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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody, this is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show and with those great heroic tones, we certainly welcome a discussion of the great American writer, John Steinbeck, who is the presence of this area,

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especially in the Salinas region. And tonight our program is going to be about the Steinbeck Festival out in Salinas at the wonderful Steinbeck Museum. This festival, number 20, will be taking place from August 3rd to August 6th,

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and on Friday, August 5th, from 3:15 to 4:45pm, Kevin Hearle has put together a program called "Steinbeck and Poetry." And Kevin Hearle is a poet and member of the editorial board at the Steinbeck Newsletter. As a poet, his work has been

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published in the Yale Review, Georgia Review, New Orleans Review, and he has a book out which is called, "Each Thing We Know Is Changed Because We Know It." He has also been the revision editor for the latest edition from Viking of

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Steinbeck's, "Grapes of Wrath." Kevin, welcome to the Poetry Show. Kevin Hearle: Thanks for having me, Mort. Morton Marcus: Well, this is not the first time you've been here.

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You have been here in various guises as the person who is doing liaison for the wonderful translation workshops that were put on years ago at UC, and then as a poet in your own right, so now we see you in yet another guise.

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Kevin Hearle: Well, I hope they're not disguises. Morton Marcus: They're not, they're all the authentic Hearle. Kevin, tell us a little bit about "Steinbeck and Poetry", this panel you'll be leading?

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Kevin Hearle: Well, it seemed to me that there are lots of different ways of looking at Steinbeck in poetry, and that the two obvious ones are the influences of poetry on Steinbeck's writing, the poets that he read, and then also the

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poetry that he himself wrote, or the- the poetic influences within his own writing. And we know he read a lot of other poets from many languages, but you can just look at the titles of his books and you know that this was a man who loved poetry.

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"Burning Bright," not one of his more famous books, but it comes right from William Blake, "Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright." And so many of his other titles came from Shakespeare, came from Milton, that it just seemed an obvious way of looking at him.

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And it turned out that it's- that my timing was wonderful, that a lot of interesting things are coming out about now in regards to Steinbeck's poetry. Morton Marcus: Tell us about a few of those things.

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Kevin Hearle: Well, one thing is that last year the descendants of Steinbeck's oldest sister, and- who had collected the letters that Steinbeck wrote as a young man to up to his death -- to his parents, to his sisters, to his nephews and

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nieces -- essentially, got those, gave them to Stanford through a gift from Wells Fargo. And so that there's this wealth of new manuscripts to look at, and through that I was fortunate to come across a wonderful bounty of poems of highly

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varying quality, but since some of them were clearly written during his teenage years you would expect that, up to much later works. And it's just fascinating to see the- what he was doing and how much he loved- how much he loved the poetry and

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really how important that was in his own development. The other thing that has come out is, and this I just discovered myself within the last two weeks, was when I was trying to obtain permission to read some of the poems here tonight. Steinbeck's

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one surviving son, Thomas Steinbeck, called me up on the phone and said, this is Thomas Steinbeck -- which was a bit of a surprise to me on my message machine -- and he was somewhat concerned that I, well, you know, wanted to read these. And

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I turned out the reason he was wondering was that he intends to go into the publishing business himself with a company called the Steinbeck Press, and one of his first publications will be a collection of the twenty-five poem sequence that John

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Steinbeck wrote to his mother who was Gwyn Conger-Steinbeck. Morton Marcus: So he wrote these poems, we don't obviously know when. We try to put it together by- Kevin Hearle: Well, I mean, we can do it- off the top of my

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head I don't know that figure and I should, but it would have been in late, I mean, 1939 through 1941. Morton Marcus: Oh, so he was already mature. Kevin Hearle: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

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Morton Marcus: Now his second wife- Kevin Hearle: His second wife, right. Morton Marcus: But there were earlier ones than that. Kevin Hearle: Oh, yes.

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Morton Marcus: Which really seemed like the work of a young person, let's say maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. Kevin Hearle: Some of them, and some of them seem- we have some of the poems that he wrote at Stanford and those tend to be

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better, although we don't have very many of them, that's because Steinbeck was famous for convincing his friends to have bonfires and throw in his old letters and manuscripts that he had given to them over the years. So we don't really- I

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mean, so there are huge gaps in what we know about Steinbeck's development as a poet between, say, his Stanford years and 19- I mean, which would have been 1919 through 1925 and then to 1939, say. So this twenty year gap between what we have, so

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it's possible that he was writing things there that joined the bonfire. Morton Marcus: The interesting thing here is that I'd like you to talk about the panel because for the people out there, we can

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talk to Kevin for hours, hours, and hours. This is going to be an interesting show. We're going to be joined by other people via the magic of tape and telephone and delayed action. Tell us a little bit about this panel, who's going to be composed- what

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it's going to be composed of and whom. Kevin Hearle: Well, the other people on the panel are Dana Gioia, who is- well, it's hard to describe Dana, he's sort of a poetic force and critic in his own right.

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Morton Marcus: And I'll just add to that, probably one of the most important young thinkers in poetry. Certainly, he's having tremendous influence on writers around the country, critics around the country. We do agree or disagree with him, but he has

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certainly started dialogues going. Kevin Hearle: Oh, yes, indeed. If Dana is anything, it is opinionated. And he's wonderful at both stating his opinions and backing them up and getting dialogue going.

