CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1267
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:
John Logan at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 26 January 1968
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"JOHN LOGAN I006/SR163" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. "I006-11-163" written on sticker on the reel
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Logan, John
Dates:
1923-1987
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Poet John Logan was born in Red Oak, Iowa. Logan earned a B.Sc. in zoology at Coe College and earned an M.A. in English at the University of Iowa. Later he pursued more graduate work at Georgetown University and at the University of Notre Dame. He taught English at St. John’s College in Maryland and at the University of Notre Dame, finally settling in as a professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo. He married, and fathered nine children but divorced later on in his life. His first of fourteen publications was Cycle for Mother Cabrini (Grove Press), published in 1955. Two collections followed, Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press) in 1960 and Spring of the Thief: Poems 1960-1962 (Knopf) in 1963. In 1969, Logan published a selection of his poems written since 1963 in The Zig-Zag Walk: Poems 1963-1968 (E.P. Dutton), and in 1973 The Anonymous Lover: New Poems (Liveright) came out. The bridge of change: poems, 1974-1980 (BOA Editions) was published in 1981, along with Only the dreamer can change the dream (Ecco Press, 1981), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize the following year. Logan’s prose was collected in A Bullet for the Ear: Interviews, Essays and Reviews (Ann Arbor, 1983) edited by A. Poulin, Jr. Logan received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Wayne State University’s Miles Modern Poetry Prize. He was the poetry editor of The Nation and Critic, and founded Choice magazine. John Logan died in 1987, and his poetry was published posthumously in The Collected Poems (BOA Editions) in 1989.
CONTRIBUTORS
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playback Mode:
Mono
Tape Brand:
Scotch
Sound Quality:
Good
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
01:09:14
Size:
166.2 MB
Content:
John Logan
00:00:00
Reads “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot” [recording begins abruptly].
John Logan
00:03:37
Now, can you see over there? I'm still concerned about the situation of the lights. Light's one of the big problems in poetry. [Audience laughter]. This is "Two Preludes for La Push", and it’s dedicated to Michael Ross
. It was written when I was teaching [Wetky's (?)] courses a couple of years ago in Seattle
for a couple of quarters. The physical beauty of the North West got me very involved and I wrote a number of poems about it, of which this was the first. La Push
, Washington
is a city on the coast--city, no it's a hamlet on the coast, very poverty stricken Indian populated, really a ruined community with dead cars lying around and houses falling apart, but in the summer many people come there because of its superb beauty. I found that I couldn't write about the Indian community, I wrote rather about the sea and myself.
John Logan
00:05:38
Reads "Two Preludes for La Push" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:07:48
I'm sorry it bothers me when people come in late, I'm temperamental about that, you'll just have to excuse me. It's not that they're late, you know, it has no respect for the poem, they could wait until it's over. I'll go back to the second part.
John Logan
00:08:13
Resumes reading "Two Preludes for La Push" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:10:57
This is another poem about a superb place in the North West called Deception Pass
, which is a pass really--a water pass between islands, Deception Island
is the name of the poem which the poem takes its name.
John Logan
00:11:39
Reads "The Pass" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:13:32
I lived on a houseboat for a while, in Seattle, which I certainly think that everybody who considers going to Seattle ought to do. In fact, I was living on a houseboat when the tidal wave struck in the spring of that year. That is a marvelous thrill, it woke me up. I became friends with ducks there, I was living alone, and the poem is partly about that. "Three Moves in Six Months". You'll have to forgive me, I don't have this poem with me, I wanted to remember it, I'll see if I can.
John Logan
00:14:29
Reads "Three Moves" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:15:45
I'm sorry, I can't remember this poem now. I'll try it again in the second half of the program, I'm screwing it up. [Audience laughter]. I'll read you another poem, I'll try that one later. This is called "Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)". There are two epigraphs, one from a student of mine who said "I care more about strawberries than about death", and one from Rilke
, who wrote "Heir, es ist zeit".
