CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1264
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Barbara Howes at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 3 November 1967
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"Barbara Howes Poetry Reading Nov 3, 1967" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box. "RT 521" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box. "Howes Poetry Nov 3/67" written on sticker on the reel. "Barbara Howes 3/11/67 I068-11-024" also written on the spine of the tape's box
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Howes, Barbara
Dates:
1914-1996
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
American poet, short story writer, essayist, editor and translator Barbara Howes was born in New York in 1914, and adopted into a family in Boston. She enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont before moving to New York City upon her graduation. Howes then worked as an editor of Chimera: A Literary Magazine between 1944 and 1947. She married poet William Jay Smith, and they lived in England and Italy for a short while. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1948, named The Undersea Farmer (Banyan Press), which was followed by In the Cold Country (Bonaci & Saul in association with Grove Press, 1954), both of which drew critical acclaim and praise. She then published Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966), The Blue Garden (Wesleyan University Press, 1972) and A Private Signal: Poems New and Selected (Wesleyan University Press, 1977). Howes divorced in the 60’s and traveled to the Caribbean, which inspired her to edit two anthologies of Caribbean and Latin American writing: From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean (Macmillan, 1966) and The Eye of the Heart: Short Stories from Latin America (Bobbs-Merrill, 1973). Howes also edited 23 Modern Stories, (Vintage, 1963), The Sea-Green Horse with her son Gregory Jay Smith (Macmillan, 1970), The Road Commissioner and Other Stories (Stinehour Press, 1983). She published two final collections of poetry, Moving (Elysian Press, 1983) and The Collected Poems of Barbara Howes, 1945-1990 (University of Arkansas Press, 1995), which was nominated for the 1995 National Book Award. Her poetry can be found in dozens of periodicals and literary magazines. Barbara Howes died at the age of 81 in Pownal, Vermont in 1996.
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Hoffman, Stanton
Role:
"Presenter",
"Series organizer"
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Storage Capacity:
Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
2 track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Tape Brand:
Ampex
Sound Quality:
Good
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:54:57
Size:
131.9 MB
Content:
Stanton Hoffman
00:00:00
The reading this evening is by Miss Barbara Howes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4858990[. Miss Barbara Howes was born in Boston
and educated at Bennington College
. She has published four volumes of poems: The Undersea Farmer, which was published in 1948 by the Banyan Press; In the Cold Country, which was was published by Bonaci and Saul in cooperation with Grove Press
in 1954, Light and Dark, which was published by Wellesley University
Press in 1959, and the recent Looking up at Leaves, which was published by Knopf
in 1966 and which was nominated for the National Book Awards. She has been the editor of a volume of writings of the Carribean which was published by MacMillan
in 1966 and Twenty-three Modern Stories published in 1963 by Vintage Books
. In 1949, she won the Bess Hokin Prize of Poetry Magazine, in 1955 she held a Guggenheim Fellowship
, and in 1957, she won the Brandeis Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals, such as Harper's Bazaar
, New World Writing
, Poetry
, Suani Review, New Republic
, and so forth. And next week in New York City
, Miss Howes will be reading as part of series, or brothers, as part of reading, as part of a reading by fifteen or so other poets, as part of a Poets for Peace, sponsored by the Compassionate Art of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Barbara Howes.
Audience
00:01:48
Applause.
Barbara Howes
00:02:17
Thank you very much, Mr. Hoffman, I'm delighted to be here. If you can't hear me, raise your hands or let me know by some other device. Is this a microphone or does this have to do with this machine? Well I'll try to be clear. I thought rather than read a kind of segmented, like a string of sausages, series of poems, going on and on and on, which gives one very little hope that it'll ever end, it'd be better to say that I'm going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that would be...and so I've arranged the poems in this way, so you will have hope that I won't continue forever, which has been done, in the annals of poetry. I wanted to write, read some poems that have to do with place, because I've thought a lot about the effect of place on poems, and to what extent the place you're in influences what you write. One's imagination would never become extended in certain directions if you hadn't happened to live in a certain place. I was very conscious of that when we lived in Florence
for two years and when my older boy was born, and subsequently for another two years. And I would never--because we--I would never possibly have been able to think, I mean this is obvious in a way, but it gets more complicated, of...Some of the imaginative happenings that occurred would, could never have happened, well in Massachusetts
or anywhere else, and also even in, I mean in Vermont
, where we now live, have been profoundly affected by the section of the mountain which we life. And also we spent some time in Haiti
, and so on and so forth, so this first group will be mostly poems that have a lot to do with experiences that have happened because of a particular place. The first poem is an Italian poem, or written out of Italy
, called "Primavera".
Barbara Howes
00:04:48
Reads "Primavera" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:06:19
This is called "The Triumph of Love".
Barbara Howes
00:06:27
Reads "The Triumph of Love" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:07:18
Then for a summer, we lived in a little town in the south of France
, Le Lavandou
, and it was a very good summer all in all, although, except we had no car and a very big house with only about one room on a floor. So the baby was on the top floor, and the kitchen, it's one burner, was on, you know, it's four floors down. And I would rush up and pick him up and then put him back in his bed, and then rush down and light the burner, and then rush up and get him, and then rush down. So it was difficult in some ways. But one of our entertainments, or entertainments that seemed to certainly entertain friends was to go to an island off Toulon
called Ile Levant
, which is half a naval base and half a colony. And you could go out there in a small--it took about an hour in a small boat, and one time we stood on the dock not quite sure what to do next. Another person who'd come in the boat with us in very high heels and an enormous black hat removed everything else and ran up the hill. [Audience laughter]. So this is “L'Ile du Levant, the Nudist Colony”.
Barbara Howes
00:08:55
Reads "L'Ile du Levant: the Nudist Colony" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:10:59
Now living as I do in the country in Vermont, there comes that terrible time in November when all the hunters from the cities come rushing up with their pint bottles and their confusion and they lounge around half the time sitting in cars and shooting vaguely at anything. So I used to try to write an anti-hunter poem every fall,I don't know about this year, I haven't got an idea yet, but I may see if I can do something. "In Autumn". Excuse me.
