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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody. This is Mort Marcus, this is the Poetry Show. There have been some very significant passings in the last ten days in the world of poetry. On the 22nd of September, the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai died. And

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if you're listeners to the Poetry Show, you know that I have done several shows of Amichai over the last several years, and have other hosts done the same. But the day before that, as the sounds of praise throughout the world were

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echoing for Amichai, another poet passed away. A poet who lived in Santa Cruz for ten years, and did not receive the same kind of praise, nor did his passing get acknowledged in the major presses of the world. Though to many of us, he was the

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poet's poet. He was a friend and a wonderful example of how to live your life and be a whole person in a world of chaos and entropy. His name was Bob Peterson and if you ever attended a Bob Peterson reading, you know that it was an event in

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itself, an event of great subtlety. And the music that you just heard from Mozart's German dances sort of epitomizes Bob for me. There is an offhanded, wry humor, and yet elegance that is classical yet not classical at all. And that to me, in many

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ways, was Robert Peterson, the poet who I will be talking to tonight with one of his very good friends, John Deck, who was a short story writer, a novelist, and has had his hand in literature for decades, and is a very old friend of Bob's.

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They went to school together at San Francisco State. Welcome to the show, John. John Deck: Thank you, Mort. It's a pleasure to be here. My first time on radio so kick me if I do anything wrong.

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Morton Marcus: Well, if I do, no one will see us out there anyway. But we're here to talk about Bob. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Bob's biography? John Deck: Well, he was born in Denver, Colorado in 1924. And he

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had a kind of a rocky beginning. His father was a journalist. They moved to California, into Alameda where his father worked for the Oakland Trib, and he died, suddenly in his early 30s. Bob was an infant so he was taken back to Leadville,

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Colorado to the family home, and seems to me that the outlook must have been fairly bleak for him. But he had the first piece of luck that he ever had, and he was to have much more. His aunt, his father's sister, and her husband came and adopted him,

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brought him back to San Francisco, and they owned the Fielding, owned and operated the Fielding Hotel on Geary Street and Mason, right in the dead heart of the city and Robert grew up there. And it had to be one of the best places on Earth

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for a young man with his sensibilities to grow up. He had a wonderful time, he joined in the whole- every part of the hotel life he was- He worked as a- he hopped bells, he ran elevators, he served rooms, and he had his own room in the hotel

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when he was 13. What a dream for a kid. Morton Marcus: Right. He- oh, he has also written a memoir about that. John Deck: Oh, yeah called- it was, he used the slogan for the

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hotel, "Famous for Comfort," as the title for his memoir. It hasn't been published yet but- Morton Marcus: Hopefully, one day the work is still there. John Deck: Yeah, right. It's great stuff. And Robert was,

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initially his parents wanted him, his adoptive parents, wanted him to go into medicine and he started pre-med at, let's see, I think the University of Nevada initially, went on for a while then was drafted or joined the army in 1943. He became a

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medic, combat medic, went to Germany. I think he was involved in some actual combat, he came back and decided that medicine was not for him. He finished a BA at UC Berkeley and didn't know quite what to do with it, it was in general studies, and

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then found out about the action going on at San Francisco State in the creative writing department, moved over there. And he was looking initially for a teaching credential, but people discovered his ability to write and they encouraged him to

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go into writing, and he just took off. And it happened that he was at San Francisco State at the time when Ruth Witt-Diamant had that Poetry Center going there. She had a large grant and she was bringing in top poets in the UK and in America.

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Morton Marcus: These were the great years of San Francisco State. John Deck: Oh, golden, golden. Morton Marcus: Both fiction and poetry.

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John Deck: And Robert was there all the way through that, at the heart of it, and he was one of the founding editors of Transfer Magazine, the literary magazine for SF State College. And he was also the poetry editor for Contact when the quarterly

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started in Sausalito. Morton Marcus: Very important quarterly at that time in Sausalito. So, he was really part of this whole San Francisco scene that went beyond and included the whole Beat

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Generation that we think is really San Francisco. John Deck: Yeah, yes. He was never quite part of the Beat Generation but he was on the side of it. And he shared many of the interests of Beat Generation and he would love

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jazz. And he was out there all the time and loved North Beach and the whole atmosphere of the city. And from then on, he wrote and worked and he'd had various jobs and lived- he traveled extensively in Europe, and he settled for a while in Taos and

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then later in Albuquerque. In Taos, he built an adobe house. In Albuquerque, he routed the Dukes, the professional baseball team, he was a great baseball fan, as you know. And then he came to California. He'd, by this time he'd published six

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books of poetry, and- five, I think, and he came to live in Capitola. You know that he was the- he was one of the first, he had an actual San Francisco pad in Capitola. The only one ever say that was looked like it, it felt like it, it smelled like

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it, it was everything about it. It was great. Morton Marcus: And we would go and watch the fights. John Deck: Yeah, we watched the fights and the games and everything else, and he cooked for us. And he began to work

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here, and he published. I think the first book he published when he was here was, "The Only Piano Player in La Paz." Which is one we'll read from later, and then he later brought out a couple others, in the form of ghazal poems, a book which I find o

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e of the most intriguing and mos difficult of his works, and so n and so, you know, that's- and then just recently he's be n living well for the last ten y ars actually, he's been livi Morton Marcus: Back in Marin?

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John Deck: Yeah, went the full cycle back in Marin and he's happily there or he was happily there for a number of years and- Morton Marcus: To me, he was always the Marin poet. I met him when I was in the Haight-Ashbury and teaching in San Francisco.

