AL FILREIS:
I'm AI Filreis and this is Poem Talk at the Writers House, where I have the pleasure of convening three friends to collaborate on a close, but not too close reading of a poem. We'll talk, maybe even disagree a bit, and perhaps open up the work to a few new possibilities, and we hope gain for project that interests us some new listeners and I say listeners because Poem Talk poems are available in recordings made by the writers and artists themselves as part of our PennSound archive writing.upenn.edu/pennsound.

Today, I am overjoyed, here in Philly at the Writers House in our Wexler studio by Michelle Taransky, a poet whose books include, 'Sorry was in the Woods',' Barn Burned, Then' and the 2020 chapbook 'Abramowitz-Grossberg'. A longtime brilliant, brilliant teacher here at Penn of seminars in critical writing and also creative writing, once a full-time staff member of this very creative place, this community, the Kelly Writers House, and always a dear friend to me and us. And by Brooke O'Harra, director, artist, performer, teacher, lots of other things who has been creating and performing the nine-project, ' I am Bleeding All Over the Place: Studies in directing or nine encounters between me and you', and who also co-created with Sharon Hayes, 'Time Passes' an eight-hour performance using an audiobook sound of Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse'. And is among many other things the co-director of the Performance Intensive and teaches here at Penn, a member of the faculty of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing creative writing program. And by special guest 'cause he came from relatively far away, Chris Funkhouser, the one and only Chris Funkhouser. A unicorn if I might say (CHRIS LAUGHS) whose book, 'Prehistoric Digital Poetry, An Archeology of Forms' 1959 to 1995' has been kept… Check out that span of dates, OK? "Prehistoric Digital Poetry" that ends in 1995. You gotta love it. Has been fundamental to those of us trying to understand what's happened in this field since 1995, whose other works include 'New Directions in Digital Poetry', 'pressAgain', great title, 'Subsoil Loots', another great title. And scads of papers, articles, presentations worldwide whose magnificent recordings of poets can be found all over PennSound where he has been a collaborator since the beginning of that project. Since I think the beginning or almost the beginning.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
2010.

AL FILREIS:
That's… OK, yeah, halfway through or a third of the way through, including, especially recently, fabulous, compelling, pristine audio of George Quasha reading his preverbs. Michelle!

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
It's so great to be here.

AL FILREIS:
It's really good to see you. Why don't you...

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I agree I haven't seen Michelle in like 10 years so it's great.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Yeah, I've been teaching a few of your books, Chris, so it's great to have you here at Penn.

AL FILREIS:
Chris, it's really good to see you. I always think of you as a Hudson Valley. You're in Connecticut now.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I came down from Newark last night. I was teaching my digital poetry course last night.

AL FILREIS:
At NJIT where you have been on the faculty forever.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
26 years.

AL FILREIS:
26 years.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
It's good to see you and thank you. I'm saying for the record 'cause you've already heard me thank you, and I did a little in my intro. Thank you for all the years of, you know, sharing with us the amazing recordings that you've done, new and old, really amazing.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I find PennSound to be utterly inspirational and I don't mind saying that it inspired me to start my own archive, and I hope it eventually leads to other people starting their own micro archives. Their own rogue archives.

AL FILREIS:
Absolutely, rogue archives. If you want to figure out how it is to become a rogue archivist of audio, get in touch with Chris Funkhouser.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
No, Chris Mustazza.

AL FILREIS:
OK, all the Chrises and Chris Martin too.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. Brooke?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Yes?

AL FILREIS:
So good to see you.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
It's so great to see you, Al.

AL FILREIS:
This is good. You light up my life. (BROOKE LAUGHS) This is great. You know this rambling intro that we've done actually so relevant to John Giorno. So let me just say, as we move on, that we four have gathered here to talk about a piece created by John Giorno titled 'Everyone is a Complete Disappointment'. It was included on the album 'John Giorno & Anne Waldman - A Kulchur Selection', kulchur spelled with a K, released in 1977 from the Giorno Poetry Systems label. An album that include two Giorno pieces in four Waldman pieces. Among the latter, the Waldman pieces, the famous 'Fast Speaking Woman' and also 'White Eyes'. 'Everyone is a Complete Disappointment', was recorded on May 1st, 1977 at ZBS media. It's 26 minutes long, far too long for us to play in its entirety here on Poem Talk. We will post a link to the entire recording to our Poem Talk program notes published in Jacket2. And here before we talk about the work, we'll listen to an excerpt of five minutes and 10 seconds or so. So here now is the late John Giorno, 'Everyone is a Complete Disappointment.' 