Barbara Howes
00:11:37
Reads "In Autumn" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:12:29
And this is another on the same subject.
Barbara Howes
00:12:39
Reads ["Landscape, Deer Season" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:13:16
This is another Pownal
poem, it's really two things put together. It's called "A Night Picture of Pownal”, for JFK. And I stood one evening in very bright moonlight looking out at the shadow of the apple tree across the road on the snow and it made an impression on me, I began to take notes in the dark as best I could on it. And then later, shortly after that, for the death of Kennedy
, then I saw the poem wasn't, it was inadequate, and I somehow put, wove those two things together.
Barbara Howes
00:14:06
Reads "A Night Picture of Pownal" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:15:19
Another Vermont poem or Pownal poem on a more cheerful note. "Town Meeting Tuesday". Town meeting is the first Tuesday in March, and many of the people who have stayed in all winter then emerge like woodchucks from their houses.
Barbara Howes
00:15:45
Reads "Town Meeting Tuesday" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:16:22
Now, we spent two or three Easter vacations in the islands of the Caribbean
, we went to Guadeloupe
once for two weeks. And most of the time I find I write fish poems when I go down to the islands but this one is about a dead toucan in Guadeloupe. There was a little, well, a strange little zoo at the small hotel where we stayed and we would look at these creatures and one day I went and there was the toucan and it had fallen over dead. Somehow, it made an impression on me. "Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe".
Barbara Howes
00:17:04
Reads "Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:17:55
I hope you can hear--can you hear me? In the back rows? We also spent some time in Haiti, earlier, and I'd like to read a couple of poems from that period. This was a thing--it could perfectly well have happened elsewhere but it was the kind of thing that, after we lived in Haiti for a while, I could see very clearly, would definitely have to happen there. There was a young man of about nineteen, very talented as a painter, and did, had just tried out through the art centre there, and doing really quite good and interesting work. And he needed a job so he could buy paints and paper, and anyway just to exist. So an American woman had two small boys and he said he could look after them and play ball and, you know, keep them out of trouble and so on and so forth. And she said, “Can you swim?” And he said, “Oh yes, of course.” So the boys dove into the pool because they had been swimming, as most American boys do, for years. And he dove into the pool, and didn't come up. And nobody was around except some workers who were fixing the garden. But like everybody, almost, in Haiti, they didn't want to get involved, because then the police might ask them questions, and then at the end there's trouble, so the poor young man just died, because the little boys couldn't do anything, and nobody else did anything. And so that made an impression on me. But it's the kind of unfortunate tragedy, due to his saying that he could swim and he couldn't, just because he was so desperately anxious to get the job, and he just made himself believe he could swim. Just a complete waste.
Barbara Howes
00:20:10
Reads ["In a Prospect of Flowers" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:21:10
"Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince
". This, there was a little sign on a tree we used to pass every day and then I thought of this poem.
Barbara Howes
00:21:19
Reads "Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:21:59
There's one other. Oh yes.
Barbara Howes
00:22:06
Reads ["On a Bougainvillea Vine at the Summer Palace" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:23:36
Well, this is one of the fishing poems from the, from Barbados
, from the islands.
Barbara Howes
00:23:46
Reads ["Out Fishing" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:24:58
This poem is written in one foot, it's just an experiment to see what would happen. I, you know, diameter's two feet, or is it, trimeter is three feet. And tetrameter is four, and pentameter is five. One foot means you just have one sound, like that, and it's just, was a technical experiment, but I might as well read it. And it's also another fish poem.
Barbara Howes
00:25:32
Reads ["The Crane Chub--Barbados" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:26:18
Here's a fish, well, a jellyfish poem, from Texas
.
Barbara Howes
00:26:32
Reads ["On Galveston Beach" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:27:32
And then there's the last Caribbean poem, “A Letter from the Caribbean”.
Barbara Howes
00:27:45
Reads “A Letter From The Caribbean” [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:28:59
I've thought I would read just a few poems by modern poets that I like, they're not by any means their strongest or anything, but they're just ones I'm attached to. The first I cut out of the paper once, a long time ago. It's by an African schoolgirl, and I think it's very imaginative. It's awkward but it's really quite wonderful.
Barbara Howes
00:29:38
Reads unnamed poem by an unknown author.
Barbara Howes
00:29:53
This is an early poem of Wystan Auden's
that he kept out of, he didn't use in his book and then he printed again in a recent edition. I think it's technically as awfully, it's light verse but it's also very serious underneath, as good light verse can me. Poem.
Barbara Howes
00:30:15
Reads ["To You Simply"] by W.H. Auden [published in The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden].
Barbara Howes
00:30:57
And this is a, I think a simply charming poem by Richard Wilbur
. It gets...it's about the Piazza di Spagna
, the Spanish Steps in Rome
, and it gets the feeling of someone gliding, really gliding down that long, gorgeous stairway.
Barbara Howes
00:31:22
Reads ["Piazza Di Spagna, Early Morning"] by Richard Wilbur.
Barbara Howes
00:32:11
This is a poem by Louise Bogan
, who's a very well known American poet, a very recent one that she, that came out in The New Yorker
, this summer, I think.
Barbara Howes
00:32:27
Reads ["Masked Woman’s Song"] by Louise Bogan.
Barbara Howes
00:32:51
It's a difficult poem, might read that again, if you don't mind.
Barbara Howes
00:32:56
Re "Masked Woman’s Song" by Louise Bogan.
Barbara Howes
00:33:17
And then, the last, oh, oh that's right, I thought I would read a poem by Derek Walcott
, which I used in this Carribean Anthology. It's mostly short stories but I put a poem in front of each language section. This is by Derek Walcott who's a young poet from St. Lucia
, called "Missing the Sea".
Barbara Howes
00:33:48
Reads "Missing the Sea" by Derek Walcott [from The Castaway and collected in From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean].
Barbara Howes
00:34:31
It's quite a difficult poem but you...he had a book out, oh, can't remember the name, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
a couple of years ago, in the United States.
