Sonic Stagings of U.S. Postwar Audiopoetry

Practices, Configurations, and Contexts of Poetry on Sound Carriers (C. 1950s--1980s)
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73934-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: DQR Studies in Literature

As the first study of its kind, this book explores the publication of poetry on sound carriers in the US postwar era from an aesthetic as well as an historical point of view. Combining approaches from media and literary studies, it explains why labels and individuals like Amiri Baraka, Bernadette Mayer, or John Giorno straddled the lines between music, poetry, and visual arts using audio recording and playing devices. It sheds light on the sonic imaginaries that commercial and avant-gardist recording projects sought to mobilize and sometimes also unwittingly reproduced in this context.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stackmann, Ulla

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction: “LP Aided Poets,” Real Poetry, and Postwar High Fidelity

Part 1: Staging Readings and Poetry Performances

1 Recording Practices and the Sonic Imaginary of the Spoken Word 1 Political Black Voices: The Black Forum 2 Sound Communities: Giorno Poetry Systems 3 The Education of the People: Spoken Arts, Caedmon, Folkways

2 Constructing and Practicing the Midcentury Poetry Reading 1 The Return of the Bard: Phonocentrism and the Poetry Reading 2 The Authorial Poetry Reading

3 Listening Practices and Sonic Remediations of Poetry 1 Phonograph Realness—Authentication, Authorial Presence, and Immediacy 2 Audiopoetry as Temporal and Spatial Constellation 3 Listening as Shared Practice

Part 2: Medial Forms of Staging Audiopoetry

4 Recorded Book, Documented Performance, Audio Work 1 The Recorded Book and the Logic of the Transparent Reader 2 Mood Encapsulated: The Documented Performance 3 Press Play: The Audio Work

5 (Counter-)Intimacies on Tape: Affects and Seductive Voices 1 Intimacies of the Poet’s Voice 2 Writers of the Revolution: Closeness, Intimacy and Authorship 3 The Erotics of John Giorno’s Audiopoetry

6 Communal Rituals: between National Address and New Self-Understandings 1 Community, Nation, and Self-Understandings in Postwar Poetics 2 National Treasures and Collective Feeling 3 It’s Nation Time: The Sounds of a Future Black Nation 4 Spiritual Communities: The Subculture Speaks

Part 3: Staging Spatiality on Audiopoetry

7 Domestic Listening and the Politics of Sonic Homemaking 1 Scenes of Domestic Listening and Sonic Homemaking 2 National Time and Domestic Space 3 Deconstructions of Homeliness in Audio Works

8 Into the Streets: the Poetics of Portability and Everyday Experience 1 The Cultural Meanings of Tape Recording and Mobile Mediation 2 Sonic Realism and Documentary Configurations in Bernadette Mayer’s Memory 3 Tape Realness and the Everyday Experience in Postwar Audiopoetry

9 “Open the Lines to the Poets!” The Poetry Hotline as Poetic Network 1 A Short History of Dial-a-Poem 2 Community Outreach and Censorship

Epilogue: Remix! Poetic Networks, Digital Media, and Pop Culture

Works Cited

Über Autor(innen)

Ulla Stackmann is coordinator of the Research Training Group “Practicing Place” at the University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Her research interests include media theory and US poetry. She is the co-editor of Practicing and Placing Imaginaries: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Conceptual Ideas, and Case Studies (2025).

Ulla Stackmann is a scholar and translator. She has received her PhD from the Catholic University-Eichstätt Ingolstadt in American Studies. As a scholar, she has authored multiple articles investigating mid-century US literature, feminist approaches to literature, and the relationship between practice theory and literary studies. She is the co-editor of Practicing and Placing Imaginaries (transcript, 2025). Additionally, she has translated Laura Bates‘ Men Who Hate Women into German (&Töchter, 2023).