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Morton Marcus: Getting dialogue going, yet does not cut things off. He is very interested in discussion, an intelligent discussion. Kevin Hearle: Yes. So we were very fortunate to get Dana to

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agree to join the panel. And then also because Jeffers was a huge influence on Steinbeck, especially early on in his career, we know that Steinbeck at one point or another, either owned or through his friend Ed Ricketts had access to a total

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of nine books by Jeffers. So that indicates just right there a strong interest. And then clearly his book, "To a God Unknown," is just written right out of the spirit of of Jeffers. Steinbeck had a tendency to sort of get really involved with a

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writer and then try to some extent write himself through that influence, and "To a God Unknown" as is very much that way. And so we were very fortunate to be able to get from Santa Clara University and the former executive director of the

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Robinson Jeffers Association, Terry Beers, to join the panel, which will be this coming Friday, and today on tape. Morton Marcus: And I have talked to both those gentlemen over the phone and what we're going to do now is that we're going to go to

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my interview with Dana Gioia, and he's going to talk about what Steinbeck as poet means to him and what he plans to be talking about at this festival. And for people who just tuned in, what we are talking about is the 20th Steinbeck Festival at

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the Steinbeck Museum on the third to the sixth of August, which is this coming weekend. KUSP is one of the sponsors and during that time, on the fifth of August, a Friday, from- let me get my times right here and, of course, I don't have it right

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there. It seems 1:15, 3:15 or something like that? Kevin Hearle: 3:15 to 4:45, I believe. Morton Marcus: There's going to be "Steinbeck and Poetry." And so if we can go to my interview with Dana Gioia right now, this

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is my speaking with Dana around two weeks ago. Hello, Dana. Dana Gioia: Hello, Morton. Morton Marcus: How are you doing?

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Dana Gioia: Doing pretty well. Morton Marcus: That's great. You know, I've had enormous respect for you and your great essay, of course, which is "Can Poetry Matter," which I think has had such an effect on American

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poetry, whether you agree with it or don't agree with it, and your really exquisite poetry. It's a great honor to talk to you on the show. And unfortunately, we're not doing a show on you, which we will be doing next spring when your two

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new books come out, actually, an opera libretto called, "Nosferatu," and your next book of poems called, "Interrogations At Noon." But today we're here specifically talking about the Steinbeck Festival that you're going to be involved in with

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Terry Beers and Kevin Hearle. You know, Steinbeck is not known as a poet and never had a book of poems out. In fact, I was surprised to know that he even wrote poetry. What really is there to say about him as poet?

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Dana Gioia: Well, Steinbeck's poetry, you know, is not something that you can talk about in the context of the great poetry of the 20th century. But it has a very important role in his life as a writer. Steinbeck began writing,

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or writing poetry, and most of his poetry is what we would call juvenelia, you know, the work of an immature writer trying to find, you know, his own voice. But it's quite interesting, you know, to see how much poetry Steinbeck wrote early on, and

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how seriously he took it. And I think what you see are two things. First of all, you see the classic apprenticeship of a writer and it's, you know, it's interesting how many famous novelists, from Ernest Hemingway to Gustav Flaubert, began when

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they were very, very young writing poetry. So you see this classic development of somebody starting with poetry and then moving into the larger prose forms. But secondly, you see the origin of that poetic voice, which is so strong in

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Steinbeck's greatest novels like, "Grapes of Wrath," for example. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that certainly is where I would recognize where the poetry went to. It's a great rhapsodic

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poetry, a poetry of the land. Go on. Dana Gioia: Although it's interesting when, you know, when I read, "Grapes of Wrath," I was surprised at how much of it would be what we might, you know, today call -- and I'm

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talking about one of the experts on the subject -- a prose poem. Morton Marcus: You seem to be hesitant. Dana Gioia: These pages of description, especially the migration of the Okies, which he describes in this great sweeping

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prose language, that's very thrilling. Morton Marcus: Yeah, and which had a lot to do, actually, with the 30s novel, Thomas Wolfe, Dos Passos, and people like that. Dana Gioia: Exactly, exactly. There was not the kind of fine

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divide that we might make today between, you know, prose, fiction, and verse poetry. It just didn't matter to Dos Passos and Steinbeck. I mean, they were going after literature, you know, as a total.

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Morton Marcus: Right. What do you think- I'm talking about Steinbeck in the 30s; I know that his reputation was in decline for a long while. What do you think Steinbeck's reputation as, you know, a national literary figure is

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these days? Dana Gioia: Well, you know, Steinbeck, it's interesting because his reputation has declined significantly in the last fifty years, but it's always been a divided

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reputation. The literary critics stopped writing about Steinbeck very much, but people never stopped reading him. You know, he still is one of the most widely read novelists in the world. But in the last ten years, I've seen really, it

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seems to be the inkling of a Steinbeck revival. And, you know, his whole style, which was naturalism, you know, which was talking about, you know, the poor, the dispossessed, you know, talking about politics and the kind of all the human

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struggles, was something that was very unfashionable, you know, for years. But I think right now, it's really coming back into the mainstream, and Steinbeck is one of the, you know, the greatest central figures, one of the progenitors

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of this in the American literature. And the fact that you always have readers even when critics aren't talking about you, is I think a great sight of the stature of a writer.

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Morton Marcus: I guess we would call it grass roots stature. Kevin Hearle: Well, isn't it interesting that Salinas, a town -- and I don't mean this to offend any of your listeners -- not widely associated in the world, you know, with high

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culture, has created one of the finest literary museums in the world. And it was a grassroots effort. And, you know, I mean, they have in a sense, in that single stroke, I think, you know, both transformed downtown Salinas and Steinbeck's

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reputation. Morton Marcus: Well, it certainly is interesting to go over there and see that this certainly is the center of a new and projected Salinas and it is very exciting to go there and to

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see what they've done with the museum and all the different parts of the Steinbeck Center. And while you said that, people who are listening to this, if you've never been there, I mean, that is a place really to go on an outing. It really is

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wonderful, and the drive over there is wonderful. Dana Gioia: The curious thing about it is, I went there coming back from a trip to Santa Barbara, and I had my two sons with me who, at that point, were six and ten. And, you know, I

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have to say that much as I love my children, it's often nightmarish to vist museums with them. But the curious thing about the Steinbeck museum is that every room of that museum had something that interested me as a writer, and something that

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interested them as little boys. And, you know, we walked out of the whole thing, kind of just divided by the whole experience. Morton Marcus: Yeah, no, that's a good point. And people who are thinking of bringing their kids, it really is a place where you