And the last of this group is a poem that I've heard about a hundred thousand times, but it still gives me a chill. It's called "American Primitive" by William Jay Smith
.
Barbara Howes
00:35:06
Reads "American Primitive" by William Jay Smith.
Barbara Howes
00:35:47
I still get a chill! Now, I don't know whether you prefer to have an intermission, and get up and smoke, or prefer for me to continue, what would you think, Stanton?
Unknown
00:36:06
Ambient Sound [voices].
Barbara Howes
00:36:08
Have an intermission? So people can...breathe?
Unknown
00:36:17
Ambient Sound [voices].
Unknown
00:36:23
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Barbara Howes
00:36:23
The problem is the third group of poems, I'd read some poems that are more or less to and about people, and some new poems, although I've noticed that most of my new poems are very depressing, and this is not a good note on which to end, so I'll maybe not read them. I've been very much interested in old French forms, the trielle, the villanelle, the rondeau and rondelle, and ballade and so on and so forth, and they're very difficult but they're fascinating to try, at least. And this is in the form of a trielle. And the lines have to be repeated in a certain fashion which gives you very little room in which to maneuver. This is called "Early Supper".
Barbara Howes
00:37:14
Reads "Early Supper" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:38:10
This is a poem I wrote for W.H. Auden for his fiftieth birthday, which was several years ago, now. I think actually, he was last year, sixty.
Barbara Howes
00:38:21
Reads ["To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:39:22
I wrote three poems at that point about winds, and I'll just read one of them. The winds have names in Italy and they almost become like familiar characters. The sirocco, when it blows, is so terrible in its effect on people that if there're crimes of passion, the people generally get off with a lighter sentence, because you sell, well, the sirocco. Naturally you can throttle your wife during that period. This is about the mistral, which, if it blows for three days, one survives, if it blows for six days it's simply awful. If it blows for nine days you've probably already gone out of your head. It's a very wild wind who rushes down the Rhone Valley
and just blows everything away.
Barbara Howes
00:40:22
Reads ["Mistral" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:41:23
This is another one, an old French form, the rondeau, which again makes its, has its own complications because of the repetition of lines. And what interested me to do was to try to use, not the usual subject of the rondeaux but to write about, as in this case, the death of a Vermont farm woman, instead of just doing some sort of chittery-chattery business that generally is what people use a rondeau for.
Barbara Howes
00:42:03
Reads ["Death of a Vermont Farm Woman" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:42:51
This is a poem about a very disagreeable character, a thirteenth-century tyrant called Ugolino
, who met his death from being thrown into prison to die of hunger. He is reputed to have attempted to eat his sons, who were there with him. I must say, it's not an agreeable picture, but I don't think there's been much improvement in that part of mankind. Dante
writes of him in the 33rd Canto of the Inferno
. This poem is called "The Critic" and, I must say, critics have disliked it heartily.
Barbara Howes
00:43:28
Reads "The Critic" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:44:23
This is a, an odd combination about a person and about Pownal, I guess.
Barbara Howes
00:44:32
Reads ["Running into Edgar Bellemare" from Looking Up at Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:45:27
This is a poem I wrote for Katherine Anne Porter
on the occasion of her 75th birthday. "For Katherine Anne Porter".
Barbara Howes
00:45:39
Reads “For Katherine Anne Porter” [from Looking Up at Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:46:15
It's quite marvelous, those collective nouns, who would know that you call a lot of heron a siege of herons and so forth. I'll read that again, because it really is, I was very lucky the way it worked out.
Barbara Howes
00:46:31
Reads line from “For Katherine Anne Porter”.
Barbara Howes
00:47:06
This is called "Looking up at Leaves".
Barbara Howes
00:47:14
Reads "Looking up at Leaves" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:48:09
I'd like to read one New England
poem, this is a newer poem, I haven't read this before, I guess.
Barbara Howes
00:48:16
Reads ["Still Life: New England", published later in The Blue Garden].
Barbara Howes
00:49:34
I'll read three more poems, I think. This is "A Rune for C."--‘C.’ was a dog of ours.
Barbara Howes
00:49:51
Reads "A Rune for C." [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:50:36
Actually, I had just often, I'd made up a good luck thing that seeing the caboose was good luck, but then I found out that this has been an old piece of, well, I don't know, country folklore, that to see the caboose, it means luck. I want to read one poem about my son, and then one short one. "Portrait of the Boy as Artist".
Barbara Howes
00:51:18
Reads "Portrait of the Boy as Artist" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:52:11
Oh, I did want to read one that I'll read next week in New York. This poem is a, this is a rondelle, which is another old French form. And I'm obviously not using it for the usual subject, in this case. It's arranged about the idea, really, of a contrast of the use of space. "Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle".
Barbara Howes
00:52:45
Reads "Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle".
Barbara Howes
00:53:31
And then one last poem on a more cheerful note. "Leaning into Light".
Barbara Howes
00:53:44
Reads "Leaning into Light" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:54:21.
Thank you very much.
Audience
00:54:23
Applause.
Stanton Hoffman
00:54:38
One announcement, the next reading will be by Charles Reznikoff
, and that's Friday, the same time, November 17th.
Unknown
00:54:46
Ambient Sound [voices].
END
00:54:57
Notes:
Barbara Howes reads from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966), and From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean, (Macmillan, 1966) as well as some poems from unknown sources.
00:00- Stanton Hoffman introduces Barbara Howes [INDEX: Boston, Bennington College, volumes of poetry: The Undersea Farmer (Banyan Press, 1948), In the Cold Country (Bonaci & Saul (Grove Press), 1954), Light and Dark (Wellesley University Press, 1959), Light and Dark (Knopf, 1966)- nominated for the National Book Award, editor of Caribbean writing (MacMillan, 1966), Twenty-Three Modern Stories (Vintage, 1963), won Bess Hawkin Prize of Poetry Magazine (1949), Guggenheim Fellowship (1955), Brandeis Poetry Award (1957), Harper's Bazaar, New World Writing, Poetry, Suani Review, New Republic, reading in NYC Poets for Peace sponsored by the Compassionate Art of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.]
