Episode 120: Fred Moten and Ronaldo V. Wilson (part 1)
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In this two-part episode, Rachel Zucker speaks with Ronaldo V. Wilson and Fred Moten about poetry as performance, influences and teachers, open field poetics, finding space for listeners and audience to feel welcome, how to define the limits—or lack thereof— of a book and, specifically, the performance they gave the night before at the Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church on May 24, 2023. Part one (ep 120) is a conversation about the performance. Part two (ep 121) is a recording of that performance.
Books by Fred Moten
POETRY
perennial fashion presence falling (Wave Books, 2023)
All That Beauty (Letter Machine Editions, 2019)
The Service Porch (Letter Machine Editions, 2016)
The Little Edges (Wesleyan University Press, 2016)
The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014)
B Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2010)
Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works, 2008)
With Theodore A. Harris, I ran from it but was still in it. (Cusp Books, 2007)
With Jim Behrle, Poems (Pressed Wafer Books, 2002)
Arkansas (Pressed Wafer Books, 2000)
NONFICTION
consent not to be a single being trilogy
Black and Blur (book 1 in series: consent not to be a single being) (Duke University Press, 2017)
Stolen Life (book 2 in series: consent not to be a single being) (Duke University Press, 2018)
The Universal Machine (book 3 in series: consent not to be a single being) (Duke University Press, 2018)
With Stefano Harney, All Incomplete (Minor Compositions, 2021)
With Renee Gladman, One Long Black Sentence (Image Text Ithaca Press, 2020)
A Poetics of the Undercommons (Sputnik & Fizzle, 2016)
With Wu Tsang, Who Touched Me? (If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution, 2016)
With Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013)
In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003)
CO-EDITED BY MOTEN
Co-curated and co-edited with Ruth Fine, Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present (Rizzoli Electa, 2023)
Books by Ronaldo V. Wilson
Virgil Kills: Stories (Nightboat Books, 2022)
Carmelina: Figures (Wendy’s Subway, 2021)
Lucy 72 (1913 Press, 2018)
With Claudia Rankine, Sound & Fury/Blunt Object (MoMA PS1, 2016)
Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2015)
Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books, 2009)
Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008)
Also Referenced in the Episode
Moten and Wilson’s reading at The Poetry Project
Moten / López / Cleaver (debut album, Reading Group/Relative Pitch Records, 2022)
Gerald Cleaver (drummer)
Brandon López (bassist)
June Jordan, “Poem about My Rights”
Francis Ponge, “Le Pré” and The Making of the Pré (La fabrique du Pré)
Wilson Harris, The Infinite Rehearsal
Michael Jackson, “Got To Be There”
Thelonious Monk, “Shuffle Boil,” 1955 version and 1964 version
David Meltzer (ed.), Shuffle Boil: A Magazine of Poets & Music (issue no. 1)
Jean Starobinski, Words Upon Words: The Anagrams of Ferdinand de Saussure (Les Mots sous les mots: les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure)
Christina Sharpe, on anagrammatical blackness in In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Cecily Nicholson, Wayside Sang
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
August Wilson, Two Trains Running
Black Took Collective (BTC)
Kerry James Marshall, Mastry (exhibition)
Charles Gaines, “Trees” series
In honor of this episode our charitable partner will donate $250 to Project South chosen by Fred Moten and to Fine Arts Work Center chosen by Ronaldo Wilson.
Bios
RONALDO V. WILSON, PhD, poet, interdisciplinary artist, and academic, is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Prize; Poems of the Black Object, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other, finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and Lucy 72. His latest books are Carmelina: Figures and Virgil Kills: Stories. The recipient of numerous fellowships, including Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Ford Foundation, Kundiman, MacDowell, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo, Wilson is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at U.C. Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program; principal faculty member of CRES (Critical Race and Ethnic Studies); and affiliate faculty member of DANM (Digital Arts and New Media).
Fred Moten’s latest projects are a poetry collection, Perennial Fashion Presence Falling (Wave Books), a record album, Fred Moten/Brandon López/Gerald Cleaver (Reading Group Records, 2022) and an essay collection, All Incomplete (Minor Compositions), co-authored with Stefano Harney, Xun Lee and Denise Ferreira da Silva. He is also the author of MANY other collections of poems and books of nonfiction including the consent not to be a single being trilogy of books published in 2017 and 2018 and A Poetics of the Undercommons published in 2016, all of which are mentioned in this episode and frequently mentioned with awe and love by many former Commonplace guests.
