Read By: Catherine Barnett

92Y's Read By

Catherine Barnett on her selections:

Because there are so many texts I love and because of the radical adjustments we’ve had to make in the space-time continuum, I chose to curate a small collection of poems and prose excerpts, each of which takes notice of, or is somehow guided by, time. I’ve included the following poems and excerpts; a collection I’m calling “On the Specious Present and the So-Called Obvious Past.”

Philip Larkin, "Days"

From Samuel Beckett's "Texts for Nothing, #3"

Dominique Bechard, "Half a Party"

Gwendolyn Brooks, "An Aspect of Love: Alive in the Fire and Ice"

Guillaume Apollinaire, “There Is” or "Il y a"

Claudia Rankine, "Weather"

John Berger, from "Paul Strand"

Saskia Hamilton, “On. On. Stop. Stop.”

Wislawa Szymborska, "May 16, 1973"

Yiyun Li, from "Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life"

Jean Valentine, “For Love”

Rick Barot, “The Galleons 4”

Ellen Bryant Voigt, “Storm"

Paul Celan, "So many constellations" (trans. Michael Hamburger)

Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0