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Dennis Morton: Well hello, you're listening to the Poetry Show on KUSP. My name is Dennis Morton and currently I am almost alone in the studio here. But very shortly I will be joined by my co-host, Morton Marcus, and two guests this evening, Lew,

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"The Book of Forms" Turco, and Vern Rutsala. What I have to tell you before they march into the studio here is that these three fellows, Morton Marcus and Vern Rutsala and Lew Turco have not been together for something like forty-five or forty-six

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years, but they were best of friends at the very early stages of the Iowa Writers Workshop, the very famous Iowa Writers Workshop, one of the first of the writers workshops in in the country. And of course, there are many of them now, but the

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Iowa Writers Workshop is still probably among the most famous of all of them and it led the way. And here they are there. They're coming in on the right now, they're going to be taking their seats. And let me just tell you

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a little bit about what's going to be happening tonight: these three guys are going to be talking among themselves, maybe I'll get a word in edgewise, as they say now, and then I will have a chance to ask Vern and Lew some of the standard

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questions that I usually ask our guests. But you're going to get to hear poetry and conversation from these three old friends who have been reunited after forty-six years. They're all together now on the occasion of a reading that will take place

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at Bookshop Santa Cruz this Tuesday the 11th of April at 7:30, starting at 7:30pm. That's Bookshop Santa Cruz, April 11th, Tuesday, and the reading starts at 7:30. It's a very, very special reading the reunion of these- of these three old

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friends who have become fixtures in American poetry, each famous in their own ways, and I think they're almost ready to speak tonight. Mort, are you- are you ready? Morton Marcus: I am. Thank you very much, Dennis. That was a

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yeoman's job. We heard you on the way over here and- Dennis Morton: A yeoman's job. Morton Marcus: And thank you very much for taking the time. Yeah, I'm very excited to be here with my two old buddies. We

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were once young and frisky and now we're old and decrepit. Dennis Morton: Old and frisky, yeah. But it's really great. This is- the reading on Tuesday, as Dennis told you, is actually the first time we will have ever

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given a public reading together. Vern and I have read together but I have not seen Lew Turco really in over forty years, forty-five years really, so it was great to see him again. And we renewed our arguments about what poetry is and what it

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isn't, and we haven't changed very much. Lew Turco, say hello to Santa Cruz and Monterey and San Ardo and everything. Lewis Turco: Hello, Santa Claus- uh, Cruz. [Laughter] Dennis Morton: Lew, let us ask you to get up to about four

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inches from the mic and speak across the end of it. Lewis Turco: All right. Dennis Morton: Yep, that's it. And- Morton Marcus: Give us another- Lew is one of the most verbally

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facile human beings I've ever met. He actually can repeat what you've just said backwards. And he can do it and not just saying the word backwards, but the letters backwards. Dennis Morton: It's true.

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Morton Marcus: And he is one of the great punsters of the Western World, and I don't know if that's a compliment or not. [Laughter] Lewis Turco: Probably not.

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Dennis Morton: Now, remember, Lew, you've got to be within about six inches- Lewis Turco: Six inches. Is that close enough? Dennis Morton: That's- that'll do it.

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Lewis Turco: All right. Morton Marcus: And I've got to say, as he's probably has not said, Dennis has organized this whole reunion and he was a student of Lew Turco's at New York College at Oswego, or

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University of Oswego. How many years ago is that, Dennis? Dennis Morton: Oh my goodness, Lew, help me here. Lewis Turco: It was about 1970, right? Dennis Morton: I guess it was around '70.

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Lewis Turco: So- Dennis Morton: '70, '76, actually '69. Yeah. Morton Marcus: And the other gentleman in question has been through Santa Cruz before, one of the finalists for the

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National Book Award this past year is Vern Rutsala. I'm going to ask him to say hello and I want you people to know that once his career went neck and neck with Frank Sinatra's and when he says hello, you'll hear why.

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Vern Rutsala: Hello. [Laughter] Morton Marcus: Well, I don't think that proved anything. [Laughter] Okay, we're going to hear some poems and ask questions. And Dennis Morton, you're not going to jump in

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every once in a while; please ask the questions you want to hear answered or you think the listeners will. Dennis Morton: Okay, but I think the guys need to introduce themselves with a poem, don't you?

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Morton Marcus: I think that's great. Dennis Morton: But before we get out of the studio tonight, I really want Lew to read a favorite poem of mine that he wrote, what's the title of that poem?

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Lewis Turco: "Burning the News." Dennis Morton: "Burning the News." Yes, if Lew will read, "Burning the News," that would make her happy. Morton Marcus: And while he's looking for the page, which he's

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not, I should tell you that both gentlemen read at Tor House last night for the Tor House Foundation, broke down the house. And one of the poems that was particularly discussed was, "Burning the News," so, Lew, take it away!

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Lewis Turco: This poem was written in the old days when you could still burn the newspapers in the backyard before the days of air pollution. And it was a very boring job, you'd take your newspapers out and you dump them into the incinerator and stand

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there and watch until every last flickering ember was out. So you had to pass the time somehow and what I did was to light one side of the papers and I'd light the other side of the papers, and I'd make believe they were armies, and I'd see which army

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would conquer most newsprint territory before the whole thing was over. And I went back in the house, I said, you know, this is the Vietnam war here and that is a metaphor for what we are going through right now:

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BURNING THE NEWS The fire is eating the paper. The child who drowned is burned. Asia is in flames. As he signs his great bill, a Minister of State chars at the edges and curls into smoke. The page rises

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glowing over our neighbor's roof. In the kitchens, clocks turn, pages turn like grey wings slowly over armchairs. Another child drowns, a bill is signed and the pen blackens. The smoke of Asia drifts among the neighbors like mist. It is a

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good day for burning, a fire is eating the news. Dennis Morton: Yeah, thank you. Morton Marcus: That's great. Dennis Morton: Still holds, it's still a wonderful poem.

