Co-presented with The Poetry Center

Notes on the Port of St Francis (1952) by Frank Stauffacher edits scenes of San Francisco to Robert Louis Stevenson’s eponymous prose poem read by Vincent Price. In Between (1955) is a rare sound film by Stan Brakhage starring the renowned visual artist Jess with a cameo by his partner Robert Duncan, soundtrack by John Cage. In Lawrence Jordan’s mystical Visions of a City (1957/78) Michael McClure plays a man trapped in the glazed surfaces of the city. Charles Olson’s 1968 reading is visually inflected in early experimental video, one of three National Center for Experiments in Television (NCET) tapes we’ll be screening. Finally the San Francisco reprise of Daydream of Darkness (1963) by poet Helen Adam and painter William McNeill screens with a new CD soundtrack by Kristin Prevallet, Drew Gardner, Lee Ann Brown, Beth Brown and Nada Gordon. (Konrad Steiner)