01:48- Barbara Howes introduces reading, and “Primavera”. [INDEX: Mr. Hoffman, microphone, recording ‘machine’, reading order, poetry readings, place poems, influences, imagination, Florence (Italy), first son, Massachusetts, Vermont, Haiti, mountain, Italian poem.]
04:48- Reads "Primavera" [INDEX: horse, sick, city, Florence, Italy, riding, catacomb, past, history, stone, journey, Giotto, Aphrodite, art, architecture.]
06:29- Introduces and reads “The Triumph of Love”. [INDEX: Italy, city, Venice, art, Veronese, sight, gaze, painting, palace, love; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958)]
07:18- Introduces “L’Ile du Levant: The Nudist Colony”. [INDEX: La Bandue, town in the south of France, summer, car, house, baby, housewife, entertainment, island Toulon, Ile le Bon, naval base, colony, small town, dock, nudist colony; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
08:55- Reads “L’Ile du Levant: the Nudist Colony”. [INDEX: place, island, France, plants, cicadas, colony, nudist, vacation, display, clothes, body, skin, dusk]
10:59- Introduces “In Autumn”. [INDEX: Vermont, November, hunters, cities, pint bottles, anti-hunter poem; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958)]
11:37- Reads "In Autumn" [INDEX: place, Vermont, city, rural, country, hunter, hunting, game, cars, guns, blood, body, red, male, stag.]
12:29- Reads “Landscape, Deer Season” [INDEX: buck, gun, deer, hunting, body, blood, sun, country, place, Vermont, death; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
13:16- Introduces “A Night Picture of Pownal for JFK”. [INDEX Pownal poem, apple tree, snow, nighttime, death of Kennedy; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
14:06- Reads “A Night Picture of Pownal, for JFK”. [INDEX: place, night, Pownal, Kennedy, history, Matthew Brady, civil war, moon, sound, death, tree, sight, tragedy, stain.]
15:19- Introduces “Town Meeting, Tuesday”. [INDEX: Vermont poem, Parnell Poem, cheerful, town meeting, first Tuesday in March, winter, woodchucks; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
15:45- Reads "Town Meeting, Tuesday" [INDEX: place, Vermont, trees.]
16:22- Introduces “Dead Toucan, Guadeloupe”. [INDEX: Easter vacations, Caribbean, Guadeloupe, fish poems, islands, zoo, small hotel; ; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
17:04- Reads “Dead Toucan, Guadeloupe”. [INDEX: place, Guadeloupe, nature, bird, toucan, death, animals.]
17:55- Introduces “In a Prospect of Flowers”. [INDEX: Haiti, young painter, American woman, children, drowning death, Haitian attitudes and politics, tragedy, job; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
20:10- Reads “In a Prospect of Flowers”. [INDEX: place, Haiti, art, artist, picture, water, pool, death, drowning, Icarus, elegy, ideal.]
21:10- Introduces “Mirror Image, Port-au-Prince”. [INDEX: sign on a tree; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
21:19- Reads “Mirror Image, Port-au-Prince”. [INDEX: place, Haiti, mirror, makeup, woman, hairdresser; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
21:59- Reads “On Bougainvillea Vine at the Summer Palace”. [INDEX: place, Haiti, lizard, nature, animals, palace, couple, winter.]
23:36- Introduces “Out Fishing”. [INDEX: Barbados, fishing poems; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
23:46- Reads “Out Fishing”. [INDEX: place, Barbados, ocean, fishing, fish, boat, war]
24:58- Introduces “The Crane Chub, Barbados”. [INDEX: technical experiment, diameter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, one foot, one sound, fish poem; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
25:32- Reads “The Crane Chub, Barbados”. [INDEX: place, Barbados, fish, ocean, chub, eating, food, lover, absence]
26:18- Introduces “On Galveston Beach”. [INDEX: Jellyfish poem, Texas; from Looking up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
26:32- Reads "On Galveston Beach" [INDEX: place, Texas, Galveston Beach, ocean, beach, fish, jellyfish]
27:32- Introduces “A Letter from the Caribbean”. [INDEX: Caribbean poem.]
27:45- Reads "A Letter from the Caribbean" [INDEX: place, Carribean, wind, air, nature, time, memory, remembrance.]
28:59- Introduces poem by Unknown author, first line “What a wonderful bird, the fraga” [Spelling unknown.] [INDEX: modern poets, poems Howes is attached to, poem cut out of newspaper, by an African schoolgirl; from unknown source.]
29:38- Reads “What a wonderful bird, the fraga” by unknown poet. [INDEX: nature, animal, bird, fraga.]
29:53- Introduces unknown poem, first line “For what is easy, for what though small” by Wystan Auden. [INDEX: W.H. Auden, early poem, not published in his first edition, printed in a recent edition, technical qualities, light verse; from Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 (Faber Press, 1966) by W.H. Auden.]
30:15- Reads unknown poem, first line “For what is easy, for what though small” by Wystan Auden. [INDEX: word, heart, memory]
30:57- Introduces poem by Richard Wilbur “Piazza Di Espagna, Early Morning”. [INDEX: Spanish Steps in Rome, gliding down a stairway; from unknown source.]
31:22- Reads poem by Richard Wilbur “Piazza Di Espagna, Early Morning”.
32:11- Introduces poem by Louise Bogan “Masked Woman Song”. [INDEX: American poet, The New Yorker Magazine; from unknown source.]
32:27- Reads “Masked Woman Song” by Louise Bogan. [INDEX: sight, woman, man, face, mask, virtue, evil, beauty.]
32:51- Decides to re-read the poem [INDEX: poem difficult to read.]
33:56- Re-reads “Masked Woman Song” by Louise Bogan.
33:17- Introduces “Missing the Sea” by Derek Walcott. [INDEX: Caribbean Anthology, short stories, poem in front of language section, St. Lucia; from From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean (MacMillan, 1966).]
33:48- Reads “Missing the Sea” by Derek Walcott. [INDEX: place, house, absence, sea, sound, dead.]
