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Morton Marcus: He said about himself as a poet with characteristic wit and good humor: I do not stammer, but speak slowly when I speak. Having often nothing to say, I say nothing. Having often nothing to

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say, sometimes I talk too much. But there are no rules, and sometimes I am in without great division between intention and end. But however, I can be shrewd, I am hardly ever practical, and the matter rests unconcluded.

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He said: [CABRAS] To sing the democratic man today, or the Marxist man, for that, is no proposition. So I sing goats.

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Hardly any more the issue, to move to the line, take up the quarrel against it. Each man is forced back some by the damn noise, will hold any line against it, his own. What else can be intelligent or warm –– No communal man at all.

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Some little human conspiracy in letters or the possible handshake, but some accidents of faith or inner nature are certainly occasional –– yet all of us eat and shit and walk or ride, but goats, asses, pigs,

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sheep, enjoy equal rights, make their droppings and stink, each according to his natural inclination. Burros come up the hill today with flagstones on their backs, they left their dung on the steps, were patient, walked very

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carefully without resentment. Sheep die silently, pleading with their soft eyes. Pigs scream under the knife, and for a long while. The goats in the next field, however, are hobbled, being

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otherwise difficult to catch; they are so quick and stubborn and full of fun. His name was Paul Blackburn, and he lived in the cities, villages, and countrysides of America, Spain, and Southern

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France from 1926 to 1971, a scant forty-six years, and left us with some of the most vital poetry in American English. He was a celebrator of the most ordinary, momentary, everyday occurrence. He is today's subject, the second in a series

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on the new Poetry Show that I've entitled "Lost Voices." Hello, this is Mort Marcus. September 13th marks the 14th year that Paul Blackburn died of cancer, and to commemorate that sad event, and to bring the poetry that was so much a part

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of his life back to the speaking mad world we all live in, I've decided to make him the subject of the second program in my "Lost Voices" series. Joining me today is a friend of Paul Blackburn's, the poet Bob Sward, who now lives in Santa Cruz and

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to whom in part Blackburn dedicated his "Selected Early and Later Poems." We'll be talking about Blackburn, reminiscing about him, reading from his poems, and estimating what makes Blackburn's poetry so unique. Hello, Bob, and once

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more welcome to the show. Robert Sward: Thanks, Morton. Morton Marcus: It was a surprise to you when I showed you the dedication of the "Early and Later Poems," that in part, as I

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said, were dedicated to you. The poems, by the way, for the listening audience, came out after Blackburn's death. How long had it been since you'd seen Blackburn that at that time?

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Robert Sward: I'd last seen Paul in Cortland, New York 1969 and he died two years after that. The book came out, as you know, early 70s. Morton Marcus: Right, right. What is the nature of your

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friendship with Paul? Well, first of all, let me just read a very brief biography of Paul Blackburn, who he was, where he came from. He was born in St. Albans, Vermont on November 24th, 1926. His mother was Frances Frost, the poet and

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novelist, and he attended New York University and served in the Army from 1945 to 1947, after which he completed undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin. Now it doesn't say it here, what he became very interested in at

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that point, around 1948-49, were the troubadour poets of Southern France, certainly around Aquitaine. In 1954, he went to France on a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Toulouse. Remember that, listening audience, because one

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of his finest poems is about spending a miserable winter in Toulouse, and served as lecteur américain -- how's that for an accent? -- during the following year there. He then lived in Spain and Morocco until his return to the United States in

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1958. He worked for two encyclopaedia firms and was briefly poetry editor for "The Nation," I think that's where you got to know him, and we'll talk about that in a second. After 1968 he taught at City University of New York, and died

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of cancer as I said on September 13th, 1971. How did you first come into contact with him, Bob? Robert Sward: Well, I was teaching at Cornell University from 1962 to 1964, writing a lot of poetry at that time, sent in

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a group of poems to "The Nation." I knew of Paul's work, but I hadn't met Paul at that point, got back a warm encouraging letter from him, he accepted a couple of poems for "The Nation," and said, "Next time you're in New York City,

