PennSound

PennSound is a poetry website and online archive that hosts free and downloadable recordings of poets reading their own work. The website offers over 1500 full-length and single-poem recordings, the largest collection of poetry sound-files on the internet, all of which are available free for download. PennSound is codirected by Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein. It is a project of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Described as the “iTunes for poetry” by co-director Charles Bernstein in an Associated Press article, PennSound provides all of its recordings in the form of free downloadable MP3s. The files are intended to be used non-commercially by anyone interested in listening to them, and are furthermore available for use by teachers and libraries. Well over 1500 sound files are available for streaming and downloading, including historic recordings by poets such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Guillaume Apollinaire, William Carlos Williams and H.D., as well as more recent recordings by poets such as Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Jack Spicer and Lyn Hejinian.

PennSound’s manifesto consists of 6 points:

PennSound recordings fall into different categories within the website. They can be included in an author page, a series page, an anthology, collection or group page, as a single recording contained in a singles archive, as part of PennSound's Cinema collection, podcast collection, or in the website's classics collection.

Many of the poets whose recordings are available on the website have individual pages called author pages. Author pages include both historical and contemporary recordings, generously provided to PennSound from the poets themselves, universities and institutions such as Harvard University's Woodberry Poetry Room, and from poets' estates. Recordings are broken down into singles, or song length recordings of individual poems. Complete readings are also available. PennSound authors include Wallace Stevens, Louis Zukofsky, Ezra Pound, Bruce Andrews, Bernadette Mayer, and many others.

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