John Logan
00:16:43
Reads "Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:22:27
I'll read one more poem then would like to take a break, and begin again. It's called "Love Poem". I said that as though it didn't matter that it's called that. It does.
John Logan
00:23:17
Reads "Love Poem" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
Audience
00:25:35
Applause.
Unknown
00:25:49
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Unknown
00:25:50
Ambient Sound [voices].
John Logan
00:26:27
I was just asked to read another, earlier poem, which I'm glad to do. Why not? I still like this poem. Then I'll come back and read some more recent things. Did we decide we'll try this without the lamp at all? I think we did, because it seems to get in the way of people. I think that people are more important than I am. Is that worse? Probably if you can't see me it should be marvelous. It’s called "A Trip to Four or Five Towns" and I dedicated it to James Wright
, simply because he liked it. There's a reference toward the end of the poem to a visit to William Carlos Williams
, and there's also a reference to a story about e.e. cummings
, told by Charles Norman in his biography of cummings about a long night spent at [Archebold (?)] and [unintelligible] with them living in France
, cummings was working for the New York Herald Tribune
, I think, perhaps another New York
paper, there aren't that many. But on the way back from the party, cummings had the urge to take a leak, and so he did so, but it was Champs-Élysées
or some extraordinary [audience laughter] place like that and the cops saw him. They brought him to jail, and they said, 'You piss on Paris
' [audience laughter]. He said, 'No ,it's not the point, I just had to take a leak', but they kept him there the whole night and when he finally got back to his office in the morning they had signs posted up around, which said--and I don't read French, I'm sorry because I know that many of you know French--but it was something like this, “[unintelligible] pisseur Americain”, which I guess translated "Let the American pisser go". [Audience laughter]. This was "A Trip to Four or Five Towns”.
John Logan
00:29:01
Reads "A Trip to Four of Five Towns" [from Ghosts of the Heart]..
John Logan
00:38:34
I realize reading the poem now how dated it is with the reference to the capital of [Viscount(?)] claim, which sold out some time ago to I don't know, somebody that sold out to somebody else. Williams by the way, did not read his Sixteen new poems, he had them, but he couldn't read them because he'd had a stroke and had never heard them. I visited him with Galway Kinnell
, and he asked us to read the poems, and we did. But I thought that, you know, one of the great things about poetry is that you can make it the way that it should be, so I had him read the poems. This is "Big Sur: Partington Cove". I went with a couple of students to, well we were in the Big Sur
, and this is a very hidden place, Partington Cove
. A marvelous place, accessible only by a tunnel shored up by ancient timbers, I feel I am sort of repeating the poem by telling you this, but there is such a cove, and you can only reach it through a tunnel, it's very beautiful. Smugglers used the cove and a cave nearby to hide booze during the prohibition, it was used for other purposes before and since, and there are--well why not? [Audience laughter]. But you can't get there at all now, I tried to revisit when I was back there last spring, but it's all roped off. And even the one time I did get to go there, there was a sign that was supposed to scare you away. The, one of the motivating things behind the poem was my understanding for the first time of what happens in some paintings that a friend of mine Jim Johnson
does, where he uses combinations of landscape and the human body. He will have for example, mountains coming off an arm, and the figure of a clown. I had an experience which this poem talks about that made me see for the first time the kind of rapport between body and landscape. It was important to me, and part of what happens to the poem.
John Logan
00:41:54
Reads "Big Sur: Partington Cove" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:50:45
Reads "Three Moves" [in full, published later in The Zigzag Walk].
Audience
00:53:56
Applause.
John Logan
00:53:56
I'm glad I finally read a poem you liked. [Laughter]. I'll read two more, they're both new, one is fairly long and one is fairly short. This one is called “Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)”. It's based on an experience of being in jail along the Erie Canal
. The name of the town is Herkimer
, New York [audience laughter] and I guess I won't go into the background of it, it's not that interesting. But it was written there. Not long ago.