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And it was 1964, '65, I met him and met Leonard Gardner, his good friend and author of, "Fat City," through Robert. And Robert and I would hang around the city, go down to the Anchor Steam Brewery where he loved to hang out. And he would invite me

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to Marin in this wonderful, very Japanese-like pad he was living in at the time. And he was really, in many ways, a role model to me. He was a completely different human being. I am excitable and East European, you know, and he was very, very

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Chinese, and wry, and sort of accepted the way of the world, you know? He was a wonderful companion right? I mean, one of the best, and this is to me, when I was writing this first article on him 19 years ago, that was so great that he would

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be a person whose poetry would be like someone walking with you from day to day. John Deck: Yeah. Morton Marcus: You know, keeping you strong and yet loving to be

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in his company. And I hope tonight we're going to be able to show this. And you know, one of the reasons when we got together after you called me up about Robert passing on, the day he did. You said, "I just felt terrible and then I started to

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read his poetry and it was just, it was uplifting." There's nothing better you can say about a poet and a writer, as you know. John Deck: Right, you know, I didn't, I wasn't just uplifting,

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I began to laugh at some of the poems. And I'll laugh at them for the rest of my life. So, as companions go, they're the best. I mean, these are poems I love to turn to. Morton Marcus: Great. Let us start on them now. And you know,

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we can do this in any- any order we want. Why don't you start with one of those poems that got to you. And for the people out there, let me just say that I think one of the problems that Robert Peterson had in the latter part of his life was that

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people, if you don't listen intently, these things seem like things that are just thrown off-hand from the side of the mouth. They are so condensed, they are so suggestive, they make so many leaps of the imagination and their language

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is just astonishing. It is probably one of the best poets of spoken American, I think, who has ever written. John Deck: Well I can start with two that immediately made me, that brought Robert to life immediately. One is called:

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HOW TO GET ON ITALIAN TRAINS. Morton Marcus: This is one of his poems that were from traveling. John Deck: Right.

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Morton Marcus: And obviously to me, it's a poem of frustration, and it is absolutely hilarious. John Deck: Yeah. Here we are in Italy, seas with a classic romantic or practical destination. We are taken to the

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stazione to look for informazione. Treno numero uno will depart for Lucca at 14:32, on binario numero quattro. Ordinarily, binario would be in italics, but in Italy these days is no ordinary place. There may be an earlier treno but we don't

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know this because we didn't ask. Anyway, we proceed to Biglietti and manage to talk up a ticketto(?). Time for a sandwich or drink. Actually much more time, but we don't know this. But if you're like some Italians, even if you are

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Italian, you're out on the binario early to see what is going to happen. And don't try to pretend we're not waiting for the treno because that's what's done these days en route to Savona, Imperia, Roma, Firenze, Bari, Cipressa, or Milano. Later

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perhaps, we will get to Milano. At the moment we're looking for the diretissimo to Lucca. A voice from the sistema, "Attenzione, treno 30 minuti in retardo." We take this in stride like an experienced traveler strolling up and down the

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platform. Wondering of Sandy Koufax will make the Hall of Fame this year. Finally, ecco il treno. All aboard jostle, push, elbow bump, kick and shove, treno doors are small and corridors narrow. Never attempt to get on an Italian treno under

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the influence, or with more than one suitcase unless you want to risk being trampled to morto. So here we are, the surviving passagieri, bustling and banging back and forth looking for a posto, shoving bags and baskets and jugs of vino and parcels or

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vittles this way and that, like any normal crowd of sons of bitches shooting to kill to get comfortable. And we are fighting for a posto in a compartmento for men only because nine times out of ten, ladies on trenos have bambini and lots of candy.

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Capeci? So, here we are, bene, the confusione subsides temporarily. Avanti! We've already missed our connection to La Spezia. But let us proceed somehow as promised to Milano. Milano with its vast acoustically perfetta stazione,

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not as big as Grand Central or the Colosseum, or Meteor Crater, Arizona, but big enough to moor a few dirigibles in it, not a bad idea. All Easter, all [unidentified] all Milanese go to Genova, and the Genovese treno to Milano, not necessarily

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by train, of course. Anyway, in Milano, one does not breathe deeply on binarios because of dense clouds of poisonous fumes, which this giant città, famous in earlier times for opera, produces. In an hour or so, or tomorrow, we leave Milano for

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Trieste. Finally, il capo di statione, wearing his jaunty red cap, mistaken by many beginners for a taxi driver, waves his wand and away we go. Fifteen minuti in retardo, leaving Genova that is. This about covers getting on Italian

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trains, getting off is essentially the same, unless you arrive in the wrong town. Tomorrow or the day after, we discuss how to send or receive an Italian telegram. Morton Marcus: And you know, the last lines really get this

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unspoken leap that I was talking about. The problem here, and the anger that drives him to this, the comic anger, the frustration of late Italian trains famous throughout the century. But then the next thing he's going to write about, which is how to

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send an Italian telegram, lets us know that he has gone off at the wrong city, and he has no way of getting out of there. The, let me- let me read two short poems by him. Again, how did I did I meet him? I met him at a Kayak Collating party, he

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became one of the Kayak poets. His third book was actually a Kayak book and a celebrated one, "Wondering Where You Are," which led up to his big award-winning book, "Leaving Taos." And while he was in Taos, New Mexico, which he left, when he was

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living up in Marin, when he came back, he knew that George Hitchcock was living now in Santa Cruz. And that was the reason he came to stay for a little while and wound up spending six years. Anyway, that great take off on the Italian

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language and then traveling in Italy. I'd like to sort of do some poems on this marvelous sense he had of being in the world around us, the world of the suburbs, the world of the Marin suburbs, but before I do that, I want to show his method