(RECORDING PLAYS) (OSCILLITING SOUND EFFECT)

JOHN GIORNO:
(VOICE REVERBERATES AND ECHOES) You give us twenty-two minutes, and we'll give you the world! 'Cause when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. And when you're laughin', the sun comes shinin' through. But when you're crying, you bring on the rain and it's a complete waste of time seein' anyone you ever knew. And the way you know you're dead is when you breathe out. You can't breathe in again, you can't breath in, you can't breath in again. Deep down, honey, in the dark of night when I lay my head down to sleep, I know everything is gonna be alright. I got my baby. It isn't possible for you ever to disappoint me. It isn't possible for you ever to be disappointing because every moment is a disappointment, every moment I'm stuck with you. I can't believe how much I don't love you. And I can't seem to shake you off the sled. And it's a pleasure to know. Really you aren't. You really aren't. It's what I dream possible. You're an illusion! If only I'd hate you so much. 

And it's not as though you got anything to lose and it's pretty dismal. You are a reflection of my mind! You make me feel like dancing! I wanna dance my life away! And I don't wanna know anyone I ever knew! And I wanna sit on your face! Eat out my ass! And I want you to eat out my ass! And give me another hit of the popper. Hungry man is by us. I'm gonna dance the night away, lickin' honey from the knife. Oh I wanna do it to you like you did it to me! Oh baby I wanna do it to you like you did it to me! And I still got the hungries. And you're back on the street. And lovin' her is easier than anything I'll ever do again. And you're cruising and your jaws are bitin' themselves and there's a nerve inside your cheek, that's going: tick, tick, tick, tick! And you gotta concentrate! Because you got a knife in your hand! And you're gonna stick it in his arm! You gotta be relaxed and confident! You just gotta put it there. I don't wanna be reborn again. [OVERLAPPING AND REVERBERATING WORDS] Strawberry chips, strawberry jam.

(RECORDING ENDS)

AL FILREIS:
Alright, let's go around and say, starting with Michelle, what we heard. What did you hear? Like generally.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
An assemblage of either borrowed phrases reminding me a bit of a kind of truism, a Holzer, a little pornographic like Finley.

AL FILREIS:
Nice, good start. Brooke?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
What I heard is also I felt like some of the borrowed phrases had, like there were things happening with the language, like an accent or like somebody's own way of saying it. First I was like, are they written phrases? But then I started to recognize like maybe the speaker in the poem wouldn't speak those words that way or like with that kind of accent. So I was interested in that.

AL FILREIS:
In the sound of the voice you're hearing a persona that it's not the speaker, but it's some performance of someone else.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
That's actually a good key. Chris, what'd you hear?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
That's interesting 'cause I didn't get that sense at all except for the very beginning whenever there he was doing the... What is that? WN the radio...

AL FILREIS:
22 minutes. You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world. That's WINS I think in New York maybe.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
It's one of the big huge AM radio stations, right? Or maybe they're on FM too. So that I recognize and the rest I'm willing to you know, I see him more or less original. But what I'm hearing, what I've always heard in Giorno from the very first time I ever heard his work is that, how the use of technology really complicates the work and makes it multi-dimensional. And I'm hearing that throughout this segment. And I mean, one of the things I think we'll talk about is that very you know, dynamic.

AL FILREIS:
Michelle, how do you hear technology? How does one hear technology?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
It's really interesting, especially, with someone who teaches performance and is a performer and director and someone who does this kind of digital archive work. Just sort of thinking about you know, the voice as technology or technology as a kind of technology. It's challenging for me to read it that way. And I'm excited to sort of collaborate with this group and sort of think about the ways, I hear like a sort of chorus or refrain or repeating. My sense is that there's a bit more going on than just that what I'm hearing.

AL FILREIS:
Brooke, the technology in a literal way, can we hear the technology? Can one hear technology in a recording?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
I mean, I think you do start to… You, I, because I don't know how these pieces were made, but when I'm listening for inflection, I feel like oh, it's the same inflection, but the voice sounds different. So I'm like, is there a voice changer or is this rehearsed? Or how is this edited? Like you're aware of all those things. And then there's like two levels of repetition. There's the repetition spoken, but then there's the echo, and the relationship between like a repeated phrase, and an echoed phrase. And that seems to be like a play with the technology. The technology can do that. But when you repeat the phrase that is not, it is a technology of repetition, but it's like one person speaking it over and over.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
It is one person speaking it over and over. But I think what he's using there is a digital delay which is a common like effects pedal that guitarist will use and whatnot. It can be used for the voice as well. But we have the situation where in Giorno's work, the way he's composed it, I mean if you look at the page and we're not looking at the page we're listening, but you can see like a mirror.

AL FILREIS:
Let the listeners know that Chris is holding up a score. We call it a score probably...

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Right, of part of what we heard that's right. But he's got two columns and the thing that Brooke was talking about yes, there is a repetition in the text and that's multiplied through his use of the technology. But you can read the columns of this as almost like a poem itself. But the thing that happens with this particular case in this poem, and I don't get this in every single Giorno piece, is that he almost becomes like he's talking to himself, right? And that to me, I don't know if you all got that or not, but it's sort of profound that way.

