From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection
Open-access audio archives are changing the ways we consume and conceive of poetry. This article considers exactly how they renew our sense of the poetry collection. While books provide authoritative collections assembled by a poet or an editor, open-access audio repositories with an archival concer...
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2022-12-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/13944 |
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| author | Abigail Lang |
| author_facet | Abigail Lang |
| author_sort | Abigail Lang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Open-access audio archives are changing the ways we consume and conceive of poetry. This article considers exactly how they renew our sense of the poetry collection. While books provide authoritative collections assembled by a poet or an editor, open-access audio repositories with an archival concern preserve entire poetry readings in which poems are read in a different order than in print. Given the ability of poems to take up new meaning according to context – a characteristic identified by Neil Fraistat as “the Petrarchan paradigm” –, I argue that such “sets” constitute hermeneutic objects in themselves and in relation to print collections. To test this hypothesis, I turn to Louis Zukofsky, a poet known for the careful structuring of his books and his radical care for sound. Listening closely to two 1972 readings and examining a reading program for a 1941 reading at the YMHA preserved in the Zukofsky archives, I establish that such sources offer valuable insights into the work, expose a series of criteria used by poets to compose their readings, show how a poet can repurpose old poems in renewed contextures, and ultimately observe that approaching Zukofsky through his audiotexts tilts his work decisively toward song. Moreover, Zukofsky’s Fall 1972 readings foreground the curatorial role played by his wife, Celia Zukofsky. By setting to music her selections from her husband’s work, she offers two artistically complex textual realizations of a game-changing affordance of sound-recording technologies since the 1963 invention of the audio cassette – i.e. the possibility to anthologize on the receiving end. In large online repositories of recorded poetry, the playlist has become an established genre with a curatorial function, offering guided tours by artists or scholars. Tapping the widely shared desire to collect “favorites,” share them with others, and prompt them to come up with their own list in response, the playlist undeniably holds great critical, creative, and pedagogical potential. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-bcf808b230494635aebdef1a27f1d5ea |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2022-12-01 |
| publisher | Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Sillages Critiques |
| spelling | doaj-art-bcf808b230494635aebdef1a27f1d5ea2025-01-30T13:47:47ZengCentre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"Sillages Critiques1272-38191969-63022022-12-013310.4000/sillagescritiques.13944From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry CollectionAbigail LangOpen-access audio archives are changing the ways we consume and conceive of poetry. This article considers exactly how they renew our sense of the poetry collection. While books provide authoritative collections assembled by a poet or an editor, open-access audio repositories with an archival concern preserve entire poetry readings in which poems are read in a different order than in print. Given the ability of poems to take up new meaning according to context – a characteristic identified by Neil Fraistat as “the Petrarchan paradigm” –, I argue that such “sets” constitute hermeneutic objects in themselves and in relation to print collections. To test this hypothesis, I turn to Louis Zukofsky, a poet known for the careful structuring of his books and his radical care for sound. Listening closely to two 1972 readings and examining a reading program for a 1941 reading at the YMHA preserved in the Zukofsky archives, I establish that such sources offer valuable insights into the work, expose a series of criteria used by poets to compose their readings, show how a poet can repurpose old poems in renewed contextures, and ultimately observe that approaching Zukofsky through his audiotexts tilts his work decisively toward song. Moreover, Zukofsky’s Fall 1972 readings foreground the curatorial role played by his wife, Celia Zukofsky. By setting to music her selections from her husband’s work, she offers two artistically complex textual realizations of a game-changing affordance of sound-recording technologies since the 1963 invention of the audio cassette – i.e. the possibility to anthologize on the receiving end. In large online repositories of recorded poetry, the playlist has become an established genre with a curatorial function, offering guided tours by artists or scholars. Tapping the widely shared desire to collect “favorites,” share them with others, and prompt them to come up with their own list in response, the playlist undeniably holds great critical, creative, and pedagogical potential.https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/13944receptionpoetry collectionaudio archivesplaylistpoetry readingclose listening |
| spellingShingle | Abigail Lang From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection Sillages Critiques reception poetry collection audio archives playlist poetry reading close listening |
| title | From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection |
| title_full | From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection |
| title_fullStr | From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection |
| title_full_unstemmed | From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection |
| title_short | From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection |
| title_sort | from book to playlist how open access audio archives are renewing the poetry collection |
| topic | reception poetry collection audio archives playlist poetry reading close listening |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/13944 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT abigaillang frombooktoplaylisthowopenaccessaudioarchivesarerenewingthepoetrycollection |