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here. If I read the next poem, "Hands Folded Like Napkins," and did not explain what it's about, people might be confused. But if I do, you can see how to make the leaps in his poetry. All I'll tell you is this: he doesn't tell you where he is, he

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lets the images work for you. But I'll tell you where he is, he's in a dentist's chair and he doesn't want to think about what's going to be going on in his mouth. And the hedge-trimmer is the dentist's drill, and so he takes his mind off things by

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looking at the dentist's rather curvaceous assistant and you get this and the wonderful Peterson methodology: HANDS FOLDED LIKE NAPKINS Hands folded like napkins in my lap, I'm staring willfully at

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the future. Just one of the crowd, a bystander. It's my teeth they're after. Someone's trimming a hedge. The Paris Express arrives, it's the last lap at the lawn and the band is playing. What's the sound of one castanet decaying? Across my

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nose, doctor and nurse speak in code. "Always cementing Mrs. Kirschman's crown? Let's become a Fred. I'm going on a diet." I can't nod, even my beard is novocained. Just concentrate on letting normal thoughts flow naturally. She's built, does she

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or doesn't she? John Deck: Can I read it? Morton Marcus: Oh, sure. John Deck: This is a poem called, "Recovering From

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Divorce." Robert, I think it's fair to say, he was not particularly reverend about things like divorce and marriage like that. It's not that he didn't honor these institutions, but he could take them for their weaknesses as well as their

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strength. Morton Marcus: Well, he also had a lot of trouble with women. Yeah until Jo. [Unintelligible] [cross talk] a marvelous, marvelous woman.

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John Deck: Yeah, right. Anyway, RECOVERING FROM DIVORCE. Groping for Gabrielle in the record rack, I discovered the jacket containing overtures to Alcina and Verdi's, Boredale(?) conducting the Boredale Orchestra, but does not take me

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to Boredale or evocations of carnal pleasure or Händel, but only a Mercury LP, "Rumba With Machito." We never got around to dancing. Morton Marcus: You know, I had another one. Where is this about

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the breakup? Oh, yeah, it's "Geography" and what is that in, where's "Geography?" Which one of these books is [unintelligible] now trying to find all the way through this is going to be impossible. I believe it may only be in, "The

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Only Piano Player in La Paz." That's right. Yes! Here's another breakup of an affair but done in the inimitable style of Peterson. He really is talking about feeding ducks, alright, but he really isn't. He's talking about another

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relationship breaking up and it goes something like this. GEOGRAPHY Feeding ducks is like a trip to Venice, which has never appealed to me particularly. I've had better times in Athens and

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Copenhagen. Anyway, here they come, curious and polite as little motorboats. I toss the crumbs at a young Democrat, allowing just enough lead time for dilettantes and slow-thinkers. But when those pushy guys, the gulls arrive,

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cab drivers from New York and Naples, ravenous and unionized, the honeymoon's over. Emotion and conflict. Remember when we went at it in the only decent place in Barstow over arms-control and Yankee management? Another time, right

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up this street I won a smart poker hand and you called me a poor winner. Finally, late as usual, these cafe intellectuals we call goose, gander, geese up to here. In all that razzo over atmosphere, priorities, art, and wine, we might as well be

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breaking up in France. it's just like, here we go again, another affair chocked up. John Deck: He could also be acerbic and pretty cool and he

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had a wonderful eye for- for character. I think that that's very good in the redactions. But I want to read one from the Fielding Hotel days, and this is called: AMOS FEELY AT THE FIELDING

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Room service every two hours, two beers all night, all day. Lotused on the bed like a skinny guru and DVDs, reading the papers, nothing but papers, all day, all night. A dollar tip for every bell. Mornings, empties in neat lies outside the door. The

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maid takes them away, knocks once, leaves clean linen. After ten days, no more, no less, the same grilled ham and cheese on rye at midnight morning train, Vancouver or Detroit. "He traveled for a big union," father said, "paid every bill on

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the dot." The lobby sitters wondered, "A widower," mother thought. Fifty, say, never formed(?), never phoned or met a soul, hated radios, planes and lobby-sitters, lived in his horn-rooms, his millers, his papers, never slept or bothered

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or talked. Amos, some were sad for you. I was not. Morton Marcus: Let me continue reading some of these neighbor poems. Here is this great American voicebox, there are rhymes going through these lines and inside them, great sound.

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And this wry attitude. I'm going to read some- some poems about suburbs again. And he loves animals, especially cats, he loved cats, loved cats, dogs, but cats were the things that he loved. And he had a wonderful life for nature too, he was not

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just the suburban of the urban poet, but he was, really, I always pictured him sitting on a tatami mat looking out over television aerials, and getting serenity from it. But here is one of these pictures from the suburbs.

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It's called, THE DOG IS BREAKING DOWN, and listen to this wonderful control of voice rhythms and American speech. The dog is breaking down. To and fro he runs around the clock, pissing on seedlings and chasing moths and butterflies into the

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house. He can't think, sticks worry him. He'll eat six biscuits in a row, then bark at the box. His owners don't know. They think he's fearless, but he's a loser. Dreams of unnatural relationships and blinks cow-eyed when sparrows

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perch on his nose. Loved only by his fleas, as doomed as we are, he's trying to keep busy but his nerves are shot. He'll be killed by a car. And there, you know, there is that thing that- and I want to

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read this so, Leonard Gardner says, but it's right there: "and loved only by his fleas, as doomed as we are" suddenly he makes this deep, piercing comment on our human condition. But it's so offhanded and comic it doesn't sound like an Italian

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operatic statement. And let me just read what Leonard Gardner says about him. He says, "Peterson sings sotto voce as a zen musician might sing Wagner knowing intuitively what best befits the storms of human passion. When he takes off on

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one of his odd arias, you are as likely to feel pangs of mortality as you are to laugh. His a voice of man's comic nobility in the midst of slow disaster," and as usually Leonard hits it right on.

