Al Filreis
‘Sound of wave in channel’: the view from Bolinas
We are adding a filmed discussion of Stephen Ratcliffe’s Sound of Wave in Channel, his 1,000-page poem which, in part, describes a view of the Pacific Ocean from a spot along the road in Bolinas, California—describes it every day for those 1,000 days. Earlier we released a PoemTalk episode filmed...
A former student looks back on my poetry class 20 years later
This is David Slarskey, tweeting all these years later about his experience in English 88, the course on modern and contemporary experimental poetry I’ve been teaching now for 34 years. David took the experimentalism seriously, as you’ll see. This being twitter, you’ll need, of course, to read from bottom to...
Kelly Writers House Post-Bacc Fellow, 2019-20: Maya Arthur
We here at 3805 Locust Walk are thrilled to announce that MAYA ARTHUR (C’18) has been selected as the inaugural Kelly Writers House Post-Baccalaureate Fellow. The KWH Post-Bacc Fellows project extends a central objective of the Writers House: to direct resources toward opportunities, learning experiences, and foundational support to young...
Paris—June 2
Paris today (June 2): did much, but two highlights—a long intense visit to the powerful & in some ways heartening “Young Artists of Europe” show at the amazing Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain; and a briefer but pleasurable visit to the Picasso Museum, which featured a Picasso/Calder show. Nika Kutateladze...
Paris—June 1 (part 1 of 2)
Paris today (June 1), part 2 of 2: an astonishing show at the Musée du quai Branly about Félix Fénéon who was an anarchist and art critic (first identified the neo-Impressionists as such and supported them intellectually, critically & as himself a collector) and also strongly advocated for the inclusion...
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. He is currently writing a book on the art & avant-garde of 1960. He has taught a massive open online course, "
Founder/Faculty Director, 
PoemTalk’s crew took to the road, wandering pretty much as far west as one can go on this continent, to a place Philip Whalen called, in a poem’s subtitle, “the last of California” — Bolinas, coastal spot famous as A congenial writer’s retreat. Stephen Ratcliffe, Joanne Kyger, and Julia Bloch gathered there with Al Filreis to talk about Whalen. Our poem was indeed written in Bolinas, in 1968, and finished in Kyoto in 1969. It’s called “Life at Bolinas: The Last of California.” Whalen’s PennSound page includes a recording of his performance of this poem, the final poem he read at an event in Albuquerque in 1987. Click 