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Morton Marcus: And still unfortunately very newsworthy as well. Very unfortunately. Vern, how about honoring us- Vern has a Selected Poems out, and his last two books have just won huge prizes. And I was reading them and I misplaced them and

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Vern was assuming that I was going to have the books for him. So I am sitting here with much chagrin as well as my two friends. Vern Rutsala: Okay, I would like to read an early poem. This is

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an Iowa City poem called: THE INSTITUTION Someone, working steadily at night by dropping water from his canteen, has worn grooves in the steps leading to columns pitted

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as chewed pencil. The windows are like deep-set eyes, the door is a leather bound book no one has read. A commemorative plaque is worn smooth as an old coin by many kisses. Just as, inside, the leaders have lost their toes from waiting in the blind

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reverence of people. Terracotta statues of them lie in the entrance hall, they each have slots in the top like children's banks. A former hero dozes on a folding chair, chasing the wounded cats of his asleep. Feet on marble sound like spoons

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tapping eggs. Large furtive insects, like page boys, stare from the shadows and run along the baseboards. Outside the meeting chamber, a justice of the peace bandages his eyes. Inside the chamber, a school of vagrants studies leisure, or

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rolls endless cigarettes. A special subcommittee is in session planning obscure illnesses for us. Morton Marcus: Again, a very timely and alas timeless poem, or a timeless and alas, timely poem. The four of us met at

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Iowa, as the three of us met at Iowa, as Dennis was saying, and that was in 1959, '60. And Vern and I had been there already from '58-'59. Vern Rutsala: Right.

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Morton Marcus: And we were all veterans. Most of the workshop was composed of veterans and, of course, it was the Korean War so we had some very, very hard things that we had seen, and that we understood were going on in the country. And it was

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really a beginning of change of consciousness. I think it really started then and finally, like a wave, gathered for the 1960s. But it was a very, very disappointing experience for a lot of people who were in the military at that time. Lew,

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you're looking through the book as though I've inspired you to- Lewis Turco: I was thinking, these are anti-war poems, what we've been reading, these first two poems. And I was thinking that there's a poem that I wrote called, "The Pilot," which is

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about a pilot of World War II whose airplane was discovered in the water off the coast of France quite a number of years back. And the newspaper article inspired me to write this poem, and I thought it might be appropriate. I have- the

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epigraph of the poem is the newspaper article and this is the epigraph of the pilot: Calais, France, May 18th, 1968 AP. Low tide yesterday uncovered a plane, presumably of World War II, with the remains of the

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pilots still at the controls, its origin could not be determined immediately. And this is the poem, it's a monologue by the dead pilot: It has been a long flight, like flak the sea grass exploded

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beneath me as I fell out of light into an older and a heavier air. My planing continued in the tide. When the scavengers had done with my flesh, I found that still the stick would answer, though, more slowly than before. So I flew,

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and I'm flying still, back to the beginning. In my marrow, direction lay. Now, the sea has released me and I have been constant. But I was wrong, you see me at death's controls in the primal mud where our flight began but it is not been a

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fleeing as we have long supposed. I see that now with these sockets where fish have swum. You, rising from the shore have shown me what the snail tried to tell. The journey is the other way. Turn me around, I am with you still.

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Morton Marcus: Very nice. Vern? Vern Rutsala: Great. I want to read a poem called, "Gilbert Market." There's a corner of a street in Iowa City called Gilbert Market. In fact, I understand that other people

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have written about this particular place. Morton Marcus: And this is actually- you lived above them- Vern Rutsala: We lived above a market. Morton Marcus: And you're looking down on the street as

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you write this poem. When you wrote this, I just fell in love with this thing. I just love it. Vern Rutsala: Ah, good, good. Right. And this is a late 50s, early 60s kind of poem:

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Today, the sun's blades slide through the worn bamboo blind. In the store below, people are playing bingo on the cash register while I try to haunt my mind with names like Dachau, Buchenwald, or Hiroshima. But how do you speak of such things

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in any terms today, in a room where the sun distracts? Edited it into arrows by the slats of the blind. What words will carry terror in a place where the typewriter weighs heavy with amends like a metal made of a millstone? Where there are books

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got and worn, that refuse to spit their knowledge even though you break their bindings. How are such specters of the private made public ghosts? Downstairs people are buying out the store and here, books of words lie dormant and thoughts corrode the

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bland surfaces of paper. Below they are filling a vacancy their distended cupboards have never known, assuring themselves that if all else fails, at least they won't to feel the mice of hunger at their bellies. You can tell them that hunger lives best in

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the ripe heart of abundance. They thrive on this art of taking. They have finally lost their childhoods and become adults with accounts of their own overdrawn. They have their own lives like new toys that demand destruction. Meanwhile,

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they buy meat. There are enough horrors to blunt any pen today. People whir like flies in rooms below, workmen with pneumatic drills repair the street by digging huge chunks from your consciousness. What to say? Keep at it man, and then go home and

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wallow in your canned goods. The strongest attention is broken by their drills, the weakest shattered by the sun. The century is like a large animal breathing the odors of its disease above the town. How does the mind deal with this

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malignant time? These years that grow fat on death and slake their thirst for chaos every decade. Casualties have been piled so high, the Census will not register death in numbers. Which among our rusting instruments will gauge this time

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on such a day when typewriters chew at our fingers and women in shorts walk through the spattered sunlight showing thighs which promise though they- that though they may fall, they may spread and let us conquer it again. The heavy

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industry of hate burns factory lights all night. The seat is nurtured in all the gardens of diplomacy and the people in the store below are starving, laughing and starving. And the women on the street wear the thick ankles of embarrassment,