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John Deck: Yeah. This is a poem written to a cat, Moozy(?), after the cat died, it's quite a different treatment of animals, but it's a very touching thing because it's one of the ghazals, but it does not, it's not as complicated. It's much more

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straightforward than the rest of the poems in this book. CALLING MOOZY(?) (1971 to 1986) For most of our years, mooska, I kept you in, away from wars and cars. "Cat going up a mountain" an Indian named you. Now, so

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you've gone wild and done. In this window, you watch the neighbor's dog laze and hummingbirds shimmer in fuchsia. Here you dreamed of Taos. I'd wrap your nose to the glass and make a face, table you warmed, claw you honed, whisp of fur,

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the comb, the talk, the whisker, the legs, the play, the late-flee, water there still, empty box, that silvered daze. Where will your shy spirit my [inidentified] be happy to linger now? In your final hour by the lighthouse, long stem of

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pelicans trembling west legato. To be alive, to be truly alive, a man should always wear a cat on his head. Last notes of a Nocturne for your quiet, gentle ways. Morton Marcus: And isn't this the Bob we know right here? He

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said, "Sometimes it gets so bad, I head for the mirror, or just any window for a nod and wink from a friendly face." John Deck: About cats I would say that he never- he never sought a cat. Moozy and then later Spike came to him.

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There'll be strays and they'd wander up to his house and he would take care of them. And at the end after Spike died, as cats do, Robert never went out and looked for one, although he was very lonely for a cat, but one didn't show up, so he just

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had to live alone. Morton Marcus: Well, now let me read them- more of the suburban poems because, as you said, he could be very acerbic and pointed, and he didn't actually get along with his neighbors. So

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here are two quick poems on neighbors. This is called, SOME NEIGHBORS TO THE NORTH. Who retired every night at nine precisely, and were heard to say from time to time, "Bad dog," only. I was imagined by the wife

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to be a mysterious parcel and reported weekly to the postmaster. When the husband came by, he straightened his tie and forgot why. Whenever the sun wandered my way, he was swept home to face the wall. Later I learned they never owned the

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dog. She believed moonlight caused fevers and lived in terror that the boy might someday call her by name. John Deck: He wrote one to RIO DEL MAR. Did you know that one? Morton Marcus: Yeah, go on.

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John Deck: Those first great waves noumenons of sleep, or loss, or flight, then awe that glittering gambler later on who strode like a king through my mind, just as we loved in our prime. When the sun ran down, we dawdled home by wandering woods,

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small pools of desire and starlight. Towards the end, one phantom I recall for dark reasons of his own, masked as a god, broke sighing in the dusk on a hidden crown. I lie now in wonder at dawn, alone by a sea, known only by another silent

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sea, more yours than mine. Morton Marcus: Here's another neighbor poem. This is, "Neighbor to the South," but you can see by just the different poems that John and I are reading, that there were many

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different ways that Bob would pursue how to write a poem, and many different tones that you'd use to do that. But anyway, we got the, "Neighbor to the North," what was the neighbor to the south like?

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This is the NEIGHBOR TO THE SOUTH in the Marin days. A civil engineer is putting up a fence around his lawn. At other times I hear him tap tapping dramatically with a little hammer. Does he suspect by a woman has been having dreams of

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a liberal nature? Does he know I hate liver, tripe, and peppers? We quarreled just once over a concrete problem in my breakfast nook. But what can be improved by yards and yards of chicken wire? The space separating us used to be a simple cavity, now

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it's a series of countless pentagonal holes. When I learned to play three marimbas, that will confuse them and his wife too who gardens in gloves that go above the elbow. They'll notify the city council, maybe even the police. Then I'll

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announce him as a collaborator and throw a dead mouse perfectly preserved over his bamboo. Somebody might get arrested, or he may be driven to do the right thing and returned to Oslo and buy a sailboat.

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And this is Mort Marcus and a regular part of our show is PSA announcements, or public service announcements. Tomorrow night, Monday on October 2nd at the Bookshop Santa Cruz at eight o'clock, Richard Jones and Morton Marcus will be giving a

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reading. Richard Jones is here for his new book, "The Blessing, New and Selected Poems" published by Copper Canyon Press. He is a master of the shortline, his poems are a marriage of wit and open-heartedness, simplicity,

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and elegance. You don't have to peel this poems to get to the fruit, and the flavor is complex. Don't miss Richard Jones. Well, I just read that off, but the fact of the matter is, I was delighted to read with Richard, who is a marvelous

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poet, and in fact, a poet who Robert Peterson would have loved in many, many ways, especially for one of his poems, telling a story on an Italian train, I think one of the great poems of the last twenty-five years. And so, I was delighted to be able

00:30:34.510 - 00:30:50.590

to read with him, and I hope you'll turn out certainly to hear Richard, if not me, and that's tomorrow night at 8pm at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. I should tell you by the way that you are listening to KUSP and that this program is supported

00:30:50.590 - 00:31:06.460

in part by contributions from the community of KUSP listeners and we thank you all for your support, twenty-eight years of support in fact. By the way, following this show, and I hope you do listen and continue to listen to KUSP after this show,

00:31:06.700 - 00:31:22.750

"From the Bookshelf" hosted by Billy Harris brings us local author Roz Spafford, reading an excerpt from her novel in progress, "Telling Time." And as you probably know, Roz Spafford is also a marvelous poet. I should also add that next week

