American Women — Poetry

  • Sing a battle song: poems by women of the Weather Underground

    Reading of “Sing a Battle Song”; a clandestine publication of the Red Dragon Print Collective, March 8, 1975. Poems by women in the Weather Underground organization read by KPFK staff and volunteers. Directed by Ruth Hirschman, produced by Peter Sutheim, and engineered by Phil Mendelson.

  • The Will to change / written and read by Adrienne Rich.

    Poet Adrienne Rich (1929 – 2012) reads selections of her work. Most of the poems read are from her book The will to change (W.W. Norton, 1971). Rich reads the following poems: Planetarium, I dream I’m the death of Orpheus, Letters: March 1969, Our whole life, Shooting script (excerpts), Trying to talk with a man,…

  • She who is electric / Judy Grahn.

    Women-loving poems by poet Judy Grahn (1940 – ), including She Who and The Common Women series. Also Edward the Dyke, a short story based on real experiences, in which a woman confused and ambivalent about lesbianism is confronted by her head-shrinker and his battery of pseudo-therapeutic analyses and methods. Judy is a radical lesbian,…

  • Bard at large / Rae Lake Costos.

    Rae Lake Costos is the “Bard at Large” of KPFT, Houston. She defines a bard as a person who travels about carrying the news of heroes from place to place. In our age, the heroes are those who help us define what spiritual freedom is. While visiting from Houston, Ms. Costos recorded these thoughts about…

  • The novel of the future : realism and reality in the novel

    Anais Nin (1902-1977) introduces this program as a summary of many discussions she’s had while traveling and speaking all over the United States on writing and the “novel of the future.” She says her novel of the future will employ such diverse techniques as the interior monologue, stream of consciousness, symbolism, abstraction, and metaphor, to…

  • House of Incest

    Author and novelist Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) reads her prose poem “House of Incest.”

  • May fare for fair May

    A collection of Baroque and Renaissance madrigals including Alfred Deller, and poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, John Suckling, Robert Herrick, Anonymous, Andrew Marvell, Blake, Yeats, etc. Read by Everett Frost, Mitchell Harding, Katherine Calkin, Faith Wilding, and David Cloud. The program begins with a festive celebration live outside the KPFK building for welcoming in May.…

  • I am the babe of Joseph Stalin’s daughter / Rochelle Owens.

    Rochelle Owens (1936 – ), playwright and poet, reads selections from her latest book of poetry, “I Am The Babe of Joseph Stalin’s Daughter” (Culture Press Foundation, 1972). Sensitive language–needs heavy disclaimer!

  • Laying down the tower / Marge Piercy.

    Poet, novelist and activist Marge Piercy (1936 – ) reads her eleven-poem sequence Laying Down the Tower, a radical meditation on the ancient symbols of the tarot deck – a political reading for the overturning of a repressed society. No intro or outro, and sound mostly audible in left channel only.

  • Alta performing at the League of Academic Women’s Benefit.

    Poet Alta (1942 – ) reads selections of her works at a benefit for the League of Academic Women at UC Berkeley.