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Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody. This is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show. Joe's a little under the weather tonight and so I'm taking his place. And before we begin with the very special show that Joe and I did last June actually,

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let me say that KUSP thanks Plaza Books for providing a grant in support of this program. Plaza Books is located at 1111 Pacific Avenue, and in Pavilion F on Cedar Street in Santa Cruz. Tonight on the Poetry Show, I'm going to play a

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tape that Joe and I made last June 24th, on the occasion of the visit to Santa Cruz, of Edouard Roditi, the wonderful raconteur critic, poet, translator, amazing human being one of the last of the great European style literary figures

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of this century. And Roditi is just a wonderful storyteller. He has known James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, you name the literary figure. And not only does he know that person well, but he usually has a juicy story to tell about him. And so Joe and I

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had a great time interviewing him last June the 24th. And what I would like to do now is go right to this tape, in which we hear Joe Stroud and yours truly talking with the immortal Edouard Roditi.

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Joseph Stroud: In Santa Cruz, with the very fine poet, Edouard Roditi. And today, I'm sure we're going to range through a whole number of have different kinds of discussions about poetry and poets and probably painters too. To begin with, I

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just like to ask Edouard Roditi a little bit about your background where you were born and- Edouard Roditi: I was born in Paris, but my father was an American citizen so I was born as an American by afiliation,

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according to the law, and on account of World War I, I was sent to school in England and also because in those days, if my father was in business in Paris, and wanted to send me to school in America, I would have lost two weeks of every vacation

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in transportation. They were no longer- there not yet liked, they came much later. And crossing the Atlantic by ship could be very long so I actually didn't come to America until I finished high school. I came for the first time when I was 19 and

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fell in love with America and decided that come what may, I was going to remain an American. And I hoped at the time that I'd be able to make my home here. But then other circumstances led me after World War II to accept a job in Europe and I remained

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there, and I still have my home there, I like coming over here to America. Joseph Stroud: How early did you begin writing? Edouard Roditi: I began writing when I was 17, as a frustrated

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painter, because my father wouldn't allow me to study in art school. He believed all painters except fashionable society portrait painters lived sordidly and died of starvation, so he wouldn't let me become a painter. So, I discovered that

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one can write in secret. It doesn't take up as much space as being a painter. So I started writing and then I got to know Sylvia Beach who ran the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris and she began to encourage me first as a

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translator, I began translating French poets into English. And the first one that I managed to publish was a French poet called Leopold [unidentified], who has a close friend of James Joyce. Sylvia Beach and Joyce suggested that I try to translate one of

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his poems, which I did and they were very pleased with the translation and sent it immediately to be published by "Transition." So I was already in prints at the age of 18 in magazine, which, in those days, ultimately became known as

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"Finnegans Wake," is being published as a serial in an earlier version called "Work in Progress." And it was also published in Gertrude Stein occasionally, though rarely, because she doesn't like Joyce.. And Hart Crane, Archibald

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Macleish, and others were contributing. And so I think that Paul Bowles and I are the only surviving contributors to "Transition" today. Joseph Stroud: And this was, what? 1929?

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Edouard Roditi: 1928. Joseph Stroud: So you knew James Joyce, then? Edouard Roditi: Yes. Joseph Stroud: What sort of a fellow was he?

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Edouard Roditi: He was a difficult sort of man to communicate with for a boy of 18, and he was much older than I and he was a heavy drinker, as he was already having very serious difficulties with his eyesight. I couldn't communicate

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very easily with him. He was very friendly but his conversation was very limited with a boy of my age. And we would discuss my translations and he'd suggest that I translate this or translate that. He was always very

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friendly and very encouraging. Joseph Stroud: It must have been a remarkable place to be at that time in the late 20s in Paris, France, at the Shakespeare Bookstore because it was not only Joyce was there, but I

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think Ezra Pound and Eliot came through, or- Edouard Roditi: Yes, Pound, I met him only briefly once there. He was practically never in Paris, because he was already in those days- he was already one of the partners in Faber and

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Faber. Joseph Stroud: Right. Edouard Roditi: He had all sorts of difficulties with his wife, his first wife, so he was not traveling much. But I went to