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acne scars the surfaces of their romance, packaged in ad magazines about their favorite movie star who sleeps with them and dreams. Something tears at the maps we live on, something mutters in the spaces between our halls. Like all towns, this

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town sports his bull's eye and is mounted on someone's chart, like an insect pierced by a pin. We do not come to terms. History is ravenous about us. The sun is burning to a cinder outside the blinds, intricate pressures are building up below the earth's

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fetid rind, and we are forced to follow this century's crippled path. Morton Marcus: And talk about the timelessness of poetry and the timeliness of it. That poem, which really sounds like it was

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written yesterday, was writte back- was it '59, '60 Vern Rutsala: About 1960, yeah. Morton Marcus: Yeah, it makes you pause, it really does. I would like to, instead of having you read poems now, I'd like to

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ask you guys some questions. I'd like to ask you one of those impossible questions, but not really and that is, give her a couple of lines about your background and tell us why you started to write poetry and what you hope poetry will accomplish

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for you and maybe others? Vern, you can start [laughter] because I know you hate that question the most. Vern Rutsala: Well, what I found is, as a teenager, I began to write. I'd been a painter, I'd been a jock, I'd been all those

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things as a teenager and- but I enjoyed writing. And I was writing stories and essays and so forth. I found that by the time I was in college, about my sophomore year, I think, I found that I didn't feel right if I wasn't trying to write poetry.

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And as time went on until, and, in fact, I was lucky enough to be able to write a senior thesis which was a collection of poetry in my- at Reed College, I found that I had to deal with poetry in some way. And my problem was, of course, how do I make a

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living if I want to write poetry? That- so that poetry just became something fundamental to me. I had to try to do it or I didn't feel right. Simple as that, simple as that. Morton Marcus: Lew, how about you? And by the way, I should

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say that Vern came from a very, very poor background. A very, very hard work- people lost their land and everything. He's from a very unknown immigrant group in America, actually the Finns of Idaho.

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Vern Rutsala: Right. Lewis Turco: Well, my parents also were very poor. My father was a Sicilian immigrant and he was the first- the minister of the first Italian Baptist Church of Meriden, Connecticut. My

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mother was an old line Yankee family, although her immediate family came from the Midwest, Wisconsin, to be specific. And she was a missionary and had been working among the Italians in Wakefield, Massachusetts when she met my father. And she was

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an old maid by the time he asked her to marry him, and he was quite old himself, he was in his 40s. And so they got married, I was born in Buffalo, New York, where he was a pastor of an Italian Baptist Church. We moved to Meriden when I was four or

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five, and I grew up in Connecticut. I don't remember when I started to write, I just always wrote. I suspect it was pretty much genetic. My mother's family were the Putnams, and you know, George Palmer Putnam and Ann Putnam, the witch Bishop

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Salem who was crying out against the witches in those days. My father sat in his office in the parsonage, and actually, we didn't have a parsonage the first years, but he sat in his office and typed out two sermons every week: one in English and

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one in Italian. So it was absolutely not an unusual thing for me to see people writing stuff. The house was full of books. And I just simply began writing and I didn't write just poetry, I began by writing stories. The first thing I

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published in a public place was a short story, whose title I don't remember, that won third prize in a high school fiction contest for my hometown paper, Meriden in 1949. So that was where you could see my professional career started in

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1949, and I've just been writing ever since. When I joined the Navy, it was not feasible to write longer things like fiction so I wound up writing poetry, basically. Morton Marcus: What do you expect to get out of your

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poetry? Lewis Turco: Get out of it? Morton Marcus: Yeah. No, what does it do for you and are you thinking of- [cross talk]

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Lewis Turco: No, I don't write for any particular audience. I do always want to be understood. I also want my poems to sound good. I want them to be in love with language. But I just simply write, that's all there is to it. That's all I have ever done,

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that's probably all I will ever do. Dennis Morton: Well, tell us about your writing practices. Are they daily? Lewis Turco: No, I write in streaks.

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Dennis Morton: Yeah? Lewis Turco: Yeah. If I get an idea for a series, for instance, which I have done recently, I just start writing the series and I'll write every day for a while, two to three weeks, four

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weeks. And then I'll stop for a while and things will quiet down, I'll do reading. And then later on, it'll start up again and I'll write some more in the series perhaps, but I'm a streak writer.

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Morton Marcus: Do you keep a notebook with ideas or just the streaks? Lewis Turco: I keep a journal. It used to be a paper journal, but now of course, it's a computer journal. And I was the

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first person in my English department at SUNY Oswego to have a computer in 1982. My first computer was an Osborn One, had 64K, my watch has more K than that, nowadays. But yeah, I do keep notes, yeah, on a computer.

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Morton Marcus: Vern, what about your practices? Vern Rutsala: Yeah, I have a journal in which I write with a pen. [Laughter] Lewis Turco: That was a criticism. [Laughter]

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Morton Marcus: If you couldn't tell. [Laughter] Vern Rutsala: And my, you know, what do you do if you're a writer? You try to keep at it as steadily as you can, as my experience when I was teaching is that I would write drafts in

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my notebook and then wait until there was a period of time where I can focus on those and see which ones were worth working on. And that's, you know, that was my process. And always looking for the wider period of time to focus on some work. I

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was- worked at it as steadily as possible, always, always, yeah. Morton Marcus: Now, both of you, which is really interesting. I would say, Vern, that you're saying you're not really thinking of an audience either?

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Vern Rutsala: No- Morton Marcus: Yeah. Vern Rutsala: Well, you want to have an audience- Morton Marcus: Of course.

