Madeline Gleason, Rosalie Moore, Maxine Kumin: December 11, 1974

The Poetry Center present Madeline Gleason, Rosalie Moore, and Maxine Kumin, reading their poetry. The reading takes place at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco, and due to a power outtage the poets read by candlelight. A volume of Gleason's Selected Poems (Dragon's Teeth Press, 1973) had appeared the prior year, with Here Comes Everybody: New & Selected Poems (Panjandrum Press, 1975) soon to follow. Moore reads a span of her poems, including selections from Year of the Children (later published by Woolmer Brothers, 1977), poems on the Children's Crusade of 1212 A.D. Kumin reads work reaching back to her first book, Halfway (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), to her recent Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Up Country (Harper & Row, 1972), and poems soon to be published in House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate (Viking/Penguin, 1975). Kathleen Fraser, director of The Poetry Center, provides the introductions for this multi-generational reading by women poets.

Gleason and Moore had each read their poems in May of the same year for The Poetry Center's "Poets of the Forties" reading, commemorating Gleason's 1947 Festival of Modern Poetry, with readings by nine of the poets who'd participated in that landmark event, noted to be the first such poetry festival in the US. Invited to present more of their work at this featured reading, as Fraser notes in her introduction, the chance arose for Kumin to join them. 

Note: audio buzz from original recording persists throughout. 

Publisher
American Poetry Archives
Location
Unitarian Universalist Church, San Francisco
Date
1974-12-11
Event Run Time
01:17:36
Contributors
Kathleen Fraser
Rights

©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu. 

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Madeline Gleason (00:13:50)

Madeline Gleason says she'll begin with "something light, before I read something heavy": she reads her poems "Up and Away to Something," "Time, Old Hag, Toothless Wonder," "Wave, wave goodbye...," "I waited for you to walk with me...," and "Concerto for Bell and Telephone." She closes with what she notes is an homage to Robert Duncan and James Broughton, "On witch's night the broom hag rode...." 

Note: audio buzz from original recording persists throughout. 

Rosalie Moore (00:23:44)

The recording of Rosalie Moore's reading enters mid-phrase in what is apparently her opening poem. She then reads "Letter to Belden," and "Holbein to Henry," then turns to selections from Year of the Children, her sequence of persona poems drawing on the 13th century European Children's Crusade. She reads "The Missing," noting it is for "all the Irish mothers," and that she is reading it in particular for Maxine Kumin. She reads poems beginning "The house was uneasy with gratitude...," "Let me listen to other mariners and returners...," and closes with a longer poem from the sequence, "Of places most curious...."

Note: audio buzz from original recording persists throughout. 

Maxine Kumin (00:33:31)

Maxine Kumin reads her poems: "Song for Seven Parts of the Body," "Fraulein Reads Instructive Rhymes," "Casablanca," "The Hermit Wakes to Bird Songs," "The Hermit Meets the Skunk," "Morning Swim," "Heaven as Anus," "The Nightmare Factory," "In the Root Cellar," "Amanda Dreams She Has Died and Gone to the Elysian Fields," "Amanda Is Shod," "The Agnostic Speaks to Her Horse's Hoof," "Thinking of Death and the Dog Food," and "How It Is," which is an elegy for Anne Sexton.

Note: audio buzz from original recording persists throughout. 

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