[Discussion and lecture at the University at Buffalo] /

Recorded in Buffalo in the early 1970s by Allen De Loach on a 120 minute Tracs sound cassette which was acquired by the Poetry Collection.

The first half of this recording is of Robert Duncan, Theodore Enslin, Allen Ginsberg, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, and Charles Reznikoff discussing objectivism. The second half is of Robert Duncan teaching a workshop titled "Conventions in poetry." The group discussed the origins, influences, and poetics of objectivism. Among the topics referred to were Chinese poetry, Ezra Pound, H.D., French free verse, Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Carlos Williams, Charles Algernon Swinburne, T.S. Eliot, Botticelli, Heraclitus, e.e. cummings, Vachel Lindsay, and Aristotle. In addition, Reznikoff read two poems and Oppen read one. Duncan began his "Conventions in poetry" workshop by defining what he called conventional verse as "verse in which one line we know how it is supposed to behave because it meets the convention of a preceding line." Duncan also discussed his experience as a student in workshops: "We looked at the writng of the professors who were teaching us writing and we shook our sorry heads. . . . I didn't know the cruelty of what kids could do." Among the other topics Duncan discussed were W.H. Auden, Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, Rousseau, the relation of conventional verse to conventional societies, William James, Robert Frost, W.B. Yeats, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, Ulysses by James Joyce, William Dunbar, LeRoi Jones, Bessie Smith, Henry James, Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson, Catullus, the letters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Allen Ginsberg, and yoga. At one point Duncan mentioned that his next lecture will be on organic form.

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

197-?

Sound recording

INT108

Disc 1.Panel discussion. --Charles Reznikoff reading:first line of poem:[Salmon and red wine] --first line of poem:[I have neither the time nor the weaving skill, perhaps]. --George Oppen reading:Psalm. --Disc 2.Conventions in poetry /Robert Duncan.

Hear@Buffalo: The Poetry Collection’s Audio Archive

UB Only

lib-pc002-INT108.mp3