Sonic Stagings of U.S. Postwar Audiopoetry

Ulla Stackmann is coordinator of the Research Training Group “Practicing Place” at the University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Her research interests include media theory and US poetry. She is the co-editor of Practicing and Placing Imaginaries: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Conceptual Ideas, and Case Studies (2025). Ulla Stackmann is a scholar and translator. She has received her PhD from the Catholic University-Eichstätt Ingolstadt in American Studies. As a scholar, she has authored multiple articles investigating mid-century US literature, feminist approaches to literature, and the relationship between practice theory and literary studies. She is the co-editor of Practicing and Placing Imaginaries (transcript, 2025). Additionally, she has translated Laura Bates‘ Men Who Hate Women into German (&Töchter, 2023).

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: “LP Aided Poets,” Real Poetry, and Postwar High FidelityPart 1: Staging Readings and Poetry Performances1 Recording Practices and the Sonic Imaginary of the Spoken Word1 Political Black Voices: The Black Forum2 Sound Communities: Giorno Poetry Systems3 The Education of the People: Spoken Arts, Caedmon, Folkways2 Constructing and Practicing the Midcentury Poetry Reading1 The Return of the Bard: Phonocentrism and the Poetry Reading2 The Authorial Poetry Reading3 Listening Practices and Sonic Remediations of Poetry1 Phonograph Realness—Authentication, Authorial Presence, and Immediacy2 Audiopoetry as Temporal and Spatial Constellation3 Listening as Shared PracticePart 2: Medial Forms of Staging Audiopoetry4 Recorded Book, Documented Performance, Audio Work1 The Recorded Book and the Logic of the Transparent Reader2 Mood Encapsulated: The Documented Performance3 Press Play: The Audio Work5 (Counter-)Intimacies on Tape: Affects and Seductive Voices1 Intimacies of the Poet’s Voice2 Writers of the Revolution: Closeness, Intimacy and Authorship3 The Erotics of John Giorno’s Audiopoetry6 Communal Rituals: between National Address and New Self-Understandings1 Community, Nation, and Self-Understandings in Postwar Poetics2 National Treasures and Collective Feeling3 It’s Nation Time: The Sounds of a Future Black Nation4 Spiritual Communities: The Subculture SpeaksPart 3: Staging Spatiality on Audiopoetry7 Domestic Listening and the Politics of Sonic Homemaking1 Scenes of Domestic Listening and Sonic Homemaking2 National Time and Domestic Space3 Deconstructions of Homeliness in Audio Works8 Into the Streets: the Poetics of Portability and Everyday Experience1 The Cultural Meanings of Tape Recording and Mobile Mediation2 Sonic Realism and Documentary Configurations in Bernadette Mayer’s Memory3 Tape Realness and the Everyday Experience in Postwar Audiopoetry9 “Open the Lines to the Poets!” The Poetry Hotline as Poetic Network1 A Short History of Dial-a-Poem2 Community Outreach and CensorshipEpilogue: Remix! Poetic Networks, Digital Media, and Pop CultureWorks Cited