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London in 1929 and met Eliot there. Joseph Stroud: Was he as reserved as we're led to believe? Edouard Roditi: Yes, he was very reserved but he was, in my case,

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very helpful, because we met in a rather curious context. I had translated Saint-John Perse's long poem "Anabase" without knowing that the rights had been granted to Elliot and he'd already done a rough draft. And so Archibald MacLeish sent my

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translation to Eliot and Eliot, having no idea that I was so young, wrote back that he would very much like to meet me if I came to London. So when I came to London I phoned and made an appointment and came along to see him in his office. And when

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he saw this kid of 18 and a half what marched into the office, he practically fell out of his chair. And we had a very pleasant conversation, he was very paternal. And he asked me if I wrote any poetry of my own, he admitted, there was certain

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interpretations of Saint-John Perse's in my translation, which he agreed were more correct than his, but in any case, he'd received some letters from Perse meanwhile correcting him on those points. But- so there was no need for him to use my

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translations. I told him that he could if he wanted. And then he began to sort of exert, by remote control, a very powerful influence on me. I've been publishing already very surrealist poetry, in "Transition" and elsewhere. And

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obviously, Eliot read it but didn't approve of it. And he started asking me to send him some of my unpublished poems, which I did, and he'd send them back with his proposed corrections, very encouraging. And then in 1933, he accepted a

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group of my poems, which were published in "Criterion" and by that time I was 23, and they were published the following year, I was 24. So, I can say that my first publications were under rather brilliant auspices in "Transition" with the

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blessing of Joyce, those in "Criterion" with the blessing of Eliot and I had a group of poems in Poetry Magazine of Verse, which is still published by Harriet Monroe, before I was 24. So-

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Joseph Stroud: This is beginning? Edouard Roditi: Yes but then I had a very difficult time during all the years of depression, and the war years, I didn't publish much. I was very much discouraged with publishing, I

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continued writing and then I had to earn a living so that I didn't bother much about publishing my poems till Black Sparrow Press, Kayak Press published two books. I published relatively- oh, that must have been in the 60s. And it's only

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now that I retired from jobs that kept me financially afloat that I'm really beginning to write much more, and publish much more. Joseph Stroud: You mentioned earlier today that you knew

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Kenneth Rexroth in the 40s, that means you had to probably be in San Francisco around that time. Edouard Roditi: Yeah, I was a graduate student at Berkeley in '39, that's when I first met him. And then during the war I

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became an interpreter for the government. And I was an interpreter in '45 for the San Francisco [unintelligible]. And at that time, I met Kenneth again, but first we didn't remember as we first met in '39. And then we became very good

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friends and whenever I came out west I'd see him. On one occasion I taught for a year at San Francisco State to get away from interpreting and I lived in his apartment while he was on a around the world trip with Carol and his daughters.

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Joseph Stroud: This is the apartment on Fillmore Street? Edouard Roditi: It wasn't Fillmore, it was Scott Street. Morton Marcus: That's when I think you first came through, or when I met you at Hitchcock's, I think it was around that time.

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Edouard Roditi: Yeah, that's when we met. Morton Marcus: You would have been there, too, Joe. Joseph Stroud: I met you at George Hitchcock's one time. Morton Marcus: Just about this time.

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Edouard Roditi: And that's when I met George, whom I'd first known in '39, though neither of us remembered it, but in the course of conversation, discussing friends that I had when I was a graduate student it turned out that I had known

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George then, because we had the same friends. Among others, a very strange woman, Dorothy Van Ghent, just being dead now. She was a good poet, but she became a terrible drunk. She was a gifted woman but something went wrong in her life and he just-

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Joseph Stroud: You were one of the early surrealist poets too, so did you know Andre Breton, and that whole group of people? Edouard Roditi: I knew them from '32 to '36, I worked in Paris, in a French publishing firm, which was the publisher of

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Breton's, "Surrealist Manifesto," with Tzara, and Desnos, and Crevel. The firm published four of Crevel's novels. So, as I was working as an editorial capacity there, I was meeting them. And then I saw Breton a lot during the war

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years in New York. And that's when I translated the selection of his poems, which were published by View Editions and that has become a very, very, very valuable book. If you have it with a jacket, the jacket was by Marcel Duchamp, so if you

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have the jacket in mint condition, that alone is worth several hundred dollars. Joseph Stroud: What was Breton like, I'm curious about him. Because I know that at one point in his life, he gave up poetry,

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didn't he? I may be wrong about that- Edouard Roditi: Well he never really gave it up, he was never very productive. But there were always periods when he was more involved in controversy, in polemics in one kind or another.