AL FILREIS:
Do you hear that?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I think not necessarily a talking to oneself, but a talking sort of a conversation with oneself where I sort of thought perhaps… I know about some of his other compositional practices that he would often record before, bring to a gallery space, bring to a performance, and then sort of talk on top of it. And so it's interesting that this is recorded and obviously if he had done this performance a number of times, it would be possibly different each time. And so in a way he is sort of reacting to himself, though he knows what he did, but if you repeat something, it's probably hard to remember all of your different inflections. So I wonder if he's surprised by himself, himself talking to himself. I mean, it's like an endless refusal of answering. It's just repetition.

AL FILREIS:
I hear a certain kind of madness that comes from an inundation. I was a kid who grew up at the same inundation of the radio sounds and the clichés, and a madness that comes from losing oneself and turning into a repeater of bullshit you know? (CHRIS LAUGHS)

BROOKE O’HARRA:
That's interesting.

AL FILREIS:
I don't know, did you hear, am I way off?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
As soon as you said madness, I actually like got stuck with the word mad because there is a kind of...

AL FILREIS:
He is angry...

BROOKE O’HARRA:
He has, you feel it very like almost… And when you said Poem Talk earlier, I sort of like misheard it as punk talk, but it does have a kind of punk rage feeling and like a real cacophonous...

AL FILREIS:
Totally.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
So, sometimes you like yeah, I just grab that, that mad like he's mad and whether it's internalized or he's like processing the world in that way, but...

AL FILREIS:
I guess what I'm saying is that if we hear the anger or we sense that the anger at himself or at the world, and then you hear him say, "Because when you're smiling, 'cause when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. The whole world smiles with you. The whole world smiles with you. The whole world smiles with you. When, when, when you're laughing, you're laughing, when you're laughing, when you're laughing, the sun, et cetera." And if you're angry saying that you become something else, you become a vehicle for anodyne happy talk. And that to me is why I use the word madness, because it can drive you a little nuts to find out that you are a repeater.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
First thing I do want to say is Giorno was in his life, maybe the last 50 years of his life was a hardcore Buddhist. So the first noble truth is all of life is suffering. So I mean and there's references towards the end of being not wanting to be reborn, and what have you. So, and even amidst that, he does find the ecstatic, joyful activities that he talks that come through so clearly. But sort of back to the dual voices. I mean that to me is so such a profound part of this piece. And when he is so, when he is saying you know, the digital delay allows us to happen. And then he's you know, I'm stuck with you, and then the technology's talking back to him, "I'm stuck with you, I'm stuck with you. I can't shake you off the sled." You know, so yes, it could be the world, it could be the self, but in any case, the technology is enabling this, and at the same time is affecting him or something like that.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I mean, it's interesting because I was reading a bit, an interview that Giorno did in the 'Chicago Review' in the '80s where he talked a bit about an attempt, I think as lots of performers or artists do, to sort of like present one's subjectivity as a performance. And it's interesting that to present this subjectivity, it requires a multiplication of the individual subject. But there is something I think in his words, which are if they might be subjective, but they are rather universal. He talks about, after Kathy Acker was at a reading asking her like, "What do you remember, like from my performance?" and like what she pulled out like meant something to him. Like that was sort of like Kathy Acker's takeaway from you know, his long refrain. And really interesting to sort of think about subjectivity multiplied in that way when so many poets just focus so much on like singularity.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Yeah well, I mean I'm thinking it back to the technology question too, and how this is made. When I look at that paper, I'm like, did the performance happen first, and then...

AL FILREIS:
Exactly.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
This just a record of it. And then also at first you know, you think about it feels edited, but then I'm like oh, what's the technology at that point? And then you think about pedals or delay pedals and there's something he's doing which is listening, right? And that's actually a huge part of it 'cause when you're working in with delay pedals, you are sort of making choices as you're like thinking in both directions. Now it makes me rethink even the beginning of the sound at the beginning.

AL FILREIS:
Sure.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
And setting that up and establishing it. And then how long do you sit with something or how much do you adjust it?

AL FILREIS:
I think Giorno is a great monologist but what we have here is several voices sort of following from what you just said. So my question is, can it be a monologue if in fact a reverberation voice might be affecting the way the voice that's creating the first sound thinks of himself or themselves as a monologist? It's not really a monologue because there seem to be other voices.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
But then it goes back to talking to himself. Like we're circling back to the idea of talking to himself. So if he's a mono, like then he's speaking back, he's hearing himself and speaking back to it and moving on. It's almost like Meisner-esque (LAUGHS) like you sit with something or you're in something long enough, and you hear it and it shifts to something else. And then I guess my next question is then what is written down? Is there like a series of lines that he knows he's going to use or is he pulling? Like where is the material coming from…

AL FILREIS:
Do you know this, Chris?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
..while he's performing it?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, this is a poem from an anthology. So, I had this very same argument with myself, what comes first? How does this develop? Does he write a text and then, record it and then he writes a second part of the text. I mean, it's hard to identify what comes first in this case.

