00:01:37.980 - 00:02:41.490

Morton Marcus: He said my green graceful bones fill the air with sleeping birds. Alone, alone, and with them, I move gently. I move at the heart of the world. He said, I walk in consuming glory past the snake, the fox,

00:02:41.490 - 00:03:17.190

and the mouse. I see as the owl king sees by going in deeper than darkness. His name was James Dickey, and he was born in 1923 and died in 1997. He certainly was one of the most unique poets and one of

00:03:17.190 - 00:03:39.840

the most influential from the late 50s, all the way to 1967, before the real eruption of the flower people, and the entire change that came into American life at the end of the 60s. It was at the end of the 60s that he wrote his most famous work

00:03:41.130 - 00:03:57.120

for America itself, and that is the novel ‘’Deliverance‘’, which, as a motion picture, achieved so much fame, but before then he was writing among the most original poetry in America. And I would like to remember him tonight in a

00:03:57.120 - 00:04:17.820

memorial to James Dickey, who died this past week at a very quick age as I think you can see of 74. He is a really a fascinating person, he was born in Georgia, one of two brothers. And I say this very importantly one brother died before he was

00:04:17.820 - 00:04:34.800

born, it was to haunt his life and his poetry for the- all of his years. He went to college and was a star halfback, I believe was the University of Georgia, but that's not ringing right. He was a star halfback there, graduated, went to

00:04:34.800 - 00:04:52.860

graduate school at Vanderbilt, where he took her graduate degree and was a track star. Then in World War 2 and in Korea, he was a fighter pilot. He was an ace, which means he shot down more than five planes in the South Pacific during

00:04:52.860 - 00:05:09.030

World War 2. After Korea, he became first an advertising writer and then an advertising executive. He was throughout his life a hunter, a woodsman, an archer, he would go hunting with a bow and arrow. And as you remember from ‘’Deliverance‘’,

00:05:09.690 - 00:05:31.110

the part played by Burt Reynolds was really modeled after him. In fact, in that picture, he played the part of the Southern sheriff. His poetry is imbued, I mean, it is what I would call really Southern poetry. And it is imbued with the customs, the

00:05:31.110 - 00:05:48.090

culture, and the history of the South. These are not easy poems, they are haunting. They are brilliantly imagined poems. Now, what I want you to do is go back to the 1950s, what was American poetry really about, the mainstream of American

00:05:48.090 - 00:06:09.480

poetry before Ginsburg really was loosed on the American scene in any- you know, mainstream way. James Dickey, well, that is the rest of what was called academic poetry, was really very safe poetry, not on personal subjects, certainly on variants,

00:06:09.510 - 00:06:28.170

insightful declarations or, how shall I say, insightful moments that one had in one's daily life. And they were- they were very liberal and they, as I said, were very safe, he didn't go too far. James Dickey was a visionary and a lot can be said

00:06:28.170 - 00:06:40.980

that is negative about him and his work. But he was a visionary who was going to explode all downs, he was absolutely- his poems are imbued with the dead and they are imbued with animals, and they are imbued- imbued with our relationship

00:06:40.980 - 00:07:00.330

with animals and our fallen state. And I cannot stress this enough, that then-, very paradoxical fashion, and we'll explore that in the poems, he feels that we have fallen from the life of the soul into the life of the body. And the only

00:07:00.330 - 00:07:15.180

way we can get out of this, is to be reborn, and that sounds very Christian, and it sounds very simple until you get into it in the poems, and what he seems to be talking about is that we can learn an innocence from animals and that the

00:07:15.210 - 00:07:33.390

animals really have this innocent, pre-fallen form, although they are all body and they just react without animal- analysis and are just at the soul of the world. So many of his poems, like the "Owl King," go into the world of animals,

00:07:33.870 - 00:07:51.210

portray animals at the same time he thinks the natural state of things is the dominance of powers within the group over other powers. He is talking about power all the time, the dominance of the hunter over the hunted, so here animals become

00:07:51.210 - 00:08:16.860

the victims of him hunted, the hunter. It is very paradoxical, the way he uses all of these things. As for his poetry itself, bold vision, not safe it is all- all as I said, he would use language that would affect this larger than life vision he

00:08:16.860 - 00:08:34.740

would see in the most common things and so his language could have a really unique marvelous phrasing and yet an incantatory power. Yet at the same time, the longer the poems, usually the more overblown with rhetoric and gibberish they become, and even

00:08:34.740 - 00:08:50.670

his early clean poems which are made of a dactylic rhythm, dactylic meaning accented, unaccented- unaccented syllable, or feet of three syllables with the accent on the first syllable, the next two not. These dactylic dominated meters

00:08:51.270 - 00:09:07.050

run through a lot of his- even his early cleaner poetry; they're very monotonous. So that and the use of too many vague adverbs and adjectives hurt the work but it is really unique and I certainly hope to show that. What we will do tonight is we

00:09:07.050 - 00:09:25.440

will listen to James Dickey read his poetry and I will read some of them, too. Let me just go back to one of these subjects, which is usually fathers and sons or boys out on some kind of an excursion in the southern country. And this first piece