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And he could be extremely unpleasant, I mean he was very authoritarian. And he was constantly excommunicating from the group of theorists with bell, book, and candle anybody who didn't agree with him on a minor point of policy, which was

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changing all the time. I mean, Breton would suddenly decide that all surrealists had to become communists. Then he decided all of them had to break with communism, become Trotskyists, and Crevel refused to follow and was out. And then

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long before that [unidentified] had been bounced out. Desnos was bounced out because he- during the communist period because he had capitulated to capitalism and was writing for the capitalist press.

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Morton Marcus: Could we stop here, Robert Desnos is one of my favorite poets. Obviously you knew him. Edouard Roditi: Yes. Morton Marcus: What can you tell us about him and the type of

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person that he was? Edouard Roditi: He was one of the most delightful people I've ever known. He was not a theoretician. He was a great lyrical poet, a man of extraordinary kindness. Now

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[unidentified] tells a story about him I'm told is true. When I knew that Breton and Desnos were no longer on the best of terms, when I met Breton in New York during the war years when he just arrived as a refugee, I asked him if he had any news of

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Desnos and what was Desnos up to in occupied France. And Breton immediately started fulminating against poor Desnos and saying he is a foul collaborator, collaborating with the Germans. After the war- I didn't believe that, I knew Desnos too well.

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And after the war, it became known that Desnos died at the moment of liberation in one of the concentration camps. And I then inquired how and why he'd gotten in the concentration camp, where it appears that being a journalist by profession

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and having to earn a living, he'd continue to work in a journalist capacity in occupied Paris, but in a totally unpolitical line of writing and simply, more or less, in entertainment more than anything else. But by that time he was

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rather well known, was being rather well paid. And Desnos had never been a very extravagant man. He was using a lot of that money to procure false papers for Jewish children, to smuggle them out of the city and place them with farmers families in

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the country and so on. And he was caught doing that by the Gestapo and that's why he was put in the concentration camp. And then in one of the surrealist manifestos written after the war, Breton admits that he'd been wrong in

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condemning [unidentified] and Desnos. So then Breton was a man who would constantly be carried away by his own, well, controversial opinions and then reverse them maybe at a later date.

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Morton Marcus: He seems to have set a real tone now for all surrealist groups thereafter, even here in America, the tremendous infighting that goes on and it's not a peaceful or joyous grouping whatsoever.

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Joseph Stroud: With most schools, I think in poetry. There was a French poet that Kenneth Rexroth talks an awful lot about, whom he liked very much it, and whom he called it a cubistic poet, Reverdy. Did you know him at all?

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Edouard Roditi: No. Reverdy was a curious poet because he was very advanced gard and at the same time a very devout That's a very difficult kind of poetry for me to read, too. In Catholic, which doesn't show in his poetry, it shows in a

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curious work of prose that he publish called "Le Gant de crin" which is a book of aphorisms. And as a matter of fact, I went through Kenny's translations of Reverdy before they were printed, and made large numbers of proposed corrections, most of

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which he accepted but some he didn't. Then Reverdy is such a complex, obscure poet and I must admit that the translation is in some poems has published incorrect. One really has to know French and French poetry in that particular period very,

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very well. Rexroth's translations the whole cubistic- I never did understand thoroughly what he was up to. But I don't think anybody has understood, including the

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Cubist, the so-called Cubist poets, what cubistic poetry should be. And Reverdy is supposed to be a Cubist poet, Max Jacob, too. Gertrude Stein is supposed to be in things like "Tender Buttons," a Cubist prose writer. Paul Goodman claimed to

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be Cubist prose writer in some of his stories. Joseph Stroud: After all, the painting movement- Edouard Roditi: It is very difficult to see how they could be connected. Unless [unidentified] are descriptions

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of still lives. For most of the Cubist paintings we know of are still life paintings. Joseph Stroud: Right, refracting shapes in a geometric pattern. Morton Marcus: It would be hard to see, I'm surprised to hear

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that about Goodman. I'm trying to figure out what stories those would be also because he would just really have to keep telling or describing the same scene from different viewpoints, or different perspectives. And it doesn't sound- seems strange.

