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Joseph Stroud: [Recorded music playing] Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody this is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show. I'm here tonight with our co-host Dennis Morton. Good evening, Dennis.

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Dennis Morton: Hi there, Mort. Morton Marcus: And we are both going to do a special show, we're sitting alongside on either side of tonight's guest, Joseph Stroud, and as many of you know out there, but maybe

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some people don't, Joe Stroud was the host with me on the Poetry Show for a good ten years. He just since retired from that position, but he has been teaching creative writing and English at Cabrillo College, going on his 30th year now. He

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has nurtured many poets during that time, and at the same time -- and I think he may disagree with me -- more importantly, he is a poet of some prominence whose first two books, "In the Sleep of Rivers," and, "Signatures," were marvelous

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works, the first one coming out in 1974 and the second one, "Signatures," in 1982. This week, his third book, his first book in sixteen years, "Below Cold Mountain," will be issued by the wonderful small press Copper Canyon. Joe, we're

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delighted you've come on to the Poetry Show to kick off this marvelous week for you. And I know and we will talk about the readings that are coming up this week and next week. Welcome back.

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Joseph Stroud: Thank you, Morton. It's a pleasure to be here. Morton Marcus: I'm going to ask you some questions. That was a general introduction, and I also want to say, Dennis, jump in at

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any time. But I'm just going to ask you some strange general questions that I usually ask people and they're questions that new people, people out there who have not taken your classes or have not heard you on this show, would like to know.

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First of all, how did you begin to write? Joseph Stroud: With the alphabet? A, B, C. Morton Marcus: Folks, I should tell you that I was going to try to do this straight but Joe's not going to let me do it.

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Joseph Stroud: I believe the first poem that I ever wrote was a poem to my mother on Mother's Day. I was about maybe eight or nine years old and what impressed me about about it was that when I gave it to her, it made her cry. So that was my

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first- my first poem and my first response to a poem: tears. Morton Marcus: That's great. And what did the tears make you realize? What age was this again? Joseph Stroud: I was about eight or nine, somewhere around in

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there. Morton Marcus: So you realized the power of words. Joseph Stroud: Yeah, my mother happened to really love poetry. She got one of the first recordings of the Caedmon

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recordings of Dylan Thomas reading. So when I was a boy, she would play those- those records. And I would hear Dylan Thomas, the sonorous voice of the great bard himself at an early age. And she also loved to read poetry. Edna St. Vincent

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Millay was among her favorites, and John Keats was another favorite of hers. Morton Marcus: And [cross talk] still? Joseph Stroud: Still, yes. So I grew up listening to poetry. And

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it seemed like a very- just a natural thing to write it; it didn't seem to be a strange thing to do at all. Morton Marcus: I just want to throw this in, not to embarrass you, but as we talk about poetry at such a young age, the picture

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that might be formed by listeners out there would be terrifically incorrect. Joe was an athlete, was athlete of the year at his high school, and he has many different facets to him and that poetry is certainly not the least of them. But let's go

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back to how you started to write and then the question that you've heard me ask many people: what do you want to accomplish in your poems? Joseph Stroud: Oh, I don't know how to answer that in any kind

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of clear, direct way. I suppose that for me, poetry is simply a way into the world. John Logan once said that there are two kinds of writing: one that seeks encounter with the self and one that doesn't. And the kind of writing that interests me, as

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did John Logan who was my teacher, is the kind of writing that does seek encounter with the self. Writing is a process, it's a way of being. It can be meditative, it can be lyrical, it can be many things, but it's how I keep in touch with myself

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and with the world around me. Morton Marcus: Great. Well, that's a great answer. That also, your mentioning of John Logan, leads me to another question which will be interesting to people out there,

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and might not give them the answers they're expecting or even names they're expecting: who are those poets who you find i.e. influential and also who you're reading now and think are important for young poets and other poets to read?

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Joseph Stroud: Well, the list of influential poets is very, very long. The first great influence to me of course was Dylan Thomas. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up listening to him reading on those early Caedmon records. John Keats was a great

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influence. When I got into high school, I got introduced to some of the modernists. T.S. Eliot for one, who made a great impression on me. Theodore Roethke, the great poet from Michigan who moved to the Pacific Northwest, was another

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strong influence in my work. And then just various writers from all over the map, all over the world, different times. A lot of Chinese poets, Du Fu particularly, some Wang Wei, Li Bao, and the Chinese hermit poet Hanshan has exerted a certain

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influence on my work. Of more recent poets, I think Jack Gilbert probably has been very, very influential. Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, John Logan, the list it goes on and on and on. I like a lot of Mary

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Oliver's, the things that she does. Morton Marcus: Good answer. In fact you mentioned the hermit poet, Hanshan, and Hanshan means "cold mountain" and the title of your book is, "Below Cold Mountain." So, could you go a

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little bit into that? Joseph Stroud: Well, Hanshan is a poet. He lived in the Tang Dynasty around the ninth century in China. And he's part of a tradition of a certain kind of Chinese poet. Early in his life,

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he left his marriage, he left his work, left his family, and wandered away and wandered up into the mountains and became a hermit and began writing poems at a place called Cold Mountain, which is where he took his name, Hanshan means "cold mountain."