AL FILREIS:
It's 1977 what literal… Was he splicing with a razor and tape?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I don't think so. I think he was using a delay in the studio.

AL FILREIS:
And so he was recording the performance without then later editing.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, there may have been some sort of editing especially if he was in a recording studio but...

AL FILREIS:
And this is on tape.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Right, it would be on magnetic tape.

AL FILREIS:
Where is the tape? Do we have any of that?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I'm not sure. I was in touch with the Giorno foundation fairly recently because I was doing research on the engineer. A woman engineered this record, but they don't know anything about her. I think that eventually she went into radio. But we'd have to come up with a new word for what he's doing here, like mono-dialogist or something like that.

AL FILREIS:
Oh, you're responding to my question, I really appreciate that. What it is... (LAUGHTER) No, no, I really do, because I'm trying to figure out, I think of it as a monologue, but I also think of it as especially if it's improvised or partly improvised. You were saying if you have someone producing a follow-up sound, it might affect what you then do as a next original sound.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, he's definitely listening to, and has tweaked the device to, and practiced with the device so he knows what to expect. It's not of some sort of aleatoric thing flying back at him, although I'm sure he would've been very good at that. He's not improvising this, this is something that is coming through. And the thing about this, all these technology and his even use of a digital delay, for me, when I heard, I was like, this guy's a rock star.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Well, also he memorized all of these things. He wrote somewhere that he could memorize 1500 lines. That to me is like a machine, that is more than monologist, that is...

AL FILREIS:
What is it?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Like a computer, I just don't know. Especially these kinds of lines, whether he wrote them or not. And they are rather general. Like how do you remember the order of that? It blew my mind when I read that.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
It comes from deep within.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
It's like Buddhist.

AL FILREIS:
What's the category of performance art here? Who are the relatives? Who are the descendants? Who are the antecedents? I mean, you know, John Cage would do sometimes something a little like this. Laurie Anderson would much later do some stuff.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Giorno sometimes performs at punk venues, like for punk audiences. And that he would say that audience was like ripe and ready for the poetry to seeking it.

AL FILREIS:
That's true. I mean, this is kind of your field. How do you feel about how this belongs to your world?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Well, I think all of that stuff, that was such a hot moment in performance and in theater. Like, they were so interconnected, right? Like visual art, contemporary, like composition and punk rock or rock and roll and poetry. They were so interconnected. Like I was just, as I was looking at the lists of the Dial-a-Poem artists and thinking through just the people he's listed with and the first dialup poem, like those. I mean, it's the '70s, so it's a little before all the downtown, like 8BC and Pyramid Club and those like events that were happening theatrically in Lofts. But all of that comes out of this moment, which is this like deep collaboration between theater artists, poets, visual artists, and composers.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yeah, like I was thinking to answer their second question, someone who worked with tape loops, like Charles Amirkhanian, he did text and sound work. I mean, Laurie Anderson obviously is I mean, maybe acolyte or something, or Giorno I think he would've come first. There are other vocally oriented people who are played with the effect.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, the sort of middle stage of Karen Finley, people like this.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
But also like this Kurt Schwitters.

AL FILREIS:
And Schwitters is the originator probably.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Exactly, I mean the 'Ursonate' has plenty of this kind of stuff. I mean I hate...

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Well, I noticed that Christian Bök was in the Dial-a-Poem, and I was thinking about Bök's performance of Schwitters that he did at Penn, and like they're...

AL FILREIS:
Which is available on PennSounds.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Yeah, it was at...

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
He memorized 'Ursonate' too.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
So, there is something here that to me, and I was not, I was reading it sort of through some of the conceptual writers, which Chris, your work definitely also figures. But there was a way that this really reminded me of like Rob Fitterman and Kenny Goldsmith's work, and it's just like insistence on keeping saying something and not waiting for answers.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
But he also collaborated with Glenn Branca.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Who's like that guitarist who would sometimes put like 20 or a hundred guitars, like all tuned to E and play like three notes. And then it would just be a cacophony of sound, like a wall of sound on like such, so very few notes. So I think all of those... Like that moment is so profoundly influential to like you know, then The Wooster Group or all these other artists and rock stars and composers. But yeah, I don't know.

AL FILREIS:
Let me switch the subject just a little to tone. So the title is 'Everyone is a Complete Disappointment,' which is either hilarious and almost uplifting, or you know, just a bummer. (LAUGHTER) There's some anger, there's some violence here. "When I lay me down to sleep," you have the sense that no one is sleeping. This is not a place, this is not a time or a mode for sleeping. So maybe it's just ironic and clever or maybe it's a bummer, maybe it's... Michelle, what's the tone?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Man, I mean...

AL FILREIS:
Is everyone a complete disappointment?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I didn't feel bummed. In fact you know, as I was listening, I wasn't waiting for aleatorics but I was feeling magic. Like I was feeling magic happening, even though it was recorded... 