00:09:27.750 - 00:09:43.650

that I'm going to play for you is called ‘’In the Tree House at Night‘’ and listen to the references again to the dead brother. He is climbing with his live brother up to the tree house, and his dead brother is with him. A

00:09:43.650 - 00:10:01.470

sense of the dead is everywhere and I'm going to- do this in the first two poems that he will- he will read. Notice the idea of climbing into the tree house and into the trees though, seems to have a sense of an ascent of the fallen body into a higher self,

00:10:01.620 - 00:10:55.110

into a communion with the dead. Here is James Dickey reading his poem ‘’In the Tree House." [Silence] Well, I thought it was gonna be James Dickey in the tree house. Here is James Dickey reading:

00:10:55.000 - 00:11:13.780

James Dickey: In the tree house at night, a farm about three IN THE TREE HOUSE. brothers, one of whom is dead, the older brother who has instructed the two younger ones as to how to build a tree house

00:11:13.780 - 00:11:37.540

and the tallest tree of all. And now the green household is dark. The half-moon completely shining on the earth-lighted tops of the trees. To be dead, a house must be still. The floor and the walls wave me slowly; I am deep in them over my head. The

00:11:37.540 - 00:11:55.480

needles and pine cones about me are full of small birds at their roundest, their fists without mercy gripping hard down through the tree to the roots to sing back at the light when they feel it. We lie here like angels and bodies, my brothers and I, on

00:11:55.480 - 00:12:15.700

dead, the other asleep from muc living, in mid-air huddled besi e me. Dark climbed to us here s we climbed up the nails I ha e hammered all day through t e sprained, comic rungs of t e ladder of broom handles, cra e slats, and laths foot by foot

00:12:15.700 - 00:12:33.190

p the trunk to the branches whe e we came out at last over lak s of leaves, of fiel s disencumbered of earth that m ve with the moves of the spir t. Each nail that sustains u I set here; each nail in t e house is now steadied by my

00:12:33.190 - 00:12:52.090

ead brother's huge, freckled h nd. Through the years he has poi ted his hammer up into these li bs, and told us that we must asc nd, and all lie here. Step a ter step he has brought me embra ing the trunk as his body, sha ing its limbs with my heartb

00:12:52.660 - 00:13:11.590

at, till the pine cones da ced without wind and fell from the branches like apples. In the arm slender forks of our dwell ng I breathe my life brother's ight here. The blanket arou d us becomes as solid as stone a d it sways. With all my hea

00:13:11.590 - 00:13:31.120

t, I close the blue, timeless ye of my mind. Wind springs a my dead brother smiles and to ches the tree at the root; a s utter of joy runs up the t unk; the needles tangle; one bird uncontrollably cries. The wind changes round, and I st

00:13:31.120 - 00:13:51.730

r within another's life. Whose ife? Who is dead? Whose pr sence is living? When m y I fall strangely to Eart , who am nailed to this br nch by a spirit? Can two bodies ake up a third? To sing, must I feel the world's light?

00:13:51.730 - 00:14:17.440

y green, graceful bones fill the air with sleeping birds. Alone, lone and with them I move gently I move at the heart of th Morton Marcus: And it is interesting that he moves at the heart of the world when he comes in- into a communion or a sense

00:14:17.470 - 00:14:40.660

of the dead. And I think we have to realize that he almost seems to search out at times, at other times just come upon this communion of living and dead, that is ‘’In the Tree House at Night‘’. Who am- I who am nailed to this- Well, some of them say,

00:14:41.440 - 00:14:55.870

who is dead? Whose presence is living? When may I fall strangely to Earth when nailed to this branch by spirit? Can two bodies make up the third? To sing must I feel the world's light? And again, two bodies, the two living brothers can they

00:14:55.870 - 00:15:18.040

make up the third body for the dead brother is what he's talking about there. Let me read you my favorite poem by James Dickey, it is not a poem that is anthologized by him, it is not a poem that is well known by him, but it is a marvelously chiseled

00:15:18.310 - 00:15:36.160

piece of language. And what I mean by this is the phrasing, the conciseness of the words, the way the words seem to evoke will work in several ways at once. To me, this is the heart of poetry and it is James Dickey at his best. It is called

00:15:36.160 - 00:15:54.700

"Chenille," and let me just explain a few things that are going on here. Chenille is the- the fabric, the sewn fabric, that if you've ever driven down South, especially in the old backroads before they were all freeways and everything, there

00:15:54.700 - 00:16:10.630

would be a whole lot of fruit stands and small stores and outside them would be hung these bedspreads, these brightly colored bedspreads with a lot of different figures on them sewn in. And these were chenille bed- bedspreads are one of the things

00:16:10.630 - 00:16:27.280

he would buy when you were going through the South, most homes had even the poorest homes had chenille bedspreads on the bed. It's just one of the artifacts of the South. And what happened even when I would go down, hitchhiking and traveling

00:16:27.310 - 00:16:47.440

through the 50s, would be that a lot of these bedspreads were not made by the country people, they were made in the factories, in the in the mills, and they were sewn by machines. And this is what he's talking about here, driving through the country and

00:16:47.440 - 00:17:05.140

seeing these machine made chenille bedspreads, but then remembering his grandmother's bedspreads, which she sewed by hand and the pictures in them. So you've got today's machine bedspreads that really only harken back but in a very vapid,