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And for many, many years, this has fascinated me, the idea of someone who could do that. I feel a strong impulse in myself, I think a lot of writers do, a lot of artists do, to want to get away, to get out of the chaos that they find around

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them. So I used to write a lot of poems to Hanshan addressing certain issues in my life at the time, sort of like letter poems across the centuries. But the reason that the book is titled, "Below Cold Mountain," is a kind of decision, a kind of a

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dialectic actually that I get into with Hanshan in the sense that these poems are not about being off somewhere in a hermitage in the mountains alone, living by myself there; these are poems that come from the world in which you live in

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and I live in and it's that world that finally interests me as a poet. Not that kind of pure aesthetic in the mountains, among the snow, and the cliffs, and the Tao and the Buddhism and so forth.

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Morton Marcus: And yet, and that certainly is- There's also a pun almost in this because though it can be below the mountain, saying that I'm not up there in this airy removed way, below the mountain can also be sort of in one's guts and in that personal

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reaction of the self as well. Joseph Stroud: Yes, I have an earlier- and I want read a poem about that from the first book, "In the Sleep of Rivers," is one of the Hanshan poems. There's a couple of poems to Hanshan in

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there. And this one is -- let me see if I can find it. It's called: POEM TO HAN-SHAN #2 I've come to that age when you abandon everything -- wife,

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home, and friends to begin the solitude of Cold Mountain. I've come all these years to this ignorance, this failure to complete even the simplest of things. Each day I begin. By night, I am stunned back to the empty page while others,

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casually, build their house. I come finally to the orchard, drunk and naked in the rain, being led home by a girl. Cold Mountain, Cold Mountain, is inside me. Morton Marcus: And I think some sense of that is in the title of

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This book is old, this book came out in 1974. That poem must have the book. And you're thumbing through, "The Sleep of Rivers," probably the first time in years as poets do been written around 1967 or '68.

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That early? Even before you hit Santa Cruz? I think in the early 70s, maybe '71, '72? Joseph Stroud: No- Morton Marcus: I remember you were reading Hanshan the first

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couple of years at Cabrillo. Joseph Stroud: Yeah. Dennis! Dennis Morton: Welcome, Joe. Morton Marcus: Dennis isn't talking too much here.

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Dennis Morton: Well, I'd like to back up just a little bit when you were talking about influential poets in your life. One of the things that struck me as you were ticking off those wonderful names is that you in fact don't- To me, you don't

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sound like any of them, which, I mean, is a very high compliment. You have your own, I put quotes around the word, voice, because I know you have some misgivings about that concept of voice. But as I was reading through your book in the last few days, and

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today especially, I just can't think of anybody that you sound like. You just sound like only you. And they're such wonderful poems and I hope that- that before we do too many more interview type questions that we can get you to read some poems

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from your new book, because they're astonishingly beautiful. Morton Marcus: What I would like to do is sort of zeroing into, get into the book now, talk about the structure and then have Joe, as we go through each section, if he wants to do it

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that way, read poems from each section. Joseph Stroud: That's fine with me. Morton Marcus: How's that sound to you? Dennis Morton: Mort, you're at the helm.

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Morton Marcus: [Laughs] The ship is going to be run aground, Dennis. Joseph Stroud: We're sinking. Morton Marcus: At any rate, this book, "Below Cold Mountain,"

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Joe's new book, which we're here to celebrate, really is divided into three sections. Did you have any particular reason in structuring the book in this way? Joseph Stroud: Yes, actually, there's three sections but

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there's a kind of introductory piece called, "Provenance," that's sort of a long ruminative poem about the death of my father. The three sections are: "A Suite For The Common," then a section titled, "Homages, Voices," and then the third

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section, "Crossing Over." The first section consists of poems that are very, very short poems, about six lines in length. And they're just, as the title of the section implies, a suite for the common, they're poems in praise and celebration of the

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ordinary, everyday events, and situations and scenes of my life and the life of friends and people that I love and care about, and sources of books that I'm reading. So it's just a- very much of a combination of all those.

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Morton Marcus: Well, since we're here, let's read some of these. But before you go into it, just briefly, can you talk about them because they are poems in six lines and this is like a form you have given yourself to work in. And I wonder if you'd say

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some words on the ones of these, as far as you're concerned, are the best of the group. There are around thirty of them in here I gather, and I know that there are over a hundred- Joseph Stroud: No, there's sixty of them.

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Morton Marcus: I know there are over a hundred and sixty at what I thought was gonna be the final winnowing, but now a hundred of those are somewhere else also. Joseph Stroud: I wrote about three- a little over three

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hundred all together over a period of about three or four years. I sort of struck on the six line form by accident. I was working on a poem about my father actually, and I fiddled with it for a while and it came in at six lines and it seemed

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fine, and the next day I started another poem -- I write every day -- and that came in at six lines too. And I kept working and another poem came in at around seven or eight, so I winded down to six and I thought, wow, this is

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interesting. This is fun. So it was just something that I started off doing casually, then I couldn't stop. It got to be a real problem, I mean six lines was it. So it's not a tight form but it is-

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Morton Marcus: Not a tight form, but it seems as though the poems alternate between four and five beats a line, I mean, it does have that formality in it, not just in the length of lines. Joseph Stroud: Some are- the lines tend to be, many of them,

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quite long. I also- the form, I cheat a little bit too, sometimes the title will be one of the lines or sometimes the title will be really the ending of the poem so that when you reach the end of the poem, you have to sort of circle back up

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to the title. Dennis Morton: Are you taking requests tonight in the- first section? Joseph Stroud: Sure, absolutely, yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Let's just start reading some of these then. Dennis? Dennis Morton: I especially would like you to read, "After the Opera," on page 32, and on page 39, "Dissolving."

