cinema

In this performance, Allen Ginsberg reads from Howl (1956), Kaddish (1961), and Reality Sandwiches (1963). He also discusses his writing process and reads some unpublished excerpts.

In response to questions from attendees, John Ashbery discusses cinema, wide-ranging responses to his two earliest books (Some Trees, 1956, and The Tennis Court Oath, 1962), and his appreciation for the poetry of Walt Whitman. He also considers movements in American poetry including modernism, postmodernism, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and new formalism.

Khaled Mattawa presents a lecture on the long poem, in which he considers different types of long poems, their inspiration and subject matter, and their effect. The lecture incorporates portions of a published essay, "Epic Temptations: On an Unwritten Poem." Mattawa also reads from a sequence of poems in progress that would later appear in Fugitive Atlas (2020).