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can go back and get a sense of the old California, and also can go from there to San Juan, and, you know, get a sense of that State Park over there and really get in touch with what the state was like, not only fifty years ago, but more than a hundred

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fifty years ago. You know, this brings us again, talking about the West Coast, something that you as a California writer -- and many people out there may associate you as being an East Coast writer, but the fact of the matter is you were born out

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here, your education was out here, you went to Stanford -- and I know that you've just written a big article on the state of West Coast literature, mostly poetry today. Why don't we talk a little about that state of literature as you see

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it and we can weave Steinbeck in if you want? Dana Gioia: Well, you know, I wrote an article called "Fallen Western Star," which is about the decline of San Francisco in Northern California as a literary region. And I begin

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with a kind of paradox, which is that at the moment when California is the biggest, and the richest state in the U.S., that the Bay Area, in over the last fifty years has grown immensely, you know, and it's full of educated people, it's

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full of writers and artists, it's full of wealth. Never in human history has as much wealth been created as has been created in the Santa Clara Valley in the last ten years. And yet, Northern California's influence, its position in American

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literary culture has declined. It was a much more influential place in 1900 than it is in the year 2000. 1900, you had Jack London and Ambrose Bierce, and Edwin Markham, and Frank Norris. And they had, you know, a dozen newspapers in the Bay Area that

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were read all over the country. And it was in San Francisco, you know, and I mean, that in kind of a regional sense, articulated a kind of new democratic future for American literature that you just didn't hear from Boston or New York. Nowadays, even though

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there's a lot of writers out here, the literary opinion, I think, is all created in New York and it's just curious how this decline has happened. Morton Marcus: Well, it is very curious. And I know that for the

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last, oh, lord, how long has it been since I've been out here now? For the last thirty-five, forty years, I've been talking about this with other California writers. Neil Young down at Capra Press, and I, you know, had certainly on our minds that

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we were creating, or he was creating a California press and I was giving him names of California writers to sort of, in some way build a sense of literature out here, because the East Coast really has not been friendly to the West Coast in

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the last fifty years. Dana Gioia: No, I mean, we are an afterthought. That's why a radio show like yours,is so important because it's, you know, what literature is, a conversation between writer and

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reader, between the living and the dead, between the generations. And what criticism is is a kind of an enlargement of that conversation. So, you know, your show is really at the very heart of what is needed to create a regional literary

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identity, it's a conversation from a particular place about the world as they- as you've seen from that particular place. Because no matter what anybody tells you, we lead our lives in a location, and the location that we lead our lives, and the

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region, the place, the city, the country, determines our experience of life, determines our perspective. And we have to honor the sense of locality, as it were, in literature and when you take that away, and when all literary reputations and ideas

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are created thousands of miles away, I think it enervates literature. Morton Marcus: Well, the one thing also that's very interesting is that the East Coast sort of looks down on the

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West Coast, they make fun of us. It's the idea -- and I mean, I got an East Coast agent and so I go back there -- and it's the idea like nothing really serious comes out of the West Coast, they're always so laid back and not thinking about anything,

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dude. And I mean, that really is the editor's opinions. And a lot of the people who have moved into the big companies now, which are much less literary than they were, are usually young, young graduate students from East Coast colleges.

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Dana Gioia: Yes. Well, it's a network of- I mean, I'm a native Californian, my mother is a native Californian, you know. And I've been back living in Sonoma County for the last five years, but I spent twenty years in New York. And I was very much

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of an insider in a lot of, you know, of New York literary life. And they don't take California seriously. They haven't read many West Coast writers. They, you know, they don't consider anybody out in the West very much serious. And, you know,

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it's, you know, it's a kind- I mean, the classic New Yorker cover, you know, that everybody knows of Manhattan and things like this, you know. It's an absolutely accurate representation of the average New York intellectual's

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worldview, insofar as the West Coast is concerned. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Dana Gioia: But part of it is that, in New York, literature is a blood sport. And, you know, there's a kind of of intensity

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and pugnacity that is brought to it there that, you know, in the West Coast, you know, I think we're a little bit more civilized. Morton Marcus: Now, it certainly helps one. I know that I've been

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to several literary colonies, and I mean, I just- I couldn't wait to get out of there. I mean, the pettiness and this pugnacity were just unbelievable. It wasn't aimed at me necessarily, but it was aimed at each other, and it was not

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what I considered the literary life to be. Dana Gioia: Yeah, but you know, our challenge in California is not to complain about the East, even though I'm doing that, it's to create an alternative.

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Dana Gioia: To create the means of publishing, of talking about Morton Marcus: Yeah. literature, of criticism, of kind of creating an audience. And I think we need to do that better. I think that

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Californians have gotten very complacent, you know, about their own importance. And we really do need to- if nothing else to bring a whole new generation of readers, you know, into poetry, into serious fiction, into theater, and

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that's the challenge, I think. Morton Marcus: Well- and that was from a telephone interview with Dana Gioia, which went on, and in which he would read part of, "The Grapes of Wrath," to show John Steinbeck's poetic use

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of prose and how the early poetry that we're talking about here really comes into his later work and some of his most famous work as well. What about some of the things that he said? We're sitting here with Kevin Hearle who has set up this panel with

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Dana Gioia, who you just heard, and Terry Beers, which we'll be meeting on -- we gave the wrong date -- it's on August 4th from 3:15 at the Steinbeck Center during this 20th- the 20th Steinbeck Festival and this will be "Steinbeck and Poetry." What

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about some of the things that Dana was saying on there, Kevin? Kevin Hearle: Oh, I think what he was saying about Steinbeck being a popular writer is definitely true and it's also reflected, in some extent, in the poets that Steinbeck loved.

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One of the store- one of the stories that really fascinated me when I discovered it about a month ago and looking over the new released letters, was he was writing to his older sister about having gone to Carl Sandburg's 85th birthday party.