AL FILREIS:
Incantation?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I don't know, like there something... It felt spiritual, like it felt, like it was happening. I guess it's supposed to, right?

AL FILREIS:
Tone?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
OK, this may be too much information, but I was taking a hot bath while I was listening to it, and it was very not hot bath listening you know, it was not relaxing. (LAUGHS) It was like (FRUSTRATED NOISES). And I did have this like... You know, I did walk away from it having some like broodiness, like I started to kind of carry things in my mind. So I don't know, so maybe the tone is a little insistent. The tone to me feels insistent.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
But not exactly… We can't really figure out exactly what that insistence is maybe. And I mean, I don't want to, I mean, it's not my inclination to begin with. But I do… I got really into thinking about the disappointment aspect of it and what he might be driving at and the best I could come up with is that he was not only talking about the world around him, but also there was some self-reflection and he was not excluding himself from this. And that would be, also be, I think a maybe a kind of a Buddhist thing also. So I think it's funny too, I mean, there's a little bit of you know, everybody's… Well why bother? Go kill yourself.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Yeah I mean, I get the sense like that he sort of took from the world and like made this new world, and like that world is a disappointment, and so is the poem world. And you know, I don't think the poem world should always have to save the world. If the world sucks, it's OK for the poem to suck too and be sad. (FILREIS LAUGHS) I don't think poems should have to save the world.

AL FILREIS:
I'm gonna read you a couple of lines and your job will be to say what it is, OK? Listen to it at the beginning. "It's a complete waste, it's a complete waste, waste of time, of time seeing, seeing anyone, anyone you ever, you ever knew, knew. It's a complete, it's a complete waste of time, waste of time seeing anyone, seeing anyone you ever knew, you ever knew. It's a complete waste of time. It's a complete waste of time seeing anyone you ever knew, seeing anyone you ever knew." What's it? What's a complete waste of time?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Life.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Connections with other people.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
When I hear that, I don't hear it as his opinion, his point of view.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
He doesn't exactly mean it, but he's trying to make a point.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
It's somebody's point of view or it's a point of view. But I think it's actually just unraveling it, not committing to it. (EMPHASIZES) It.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Yeah, I think it's a point of view that exists in the world and he possibly chose what to highlight. And as listeners in a 25 minute performance, especially typical poetry audiences are gonna possibly listen for a moment or a bite.

AL FILREIS:
We've identified, "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world" as you know, news radio AM, let's identify, "You make me feel like dancing."

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Oh, Bee Gees.

AL FILREIS:
Bee Gees, what year?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, '70s...

AL FILREIS:
It's almost contemporary with this piece.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
Which is 77 right? OK, so who's you in the Bee Gee song? Who's you? It would be some love interest.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Beloved.

AL FILREIS:
Beloved. Who's you here? Well, it's not Giorno himself, I suppose.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, I was thinking before that you know, there's the suffering and not wanting you know, acknowledging that whole aspect of it. But also he finds joy and ecstasy in the world. Obviously, that's in part of it as well. So it doesn't really matter who that is, but there's something out there that makes him feel like dancing, a love interest that's...

AL FILREIS:
But it's a critique of Bee Gee-ness.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
You think? 'Cause I would think the Bee Gees have...

AL FILREIS:
"[M]ake me feel like dancing" is not John Giorno's cup of tea, I think.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yeah, but dancing might have been. So, I mean…

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I think feeling definitely is.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Bee Gees don't have the corner to market on dancing.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Why you gotta hate the Bee Gees? (LAUGHS) Well, I'm stuck on this idea that even if you are doing this really sophisticated art or you're thinking about art or language in a new way that you, dislike or disdain popular culture, because I think you can actually do both things. You can like popular culture and have it kind of pass through you in a way that's interesting and not be like horrified by it or bringing it in to sort of show what's wrong with it. That it is actually just so present.

AL FILREIS:
Is it Dial-a-Poem, a great expression of the point you just made, which is an effort to use a ubiquitous device to have people get a little poetry in their lives. Is that a fair way of describing Dial-a-Poem as a project?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
That was a radical project, but...

AL FILREIS:
It was very radical except it used, cultural ubiquity to get to it.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Technological, cultural ubiquity in fact, I mean, so sure. But I don't think there was... I don't think that Giorno I mean, he was not interested in conformity and I don't think… He might have been happy to get a big paycheck for something, but to be mainstream. He knew what he was doing wasn't mainstream, he was a beatnik bohemian, gay Buddhist you know, guy who... I mean he of course, all poets want to hear or connect with an audience and have people hear what they do.

AL FILREIS:
But I totally agree with you, everything you said except Dial-a-Poem is an outreach project, isn't it?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Well, I think, I mean, I haven't listened to all of the Dial-a-Poem selections he had, but I read a little bit about the history and my sense was that he did make some choices that were meant to sort of grind against what everyone might've liked. That there were some Dial-a-Poem things he published that were not, traditional poems or poems for kids. And there was some... He liked to be a bit of a provocateur and possibly, or an intense provocateur. A lot of the poems were pornographic, which is not, when you Dial-a-Poem…

AL FILREIS:
You could dial...

