Piero Heliczer from “You coul(d) hear the snow dripping and falling into the deers mouth” Recorded in London February 11, 1960.

11May07

This Piero Heliczer reading is interesting to me for any number of reasons. First, it’s always mindblowing to hear someone’s actual voice after reading them for several years without it. I think it’s always great to hear someone like Heliczer or Ceravolo read because up until recently it was hard to find their work even in print form. I was eating dinner over at poets Carolina Maugeri and Stan Mir’s apartment in Germantown a few weeks ago and we were talking about poetry recordings and Stan mentioned that Michael Gizzi had given him a taped copy of this Heliczer reading. Needless to say, I freaked out and Stan rummaged around and came back downstairs with the tape. I immediately went home and digitized the reading, tracking it off and making sure I wrote down all the bibliographic info that was available to me. Late late that night, after the reading was tracked off, I went to sleep with it playing. I didn’t actually get a chance to listen to it much while it was being digitized so it was a treat to be able to sit back and absorb it. This is the first poem: fuga xiii

Just as I was nodding off, the track “Paris a scenario for a silent movie” came on. Heliczer’s voice was distorted, shifting in pitch periodically. Aside from scaring the hell out of me and waking me up completely, this track reminded me that the version I was listening to was mediated through at least three kinds of recording technologies. I’m assuming it was recorded to reel to reel if the date was 1960. Is that a reasonable assumption? Then someone eventually made a cassette copy. Actually, there were probably a handful of cassette duplications in between the reel to reel and Stan’s copy. Finally, that night I had made the digital version. Here it is:
paris a scenario for a silent movie

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