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And he said, "What a wonder the man is. I don't understand why I won the prize and he hasn't." And this was within a year or two after he won the Nobel Prize, so it's clear that's the prize he was talking about. So I mean, we know- it's interesting

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who he valued and that he valued someone who is himself a populist. Morton Marcus: Yeah, later on, we're going to talk to Terry Beers, and he's going to talk a little bit about more and more

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detail about the relationship with Jeffers who obviously is living within less than fifty, sixty miles of him. What else about what Dana said? Kevin Hearle: Well, I think also what he was saying about

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literary reputation and the institution of literature in California, as opposed to the rest of the country, is spot on. I think the problem of who- I mean, he was talking about literature being a conversation between a writer and a reader,

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and the problem is writers don't get to just speak directly to readers except on radio shows, such as yours; they have to go through publishers and the publishing industry really is not in California.

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Morton Marcus: Now, did Steinbeck have these problems? I mean, was he finding this? We know, you and I know that he went to New York when he was unknown, he did odd jobs. Well, what was one of the things that he was responsible for was a hod

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carrier? Kevin Hearle: Madison Square Garden. Morton Marcus: Yeah, the Madison Square Garden, he was one of the builders of that. And he worked with Orson Welles when they both

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mopped floors in New York City hospitals. And then came back via the Panama Canal to alifornia, and there he got the tories of Jean Laffitte and published his first novel, which is, "Cup of Gold." How difficult was it for him to break this

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East Coast/West Coast barrier? Kevin Hearle: Well, I don't know to what extent he thought of it as that barrier early on in his career. Early on in his career, he just thought of it as a barrier to get published. I

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don't think- I can't remember off the top of my head any examples of him specifically saying, no, they just don't want to publish me because I'm a California boy. But certainly, in the critical reception later on, that was a problem for him,

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in that critics didn't want to take him seriously. There is a tradition in this country of treating anything about rural America as being somehow less serious than something about- than about Central America, than the area that's considered

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crucially America. Massachusetts has this license plates slogan, "Spirit of America." Well, excuse me, but that makes me sick every time I see it. Morton Marcus: You sound like a Californian, Kevin.

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Kevin Hearle: Five generations back, okay. But there was this way in which Steinbeck is treated as a regionalist. And Nathaniel Hawthorne is treated as if he's true- as if he's truly American and Steinbeck somehow isn't.

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Morton Marcus: Regionalism is conducive to saying secondary. Kevin Hearle: Yes, that's- and it seems to me that to think of Hawthorne as anything but a deeply involved New England writer is a mistake. And so- but also to think of Steinbeck as

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being someone who's not deeply American is as large a mistake. And so, I think that's been a big problem in Steinbeck's reputation, and it's been easy to dismiss him as merely a California writer. Two days after he won the Nobel Prize,

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The New York Times ran an editorial by Arthur Mizener, with the headline, "Does A Moral Vision of the 30s Deserve the Nobel Prize?" And their verdict was no. That's appalling. I mean, I- this is a great writer, I don't care who you are, where

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you're coming from, if you can't read the- if you read, "The Grapes of Wrath," from beginning to end, and you don't realize that this is a great book, it says more about you than it does about, "The Grapes of Wrath."

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Morton Marcus: That's very good. We got around another minute before this half hour anyway is over. Could you read us part of, or a whole poem by Steinbeck, these things which have just come to light and which really formed the impetus for the panel

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that we have been talking about that will take place at the Steinbeck Festival Number 20, the third through the sixth of August and this panel is on the fourth from 3:15 in the afternoon at the Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

00:30:16.350 - 00:30:27.930

Kevin Hearle: Yeah, I mean, since we only have a minute before the break, let me read just the first stanza of one poem and I'll be reading the whole thing from- at the barbecue at the Steinbeck Festival on Saturday night, and

00:30:27.930 - 00:30:42.770

it seemed appropriate since this is a poem about the Steinbeck family barbecue: Oh, heavenly muse, whose hottie dignity consigned it is to lettered recipe. Enrich my pen and scaleless make my eyes, that

00:30:42.770 - 00:30:59.300

I may sing, not sickly songs of pies, but rather that immortal I may make the crisp, the juicy, double-jointed steak. And let me paint in post ethereal hue, the fiendish pleasure of the barbecue.

00:31:00.780 - 00:31:15.240

Morton Marcus: And that, of course, is just one of the many tones in these Steinbeck poems that you'll be hearing. We will be back talking with Kevin Hearle, the organizer of the panel, and by phone with Terry Beers and other panelists. Right

00:31:15.240 - 00:31:28.200

now, we're going back to our music, which is the Red Pony Suite by Aaron Copeland. And of course, the Red Pony is a series taken from a series of short stories by Steinbeck called, "The Long Valley and Other Stories."

00:32:41.980 - 00:32:59.620

And this is the part of our show where we do public service announcements and we only have one this week. At the National Writers Union, Local several- 7 readings at the Barnyard in Carmel, Friday, August the 11th at 7:30pm, Billy Barbera and

00:32:59.620 - 00:33:18.280

Rick Masten will be reading. That's on August the 11th at 7:30pm Thunderbird Bookshop in the Barnyard Carmel, there is an admission price. We are talking tonight, and this should be another PSA here, of Steinbeck Festival Number 20, which will

00:33:18.280 - 00:33:32.350

take place from the third to the sixth of August at the great Steinbeck Center in Salinas. I certainly would plan on being over there. If you've never been over there, it's a wonderful museum which really evokes the Salinas that has been gone for

00:33:32.350 - 00:33:49.660

quite some time now. But for our interest here at KUSP, because we are sponsoring, or one of the sponsors, for the 20th Steinbeck Festival, there is going to be a panel on poetry called "Steinbeck and Poetry." Tonight we are talking with Kevin

00:33:49.660 - 00:34:08.380

Hearle, the poet, member of the editorial, member of the board of directors of the Steinbeck Center, and editor of the last revised edition of, "The Grapes of Wrath." And we are talking to him and talking about the panel. And we've already talked to one

