In this recording, Waldrop reads from “Shorter American memory” published 1988, and then from her book “Differences for Four Hands.” In the introduction to her reading, she speaks to experimental processes she used in writing– collage, the n+7 method, etc. “I’m not responsible” for the language here, she jokes. She describes “Shorter American Memory” (the title a play on Henry Beston’s book) as an endeavor of “forging herself an American past. In her reading of “Differences for Four Hands” its interesting to note the parts of the poem that are not read. This recording itself is also fragment.
0:40 Introduction by Arthur Kinney
He recalls stories of Rosemarie from a period when they both lived in Ann Arbor, MI. “her ability to invade the common moment with the unexpected, her insistence in giving us juxapopositions that jolt rather than tease us in to thought reminds us too that like the surrealists she has studied, it is the unexpected that moves and changes us.”
5:50: Rosemarie Begins
7:25 “Shorter American Memory of the Declaration of Independence”
11:06 “Shorter American memory of the American character…”
13:24 Speaking on “Differences For Four Hands,” a poem and book about the Schumanns. She describes the poem as feminist critique of their history and as an an invocation to Clara Schumann, speaking on her husband’s fear of change, his toxic masculinity
16:12 “Differences for Four Hands” poem starts
17:35 “I’ll skip right over the courtship”
19:30 — lines on hierarchies, gender and art, art and parenthood: “form is defined as fits the years”
22:00 Part 4
32:00 Description of RW’s writing process for The Reproduction of Profiles.
33:00 tapes cuts out
Rosemarie Waldrop (b. 1935) is poet, translator, and publisher (Burning Deck Press.) She lives in Rhode Island and has read at Umass many times. She is the author of 17 books of poetry including “Gap Gardening” and “The Reproduction of Profiles” and “Against Language.”