Charles Reznikoff: March 21, 1974

The Poetry Center presents Charles Reznikoff, reading his poetry before an audience at San Francisco State University. He is introduced by his friend and fellow poet, George Oppen. This is the second of two events, a decade apart, where the two poet friends shared the stage for The Poetry Center. For that earlier event, February 19, 1963, both read from their books — Reznikoff from By the Waters of Manhattan, and Oppen from The Materials — at the time newly published, by New Directions/The San Francisco Review. Here, March 1974, Reznikoff reads nearly 60 poems from the span of his poetry that would soon be collected in the two-volume edition of his Complete Poems, 1918–1936, and 1937–1975, edited by Seamus Cooney for Black Sparrow Press, which appeared in 1976, the year of Reznikoff's death.

Note: Audio for this reading is meticulously cataloged poem by poem, with Reznikoff's reading segmented into individual mp3s (one for each of the most often very brief 59 poems he reads) at Penn Sound's page for Charles Reznikoff. That page contains most known recordings of Reznikoff, including filmmaker Abraham Ravett's remarkable audio recording and accompanying photos of the poet reading from his final book, Holocaust, at his New York City home in December 1975, and Charles Bernstein's related essay "Reznikoff's Voices." Bernstein's "Reznikoff's Nearness," from a 1989 talk at Royaumont, France, addresses the present 1974 recording.