The Electro-Library

On the day of the total eclipse, Ada Limón, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, talks with Amra Brooks about her new work, the experiences that shape poetic practice, whether or not time exists, and the necessity of reimagining our relation to the Earth and one another.

Theme music by Tubifex, featuring Hitek Meshat. Additional music: Jupiter the Blue by Gillicuddy, licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Ring in the new year with Amra Brooks and Eileen Myles' intimate conversation about Myles' new edited volume, Pathetic Literature, art, music, dogs, finding the motivation to create in challenging times, and more! Recorded over Zoom, November 4, 2022.

A real Thanksgiving feast: Ross Gay talks with Amra Brooks about poetry, the meaning of gratitude in dark times, radical presence, mushrooms, and so much more! Recorded over Zoom, November 7, 2021.

We are joined by Ross Gay, poet, essayist, professor of poetry at Indiana University, and founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard. Gay is the author of the poetry collections Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and the essay collection, The Book of Delights. Gay is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens, as well as co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, River. His most recent book, Be Holding (2021), is the recipient of the PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. Gay reads from his poems and essays. A question-and-answer and discussion session follows. Recorded live via Zoom on November 4, 2021.

Poet, author, and activist Layli Long Soldier joins Amra Brooks over Zoom to talk about writing during the pandemic, activism in the wake of the death of George Floyd, finding and nurturing creative inspiration, activist art, Lakota culture, and the complex, overlapping meanings of embodiment as women, mothers, and citizens. Originally recorded on October 30, 2020.

Poet, Essayist, and activist Layli Long Soldier reads from her latest poetry collection, Whereas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. A question-and-answer and discussion session follows. Recorded live via Zoom on October 29, 2020.

00:47 D.A. Powell, "Quarantine," read by Sutopa Dasgupta

02:26 Don DeLillo, from White Noise, read by David Charlesworth

Interlude: James Bohm, "Music for Handwashing (Out Damned Spot 2)

07:11 Clarice Lispector, from "Letters to Hermengardo," read by Richard Colton

Interlude: James Bohm, "Music for Handwashing (Out Damned Spot 1)

10:33 Excerpts from the Diaries of Franz Kafka, read by Jared Green

13:40 from Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, by Bill Porter, read by Prof. Karen Teoh

Interlude: James Bohm, "Music for Handwashing (Out Damned Spot 1)

19:05 John Keats, "To Mrs. Brawne, October 24th, 1820, Naples Harbour," read by Prof. Matthew Borushko

22:59 Abigail Donovan, from Tar Paper no. 3, read by Abigail Donovan.

Interlude: James Bohm, "Music for Handwashing (Out Damned Spot 1)

31:22 Carlos José Perez Sámano, "Evening at Home," read by Carlos José Perez Sámano

Interlude: excerpt from Care of the Skin, Encyclopedia Britannica Films (Public Domain)

Interlude: James Bohm, "Music for Handwashing (Out Damned Spot 1)

34:40 Maira Kalman, interview

Outro Music: Neil Diamond, "Sweet Caroline" (COVID-19 PSA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxnETrhOIAE

-Theme music: "Ecstasy in Umbra," by Tubifex (feat. Hitek Mesh@t), courtesy of Stable Genius Records

CONTENTS

Originally recorded November 15, 2018 at Stonehill College

ABOUT OCEAN VUONG

Ocean Vuong is the author of the debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, 2019). He is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize.

Vuong’s writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harpers, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2016 100 Leading Global Thinker, alongside Hillary Clinton, Ban Ki-Moon and Justin Trudeau, Ocean was also named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers” and has been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” PBS NewsHour, Teen Vogue, VICE, The Fantastic Man, and The New Yorker.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at Umass-Amherst. He is currently not writing anything.

For more information about Ocean Vuong and his writing go to: https://www.oceanvuong.com/

ABOUT RICKEY LAURENTIIS

Rickey Laurentiis (b. 1989, February 7) was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to love the dark. His poetry has been supported by several foundations and fellowships, including the Whiting Foundation (2018), Lannan Literary Foundation (2017), Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy (2014), Poetry International Rotterdam (2014), the National Endowment for the Arts (2013), Cave Canem Foundation (2009-2011), and the Poetry Foundation, which awarded him a Ruth Lilly Fellowship in 2012. In 2016, he traveled to Palestine as an invited reader for the Palestine Festival of Literature. He received his MFA in Writing from Washington University in St Louis, where he was a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow, and his Bachelors in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where he read literature and queer theory.

He is the author of Boy with Thorn, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Levis Reading Prize, and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and a Lambda Literary Award. Boy with Thorn was also named one of the top ten debuts of 2015 by Poets & Writers Magazine and a top 16 best poetry books by Buzzfeed, among other distinctions. Individual poems have appeared widely, including Boston Review, Feminist Studies, The Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, New Republic, The New York Times, and Poetry; have been anthologized in Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers Speak of Palestine, Bettering American Poetry, A Tale of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation, and Prospect.3‘s art catalogue Notes for Now; as well as translated into Arabic, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Laurentiis’ interests include visual culture, ekphrasis, chiaroscuro and shade, revisionary logics, penetration and the body, radical justice, cultural studies, and shame. He has taught at a selection of institutions, including Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the 92nd Street Y. He is the inaugural Fellow in Creative Writing at the Center for African American Poetry and Poeticsat the University of Pittsburgh, and serves on the executive board for the Black Art Futures Fund.

For more information about Rickey Laurentiis and his writing go to: https://www.rickeylaurentiis.com/#1

Jared is joined by award-winning poet and influential philosopher Fred Moten for a wide-ranging discussion of poetry, identity, music, community-formation, and resistive practices. Originally recorded October 16, 2019.

Visit: theelectrolibrary.org and raymo-series.org

Recorded: October 16, 2019 6pm in May Hall: McCarthy Auditorium

Fred Moten’s work explores black studies, performance studies, poetry, and critical theory. In 2014, Moten’s The Feel Trio was a poetry finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was the winner of the California Book Award; and in 2016 his The Little Edges was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

In 2016 Fred Moten was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Stephen E. Henderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry by the African American Literature and Culture Society. Moten has taught at the University of Iowa, Duke University, the Naropa Institute, and Brown University.

Moten currently teaches in the department of performance studies at New York University and lives in New York City.

EPISODE NOTES AND LINKS:

Introduction: Prof. Daniel Itzkovitz, Stonehill College

Links to Images and Songs:

•Pieter Brueghel, The Elder, The Peasant Dance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasant_Dance#/media/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpg

•Ernie Barnes, "The Sugar Shack", 1976.

•Marvin Gaye, "Since I Had You": https://youtu.be/kfdEnYEhmvA

•Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly, Save Your Love For Me