34:31- Explains “Missing the Sea”, introduces “American Primitive” by William J. Smith. [INDEX: difficult poem, Walcott’s book (perhaps Another Life 1966) published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, United States, William J. Smith; from unknown source.]
35:06- Reads “American Primitive” by William J. Smith. [INDEX: man, clothes, money, America, father, daddy, dollar.]
35:47- Introduces intermission. [INDEX: chill from poem, Stanton (Hoffman).]
36:23- Cut made in tape.
36:23- Howe introduces third group of poems and “Early Supper”. [INDEX: poems to or about people, new poems as depressing, old French forms, trielle, villanelle, rondeau and rondelle, ballade, difficult but fascinating, trielle; from unknown source.]
37:14- Reads “Early Supper”. [INDEX: genre, form, trielle, kitchen, autumn, children, eating, cooking, food, night.]
38:10- Introduces “To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday”. [INDEX: poem for W.H. Auden on his fiftieth birthday, sixtieth birthday last year; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
38:21- Reads “To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday”. [INDEX: occasional poem, books, library, poem, poet, Auden.]
39:22- Introduces “Mistral”. [INDEX: three poems about winds, wind names in Italy, sirocco, crimes of passion, mistral blows for three days, down the Rhone Valley; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
40:22- Reads “Mistral”. [INDEX: nature, wind, Mistral, place, Italy, solitude, sound, storm.]
41:23- Introduces “Death of a Vermont Farm Woman”. [INDEX: old French form, complications because of the repetition of lines, not the usual subject of the rondeaux; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
42:03- Reads “Death of a Vermont Farm Woman”. [INDEX: form, genre, rondeau, death, woman, Vermont, place, farm.]
42:51- Introduces “The Critic”. [INDEX: disagreeable character, thirteenth century tyrant called Ugolino, prison, eat his sons, Dante’s 33rd Canto of the Inferno, critics dislike the poem; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
43:28- Reads “The Critic”. [INDEX: Ugolino, Dante, critic, criticism, poets, Eliot, Yeats, eating, wisdom.]
44:23- Introduces “Running into Edgar Blemar”. [INDEX: odd combination or a person and Pownal; from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
44:32- Reads "Running into Edgar Belmar" [INDEX: place, Vermont, Pownal, Edgar Belmar, car, children, accident.]
45:27- Introduces “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: written for Catherine Ann Porter on her 75th birthday; from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
45:39- Reads “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: occasional poem, Catherine Ann Porter, birthday, birds, heron, peacock, dove, starling, nightingale, lark.]
46:15- Introduces unknown poem first line “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: collective nouns, siege of herons.]
46:31- Rereads “For Catherine Anne Porter”. [INDEX: occasional poem, Catherine Ann Porter, birthday, birds, heron, peacock, dove, starling, nightingale, lark.]
47:06- Introduces “Looking up at Leaves”. [INDEX: from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
47:14- Reads “Looking up at Leaves”. [INDEX: nature, tree, leaves, sight, reflection.]
48:09- Introduces “Still Life, New England”. [INDEX: new poem, never read before; unknown source.]
48:16- Reads “Still Life, New England”. [INDEX: nature, animal, cow, birth, calf, sheep, boar, death, cat.]
49:34- Introduces “A Rune for C.”. [INDEX: dog named ‘C’; from Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966).]
49:51- Reads “A Rune for C.”. [INDEX: animal, dog, sickness, omen, luck, rune, fate, death, train]
50:36- Explains “A Rune for C.”, introduces “Portrait of the Boy as Artist”. [INDEX: good luck, caboose, country folklore; from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1958).]
51:18- Reads “Portrait of the Boy as Artist”. [INDEX: son, boy, artist, composer, music, painter, train, colour, poet, Theseus, Daniel Boone, youth.]
52:11- Introduces “Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle”. [INDEX: will read in New York, rondelle, old French form, not usual subject, contrast of the use of space; unknown source.]
52:45- Reads “Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle”. [INDEX: war, Vietnam, peace, bomb, death, face, genre, form, rondelle.]
53:31- Introduces “Leaning into Light”. [INDEX: cheerful poem; unknown source.]
53:44- Reads “Leaning into Light”. [INDEX: hibiscus, nature, plant, light, shadow, wisteria]
54:21- Barbara Howes thanks audience.
54:38- Stanton Hoffman makes announcement about next reading. [INDEX: Charles Reznikoff reading on Friday, November 17th.]
54:57.60- RECORDING ENDS.
Howard Fink Print catalogue page from Concordia University archives contains the following information:
Title: Barbara Howes reading poetry, November 3, 1967
Date: November 3, 1967
Source: one 7”, two track tape, mono, @ 3 ¾ ips, lasting one hour and 15 mins.
1. Title:
First line: “The horse with consumption…”
2. Title: The Triumph of Love
First line:
3. Title:
First line: “All the wide…”
4. Title:
First line: “In Autumn, red men come…”
5. Title: Landscape: Deer Season
First line: “Snorting his pleasure in the…”
6. Title: A Night Picture of Ponel for J.F.K.
First line: “Thanks to the moon…”
7. Title: Town Meeting; Tuesday
First line: “Our roadside trees…”
8. Title: Dead Tucan; Guadeloupe
First line: “Down like the oval fall of a hammer…
9. Title:
First line: “As in his tomb…
10. Title: Mirror Image: Port au Prince
First line: “Mirror image: Port au Prince…”
11. Title:
First line: “Under the Sovereign…”
12. Title: Out Fishing
First line: “We went out…”
13. Title:
First line: “Darling I learn the full…”
14. Title: On Galveston Beach
First line: “The sky was…”