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Vern Rutsala: You want to be, you know, you want to win the Nobel Prize, and have the widest audience in the world, but you know that's not going to happen. Morton Marcus: But what's so interesting- [unintelligible]

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take over, what's you're so interesting is that both of your poems are so accessible. Lewis Turco: Which is one of the things I insist on, yeah. Morton Marcus: Not thinking about an audience, no,

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communication is obviously some- Lewis Turco: Right, of course. Absolutely. Vern Rutsala: Of course, of course. Dennis Morton: Well, I want to ask Vern what it felt like to be

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nominated for the National Book Award and has that changed anything at all for you? Vern Rutsala: Doesn't change anything, no. It was wonderful, of course, to be as Dizzy Dean would have said to be considered

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amongst them, you know, and, of course, you always think you're amongst them anyway. And it was very nice that- my feeling always is that if you're any kind of an artist, that anything good that happens is a windfall. And that was a windfall, it was

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a wonderful windfall. And it made for- we had a wonderful time in New York, and we're well treated by the National Book Foundation, all of that. And it is almost like a payoff for spending forty or forty-five years of your life trying to

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write poems. But you can't expect that to happen either. It was- yeah, well, no, it was great. It was good. Dennis Morton: And well, it's actually relatively recent, so there's probably still some residual-

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Vern Rutsala: Oh, yeah. Dennis Morton: Fallout from that. Vern Rutsala: You know, of course. Well, what you have- of course, one of the things you get, you get a lot of notes from

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other poets, people who want to tell you how pleased they are or how pissed off they are, whatever. And it does give you a kind of focus that you may or may not have had before. And yeah, it's nice. Yeah, no, there's nothing bad about it at

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all. Dennis Morton: I can't, I can't imagine there would be. Vern Rutsala: Right, right. Dennis Morton: I want to kind of change the subject slightly with

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Lew. Now, I know that it was perhaps a time coming, but it seems to me now, that, "The Book of Forms," has slowly but surely crept into a kind of ever burning spotlight. And you, you know, I mentioned, "The Book of Forms," to people who never even

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write in form and, you know, they know the book. So what does that feel like, finally, to be getting your dues for a book that has been described by many poets as the Bible? Lewis Turco: Yeah, the poet's Bible, some of them call it.

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Well, when it first came out, it came out without poems in it, it was just schematic diagrams and descriptions of the forms. And Dutton published it in a little paper back in 1968. And at the oddest- I really don't quite understand it, but for years

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people did not associate my name with, "The Book of Forms." And I remember, I went to Suffield Academy for two years, and I remember one time the librarian and I were writing about something and I mentioned that I'd published, "The Book of

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Forms," and she said, "Oh, I didn't know you were the author of it." And I said, "Well, you're a librarian. You've got it in your library and my name is on the cover, I think you should know that." But over the last twenty years, let's say,

00:30:02.060 - 00:30:15.020

not the whole thirty-six, over the last twenty years, people have begun to realize that I am, in fact, the author of, "The Book of Forms." Dennis Morton: Well, when did the revised book first come out?

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Lewis Turco: The second edition was called, "The New Book of Forms," and that came out in 1986. Dennis Morton: In '86. Lewis Turco: And this is the third edition, and this came out

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in 2000. Morton Marcus: And who was the first edition dedicated to? Lewis Turco: It was dedicated to two guys named Vern and Mort. [Laughter]

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Morton Marcus: So I put him on the spot as I picked him up from the airport. And I said, "Well, why did you take it off?" And his answer was: Lewis Turco: Well, it's just a different book. It was the first

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book, these are the later books. Other people get shots at it too, you know? Morton Marcus: [Laughter] O well. We are- Dennis Morton: Well, we are just about at halftime, and I've got

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a little bit of music so that we can take a, you know, a two minute breather here if we've got- no, Lew is shaking his head no, Vern is shaking his head yes. Morton Marcus: Okay.

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Dennis Morton: I think in this instance, the yes will prevail. Lewis Turco: He's bigger than I am. Dennis Morton: Yeah. So we'll take a short break right now and come back in two,

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three minutes and continue the conversation. Vern Rutsala: All right. Unknown: Thanks to everyone who contributed to our spring membership campaign, we're very grateful for your support. The

00:34:01.170 - 00:34:12.150

funds we raised through our on-air pledge drives are an essential part of our yearly revenue. In fact, over 50% of our support comes from listener contributors just like you. If you weren't able to contribute during the drive, you can still

00:34:12.150 - 00:35:10.860

do so on our secure website, KUSP.org. Thank you, we appreciate your support. Dennis Morton: All right, well, this is the Poetry Show on KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz. My name is Dennis Morton, my co-host is

00:35:10.890 - 00:35:24.460

Morton Marcus and he's right here beside me. And beside you, Mort, who do you have sitting there? Morton Marcus: I have the great American poet, Lew Turco, and to his left is another great American poet, Vern Rutsala. And

00:35:24.460 - 00:35:36.910

we are three old schoolmates from the graduate workshop at the Iowa Workshop at the State University of Iowa. And we are going to give a reading on Tuesday, and tell us about it, Dennis.

00:35:37.150 - 00:35:51.280

Dennis Morton: Yes, this is part of the Poetry Santa Cruz reading series, it will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Tuesday evening, the 11th of April. The reading starts at 7:30 and it will be a reunion reading of the three of you; you haven't been

00:35:51.280 - 00:35:57.880

together for forty-five years or forty-six years. Is that right? All three of you- Morton Marcus: All three at one time. Yeah, all three at one time.