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Edouard Roditi: Could we hear a few of your pieces? I'll begin by reading, maybe one of the very early poems that Eliot looked through, corrected before I published it. It's from a series called "Oracles," which I wrote when I was about 17.

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Rain casts and drags its net across the street. The night is caught in mist, stars are caught in mist, my lips are caught with all the stars. My lips are frozen and the night lasts all too long, breathing a spell of death on its halted flow of

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hours. Like icicles, my speech hangs in the night, the words that I might speak have died, stillborn the words that I would speak, the rain breaks paths of silence through the night that with its bitter breath has sealed my lips, the stars are

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dimmed by mists the words that I might speak are ghosts. Well, that is very romantic and mildly surrealist. And that is the kind of poetry that I was writing when I started publishing in "Transition." But now I'd like to read something

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quite different but still surrealist. It was written perhaps 30 years later. This is called WORDS OF THE BIRD and I think I wrote it in late 60s, that's to say almost 40 years after that.

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Touched on a twig, mourning the bird, Sam, his words were coin. I'd count and tell his prophecies. The tree conceals with leaves of gold my secret nest where I'm asleep while others die. Where I was born, not of an egg, but of my sleep.

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I sleep when history's clock has stopped and awake when history ticks again. I'm history or its memory, its conscience and its heart that beats whenever I'm awake, that mimics death when I'm asleep. My life's a dream, my death the life that

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hibernates until the time when I must wake and see again the past that's present and the future too. My song was shaped the world as it is. Nothing has been, can be, become that in my song I haven't told foretold or counted or recounted. Hearing

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the bird, I knew that I had heard the voice of history. The teaming hell that bears the days. This sort of sad poetry but I mean, we live in an age which is not always very cheerful. And so now I'm going to read you

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something which is very, very different. I've been doing a lot of prose poems in the last few years, last couple of years. And this one is called THE POLITICS OF THE WEATHER. It's just been published if I remember in a thing called

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"Poly," which is published near here. Deprived of both the weather and politics, in a less stormy and more peaceful world, we no longer had any subjects to tentative conversation as an opening gambit whenever we

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chanced to meet another stranger. You'll agree that one cannot really approach a newcomer but asking him point blank about the state of his finances, the peculiarities of his sex life, or the quality of his daily stools. So we're all

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left practically speechless, or reduced to discussing eternally the same few stale subjects in small groups of family and close friends. After a while, however, some of us were fortunate enough to discover the charms of botany. Groups of local

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residents were soon organized to go out on expeditions in the surrounding countryside, where unusual leaves, grasses, flowers or weeds were culled and then compared and identified in excited and often competitive arguments, sometimes with people

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one had never yet chance to meet and were as mysterious and odd as the botanical specimens that they so proudly displayed. Violent quarrels even occurred over a few such discoveries when fraud was suspected, such as a leaf that might have been

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artificially bleached or stained. One joker even turned up on a Saturday with obviously homemade mandrake root. Botany led us in turn to develop an interest in the insect world, which kept us for a while very busy, if only with a more common

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varieties of lepidoptera. Later, we nevertheless found ourselves beginning to form hostile groups, factions or political parties, those in favor of exterminating quite ruthlessly some species of arthropods that they deemed harmful, and those

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others who are just as determined to protect either [cut] by predicting the results of the next elections or of tomorrow's weather. Now that both politics and the weather thanks to our arguments about insects and the influence of the

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weather on their proliferation, have returned as permissable subjects of conversation, which always thrives on uncertainty and speculation. Joseph Stroud: Are these gonna be collected anywhere in a book?