John Logan
00:55:00
Reads "Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
01:02:31
And finally, read "The Search". Which is my most recent poem. If you knew how few poems there have been lately, that would mean more but...
John Logan
01:03:03
Reads "The Search" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
Audience
01:07:31
Applause.
John Logan
01:07:48
Thank you [audience applause continues throughout].
Introducer
01:08:04
Thanks very much John
, just several announcements before we go. Fred Cogswell
, who is visiting us this year, has been invited by the Sir George Williams Student Literary Society to read his poetry, next Friday evening, in the students' lounge on the sixth floor. Jorge Luis Borges
, the distinguished--[audience laughter] you're not making it easier--the distinguished author will be coming here, to Sir George Williams
, on Thursday February the 29th and I think I have this right. He's changed the title of his talk, it will be "Beginnings of English Poetry". Our next reading, John Newlove
and Joe Rosenblatt
, two weeks from...
Unknown
01:09:05
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Unknown
01:09:06
Ambient Sound [voices].
END
01:09:14
Notes:
John Logan reads from Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1960) and The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968 (Dutton, 1969).
00:00- Begins mid-sentence “...sperm in the womb quickens to a man...” from “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot”
03:37- John Logan introduces “Two Preludes for La Push” [INDEX: Michael Ross, teaching Wetky’s class [?], North West, Seattle, La Push Washington, Indian]
05:38- Reads “Two Preludes for La Push”
10:57- Introduces “The Pass” [INDEX: Deception Pass, North West]
11:39- Reads “The Pass”
13:32- Introduces “Three Moves” [partial reading] [INDEX: houseboat, ducks, Seattle]
14:29- Reads “Three Moves”
15:45- Introduces “Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings (1896-1962)” [INDEX: explains epigraphs]
16:43- Reads “Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings (1896-1962)”
22:27- Introduces “Love Poem”
23:17- Reads “Love Poem”
25:52- Introduces “A Trip to Four or Five Towns” [INDEX: James Wright, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Charles Norman, Archebold [?], France, New York Herald Tribune, Champs Elysees]
29:01- Reads “A Trip to Four or Five Towns”
38:34- Explains “A Trip to Four or Five Towns”, introduces “Big Sur, Partington Cove” [INDEX: Capital of Viscount, William Carlos Williams, Galway Kinnell,Partington Cove, prohibition, artist Jim Johnson, relationship between body and landscape]
41:54- Reads “Big Sur, Partington Cove”.
50:45.20- END OF RECORDING
00:00- John Logan reads “Three Moves” in full.
03:10- Introduces “Lines on Locks, or Jail on the Erie Canal” [INDEX: Herkimer, New York]
04:14- Reads “Lines on Locks, or Jail on the Erie Canal”
11:46- Introduces “The Search”
12:18- Reads “The Search”
17:19- Unknown male announces next readings [INDEX: Fred Cogswell, Sir George Williams Student Literary Society, Jorge Luis Borges, John Newlove, Joe Rosenblatt]
18:29.44- END OF RECORDING
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Featured:
Yes
Title:
John Logan Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
John Logan Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
John Logan Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
John Logan Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1968 1 26
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Supplemental Material
Notes:
Date specified in "Georgantics" by Marty Charny
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Art Gallery
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Location specified in printed announcement "Georgantics" by Marty Charny (Supplemental material)
CONTENT
Contents:
john_logan_i006-11-163.mp3
John Logan
00:00:00
Reads “Eight Poems on Portraits of the Foot” [recording begins abruptly].
John Logan
00:03:37
Now, can you see over there? I'm still concerned about the situation of the lights. Light's one of the big problems in poetry. [Audience laughter]. This is "Two Preludes for La Push", and it’s dedicated to Michael Ross
. It was written when I was teaching [Wetky's (?)] courses a couple of years ago in Seattle
for a couple of quarters. The physical beauty of the North West got me very involved and I wrote a number of poems about it, of which this was the first. La Push
, Washington
is a city on the coast--city, no it's a hamlet on the coast, very poverty stricken Indian populated, really a ruined community with dead cars lying around and houses falling apart, but in the summer many people come there because of its superb beauty. I found that I couldn't write about the Indian community, I wrote rather about the sea and myself.
