Feminism/Disability/Embodiment/Poetics

A reading/performance/improvisation with Denise Leto, Amber DiPietra, Eleni Stecopoulos and Petra Kuppers

March 20th, Saturday. 2-4pm, Subterranean Arthouse. Berkeley

“From this companion text, I’d like to make you a creature from the materials already available in the Kelsey Street book.”

–Bhanu Kapil reading an alternate version of Humanimal, a Project for Future Children.

The interviews include: Susan Gevirtz, on Barbara’s early years; Kathleen Fraser, on her years in New York City; Brenda Hillman, on certain late poems and the creative process; Rena Rosenwasser on collaborations with visual artists; and Patricia Dienstfrey on Hadley’s recollections of Barbara in the context of family life. If you cite or quote this series on your website or in your work, which you are invited to do, we ask that you acknowledge Kelsey Street Press. These recordings are unedited. A copy of the entire series on CD may be obtained through us at www.kelseyst.com Phone: 510.845.2260. Address: 2824 Kelsey Street, Berkeley, CA, 94705.

Susan Gevritz with Hadley Guest

Kathleen Fraser with Hadley Guest

Rena Rosenwasser with Hadley Guest

Patricia Dienstfrey with Hadley Guest

The three Gevirtz/Guest tracks divide into two main sections.

Section 1:  Guests’ peripatetic childhood moving back and forth between Florida and West Virginia. Brief profiles of her mother and father. Influences of the Depression. Beverly Hills High in 1930’s. College at UCLA and UC Berkeley. World War II years, social work and other jobs. First marriage to John Dudley and moves from LA to Kansas City and Manhattan. Barbara in Los Angeles, 1940s. Discussions of “Handbook of Surfing,” and “Turkey Villas” from THE BLUE STAIRS. Guest’s conflicted views regarding psychoanalysis and doctors given her Christian Science background. Hollywood and THE CONFETTI TREES. UC Berkeley: the Beats, Josephine Miles, Kenneth Rexroth and the SF Renaissance poets. Poets who influenced Guest’s poetry. Her view of historical time in poetry and the character of her modernism. Hadley Guest reading “Blurred Edge” from MINIATURES.

Section 2:  The third voice is Patricia Dienstfrey’s, co-founder of Kelsey Street Press. Guest’s apartment overlooking Kandinsky’s studio in the Flatiron District. Her respect for artists who came to the U.S. from European and Eastern European during World War II. Her four siblings.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

The main focus of this track is on Guest’s collaborations with visual artists throughout her writing career.

Guest’s visits to Berkeley in the eighties for readings and to stay for periods of time in friends’ homes. How “writing against personal difficulties” stimulated her middle and later poems. Combinations of adventurous spirit, risk-taking, insecurity, fear, opportunity, spontaneity as part of her process and an aspect of her modernism. Guest’s close friendship with artist, June Felter. The importance of the writing of “Chalk” in an empty Albany, CA classroom. Rosenwasser’s first meeting with Guest and their visits in NYC in the eighties. New York School views of life and art as not separate from social engagement of artists, writers, dancers, musicians in studios, museums, bars, parties and private conversations. Reasons for Guest’s move to the Bay Area in 1994. Guest’s immediate impact on the poetry Bay Area poetry scene among innovative feminist writers, students, and others. Discussion of some of her Bay Area poet friends. Guest’s many awards in later life, including the highly prestigious Robert Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime of Work in Poetry from the Poetry Society of America, 1999.

Works discussed:

DEFENSIVE RAPTURE, Sun & Moon, 1993
QUILL, SOLITARY, APPARITION, Post-Apollo, 1996
THE CONFETTI TREES, Sun & Moon, 1999

Poem paintings with Mary Abbott in NYC and Ilse Getz in Paris

MUSICALITY: With artist June Felter, Kelsey Street Press, 1988
THE NUDE: With artist Warren Brandt, International Editions, 1989
THE ALTOS: With artist Richard Tuttle, Hank Hine Press, 1992
OFTEN: A play, in collaboration with poet Kevin Killian, performed at Small Press Traffic, 1990’s
STRIPPED TALES: With artist Anne Dunn, Kelsey Street Press, 1995
SYMBIOSIS: With artists Laurie Reid, Kelsey Street Press, 2000
DURER IN THE WINDOW: With artist Richard Tuttle and editor Africa Wayne, Roof Books, 2003

This interview focuses on Hadley Guest’s memories of family life, growing up in a household with her mother, her stepfather, Trumble Higgins, and her half brother, Jonathan.

Track 1:  Hadley Guest’s early childhood memories of her father, Stephen Guest, and her stepfather, Trumble Higgins in New York City.

Track 2:  Barbara Guest’s and Trumble Higgin’s differing perspectives on politics and class. Barbara Guest’s activism during the Vietnam War. Years in residence in Washington, D.C. during the Kennedy Administration. Entertaining at home. Styles of argument and discussion in the family context. Hadley Guest’s years at boarding school and Bennington College. Barbara Guest’s style of criticism and her advise to Hadley starting out as a writer of children’s books.

Bed of Lists
========
00:00 Introduction
00:48 Salisbury Plain
02:04 Coal
03:20 Dust Bowl
05:20 The Array of Orthodoxy
07:01 Norte
07:53 Mexican Rain
10:52 For Karin
11:29 Meshes
13:09 The Sheep
16:03 end

house made of silver
===============
00:00 The Excess
01:24 Its Companion
02:15 Return
04:46 Term
06:13 The Ferry
09:22 Emitted Adoration
15:39 end

Ross Craig, Sound Engineer

00:00 Introduction by Hazel White
00:28 These Fishing
02:46 Commentary by Myung
05:40 Demarcation
07:47 Commentary by Myung
08:55 And Sing We
11:47 Food, Shelter, Clothing
15:30 Commentary by Myung
18:30 end

Buy Under Flag from KSP.

00:00 KSP intro
00:26 intro to 12th of Never
02:16 12th of Never
07:16 Postscript to 12th of Never
08:12 Intro to Black Box Cutaway
11:45 Black Box Cutaway
29:23 Conversation with Hazel White

In this recording, Laynie reads from untitled sections of her KSP book.

Introduction by KSP and Laynie

pp11-13

pp16-21

pp23-26

p28

p30

pp33-35

pp37-39

p42

p45

p47

Introduction

Concordance

Red Quiet

Purchase Concordance from KSP.

In “thinking about who I was when I wrote this book”, Bhanu reads from her notebook by way of a detailed introduction;

I was still dreaming/fulfilling the break.   Preprostheses, pre-healing, pre-everything.

That’s when I invented this form. A sacred space for voices. I interpolated them into and through my own documents, my own poems, my own answers. It was an intuitive decision. There are about 10 or more notebooks that I have at home that contain the dense, complete answers, the descriptions of the women, where I met them and so forth. The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers contains words, lines, sentences, fragments, stories, phonemes and images taken from those notebooks.  I think of them as red threads I tied on to my coat, its hem and buttons. I have done this for years and years. Come upon a scrap of red wool or cotton on the sidewalk and tied it onto whatever I am wearing.

Purchase Vertical Interrogation of Strangers from Kelsey Street Press.