I was asked to write 200 words about Auschwitz for some sort of commemoration marking 75 years after liberation. I wrote what is below—actually 267 words. Survivor testimony presents its great challenges, but it is a subjectivity so intensely collective that it makes for a new kind of objectivity. One...
I’m including a sampling of three poems by Nelly Sachs in my course on representations of the holocaust. Here is a link to a PDF copy of these three: https://media.sas.upenn.edu/afilreis/holocaust/Sachs-Nelly_selected-poems.pdf
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...
Visits to the Shoah Memorial, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Place des Vosges—and, later, with Spanish-Parisian poet Irene Torra Mohendano, to the Le104 public/open art center, Canal de l’Ourcq, and a squatter-style poets’ pop-up where we hung out with Colombia poet Jorge Torres Medina.
We received hundreds of applications again this year’s RealArts@Penn paid summer internships and the RealArts@Penn prize. Below is a list of the students who have been appointed as RealArts@Penn interns for 2019.For more about RealArts@Penn: http://writing.upenn.edu/realartsI want to thank Mingo Reynolds and R.J. Bernocco, Director and Associate Director of RealArts@Penn; and Anthony DeCurtis,...
We celebrated Charles Bernstein the other night at the Kelly Writers House, marking the occasion of his birthday and of his retirement from teaching at Penn. Lots and lots o’ BBQ, a case of whiskey (not quite all the whiskey in heaven), and much else—and many, many colleagues and friends,...
Color and gritty brightness, Manhattan in February. Words on the sidewalk at Greenwich Avenue and 7th. Self-portrait in a convex subway mirror. A favorite scruffy mailbox. Subway mosaic. And the western sun hitting me hard as a I turn down 11th Street.
Second dwelling from the left: House of the Book. (With thanks to Harris Steinberg & Jane Stevens Steinberg, who gave us a framed sketch of this at the time of the completed first renovation of 3805 Locust Walk in late 1997.)
We at the Kelly Writers House are thrilled to announce our 2019 Writers House Fellows events. This year, we will welcome fiction writer, critic, and (as of last month) MacArthur Foundation grantee John Keene, legendary poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and eminent singer-songwriter and fiction writer Rosanne Cash. Seating is strictly limited for these programs, and an RSVP...
Thanks to the work of Luisa Healey, PennSound staffer, we have now segmented (into audio clips arranged by topic) the “Close Listening” conversation Charles Bernstein hosted with Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge in 2006. PennSound’s Berssenbrugge author page is HERE. And here are the segments: Close Listening with Charles Bernstein, April 28, 2006...
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. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.