00:35:57.780 - 00:36:14.820

Dennis Morton: Okay. And I've got another announcement that I'd like kind of get out of the way. I don't want to talk about it like that because I'm glad to make this announcement. The publicist at Alfred A. Knopf, the great New York publishing

00:36:14.820 - 00:36:39.450

house, has asked me to remind our listeners that by going to www.KnopfPoetry.com, you can easily sign up for a poem a day for the entire month of April. And I've heard from several people, unbidden, that they are enjoying that poem immensely. So

00:36:39.600 - 00:37:04.710

let me spell the website for you. Again, it's www.K-N-O-P-F-P-O-E-T-R-Y.com, www.KnopfPoetry.com, you'll get a poem a day for throughout throughout April, by followin the very simple directions. An I think Mort, aside fro

00:37:04.710 - 00:37:22.130

reminding folks again about the reading on Tuesday night, and that, that we are ready to roll for the rest of the hour here. Morton Marcus: I think we are too. I also want to thank all those wonderful people who gave to KUSP last week and to the

00:37:22.130 - 00:37:37.370

Poetry Show, in particular, but certainly to the entire station. So we thank our listeners out there. Again, Vern and Lew, it's great that you're here. Lew, you've done some very strange things in your life. One of them is that you took on another

00:37:37.370 - 00:37:53.970

identity and that was the identity of Wesley Court. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Lewis Turco: Well, you know, when we three began publishing in the late 50s, early 60s, those were the days when the

00:37:53.970 - 00:38:14.280

Beats and the Black Mountaineers were coming in and they were saying that formal poetry sucked big time. And they were likening formal poetry and formal poets to people who were part of the military industrial complex, and that's an actual fact that that

00:38:14.280 - 00:38:34.410

equation was made. And a lot of poets who were teaching poetry in those days stopped teaching formal poetry. So, formal poetry was out for the 60s and the 70s, a good part of the 80s also, really. And I recognized that when I came to Iowa, I was

00:38:34.410 - 00:38:53.550

writing syllabic poetry and that has been the main system that I've used throughout the years. But when I wrote, "The Book of Forms," what I needed was formal poems, and there weren't a lot of formal poems in the forms that I needed. So rather than be

00:38:53.550 - 00:39:08.670

tainted with the tar brush of being an academic poet, or a formalist poet, I invented the- Wesley Court to be the formal poet and to write the poems that I needed for examples in, "The Book of Forms." And that's where Wesley Court came from.

00:39:08.700 - 00:39:13.490

Dennis Morton: Wesley Court, now that name sounds vaguely familiar. Lewis Turco: Well, that's what Lewis Turco is scrambled. [Laughs]

00:39:13.580 - 00:39:27.600

Dennis Morton: Oh, my gosh, is that it? Lewis Turco scrambled is Wesley Court? Morton Marcus: He has a very impish humor, folks. [Laughter] Dennis Morton: Well, at least once tonight I would hope that

00:39:27.600 - 00:39:42.220

we could get Lew to do one of his backwards tricks. Lewis Turco: Well, I'm that clot struck hameroff why reven no white shoe in oute. I can talk backwards for you whenever you wish me to.

00:39:43.440 - 00:39:55.800

Morton Marcus: He just said where's the men's room? [Laughter] Lewis Turco: Yes, and it made me flush. [Laughter] Dennis Morton: No, no, no, don't. That's it! We got this

00:39:55.800 - 00:40:14.630

far without one of them erupting. Lew Turco, for those of you who may not know, is probably, well, what do you think, Mort, does he- he just bleeds puns, doesn't he? Morton Marcus: We believe that [laughter] [cross talk] what

00:40:15.680 - 00:40:26.540

happens is everyone thinks that my puns are so terrible and people walk away from me all the time when I start punning, but when I'm around Lew, I feel good. I realize I am a minor leaguer after all.

00:40:27.150 - 00:40:34.790

Lewis Turco: Vern, you were talking about that- Vern Rutsala: His famous reverse stampede. Lewis Turco: What jazz musician was it that sat amongst us? Do you know what we were talking about?

00:40:35.480 - 00:40:41.390

Morton Marcus: That was Dizzy Dean. Vern Rutsala: Dizzy Dean, the baseball player. Lewis Turco: Oh, it was Dizzy Dean the baseball player, not Dizzy Gillespie.

00:40:42.890 - 00:40:51.140

Dennis Morton: Now, Lew, get closer to that mic. Lewis Turco: What did he say? Vern Rutsala: He said, it's good- I want to be- it's good to know that I'm the least amongst us.

00:40:51.720 - 00:40:58.860

Lewis Turco: Thelonious Monk said something like that, only he said it's good to be known that I'm a amonk you. Vern Rutsala: Yes, yes. Morton Marcus: All right.

00:40:58.870 - 00:41:09.010

Dennis Morton: All right. Now, I'm going to- Paul has actually stepped out of the room. He's doing- kindly doing the sound engineering. But if I hear that, again, I'm going [laughter] and turn his mic off-

00:41:11.230 - 00:41:26.230

Morton Marcus: Vern, you've written a lot of different kinds of poems but I think one of the real big turning points in your career was when you went back and you started to write about your childhood, and about the life of this very, very

00:41:27.400 - 00:41:42.190

difficult economic existence that your friends and neighbors lived in this lake country in Idaho. And it came out in several books: one was, of course, the big one was, "Walking Home From the Ice House." And I would love you to

00:41:42.190 - 00:41:56.290

talk about that, and read some of those poems if you would, because what this did to you also was when you had written the book, memory itself began to fascinate you. And so a lot of the poems since then have been about memory yourself. And in

00:41:56.290 - 00:42:11.790

many ways, you keep traveling back and traveling becomes a metaphor for you, you keep traveling back to these times. Dennis Morton: No, let me ask that maybe Vern read one and then Lew read one. And I know you wanted to read a page or two

00:42:11.790 - 00:42:27.120

from your memoirs, I don't know whether- Morton Marcus: Not here. This is on Tuesday, I'm going to read some pages from my memoirs of what it was like to be in the workshop in Iowa in the late 1950s.