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give me a call." So I was making regular trips to New York at that time, called Paul, and he said, "Where are you staying tonight?" And I said, "Well, you know, getting a hotel." He said, "Well, come here." It was just an act of generosity, of- I

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don't know. There was an immediate connection, so I'm not just hearing his voice, knowing his work and I think, it was obviously poetry that made that connection. And sessions at Paul's house, I mean, really involved sitting in the kitchen,

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where I also like to write, and having Paul read up and back across the table and getting comments, and he'd come into with about four or five loose-leaf notebooks filled with poems, translations, his journals, lyrical poems and so

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forth. Then he also would frequently play, he was organizing readings at Cafe Metro, so on many occasions, he would, you know, he'd make a reference to Olson or to Creeley and then he would play some of those tapes for me. But above

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everything else, what struck me about Paul, I mean, I'd known poets for a number of years before I met him, was just the relative lack of ego, the generosity of spirit that he had. He was rare because he was a really rare person at that

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level and a phenomenal poet. Morton Marcus: Yes, to go on with this, he went over and lived in Spain in, as I said, the Fifties. And it was there that he met another poet who was Robert Creeley, who put out his

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first book, and Creeley felt the same way about him. He thought he was really rather extraordinary. And I should put in at this point that Paul Blackburn is definitely considered part of a school of poetry which we consider, or we

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call it the "Open Field Poets" who followed Pound, followed Olson. And what you will be hearing, dear listener, today is a poet who has opened form. And what he is following is his ear, and he has a wonderful ear to the sound of language. And when

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we get to the second part of the show, which will deal with the cities of America, you will hear this wonderful, wonderful tuned ear to American speech. The Olsonites felt that poetry should balance itself on the basis of the line and the line

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should be balanced on the basis of breath, that was their measure, so it was a living speech. And this idea of living and spontaneity was to be in the poetry because you were literally to tap the movement of the mind, almost a stream of

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consciousness, but instead of babble, what they were really trying to touch was the interesting way the mind works, the different intellectual concepts that came to it that made it relate seemingly disparate things. Now Olson, of

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course -- as many of you may know, I'm talking about Charles Olson -- he was an anthropologist and so his mind was filled with anthropological connections. Paul Blackburn was not an anthropologist, he was a lover of poetry, a lover of

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troubadour poetry of Spanish and South American poetry. In fact, he did the first translations of Julio Cortazar, and his translations are coming to be more and more recognized as South American writers, but he had a mind that was wonderfully

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alive to everyday life and its ironies. And so what you get is a man who is literally writing about any subject, anything that happens to him at any moment of the day. You get this idea of what I said in the introduction is the celebration of the

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moment, the celebration of a woman seen on the street, a fly crawling up a wall. So what we are going to do today is we are going to read from the poems of Paul Blackburn, talk about him, and we're going to divide the show into two parts. The first

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part will concern his "country poems" and what I mean by that are those poems mostly written in Spain, in North Africa, and in southern France. And they are poems in which he comes to grips with the soil, with the fundamental movement of the

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seasons, and gives this wonderful sense of atmosphere, which I only think he is one of the few poets can do. And then we will move on to his poems about American life and American cities, and I think you'll see the difference. So with that in

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mind, do you have one of these poems you would like to read, Bob? Robert Sward: Well, there's one poem that's from the Selected, just a short poem called:

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FRIENDS, and I'd like to read this one. Perhaps it is right that you shall not be there, perhaps good friends should remain apart. The sea beats on the rocks or that proximity but there are friends also close in space.