00:34:08.380 - 00:34:21.790

of the panelists by phone, we'll talk to another one by phone in a few minutes. Kevin, why don't you tell us a little more, maybe read another poem by Steinbeck. This is, generally speaking, the young Steinbeck and then the older Steinbeck who wrote love

00:34:21.790 - 00:34:36.010

poems to his second wife, poems to his mother as well, I believe, Kevin Hearle: Right. Let's go with- here's perhaps his most accomplished poem, at least in my opinion, from beginning to

00:34:36.010 - 00:34:55.730

end. And it's one that he sent his parents from Stanford so we can date it reasonably well, probably the early 1920s. There was a beast, a scarlet loathsome beast, a crown upon his many horned head, draws softer legions from the most and

00:34:55.730 - 00:35:14.630

least, and rules the living, and creates the dead. And on the beast, there sits a queen of Earth, a mighty monarch of triumphant shame, whose days of coming- whose day of coming was at Adams birth, who lives to manufacture and to maim. The

00:35:14.630 - 00:35:33.050

woman's bosom is the morning rose that hides its tender beauty from the light. The woman's eyes are still the jealous foes of latticed city skies, more blue than bright. Upon the beast, her mantle falls and folds, and scarlet they are

00:35:33.050 - 00:35:51.140

blended one with one, and scarlett is the scimitar she holds to slash the laggards while the race is run. And on her lips, there is a hint of hells, and in her eyes, a promise of despair, despair that with its icy fingers quells the

00:35:51.140 - 00:36:06.470

icy spirit in its icy layer. Morton Marcus: And, you know, you don't associate that kind of imagery or symbolism with Steinbeck. But that's because people really don't pay attention to the Steinbeck who's

00:36:06.470 - 00:36:19.450

not the regionalit. But tell us a little bit about him and what Joseph Campbell said. Kevin Hearle: Well, just, I mean, he loved mythology. He said he wasn't a realist. He said he was a fabulist. But

00:36:19.870 - 00:36:33.580

Joseph Campbell said about Steinbeck and their friend Ricketts, and Ricketts, that he learned more from them than they learned from him about mythology. Morton Marcus: That is really quite odd.

00:36:33.690 - 00:36:49.590

Kevin Hearle: Oh, it's quite- I mean, a bit of praise. And that does apply specifically here because, interestingly, after the poem, Steinbeck has a little note to his parents, and he says, "That hasn't been handed in yet. He will probably tell me

00:36:50.010 - 00:37:05.640

that it is immoral and then I shall feel it necessary to tell him that it is merely the Bible put into verse." He loved- think of, "The Grapes of Wrath," how much biblical symbolism there is in, "The Grapes of Wrath."

00:37:07.100 - 00:37:23.030

Morton Marcus: Well, you know, I mean, when I was a young man, if I ever was young, I went to see Viva Zapata, which he wrote the script for one of Marlon Brando's great jobs and one of Anthony Quinn's. I mean, that's the real impetus behind Quinn's

00:37:23.030 - 00:37:40.670

career. Elia Kazan directed. And I mean, this really is a fable. It goes well beyond the story of Zapata and it's- the language just keeps rising and becomes more and more rhapsodic until those last lines at the end. And then, of course, he wrote a

00:37:40.670 - 00:37:50.930

whole novel that was a very important influence on me, which was, "The Pearl." Kevin Hearle: Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: Beautiful musical language in that. So, poetry was

00:37:50.930 - 00:38:06.140

continually in his prose all the time. You know, maybe now's the time to go to Terry Beers and- unless you want to say something else before we get into that. Kevin Hearle: I'm happy to hear what Terry has to say, and mayb

00:38:06.140 - 00:38:16.830

that'll tell me something else should read Morton Marcus: Okay. Well, let me just introduce who Terry is. Terry Beers is an Associ te Professor of English at Sa ta Clara University. He is he former executive director of

00:38:16.830 - 00:38:30.510

he Robinson Jeffers Associati n, and the author of, "A Thousa d Graceful Subtleties: Rhet ric in the Poetry of Robinson effers." He is currentl working on an antholog of California landscape writi g to be called, "Unfolding B

00:38:30.510 - 00:38:47.280

auty: Celebrating California La dscapes," which is due out in ctober from Heyday Books and I'l talk to him about this Heyday ook project on the the phone But before we get into thi interview, I want people to re lize: here, you have Steinbe

00:38:47.280 - 00:39:08.490

k in Salinas, and forty miles a ay or so is this other giant of merica who is Robinson Jeffers who is also, you know, immer ed in this landscape of Carmel- onterey as Steinbeck is immersed in Salinas-Monterey. So that b comes the point of this con

00:39:08.490 - 00:39:16.810

ersation. Here is Terry Beers y phone, again, tw Hello, Terry. Terry Beers: Hey, Mort, how are you doing? Morton Marcus: Fine, fine. Thanks for consenting to this

00:39:16.810 - 00:39:34.420

interview. I just introduced you on the air, by the way, by pointing out that, among other things, you were the executive director of the Robinson Jeffers Association. And that is interesting to me because, obviously, when we think of

00:39:34.420 - 00:39:49.810

California writers from this area, of writers of national prominence, the first people who come into our minds are Robinson Jeffers and Steinbeck. What was the relationship, if any, between them?

00:39:50.860 - 00:40:04.330

Terry Beers: Well, a slight relationship, at least personally. They didn't know each other well, but they apparently did meet occasionally. Steinbeck's biographer mentions one time when Steinbeck had returned to

00:40:04.330 - 00:40:19.600

Monterey that the Jeffers, both Robinson and Yuna, had come by to visit and to sort of welcome him back to the area. So they had met, but they certainly didn't know themselves very well. In preparing for this, I talked to Jim Karman and he's

00:40:19.600 - 00:40:38.410

doing the collected letters of Robinson Jeffers, and he tells me that he has found nothing between Steinbeck and Jeffers in his research. So certainly, you know, a slight acquaintance but nothing that was a very deep friendship, or anything that led

00:40:38.410 - 00:40:49.570

to any exchange of correspondence, it seems. Morton Marcus: They were very different people. Terry Beers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And I think that sort of explains it. How would

00:40:49.570 - 00:40:59.770

you sort of give a thumbnail sense of their different personalities? Terry Beers: Well, in some ways, I kind of disagree with you. Morton Marcus: Okay, good.