00:42:27.390 - 00:42:37.970

Dennis Morton: Okay, so I just wanted to leave enough time so that we could ask some of those standard questions that- all right, Vern, it's yours. Vern Rutsala: Right. This is called:

00:42:37.970 - 00:42:54.470

WASH RAGS In Long Valley, the Finns brought the old country with them, brought it in the 90s, in steerage, in their ragged luggage. They lugged it with them, it was a millstone, and

00:42:54.470 - 00:43:14.570

the knives in their boots. It was the way they stood around the store in town, eyes down, shoulders hunched, waiting for everyone else to buy. They packed it with them in gunny sacks. They took it to dances, condensed and distilled in pint

00:43:14.570 - 00:43:33.680

bottles. They beat each other with it behind Finn Hall. Its weight pulled them out of school at fourteen. It ruined their teeth with hard tack and filled their mouths with strange accents, no soap would wash loose. It was the broken axle

00:43:33.890 - 00:43:57.980

and the bad crop. It was the huge tree they knew would fall. They knew, they smiled grimly knowing 1929 by its real name. It let the traveling dentist pull all my grandfather's teeth the year he died. It was in the wash rag I buried for my mother-

00:43:58.040 - 00:44:16.980

for my father to cure a wart. Morton Marcus: And Lew? Lewis Turco: Well, I mentioned that it was Wesley Court who wrote almost all of my traditionally lyric poems, and

00:44:17.010 - 00:44:36.870

they appear in, "The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco: Wesley Court, 1953-2004," that came in 2004. And I thought I might read an example of the kind of thing that Wesley Court wrote for me. I wrote a ser- or he wrote a series called, "Bordello." And

00:44:37.200 - 00:44:54.090

in Cleveland, just after I left Iowa, I was teaching at Fenn College which is now Cleveland State University. And I had to teach all these socially conscious novels, "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," and, "Maggie, A Girl of the Streets," which, you

00:44:54.090 - 00:45:05.940

know, in whichever- had all these fallen, "fallen" women. And I said to myself, damn, whatever happened to the fallen men? I mean, there's got to be some of them around too right? So I wrote this series called board- or Wesley wrote the

00:45:05.940 - 00:45:23.670

series called, "Bordello." And they're monologues by men who use a bordello and the reasons why they do. And they were written in very strict forms. And what I wanted to show at one point was that you can take a very strict form that's got this

00:45:23.670 - 00:45:44.400

burden of tradition of garden club verse on it, and just ignore that and write a real poem from that form, and the triolet seemed to be the quintessential Garden Club form. So I wrote a poem called, for the, "Bordello," series called,

00:45:45.240 - 00:45:59.670

"Jasper Olsen," and this is a triolet. Morton Marcus: Well, why don't you tell us how a triolet works? Lewis Turco: Well, it's got two rhymes, and it's only eight lines long. And it is very lyrical, and it usually has, you

00:45:59.670 - 00:46:11.310

know, bunny rabbits in it and pink- pink strawberries or something, I don't know. Usually it's just chunk. Even Dylan Thomas wrote a triolet when he was young, which is just terrible. But anyway, this is a triolet.

00:46:13.710 - 00:46:29.330

JASPER OLSEN I take my women in any way they come. I'm Jasper Olsen, brother, hard and fast I play this game. Though some folks think I'm dumb, I take my women any way they come and come they do.

00:46:29.570 - 00:46:46.240

There is no time to be numb in this life. Grab it now and ram the past, I take my women any way they come. I'm Jasper Olsen, brother, hard and fast. Dennis Morton: Well, I'm breathing a sigh of relief, you

00:46:46.240 - 00:46:58.960

have avoided the seven deadly words that George Carlin warned us all against, and for which we could get in trouble. Thank you. Thank you, Lew. [Laughter] Morton Marcus: It was your idea to bring him out. [Laughter]

00:47:01.570 - 00:47:16.480

Dennis Morton: Well, you know, we've got about fourteen minutes left. And I do want to ask a couple of those standard questions, Mort. And the first question that I'd like each of you to respond to would be to give our listeners the ABCs of

00:47:16.480 - 00:47:29.700

advice that you might offer to aspiring poets. Vern, do you want to start? Vern Rutsala: Oh, thanks a lot. [Laughter] Well, obviously, if you're serious about it, you have to work at it very

00:47:29.700 - 00:47:48.480

steadily: you have to read a lot, you have to work very hard, you can't take it- You can't just assume that because you want to be a writer, that you're going to be one, that you have to invest time, energy, all of those things into the process.

00:47:48.720 - 00:48:10.920

And you have to also know that nobody cares if you do what you do, you have to care about it, you have to care. And if you don't have that kind of impulse, don't bother with it. Just don't bother with it. It just has- the whole process has to mean

00:48:10.920 - 00:48:18.020

something to you. Dennis Morton: Because is that A or is that A and B? I've lost track. Vern Rutsala: A and B what?

00:48:18.050 - 00:48:23.060

Dennis Morton: That's- Morton Marcus: The second part of the- Dennis Morton: The second part of the question is, you know, the ABCs of advice.

00:48:23.090 - 00:48:31.530

Vern Rutsala: Oh, ABCs of- Dennis Morton: Yes. Right. So I think we're looking for one more piece that you know, at dinner you mentioned Auden's- Lewis Turco: No, I did.

00:48:31.800 - 00:48:40.290

Dennis Morton: Oh, that was you? Oh, my goodness. All right and you seconded it, I believe. Vern Rutsala: Yeah, yeah. Dennis Morton: Yeah. Well, so if you second it now, you'll steal

00:48:40.320 - 00:48:50.300

one of them from Lew. Vern Rutsala: I don't know what I seconded at dinner. Dinner was so good, I couldn't remember. Lewis Turco: What I said was, that Auden said, when he was

00:48:50.300 - 00:48:59.510

asked to buy someone- Vern Rutsala: Oh, yes. Lewis Turco: Remember that- what would you say to a young poet, a young person who said he wanted to be a poet, and Auden said,

00:48:59.540 - 00:49:12.230

"Well, I'd ask him why he wanted to be a poet. And if he replied, 'because I think I have something to say,' I would say then do something else. But if you're interested in language, then I'd say go ahead and give it a try, you might make it."

