Performance Poetry

The poet on prison writing, collective art-making, Bay-area resistance, and being read in a thousand years.

When you don’t have the words / what will you use to speak (to truth)? Whiteness is structured like a language

A pioneer of New York’s downtown scene in the ’60s and ’70s recalls how he found his vocation as a poet.

John Giorno’s influence as a cultural impresario, philanthropist, activist, hero, and éminence grise stretches so widely and across so many generations that one can almost forget that he is primarily a poet.

“I don’t think being a cynical, academically oriented deconstructor should stop one from being a wild and crazy performer.”

Mónica de la Torre interviews the late Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (yes, you read that correctly) in honor of the publication of Body Sweats, a collection of her uncensored writings.

Corina Copp contrasts the theatrical work of Yvonne Rainer with her new collection of poems, which are private and resistant to narrative, rejecting abstraction and decorative language.
Anne Waldman includes in her books chants, cantos, sestinas, haibun and elegies, demonstrating her intellectual and creative range and drawing on her studies of spirituality, mythology, and philosophy.