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Edouard Roditi: I'm hoping, I'm hoping. Morton Marcus: As you read the prose poems, another one of my favorites- We will take a break there. We were listening to and we'll

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return to Edouard Roditi in an interview done by Joe Stroud, and yours truly last June, here in Santa Cruz on the occasion of Edouard Roditi's visit to some friends here in Santa Cruz. In fact, on that visit, Roditi met our own Bill Everson for the

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first time and it was a very historic and moving meeting between the two men. However, let us take a musical break now, we'll come back with some really important announcements of major poetry events coming up this week here in Santa Cruz, so stay

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tuned for these announcements and the rest of the Roditi interview. This is Mort Marcus again and we are playing the "Gymnopédies" of Erik Satie and we'll continue with the "Sarabandes."

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I have several announcements, which you will find interesting. First of all, "Playhouse," Thursday at 9pm, radio drama from National Public Radio here on KUSP. The National Public Radio's winter season begins on KUSP with the enthralling,

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romantic, vivid world of, "A Tale of Two Cities," Charles Dickens' brilliant story about the reality of revolutionary turmoil. The epic classic is given new life in this outstanding radio adaptation from Great Britain. The long

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suffering Doctor Manette, reluctant nobleman and French exile Charles Darnay, the melancholy and ultimately heroic Sydney Carton, the nefarious Madame Defarge, and the beautiful Lucy Manette will weave, "A Tale of Two Cities,"

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on Thursday nights from 9 to 9:30. This week, "Book the Second: The Golden Thread. Part 1" Lucy Manette is reunited with her father. The years of imprisonment have weakened his mind and he imagines himself a shoemaker. Five years pass and

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we are introduced to Tellson's Bank of Temple Bar, an old fashioned place, even in the year 1780. So, that's this Thursday at 9pm, here on KUSP for playhouse, "A Tale of Two Cities."

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The big news literally this week in Santa Cruz is the appearance of Philip Levine, who must be ranked as one of the finest poets America has produced. Levine will be giving two readings: one tomorrow night Wednesday, February 21st at the

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University of California at Santa Cruz in classroom unit number 1 at 8pm. The reading there is free. He will be giving another reading on Thursday, February 22nd, that is the day after tomorrow, at Cabrillo College, in the forum building

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in room 456. That reading is also 8pm and is also free. Levine is an emotional often humorous reader who uses image, studied colloquial American language, and narratives and lyrics about the poor working underclass of America, while at

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the same time discussing such universal themes as joy, disillusionment, loss and death, which he portrays in vividly evoked environments of urban and rural America. He has won the American Book Award [unintelligible] Marshall Award

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and the National Book Critics Circle Award, the latter he has won twice. Peter Stitt has said that Levine's poems are a monument of our age. And I would agree with that. In fact, you ask people different questions like who's your favorite

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novelist, who's your favorite poet, and it's almost impossible to answer, but I can tell the radio audience out flat, my favorite living American poet is Philip Levine. And it is a joy to have him here and you just should not miss his reading.

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He's an excellent reader, his poems will lift you up, they will set you down, they will put you into an emotional turmoil which will again set your heart racing and your blood roaring as you once more feel yourself quickened with a pulse of what

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life should be all about and I really mean that. You've got two chances to see him, again, at the University of California tomorrow night at classroom unit number 1, 8pm. It's free. And then Thursday night at Cabrillo College in the forum building

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room 456 also at 8pm and it is free there, too. I cannot urge you enough to come out and see Phil Levine. Also at Cabrillo that day on Thursday, Levine will give an informal talk and answer questions from 12:30 to 1:30 again in room 456. So, at

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Cabrillo, he'll be at 8pm and before that at 12:30 for an hour of talk that afternoon on Thursday. And the Poetry Prose Reading Series at Louden Nelson Community Center this Friday, beginning at 7:30. Three

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readers, the prose writer, journalist and poet, and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn will be one of three people reading. He will be joined by Candida Lawrence, the editor of Coydog Review, a very sprightly lady with a great sense of humor. And

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the third reader on that program is yours truly, Mort Marcus and I, for one, know what I'm going to be reading, I will be reading all new poems that have been written since my last book came out. So, if you're interested in hearing some new work, and what

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directions I might be taking, please come out to Loudon Nelson, this Friday evening at 7:30pm. And just ask anyone where the poetry reading is and they'll tell you. So, we- oh, one more announcement. On March 7th at

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Zachary's, readings there are from 7:30 to 9:30pm. And you've got more eight days for this one, we'll read another announcement on this next week. There is a special Mystery Night with some of our best mystery writers who live in Santa Cruz

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and are publishing very well-received books. Lia Matera for one, who has several books out Bernard Dix and Jean Hart, who has just sold three books that will be published one after another in Britain and whose second mystery novel is coming

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out in this country. In fact, her novels are centered in Santa Cruz. So, lots to do and lots doing and I will read those over at the end of the program. Now, let us go back to hear the end of this interview with Edouard Roditi, the raconteur, poet,

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critic, translator and our grand old man of literature. [unidentified] did you ever meet? Edouard Roditi: Yes, he was a difficult man to see frequently. Morton Marcus: I see, he was reclusive?