BROOKE O’HARRA:
And hear a pornographic poem.

AL FILREIS:
OK.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
OK, but also Dial-a-Poem it makes me think of like all the hotlines for queer folks...

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, absolutely completely.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
..and lesbian folks like you have to call these hotlines. And then there's someone on the other side who can be like, if you wanna go somewhere for bears or if you wanna like have a quick hookup, or if you need a gay plumber or a plumber to come to your house who's not that kind of a plumber, like a plumber who will fix your plumbing, actual plumbing… (LAUGHTER) This is getting out of control.
(LAUGHS) You won't like, you know…

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, yeah.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
..out you, didn't you... So I do think that Dial-a-Poem probably has some relation to this whole culture of people that are deeply dependent on access to culture and access to intimacy, and their world through the phone.

AL FILREIS:
Brooke, that was amazing when you just...

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
And the technology was there so that they could do it. I mean, he was hooked on, you know, early on. He capitalized on that. I mean, not monetarily I don't think, but he certainly was exploiting the ability to do such a thing. And I think that is so amazing how the technology can drive the content. The content can drive the technology, but the processing, whatever he is doing, really connects with the work. And that in this case, I mean, when you hear another piece of it, Giorno say, "I don't want it. I don't need it. I don't want it. Someone cheated me out of it,” which is one of his famous pieces. Like, that becomes more of a mantra. Whereas in this piece, I really get the sense that you know, sometimes technology really helps the artists and sometimes it just is there. But in this case, I think it really helps.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
I also wonder about like, film booths as advertising spaces. Like how do you get information out? Because I know like early Jeff Weiss or you know, actor would actually pick up their scripts from a phone booth. They would call Jeff, and then Jeff would tell them their role and then their like role would be named in the script in a phone booth. But I think like there are, I don't know that period like how advertisement or how people learned about things, but Dial-a-Poem also as like a form that you could just go somewhere. Like how is it advertised? How do people know how to Dial-a-Poem is an interesting question 'cause I know things, some downtown shows and downtown events were literally advertised in phone booth. Like people knew which phone booths would have the information that they would be interested in.

AL FILREIS:
I have a question for Chris, and specifically about his work, but then I would like to have, have everybody offer final thoughts on this. Something that you wanted to say today, but haven't had a chance to yet. Chris, in your thinking about pre-1995 you know, sound art and technology and computer-ish, where does Giorno fit in that pre-history?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Performance poet who used technology? That would be my raw, fresh thought. I mean, I wouldn't, I don't think of… Giorno was not interested in computers so much at this time. He was, I'm pretty sure he was using analog equipment, equipment we were using. We used the phrase digital delay, and there were maybe digital components, but it's not like he had a laptop.

AL FILREIS:
But it's not actually digital.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
It's not a laptop. I hope that someone had, including maybe even him, sort of cataloged his process. And this is one of the reasons I was trying to get in touch with the foundation about, you know, the engineering of such. I mean, Anne Waldman might know because she, you know, she was around. There may be people who worked with him, but I would say yeah, performance poet.

AL FILREIS:
So I know Anne listens to Poem Talk. So Anne, we're talking to you. Call us up and dial us and tell us how it all worked. OK, final thoughts starting with Michelle, one more thing you wanted to say?

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I don't often think about poetry and magic. It's not a research interest of mine, but there's something about this that is just making me think about mass media and magic, and that's my final thought, reminding everyone that there might be magic here.

AL FILREIS:
I love it. Brooke.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
I just was surprised actually by the technology of it 'cause I know, I'm so interested in that moment in the history of New York and the history of poetry and art, but I actually hadn't heard any poetry like this before from that moment. Like, the way that I had to really think through the editing or how was this done? And I didn't think about the like the pedals or how that was done. And I think it's really ahead of its time technologically, you think, I think… It took me a while to figure out like how difficult that was to make or how creative to make work that way, and I'm...

AL FILREIS:
Excellent, which is why I'm just so happy. You and I co-curated this episode. We thought about it together and this is such a great choice. I'm so glad that Giorno is now in the catalog of Poem Talks.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, he should be. And this is captivating the types of things, the qualities of the work that Brooke was talking about. It was captivating, when I first heard this, maybe I was 20 or so. And yeah, it drew me in. But the thing I wanted to say in conclusion, that I didn't bring up earlier, we haven't really talked too much, is there's some narrative to it. I mean, I find that there's a story, he's telling a story about his, whatever it is, of views of the world, views of self. It could be all these things, but by the end of the clip, we heard, and certainly as it goes on, that there's a 25 minute version of this piece, something emerges from that, that we could call narrative, I think.