00:17:05.140 - 00:17:20.620

shallow way to the- the bedspreads that were done as part of the tradition and lifestyle of those people who are now dead. But then, as his grandmother would draw in the pictures of her life and her past life, he suddenly makes a

00:17:20.620 - 00:17:44.620

leap, and he begins to talk about whoever the maker of this world is, who sews us into the pictures on earth. And using all of these metaphors, so naturally in his verbs, he gives a whole picture of us as though we are faded in some kind of continuous

00:17:44.620 - 00:18:01.510

chenille bedspread. It's a marvelous poem, I don't think there is one false move in the words. So let me read you now this wonderful poem "Chenille" which you can find, and I think it's the only place you can find it, in poems 1957-1967 the first

00:18:01.510 - 00:18:15.280

collection of his work and the one that is still a standard collection of his work, and you can find and is printed by Collier Books and Wesleyan University Press. So this is: CHENILLE

00:18:17.400 - 00:18:35.160

There are two facing peacocks, or a ship flapping on its own wide tufted sail at roadside near a mill. Flamingos also are hanging by their bills on bedspreads and an occasional mallard. These you can buy anywhere. They are made by

00:18:35.160 - 00:18:56.700

machine from a sanctioned unholy pattern rigid with industry. They hoard the smell of oil and hum like looms all night into your pores, reweaving your body from bobbins. There is only one quiet place and a scuppernong dapper- arbor, where animals as

00:18:56.700 - 00:19:13.830

they would be are born into sleep cloth. A middle aged man's grandmother sits in the summer green light of leaves, gone toothless for eating grapes better, and pulls the animals through with a god darning needle. Deer, rabbits, and

00:19:13.830 - 00:19:33.210

birds, red whales, and unicorns, winged elephants, crowned ants, beasts that cannot be thought of by the wholy sane rise up in the rough blurred flowers of a fuzzy cloth, and only their timeless outlines, like the beasts of heaven. Those sketched out

00:19:33.210 - 00:19:51.960

badly, divinely by stars, not wholy sane. Love I have slept in that house. There it was winter, the tattered moon fields crept through the trellis and fell in vine tangled shade on my face, like thrown away knitting before cloud came and dim those scars

00:19:51.960 - 00:20:11.160

from off me. My fingernails chilled to the bone, I called for another body to be with me and warm us both. A unicorn neighed, I folded his neck in my arms and was safe as he laid down. All night from thickening heaven someone up there kept

00:20:11.160 - 00:20:29.310

throwing bedspreads upon me, softly I called and they came, the ox and the basalis, the griffith, the phoenix, the lion, light bodied, only the essence that tufted creative star fields behind the assembled clowns. The snake from the apple tree came

00:20:29.310 - 00:20:53.220

to save me from freezing and at last, the long winged ship on its own sail, scented with pot ash fell sighing upon us all. The last two nails of cold died out in my nostrils under the dance weight of beasts. I lay breathing like thread, an

00:20:53.220 - 00:21:12.100

inspired outline of myself, as rain began gently to fall and close the door of the arc. And again this is a vision he has in his dream, that he has been sewn into the chenille bedspread, but alas, the picture

00:21:13.420 - 00:21:33.250

is of a world before the world we have, before the world of bobbins and machine made chenilles, it is the world when he finally wakes to it. That is the world that has been drowned because he is one of those locked out of the ark, or we all

00:21:33.250 - 00:21:48.340

are, we all are in our fallen state. Have any of you know anything about Sufi beliefs in metaphors? The similarity here, with an American voice and American imagery is really amazing. This fact that we have been exiled from our spiritual

00:21:48.340 - 00:22:11.530

selves, that we are lost and lonely in this life and seek once more union with a spiritual of the Godhead is very, very much here. We are reading if you've just tuned in the poetry of James Dickey, and I will have Dickey reading again when I

00:22:11.530 - 00:22:37.690

return. But, um, before I even go anywhere, I'm going to read another poem by James Dickey. And I'm going to see what that is. Oh, can I get in? I think, I probably will not try. So, let me read you a love poem in which to show how- he gets even more

00:22:37.720 - 00:22:51.190

ecstatic than this. He can be and this is a well-. We've been talking about the dead brother, let me read a poem about the dead brother from his first book "Into the Stone," and it's called:

00:22:51.310 - 00:23:04.060

THE SPRING And this is again how he is haunted by his dead brother and he now is speaking as a father, he has a son of his own. That is the poet James Dickey.

00:23:05.620 - 00:23:26.890

Except when he enters my son, the same age as he had his death, I cannot bring my brother to myself. I do not have his memory in my life, yet he is in my mind and on my hands, I weave the trivial string upon a light, dead before I was born. Mark how

00:23:26.890 - 00:23:45.880

the brother must live, who comes through the words of my mother, I have been told he lay in his deathbed singing with fever, performing with string on his fingers incredible feats of construction. There, before he was born. His Jacob's coffin now

00:23:45.880 - 00:24:05.440

floats deeply between my fingers, the strings with my thin bone shake, my eyes go from me and down through my bound spread hands to the dead, from the kin of the dead, dead before I was born. Gaze of genius comes back, the Rose Window of shard

00:24:05.470 - 00:24:23.890

is in it, and the Diogenes's lines upon sand, and the sun through the Brooklyn Bridge, and caught in a web the regard of a skeletal blood sharing child, dead before I was born. I believe in my father and mother, finding no hope and these lines.