00:31:22.960 - 00:31:37.960

at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, Kay Ryan, author of five books, her latest "Say Uncle," published by Grove Press will read. She has been a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. She'll be reading with Joseph McNeilly,

00:31:37.960 - 00:31:53.560

longtime English teacher at Cabrillo College, whose new book out there has just been published by Charion Press(?). And in fact, Joseph will be the guest at next week's Poetry Show hosted by Dennis Morton, so do tune in for that. Learn more

00:31:53.710 - 00:32:13.840

about Joseph who is an interesting prose writer as well as poet. Right now, we are, if you've just turned in, talking about the poet Robert Peterson, who died roughly two weeks ago, and lived in Santa Cruz for ten years, was an important San

00:32:13.840 - 00:32:33.220

Francisco poet, and in fact, one in 1980 was named in the national poetry series as winner by Carolyn Kizer wonderful poet herself who really promoted Bob's work throughout his life and really felt that there was something very unique about his

00:32:33.220 - 00:32:46.960

work and obviously, we agree. I'm sitting here with novelist, short story writer and good Peterson friend, John Deck, and we're just reminiscing and going back and forth in reading Peterson's poem, so, John.

00:32:47.170 - 00:32:59.050

John Deck: Well, Robert always had, as we all do, troubles with the ordinary puzzles of modern existence and he has several poems about such, as this one is called: MECHANICS

00:33:00.760 - 00:33:19.090

If doctors are as remote as 21 dealers, or masters of the koto, and dentist just too incredibly genial confidentially, most mechanics don't even bother to observe the most common courtesies. While I'm trying logically and chronologically to

00:33:19.090 - 00:33:35.710

confess my faulty machine, they make no secret of being bored to tears. Sometimes seem almost narcoleptic, when finally they do catch enough to declare in their unique patois what must now be done, and how long it will take and add up the

00:33:35.710 - 00:33:51.250

incredible costs for parts and labor, take it or leave it, almost always managing to imply I lead a dissolute private life, and I'm doomed never to grasp the gnosis of machines, also hinting that no matter how many times I've checked and tuned and

00:33:51.250 - 00:34:04.660

remember to change the oil, I should learn to expect my rods, valves, and mufflers to continue to fail and drop off willy-nilly, ad infinitum in series, the proper fate of all moronic luddites deserve.

00:34:05.860 - 00:34:23.890

Morton Marcus: And though there is a bit of sarcasm in there, I think that in the poems, we have a persona. It is not quite Woody Allen, but it is someone who is sort of done in by the world around him, and yet with a wry smile just continues through,

00:34:23.890 - 00:34:35.560

because he always knows what is needed to get through this life. And it is that kind of Chinese detachment of certain Chinese poets, which has a very, very wry humor to it, and you've got another poem.

00:34:35.650 - 00:34:46.660

John Deck: Yes. Along the same lines [unintelligible] [cross talk] called: NOTES FROM THE PECOS WILDERNESS Wed. 4pm, Pecos Ranger State, two dollar permit. 8pm Jack's

00:34:46.660 - 00:35:09.370

Creek trailhead camp, [unidentified] Lasagna, radio and to bed. Thurs. Sleep fair. Up 6:30, cold cereal. 8:15 Beatty's Camp trail, steep. Nine o'clock, rest. 9:30, rest. 10:20, rest. 1:15, arrange Beatty's. Arrive Beatty's, five

00:35:09.370 - 00:35:29.950

hours hard climb, wash feet, rest to three o'clock. Agatha Christie. Spot a fish, nada. Forage firewood, slim pickings, no one but me here along the Pecos anyway, and about one thousand yards west elk, clean socks. 4:30 then fire and to

00:35:29.950 - 00:35:51.250

bed. Eight o'clock following stars, dawn frost, up five, leave seven, incoming pac train. Dudes, guns, howdies, elk season manana, arrived Jack's Creek 11:40. Return trip four hours, ten minutes. One hour, fish, three native browns that's each

00:35:51.250 - 00:36:09.280

seven inch. Sore all over, beer, pickles, bar, mistakes. Wrong kind of moleskins, torn tent, nail in boot, forgot ace bandage, dull hatchet. Morton Marcus: And that's from his last book when he is really

00:36:09.460 - 00:36:28.750

now cutting connections down tremendously. I want to read Bob's biography of himself. And this is his poetic biography of how he became a poet. And it's a kind of poem that Bob really perfected, in which he just puts down a whole load of details,

00:36:29.050 - 00:36:44.800

which are almost non-sequiturs or just seem to have no relationship to each other and almost seems surreal, but give you the sense of this quirky mind and how it's working. And so here is how someone, if you ever wondered, becomes a poet.

00:36:45.340 - 00:37:02.890

And here it is: HOW I BECAME A POET, and he would read this at a lot of readings. It was between some wars. I owned a bird called Charles Dickens. My Lionel electric train was in storage and things

00:37:02.890 - 00:37:19.330

began to go badly. A friend lost his right hand and I stopped seeing him. For no reason, hug my chest, one day fell to the floor, selfishly clutching a sponge. The bird passed on and I moated to Mexico speaking sloppy English pretending to be

00:37:19.330 - 00:37:38.710

Lindbergh, recognized by thieves and orphans. Lived on Tabasco and penicillin, sketched cloudbursts by candlelight, knowing I'd never swim in Guatemala, returned to beloved homeland to work out dreams. Dead in chemistry, and too late

00:37:38.710 - 00:37:55.480

for chess, boyhood mildewed. Curious for a week about ancestors, one day woke fox-footed and dictatorial issuing meticulous orders for conduct of the secret life, refusing to carry them out, terrified of heights and snakes.

