Black Mountain Poets - Audio Recordings - Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

Thanks to Phillip Barron, a poet and graduate student in the MFA program in creative writing at San Francisco State University, for assembling this collection of links to audio recordings by some of the Black Mountain poets. Below is his explanation of the process he went through.

I started with a broad understanding of who counts as a Black Mountain poet and why. Below is a walk through my thinking about the search. While on sabbatical from his teaching responsibilities at Black Mountain College, Charles Olsen hit upon an idea that poetry needs to focus on the world through objects, instead of through our impressions. As Olson writes in “Projective Verse,”  poetry is a matter of relating the “(1) the kinetics of the thing.[6] A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.” Fielding Dawson, in his memoir The Black Mountain Book, writes about Olson’s breakthrough and the impact it had on him. This “objectist” focus eventually became known as processural poetry. The main purpose of processural poetry is to convey the kinetics of a moment to the reader. 

Around Charles Olson and his student and colleague Robert Creeley there developed a school of poetics called the Black Mountain School or the Black Mountain Poets. Some of these poets attended or taught at Black Mountain College. Some, like Denise Levertov, never had any official affiliation with Black Mountain College. Instead, these poets share a style of writing that develops around attention paid to the process of writing itself. The poetry produced by Black Mountain Poets is very diverse and shares no coherent form. Yet they all share a relationship to the process of writing that links back to Olson’s essay, Projective Verse.

Charles Olson
Penn Sound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Olson.php
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/tags/charles+olson
Woodberry – http://hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom/listeningbooth/poets/olson.cfm

Robert Creeley
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/tags/robert+creeley
PennSound – http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Creeley.php
Woodberry – http://hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom/listeningbooth/poets/creeley.cfm

Robert Duncan
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/tags/robert+duncan
PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Duncan.php
Woodberry – http://hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom/listeningbooth/poets/duncan.cfm

Denise Levertov
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/bundles/191212
PennSound – N/A
Woodberry –  http://hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom/listeningbooth/poets/levertov.cfm

John Wieners
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/bundles/191228
PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Wieners.php
Woodberry – http://hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom/listeningbooth/poets/wieners.cfm

Larry Eigner
PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eigner.html
SFSU – N/A
Woodberry – N/A

Ed Dorn
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/tags/ed+dorn (several recordings will be available soon)
PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Dorn.php
Woodberry –  N/A

Paul Blackburn
SFSU – N/A
PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Blackburn.php
Woodberry –  N/A

Jonathan Williams
SFSU – https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/tags/jonathan+williams
PennSound – http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-Jonathan.php
Woodberry –  N/A

Basil King
PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/King-Basil.php