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Morton Marcus: Let me follow that with a longer poem on friendship. And again, this is written in Spain, I believe. And also obviously you can hear he's a wonderful narrative poet, narrative is coming back, but he is a narrative poet because he

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is writing about what is happening to him at that time, and it is as though you are sitting there with him. Well, here he is ruminating, and watching a truck come up a road as he also looks at the stars in this high mountain landscape,

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and the poem is called, "The Friendship." And it seems to me he's telling you if you have to choose things in this world, what you choose is mankind and men and women. And it's called: THE FRIENDSHIP

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Now we can wonder how that star that sat there so high, so high on the peak of the mountain, follow the seasons, follow, now appears in a cleft between hills further down, further down. And the light appears dimmer, at least it has more red in it. Now

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too, we can wonder that the truck moving through the town below casts more light, can besides make noises being in that sense humanistic, i.e. a human contraption, though the shadows close behind it. Starlight casts no shadows,

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better not play with stars, better the shadow dissolving, better the human contraction. So the light appears dimmer, so there is more red in it, so it does not sit so high. So cool on the peak of the mountain, it takes a man to drive the truck.

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The shadows close behind him and the seasons follow. Paul Blackburn was a very sensitive man to language and in one of my favorite poems, wh ch I'll be reading later, he literally moves from one thou ht to another, one image

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to another, on the sounds of wor s; he makes associations in he sounds of words. And there's ne word in here which is rea ly wonderful, and you may h ve thought that I mispronounced nd it is, "better the hu an contraction." The cliche

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is better the human condition. ut in this case, he's talking ab ut don't look at the big world ut there, don't look at he universe in the cosmos, bring it down to a human scale. And so the human condition becomes he human contraction, and start

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es us, surprises us as so much t at he does startle us. In fact a lot of these poems start out as romantic pastoral poems nd suddenly turn around on themselves. He was v ry influenced by Creeley, there is a poem called, "A Storm," an

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I know that you have that. hy don't you read it to us? If ou remember, there's a poem by Creeley, which goes, "Me an my friend are driving and w 're driving towards this storm. And he is- the person who's dr ving is looking at the storm. An

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the man who was talking says you know, don't look at the s orm, for God's sakes, look a the road directly in front of you, or you're not even going to have a chance to make it to that distant storm. And I think this poem really is written

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ith this Creeley-esque idea be ind it. And also, there's a lo of syntactical and word uses hat remind us of Creel A STORM was written in 1954. Robert Sward: The field below, dark green, solid and dark,

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filling us with a sense of the ominous. At the horizon, a line of cumulus with black along its belly. "See, there is light on the slopes. It is only one cloud darkening those fields." "I know it is only one cloud, but it is ominous. Did you look at those

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on the horizon?" I looked at the horizon, it might blow over." "Yes, it might blow over." Morton Marcus: A very simple seeming poem, and a conversation again between two men as in the Creeley poem. But what happens

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in these poems is that the incident becomes metaphorical, without his making it a metaphor, and it just takes on a vitality of its own, and yet it exists as a very, very simple moment in a day when a storm is coming on. Here's another one,

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in fact, it's the next poem in the book, and it talks about something very simple. And again, it's about the change of times, and impermanence, which I think the storm is all about. It's called:

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A BUSRIDE, and the changes in life even in this seemingly changeless landscape of a Spanish village life. The twenty-six kilometers between the city and this village used to take half- I'm sorry.

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The twenty-six kilometers between the city and this village used to take an hour and a half. The new driver, a young man from Estallenchs, makes the same trip in an hour. The old man's been relegated down to ticket-taker. One hour, neither

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rain nor fog nor low-lying cloud on those mountains, etc., one hour. But the new man crosses himself like any woman before starting, a big cross, wide slow and sure. And despite the breakneck weight of his big foot on the accelerator, his

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passengers ride confident and relaxed. Well, it shows that there may be changes but there aren't that many changes. And as long as this young man no matter how breakneck this some bus is being hauled around by him, as long as

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he crosses himself, as long as there is the old tradition, the people in the bus will accept even the speed of the bus, but you've got to have that old tradition, that old sense of life. Bob, why don't you read another one of these poems,

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which were written mostly between 1954 and 1957? Robert Sward: That's right. This is one called: THE LINE, and it deals with permanence and impermanence. And it has to do with the relationship between a man and a

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woman. It goes like this: Had it nearly entered my body, my only awareness the warmth by which it was sinking, slowly, into me, that being-included of body heat, the steadiness of the source next to me.