AL FILREIS:
It's a story being told.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
A bit of a story you know and what starts out is maybe being a simple story gets more and more complex as it goes along. And why is that? Well, the world is that way, isn't it? You know? But he was… Giorno, I did happen to cross paths with him a few times, and he couldn't have been more generous and receptive to inquiries and the sort of edginess that comes through. He was I mean, I'm sure he had his moments, but as a person, he was pretty sensitive and open, and not just like you know, angry person. I mean, we all have a lot to be angry about.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
His interviews seemed really generous. The ones that I read, he seemed like a really generous interviewer, even when people interviewing him didn't know his expertise.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
And also just thinking about his work. When you look on his website and then you see like oh, it's these albums, whether it's the call, whatever, dial a poet or Dial-a-Poem, the way that you see more albums actually on the website for sell or as a record of him than the books themselves. Like thinking about that as a legacy, as like the sound. The sound is, and the album and the record is more of how he left his legacy than a book that you put in your pocket.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
There is a collected Giorno, I think. I haven't seen it, but I would like to get a hold of it.

AL FILREIS:
Wait, how's it possible that you haven't seen it if there is such a thing?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
This can't be true.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Oh, what do you mean? I just...

AL FILREIS:
Aren't you a completist?

BROOKE O’HARRA:
No, I think I read about it too. Just today. I was reading...

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
My library has holes.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
I read about it. It's put out by Soft Skull Press. I just read about it.

AL FILREIS:
So there it is. We should have known that. We, you can't start a Poem Talk conversation and not know where the book, look...

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I am a complete disappointment actually.

AL FILREIS:
You aren't, you're the best. You're the best. I love your...

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Conclusion, that's how it ends. (LAUGHS)

AL FILREIS:
Look, I get a final thought and it's about the word disappointment. I've puzzled over the title of a Wallace Stevens poem, 'Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock' for years. I never really understood what the disillusionment means. It doesn't mean that I'm seeing reality straight you know, I'm disillusioned, I'm down. It means the elimination of illusion, right? I have an illusion, and then disillusionment is the end of the illusion, which means reality and it also… Anyway, disappointment I take to be similar, not to make too big a deal out of the several voices here, or let's just say two because there's always one echo. That's a kind of appointment. And we think of like a meeting, appointment as a meeting, an engagement of a self and an alter ego or a self and another, an echo that begins to influence the original. And in that sense that I've been talking about on and off here in this conversation. Disappointment is the end, the merging of that doubleness, that appointment, that engagement, it becomes kind of wholer and wholer. I think Michelle's been edging toward this view, you know, so that the split of the self becomes kind of less important or maybe even merged. You can't even tell which side of the page is the voice. Which side of the page is the persona? Well, we like to end Poem Talk with a minute or two…

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
That's a good point, Al I just wanted to say...

AL FILREIS:
Thank you, I'm not a complete disappointment.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
It goes against, the colloquial understanding what disappointment is, but...

AL FILREIS:
Totally.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
But you've really done, I mean, that's a good...

AL FILREIS:
No, totally, right? Disappointment is sad and upset and mad. But disappointment in a neutral sense is the end of that, it's like disillusionment, you know?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yes, yes, that goes back to almost Buddhist concept. And I think this is the thing that has to be said about Giorno. He was a Buddhist activist. I mean, he is now the foundation at 'The Bunker', right? Is big Tibetan Buddhist.

AL FILREIS:
And I guess what I'm saying about disappointment is that it's part of that, what he's trying to convey here in a bit of a pun, with the use of this colloquial, everybody's a disappointment. Well, as I said a minute ago, (LAUGHS) we like to end Poem Talk with a little bit of gathering paradise, a chance for several of us or all of you, if you're quick, to spread wide, our narrow hands to gather a little something really good to hail or commend someone or something going on in the poetry world, the art world, the performance world, the film world, the music making world. Who's got one?

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Well, my first of four engagements here at Kelly Writers House today.

AL FILREIS:
This a quadruple day for you.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
I was in a radio interview with Laynie Browne. And so I think that you know, her book, you know, the 'Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists' is provocative read. But on the side, I mean, actually my main reading thing is this book that makes me really unproud to be an American, it's called 'Poisoner in Chief' by Stephen Kinzer and it's about the MK-ULTRA experiments that the CIA was doing. And this is you know, I'm wondering how they could have even thought to do these horrific things in the sponsored...

AL FILREIS:
In all 180 some episodes, I think this is 185 of Poem Talk, no one has ever taken gathering paradise down to hell like that.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
Quite.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Sorry about that, Al.

AL FILREIS:
Gathering hell...

AL FILREIS:
No, that's fine.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Disappointing, it's a little disappointing. It's a little disappointing but…

AL FILREIS:
It's complete disappointing.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
You can edit that part out. 

AL FILREIS:
No, we're not…

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Just leave it with Laynie. 

