This recording was from the same session as I recorded these poems from War of the Foxes. However, they are from his new book I Do Know Some Things by Copper Canyon Press. The poems read are Cloud Factory, Devonian Forest, Non-Diegetic Music, and True Love.

Here is a new recording of James Thornton reading from his short essay collection Nature Is My Teacher. James has a warm voice full of humor, compassion, and wisdom.

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I have had the pleasure of recording Siken twice now, originally for Crush and now for War of the Foxes. We recorded this two poems from the collection in Tucson, Arizona, where Siken lives. The first is Logic and the other the titular poem War of the Foxes.

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I ran into James Thornton’s The Feynman Challenge at Book Culture in NYC. The conceit of the collection is what grabbed me. Thornton is responding to a challenge that Feynman issued to poets in his Lectures on Physics.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars–mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination–stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern–of which I am a part… What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

I recorded James in his home in Santa Monica. The poems are wonderful, and overall sound is good, except for the late appearance of a circular saw coming from some nearby workmen.

Listen to all recordings at So I Have Heard

I pulled this reading from the archives. I went to Tucson way back in 2008 to meet up with Monson. It is recorded at the Tucson Poetry Center if I remember right. There is some occasional noise in the background, but you can always hear Monson clearly. He is reading essays and poems from Other Eccentricities and Vacationland.

Listen to all recordings at So I Have Heard

I recorded this at a Craigardan residency during the summer of 2024. The zine or booklet mentioned in the reading is here.

I recorded this way back when Elizabeth Willis was at Wesleyan. I remember I was so nervous my stomach was making noise. EW was great about it though. She soldiered on reading. I tried to sit as far away as possible. Fortunately, my stomach didn’t make it onto the recording. Just EW’s wonderful poetry.

I had the priviledge of being on residency last summer with Emily. Here is her reading from the beginning of her novel in progress, Until My Heart Comes Clean.

Here is an old recording from one of Connecticut’s best, Tony Fusco, just added to So I Have Heard.

Here are four wonderful poems by Cynthia Cruz that I found in my archive. I’ve somehow misplaced the entire reading. You can find the all recordings in So I Have Heard on this page.

I just added a recording of Richard Siken reading from Crush to So I Have Heard. Check out his page to hear the recording.