will Alexander: A Profound Investigation, with Marcella Durand

Ron Padgett Lifts Off, with Edmund Berrigan

Wayne Koestenbaum and Maggie Nelson In Conversation

Knowing Isn’t Enough: A Conversation with John Trudell, by Brendan Lorber

An Interview with Ted Greenwald by Arlo Quint

An Interview with Eileen Myles, by Greg Fuchs

10 Questions for Bruce Andrews and Sally Silvers

Editorial Reviews

04/10/2017
On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Berrigan collates a treasure trove of selections from its newsletters, featuring conversations with luminaries such as Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Alice Notley, and Anne Waldman. Koch and Ginsberg expound on the New York School as a “vernacular revolution in American poetry” and David Henderson charmingly relates his hazy memory of the fistfight that launched the Poetry Project itself. Paul Schmidt discusses the performative aspects of translation, and painter Alex Katz relates the history behind his famed portraits of New York School elites. Alice Notley remarks on feminism and the dearth of positive representations of motherhood in poetry, with a few choice words for Sylvia Plath. Maggie Nelson and Wayne Koestenbaum chat about their respective explorations of poetry/prose hybrids, Jane and Hotel Theory. Kenneth Koch expresses the project best: “Certain things can only happen at St. Mark’s... the classiest things... but totally without pretentiousness.” There is a wide diversity in representation here, in the interviewees themselves and in their work’s aesthetics, form, and content. The vast majority of the contributors are poets, with an emphasis on the New York School, but there is valuable insight to be gleaned for anyone working in the creative arts. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2017-02-06
A striking anthology of interviews that sheds light on one of the most iconic poetry institutions in New York City.When it first opened in 1966, the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was a place for poets to gather, listen to the vibrant new voices making noise in the city, and, more importantly, collaborate with their peers. It opened "out of the need for a stable ongoing reading series/gathering point/community center for the overlapping circles of poets in downtown NYC." In celebration of the Poetry Project's 50th anniversary, Berrigan (Come in Alone, 2016, etc.) has assembled a series of interviews that were originally published in the Poetry Project newsletter. The newsletter had as a mission to instigate cross-generational conversations, featuring writers from various decades discussing contemporary issues in the writing/poetry community. The work "will reward readers who take on the experience of reading it from beginning to end"—and the reward is no small thing. Readers have the pleasure of encountering Charles North discussing "scenes," Kenneth Koch characterizing anthologies, Alice Notley talking about the construction of narratives, Ed Sanders discussing Allen Ginsberg and the New York School, Bernadette Mayer shedding light on her vocation as a writer, Fred Moten exploring the masculinity/femininity of discourse, and Anne Waldman ranting about the joys of collaboration. This anthology provides strong historical context for a space that championed linguistic risks, welcomed diversity with open arms, and celebrated a sociopolitical agenda. Berrigan explains that the Poetry Project "wasn't just a place to go give a reading and cross off some list of desired venues. The point was to be exposed, to expose your rawest risk-taking work to a discerning audience, one that would let you know right there whether it's working or not, and to participate in that as communal process." An essential tour de force for poetry buffs.

Kirkus Reviews