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Joseph Stroud: Oh, yeah. Dennis Morton: And also I think on 39, "No Lexicon." Joseph Stroud: Okay. Dennis Morton: I love those three.

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Joseph Stroud: Oh, great. AFTER THE OPERA Coming out of the theater surrounded by people in elegant clothes, jewelry, all the arias finished, no one able to hold

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the music inside for long, soon enough it's gone, and it's night in the city, it's all neon and noise, the woman you're with stops to adjust her shoe, leans, her body against yours for a moment, balancing.

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The- I guess the impetus of that poem was going to an opera and I love opera. I love the singing and I love the spectacle of it. But I guess what's important apart from all of that is that it doesn't last, and the moments that we have, to me that are

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really the most interesting and the ones that I end up valuing the most, are not the great grand gestures and the beautiful singing, but those very small little moments and touches that we have with each other in our lives.

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Dennis Morton: That's what I loved about that. Though I'd not had that exact experience, it was as if I had had that exact experience. It was so true and accurate. Joseph Stroud: And the other poem that you wanted, Dennis,

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"Dissolving," this poem, the locale for this poem is Varanasi or Banaras, the holy city in Ind a, and it mentions the ghats ar - the word ghats means steps a d it's a certain place near t e Ganges, where corpses a e cremated, and the ashes are th

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n taken out into the river a d strewn across the water. And t also mentions a place called t e Chowk which is like a labyrinthian area of alleys a d small shops and a lot of si k merchants work there. So thi , this poem was title

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DISSOLVING Standing above the ghats, looking down on the river, the bodies burning, my own thoughts burning, remembering the silk merchant in the Chowk unrolling a bolt of cobalt fire over the

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floor, pouring chai into a clay cup, smiling, offering me a nugget of sugar to place under my tongue. Morton Marcus: We are talking to Joe Stroud, and we'll be talking to him for the rest of this hour and you are listening to KUSP.

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Joe, we have to do that every fifteen minutes or so now. That's something that comes up- Joseph Stroud: I remember, 88.9 on your FM dial. Morton Marcus: Yeah, but we have to do it at like every fifteen

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minutes. Morton Marcus: [Laughs] I'd rather get into the poetry. Joseph Stroud: Why is that? There was another one that Dennis wanted. Dennis, if you

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want to comment on that last one, please do. Dennis Morton: I like the the poem immediately following on page 39, "No Lexicon," but I liked "Dissolving" because really, almost everything dissolves in the- in the poem.

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And it strikes me as a very accurate portrait of how the mind works. You look at the burning bodies, they're dissolving and instantly that summons up another memory and it dissolves. And within the memory that has been summoned up is the

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sugar cube which dissolves and it's just the way we are as humans and it just- Morton Marcus: It's also very Hindu and Buddhist because everything dissolves, everything is illusion. And our life

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dissolves as well, we go back to the beginning again with the burning ghats. Joseph Stroud: I think I'm dissolving right now, as a Morton Marcus: [Laughs] Didn't we get you any water?

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matter of fact. Joseph Stroud: You didn't. Morton Marcus: Well, I'll take care of that. Shall we go on to lexicon?

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Joseph Stroud: Sure. NO LEXICON When I arrived, the table had already been set -- plates from China, crystal, silverware, two burning candles. From the

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kitchen the aroma of basmati, cumin, ginger. She stood in the doorway. A summer evening. A feast. To that moment, I brought everything I had, and what I had we have no word for, though some call it hunger.

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Morton Marcus: Great stuff. I mean, it's just such an- [unintelligible]. I don't want to comment, you comment. Go on. Dennis Morton: No, I don't know what to say about that one. I like it very much.

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Morton Marcus: Well, one of the things art does is it surprises, it doesn't give you what you're expecting you're going to hear. And though this is all about eating, it is about much more and the hunger therefore that he comes up with in the end, not

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only is it unexpected, but it has a resonance that means so much more in the meaning of the word, because he's not talking about food, though food comes in here. And to even call it, "No Lexicon," is just this brilliant touch of what language can do

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and how it goes beyond the words themselves. Dennis Morton: Mort, that's pretty good. Morton Marcus: Every once in a while I come up with stuff like this. These six-line poems are- they are not small gems, they

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are very large gems. Dennis Morton: There's so many of them. This is what amazed me about the book. I've had the privilege of reading many of these before. Joe often would bring some of these, many of the

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poems in this book, actually, into the workshops that he teaches. And I hope that sometime tonight we could actually ask you a few questions about the the workshops, they've become somewhat of an institution in the area in the

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community. Morton Marcus: Absolutely. And n fact, part of that is that of ourse Joe does writing with the lass and is inspired by what e's having the students do, the same, not lessons but you know,

