{"id":13893,"date":"2013-10-04T01:11:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T01:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/?p=13893"},"modified":"2014-02-14T21:42:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T21:42:43","slug":"groove-dreams-whipped-stiff-poetry-performance-and-the-infinitude-of-the-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/2013\/10\/04\/groove-dreams-whipped-stiff-poetry-performance-and-the-infinitude-of-the-archive\/","title":{"rendered":"“Groove dreams whipped stiff”: Poetry, Performance, and the (In)finitude of the Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a kick-off for Archives Month Philly<\/a>, Paley Library hosted \u201cLive from the Collections: In and Out of Poetry\u201d Tuesday, October 1st. Stemming from an exhibition of small press and alternative poetry entitled \u201cThe Fun in Speaking English\u201d done by TU Libraries in spring, the afternoon saw the assembly of three poets who, through their own work’s thematic concerns and by their very participation in the event of the reading, interrogate and explore the notion of The Archive. Challenging the audience to consider the reading as more than a recitation of poetic product, Moderator Matthew Kalasky (director of Philadelphia cultural organization Nicola Midnight St. Claire<\/a>) prefaced the reading by posing the question, \u201cHow does the current reading color the writing process of the past?\u201d<\/p>\n

The reading began with Penn Ph.D. student\/writer\/media archivist Daniel Snelson sharing work exploring the infinitude of the poetic page. Snelson read from Ronald Johnson\u2019s Radi O\u2019s<\/a>, a poem which, through the careful, meticulous removal of text from Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost<\/em>, recontextualizes and reinvents the work. Snelson then shared one of his own projects of reimagining, audio of himself reading over archived audio of a reading by poet Rosmarie Waldrop of her work\u00a0Differences for Four Hands<\/em> reading over audio of a previous reading of her poem. Yes, you did in fact read that correctly: note the layers! Waldrop\u2019s last stanza in particular, speaks toward the process & performance theme of the reading:<\/p>\n

\u201cClara, play for us. The performance over, your name drops back out of the air. Records now, of course. Groove dreams whipped stiff. You never stepped twice\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Next, the program featured prolific contemporary poet Lyn Lifshin, a writer whose work is partially housed in TU Libraries\u2019 Special Collections Research Center (check out the extensive list of the Library’s holdings here<\/a>). Plumbing her own archive of material, Lifshin read a number of poems, sometimes pausing between each to give the audience a history of the poem, in terms of both its initial writing and its life as a performed piece. The following piece, the beautiful and devastating \u201cI Remember Being Lovely But,\u201d was one of these historicized poems, allowing the audience a glimpse into the moments of its creation. The work itself functions as the poeticized written trace of lived experience, each performance of the work a further instance of documentation:<\/p>\n

“There were snakes in the
\ntent. My mother was
\nstrong but she never
\nslept, was afraid of
\ndreaming. In Auschwitz
\nthere was a numbness,
\nlull of just staying
\nalive. Her two babies
\ngassed before her, Dr.
\nMengele. Do you know
\nwho he is? She kept
\nher young sister alive
\nonly to have her die
\nin her arms the night
\nof liberation. My mother
\nis big-boned but she
\nweighed under 80 lbs.
\nIt was hot. I thought
\nthe snakes lovely. No
\ndrugs in Israel, no
\nfood. I got pneumonia,
\nmy mother knocked the
\ndoctor to the floor
\nwhen they refused,
\nsaid I lost two in
\nthe camp and if this
\none dies I\u2019ll kill
\nmyself in front of you.
\nI thought that once
\nyou became a mother
\nblue numbers appeared
\nmysteriously, tattooed
\non your wrist.”<\/p>\n

The SCRC also contains a substantial amount of Lifshin\u2019s papers, including poem drafts and correspondences.<\/p>\n

Poet Elaine Terranova ended the afternoon\u2019s readings, reading from several of her seven collections of poetry. (Some of Terranova\u2019s work is housed in the SCRC–see the list here<\/a>). Her poem \u201cStairway\u201d, from her most recent collection Dollhouse, nicely summates many of the tensions of the archive:<\/p>\n

“Think of the dollhouse
\nas a collection, a museum,
\neven a prison, but a little doll,
\na tiny chair, mean nothing
\nif not in the context of a house.<\/p>\n

There is in a house, despite
\nits safety, I don\u2019t know,
\nsuch capacity for movement and change.<\/p>\n

At night, for instance, a house
\ntalks back, crackles and knocks.
\nTurn on the alarm and it is like
\nsetting the alarm of your fear,
\nlittle birdcall of eternity.<\/p>\n

Downstairs you have only just
\nshut the door on the world
\nand you float up, giddy with sleep.
\nYou fly–don\u2019t they call the sets
\nof steps flights? At the top,
\nmassive dark, a wind that rushes through the hall.<\/p>\n

Everything moves around.
\nNothing is stable. Then you open
\na door, look through a window,
\nand find there, pocketed by the sky,
\nthe nearly perfect moon.”<\/p>\n

Terranova reminds us, \u201cNothing is stable\u201d, and such is the archive, not merely a static collection of printed texts \u201cwhipped stiff\u201d, to borrow from Waldrop, but an animate entity that circulates beyond its physical repository, full of a \u201ccapacity for movement and change,\u201d each performance a circuit on a current that loops both backward and forward. The works shared by these three wonderful poets that afternoon were indeed dreams grooved and regrooved, each performance an instance of truly moving beyond the page, renegotiating the boundaries of the printed word.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1264

Poet Daniel Snelson explicates his poetic process to the audience while Moderator Matthew Kalasky and poets Lyn Lifshin and Elaine Terranova look on.<\/p><\/div>\n

Interested in future library programming? Take a look at this <\/a>calendar for the Beyond the Page schedule of events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a kick-off for Archives Month Philly, Paley Library hosted \u201cLive from the Collections: In and Out of Poetry\u201d Tuesday, October 1st. Stemming from an exhibition of small press and alternative poetry entitled \u201cThe Fun in Speaking English\u201d done by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1900,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[144,6],"class_list":["post-13893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library-news","tag-programs-events","tag-top-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1900"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}