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When she had left, softly, though doubtless under the pressure of some urgency, part of the warmth remained there on the abandoned sheet, which lessening of that power and my awareness of it increased my own in such wise that on the return,

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my warmth was greater than hers, and the line moved again, into undefined spaces, under the roof. The scope of senses and man extended to such degree as was called for.

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Morton Marcus: If you are hearing strange noises without, I think they are trying to rebuild a street behind us and the windows are open because it gets so hot in here. So do bear with us there. Bob has gotten up and closed the windows. This is

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the practical side of poetry, folks, but it is not your receiver. Now, a truck is starting up out there and there is a plane overhead, oh well. What goes on in his poetry also is love, and he was married three times, and love, which

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plays a part in all our lives, played a great part in his. Here is the way he can capture this wonderful sense of the world around him. It is the day before Ramas and, in Spain, and the moon will be full in Ramas but it is not full right now. Now

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for Paul Blackburn, the moon has the symbolism that it has had for poets down through the years and that it is- is the cold woman, the woman we all try to achieve, in many ways, the muse. And here is what happens, we don't really know what's going

00:19:30.920 - 00:19:48.100

on but we have this wonderful description of walking through this Spanish village and it's called: SPRING THING Tomorrow, Ramas and the moon will come to full. Tonight at

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9:25, the moon had just come over the mountain. A few light clouds passed quickly over her, a shadow along the bottom brilliant between two planets: one golden, one red. The stone steps down to town washed in her light, the ribbon

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of road curving out far below white, white. A red cat darts by on the steps. Light cloud over the sea, sea patched with shadows, and sung with a glitter of moon. At the last minute, I will not pass back of the church where

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there is a cross in stone, though it is not tonight that the moon is full,. Meaning to avoid it by the middle stair, I fart all the way down the steps, absent-mindedly and find myself directly in front of it. I have forgotten how the town is built

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under the pale brightness of moon. Two women come by in black veils, both hands held, palm upward, carrying rosaries probably. I see that their hands are empty. The moon does not reach

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into this street. I offer good night and take two back and hurry on. Both trucks have arrived. One can tell by the empty baskets piled by the wall, means the cigarettes have come in, the

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first in a week. One is jubilant to have calculated the hour. The man in the cafe, which is grocery and tobacco store both, sit and smoke over there coñacs and show no undue emotion. I give one good night and get back twenty.

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Climbing again, more slowly, enjoying the smoke, the moon is everywhere. Over a terrace of fruit trees first, then over the pines higher up, then over houses on the first transversal. As I turn the last terrace to the house, she sits over a great

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cactus clump, light clouds, a few stars, a yellow cat darts by on the steps. In the kitchen, my wife has left me a small fire. The power plant has gone off for the night. I have some candles to write by. I think that's what the argument was about. Still

00:22:21.590 - 00:22:40.520

goofy with moonlight, I pick up pen and write SLUT OF A POET and FOOL and flower-crowned, season-driven white samovar of corruption from which sweetness and also- ah, fuck her! I forget what the argument was about. Carefully, I feed the

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coals some dried sticks, blaze warms my hands and feet. The bamboo blowpipe is yellow, the hot coals are red. And outside, the moon sits over the cactus clump. In an hour, the day will be Ramas and the moon full, the inversion.

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Okay, Bob, how about you? Robert Sward: The poem also from the Selected: [BAÑALBUFAR , A BRAZIER,] RELATI ITY, CLOUD FORMATION, AND THE INDNESS AND RELENTNESNESS O TIME, ALL SEEN THROUGH A WIN

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OW WHILE KEEPING THE FEET WAR AT THE SA End of the February, beginning of Lent. How prevent the clouds from moving now. Where sunlight falls... The walls keep the wind out but the house cold, cold. Feet under the fold of the table

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cover, edge toward the brazier underneath. Old house warmer outside where is sun when sun is. Sheaves of love and talk wave at the attention. More hot coals are added. Loud thanks. Focus on direction.