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Edouard Roditi: Very, yes and he tended to limit his association, his social life to a very small group of close friends and admirers. I was an admirer, in fact, I translated some of his poems a long time ago when I was coming and going too often from

00:42:50.530 - 00:43:04.630

Paris to become a close friend. Morton Marcus: What has been the the business concerns that have, well, actually, not business concerns, but career concerns that have been sort of kept you away from poetry all these

00:43:04.630 - 00:43:18.700

years? Edouard Roditi: Well, I was making a rather good living as a freelance conference interpreter during- what is known as simultaneous interpreting. And as I had some family

00:43:18.700 - 00:43:42.070

obligations, because I have a younger brother who is a paraplegic until he passed away, I had to make a good living to support myself and help support him. And that kept me moving around a lot because at one time, I was nearly every week

00:43:42.070 - 00:44:00.250

two or three days in Brussels for the European Common Market and another time, UNESCO used to send me very frequently on missions to Africa or Asia. And I didn't have enough continuity in my life to do much writing except snippets.

00:44:01.150 - 00:44:20.150

Morton Marcus: How many languages do you speak? Edouard Roditi: Well, I speak and write both English and French. I speak, read and write a pinch of German, so I've never written any books in German. Yes, I did one little book and

00:44:20.150 - 00:44:37.970

some articles. And I speak Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, but I don't write them. And I read about six other languages, all in all about 12 languages. Joseph Stroud: There's a lot of talk in this country about the

00:44:37.970 - 00:44:50.570

influence that the French surrealist had on the New York school back East. But in the past 20 years or so, there's been an awful lot of tremendous concern with the Spanish surrealists. Do you see any real difference in distinction

00:44:50.570 - 00:45:05.170

between the French and the Spanish surrealist at all? Edouard Roditi: Oh, yes. Oh, well, Spanish surrealists, who would you consider, [unidentified] Joseph Stroud: Or Lorca, maybe South Americans too.

00:45:07.280 - 00:45:39.770

Edouard Roditi: Yes. Well, [unidentified], wrote in French and in Spanish and I guess that he really began as a Dada and then a surrealist. Vallejo, he has a sense of drama, of anguish that very few of the French surrealists had. And Lorca was

00:45:39.770 - 00:46:00.430

very different. Morton Marcus: He's mostly gypsy and folklore. Edouard Roditi: Yeah, because if you look at the poem, " A Las Cinco De la Tarde," let's discuss this surrealist poem. He

00:46:00.430 - 00:46:29.200

was very much influenced by gypsy, folklore, and folk poetry. I think the only one of the Spanish language poets who can be said to be a very derivative surrealist will be Octavio Paz because he came along with such an admiration of

00:46:29.200 - 00:46:47.170

the French surrealists and so deliberately imitated them in Spanish, but I don't like him as a poet, I find he's too elitist. Joseph Stroud: What about Neruda? Edouard Roditi: Neruda is very different, Neruda is sort of- he

00:46:47.170 - 00:47:12.850

ranges all the way from surrealism to Whitman, Mayakovsky. He was so clearly committed politically without wavering and his poetry displays his political interests much more than that of any of the French surrealists.

