These audio recordings have been digitized from a collection of cassette and open reel tapes of readings and lectures at Bard over the last 50 years. The collection was initially established with funds provided by the Carter A Towbin Poetry Fund in 1982 and first located in Albee Hall before moving to the Olin Building. Our hope is to use the recordings to help tell the story of Bard as an exuberant place for poetry for more than half a century.
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Milnor Alexander - Freedom of Expression Discussion
Milnor Alexander
Conversation with Assistant Director of Admissions Milnor Alexander at Bard College on April 3, 1957. Recorded in Albee Social.
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Readings by John Ashbery and Joan Retallack
John Ashbery and Joan Retallack
This reading was part of the John Ashbery Poetry Series that ran from approximately 1995 to 2007 and brought leading contemporary poets to Bard for readings and discussion.
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Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Amiri Baraka and LeRoi Jones
Amiri Baraka (credited on the tape under his previous name, LeRoi Jones) reading poems and prose at Bard College, circa 1960. Includes a major reading from his 1965 novel The System Of Dante’s Hell.
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Ted Berrigan
Ted Berrigan
A wonderful 90-minute reading--intimate and playful--by this leading figure of the New York School's "second generation." The event took place in Albee Social on 15 December 1982, only months before Berrigan's untimely death in July, 1983. The recording begins with a wide-reaching, exploratory introduction [nearly 20 minutes long] and includes a lovely translation of Heine and readings of many of the poems from his last book "A Certain Slant of Sunlight," published by O Books, Oakland, California, 1988.
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Paul Blackburn
Paul Blackburn
Parts 3 & 4 of a nearly two-hour recording of the poet Paul Blackburn [1926-1971] reading at Bard on December 6, 1968 in Albee Social, introduced by Robert Kelly. The selections are poems published in various books of Blackburn's including: The Journals, edited by Robert Kelly (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1975); The Omitted Journals (Perishable Press, 1984); Halfway Down the Coast (Northampton, MA.: Mulch Press, 1975); The Cities (New York: Grove Press, 1967); In . On . Or About the Premises (London/New York: Cape Goliard/Grossman, 1968). Includes several selections from his translations of the Provencal poets. Includes his wonderful Pre-Lenten Gestures, a poem for Ed Dorn. Most of the texts are now contained in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn, edited, with an introduction by Edith Jarolim (New York: Persea Books, 1985).
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Paul Blackburn
Paul Blackburn
Parts 1 & 2 of a nearly two-hour recording of the poet Paul Blackburn [1926-1971] reading at Bard on December 6, 1968 in Albee Social, introduced by Robert Kelly. The selections are poems published in various books of Blackburn's including: The Journals, edited by Robert Kelly (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1975); The Omitted Journals (Perishable Press, 1984); Halfway Down the Coast (Northampton, MA.: Mulch Press, 1975); The Cities (New York: Grove Press, 1967); In . On . Or About the Premises (London/New York: Cape Goliard/Grossman, 1968). Includes several selections from his translations of the Provencal poets. Includes his wonderful Pre-Lenten Gestures, a poem for Ed Dorn. Most of the texts are now contained in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn, edited, with an introduction by Edith Jarolim (New York: Persea Books, 1985).
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Mary Ann Caws: Showing & Telling (Side A & B)
Mary Ann Caws
Poetics of Stress. March 4, 1988 in Olin 102
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Richard Clarke
Richard Clarke
Richard Clarcke reading his own poetry at Bard College. Faculty Poetry Reading on March 23, 1966.
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Richard Clarke
Richard Clarke
Richard Clarke reading his own poems at Bard College, Albee Social-Faculty Poetry Reading on May 21, 1969.
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Margaret Creal Reading
Margaret Creal
Reading from The Man Who Sold Prayers and an unfinished novel. May 11th, 1983
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Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley reading at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents at Bard College on April 24, 1973.
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Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis
Reading given by Lydia Davis at Bard College November 11, 1978. Includes: The Senses, Neighbors, The Tasters, Audience, The Strangers, The Messenger, My Husband and I, The Rape of the Inuit Women, The Actors, Sketches for a life of Wasally.
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Readings by Tim Davis and Robert Fetterman
Tim Davis and Robert Fetterman
*Side B Damaged. This reading was part of the John Ashbery Poetry Series that ran from approximately 1995 to 2007 and brought leading contemporary poets to Bard for readings and discussion.
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Diane Di Prima, Part 1
Diane Di Prima
October 11, 1973 at Bard College
- 00:00 Interlude: Introduction to the reading
- 01:22 Interlude: Introduction to The New Handbook of Heaven poems
- 02:10 "The Beach" (from The New Handbook of Heaven)
- 03:36 "Lord Jim" (from The New Handbook of Heaven)
- 05:25 Interlude: Missing Book
- 05:41 Interlude: Introduction to "The Joyous" from The Calculus of Variation
- 06:15 Excerpt from "The Joyous" (from The Calculus of Variation)
- 13:20 "Elegy 1939"
- 13:43 "Pink Angels, circa 1945"
- 14:01 "Women, Wind, and Window 1950"
- 14:31 "Excavation 1950"
- 15:21 "Woman I 1950-1952"
- 15:49 "Door to the River 1960"
- 16:42 "Revolutionary Letter #49" from Revolutionary Letters
- 20:52 Interlude: Missing Poems & Introduction to "Ave"
- 22:34 "Ave" from Loba