00:41:00.410 - 00:41:17.390

Terry Beers: They were both people who didn't particularly like the limelight in a way. Steinbeck had his foibles, I suppose, in Sag Harbor in New York, but for the most part, you know, that they preferred to live close to the land, they

00:41:17.390 - 00:41:36.410

preferred to be at home with their work and things like that. Steinbeck more than Jeffers, obviously, in his later career decided that he was more interested in writing probably a more humanistic kind of work than Jeffers ever did. Jeffers

00:41:36.410 - 00:41:52.550

is famous for his inhumanisms, the idea that the human beings have to be integrated with nature and should look to the natural world into the landscape before they look to themselves. And he was concerned that human beings were too concerned with

00:41:53.030 - 00:42:10.010

their own conventions and religious aspects rather than looking at nature. And you know, Steinbeck, I think, had a similar idea but I think that he never took it quite as far as Jeffers did. I hope that answers your question.

00:42:10.060 - 00:42:29.290

Morton Marcus: Yeah, no, I was thinking more in personality. It just seems to me that Steinbeck was a hard drinker, and in that way, a very gregarious fellow. The sense that I get of Jeffers was that he was very withdrawn, much into his whole family unit.

00:42:29.480 - 00:42:41.720

Terry Beers: Well, he certainly was withdrawn into the family unit, but at the same time, he could be quite convivial. And I think it took a long time for him to warm up to people. And maybe there's an essential difference, I don't know.

00:42:43.040 - 00:42:59.120

Jeffers- there's a story told about Henry Miller coming to visit Jeffers at Tor House, but the two of them took a very long time before they actually began to sort of warm to each other and to begin to converse. And I think that once Jeffers was more

00:42:59.120 - 00:43:11.840

at home with people, he could be quite outgoing. But but it did take some doing to get under his skin and to get him, I think, interested in you, and perhaps that is different from Steinbeck.

00:43:13.880 - 00:43:31.520

Morton Marcus: They were in very similar- they were men with big visions. I mean, they had a large vision of the world that, we were talking to Dana before during the interview. And he said that, you know, that these were men with visions, and I

00:43:31.520 - 00:43:49.070

certainly agree with him on that. But so much, not like the little domestic visions that so many writers pursue today, it was a time of big vision during the 30s and big social as well as, you know, metaphysical visions of what the world was,

00:43:49.070 - 00:44:06.830

and that was the tradition even that these novels were coming out of. But let's go on to something else. Do you think that Steinbeck read Jeffers' poetry? Terry Beers: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Steinbeck, at the

00:44:06.830 - 00:44:23.960

time he was working on, "To A God Unknown," was part of a group that included you know, Ed Ricketts, of course, and Joseph Campbell and Steinbeck's wife, Carol. And she brought back "Roan Stallion" for the group to read and to discuss. Steinbeck

00:44:25.250 - 00:44:40.970

mentions in a letter when he was writing, "To A God Unknown," that he thought that Robinson Jeffers was going to come from Pittsburgh and actually write the land, that what Steinbeck was trying to do in that particular novel was to create

00:44:40.970 - 00:44:55.040

his people and his landscape and he thought that Jeffers would do it with after "Roan Stallion," but he felt he never did. So he certainly was reading Jeffers quite carefully, perhaps with a sense of competition. You know, here's this guy who's, you know,

00:44:55.040 - 00:45:12.740

at that time far more famous than Steinbeck, in 1932 Jeffers has his face plastered on the cover of Time Magazine and Steinbeck is very much aware of Jeffers' reputation and, as a matter of fact, had referred to or had in his personal

00:45:12.740 - 00:45:23.130

collection, according to some Steinbeck scholars, I think nine different volumes of Jeffers' poetry. Morton Marcus: Wow. Terry Beers: So I mean, clearly he was reading Jeffers very

00:45:23.130 - 00:45:40.290

carefully and Lawrence Clark Powell said that Steinbeck had once told him that he thought that Steinbeck thought that Jeffers should have won the Nobel Prize. So clearly, even if they only knew each other very slightly, Steinbeck's personal

00:45:40.290 - 00:46:00.230

regard for Jeffers' work was long lasting and I think quite genuine. And I think he also felt some type of competition. Morton Marcus: Yeah, we're talking about now Steinbeck as the poet, which is emerged in several volumes that people have

00:46:00.230 - 00:46:15.870

found. How do you think his poetry was influenced by Jeffers? Terry Beers: From what I can tell, not very much at all. Perhaps Dana might disagree with me on this, I really don't know.

00:46:15.870 - 00:46:33.390

But from my reading of the few poems that I've looked at, that Steinbeck penned, the meters seem to be relatively conventional. And they certainly weren't trying to do the long narrative kinds of lines of Jeffers' and even Jeffers'

00:46:33.390 - 00:46:49.290

lyrics are, you know, far more- what I want to say is, Jeffers' mature lyrics are far tougher than the kinds of poems that I saw Steinbeck writing in that small collection. I think, you know, when we're talking about the influence of Jeffers on

00:46:49.290 - 00:47:06.960

Steinbeck, it has to do, I think, as much with ideas and with a certain kind of shared sympathy to landscape rather than something that would emerge, I think in the technique of the work. And I don't know from the few poems that I've

00:47:06.960 - 00:47:21.300

read of Steinbeck's that I would be able to say that, you know, there was a definite kind of influence there. I certainly don't see one. The kind of themes that have emerged in the Steinbeck poetry don't seem to be the kind of themes that