15. Title: A Letter from the Caribbean
First line: “Breeze ways in the tropics
16. Title: poem by a young African girl [is this the real title or a stand-in?]
First line: “What a wonderful…”
17. Title: by W. H. Auden Poem
First line: “For what is easy…”
18. Title: by R. Wilbur
First line: “I can’t forget how she stood…”
19. Title: by L. Boden Masked Woman Song
First line: “Before I saw the tall…”
20. Title: by D. Walker Missing the Sea
First line: “Something removed roars in the ears…”
21. Title: by W. J. Smith American Primitive
First line: “Look at him there…”
end of track one
22. Title: Early Supper
First line: “Laughter children bring…”
23. Title:
First line: “Books collide…”
24. Title: Mistral
First line:
25. Title:
First line: “It is time now to go away…”
26. Title: The Critic
First line: “…takes his rest…”
27. Title:
First line: “In my fool…”
28. Title: For Katherine N. Porter
First line: “Madam, a siege…”
29. Title: Looking up at Leaves
First line: “No one need feel alone”
30. Title: Still Life: New England
First line: “From that old cow…”
31. Title:
First line: “Luck, I am upset…”
32. Title: Portrait of a Boy as Artist
First line: “Were he a composer…”
33. Title:
First line: “To save face…”
34. Title: Leaving into Light
First line: “Beginning…”
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Featured:
Yes
Title:
Barbara Howes Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Barbara Howes Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Barbara Howes Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Barbara Howes Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1967 11 3
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Accompanying Material
Notes:
Date written three times on the reel and tape's box
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Basement Theatre
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Previous researcher
CONTENT
Contents:
barbara_howes_i086-11-024.mp3
Stanton Hoffman
00:00:00
The reading this evening is by Miss Barbara Howes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4858990[. Miss Barbara Howes was born in Boston
and educated at Bennington College
. She has published four volumes of poems: The Undersea Farmer, which was published in 1948 by the Banyan Press; In the Cold Country, which was was published by Bonaci and Saul in cooperation with Grove Press
in 1954, Light and Dark, which was published by Wellesley University
Press in 1959, and the recent Looking up at Leaves, which was published by Knopf
in 1966 and which was nominated for the National Book Awards. She has been the editor of a volume of writings of the Carribean which was published by MacMillan
in 1966 and Twenty-three Modern Stories published in 1963 by Vintage Books
. In 1949, she won the Bess Hokin Prize of Poetry Magazine, in 1955 she held a Guggenheim Fellowship
, and in 1957, she won the Brandeis Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals, such as Harper's Bazaar
, New World Writing
, Poetry
, Suani Review, New Republic
, and so forth. And next week in New York City
, Miss Howes will be reading as part of series, or brothers, as part of reading, as part of a reading by fifteen or so other poets, as part of a Poets for Peace, sponsored by the Compassionate Art of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Barbara Howes.
Audience
00:01:48
Applause.
Barbara Howes
00:02:17
Thank you very much, Mr. Hoffman, I'm delighted to be here. If you can't hear me, raise your hands or let me know by some other device. Is this a microphone or does this have to do with this machine? Well I'll try to be clear. I thought rather than read a kind of segmented, like a string of sausages, series of poems, going on and on and on, which gives one very little hope that it'll ever end, it'd be better to say that I'm going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that would be...and so I've arranged the poems in this way, so you will have hope that I won't continue forever, which has been done, in the annals of poetry. I wanted to write, read some poems that have to do with place, because I've thought a lot about the effect of place on poems, and to what extent the place you're in influences what you write. One's imagination would never become extended in certain directions if you hadn't happened to live in a certain place. I was very conscious of that when we lived in Florence
for two years and when my older boy was born, and subsequently for another two years. And I would never--because we--I would never possibly have been able to think, I mean this is obvious in a way, but it gets more complicated, of...Some of the imaginative happenings that occurred would, could never have happened, well in Massachusetts
or anywhere else, and also even in, I mean in Vermont
, where we now live, have been profoundly affected by the section of the mountain which we life. And also we spent some time in Haiti
, and so on and so forth, so this first group will be mostly poems that have a lot to do with experiences that have happened because of a particular place. The first poem is an Italian poem, or written out of Italy
, called "Primavera".
Barbara Howes
00:04:48
Reads "Primavera" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:06:19
This is called "The Triumph of Love".
Barbara Howes
00:06:27
Reads "The Triumph of Love" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:07:18
Then for a summer, we lived in a little town in the south of France
, Le Lavandou
, and it was a very good summer all in all, although, except we had no car and a very big house with only about one room on a floor. So the baby was on the top floor, and the kitchen, it's one burner, was on, you know, it's four floors down. And I would rush up and pick him up and then put him back in his bed, and then rush down and light the burner, and then rush up and get him, and then rush down. So it was difficult in some ways. But one of our entertainments, or entertainments that seemed to certainly entertain friends was to go to an island off Toulon
called Ile Levant
, which is half a naval base and half a colony. And you could go out there in a small--it took about an hour in a small boat, and one time we stood on the dock not quite sure what to do next. Another person who'd come in the boat with us in very high heels and an enormous black hat removed everything else and ran up the hill. [Audience laughter]. So this is “L'Ile du Levant, the Nudist Colony”.
Barbara Howes
00:08:55
Reads "L'Ile du Levant: the Nudist Colony" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:10:59
Now living as I do in the country in Vermont, there comes that terrible time in November when all the hunters from the cities come rushing up with their pint bottles and their confusion and they lounge around half the time sitting in cars and shooting vaguely at anything. So I used to try to write an anti-hunter poem every fall,I don't know about this year, I haven't got an idea yet, but I may see if I can do something. "In Autumn". Excuse me.
Barbara Howes
00:11:37
Reads "In Autumn" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:12:29
And this is another on the same subject.
Barbara Howes
00:12:39
Reads ["Landscape, Deer Season" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:13:16
This is another Pownal
poem, it's really two things put together. It's called "A Night Picture of Pownal”, for JFK. And I stood one evening in very bright moonlight looking out at the shadow of the apple tree across the road on the snow and it made an impression on me, I began to take notes in the dark as best I could on it. And then later, shortly after that, for the death of Kennedy
, then I saw the poem wasn't, it was inadequate, and I somehow put, wove those two things together.
Barbara Howes
00:14:06
Reads "A Night Picture of Pownal" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:15:19
Another Vermont poem or Pownal poem on a more cheerful note. "Town Meeting Tuesday". Town meeting is the first Tuesday in March, and many of the people who have stayed in all winter then emerge like woodchucks from their houses.