00:24:25.000 - 00:24:44.530

Out of grief I was myself conceived and brought to life to replace the incredible child who built on this string in a fever, dead before I was born. A man, I make the same forms for my son that my brother made who learned them going to heaven. The coffin

00:24:44.530 - 00:25:05.500

of light, the bridge, the cup and saucer of pure air, cradle of cat, the foot of a crow, all in string, dead before I was born. I raise up the bridge and the tower, I burned the nip coffin in sunlight for the child who has woven this city who

00:25:05.500 - 00:25:37.880

loved doing this to die, who thought like a spider and sang and completed the maze of my fingers, dead before I was born. This is a program in memoriam for James Dickey who died in Columbia, South Carolina. He was poet and author, he‘d been in

00:25:37.880 - 00:25:57.920

the hospital since Wednesday, and of last- of the week before last when he died of complications from lung disease, and he will be remembered, I think, for the importance of many of his poetry, much of his poetry. And I will read some

00:25:57.920 - 00:26:15.050

more of his poems and tell some of the controversy he got into for some of his attitudes about power and essential order. I think controversies that really destroyed his reputation among American poets and the reading audience at the end of the 60s

00:26:15.050 - 00:27:26.090

and the beginning of the 70s, especially in regard to Vietnam. So, let us get back to some music and I will return after a short musical intermission. And this is the time in the show when I make some public

00:27:26.090 - 00:27:42.350

announcements, and I think we've got several big ones. First of all at Loudon Nelson Community Center in the poetry reading series, ‘’Coastlines‘’, a new anthology featuring John Laue, Dan Phillips Bernice Renwick, Bonnie Shell, Donna Longo Stein,

00:27:42.350 - 00:27:58.340

David Thorne, Philip Wagner, and Joan Zimmerman will have a reading by the participants in the anthology, if you remember they were on the show last spring, and that is a Friday, this Friday, January 31, at 7:30pm at the Loudon Nelson

00:27:58.340 - 00:28:14.420

Center in downtown Santa Cruz. The reading is free, I would advise everyone who enjoyed the show, or wants to hear this wonderful diverse group of poets, to attend. Two very important announcements, our wonderful poet who lives here

00:28:14.420 - 00:28:31.640

Adrienne Rich will be giving a poetry reading and discussion and book signing this coming Saturday, February 1, from 2 to 4pm. It‘s very important, 2 to 4pm Adrienne Rich poetry reading, discussing and book signing at the Garfield Park

00:28:31.640 - 00:28:49.250

Christian Church 111 Errett Circle, Santa Cruz, that is on the west side of Santa Cruz again, at the Garfield Park Christian Church 111 Errett Circle in Santa Cruz. Adrienne Rich, this Saturday February 1, from 2 to 4pm. The proceeds of

00:28:49.250 - 00:29:06.740

this entire event will go to the Daily Bread Food Pantry, a very charitable worthwhile cause, the tickets are $20, I'm not supposed to mention that but I am there. All of the money, it's really a benefit reading for the Daily Bread Food Pantry, a

00:29:06.740 - 00:29:26.510

wonderful time for you to hear and ask questions of Adrienne Rich. And those poets out there who have had some experience, the advanced poetry workshop at Cabrillo is open, I cannot tell you how important this is for those people who really want to

00:29:26.510 - 00:29:45.530

write and get direction from not only a professional, but really one of the fine poets, who I think is writing today and that is Joe Stroud, who as you- many of you know that there was the co-announcer of this series. Joe's third book is going to be

00:29:45.530 - 00:30:00.380

out next year and he is teaching not the workshop at Cabrillo, but this is the advanced workshop. And if you are interested and have done some work with other people and you you think that you're not really starting at the beginning level

00:30:00.380 - 00:30:21.290

in poetry, man, I urge you to go Cabrillo this Monday, that's tomorrow night, and show up in room 312 at six o'clock. The class goes every Monday from six to nine in room 312 at Cabrillo. You don't have to sign up or do anything that will all be taken

00:30:21.290 - 00:30:41.750

care of when you get there, so I urge you to do that, and attend this marvelous advanced poetry workshop. There is room in the workshop given by Joe Stroud, room 312, tomorrow night from six to nine. I'll announce that again, and the Adrienne Rich

00:30:41.750 - 00:31:02.360

reading before the program is over. Okay, tonight we are doing a memorial to James Dickey, the American poet who died last week actually. He was born in Georgia 1923 and obviously died in January of 1997 of lung cancer.

