Penn Sound: Fantastic Audio Archive of Modern & Contemporary Poets

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia hosts an exten­sive and pret­ty remark­able audio col­lec­tion of mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary poet­ry, with a gen­er­ous help­ing of prose writ­ers thrown in. Direct­ed by Al Fil­reis and Charles Bern­stein (whose U. Penn exper­i­men­tal poet­ry cours­es are them­selves works of art), the col­lec­tion includes hun­dreds of names you’ll rec­og­nize imme­di­ate­ly, and oth­ers who are not house­hold names, but ought to be.

You can start with the stars, includ­ing John Ash­bery, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Amiri Bara­ka, Ezra Pound, William Car­los Williams, and Vladimir Mayakovsky… But don’t be afraid to dig around for a while too. We were delight­ed to find “The Out­cry,” a favorite poem by the won­der­ful William Bronk, and sev­er­al fas­ci­nat­ing pod­cast inter­views with Cid Cor­man.

For more poet­ry, don’t miss the read­ings in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.