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exercises and things. And then they go beyond that, they make it into poems, made it into a ot of poems in this book, actual y. Yeah, I am hoping, and I go eyond the book here, that there ill be others of the six-lin poems that we will see in

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nother book, or other Joseph Stroud: Well, it's interesting. When I finished doing these, I did so many of them I just didn't want to do them anymore. But this year, this spring, I've been doing

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another very small series, but they're not six lines, they're five lines, little five-line poems which are a bit trickier. I must say they're a little bit more difficult to do. Morton Marcus: Well, I would want to see that. But I'm

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talking about the six-line poems you've already written. Joseph Stroud: Oh, yes Morton Marcus: Because you see, there- Joseph Stroud: The other ones-

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Morton Marcus: -are many of them. Yeah, the ones that are not in this book, there's so many. Dennis Morton: A lot of my favorites didn't make it into the book.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah. I mean, I was surprised when you know, you only came up with sixty, but yeah, I'm sure my eyebrows went up and then fell off or something like that because as you said, it starts out with more than three hunred. And I

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think one of the versions I saw the one was one hundred and sixty. And I did not think very many of them could be cut, but there you are. Why don't you read us some that you are particularly fond of?

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Joseph Stroud: Well, let me change the tone of some of them. One of the things that this little form allowed me to do, first of all, it took a lot of pressure off. I felt that when I began a six-line poem that I didn't have to think that I had

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to write a great poem. In fact, I knew I couldn't write anything worthwhile in six lines, so in a very peculiar way, it freed me a lot. Morton Marcus: How wrong poets can be, right Dennis?

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Joseph Stroud: It's some psychological game I'm sure that forms play with one another, I mean, play on writers. But what it also allowed me to do was to explore tones in- in poetry. I'd never really written about- for- humorous things.

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Dennis Morton: Yes, having observed you in these workshops for years now, I surely saw that you began to play in your poetry in a way that I'd never seen before, very successfully with that compressed six lines.

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Joseph Stroud: What's the language requirement on the air these days? Morton Marcus: Anyone out there who is offended by explicit language or language of a sexual nature, Mr. Stroud is about to

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read something that may offend your ears. How's that? Dennis Morton: [Laughs] Joseph Stroud: I'm just quoting somebody here. Now this one is titled:

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WHAT SHE TOLD ME IN ORLAND, CALIFORNIA, and this is not me speaking. This is the woman speaking. My son's a sheriff. He'll find a dead possum on the road -- if it's male he'll cut the penis off -- there's a little bone in

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there -- then he'll boil the meat off it, and stick this sharp penis bone in his hatband. Uses it for a toothpick. I swear to you it's a man's world. But if I'm ever reborn -- a snake, a kangaroo -- whatever -- it damn well better not have a penis

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along with it. Morton Marcus: I can hear the sirens now. Joseph Stroud: The sirens are coming to get us. What's this pornographic stuff being written? "Matar la Noche," Matar

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la noche is a phrase that you get to hear in Madrid, it means to kill the night. And it's a phrase that the Madrilenos use about their nightlife which doesn't end until around four or five in the morning. In fact, you'll see lines and- of cars at

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that time in the morning. You think people are coming to work but they're not, they're going home, so this is about that. MATAR LA NOCHE I'm in a taverna eating tapas and drinking a glass of wine

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listening to Pepe tell me of the Spanish way. Each moment is to be savored. We drink to make the mind sparkle, not to get drunk, like those Germans yesterday -- two hours and the night was finished for them. They're very good at making money, but we can

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teach them how to spend it. And there's other various funny ones in there as well. For me that was a real change because I hadn't written poems in that tone before.

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Morton Marcus: How about one more before we take our break? Joseph Stroud: Okay, let's see if I can- Morton Marcus: And while Joe is looking, we are talking with Joseph Stroud and we will be talking with him in the second

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half hour of the Poetry Show. You're listening to KUSP radio. Joseph Stroud: I'll do a little interesting one that doesn't have any punctuation and just is one long suspended sentence. It's called:

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CHAOS THEORY: EQUATION The sun multiplied by bees equals honey and the addition of leaves with rain is the sum of nights in summer when pines ooze the resin time turns to amber on the necklace around the throat

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of the woman dividing her past by mornings in the spell of flowers factored by the love marriage mix of yearning and desire. Morton Marcus: Great. Well, we are going to take our break now,

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and we'll be back with Joe Stroud, and we hope you're enjoying it. Take the next several minutes to call your friends and tell them to tune in, we are going to be reading more poems from his just released book, "Below Cold

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Mountain." Joseph Stroud: [Music] Morton Marcus: And this is Mort Marcus once again. You're listening to the Poetry Show and tonight, our guest is Joseph

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Stroud, former co-host with me on the Poetry Show, long time teacher of English literature, literature, and especially creative writing poetry at Cabrillo College. And in fact you will be able to take his classes at Cabrillo College, at

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least for the next several years, and I urge you to do that. I now have to make the public announcements and it is a joy that the only public announcements concern Joseph Stroud this week. And if you are listening on the other side of

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the bay, and if you're up on this side of the bay, just listen closely because the readings start this Thursday on May 7th. Joe Stroud will be reading at the Capitola Book Cafe at 7:30. Again, this Thursday, May 7th, Capitola Book

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Cafe at 7:30. Joe will be reading from the new book we're talking about tonight, "Below Cold Mountain." Then this Friday, the very next day at the Thunderbird Bookstore in Carmel, you people down in the south bay, at 7:30 Joe will be reading

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again from, "Below Cold Mountain." And this is a time for you to really to hear a wonderful poet. The last time I think you read down there must have been what, three or four years ago?