00:47:21.300 - 00:47:38.280

Jeffers treated very deeply after his first couple of volumes of poetry. "Flagons and Apples and Californians," and Jeffers' readers just generally sort of don't look at those nearly as carefully as the later work. They certainly look at

00:47:38.280 - 00:47:58.410

them in terms of understanding Jeffers' genesis as an artist, but not as any sort of mature work. It's something that is more in the line of someone trying to find a vision, find a voice, find a technique, and that wouldn't come until,

00:47:58.440 - 00:48:15.490

"Tamar." Morton Marcus: You know, in a way, they're really sort of fighting over the same soil and fighting to get from it their reputations, if I can be so crude and crass. And I just

00:48:15.490 - 00:48:32.470

picked that up from, you know, that Steinbeck may have felt in competition with Jeffers. And therefore, let us get into this idea of how they used the landscape and, "To a God Unknown," on Steinbeck's part and then Jeffers for his part,

00:48:32.470 - 00:48:44.400

and even Steinbeck in later works, you know, like, "East of Eden," and things like that. Terry Beers: Yeah, well, "East of Eden," you know, it's- I always thought of that as a remarkable book. I know that

00:48:44.400 - 00:49:02.100

it's not always thought of as Steinbeck's best work, but that opening section where he is describing the Salinas Valley is astounding to me. In some ways, if you wouldn't say directly influenced by Jeffers, that reminds me of Jeffers. And the

00:49:02.100 - 00:49:20.040

reason it reminds me of Jeffers, as well as passages of, "To A God Unknown," it's that sense of fine detail in the landscape, the attention that the writer brings to it that just lets you know that it's someone who's looked at every detail

00:49:20.040 - 00:49:40.260

carefully, and that knows that very well. The- In, "To A God Unknown," which is a story about a man who moves from the East Coast to the West Coast and homesteads and eventually brings out his brothers and their family and settles in the Ohlone

00:49:40.260 - 00:49:59.640

Valley. And when that main character, Joseph Wayne is first coming into that valley, he comes across this ridge top and it's laid out before him, and he talks about seeing the live oaks, and he notices the animals that are there, he sees a boar

00:49:59.640 - 00:50:16.680

eating a pig. And what really grabs me about that, coming from the standpoint of someone who reads Jeffers, is that he doesn't judge this. I mean, here's this apparently, you know, sort of natural act that at first seems- seems sort of

00:50:16.680 - 00:50:36.660

terrifying and merciless. And what comes back to my mind is the last couple of lines of a poem by Jeffers called "Fire on the Hills." And in this poem, there's an eagle that is using a brush fire to beat game and he's falling along the brush fire and

00:50:36.660 - 00:50:51.360

he's gorging himself. And the poet sees this eagle and the last couple of lines of the poem are, "the terror that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy." And it's that distinction between something that's a natural process even

00:50:51.360 - 00:51:05.370

though it's terrifying and it assaults human sensibility, it's a distinction of that between human sentimentality about the natural world that I see in both Steinbeck and Jeffers, and certainly in, "To A God Unknown."

00:51:05.960 - 00:51:18.890

Morton Marcus: I think that's a really great definition and a way of looking at them because they seem so California that -- I don't conclude Southern California with this -- they seem so California because they are bringing stories out of this

00:51:18.890 - 00:51:33.230

landscape, out of the natural process. And certainly, when I moved here, this was the thing that so astounded me, coming from the East as well. This also gets us on to something that Dana and I touched on, which is the idea of the California

00:51:33.230 - 00:51:51.080

writer. And although the writer from the West, and in particular we're interested in California, really sort of getting a voice now, as the East seems to disregard this voice more and more, but won't be able to because the numbers of people

00:51:51.080 - 00:52:07.070

are really coming out here. Now, I know that you have been connected in a very interesting way- or actually Santa Clara where you teach has been interested in a very interesting way, joining with Heyday Books and starting to bring out a

00:52:07.070 - 00:52:19.520

series of books about California. And you yourself now have just edited several of them, one of them's called, "California Literary Landscapes." Why don't you tell us a little bit about all this?

00:52:19.930 - 00:52:33.730

Terry Beers: Well, it's a wonderful opportunity for our university. It's a wonderful opportunity, I think, for Heyday Books. Malcolm Margolin, the publisher, had long wanted to bring out a series of California reprints of literature and of

00:52:33.760 - 00:52:46.450

history. And he asked me if I wanted to work on it with him, and I said that I would like to. And rather than look for grants or other sorts of ways of being able to fund the project, we took it to Santa Clara. And Santa Clara, as you may know, is

00:52:46.450 - 00:53:02.230

the oldest university in California. So I took it back to my department, the English department, Dick Osberg there and to our dean, Dean Fasseon(?) and basically sold them on helping to underwrite this idea, since I thought that our

00:53:02.230 - 00:53:16.270

university had a special responsibility for keeping California's legacy alive and literature and history. So we were able to work out this partnership. We have three books coming out in October. One is, "The California Landscape," a

00:53:16.270 - 00:53:38.140

book that I've edited. We're redoing, well, we're publishing a new edition of Bayer Taylor's 1850 book, "Eldorado," and Bayer Taylor you probably know was a reporter on the Tribune. Horace Greeley sent him out to report on the Gold Rush for the paper

00:53:38.140 - 00:53:53.470

and, "Eldorado," was the result of that work. And we're also bringing back some stories with some unpublished material by Toshio Mori, and this is very exciting. Toshio Mori was the first Japanese-American to publish a book of short stories

00:53:53.890 - 00:54:11.890

in the United States. Most of these are set in the East Bay, and we also are planning at this point to include an unpublished novella in the collection. So we're very excited about being able to work on California's legacy to bring back books that

00:54:12.040 - 00:54:26.020

people remember but don't often have the opportunity to buy any longer outside of specialty shops or special order. So what we're trying to do is to sort of, perhaps even redefine part of California's legacy.