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Analyze. Keep the eyes peeled, are changing now clouds. Southwind: and lines of clouds walk across the mountains straight across the sea. The land, the mountains at angle. Between the cloudbanks sun falls. Lemon trees outside the

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window under sun, making a sweet quadrangle: parallel lines of sun, straight trees bent under the double weight, wind, fruit. How prevent the clouds from moving, now that sun... Sunlight on

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pear blossom, apple blossom, the red wall, roof's tile, red and yellow, yellow! lemons under sun. The mountain now in one shadow, huge. The colors in old wood, the door, sun, dark green of pines, dark blue of rock, more cloud, the wing of a cloud

00:24:55.540 - 00:25:10.930

passes. Alas! ["Alles, ala"] The wing everything goes. No. Always is always, all ways. No, not so. My love says to me, –– Not so. I am humble under this wind, but stupid and hopeful even.

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"Come into this cold room, the smell of wildflowers is in every corner. The mind is filled with flower smell and sun, even when sun is not." Morton Marcus: I would like to read another love poem. And this

00:25:30.400 - 00:25:43.450

one is called, "The Purse Seine," and as you know, a purse seine is a fishing net in which you catch the fish and then you close the lip of the net; he describes it in the poem. But it also shows how his mind worked, the poem is also using the purse

00:25:43.450 - 00:25:56.020

seine as a metaphor for love and lovers, and he mixes them together in a very original way; it's a very lyrical poem. And I'm just going to read one more from this section afterwards. I'm going to ask Bob to read a short poem after this and then

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we're going to take a break and we're going to come back with his poems about the cities of America, mostly New York. It's called: THE PURSE SEINE

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Fierce luster of sun on sea, the gulls swinging by, gulls flung by wind aloft, hung clear and still before the pivot, turn, glide out, riding the wind as though it were the conditions of civilization. But they are hungry too. And what they do

00:26:27.230 - 00:26:46.080

that looks so beautiful, is hunt. The side of your face so soft, down, their cried falls, bitter broken-wing graces crying freedom, crying carrion, and we cannot look one another in the eye, that frightens, easier to

00:26:46.080 - 00:27:08.010

face the carapace of monster crabs along the beach. The empty shell of death was always easier to gaze upon than to look into the eyes of a beautiful killer. Never look a gull in the eye. Fit the three-hundred pound tom over the pursing lines, start it

00:27:08.010 - 00:27:23.360

sliding down the rope to close the open circle, bottom of the net, weight thudding down through the sea. Brass rings hung from the lead line come closer together, the tom pushing the rings ahead of it, the purse line drawing

00:27:23.360 - 00:27:45.050

through them taking up the slack, the school sounding the fish streaking by toward the narrowing circle and out... Waiting behind the skiff, birds sit on a sea, staring off, patient for what we throw them. We merely fight it, surf, and

00:27:45.050 - 00:28:06.800

that other day. No bed ever was until this. Your face half-smiling down your swell of half-sleep, eyes closed so tightly they will admit nothing but fears and stars. How can we call all this our own? and shall we dare? admit the moon? full

00:28:06.800 - 00:28:24.230

bars of song from night birds, door of the mind, agape and swelling? Dream again that orange slope of sand, we belting down it hand upon hand, the birds cry overhead, the sea lies in its own black anonymity, and we here on this

00:28:24.230 - 00:28:44.060

bed, enact the tides, the swells, your hips rising toward me, waves break over the shoals, the seabird hits the mast in the dark and falls with a cry to the deck and flutters off. Panic spreads, the night is long, no one sleeps, the net is tight, we

00:28:44.060 - 00:29:05.150

are caught or not, the tom sliding down ponderous, shall we make it? The purse closes. The beach is a playground, unsatisfactory, but we pretending still it's play swim out too far, and reaching back,

00:29:05.300 - 00:29:25.070

the arm strain inward. Waters here are brown with sand, the land too close, too close we drown in sight of I love you and you love me. Do you have any short one to read from the section?