00:49:12.330 - 00:49:23.130

Vern Rutsala: Yeah. Lewis Turco: And that's the thing. You know, fiction is the art of written narrative, drama is the art of theatrical narrative, non-fiction is the art of rhetorical exposition,

00:49:23.130 - 00:49:41.850

but poetry is the art of language and that's what the poet's interested in. He's interested in sculpting language like a sculptor's stone, or a dancer, a sculptured space, and body movement. You've got to be interested in language, you want

00:49:41.850 - 00:49:59.700

to know everything there is to know about language, its sounds, its sense, its imagery. The four levels of a poem are the way it looks on paper, the typographical level, then there's the images, sensory level, sonnet level and the

00:49:59.700 - 00:50:09.180

thematic level. And you got to get all those things working together to come out with- Vern Rutsala: As well as the overtones and everything. Lewis Turco: Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah. And as you say,

00:50:09.180 - 00:50:14.220

Vern, you've got to really work at it. Vern Rutsala: Oh, yeah. Lewis Turco: And you're not going to get any reward for it. Vern Rutsala: Yeah, yeah.

00:50:14.370 - 00:50:23.610

Morton Marcus: Gee. Vern Rutsala: You must care. Morton Marcus: I don't think I'm going to do this anymore. I think you've talked me out of it. [Laughter]

00:50:23.640 - 00:50:35.100

Lewis Turco: I doubt it. Dennis Morton: Okay, that actually leads into the second standard question in. And that is what I've noticed, as I've been doing this, and as sometimes people send review

00:50:35.100 - 00:50:50.220

books to me and so forth, I've noticed that there are an awful lot of really, really fine poets out there that most of us have never heard of, and in some cases, they've been around for twenty years or more writing good poetry and yet, it's a

00:50:50.220 - 00:51:07.830

surprise to most of us. And I wonder if each of you might have a shortlist of four or five names that, or even a few names of people that you think we ought to be reading, but you suspect we may not have ever heard of them before? Yeah, you

00:51:07.830 - 00:51:12.990

have any, Lew? Lewis Turco: Yeah, if you want, Alfred Nicol would be one I've mentioned. Dennis Morton: I've never heard of him.

00:51:13.140 - 00:51:28.170

Lewis Turco: I know bt he's a really, really fine poet. He's not all that young but he hasn't been around a long time as a poet. He used to be a kind of a neo-beat, but all of a sudden he decided he was going to write formal poetry and he's just

00:51:28.170 - 00:51:38.880

terrific at it, it was wonderful. Dennis Morton: Alfred Nicol. Lewis Turco: N-I-C-O-L, Alfred Nicol. Where does he- Massachusetts. Well, he's published only I think one book

00:51:38.880 - 00:51:56.320

so far and I believe that was the University of- Dennis Morton: One of those universities- Lewis Turco: No, Indiana, it's not Indiana, but it's an Indiana University. I forget which one it was. Anyway, another one

00:51:56.320 - 00:52:15.880

would be Christian Nguyen Langworthy who is a Vietnamese-American poet, and he was an Oswego graduate also. And another Oswego undergraduate poet who won the Walt Whitman Award of the Head of American poets is Ben Doyle, who wrote a

00:52:15.880 - 00:52:33.340

book called, "Radio, Radio," and won maybe three years ago and he teaches at Denison University, as I recall, but he's not terribly well-known. And then there's a terrific- a woman poet also not all that young named Lois Roma-Deeley, who teaches

00:52:33.340 - 00:52:57.070

out at Pleasant Valley Community College in Tempe and- not Tempe, in Scottsdale, Arizona. And another Oswego graduate that you might know, Steven Mirabito, who's also published at the same publisher Roma-Deeley. All these poets, he wrote a series of

00:52:57.070 - 00:53:20.350

poems that I'm sure you'd be interested in, it's called the, "Oswego Fugues," and it came out two years ago, and it's an epic about Oswego. And I did a large essay on him and on another Oswego poet named Charlie Davis, who is dead now, but was a

00:53:20.350 - 00:53:41.080

wonderful poet and I wrote this in the Hollins Critic, it was called, "Oswego Poems and Poets." So there's a shortlist. Morton Marcus: All right, Vern. Vern Rutsala: Lewis already done the list. I mean, my goodness, I

00:53:41.080 - 00:53:52.990

mean, there are poets who are known by some but I think don't get the kind of attention that- Morton Marcus: Yeah, that's good. Why don't you tell us? Vern Rutsala: Maura Stanton, for instance, wonderful poet and she

00:53:52.990 - 00:54:14.200

hasn't received the kind of attention she deserves. I think Lisa Steinman, who's published several books out of the Northwest, that Jim [unidentified], another poet who doesn't have a book but should have a book soon. Carlos Reyes,

00:54:14.830 - 00:54:25.270

very good poet. Lex Runciman, another very good poet from that era. Morton Marcus: A lot of these people Vern's mentioning, these are Oregon poets and it is astonishing, the writing level

00:54:25.270 - 00:54:32.510

that's going on up there, and has gone up there. Vern Rutsala: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: Well- Dennis Morton: This is the way they get-

00:54:33.260 - 00:54:45.480

Vern Rutsala: Chris- Lewis Turco: But I'd like to say something about the fact that these are not well known people. You know, it's so obvious to me that -- and we've talked about this, Mort and Vern, since we've

00:54:45.480 - 00:55:05.130

been together -- that nobody, everybody wants to write poetry, but nobody wants to read it. Nobody buys books of poems, everybody wants to win a prize but nobody wants to give anybody else his or her due. And who was it? Was he mentioning Vern,

00:55:05.160 - 00:55:12.600

somebody said- Vern Rutsala: I think it was Kenneth Patchen- Lewis Turco: Yeah, what was that he said? Vern Rutsala: Who said, "There are those who say they love

00:55:12.600 - 00:55:23.870

poetry, but they don't buy books of poet- those who say they love poetry, but don't buy books of poetry; a bunch of cheap sons of bitches." Lewis Turco: And you know that this is true. You know,

00:55:24.590 - 00:55:35.420

everybody wants to publish a book of poems because they figure it will get them a promotion in their junior college where they teach. But nobody reads it, nobody will buy it. That's amazing.