00:33:31.370 - 00:33:44.000

Joseph Stroud: Yeah, I think so. Morton Marcus: And then finally, next Tuesday, not this coming Tuesday, but the Tuesday afterwards on May 12th at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, Joe will be reading with Charis Wilson, the

00:33:44.000 - 00:33:59.000

former wife and model of Edward Weston, the great American photographer, who is also comin out with a book of memories, an that should be wonderful, a d together they should e wonderful. Charis is an o d friend of Joe's and I urge y

00:33:59.000 - 00:34:11.600

u to make one, if not all three f these readings. I think it wi l be very rewarding. But you kno , we've been talking abou Joseph Stroud: Charis' book is really wonderful. It's- yeah, I just saw a copy of it the other day. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

00:34:11.630 - 00:34:26.720

are doing it. And it includes a lot of photographs that many people who are familiar with Weston's work have never seen, a lot of photographs of Weston himself, and Ansel Adams and that whole group that lived down in Carmel and Wildcat Hill and-

00:34:28.100 - 00:34:39.370

for so many years and just- it's a beautifully written book. And Charis is really one of the remarkable person so- Morton Marcus: She is- Joseph Stroud: Of our time, in my life at least. She is an

00:34:39.370 - 00:34:50.150

amazing person. Morton Marcus: And we should say also that today in the Sentinel, there is a marvelous article on her by Peggy Townsend, which everyone should go and read after they listen to this show.

00:34:50.390 - 00:35:04.340

Dennis, we're talking about this book, could you read just some of the comments, just a few of them, there are many of them that have been made on the book by prominent American writers? Dennis Morton: Right, this is before the book has come out,

00:35:04.340 - 00:35:20.560

which is very interesting. One of my favorite American authors is Jim Harrison. And this is what Jim Harrison has to say about, "Below Cold Mountain:" After the first onset of surprise, I read Joseph

00:35:20.620 - 00:35:38.080

Stroud's, "Below Cold Mountain," carefully, twice, the second time as if reliving a grand feast, course by course, seeing the food re-enlivened by the infusion of imagination into memory. I must say, I was dumbfounded. I don't recall when

00:35:38.080 - 00:35:53.350

a poet unknown to me has struck me so deeply. I had the terribly inaccurate sensation that I was young again, and reading one of history's good poets for the first time. The book made nearly all the manuscripts and galleys that passed my way seemed like

00:35:53.350 - 00:36:09.490

thin gruel, indeed. What an achievement. There is a range and amplitude here found among only the very best. There aren't a few high points, but dozens. We don't have here a few isolated mountains but a whole range, a cordillera. I

00:36:09.490 - 00:36:25.720

congratulate you on finding and publishing this true master. Like all of the best poets, Stroud makes the earth again consolable. And, actually, that's- the others are equally laudatory.

00:36:26.050 - 00:36:40.690

Here's a short one from Ted Kooser: This book is remarkable in its splendid completeness. I have never read anything quite like it. I am not a churchly person, but as I read Stroud's poems, I began to understand- as I read

00:36:40.750 - 00:36:53.500

Stroud's poems, I began to understand what taking communion must be like. Here in my hands was not just a very good book, not just the record and symbol of someone's experience, but an entire being, a living man.

00:36:54.350 - 00:37:08.510

Morton Marcus: And if that does not whet your appetite out there in radio land to attend one of the three readings, which I'll announce again at the end of the show, nothing will. So this is an extraordinary moment, certainly for Joe, and I think

00:37:08.510 - 00:37:22.970

for poetry as well. Joey, you want to read any more of those six-line poems or shall we go on to other sections? Joseph Stroud: I think we should just move on. Morton Marcus: Okay. Talk about the second section of the book,

00:37:22.970 - 00:37:37.190

if you would. Joseph Stroud: The second section consists of two kinds of poems, one titled "Homages," which are just poems in praise of various things, "Homage to Night," "Homage to the Word

00:37:37.190 - 00:37:53.390

Hoard," "Homage to Doowop," various things. And then another type of poem in there are what I call voices, sometimes they're translations, or sometimes that- they're the poems inspired by the particular voices of other poets.

00:37:54.980 - 00:38:07.610

Morton Marcus: Okay, now you say some of these translations, because that was a question I had. I was wondering if some of these were imitations and not translations. For example the Jules Supervielle, "Homage to Life," is that an imitation?

00:38:07.610 - 00:38:10.130

Joseph Stroud: A translation, no. Morton Marcus: It is a translation? Joseph Stroud: Translation. Morton Marcus: Oh, okay.