00:37:56.410 - 00:38:14.050

Read impossible books, got conversational, voted, quarreled, registered, punched out my history, every motive questionable. When asked what I was doing, all I could refer to was what I'd done yesterday, then fell in love with sad

00:38:14.050 - 00:38:31.630

nights and came to trouble. Nothing worse than being unhappy; in this country, i t goes against the teachings. But trouble, I found, brought out the best in me. And poets, I was told, can't be told how to think what to feel, or vice versa, and

00:38:31.630 - 00:38:55.480

have lots of trouble, so that's what I became. And earlier when I said, "beloved homeland," that's not what I meant exactly, that was yesterday. John Deck: I think one of the first poems that I remember that

00:38:55.480 - 00:39:11.710

Robert wrote and that I read was this one that- from the same book, from "Native Dancer" called, "Baseball." Baseball was- Robert held several things sacrosanct, one was baseball, certainly cats, and music and so on. But baseball pops up off and

00:39:11.710 - 00:39:24.400

on all through his poetry. So: BASEBALL In the last pocket of a threadbare afternoon, I found a park, some boys, five on one side, seven on the other we're

00:39:24.400 - 00:39:45.580

having baseball then. Home played on a hill, first base an imaginary place. Everyone knew where it was, and out beyond a real pond a duck sailed on. The sides called, "Come on and play, ump. Come on and play ump." And catcher for both sides so I came

00:39:45.580 - 00:40:03.070

on, and we had baseball for a long, long time, until nobody remembered the score, until we were only three against two, six shadows tilting under one evening star. Morton Marcus: You know, he was, as we've said, a great

00:40:03.070 - 00:40:18.310

companion. He had this great comic sense and yet this very, very wry, almost Chinese sage-like sense. And it's this that we remember about him. Your wife, Harriet was saying, because we really found it very hard that he had died, though he

00:40:18.310 - 00:40:35.500

was 76, 77 years old, and she said, "Well, you know, it was his youthful spirit, we never really thought that he would go." It was part of this persona that he had. He was tremendously alive and loving and generous to his friends. He really lived in

00:40:35.500 - 00:40:52.360

many ways through his friends. He was tremendously loyal. He would send birthday greetings to you, and anniversary greetings, usually sometimes a little miniature paintings. They were wonderful. He was always sending letters with cutouts from

00:40:52.360 - 00:41:06.760

newspapers, of curious little love stories that that he had found there and he was always keeping people together. He was marvelous, but he also to me was always the quiet, laconic self-effacing hero like Bogart.

00:41:06.850 - 00:41:21.280

John Deck: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Right? And he has as his heroes, Bogart Toshiro Mifune and Jean Gabin and I want to read a poem that has to be read here. And this is, "Jean Gabin as Ship." And if you don't

00:41:21.280 - 00:41:39.790

know who Jean Gabin is out there, he is the great French actor who can only be compared in the films, I think, to JohnWayne. He is John Wayne and Bogart put together, he is the French hero, and this is what he is to Bob Peterson and the last

00:41:39.790 - 00:41:55.870

lines of this poem are priceless Peterson. And this is actually a film that I saw when I first heard Bob read. I'd seen this film around five years before and this is: JEAN GABIN AS SHIP, and this is actually a film Gabin made late

00:41:55.870 - 00:42:10.480

in life. In this plot he's a chef, falls for his step-daughter, loses his best friend for it, etc. There's some killing, things finally get resolved. And he comes back alone to his kitchen, sadder in

00:42:10.480 - 00:42:31.060

the end, but what he thinks isn't important. It's that smooth, well-trimmed walk between the big scenes I go to see, try it myself sometimes when I have a need to be making not love, but speed with lots of deep water under me.

00:42:34.780 - 00:42:53.410

John Deck: I like a poem him here and this is a little bit longer but this- from his recollection of his youth called, "1937." I kind of imagined because when I heard that Robert had his own room in a hotel for some reason keyed

00:42:53.410 - 00:43:08.440

off, a notion what a strange boyhood he must have had. This is not exactly that, but very like it. 1937 Twice a week at thirteen, I got my chance at the bottle. All

00:43:08.440 - 00:43:24.700

granddad's straight bourbon 100 proof that belonged to my father, ten shots with a water chasers, writing down in my notebook the exact time of each, every quarter hour, until it was time to refill and balancing precariously on a chair taller

00:43:24.700 - 00:43:42.310

than I had a right to be, set it safely back in place on the top shelf beside the brandy, with this label facing just the right way. From room to room, I'd spin, feeling expensive, acting out rude pretentions, free of all necessities except tobacco,

00:43:42.550 - 00:43:59.500

and the disappearance of my clothes, singing to my moronic twin lugubrious songs of genealogy and flesh, shouting cracked commands to the preposterous apartment and advised, consoled, and illuminated by my magic

00:43:59.500 - 00:44:19.540

erection. Then lost and lurching in bed, I slam against riddles of nausea and despair like a drunken boy stunned to the retinas by furious interactivity by a separate, sober self, leaning on a pin, and without religion, survey the wreckage

00:44:19.600 - 00:44:37.810

and hoped I'd destroyed all the evidence. Morton Marcus: Bob wrote nine books and his tenth actually was, "All the Time in the World." It is the only book of his that is still in print. And if anyone is out there and

00:44:37.810 - 00:44:51.220

interested, the book can be ordered if it's not in the Bookshop from Hanging Loose pPress, and it's called, "All the Time in the World," by Robert Peterson, I think contains some of his best poems. But I want to read one to show