00:29:25.000 - 00:29:36.020

Robert Sward: It's a short poem called: MUSCA And title question, it simply means "fly" and it illustrates something of Paul's wonderful humor, his love of detail, his

00:29:36.230 - 00:29:52.640

celebrations of all the ordinary details of living. And the poem has this, I don't know, a special connection because I'm going back over twenty years in Paul's apartment in New York and having him read aloud this poem, among many others, but this one

00:29:52.640 - 00:30:08.300

for some reason stood out. A fly sits and scrubs his front feet, then rubs his back feet together, cleaning them, then washes his wings and his eye. Why do people call flies dirty? It looks like a pleasant

00:30:08.300 - 00:31:28.070

process. Self-absorbed and self-contained, directed especially in flight, certainly curious and active. Why is buzzing considered idle? Morton Marcus: This is the new Poetry Show, we are listening to

00:31:28.460 - 00:31:42.140

the guitar of Manitas de Plata's when he was a great guitarist and I mean by that when he was doing pure flamenco, and the reason for that is not only that Paul Blackburn, who is the subject of today's show as we commemorate the fourteenth year

00:31:42.140 - 00:32:00.710

of his death, loved Spanish culture and loved flamenco but also that Manitas de Plata lived in Provence, which is Southern France also, and still does some [unidentified]. Well, it is time for the announcements. And we have only one announcement this

00:32:00.710 - 00:32:18.410

week and it's something that I would like to let you in on. There is an "Introduction to Poetry" class going at Cabrillo College and you can still get into it. It meets Monday nights at Cabrillo from 7 to 10pm, and I strongly recommend this class

00:32:18.410 - 00:32:38.240

to you because it is taught by our own Joe Stroud who as you know is my co-host on this show, and will be here next week, by the way, with two local Santa Cruz poets, Barbara Boone and Paula Jones. Again at Cabrillo College, call 479-6424 for

00:32:38.240 - 00:32:56.360

further information for Joe Stroud's "Introduction to Poetry" class, which goes from 7 to 10 on Monday nights, there's still time to sign up for it. And the number again, to get more information on this is 479-6424, or just show up next

00:32:56.360 - 00:33:12.410

week, you can find out from the catalog or from information on canvas where the course is being held. And again next week, Joe will be back with Paula Jones and Barbara Boone. And that is going to be a wonderful show because they are two wonderful

00:33:12.470 - 00:33:59.760

poets. I'll let you have a little more of this [unidentified]. Well, we are here, Bob Sward and I, talking about the poetry of Paul Blackburn. We're now ready to move rather late into his

00:33:59.760 - 00:34:17.010

"city poems" and we can still give you a wonderful sense of these wild, wacky poems of Paul Blackburn in the city. So why don't you read one to us, Bob, and we will certainly be able to comment on it and get a feel of this very different kind of

00:34:17.010 - 00:34:31.700

poetry. Robert Sward: A PHONE CALL TO RUTHERFORD, of course, is a phone call that Paul Blackburn actually made to the poet, his mentor, William Carlos Williams, and this is dated October 1962.

00:34:31.700 - 00:34:53.050

And of course it followed on a stroke that Williams had in the very last part of his life. Williams is speaking: "It would be –– a mercy if you did not come see me... I have dif-fi /culty speak-ing. I cannot count on it. I am afraid

00:34:53.050 - 00:35:09.130

it would be too em-ba rass-ing for me." Bill: can you still answer letters? "No, my hands are tongue-tied. You have... made a record in my heart. Good bye."