Barbara Howes
00:15:45
Reads "Town Meeting Tuesday" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:16:22
Now, we spent two or three Easter vacations in the islands of the Caribbean
, we went to Guadeloupe
once for two weeks. And most of the time I find I write fish poems when I go down to the islands but this one is about a dead toucan in Guadeloupe. There was a little, well, a strange little zoo at the small hotel where we stayed and we would look at these creatures and one day I went and there was the toucan and it had fallen over dead. Somehow, it made an impression on me. "Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe".
Barbara Howes
00:17:04
Reads "Dead Toucan: Guadeloupe" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:17:55
I hope you can hear--can you hear me? In the back rows? We also spent some time in Haiti, earlier, and I'd like to read a couple of poems from that period. This was a thing--it could perfectly well have happened elsewhere but it was the kind of thing that, after we lived in Haiti for a while, I could see very clearly, would definitely have to happen there. There was a young man of about nineteen, very talented as a painter, and did, had just tried out through the art centre there, and doing really quite good and interesting work. And he needed a job so he could buy paints and paper, and anyway just to exist. So an American woman had two small boys and he said he could look after them and play ball and, you know, keep them out of trouble and so on and so forth. And she said, “Can you swim?” And he said, “Oh yes, of course.” So the boys dove into the pool because they had been swimming, as most American boys do, for years. And he dove into the pool, and didn't come up. And nobody was around except some workers who were fixing the garden. But like everybody, almost, in Haiti, they didn't want to get involved, because then the police might ask them questions, and then at the end there's trouble, so the poor young man just died, because the little boys couldn't do anything, and nobody else did anything. And so that made an impression on me. But it's the kind of unfortunate tragedy, due to his saying that he could swim and he couldn't, just because he was so desperately anxious to get the job, and he just made himself believe he could swim. Just a complete waste.
Barbara Howes
00:20:10
Reads ["In a Prospect of Flowers" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:21:10
"Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince
". This, there was a little sign on a tree we used to pass every day and then I thought of this poem.
Barbara Howes
00:21:19
Reads "Mirror Image: Port-au-Prince" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:21:59
There's one other. Oh yes.
Barbara Howes
00:22:06
Reads ["On a Bougainvillea Vine at the Summer Palace" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:23:36
Well, this is one of the fishing poems from the, from Barbados
, from the islands.
Barbara Howes
00:23:46
Reads ["Out Fishing" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:24:58
This poem is written in one foot, it's just an experiment to see what would happen. I, you know, diameter's two feet, or is it, trimeter is three feet. And tetrameter is four, and pentameter is five. One foot means you just have one sound, like that, and it's just, was a technical experiment, but I might as well read it. And it's also another fish poem.
Barbara Howes
00:25:32
Reads ["The Crane Chub--Barbados" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:26:18
Here's a fish, well, a jellyfish poem, from Texas
.
Barbara Howes
00:26:32
Reads ["On Galveston Beach" from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:27:32
And then there's the last Caribbean poem, “A Letter from the Caribbean”.
Barbara Howes
00:27:45
Reads “A Letter From The Caribbean” [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:28:59
I've thought I would read just a few poems by modern poets that I like, they're not by any means their strongest or anything, but they're just ones I'm attached to. The first I cut out of the paper once, a long time ago. It's by an African schoolgirl, and I think it's very imaginative. It's awkward but it's really quite wonderful.
Barbara Howes
00:29:38
Reads unnamed poem by an unknown author.
Barbara Howes
00:29:53
This is an early poem of Wystan Auden's
that he kept out of, he didn't use in his book and then he printed again in a recent edition. I think it's technically as awfully, it's light verse but it's also very serious underneath, as good light verse can me. Poem.
Barbara Howes
00:30:15
Reads ["To You Simply"] by W.H. Auden [published in The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden].
Barbara Howes
00:30:57
And this is a, I think a simply charming poem by Richard Wilbur
. It gets...it's about the Piazza di Spagna
, the Spanish Steps in Rome
, and it gets the feeling of someone gliding, really gliding down that long, gorgeous stairway.
Barbara Howes
00:31:22
Reads ["Piazza Di Spagna, Early Morning"] by Richard Wilbur.
Barbara Howes
00:32:11
This is a poem by Louise Bogan
, who's a very well known American poet, a very recent one that she, that came out in The New Yorker
, this summer, I think.
Barbara Howes
00:32:27
Reads ["Masked Woman’s Song"] by Louise Bogan.
Barbara Howes
00:32:51
It's a difficult poem, might read that again, if you don't mind.
Barbara Howes
00:32:56
Re "Masked Woman’s Song" by Louise Bogan.
Barbara Howes
00:33:17
And then, the last, oh, oh that's right, I thought I would read a poem by Derek Walcott
, which I used in this Carribean Anthology. It's mostly short stories but I put a poem in front of each language section. This is by Derek Walcott who's a young poet from St. Lucia
, called "Missing the Sea".
Barbara Howes
00:33:48
Reads "Missing the Sea" by Derek Walcott [from The Castaway and collected in From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean].
Barbara Howes
00:34:31
It's quite a difficult poem but you...he had a book out, oh, can't remember the name, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
a couple of years ago, in the United States.
And the last of this group is a poem that I've heard about a hundred thousand times, but it still gives me a chill. It's called "American Primitive" by William Jay Smith
.
Barbara Howes
00:35:06
Reads "American Primitive" by William Jay Smith.
Barbara Howes
00:35:47
I still get a chill! Now, I don't know whether you prefer to have an intermission, and get up and smoke, or prefer for me to continue, what would you think, Stanton?
Unknown
00:36:06
Ambient Sound [voices].
Barbara Howes
00:36:08
Have an intermission? So people can...breathe?
Unknown
00:36:17
Ambient Sound [voices].