John Logan
00:05:38
Reads "Two Preludes for La Push" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:07:48
I'm sorry it bothers me when people come in late, I'm temperamental about that, you'll just have to excuse me. It's not that they're late, you know, it has no respect for the poem, they could wait until it's over. I'll go back to the second part.
John Logan
00:08:13
Resumes reading "Two Preludes for La Push" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:10:57
This is another poem about a superb place in the North West called Deception Pass
, which is a pass really--a water pass between islands, Deception Island
is the name of the poem which the poem takes its name.
John Logan
00:11:39
Reads "The Pass" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:13:32
I lived on a houseboat for a while, in Seattle, which I certainly think that everybody who considers going to Seattle ought to do. In fact, I was living on a houseboat when the tidal wave struck in the spring of that year. That is a marvelous thrill, it woke me up. I became friends with ducks there, I was living alone, and the poem is partly about that. "Three Moves in Six Months". You'll have to forgive me, I don't have this poem with me, I wanted to remember it, I'll see if I can.
John Logan
00:14:29
Reads "Three Moves" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:15:45
I'm sorry, I can't remember this poem now. I'll try it again in the second half of the program, I'm screwing it up. [Audience laughter]. I'll read you another poem, I'll try that one later. This is called "Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)". There are two epigraphs, one from a student of mine who said "I care more about strawberries than about death", and one from Rilke
, who wrote "Heir, es ist zeit".
John Logan
00:16:43
Reads "Poem, Slow to Come, on the Death of Cummings, (1896-1962)" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:22:27
I'll read one more poem then would like to take a break, and begin again. It's called "Love Poem". I said that as though it didn't matter that it's called that. It does.
John Logan
00:23:17
Reads "Love Poem" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
Audience
00:25:35
Applause.
Unknown
00:25:49
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Unknown
00:25:50
Ambient Sound [voices].
John Logan
00:26:27
I was just asked to read another, earlier poem, which I'm glad to do. Why not? I still like this poem. Then I'll come back and read some more recent things. Did we decide we'll try this without the lamp at all? I think we did, because it seems to get in the way of people. I think that people are more important than I am. Is that worse? Probably if you can't see me it should be marvelous. It’s called "A Trip to Four or Five Towns" and I dedicated it to James Wright
, simply because he liked it. There's a reference toward the end of the poem to a visit to William Carlos Williams
, and there's also a reference to a story about e.e. cummings
, told by Charles Norman in his biography of cummings about a long night spent at [Archebold (?)] and [unintelligible] with them living in France
, cummings was working for the New York Herald Tribune
, I think, perhaps another New York
paper, there aren't that many. But on the way back from the party, cummings had the urge to take a leak, and so he did so, but it was Champs-Élysées
or some extraordinary [audience laughter] place like that and the cops saw him. They brought him to jail, and they said, 'You piss on Paris
' [audience laughter]. He said, 'No ,it's not the point, I just had to take a leak', but they kept him there the whole night and when he finally got back to his office in the morning they had signs posted up around, which said--and I don't read French, I'm sorry because I know that many of you know French--but it was something like this, “[unintelligible] pisseur Americain”, which I guess translated "Let the American pisser go". [Audience laughter]. This was "A Trip to Four or Five Towns”.
John Logan
00:29:01
Reads "A Trip to Four of Five Towns" [from Ghosts of the Heart]..
