LINEbreak Program Descriptions

Tape 1:

Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña chants song-poetry from the shaman tradition. Her performances are often a layering of just a few words in English, Spanish, and Quechua. Her works include Precario Precarious and Selected Poems of Rosario Castellanos. In her LINEbreak program she performs selections from her Unravelling Words the Weaving of Water.
Ethnographer Dennis Tedlock is the editor of The American Anthropologist. In his LINEbreak program he talks about new, more sensitive ways of translating literature between cultures. He plays samples from his vast archive of stories, songs and poetry recorded in different parts of the world, and performs a translation of a Zuni folktale as well.

Tape 2:

Legendary experimental novelist Raymond Federman tells stories of surviving the Holocaust and going to war. He has been on the cutting edge of fiction for more than twenty years. His books include Double or Nothing, Take It or Leave It, and Me Too. In his program he performs selections from his Smiles on Washington Square.
Postmodern novelist Lance Olsen, and video artist Andrea Olsen talk about what it means to be a "cyberpunk" and the value of television to today's art. Lance is the author of Live from Earth, I Believe, and Tonguing the Zeitgeist. For LINEbreak he performs a passage from his new novel Burnt.

Tape 3:

The poet Ted Pearson is lyrical yet contemporary. His works include Planetary Gear, Acoustic Masks, Mnemonics, and Grit. On his LINEbreak program he talks about the literary scene of his native Bay Area and performs a poem from his book, Evidence.
Co-founders of the Electronic Poetry Center, the largest and most popular new literature resource on the internet, Ken Sherwood and Loss Glazier talk about writing in electronic space. They perform a variety of different pieces all influenced by the digital age.

Tape 4:

Lyn Hejinian is a California poet with a long interest in travel writing. She is the author of Writing Is an Aid to Memory, A Mask of Motion, A Thought Is the Bride of What Thinking, and The Guard. For LINEbreak she performs selections from her book, The Cell.
Author Ron Silliman mixes puns, declarations, sounds and sights from everyday life that are as fun to listen to as they are to read. On LINEbreak he tries to answer the question: "Just who do poets write for in the '90s?" He will also perform a selection from his new book, Xing. His works include Toner, Demo to Ink, and The New Sentence.

Tape 5:

One of the most famous poets in America, Robert Creeley, talks about his evolution as a writer after World War II, the experience of working at the radical Black Mountain College, and his most recent writing. He has authored over seventy books of poetry and is currently working with Buffalo students at City Honors School on an on-line writing project. (two half-hours)

Tape 6:

Buffalo writer Jena Osman stages her radio play, The Detective. Written with the hard-boiled crime novels of the '50s in mind, The Detective is part tribute and part send-up. Jena also talks about her experience editing the literary magazine, Chain.
Scottish performance artist Fiona Templeton has had work displayed in a penitentiary, and staged a play on the streets of New York City. She has written London, Elements of Performance Art, and Going. For us, she performs selections from You--The City.

Tape 7:

Profound, irreverent, provocative, philosophical, and always funny, Steve McCaffery is one of the founders of the legendary Toronto Research Group. He has authored more than thirteen books which range from poetry to pedagogy in a style that defies description. On LINEbreak he preforms his Teachable Texts. (two half-hours)

Tape 8:

Best-selling author Peter Straub has been a master of the horror genre for more than twenty years. He has collaborated with Stephen King and is the author of Shodowland, Hellfire Club, and From the Throat. He talks about the evolution of horror novels and what makes a good character. For LINEbreak he performs a selection from his story, "The Hunger." (two half-hours)

Tape 9:

Author Carla Harryman is famous for blurring the boundaries between masculinity and femininity. She is the author of Animal Instincts, In the Mode Of, and Under the Bridge. On LINEbreak she talks about her experiments in mixing literary genres, and performs from her book, There Never Was a Rose without a Thorn.
Screenwriter of two of the best films to come out of Hollywood last year (Smoke and Blew in the Face), Paul Auster worked for years as a writer before his work hit the big screen. From his book The Invention of Solitude he'll read some translated poem fragments by Malarmè.

Tape 10:

Jackson Mac Low has been on the forefront of American poetic innovation since the 1930s. As a pioneer of "chance operation" in writing and music he seeks to question commonly held beliefs about authorship and creativity. He reads a selection from his work, The Forties.
The poetry of Bruce Andrews is at once inviting and confrontational. Using pieces of everyday language which lull and then attack, he was one of the originators of "Language Poetry." He has written Give 'Em Enough Rope, Getting Ready to Have Been Frightened, and Fractura. He performs from his I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up!

Tape 11:

Navaho poet and performer Luci Tapahonso brings a melodic elegance to the Native American stories she tells. She has authored Breeze Swept Through, and Saanii Dahataal. On LINEbreak she performs her "Hills Brothers' Coffee," and talks about her experiences as a Navaho writer.
Ben Yarmolinsky is a New York City poet and composer famous for finding art in strange places: he writes operas based on contemporary pop-cultural phenomena. On LINEbreak we will hear an aria from Anita, his opera based on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings.

Tape 12:

Canadian poet Karen Mac Cormack picks through dead languages and dialects for phrases, words and fragments to include in her own work. She is the author of Straw Cupid and Quill Driver. On LINEbreak she performs a selection from her Quirks & Quillets.
Formerly of Oakland, California, Buffalo-based writer Ben Friedlander crafts poetry based on our perceptions of the Vietnam War. He has written Danger Warning and Anterior Future. During his program he plays us a sample of his recent experiments in audio art.

Tape 13:

One of the original New York School Poets, Barbara Guest, has a career as a writer that spans five decades. Her works include: Location of Things, Blue Stairs, Defensive Rapture, and Fair Realism. On LINEbreak she reads from her first book, A Reason.
Sophisticated and cerebral but always playful, author Madeline Gins often takes literary cues from visual artists. In her LINEbreak program she performs various selections from her book Helen Keller or Arakawa which interrogate means of perception and constructions of reality.

Tape 14:

The work of pre-eminent American poet Susan Howe combines radical linguistic experiment with personal narrative and literary criticism. Her major works include: Europe of Trusts, Birth Mark, and Pythagorean Silence. She is also a leading Emily Dickinson scholar. In her second half-hour she discusses misrepresentations of Dickinson in readings of American literature and performs from her book, My Emily Dickinson. (two half-hours)

Tape 15:

Hannah Weiner is famous for "seeing words" on objects, on other people, and on her own forehead. In her program she describes collecting language from astral projections and reads from her Clairvoyant Journal.
Author of more than a dozen books of prose, poetry and drama, Leslie Scalapino has recently turned her attention on the compartmentalization of "poetry" and "the public" in contemporary American society. In her program she performs a selection from her Front Matter Dead Souls which suggests a literary alternative to newspaper coverage of the Gulf War.

Tape 16:

In addition to publishing over twenty books of his own poetry, Jerome Rothenberg has been extremely influential in the field of Anthropology. Compiling and editing Alcheringa and Technicians of the Sacred, Rothenberg is often credited with founding the study of Ethnopoetics. For LINEbreak he performs work from various points in his forty-year career. (one extended program)

updated 21 May 1997

Martin Spinelli (martins@acsu.buffalo.edu)