Computer Writing and Research Lab | University of Texas at Austin

poetry singles: mp3s at PennSound

Submitted by laurasmith on September 16, 2007 - 5:14pm

I've been making constant use of PennSound this semester and wanted to remind everyone of its existence.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/

PennSound is a literary audio archive. The interface is quick and easy and individual tracks play directly off the web in mp3 form. The editors have made whole readings available, but have also sliced them and made them available as individually labeled tracks (indexed by poem title), which makes for great ease in the classroom. The archive's strength is contemporary poetry/writing, but if you take a look at the homepage, current features include a clip of Gertrude Stein reading from The Making of Americans, as well as selections from Oppen, Baraka, and Nathaniel Mackey.

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Pretty neat

Submitted by jonathanlamb on September 19, 2007 - 1:38pm.

In prepping for my course on Shakespeare, I found a large community of YouTube folks who record themselves reciting/reading Shakespeare's sonnets. Here's my favorite:

I don't know what pedagogical value this has, but his beard is awesome.

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students and public spaces

Submitted by SarahJett on September 24, 2007 - 12:33pm.

I agree about his beard...

Could we assign students to upload videos of themselves reading poetry onto YouTube? Are we allowed to ask them to do things like that, or does it violate their privacy in some way?

I know the other day in class, one of my students was horrified to learn that anybody can go to the course website and read our blog. Was it wrong of me to allow anyone to view my website? They're not allowed to contribute. I thought about making it more restricted, but people seemed to be using it for legitimate purposes. One English instructor in China e-mailed me a few times about some of my poetry material which she had borrowed for her class.

This is less a question about YouTube than it is about requiring students to reveal themselves in public ways. (It's also in support of that YouTube man's awesome beard.)

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