Search View Archive

DIAL-A-POEM

IV. DIAL-A-POEM

Over the course of sixty years, John Giorno challenged what he saw as a fatigued tradition of poetry: a dynamic that placed the poet on a page, and the audience in a library.

On Dial-A-Poem

On YouTube you can watch clips of John Giorno talking his work. There’s a longer one made by Rirkrit Tiravanija and filmed in JG’s studio where he’s talking hands-free and bouncing lightly on his soles—“everyone gets lighter in the end”—and his hands twitch out in a language of their own or join his to convey unvoiced details in the poem, pointing like he might do in friendly conversation, or gesturing an image.

NOTES FROM

ÉDOUARD GLISSANT'S

POETIC INTENTION

No dependency in relation to nature; art chooses and purifies: in that resides liberty and the power of the mind.

ADVERTISEMENTS
close

The Brooklyn Rail

I LOVE JOHN GIORNO

All Issues