00:38:10.160 - 00:38:23.100

Joseph Stroud: Yes. Morton Marcus: The "Issa," I don't remember reading those Joseph Stroud: No, I mean, I can't really call those translations since I don't, you know, read Japanese but I've

00:38:23.100 - 00:38:36.390

read every version of Issa I think that's ever been written Issas. They sound like they might be imitations. in English. And these are the ones that you don't see very often, that I've sort of transf rmed over into my own voice I su

00:38:36.390 - 00:38:48.480

pose in a way but yeah, th y're versions, I guess would be a better word. I don't kn w if translation would be the xact word fo Morton Marcus: And so then I gather, "Autumn," which is from,

00:38:48.480 - 00:38:58.970

it says from the Man'yoshu, and the "Shards of Sappho," they also are versions? Joseph Stroud: Yes. Morton Marcus: Yeah, okay, that's enough. Why don't we read

00:38:58.970 - 00:39:12.950

some of these, because some of these voices are really marvelous and very big change of tone from either the first or the third section. Joseph Stroud: Let me do the Supervielle, "Homage to Life,"

00:39:12.950 - 00:39:37.910

which- which begins the second section. Jules Supervielle was an interesting poet, he spoke French but he lived in Buenos Aires most of his life, peculiar guy. The person who turned me on to Jules Supervielle, by the way, was Kenneth Rexroth, who

00:39:37.910 - 00:39:52.670

translated some of his stuff. HOMAGE TO LIFE It is good to have chosen the living home and harbored time in a constant heart, to have seen one's hands touch the world as

00:39:52.670 - 00:40:14.600

an apple in a small garden, to have loved the earth, the moon and the sun, like old friends beyond any others, and to have entrusted the world to memory like a luminous horseman to his black steed, to have given shape to these words: wife, children,

00:40:15.110 - 00:40:32.330

and to have served as a shore for roving continents, to have come upon the soul with little oarstrokes, for it is frightened by a sudden approach. It is good to have known the shade under the leaves and to have felt age steal over the naked body

00:40:33.050 - 00:40:51.350

accompanying in the grief of dark blood in our veins and glazing its silence with the star, Patience, and to have all these words stirring in the head, to choose the least beautiful and make a little feast for them, to have felt

00:40:51.380 - 00:41:20.190

life rushed and ill-loved, to have held it in this poetry. And another voice is, "Listening to Leon." Leon was a man who lived in my neighborhood, a friendly fella who used to walk up and down the street and talk with Ellen or talk with me or

00:41:20.190 - 00:41:38.670

Sam, a very garrulous man. I guess you could say he was a gentleman of the old school. And he had leukemia. He'd retired; he's was very old man. And eventually he died in his apartments where we lived, but this is a poem about:

00:41:38.990 - 00:41:59.050

LISTENING TO LEON My time's coming, and that's a hard thing to say, I go to bed at night not certain I'll be here in the morning, I got this fear lying in the dark, I can't sleep and I'm scared of

00:41:59.050 - 00:42:14.470

thinking. Every afternoon loud music from the neighbor's place, she calls it "rap," rhymes with "crap," but everyone's got their own music, it's been years since I heard "Body and Soul," never

00:42:14.470 - 00:42:32.530

thought I'd hear anything better, and I haven't, Coleman Hawkins, 1939, Memphis, a juke joint, drinking whiskey, twenty-five years old, my whole body filled with music, a couple of years before the War.

00:42:34.700 - 00:42:47.930

I don't know, I don't know, that's what I say, not I don't care or I don't think so, it's not a negative thing, no, it's not some loose change you get from every mother's son, I don't know, you know what I mean?

00:42:50.660 - 00:43:07.160

I miss the woman, the mornings mostly, the sweetness like a ripe peach, all those years reaching my hand into the leaves, feeling around in there for the touch, and I never knew when the last one was the last one.

00:43:10.060 - 00:43:27.280

Thirty-two years I drove a bus, watched coins drop, people paying to get from here to there, thirty-two years to get here, retired they call it, but I'm not tired, I'm just old, like everybody else I buy my onions and carrots at the

00:43:27.280 - 00:43:45.190

market, I don't own property, when I was a boy I planted some seeds, squash and bush beans, sweet corn, in the Georgia summer, a simple thing, a garden, some dirt and water, some sun, some time.

00:43:47.620 - 00:44:06.910

Walking home after the dance, you know what I mean, a bit weary but feeling good, still hearing the music, remembering how we danced, walking out of town, into the country, a big night sky with stars, the music faint, but holding onto it,

00:44:07.420 - 00:44:22.700

remembering, humming, sometimes that's the way it is for me. Dennis Morton: That's a knockout. Morton Marcus: Could I ask you to do at least a few sections of, "Islands," just to show-

00:44:22.630 - 00:44:32.240

Joseph Stroud: You would ask me that! Morton Marcus: Well, no, just to show the, the variety of tone and voice in this. You don't have to read the whole thing if you don't want.

00:44:33.260 - 00:44:49.190

Joseph Stroud: It's hard to read these. These poems come from- the poem is titled, "Islands," and each of these little, they're very, very short little pieces, they're like an island. But specifically the islands that they come from, the voices

00:44:49.190 - 00:45:05.900

come from, are Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados, and many of them are Jamaicans who had been moving and who live in those areas, so there's a variety of different kinds of voices here.

00:45:10.430 - 00:45:24.180

ISLANDS You all time malicious, mon, askin the questions no answer I got. What it be you lookin sad sad? De woman she got your money?

