Metallijoycekast

I can hear the non-poetry fans cringing, but I was made aware of something a while back and wish to pass it on to any who may be interested.

I first learned, through Ron Silliman's blog of an amazing treasure trove of audio files that are free for personal use, for those who may want to experience them.

The website is www.ubu.com and is a humungous archive of literary recordings that may or may not interest you. For example, I just downloaded recordings of Charles Bukowski, Amiri Baraka, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, and Kenneth Koch reading in public from 1959 through the 1979. That may not excite many of BillyBlog's loyal readers, but hey, it's Sunday, I don't want to overstimulate any of you.

I should add, however, it goes beyond poetry. There are recordings of William S. Burroughs, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Glenn Gould, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Frank Zappa, Timothy Leary, Max Ernst, Eugene Ionesco, James Joyce, John Lennon, and on and on. All free, as long as you use it for personal enjoyment and do not reproduce it commercially.

It's always nice to sandwich a little James Joyce reading from Ulysses between Metallica and Outkast on the old iPod.

Anyway, it's worth checking out.