00:47:13.930 - 00:47:38.050

[unidentified] was politically involved in the resistance during the occupation, but before that not at all. After that he became a Gaullist which he doesn't show in his poetry. Desnos was just leftist in a kind of 19th century idealistic

00:47:38.050 - 00:48:02.500

way, I mean, in the same way as certain French poets were not very well-known today who were leftist under Napoleon the Third in the 1860s. And Desnos would have been involved in the commune in the 1870s if he'd been alive then. His real

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politics were kind of generous liberalism, without much intellectual backbone, politics of the heart rather than the intellect. Joseph Stroud: What about American surrealist poets,

00:48:25.330 - 00:48:42.280

people like Philip Lamantia and a little bit later, someone like Robert Bly, who at least a certain [inaudible]. Edouard Roditi: Yeah. Well, I knew Philip when he first appeared in New York as a child prodigy. And I found that he was

00:48:42.280 - 00:49:05.140

quite promising poet then, but I must admit that what he writes and publishes now best leaves me utterly cold, just verbose and mindless most of the time, absolutely mindless. And I mean, I've tried conversing with Philip, I mean, and he's totally

00:49:05.140 - 00:49:25.510

mindless. I mean, I read a great deal of philosophy, yes. I've written and published essays on Lev Shestov, I read a lot of Wittgenstein and so on. I read Plato, you can't discuss any of that was Philip. He doesn't know Wittgenstein from a hole in the

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wall. Morton Marcus: But I also heard that he's- I mean, he's mentally ill, he has periods where he goes in and out, and he can even become quite violent when he's-

00:49:34.360 - 00:49:49.630

Edouard Roditi: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you can- you can be quite violent at times and still be a good poet. Joseph Stroud: You mentioned Wittgenstein. Have you been following at all any of the recent language poetry ideas

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that are happening now? Edouard Roditi: Well, I've been trying to follow it but I find that most of the language poets are utterly boring. They have- they've discovered ways of saying something but have

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nothing to say, so to speak. There is an avoidance of statements there which makes it too abstract. Oh, what do you think of it? Joseph Stroud: You put the words in my mouth. I feel the same

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way. I mean, my sense of it is they all saw that their theory's more interesting than the work that they produce. Edouard Roditi: Oh, yes. Joseph Stroud: That's pretty much what I feel about most of

00:50:31.630 - 00:50:46.750

them. Edouard Roditi: Well, I've just gone through- Because I had nothing much to do. Having undergone some surgery on my eyes, I was able to read but I was not allowed to drive around

00:50:46.750 - 00:51:05.680

much because if a bumper to bumper thing, then the implants might jump out. So, I stayed at home and read, cover to cover the whole every issue of [unidentified]. It wasn't fun but ever since I was going to have dinner with the editor,

00:51:05.710 - 00:51:32.980

[unidentified]. I thought, well, I was like, I didn't know him. I thought well, I might as well see what he's publishing and it's all very ingenious. But I think that occasionally I find one of these poets are doing something which- some of

00:51:32.980 - 00:51:51.790

Bernstein's poetry I find acceptable. I wouldn't say all. And then in San Francisco there's a poet called Shurin who belongs to the group in a modular way. He's sometimes quite good.

00:51:52.180 - 00:52:02.500

Joseph Stroud: There are a few poets on the margins that I like, Michael Palmer is one- Edouard Roditi: Oh, yes. But I don't think he's really a language poet. See, I've known Michael's poetry enough, about

00:52:02.500 - 00:52:20.890

10 years. He associates with them. Well, [unidentified] can sometimes be quite good. But all of them are good when they're not language poets, when they're being poets. Joseph Stroud: I know Bly says something else that was

00:52:20.890 - 00:52:34.060

interesting. He said that his problem with the language poets is that they've abandoned the personality. And I think he meant that not as, you know, in some sort of flippant way, but as you know, as what, what it is to be human and a human being in

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language in poetry, that that's not there, they distrust it. Edouard Roditi: I think who probably is the American poet who's been most influenced by the French surrealists is probably Ashbery.

00:52:51.280 - 00:53:05.670

Joseph Stroud: Right. Edouard Roditi: It doesn't show immediately at the surface but is latent and it's always been there. But I knew John Ashbery when he was living in Paris, when he was being an art critic

00:53:05.670 - 00:53:32.610

for the Paris Herald Tribune and he was fascinated by surrealism in those days. And his approach to surrealism is more intelligent than Lamantia's. Of course, Charles Henri Ford is a poet. And if he'd give up writing these cut up haikus

00:53:33.150 - 00:53:48.780

which are absolutely senseless. For the last few years, he's done nothing but cut sentences out of newspapers and count the syllables and then make haikus out of the them and paste them on a sheet of paper.