00:31:02.690 - 00:31:19.190

Many of you know him as the author of ‘’Deliverance‘’ from which the very, very popular movie was made, and it was also a great bestseller. I said something about him before that he was a fighter pilot, and he was a hunter, and a woodsmen, in

00:31:19.190 - 00:31:36.740

his last years he was consultant to the Library of Congress. And he was at various times a poet in residence at different universities. He never really taught as such though, he just sort of did it as part of his life. He had more than enough

00:31:36.740 - 00:31:53.780

money from being an executive and then the money he made in ‘’Deliverance‘’ and he wrote two other novels and the second one sold well also. So he spent most of the last part of his life actually as a poet in residence at the University of South

00:31:53.780 - 00:32:10.250

Carolina and lived in South Carolina. I want to go now- I talked about how custom and the elements of the South played so much part of his work. Here is a poem, again, a really marvelous poem about, again what I was talking about the first part of

00:32:10.250 - 00:32:29.300

the show, how he gets in touch with the dead, communes with a dead, and gets a sense of himself as having- as bringing forth the world of the dead from oblivion into being, in his being, in his memory, in his spirit, and how his spirit will

00:32:29.300 - 00:32:45.230

go on from him into his child. In this case, this poem, which is called ‘’Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill Creek‘’. I think it's amazing that Nimblewill just think of the significance of that name, he is actually at Nimblewill, it is

00:32:45.230 - 00:33:01.610

not a made up name. And he is there with his brother and this is what his brother is doing, his brother is using a metal detector to find the Civil War relics, whether they be canteens, spoons, from musket, muskets themselves or even

00:33:01.610 - 00:33:23.510

bullets. This sense therefore of a life under the earth, the life of the dead, communing through the earphones of the metal detector shutting out the world of the living is what brings about this spiritual moment in which he wants more communes

00:33:23.510 - 00:33:40.040

with a dead and takes his direction from there. And of course, historically, and being a Southerner, these are the Southern dead from the Civil War, that- that great undertaking, which many in the South feel was the end of a

00:33:40.040 - 00:33:55.010

whole culture if not a civilization, and that we've gone in this different direction, maybe the same direction as the factories, as commerce, that now does not make us sew the chenille bedspreads I read about in the first part of

00:33:55.010 - 00:34:11.570

this show, but has those chenille bedspreads made without any meaning, smelling of oil in factories at the mills. Anyway, here's James Dickey again. "Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill Creek," with his brother

00:34:24.410 - 00:34:41.720

James Dickey: HUNTING CIVL WAR RELICS AT NIMBLEWILL CREEK. A might preface this by saying that I have a brother, who's a fanatical Civil War relic hunter and goes out into the battlefields around Atlanta with a World War 2 vintage mine

00:34:41.720 - 00:34:59.300

detector, digging up the scraps of murderous metal from along- since fought war, one which is still important to Southerners. Anyway, sometimes I go with him and out of one such expedition, came this poem.

00:35:00.740 - 00:35:18.470

As he moves the mine detector a few inches over the ground, making it vitally float among the ferns and weeds, I come into this war slowly, with my one brother, watching his face grow deep between the earphones, for I can tell if we entered the

00:35:18.470 - 00:35:37.610

buried battle of Nimblewill only by his expression. Softly he wanders, parting the grass with a dreaming hand. No dead cry yet takes root in his clapped ears, or can be seen in his smile. But underfoot I feel the dead regroup, the burst

00:35:37.610 - 00:35:58.100

metals all in place, the battle lines be drawn anew to include us in Nimblewill, and I carry the shovel and pick more as if they were bright weapons that I bore. A birds cry breaks in two, and into three parts. We cross the creek; the cry shifts into

00:35:58.100 - 00:36:20.180

another, nearer, bird, and it's like the shout of a shadow - lived-with appallingly close - or the soul, pronouncing "Nimblewill": Three tones; your being changes. We climb the bank; a faint light glows on my brother's mouth. I listened, as

00:36:20.180 - 00:36:38.900

to birds fight for a single voice, but he must be hearing the grave in pieces, all singing to his clamped head. For he smiles as if he rose from the dead within green Nimblewill and stood in his grandson shape. No shot from the buried war shall

00:36:38.900 - 00:36:56.810

kill me now. For the dead have waited here a hundred years to create only the look on the face of my one brother, who stands among them, offering a metal dish afloat in the trembling weeds, with a long buried light on his lips at Nimbilewilll and

00:36:56.810 - 00:37:15.770

the dead out singing to birds. I choke the handle of the pick, and fall to my knees to dig wherever he points, to bring up mess tin or bullet, to go underground still singing, myself, without a sound, like a man who renounces war, or one

00:37:15.770 - 00:37:38.970

who shall lift up the past, not breathing, "Father," at Nimblewill, but saying, "Fathers! Fathers!" Morton Marcus: And again, I think you can see how this idea of his being a son, to all the past and all the dead, as well

00:37:38.970 - 00:37:58.530

as the son to his own father is important. I should say that he visits his father as he dies, in the very next poem that's from a book called ‘’Drowning with Others‘’. Very next poem is called ‘’A Hospital Window‘’. And what he does is that he

00:37:58.530 - 00:38:13.350

visits his father and his father dies, and well let me just read that to you. This is the death of his father and again, notice the continuance not only of one brother who is dead to the living brother, but the son of the father. It's called: ‘’A

00:38:13.350 - 00:38:27.810

Hospital Window‘’. "I have just come down from my father." Now notice I'm gonna stop right there. Notice that line. Yeah, he has come down from his father's hospital room, But he also means he has descended from his father. The language

00:38:27.810 - 00:38:43.860

sometimes seemingly so simple and other so complex, are really- has enormous amounts of suggestions in it, especially this idea of being a fallen soul, a risen soul, descending, ascending, going into the height, soaring, etc, etc.