00:54:26.450 - 00:54:40.880

Morton Marcus: It's good, it's really great. And I think that this is going to happen more and more as people really begin to discover the richness, that is new people moving into the areas, really discover the richness of this almost mythical

00:54:43.250 - 00:54:52.040

state that we're in, in more ways than one. Terry Beers: Oh, Mort, I tell you the more I read, the more I discover, and the more I am just astonished at the diversity of voices.

00:54:52.070 - 00:55:00.440

Morton Marcus: Yes, that's it. Terry Beers: Amazing work that we simply don't read because we don't it have anymore. Morton Marcus: Well, Terry, you know, one of these days, we're

00:55:00.440 - 00:55:15.410

just gonna have to have you on the show talking about Jeffers, talking about poetry, and talking about California literature. Unfortunately, this is a very short interview concerned with the Steinbeck Festival. And I hate to break it

00:55:15.410 - 00:55:28.700

off here, but we will be talking again. And I hope the festival has a million people up at the panel with you, Dana, and Kevin. It's just going to be marvelous. Terry Beers: Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate

00:55:28.700 - 00:55:37.280

the opportunity to talk to you. Morton Marcus: Great, I'll be calling again. Terry Beers: Okay, great, Mort. Morton Marcus: And that was an interview, telephone interview,

00:55:37.280 - 00:55:54.050

with Terry Beers, Professor of English at University of Santa Clara, who will be one of the panel members. The other is Dana Gioia, and our guest tonight who has put this panel together and will be in charge of the panel, which is Kevin Hearle, the poet

00:55:54.080 - 00:56:04.760

and member of the board at the Steinbeck Center. Kevin Hearle: Actually, I'm not on the board at this time because I'm on the editorial board of the Steinbeck Newsletter, which is at San Jose State.

00:56:04.790 - 00:56:18.010

Morton Marcus: Good, glad we cleared that. What about that interview, and what more would you like to say as unfortunately, this hour has scampered away from us? Kevin Hearle: Well, mostly I'd agree with Terry, I think, but

00:56:18.010 - 00:56:36.670

there are a few points I would go further than he did. He said that Steinbeck had expected that Jeffers would do the land after he read "Roan Stallion," but that he later on decided that Jeffers didn't. And I think the difference is that Steinbeck

00:56:36.700 - 00:56:55.300

always felt that Jeffers was approaching California as a place to escape from civilization, and whereas for Steinbeck, and for someone such as myself, California is what we know of civil, I mean, is where we learned of civilization.

00:56:55.330 - 00:57:04.510

Morton Marcus: I mean Steinbeck was born and raised here, and Jeffers is coming from the East Coasts. Again, here we go again with that, yeah. Kevin Hearle: But so for Jeffers, there's always the

00:57:04.510 - 00:57:28.000

sense in which, I mean, at least as I read the poems, and I think as Steinbeck read the poems, that he loved this land and he understood- and he got the lesson about going past human sentimentality and writing about the animal- about human beings

00:57:28.000 - 00:57:45.130

as animals, and animals as animals, and not being sentimental about natural selection. I think Steinbeck definitely appreciated that in Jeffers, but I think there was a point at which he felt: Okay, Jeffers though, is still looking

00:57:45.130 - 00:58:04.090

at this landscape as an escape from the civilization rather than as a part of civilization, and that was a fundamental difference. And so I think, that being the case, that's probably the point at which Steinbeck decided that Jeffers never did

00:58:04.090 - 00:58:20.800

the land. But also the other thing that Terry was talking about was that he said he doesn't see Jeffers' influence in Steinbeck, in his poetry- in Steinbeck's poetry. And I think that's clear, at least in what we have of it, because as I

00:58:20.800 - 00:58:37.900

said, there's a basically a twenty year gap between the student poems that he wrote at Stanford, and then what we have from the poems that he wrote to his second wife, and I mean, it's a suite of love poems, so you're not going to get vultures

00:58:37.900 - 00:58:52.900

descending and eating- Morton Marcus: -the carcasses. Okay, we're going to wind this up. Any last words that you may have or part of a Steinbeck poem?

00:58:54.100 - 00:59:11.610

Kevin Hearle: Sure, let me read one, just a brief bit from one of the poems to his second wife: In the morning you lay one arm soft under cheek, lips full bloom, eyebrows high in a kind of puzzled wonder, tired,

00:59:12.000 - 00:59:29.220

marvelously. I reach sideways in the night. I must remember these things. I must forget nothing. The harsh words, the gasp, the all and now, the gust of tears. I must forget nothing. And it goes on a little bit longer.

00:59:30.850 - 00:59:51.770

Morton Marcus: We've been talking with Kevin Hearle, who has organized the panel at the 20th Steinbeck Festival which will take place from the third to the sixth of August, which is this weekend. And then on the fourth of August, which is in

00:59:51.860 - 01:00:13.790

the middle of the Steinbeck Festival, there will be this panel we've been talking about tonight, Steinbeck and Poetry from 3:15 to 4:45. If you'd like more information on this festival which KUSP in part is sponsoring, call 831, which is

01:00:13.890 - 01:00:35.640

our area code, of course, 775-4721. I'll repeat that again 775-4721 to get the Steinbeck Center and I'll tell you all about it. But we're not through on KUSP. On the next show, starting here in just another minute and a half, "From the

01:00:35.730 - 01:00:58.220

Bookshelf," Billie Harris brings us Mark Messersmith, one of the most talented and brilliant actors in the area, reading excerpts from John Steinbeck's, "Tortilla Flat." And I hope you'll stay tuned and hear more of this wonderful novelist who

01:00:58.310 - 01:01:21.640

has given voice to this area so beautifully and so powerfully. I want to thank Howard again for doing great work here, helping us out. And I want to thank Kevin for coming by, and want to welcome in Billie and Mark. This is Mort Marcus, I'll see you in

01:01:21.730 - 01:01:22.840

three weeks.