John Logan
00:38:34
I realize reading the poem now how dated it is with the reference to the capital of [Viscount(?)] claim, which sold out some time ago to I don't know, somebody that sold out to somebody else. Williams by the way, did not read his Sixteen new poems, he had them, but he couldn't read them because he'd had a stroke and had never heard them. I visited him with Galway Kinnell
, and he asked us to read the poems, and we did. But I thought that, you know, one of the great things about poetry is that you can make it the way that it should be, so I had him read the poems. This is "Big Sur: Partington Cove". I went with a couple of students to, well we were in the Big Sur
, and this is a very hidden place, Partington Cove
. A marvelous place, accessible only by a tunnel shored up by ancient timbers, I feel I am sort of repeating the poem by telling you this, but there is such a cove, and you can only reach it through a tunnel, it's very beautiful. Smugglers used the cove and a cave nearby to hide booze during the prohibition, it was used for other purposes before and since, and there are--well why not? [Audience laughter]. But you can't get there at all now, I tried to revisit when I was back there last spring, but it's all roped off. And even the one time I did get to go there, there was a sign that was supposed to scare you away. The, one of the motivating things behind the poem was my understanding for the first time of what happens in some paintings that a friend of mine Jim Johnson
does, where he uses combinations of landscape and the human body. He will have for example, mountains coming off an arm, and the figure of a clown. I had an experience which this poem talks about that made me see for the first time the kind of rapport between body and landscape. It was important to me, and part of what happens to the poem.
John Logan
00:41:54
Reads "Big Sur: Partington Cove" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
00:50:45
Reads "Three Moves" [in full, published later in The Zigzag Walk].
Audience
00:53:56
Applause.
John Logan
00:53:56
I'm glad I finally read a poem you liked. [Laughter]. I'll read two more, they're both new, one is fairly long and one is fairly short. This one is called “Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)”. It's based on an experience of being in jail along the Erie Canal
. The name of the town is Herkimer
, New York [audience laughter] and I guess I won't go into the background of it, it's not that interesting. But it was written there. Not long ago.
John Logan
00:55:00
Reads "Lines on Locks (or Jail and the Erie Canal)" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
John Logan
01:02:31
And finally, read "The Search". Which is my most recent poem. If you knew how few poems there have been lately, that would mean more but...
John Logan
01:03:03
Reads "The Search" [published later in The Zigzag Walk].
Audience
01:07:31
Applause.
John Logan
01:07:48
Thank you [audience applause continues throughout].
Introducer
01:08:04
Thanks very much John
, just several announcements before we go. Fred Cogswell
, who is visiting us this year, has been invited by the Sir George Williams Student Literary Society to read his poetry, next Friday evening, in the students' lounge on the sixth floor. Jorge Luis Borges
, the distinguished--[audience laughter] you're not making it easier--the distinguished author will be coming here, to Sir George Williams
, on Thursday February the 29th and I think I have this right. He's changed the title of his talk, it will be "Beginnings of English Poetry". Our next reading, John Newlove
and Joe Rosenblatt
, two weeks from...
Unknown
01:09:05
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Unknown
01:09:06
Ambient Sound [voices].
END
01:09:14
Notes:
John Logan reads from Ghosts of the Heart: New Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1960) and The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968 (Dutton, 1969).
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
In 1968, John Logan was an English Professor at State University New York in Buffalo. He was working on The Zig-Zag Walk: Poems 1963-1968, which was published in 1969.
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
John Logan’s direct connection to Montreal or Sir George Williams University is unknown at this point. Logan was, however, an important and influential American poet and professor at State University of New York.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Charny, Marty. “Georgiantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 26 January 1968.
Citation:
Logan, John. Ghosts of the Heart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Citation:
Logan, John. The Zigzag Walk: Poems; 1963-1968. New York: Dutton, 1969.
Citation:
"Logan, John". The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart (ed.), Phillip W. Leininger (rev). Oxford University Press 1995.
Citation:
Butscher, Edward. "Logan, John". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.
Citation:
“John Logan”. Poets.org: Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. The Academy of American Poets, 2009.
Citation:
“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George University, Spring 1967, page 20.