00:44:51.220 - 00:45:05.590

the sensibility and how in many ways it was at war with the world he was most comfortable in, the world of trivia, the world of material existence and how he knew it was all a shock. And that's when he says, you know, "and when I said, beloved

00:45:05.590 - 00:45:21.550

homeland, that's not exactly what I meant." He knows the problems over here. But anyway, this is, "January 27th," that's the name of the poem and it's actually Mozart's birthday. And here he can- he shows Mozart and really gives points about

00:45:21.550 - 00:45:36.370

himself in contrast to the life he leads as a 20th century American, and this is called: JANUARY 27TH, Mozart's birthday, as I said, Even though he was known to be generous and sociable, and now

00:45:36.370 - 00:45:52.870

and then loved a good joke, probably we're not even close right now to the mood of his original intention. On Mozart's birthday, the best we can offer is this essentially quiet, but life-sustaining minor event, deep in contemplation of the

00:45:52.870 - 00:46:10.690

sporting green, at the kitchen table, simultaneous with this early composition, the soloist is Ashkenazi. Simultaneous with green pea, raw mushroom, cucumber, imitation crab, cherry tomato, red beet, crouton, bacon bits, salad bar, [unidentified],

00:46:11.200 - 00:46:25.630

blue cheese dressing, white throwaway fork, brand new paper napkin, Steffi Graf easy winner of her semi-final in the Australian Open, Piano Concerto Number 11 in its loosened entirety.

00:46:29.650 - 00:46:40.000

John Deck: Do you want to talk about these ghazals? Morton Marcus: Sure. John Deck: All right. They they strike me as the strangest and most poetically poetic of his work that- because they are.

00:46:40.510 - 00:46:53.350

Most of the poems have a little framework that you can tie yourself to and connect to, a little sort of, they make a little box and the poem's inside, right- Morton Marcus: They're five couplets.

00:46:53.380 - 00:47:01.630

John Deck: Right. Morton Marcus: And they can't, one couplet cannot directly relate to another. John Deck: Right and very often the two lines together don't tie

00:47:01.630 - 00:47:14.470

too close to [unintelligible] sort of it's more playful it seems to me than anything else more- Morton Marcus: I think that's what- yeah we should say as from the poetry standpoint that there are two forms that he will go

00:47:14.470 - 00:47:28.480

back to again and again, ghazals which he'd written, even before this he'd written several, and sonnets. He would write his own versions of sonnets which would have usually a break in line eight, and then go on to a finale in the last four but they

00:47:28.510 - 00:47:43.630

wouldn't look like sonnets. They were just very, very free and open but they had that sense of fourteen-line structure. John Deck: In these, in the ghazals there are there are two characters that keep popping up: one is the kid and one is

00:47:43.630 - 00:48:04.360

Borsalino. Borsalino I believe is a cat, the kid is probably Robert and another guise and I will read one called, I guess, SESAME Sinbad was a Baghdad businessman first, right? Let's say gems or

00:48:04.360 - 00:48:22.840

spice, only later did he meet the old man of the sea. In the daydream, the kid escapes a Moorish parentheses, he's got to start somewhere. Real dream breaking and entering father's mathematical mind, he becomes an overnight sensation. Of all

00:48:22.840 - 00:48:40.450

farewells, a ship's farewell is the longest and most dreary. For this reason, the avatar of his youth tries again and again to join the navy. A lul in the sonata, he imagines a head full of hydrogen, halt, who goes there? During earthquakes, he

00:48:40.450 - 00:49:00.070

always acts sensibly as one does in the cradle, perhaps making a wish, and certainly news, a fashionably-dressed body hums horizontally through a meridian, sudden spotlight, snazzy drum-roll, your heart as big as a taco, then my moon's long

00:49:00.070 - 00:49:15.250

soliloquy. Morton Marcus: One of the events in his life as so many others, was the Second World War, something really happened over there in France and then over at Cologne. And it certainly was

00:49:15.280 - 00:49:31.090

what he had to come to grips with to go on and finally we see this happening again and again in his poetry, though he never really talks about it. Way before everyone started to talk about the greatest generation in the last year or two, he read a

00:49:31.090 - 00:49:50.740

book, which was called, "Band of Brothers," which was by Stephen Ambrose and was published in 1993. And this book about World War II allowed him to go back and confront the ghosts of the war. I think it's one of the best poems he ever wrote and

00:49:50.740 - 00:50:06.490

it's very different than the others because in this one, instead of being wry or ironic about the emotion, he just confronts them head on. I think it's a major Peterson poem and I want to read it now, for Peterson and for all the vets of

00:50:06.490 - 00:50:21.190

all the wars, but specifically, the great generation of World War II. He was there before the big hoopla and hullabaloo. VETERANS DAY, 1993, and the book he's talking about is the book I just mentioned, Ambrose's book.

00:50:22.960 - 00:50:37.960

Towards the end of the book, a few surviving Screaming Eagle paratroopers of E Company 100 and first Airborne Division briefly recall for the author times in the air, snow, water, and mud on dikes and around the wire, in firefights on open

00:50:37.960 - 00:50:57.250

ground and hand to hand in hedge groves from the D-day to [unidentified], near Eindhoven, Foy and Bastogne. Pinup-flare, tracer-lace, dirty, hard slap of 88. Black moods, trench-knives, burp-guns, tree-burst, the old toy crickets, chain-smokes,

00:50:57.250 - 00:51:14.380

unfamiliar passwords, dubious promises and predictions by clean crease generals perpetual by the book G.I. chickenshit. The nickel dime, too-bitten bingo back to blighty wound, not to mention big casino with its K.I.A. chameleon faces,