00:38:44.490 - 00:38:59.520

THE HOSPITAL WINDOW I have just come down from my father. Higher and higher he lies above me in a blue light shed by a tinted window. I drop through six white floors and then step out onto pavement.

00:38:59.610 - 00:39:19.520

Still feeling more father ascend, I start across the firm street, my shoulder blades shining with all the glass the huge building can raise. Now I must turn around and face it, and know his one pain from the others. Each window possesses

00:39:19.600 - 00:39:40.190

the sun as though it burned there on a wick. I wave, like a man catching fire. All the deep dyed window panes flash, and, behind them all the white rooms they turn to the color of heaven. Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly, dozens of pale hands

00:39:40.270 - 00:40:00.350

are waving back from inside their flames. Yet one pure pain among these is the bright, erased blankness of nothing. I know that my father is there, in the shape of his death still living. The traffic increases around me like a madness cold

00:40:00.440 - 00:40:21.190

down on my end. The horns blast at me like shotguns, and drivers lean out, driven crazy - But now my propped-up father lifts his arm out of stillness at last. The light from the window strikes me, and I turn as blue as a soul, as the moment when I

00:40:21.270 - 00:40:42.110

was born. I am not afraid for my father - Look! He is grinning; he is not afraid for my life either, as the wild engine stand at my knees, shredding their gears and roaring, and I hold each car in its place for miles, inciting its horn to blow down

00:40:42.190 - 00:41:02.520

the walls of the world, that the dying may float without fear in the bold blue gaze of my father. Slowly I mov to the sidewalk with my pin-tingling hand halfdead at the end of my bloodless arm. I carry it off in amazement, high, still higher,

00:41:02.610 - 00:41:23.390

still waving, my recognised face fully mortal, yet not; not at all, in the pale, drained, otherworldly, stricken created you of stained glass. I have just come down from my father. So as he descends from his father's room and then looks

00:41:23.390 - 00:41:42.800

back from the street and tries to find his father's window, the window to his father's hospital room, he has one of these communions. He waves and feels that everyone in this hospital is waving at him, that he really is taking the- all of the sick

00:41:42.800 - 00:41:59.990

and the dying back into life with him. And then there was the one blank room where his father is dead and yet still living because James Dickey carries him with him, into the life, he is the descendant of his father, yet he has descended from his

00:41:59.990 - 00:42:18.110

father‘s spiritual moment of moving into immortality. But we keep the dead immortal by going on with them genetically, and going on with them in their values in their spiritual life as well. Let me read one of his most popular poems, he even said

00:42:18.110 - 00:42:35.870

this himself, a poem called ‘’Cherrylog Road‘’. And for the older members out there, for anyone who has ever been a teenager and of course there's most of you out there, this is about a love rendezvous of a young high school girl and a

00:42:35.870 - 00:42:53.150

high school boy. He has just gotten a motorcycle. Before let's say he was playing with bicycles in junior high school or primary school, and now he has arranged this love meeting with this girl, which they both come to with their hormones

00:42:53.150 - 00:43:18.500

tingling in the junkyard of Cherrylog Road. And in this thrown away end of human endeavor, in what is dead, if you will of the material world, the young find love for the first time, and there is this paradox is working throughout

00:43:18.500 - 00:43:35.480

the poem. It is obviously working on Dickey‘s mind, that in this place where we throw away everything, suddenly is going to rise like almost a flower out of the junk, this sense of youth discovering the pulse of their own life and the

00:43:35.480 - 00:43:45.290

life to come even after them. So here is ‘’Cherrylog Road‘’. It is a little longer than the other poems that I read, but it is very narrative and as I said, it's one of his most popular poems.

00:43:46.320 - 00:44:04.620

‘’Cherrylog Road‘’, and kudzu, by the way, which I'll say here in case you don't know it, it is the vines that grow throughout the South and just seem to weave their way into everything, almost making the South with all of its rain in those areas which

00:44:05.910 - 00:44:24.960

are, you know, Piedmont area and the areas close to the coastlines, making them very, very rich in this tangled vine situation that goes on under trees in any kind of forest or any kind of stand of trees. So that's what he's talking about

00:44:24.960 - 00:44:41.570

here is called kudzu even has another poem to it. CHERRYLOG ROAD Off Highway 106 at Cherrylog Road, I entered the 34 Ford without wheels, smothered in kudzu, with a seat pulled out to

00:44:41.570 - 00:44:59.450

run corn whiskey down from the hills, and then from the other side crept into an Essex with a rumble seat of red leather and then out again, aboard a blue Chevrolet, releasing the rust from its other color, reared up on three building blocks. None

00:44:59.450 - 00:45:14.510

had the same body heat; I changed them inward, toward the weedy heart of the junkyard, for I knew that Doris Holbrook would escape from her father at noon and would come from the farm to seek parts owned by the sun among the abandoned chassis,

