On this reel, readings by James Tate and Robert Creeley are joined by a musical interlude–- by collaboration or by a beautiful coincidence of arrangement, the readings end and begin respectively with writing on doors.
The first poem read by James Tate on this recording includes the line “my books are melting they are the first ingredients of the terrible birthday soup.” Mentions of birthdays– and the accumulation of days– are frequent here. (This reading was given in celebration of James Tate’s twenty sixth.)
On this recording, especially of interest are the readings of “Two Hundred and One” and “Fuck the Astronauts.”
0:00 Creeley begins: unknown poem about sinking “ I don’t know how I only live here with the body I walk in, hence I love you.”
1:39 words
2:21 the invoice
2:52 the cracks [published poetry foundation 1960]
3:45 A reason
4:38 the name
6:06 the wife
6:38 naughty boy
7:17 “to see the moonlight and see it as trees”
9:33 the ball game
10:25 the door
14:27 static on tape
14:37: unknown pianist
17:10 Tate begins. Serial Poem, opens “though the odds were in your favor, the figure in the doorway has chosen you..”
20:19 Frivolous Blind Death Child
21:14 Recipe for Sleep
21:57 Sliding on my Back off the Mirror
22:53 Wind Birthday Sleep
23:41 [talking about astronauts]
24:30 Fuck the Astronauts
[so my eyes don’t become blinded by the new world]
27:09 Amnesia People [poem in ten sections]
39:46 Two Hundred and One
41:58 The Seeing Eye People
48:05: The Blue Canyon, dedicated to Frederic Will
53:36 Absences [poem in sections, which would be published as a book 1972]
1:06:20 Pride’s Crossing
1:07:0 Radio announcement