Unknown
00:36:23
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Barbara Howes
00:36:23
The problem is the third group of poems, I'd read some poems that are more or less to and about people, and some new poems, although I've noticed that most of my new poems are very depressing, and this is not a good note on which to end, so I'll maybe not read them. I've been very much interested in old French forms, the trielle, the villanelle, the rondeau and rondelle, and ballade and so on and so forth, and they're very difficult but they're fascinating to try, at least. And this is in the form of a trielle. And the lines have to be repeated in a certain fashion which gives you very little room in which to maneuver. This is called "Early Supper".
Barbara Howes
00:37:14
Reads "Early Supper" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:38:10
This is a poem I wrote for W.H. Auden for his fiftieth birthday, which was several years ago, now. I think actually, he was last year, sixty.
Barbara Howes
00:38:21
Reads ["To W.H. Auden on his Fiftieth Birthday" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:39:22
I wrote three poems at that point about winds, and I'll just read one of them. The winds have names in Italy and they almost become like familiar characters. The sirocco, when it blows, is so terrible in its effect on people that if there're crimes of passion, the people generally get off with a lighter sentence, because you sell, well, the sirocco. Naturally you can throttle your wife during that period. This is about the mistral, which, if it blows for three days, one survives, if it blows for six days it's simply awful. If it blows for nine days you've probably already gone out of your head. It's a very wild wind who rushes down the Rhone Valley
and just blows everything away.
Barbara Howes
00:40:22
Reads ["Mistral" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:41:23
This is another one, an old French form, the rondeau, which again makes its, has its own complications because of the repetition of lines. And what interested me to do was to try to use, not the usual subject of the rondeaux but to write about, as in this case, the death of a Vermont farm woman, instead of just doing some sort of chittery-chattery business that generally is what people use a rondeau for.
Barbara Howes
00:42:03
Reads ["Death of a Vermont Farm Woman" from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:42:51
This is a poem about a very disagreeable character, a thirteenth-century tyrant called Ugolino
, who met his death from being thrown into prison to die of hunger. He is reputed to have attempted to eat his sons, who were there with him. I must say, it's not an agreeable picture, but I don't think there's been much improvement in that part of mankind. Dante
writes of him in the 33rd Canto of the Inferno
. This poem is called "The Critic" and, I must say, critics have disliked it heartily.
Barbara Howes
00:43:28
Reads "The Critic" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:44:23
This is a, an odd combination about a person and about Pownal, I guess.
Barbara Howes
00:44:32
Reads ["Running into Edgar Bellemare" from Looking Up at Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:45:27
This is a poem I wrote for Katherine Anne Porter
on the occasion of her 75th birthday. "For Katherine Anne Porter".
Barbara Howes
00:45:39
Reads “For Katherine Anne Porter” [from Looking Up at Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:46:15
It's quite marvelous, those collective nouns, who would know that you call a lot of heron a siege of herons and so forth. I'll read that again, because it really is, I was very lucky the way it worked out.
Barbara Howes
00:46:31
Reads line from “For Katherine Anne Porter”.
Barbara Howes
00:47:06
This is called "Looking up at Leaves".
Barbara Howes
00:47:14
Reads "Looking up at Leaves" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:48:09
I'd like to read one New England
poem, this is a newer poem, I haven't read this before, I guess.
Barbara Howes
00:48:16
Reads ["Still Life: New England", published later in The Blue Garden].
Barbara Howes
00:49:34
I'll read three more poems, I think. This is "A Rune for C."--‘C.’ was a dog of ours.
Barbara Howes
00:49:51
Reads "A Rune for C." [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:50:36
Actually, I had just often, I'd made up a good luck thing that seeing the caboose was good luck, but then I found out that this has been an old piece of, well, I don't know, country folklore, that to see the caboose, it means luck. I want to read one poem about my son, and then one short one. "Portrait of the Boy as Artist".
Barbara Howes
00:51:18
Reads "Portrait of the Boy as Artist" [from Light and Dark].
Barbara Howes
00:52:11
Oh, I did want to read one that I'll read next week in New York. This poem is a, this is a rondelle, which is another old French form. And I'm obviously not using it for the usual subject, in this case. It's arranged about the idea, really, of a contrast of the use of space. "Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle".
Barbara Howes
00:52:45
Reads "Viet-Napalm: A Rondelle".
Barbara Howes
00:53:31
And then one last poem on a more cheerful note. "Leaning into Light".
Barbara Howes
00:53:44
Reads "Leaning into Light" [from Looking Up At Leaves].
Barbara Howes
00:54:21.
Thank you very much.
Audience
00:54:23
Applause.
Stanton Hoffman
00:54:38
One announcement, the next reading will be by Charles Reznikoff
, and that's Friday, the same time, November 17th.
Unknown
00:54:46
Ambient Sound [voices].
END
00:54:57
Notes:
Barbara Howes reads from Light and Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), Looking Up at Leaves (Knopf, 1966), and From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean, (Macmillan, 1966) as well as some poems from unknown sources.
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
In 1967, Looking Up At Leaves was published in Poetry Magazine. The previous year, Howes edited From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1966.
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
Direct connections between Barbara Howes and Sir George Williams University are unknown at this time. Howes’ position as an important American poet, though her work was not often acknowledged publicly, made her an ideal candidate for the Reading Series.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript by Rachel Kyne
Original print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Grosholz, Emily. "Howes, Barbara". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.
Citation:
Howes, Barbara. Light and Dark. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959.
Citation:
Howes, Barbara. Looking Up at Leaves. New York: Knopf, 1966.
Citation:
Howes, Barbara. (ed) From the Green Antilles: Writings of the Caribbean. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
Citation:
Pace, Eric. “Barbara Howes, Poet and Editor, Dies at 81”. New York Times. February 25, 1996. New York Edition: Obituary, page 139.
Citation:
“Barbara Howes (1914-1996)”. Poetry Foundation. Poet Biography. Poetry Foundation: 2009.
Citation:
“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20.
Citation:
“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. Montreal: The Gazette. 14 September 1967, page 15.
Citation:
Howes, Barbara. Looking Up at Leaves. Poetry Magazine. Volume 109, January 1967, Page 270.
Citation:
"Howes, Barbara". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed). Phillip W. Leininger (rev.). Oxford University Press 1995.