00:45:15.170 - 00:45:34.490

sitting in each in turn as I did, leaning forward as in a wild stock car race in the parking lot of the dead. Time after time, I climbed in and out the other side, like an envoy or movie star met at the station by crickets. A radiator cap raised

00:45:34.490 - 00:45:52.280

its head, become a toad, a real toad or a kingsnake as I neared the hub of the yard, passing through many states, many lives to reach some grandmother's long Pierce-Arrow sending platters of blindness forth from its nickel hubcaps and spilling its tender

00:45:52.280 - 00:46:10.760

upholstery on sleepy roaches, the glass panel in between lady and color driver not all the way broken out, the back-seat phone was still on its hook. I got in as though to exclaim, “Let us go to the orphan asylum, John; I have some old toys for children

00:46:10.910 - 00:46:28.580

who say their prayer.“ I popped with sweat as I thought I heard Doris Holbrook scrape like a mouse in the southern-state sun that was eating the paint in blisters from a hundred car tops and hoods. She was tapping like code, loosening the screws,

00:46:28.730 - 00:46:45.650

carrying off headlights, spark plugs, bumpers, crack mirrors and gear knobs, getting ready, already to go back with something to show other than her lips' new trembling I would hold to me soon, soon. Where I sat in the ripped back seat, talking

00:46:45.650 - 00:47:01.940

over the interphone, praying for Doris Holbrook to come from her father's farm and to get back there with no trace of me on her face to be seen by her red-haired father who would change, in the squalling barn, her backs pale skin with a

00:47:01.940 - 00:47:19.460

strop, then lay for me in a bootleggers roasting car with a string triggered 12 gauge shotgun to blast the breath from the air. Not cut by the jagged windshields, through the acres of wrecks she came with a wrench in her hand, through dust where

00:47:19.460 - 00:47:40.100

a black snake dies of boredom, and the beetle knows the compost has no more life. Someone outside would have seen the oldest car's door inexplicably close from within: I held her and held her and held her, convoyed at terrific speed by

00:47:40.100 - 00:47:56.150

the stalled dreaming traffic around us, so the blacksnake, stiff with inaction, curved back into life, and hunted the mouse with deadly overexcitement, the beatles reclaimed their field as we clung, glued together, with the hooks of the seat springs

00:47:56.270 - 00:48:14.900

working through to catch us red-handed amidst the gray breathless batting that burst from the seat on our backs. We left by separate doors into the changed, other bodies of cars, she down Cherrylog Road and I to my motorcycle parked like the

00:48:14.900 - 00:48:31.280

soul of the junkyard restored, a bicycle fleshed with power, and tore off up Highway 106, continually drunk on the wind in my mouth, wringing the handlebar for speed, wild to be wreckage forever.

00:48:37.510 - 00:48:59.560

That was Cherrylog Road by James Dickey. If you are interested in Dickey certainly the longer poems such as “Firebombing“ and “Slave Quarters“ from his book ‘’Buckdancer's- ‘’Buckdancer's Choice‘’, which won the National Book Award in 1966. He was known

00:48:59.560 - 00:49:13.630

well by poets before then, for his books that were published, four books from Wesleyan University Press, but it was that book, ‘’Buckdancer's Choice‘’ that won the National Book Award that catapulted him into national prominence at that

00:49:13.630 - 00:49:27.820

time. What is interesting, and maybe I'll just read the beginning of ‘’Firebombing’’, which is much too long to read. What is interesting about ‘’Firebombing’’ and that caused a very eloquent Robert Bly to attack it with thought that,

00:49:28.180 - 00:49:49.150

before then, that Dickie was a very unique poet, even though he recognized some of his weaknesses, was the fact that in this poem, he remembers being a fighter pilot, having under his wings, the- the rockets, and he seems to rejoice in his power

00:49:49.150 - 00:50:07.120

here. And Bly felt that really repugnant and an another poem called ‘’In Visiting the Slave Quarters‘’, he seems to once again create the situation, not only the slaves life, but wonders at himself 150 years before as a slave owner and

00:50:07.120 - 00:50:24.550

relishes in that power he had over others. My argument with Bly‘s argument is that one of the other things that Dickey was doing in his poems was not giving the politically correct image of the late 50s and 60s, of being a timid, liberal, but

00:50:24.550 - 00:50:45.070

was very truthfully showing the weakened sides of himself. Especially this fight that he had with power and his love of war and killing, and tremendous self absorption and narcissism, which I think was very refreshing at the time and still

00:50:45.070 - 00:51:00.280

is. Here he is remembering: FIREBOMBING and I'm just gonna have time to read just a little bit of this, but you can get the feeling of it. Homeowners unite, all families lie together, though some are

00:51:00.280 - 00:51:17.080

burned alive, the others trying to feel for them. Some candidates often said, ‘’starve and take off.‘’ 20 years in the suburbs and the palm trees willingly leap into the flashlights, and there is beneath them also a booted

00:51:17.080 - 00:51:34.390

crackling of snail shells and coral sticks. There are cowl flaps and the tilt cross a propellers, the shovel marked clouds, far sides against the moon, the enemy filling up the hills with ceremonial graves. At my somewhere among these, snap,