AL FILREIS:
Besides you came the longest way of all the Poem Talkers today so you get a two-part gathering paradise, you're fine. Michelle, gather some paradise.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I'd love to gather paradise about a press called Fonograf Editions out of Portland. They just published a book by Hilary Plum called 'Hole Studies'. They also release LPs of poets reading their work. And Peter Gizzi's lp, which you can listen to on Spotify, is truly why I wake up in the morning.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Wow.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
And I would stay awake all night listening to it if I could stay awake.

CHRIS FUNKHOUSER:
Wow.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Thanks, Fonograf.

AL FILREIS:
Ooh, Brooke.

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Mine is also a small presser. I can't remember the name of it. It's based out of England and you have to like, you subscribe, you're a subscriber and you just get the books by their authors. But this book came out called 'After Sappho' by Selby Wynn Schwartz. And it's such, it, it reminds me in a way of this conversation because it tracks these lesbian writers and makers back, and sort of like all the way through to, maybe Gertrude Stein or something. But sort of like how this culture of being a radical, and doing things sort of outside of form and structure and how it's kind of bound into this like, secret world of transness or sex or lesbian sort of, yeah worlds. It's cool. It it's like based on real authors and writers, but it also is sort of imagining this sort of interior conflict, and yeah so, 'After Sappho'.

AL FILREIS:
Great recommendation. Alright, great, we've talked a lot about Chris today. So my gathering paradise is about the two of you as paradisial. First of all, Brooke O'Harra, I have never had the chance to be inside your classroom, but I have heard about it forever starting when you were teaching at Bates College. And my own daughter, Hannah was your student, and there wasn't... Let's say folks listening from Bates College, please don't take this the wrong way, let's just say there wasn't a ton of experimental pedagogy going on up there in that cozy little Maine spot, but you were just, you blew her mind. She couldn't stop talking about how the classroom experience didn't feel like a classroom anyway. And now that you're my colleague here and I constantly hear students come out of your classes and say, "Oh my God, this has changed the way I think about everything."

BROOKE O’HARRA:
Oh, that's so nice. Well, I love teaching and I've been teaching more creative writing now that I'm part of creative writing and I am learning. So like as a maker, as a director, I'm always thinking about text and how text comes to life. But working with writers has just like changed my enthusiasm for writing.

AL FILREIS:
You do some amazing wild things. And then there's Michelle Taransky, holy Toledo, two things to say about you. One is you teach part of, much of the teaching you do is a required course, which is a writing course. It's a much more interesting version of an old composition course. And you teach a lot of this kind of stuff in it. And the students come pouring out of this critical writing seminar ready to become part of the creative writing community. And it's just such a feat of magic.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Thank you for building this house and this place where we can do such amazing things. I think, I'm looking at Brooke and Chris and I mean, you built this place where well, we can do the thing. (CROSSTALK)

BROOKE O’HARRA:
The thing at the house, it's also important is there is so much like buy-in with the students in this community and they're so present and they walk around in their Kelly Writers House outfits, and…

MICHELLE TARANSKY: Their tote bags. (CROSSTALK)

BROOKE O’HARRA: Their like shirts and their bags and it is, you do feel as someone here grateful to be part of a community where the students identify with the community. That is not a thing that always happens.

AL FILREIS:
Well OK, thank you. That's very sweet. You sort of, this sort of backfired, but I would just wanna say something else, a fact about Michelle. We've had, I think I said 185 episodes of Poem Talk, a lot, many years. And there's only been one episode where I was not the host, and it was Michelle Taransky.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Tell them who the guests were, please.

AL FILREIS:
I think it was about Ron Solomon.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
I think it was either about Ron or about Bob. And Ron was there, or Bob was there.

AL FILREIS:
I think Bob was there.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
And Rachel.

AL FILREIS:
And Rachel.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
So (LAUGHS) anyway, I had to go away suddenly, family emergency. And you sat in and...

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
It's a great experience.

AL FILREIS:
You know, everybody should go back into the catalog.

MICHELLE TARANSKY:
(WHISPERS) Please don't.

AL FILREIS:
And look for that. Well, that's all the complete disappointment we have time for on Poem Talk today, Poem Talk at the Writers House is a collaboration of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and the Kelly Writers House of the University of Pennsylvania, and PennSound and the Poetry Foundation, poetryfoundation.org. Thanks so, so much to my pals, my friends, my guests, Michelle Taransky, Brook O'Harra, and Chris Funkhouser. And thank you Chris once again for coming all this way to be with us today for a quadruple header, which is you know, still we have an event left an hour from now, the annual 'Mind of Winter' program, and which is chasing the blue, the Winter Blues away by talking about cold, it's weird. And to Poem Talks, directors, and engineers today, Zach Carduner is always, and also Paul Burke, and to Poem Talk's editor, the same amazing Zach Carduner. Next time I'm Poem Talk, Amber Rose Johnson, Erica Hunt, and Davy Knittle will join me to talk about two poems by the late and much missed June Jordan. This is Al Filreis and I hope you join us for that, or another episode of Poem Talk. (MUSIC PLAYS)