[Poetry readings at the University at Buffalo and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery] / Robert Duncan.

Recorded at the University at Buffalo and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. on January 8, 1962, May 1, 1967, and March 6, 1968 by Allen De Loach on 7 inch Scotch reel-to-reel tape. The Poetry Collection acquired the recordings from De Loach.

This recording is of three separate poetry readings by Robert Duncan, two of which were held at the University at Buffalo and the other at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, also in Buffalo, N.Y. The dates of the readings were January 8, 1962, May 1, 1967, and March 6, 1968. In the first reading, Duncan was introduced by Robert Creeley, and the two poets then had a discussion about Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, Robert Browning, H.D., D.H. Lawrence, imagism, Allen Tate, Randall Jarrell, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, New Criticism, paganism, Mohammed, The Cantos, Carl Jung, Thomas Carlyle, Dale Carnegie, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot, among other subjects. Duncan then read the eighteenth and the seventeenth poems from his long poem "Structure of rime." In the second reading, in which Creeley again gave the introduction, Duncan read thirty of the thirty-two total poems that make up his long poem "Passages." In the middle of reading "Shadows, Passages 11," a baby could be heard crying in the audience, prompting Duncan to say "The reason a child is going to be distressed during these poems is that a child does not understand the words to get fully the emotional undercurrent of them, and frankly this section distresses me and if I were a baby I'd howl. I mean, I really think you've got to remember this in relation to a poem because the human voice changes in a poem." In the third reading, Duncan reads the last two poems, the thirty-first and thirty-third, of "Passages." The three readings are not divided by the three discs. The first reading runs from tracks one to six of disc one, the second reading runs from track six of disc one to track eleven of disc three, and the third reading runs from tracks twelve to thirteen of disc three.

Robert Duncan.

The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries. Digital conversion was made possible through a 2009 National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

1962-1968

Sound recording

INT169

Disc 1.Introduction /Robert Creeley --Structure of rime XVIII --Structure of rime XVII --Tribal memories, passages 1 --At the loom, passages 2 --What I saw, passages 3 --Where it appears, passages 4 --The moon, passages 5 --The collage, passages 6. --Disc 2.Envoy, passages 7 --As in the old days, passages 8 --The architecture, passages 9 --These past years, passages 10 --Shadows, passages 11 --Wine, passages 12 --The fire, passages 13 --Chords, passages 14 --Spelling, passages 15. --Disc 3.The currents, passages 16 --Moving the moving image, passages 17 --The torso, passages 18 --The earth, passages 19 --An illustration, passages 20 (structure of rime XXVI) --The multiversity, passages 21 --In the place of a passage 22 --Benefice, passages 23 --Orders, passages 24 --Up rising, passages 25 --The soldiers, passages 26 --Transgressing the real, passages 27 --The light, passages 28 --Eye of God, passages 29 --Stage directions, passages 30 --The concert, passages 31 --Ancient reveries and declamations, passages 32.

Hear@Buffalo: The Poetry Collection’s Audio Archive

UB Only

lib-pc002-INT169.mp3