00:51:34.600 - 00:51:50.230

a blub is tricked on in the cockpit, and some technical-minded stranger with my hands is sitting in a glass treasure-hole of blue light, having potential fire under the un-deodorized arms of his wings on the thin bomb-shackles, the

00:51:50.350 - 00:52:06.970

"tear-drop-shaped" 300-gallon drop-tanks filled with napalm and gasoline. Thinking forward ten minutes from that, there was also the burst straight out of the overcast into the moon. There is now the moon-metal-shine of propellers,

00:52:07.090 - 00:52:25.810

the quarter-moonstone aimed at the waves, stopped on the cumulus. There is then this re-entry into cloud, for the engines to ponder their sound in the white dark, the aircraft shrinks. Japan dilates around it like a thought. Coming out, the

00:52:25.810 - 00:52:42.910

one who is here is over land, passing over the all-night grain fields in dark paint over the woods with one silver side, rice-water calm at all levels of the terraced hill. Enemy rivers and trees sliding off me like snakeskin, strips of vapor

00:52:42.910 - 00:53:04.090

spooled from the wingtips going invisible, passing, over, on, over bridges roads for nightwalkers, Sunday night in the enemies country, absolute calm. The moon's face coming slowly about, the inland sea slants is woven with wire

00:53:04.090 - 00:53:22.810

thread, levels out, holds together like a quilt of the starboard wing. Cloud flickers at my glassed-off forehead, the moon's now and again uninterrupted face going forward over the waves in a glide-path lost into land. Going, going

00:53:22.810 - 00:53:40.120

with it, combat booze by my side in a cratered canteen, bourbon frighteningly mixed with GI pineapple juice, dogs trembling under me for hundreds of miles, on many islands, sleep-smelling that ungodly mixture of napalm and high octane fuel, good

00:53:40.120 - 00:54:04.030

bourbon and GI gin. And he goes on and he then describes the feeling of watching the bodies just totally explode under him, but I see I have a- I used up my time here. Let me just end this program by

00:54:04.510 - 00:54:20.050

reading very quickly one small thing about the magic of creation that he has. It's called ‘’A Birth‘’, it's a very, very short poem, and I end this memorial to James Dickey, which we have been giving. And he calls this:

00:54:20.130 - 00:54:38.430

A BIRTH and it is about how the power of creation transforms reality. And he's telling a story to his children. Inventing a story with grass, I find a young horse deep inside it. I cannot wear nail wires around him; my fence posts

00:54:38.430 - 00:54:56.190

failed to be solid, and he is free strangely, without me. With his head still browsing the greenness, he walks slowly out of the pasture to enter the sun of his story. My mind freed of its own creature, I find myself deep in my life in a room with

00:54:56.190 - 00:55:17.080

my child and my mother, when I feel the sun climbing my shoulder, change, to include a new horse. Memorial read- reading tonight for James Dickey who died this past week of lung cancer. May I remind you, people who want

00:55:17.080 - 00:55:35.350

advanced poetry to please go to room 312 tomorrow night for a class that is starting at Cabrillo from six to nine of advanced poetry by Joe Stroud, a marvelous teacher and a marvelous poet. There is room in the class at Cabrillo, if you're

00:55:35.350 - 00:55:47.860

interested, just show up tomorrow night, the class goes every Monday from six to nine, room 312 at Cabrillo. You don't have to sign up for anything, everything will be taken care of there. And finally, very importantly, this coming

00:55:47.860 - 00:56:05.530

Saturday, February 1, Adrienne Rich, the National Book Award winning poet, many many awards, fascinating poet, thinker, woman, you can hear her be giving a reading and discussing her poetry. And she will be signing books at the Garfield

00:56:05.530 - 00:56:21.970

Park Christian Church at 111 Errett Circle in Santa Cruz, that's on the Westside of Santa Cruz in the circles, Garfield Park Church, 2 to 4pm this Saturday. The proceeds of the tickets, which are $20, go to benefit the Daily Bread Food

00:56:21.970 - 00:56:37.720

Pantry, a very good cause. A marvelous time to hear Adrienne Rich talking about her work and meeting her. So do that, Joe Stroud's class tomorrow night six to nine, Adrienne Rich at the Garfield Church, the Garfield Park Christian church

00:56:37.720 - 00:56:57.610

at Errett Circle from two to four this Saturday. This is Morton Marcus, saying thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned for a book before sleep, the "Book Before Bedtime" with the fascinating character actor Ralph Peduto, playwright, back

00:56:57.610 - 00:57:16.780

on tour, marvelous human being, and he will be talking to you introduced by our own Billy Harris. As you probably know, Mr. Peduto has been in ‘’Mrs. Doubtfire‘’, ‘’Getting Even with Dad‘’, and can be seen eating a delicious meal and enticing all

00:57:16.780 - 00:57:32.800

other FBI agents to do the same in "The Rock." He is a fascinating talker, and a wonderful actor, and really a joy to listen to. This is Morton Marcus, I'll be back in several weeks and I turn this over to "A Book Before Bedtime," which I

00:57:32.800 - 00:57:35.590

should have gotten just from that wonderful alliteration.