00:45:27.900 - 00:45:45.800

The light from behind the sun make this day on the island great day even the he goat be still. How's that? Morton Marcus: That's good.

00:45:46.530 - 00:46:01.230

Joseph Stroud: Some are very strident and it's hard to do because each one is- some people think they're all the same person but they're not, each one's different. Some of them are kind of angry, but last one's nicer:

00:46:02.080 - 00:46:15.910

Yah mon from way back en de mountain de mot mot he make he song. There's a certain music and preciseness of language in those islands that I just I fell in love with.

00:46:16.420 - 00:46:29.680

Morton Marcus: Well, you certainly captured the- your ear is just really tuned here and that's- as well as the sense of voice and difference. Dennis, you can say something. Dennis Morton: Well, I know that Joe wants to close on a poem of

00:46:29.680 - 00:46:45.550

his own choosing. We don't have a long time, but I did want to mention something. I guess maybe we can talk about the workshop some other time, Joe, other than to say that every spring Joe does offer a wonderful writing workshop at Cabrillo and

00:46:45.550 - 00:46:55.470

whenever I can I love to sit in on- Is that only in the spring? Joseph Stroud: Dennis is the co-teacher of that class, he's been in there for it must be at least ten years n

00:46:55.540 - 00:47:02.980

Dennis Morton: Oh, I never- I would never miss it. Morton Marcus: Is that only in the spring? You're only teaching- Joseph Stroud: Generally in the spring is when I teach it.

00:47:03.010 - 00:47:10.990

Morton Marcus: Is this the advanced one? Joseph Stroud: Sometimes, the one I'm teaching now is not the advanced one, it goes back and forth. Morton Marcus: And so the poetry just once a year in the spring.

00:47:11.020 - 00:47:18.570

Joseph Stroud: Yeah. Dennis Morton: It's the most nurturing- Morton Marcus: We're talking about Cabrillo College out there, and you people who are thinking of signing up, just do

00:47:18.570 - 00:47:32.150

put this in your memory box. Dennis Morton: Indeed, but what I wanted to talk about- I had given you a call earlier today and just to clue you in on a few questions that I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask you about your

00:47:32.150 - 00:47:50.240

preferences in poetry. I know that poets like James Tate and John Ashbery and so forth, you admire their skill and their brilliance and so forth. But I know that they're not among your favorite poets. And I know some of the poets that you do love.

00:47:50.630 - 00:48:05.600

And I wondered, what is it that makes the difference for you in a poem that you like, and then I read, before I came over tonight, I read, "Crossing Over and Back." And I think you answered that question in the poem and I wonder if you would

00:48:05.630 - 00:48:19.590

mind reading that poem? Joseph Stroud: I would be happy to. This is in the third section, and as Dennis said to me this evening, it's the penultimate poem, and I thought he meant the last poem, but the

00:48:19.590 - 00:48:30.060

penultimate means next to last. Is that true, Mort? Morton Marcus: Yeah, it is. Is it the next to last? Joseph Stroud: All these years I've been using that word the wrong way, so I learned something new, Dennis, thank

00:48:30.060 - 00:48:51.340

you. Yeah, that's why I have Dennis in that workshop he's always telling me. This is titled: CROSSING OVER AND BACK, of course, the locale is Venice. How triste the facades are the palacios along the Grand Canal.

00:48:52.420 - 00:49:16.000

And those crowds back and forth crossing the Bridge of Sighs. Where is the other shore? This boat goes to San Michele, the isle of the dead. No one gets off but me and two old Russian women. They bear flowers for Stravinsky's tomb. We walk

00:49:16.000 - 00:49:38.800

together among the graves searching for the dead. Good luck, I say. They smile -- Spaseba, thank you. The one I'm looking for is difficult to find, as he would have wished. "Most poems fail not through craft but from a failure of

00:49:38.800 - 00:50:02.710

character." He said that. At last I find a simple stone imbedded in the earth -- the chiseled name, Ezra Pound. No epitaph. No famous quote. Someone has planted a laurel nearby, but it withers in this Venetian swelter. I say the

00:50:02.710 - 00:50:26.110

goodbye I have carried for many years. "What is it that I still cherish?" I think to myself walking back with those two old peasant women, kindness etched in their faces, wondering how we have been compressed to the elementals of language, to

00:50:26.110 - 00:50:42.700

gestures of respect and goodwill, to the poem's chiseled music. Morton Marcus: And if I can ask you, Dennis, what of the lines in there were the ones that answered your question?

00:50:42.970 - 00:50:57.280

Dennis Morton: Well, the quote from, I take it that it's a quote from Ezra Pound, is that correct, Joe? "Most poems fail not through craft but from a failure of character." And that's not to imply that there's no character in some of the

00:50:57.280 - 00:51:19.330

poems that I know Joe prefers less than others, but there's something beyond craft and imaginative use of language or even the imagination itself that I know Joe finds necessary for a poem to please him. And well, I don't know but I think that so.