00:53:49.440 - 00:53:59.940

Joseph Stroud: There's that aspect of surrealism, the really kind of nutty` stuff that I never had much patience for. There was the also the stuff where you cut up a bunch of words and you put them in a newspaper bag or a paper bag.

00:54:00.030 - 00:54:14.700

Edouard Roditi: Yeah. Joseph Stroud: And you pull them out and whenever, however they come out is the poem. Edouard Roditi: Brion Gysin did that and Burroughs. But I think

00:54:15.390 - 00:54:29.010

it's fun for a while, I always like the "Exquisite Corpse" drawings, they're fun, but I mean, you can't make a career out of that. Sooner or later, you've got to paint the Sistine Chapel to be a great artist.

00:54:30.540 - 00:54:42.660

Joseph Stroud: You mentioned Paul Bowles. Did you know him back in those days? Edouard Roditi: Oh, yes, I've known, Paul since the early 30s. Joseph Stroud: I really admire his short stories. I love his

00:54:42.660 - 00:54:58.680

work. Edouard Roditi: Yeah. Well, when I first met Paul, he was occasionally publishing poetry in "Transition" and in other magazines and mainly studying composition. And he was not

00:54:58.680 - 00:55:32.400

writing stories yet, or if he was, he was keeping it a secret. Then after that he did at one time a lot of music criticism for View, for the New York Herald Tribune, I think Virgil Thompson introduced him there to cover of concerts that Virgil

00:55:32.760 - 00:55:59.670

couldn't or didn't want to cover. And he you continued to compose, he did a lot of composing of music for movies and theater. And he really got turned to writing fiction mainly after his marriage to Jane. Well, there's there are very,

00:55:59.670 - 00:56:27.510

very strange thing which happened because he turned to fiction partly when he had to correct and edit Jane's novel. Now we know that originally there'd been three ladies not two. The third lady was cut out of the novel and the little of

00:56:27.600 - 00:56:55.980

the third ladies that's survived has become one of Jane's top stories. And it's much better with two ladies instead of three. And he always edited Jane's writings and I think that got him back into writing and by now of coursehe's a much greater

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story writer than Jane. Jane's fun, but I mean not very profound. Morton Marcus: Did you know her also? Edouard Roditi: Oh, yes.

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Morton Marcus: What was their relationship like and from your point of view? Edouard Roditi: Oh, well, they're both homosexual, but both terribly dependent, each really depends on the other. I

00:57:23.280 - 00:57:42.780

think that they're most [unintelligible] utterly scared of reality, very masochistic. Morton Marcus: That's both of them? Edouard Roditi: I think that as long as they were together, they

00:57:42.780 - 00:58:02.700

felt safe. Morton Marcus: And with that, we will conclude our interview that Joe Stroud and yours truly did with the great Edouard Roditi last June. I would like to announce that I will be back

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here this Sunday night, that's February 25th, from 9 to 11 on the Sunday night special, with "Word Quake," part 1. In the wake of the quake, KUSP's Mort Marcus and Joe Stroud helped organize the great Santa Cruz Word Quake, an earthquake

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benefit for destroyed bookstores, which brought together the largest gathering of local writers ever assembled. Tonight, that is on Sunday night, you'll hear the afternoon reading which featured Bill Everson, Adrienne Rich, Paige

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Smith, Francisco X. Alarcon, Claire Braz-Valentine and many others. So, stay tuned this Sunday to KUSP, always good programs. And from 9 to 11 I will be here with the first of the two "Word Quakes." KUSP thanks Nicholas Van Angle for

00:58:47.010 - 00:59:09.630

providing a grant to help make this program possible. Nicholas Van Angle is a realtor in Carmel. Once more, let me remind you of the readings that are going on this week by the great Phil Levine and that will be at UCSC, tomorrow night at 8pm at

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classroom unit number 1, and then the next night which is Thursday at Cabrillo College in the forum building room 456 also at 8pm, both readings are free. Levine will also appear, informally talking at 12:30 to 1:30 at Cabrillo College again

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in room 456. And that's an informal talk on Thursday as well the day he gives us reading at Cabrillo.