00:55:35.630 - 00:55:53.630

Morton Marcus: Well, let me just say that this is thw situation, but at the Poetry Santa Cruz readings, one of the things that Dennis does all the time, is say, remember, you just don't sit here, you buy books of poems by poets. And it's really a

00:55:53.660 - 00:56:08.330

great thing that Dennis does. I want to say that one of the real changes that went on when I started to teach was that Vern, Lew, and I and everyone else who was in the workshops, people came before us people, came after, and we're always buying

00:56:08.330 - 00:56:17.560

the books of your fellows, and especially your teachers. Lewis Turco: Yeah. Vern Rutsala: Yes. Morton Marcus: And since I've been teaching now, people come

00:56:17.560 - 00:56:32.800

into writing workshops. And I'll just tell the story because it's got a name to it, Al Young, teaching up at UCSC, not recently, we're talking around fifteen years ago. And he asked me to come in and talk to his class. And I said, "You know,

00:56:32.800 - 00:56:51.130

you're really lucky to have such a wonderful writer, who writes so many different things in different genres, for your teacher." And one kid turns around, says, "You mean Mr. Young's a writer?" And no one in that class had read anything he

00:56:51.130 - 00:57:06.220

had ever written -- the novels, the poems, the jazz essays -- and it just goes on all the time. And it's amazing to me, one of the things that Vern said is you've got to read. If they're not reading their teachers, you know, they're not

00:57:06.220 - 00:57:19.630

reading. One of the things Joe Stroud, who everyone in the airwaves knows out there, would do when he would start his creative writing class was that- and he had me- and instituted me doing it on mine, and when he and I taught together, was that

00:57:19.630 - 00:57:33.580

he would say, "Okay, will you introduce yourself by your name, tell me who your favorite poet is." And he would go around the room and 90% of the people would not have a favorite poet because they never read a poem.

00:57:33.610 - 00:57:40.170

Vern Rutsala: Sure. Yeah. Morton Marcus: It's just uncanny. Vern Rutsala: [Cross talk] McEwan or something- Lewis Turco: You know, if you want to be a writer, and you

00:57:40.170 - 00:57:50.640

want to have an audience, you got to be a part of the audience yourself. And that doesn't seem to be the case. Dennis Morton: Of course, that's one of the great complaints that you hear also is that the only people who buy books of poetry

00:57:50.640 - 00:57:57.240

are the- Vern Rutsala: Are poets. Lewis Turco: Some of them. Dennis Morton: Yeah. I don't think it's actually true. I

00:57:57.240 - 00:58:12.070

think in Santa Cruz, I think we have a growing and relatively healthy audience for poetry. And part of it is because Poetry Santa Cruz is bringing poets to Santa Cruz. Morton Marcus: Well, they will have a chance on Tuesday to

00:58:12.070 - 00:58:27.850

prove your statement, because we are going to have the books of these two gentlemen on sale. And I would like to just see how many people buy them. And of course, Vern Rutsala, who has sort of become the Bobby Bonds of American poetry, not that he

00:58:27.850 - 00:58:43.510

takes steroids, but that he has been hitting a home run now, certainly in the last two volumes, but many volumes before that, the finalist in the National Book Award. That book had already won a prize to get published and then the very next

00:58:43.510 - 00:58:58.120

year, which is this year, he comes out with the Akron Prize, both these books will be on sale. On Tuesday, Lewis got his Selected Poems. He's got- which is called, "The Shifting Web." He's got the famous, "Book of Forms," every young poet should

00:58:58.120 - 00:59:09.040

have; a new book of poems, "The Green Mesas of Autumn." And of course, he's got Wesley Court as well. Dennis Morton: And I want to say something about, "The Book of Forms." Lew was mentioning how so many people said- knew, "The

00:59:09.130 - 00:59:19.960

Book of Forms," but they didn't associate his name with it. Well, I think it's because, "The Book of Forms," has achieved such stature that it's like the dictionary, nobody- who wrote the dictionary?

00:59:19.960 - 00:59:34.670

Lewis Turco: Webster. Dennis Morton: You know, well, yeah, but you don't think about an author of the dictionary and, "The Book of Forms," really has kind of superseded any author in fame.

00:59:35.420 - 00:59:43.430

Morton Marcus: By the way, Dennis, you know how many copies that book has sold? Say that again, Vern? Vern Rutsala: Fifty thousand. Morton Marcus: Fifty thousand copies.

00:59:43.430 - 00:59:50.900

Dennis Morton: For a book of poetry that's absolutely- Morton Marcus: No, a book of forms. Lewis Turco: People buy books about poetry, they don't buy books of poetry.

00:59:50.900 - 01:00:05.720

Dennis Morton: Yeah, well, we're trying to change that. But unfortunately, we've run out of time, and I want to let folks know that this is Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP Santa Cruz, KBDH San Ardo, streaming live and podcasting at KUSP.org. We

01:00:05.720 - 01:00:22.940

thank everyone for listening this evening. Vern Rutsala, Lew Turco, Mort Marcus, show up at 7:30 Bookshop Santa Cruz on Sunday- on Tuesday evening 7:30 and catch this reunion reading. Thank you very much for listening and good night.