the snow man

The video recording of our annual January "Mind of Winter" event--which always begins with a reading of "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens--is now available: here.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

snow cancellation: Michael Stolowitzky

It continues to snow! And the terrible weather will force us to postpone the scheduled discussion with survivor-writer Michael Stolowitzky, originally scheduled for 3:00 p.m., Thursday, February 11th. We want to be sure that you can join us for the conversation, so we'll find a less snowy day to host it; you'll hear about a new date soon. Meantime, check our web calendar for up to date programming information.

Sam Apple reading -- postponed

We're worried about the snow! and many of you are worried too and have called to ask about tonight's program, featuring Sam Apple (Tuesday, February 9th) .

So, as painful as it is, we have decided to POSTPONE the SAM APPLE READING.

We'll let you know when we have a new date.

Meantime: stay warm.

ArtsEdge program subsidizes artists' rent

We're pleased to see that our ArtsEdge program is mentioned in an article in today's Daily Pennsylvanian. We subsidize rent for emergent artists - one writer per year who is associated with the Kelly Writers House (and, often, will teach a course). The project is a collaboration with the Fine Arts department of Penn's School of Design and the Real Estate and Facilities division.

top 10 PennSound poets for January

Most oft-visited PennSound author pages in the past month: 1) Ginsberg, 2) Pound, 3) WC Williams, 4) Ashbery, 5) Creeley, 6) Olson, 7) Howe, 8) Baraka, 9) Christian Bok, 10) Spicer, 11) Reznikoff Holocaust page, 12) Berrigan, 13) C. Bernstein [60-Second Lecture page].

This last item is the video recording of a 60-second lecture given by Charles Bernstein on the topic, "What Makes a Poem a Poem?" It has a punchline ending, so be sure to watch.

Jacket magazine moves to KWH!

On Thursday evening, February 4, 2010, John Tranter and Al Filreis are sending out the following announcement:

Dear friends:

We are writing with news of a transition we both deem very exciting.

By the end of 2010, John Tranter and Pam Brown will have put out 40 issues of Jacket (jacketmagazine.com). It began in what John recalls as "a rash moment" in 1997 - an early all-online magazine, one of the earliest in the world of poetry and poetics, and quite rare for its consistency over the years. "The design is beautiful, the contents awesomely voluminous, the slant international modernist and experimental." (So said _The Guardian_.)

After issue 40, John will retire from thirteen years of intense every-single-day involvement with Jacket, and the entire archive of thousands of web pages will move intact to servers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where it will of course be available on the internet to everyone, for free, as always. But the magazine is not ceasing publication: quite the opposite.

Starting with the first issue in 2011, Jacket will have a new home, extra staff and a vigorous future as Jacket2. Jacket and its continuation, Jacket2, will be hosted by the Kelly Writers House and PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania.

The connection with PennSound, a vast and growing archive of audio recordings of poetry performance, discussion and criticism, is seen as a valuable additional facet of the new magazine, as is the relationship with busy Kelly Writers House, a lively venue for day-to-day poetic interchange of all kinds. The synergy in this three-way relationship has great potential.

Al will become Publisher and Jessica Lowenthal, Director of the Writers House, will be Associate Publisher. The new Editor will be Michael S. Hennessey (currently Managing Editor of PennSound) and the new Managing Editor will be Julia Bloch. John will be available as Founding Editor, and Pam will continue as Associate Editor.

More news about Jacket2 in the weeks and months to come. Meantime, the Jacket2 folks extend gratitude -- as many in the world of poetics do -- to John and to Pam Brown for the extraordinary work they've done. And John, for his part, is mightily pleased that Jacket will be preserved and will continue and grow in a somewhat new mode but with a continuous mission and approach.

- John Tranter & Al Filreis
jacketmagzine.com

convicted Philadelphia communist at KWH

The photograph here shows Philadelphia communists picketing to demand the release from jail of W.E.B. DuBois in 1951 (source: Temple University Urban Archives). Sherman Labovitz was among these protestors. Sherman Labovitz...
* came of age in the progressive political and social movement in Philadelphia, a period that included years of membership, and then leadership, in the Philadelphia section of the U.S. Communist Party
* was arrested with other communist leaders in the summer of 1953 and tried under the Smith Act of treason; he was the youngest defendant of the "Philadelphia Nine," which included among others the radical modernist poet, Walter Lowenfels
* was for many years a Professor of Social Work at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, having established the undergraduate program in social work there
* has been an active partner with the Council of Social Work Education
* has written a beautiful, moving memoir of his experiences being tried under the Smith Act and defended by unusually principled prominent Philadelphia lawyers.

In January 1999 Sherm read from and talked about his memoir at the Writers House. Here is what Faculty Director Al Filreis wrote the next day: "Last night Sherman Labovitz spoke at the House--about his experiences as a young communist leader in Philadelphia on trial under the Smith Act (for conspiring to teach the necessity of overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence as soon as conditions permit) and about his memoir, Being Red in Philadelphia. It was a wonderful session, well attended and exciting. Sherm was the youngest of the nine Philadelphia Smith Act trial defendants. The oldest was Walter Lowenfels, avant garde poet from the 1920s, communist, and (at the time of the indictment) the editor of the Pennsylvania edition of the Daily Worker. Sherm ended the program last night with a nice surprise. He pulled out his (rare) copy of the poems Lowenfels wrote during the trial and while in jail (awaiting high bail to be raised), and he read three of these poems--quite movingly, I thought."