00:51:14.500 - 00:51:31.540

crack-up, fuck-up, God-Almighty-boredom, and brainy improvisations, laughs. The lucky roll of a not-a-scratch, close-called drunken whoopee blasted on short notice anywhere. Somehow near the end, overloads of crowd boos, looters

00:51:31.660 - 00:51:54.880

and fancy swag, well-filled arms and rooms of honey, babe, sweetheart and Liebchen. Unfathomably bonded forever by invisible ambiguous scars, the rare skill and true grit of one or two officers and calm, successful peacetime lives. All

00:51:54.880 - 00:52:12.910

of them at some point, in one way or another, bidding a fond farewell to an absent comrade. First Sergeant Floyd Talbert of Redding, California, post-war fishermen, hunter, guide, thinker, trapper haunted by bogeys. The ghosts, cold sweats

00:52:12.910 - 00:52:29.860

and awful dreams and the aftermath of no quarter combat cauchemars, when last seen a long-bearded, tattered mountain-man, vagrant drifter and drinker officially felled by heart failure at fifty-nine. By too much pain and loneliness,

00:52:30.100 - 00:52:51.730

the truth of the matter, signing one last letter to his former captain, "Your devoted soldier forever." At first, it seems utterly pointless and absurd, asking too much of the self to grieve deeply, far into the night for unspeakable suffering

00:52:51.820 - 00:53:13.120

nobley endured for long periods of time by individuals, or groups of individuals, one hardly knows. But sometimes for childish, imperfect but mysteriously compelling reasons, it becomes extremely important as yet another way, an average

00:53:13.180 - 00:53:36.130

uneventful life, maybe lived with honor and decency. And there's absolutely no alternative, but to quit fighting it and let go. So that's a Peterson we don't see very often, he doesn't let

00:53:36.130 - 00:53:53.800

us see. But that's who's there behind these other poems. John Deck: Well, at the end of, "All the Time in the World," as you know, he has this collection of very short poems. Morton Marcus: Yeah, let me say about poems I've said and I

00:53:53.800 - 00:53:59.200

wrote a review of this also. This has some of the longest poems he ever wrote. John Deck: Yeah. Morton Marcus: But has some of the shortest poems he ever wrote

00:53:59.200 - 00:54:13.690

and these in the end are these marvelous haiku-like poems that just really knock people's socks off as well as these others. John Deck: I know and while you're talking about it, I think that the title poem of this book is one of the most amazing, that

00:54:13.720 - 00:54:30.100

he's lying in bed on Domingo Avenue in Fairfax, wakes up in the morning and begins to think of China and all of the influence that China has had, it's a leisurely rising. It's a perfect title for what goes on. It's wonderful firework of a

00:54:30.100 - 00:54:38.530

poem. I've never read anything like it. Morton Marcus: It's the longest poem he ever wrote and it's really his philosophizing on philosophy. I know I mean, what is life all about?

00:54:38.560 - 00:54:43.120

John Deck: Right, yeah. Morton Marcus: And it's worth getting a book just for that. John Deck: Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: It's worth getting the book just for its

00:54:43.120 - 00:54:57.640

cover which he drew. John Deck: I know! Well, anyway, I'm gonna read the last three poems of these and then you can finish up. Okay. Back when the kid making evil faces in slow-motion was the

00:54:57.640 - 00:55:13.150

absolute monarch of the mirror. Only a paper flower, but you never know, not a soul in sight, just a whiff. Ah, Puccini, your problems are mine.

00:55:15.670 - 00:55:27.040

Morton Marcus: Yes and you know, there's always these references, obviously to people who are great athletes, who are great stars, that a lot of people don't know anymore, but also to the great composers and the great writers. And this again,

00:55:27.070 - 00:55:42.880

makes his work, it just sort of removes it from the general reader today who doesn't have the education or the depth and layers of feeling and sensibility that Robert had, you know. I think one of the tragedies that's happened here

00:55:42.880 - 00:55:55.990

is that towards the end of his life it was very hard for him to get published. He did not achieve that great notoriety we're talking in the beginning to make this a full circle of an Amichai, but he should have been one of our most praised and

00:55:55.990 - 00:56:08.740

honored poets. And I hope that people are listening there maybe coming back to the file- from the fireworks because this is the day that's the 150th anniversary of Santa Cruz, for some reason, don't ask me to explain it, seems right that

00:56:08.740 - 00:56:24.640

we're reading Robert Peterson while the fireworks go off. He was an amazing man and you gave me the last word here so I'm going to read the last part of, "The Only Piano Player in La Paz," that poem itself. And I want to thank John Deck for

00:56:24.640 - 00:56:40.720

sharing this evening for me, he says it's his first radio show. He's like a pro, he's a Walter Cronkite for God's sakes. But anyway, Robert, wherever you are, your words God knows are with us and will be with us as many other poets words will not

00:56:40.720 - 00:56:46.630

be with us. And here's what you say in: HOW TO GET ON ITALIAN TRAINS THE ONLY PIANO PLAYER IN LA PAZ

00:56:48.470 - 00:57:08.480

I want the simplest thought to glow like neon as it speeds through a heart in the bodies of butterflies. The storms of revelation to break again and again on the shy reefs of your breasts. I want a jury of our peers, the trees. I want to hear

00:57:08.480 - 00:57:29.810

truth crack its knuckles. God bless you, Bob. We'll always be with you and you'll be with us. This is Mort Marcus saying stay tuned for the next program which will be From the Bookshelf. And I'll be seeing

00:57:29.810 - 00:57:43.580

you in three weeks. Next week, Joseph McNeilly will be interviewed by Dennis and tomorrow night I'll be reading with a great Richard Jones at the Bookshop Santa Cruz at 8pm. Good night, wherever you are.