00:51:20.260 - 00:51:33.880

I think you're right and I think, you know, I think this poem answered my question. Morton Marcus: Great. We're going to have Joe read some poems he wants to, I do want to tell the people out there, the

00:51:33.880 - 00:51:47.380

poem that begins the book, and it's not in any of the sections, called, "Prominence," is really just an absolute knockout poem, and it's really too bad we don't have time to read it. It's another reason for you to go out and get the book and I hope Joe

00:51:47.380 - 00:51:57.010

will be reading this in one of the readings he's doing. Joseph Stroud: I'll probably read it once. It's a long poem. It's a hard poem to read, it's a sort of a ruminative poem, and it's-

00:51:57.220 - 00:52:04.330

Dennis Morton: As I recall, you have read it on- Joseph Stroud: I did, I read it on this show. Morton Marcus: Yeah, right. Yeah, last year. Dennis Morton: It's one of the- not just one of Joe's most

00:52:04.330 - 00:52:16.150

beautiful poems, but I think it's one of the more beautiful poems I've ever read. Gorgeous. Morton Marcus: Joe did want to read a poem, why don't you tell us about it?

00:52:16.150 - 00:52:26.020

Joseph Stroud: Okay. Let me finish with the poem titled, "Auvergne," and then we can go to some music, that- songs of the, "Auvergne," Paul is here looking with a very bored expression on his face.

00:52:26.500 - 00:52:36.100

Morton Marcus: But first before we go to that music, Paul, I want to announce again where Joe's reading and- Dennis Morton: I have one short announcement. Morton Marcus: In fact, would you rather I read this first,

00:52:36.100 - 00:52:43.330

and then we go to it? Joseph Stroud: Yeah. Morton Marcus: What we'll do is we'll read this first then we'll have the poem and the music that goes with it. Again, Joe Stroud

00:52:43.360 - 00:52:59.470

will be giving three readings within the next week and a half. The first one will be this Thursday at the Capitola Book Cafe at 7:30 and that obviously is in Capitola. Then the very next day on May 8th, the same time, 7:30, he'll be reading

00:52:59.470 - 00:53:16.270

down in Carmel at the Thunderbird Bookstore in Carmel. And then on Tuesday with Charis Wilson, he will be reading at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, that is May 12th at 8pm. I urge you to go to one or all of those readings if you have certainly

00:53:16.270 - 00:53:26.740

enjoyed the show, and even if you haven't, I think you know, this will be a real revelation of the powers of poetry. Dennis Morton: And one more quick announcement: I'd like to first of all, thank our listeners for listening, and

00:53:26.740 - 00:53:42.100

second, remind them that next week is Kim's Show. Kim, this weekend at a conference in San Jose about poetry and healing, was able to get an interview with Deena Metzger and she will be playing that on her show.

00:53:42.000 - 00:53:51.340

Morton Marcus: Great, Jane had to take off, or-? Dennis Morton: She wasn't able to coordinate an interview with Jane. Morton Marcus: At any rate, Joseph? Joe Stroud, who we've

00:53:51.340 - 00:53:58.300

been talking with tonight. Dennis Morton: Thanks, Joe. Morton Marcus: Thank you very much. Joseph Stroud: Thank both of you. This poem was titled,

00:53:58.330 - 00:54:07.110

"Auvergne," well, I'll just read it and then we'll go into some music. Hey Jim, Jim Houston just walked in the door. Morton Marcus: The heavy hitters are here this week. Joseph Stroud: Okay.

00:54:07.110 - 00:54:16.430

James Houston: Devoted fan. Joseph Stroud: Devoted fan, okay. AUVERGNE Why should the mindless singing of the mockingbird high in the

00:54:16.430 - 00:54:33.260

avocado tree so much please me? Or the lure of light these winter mornings the first days of War? -- As our Century comes down. I sit on a bench reading the eight-hundnred-year-old poems of

00:54:33.260 - 00:54:53.040

a Sufi dervish. So where is the Beloved Friend? Is it this dog sleeping at my feet under the shadow of a cow skull nailed to the fence? I believe I no longer believe in the romance of the body. Once,

00:54:53.340 - 00:55:15.690

twenty years ago, in that other country, in Auvergne, I knelt down inside the fire. Of my beloved, I remember most her quiet words, the taste of comice, warm rain in the orchard, our little happiness inside us. That's not the All of

00:55:15.690 - 00:55:38.930

it. Rumi says, "The price of the kiss from the Beloved is your life. What a bargain!" But I was a thief, I did not pay. Like everybody, like you, I returned from that country of love alive. From nights of the Auvergne. The river Lot with its

00:55:38.930 - 00:55:59.660

shade trees in summer, arbors of dusty grapes, white honey from the blossoms of rosemary, fields where the dragon sang inside the writhing mouths of poppies where the black seeds catch fire. Returned to the mockingbird, crazed, singing out of season.

00:56:00.650 - 00:56:24.230

To my dog, stretching now, who turns and shoves her snout over my book, jowls slobbering on Rumi's ecstatic poem to the Beloved. What does she know, this trusting, dumb creature who forgives me everything? Is "The cure for pain in the pain?"

00:56:25.670 - 00:56:43.730

Grinning, tongue out, tail thrashing, she knows something is up. In the next Millennium, among the nightmares and machines, among time's indifferent slaughter of our body, there

00:56:43.730 - 00:56:58.640

must be poems to make room of silence, to praise birdsong in winter light, to sing of Auvergne, the Friend, and the old promises of love.