John Marron, Harry Mathews, Andrei Codrescu: April 24, 1975

The Poetry Center presents John Marron, Harry Mathews, and Andrei Codrescu, presenting their works at San Francisco State University. Marron, visiting from Portland, Oregon, performs a narration drawn from his experience of Dancing with the Birds, a Sufi dance practice, reads related work, some alphabet poems, and what he calls "kind of a sound poem." Mathews and Codrescu each read work, as Mathews notes, "connected, more or less, with disease and medicine." Mathews reads two prose pieces plus excerpts from his early experimental novels, Tlooth (Paris Review Editions/Doubleday, 1966) and The Conversions (Random House, 1962). Codrescu, whose License to Carry a Gun (Big Table Publishing, 1970) had marked his debut, reads a series of poems and prose, including sections from his novel Monsieur Teste in America (published much later by Coffee House Press, 1987) and his then newly-published memoir, The Life & Times of an Involuntary Genius (George Braziller, 1975). Kathleen Fraser, Poetry Center director, introduces the writers. 

Note: while Mathews and Codrescu alternate in three short sets each, the audio records below consolidate each of their readings into single files for each writer.