00:35:10.920 - 00:35:23.550

Morton Marcus: And a few months later, he wrote this very short poem called: OBIT PAGE, or the Obituary Page Oh god. First the greatest right-handed batter in history,

00:35:23.940 - 00:35:51.330

Rogers Hornsby (hit .424 in 1924) with a lifetime average of .358 –– and now William Carlos Williams. You wanted to talk about his sense of duende as it's used by Lorca and interpreted by Blackburn; why don't you say a

00:35:51.330 - 00:36:04.740

few words about that, Bob. Robert Sward: Okay, there's- I think a way- the best way to begin, just want to keep this brief, is to go directly to the book, "The Cities," which is published by Evergreen, and

00:36:04.920 - 00:36:24.220

there's a brief author's note by Paul, naturally, and he says: Of the poems, let me use a Lorca's term, "duende" is tha faculty of making/ into which y u subsume yourself, your nicke , your dime, your peso, your 5 gold piece, your talent, silve

00:36:24.550 - 00:36:39.910

mark, a goddamn hate penny i that's all you're carryin around in your pocket that day you lay it on the line, it' payment to whatever devil o demon wishes (with that idea o feeling IT feels itself, itsel its owner, if you'd like) to ta

00:36:39.910 - 00:36:49.990

e possession of the THING in yo , giving that quality to t e process. The secret of this bo k is three: scissors, rock, a And it strikes me that what Paul is saying is that you have to d pape

00:36:56.110 - 00:37:11.380

invoke something outside of yourself to put your entire self into that poem, out of th interaction between yourself an the loved one that you'r writing about, whether it's a loved woman, a loved stre t scene in New York City, the lo

00:37:11.380 - 00:37:26.020

e of language. And Paul s entirely present in eve y detail, and every nuance, a d every word, phrase that h interjects into his poems. It' interesting, too, I think, th way he gets dialogue, his ow natural way of speaking, i

00:37:26.020 - 00:37:37.420

quotation marks, into his poem in juxtaposition to description of natural street scenes, an the conversation is very much part of the poems, and yet th poems themselves are ver conversational

00:37:37.930 - 00:37:52.570

Morton Marcus: Well, in in relation to that, let me go over everything you've just said in one of my favorite poems, and this was the first poem that I read by Paul Blackburn. And being a New Yorker myself, I said to myself: Lord, if I could

00:37:52.570 - 00:38:06.190

only write poetry like this, it's so simple, it's so direct, and it's so much the experience of the city, and yet the experience of living in some cosmic universe where you're trying to get continuity, things coming together, the lines

00:38:06.190 - 00:38:18.580

meeting in one of the other poems that you read. And it is a poem here called, "The Continuity," and it's about an area of New York that I know very well and lived around. And I just love it, I love the language in it, I love what it's

00:38:18.580 - 00:38:32.110

saying, and I love the conciseness with which it says it, and the dramatic quality in which it says it. It's called, "The Continuity," or how everything connects. And here it goes. Also, you people who are interested in writing narrative

00:38:32.110 - 00:38:42.240

poems, here is the quintessential poetic narrative it seems to me: THE CONTINUITY The bricklayer tells the bus driver, and I have nothing to do

00:38:42.000 - 00:38:53.790

Th' holdup at the liquor store, d'ja hear? a detective watch't but listen: 'm for ten minutes. He took it anyway, got away down Broadway. Yeah? Yeah.

00:38:54.410 - 00:39:11.970

And me: the one on the Circle? Yeah. Yeah? I was in there early tonight. The continuity. $1.42 that I spent on a bottle of wine is now in a man's pocket going down Broadway.

00:39:12.870 - 00:39:28.890

Thus far, the transmission is oral. Then a corner boy borrows my pencil to keep track of his sale of newspapers. Wonderful stuff. I mean, you know, that's what poetry is.

00:39:28.890 - 00:39:44.280

That's as simple as it can be, as musical and as concise, and it seems like it's not literature with a large L but it talks to our lives so much. It's just- and the sound of voices talking, it's just- it's almost like contemporary madrigals.

00:39:47.930 - 00:39:56.360

Robert Sward: Here's a contemporary madrigal, it's CLICKETY-CLACK, it's for Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It's a called: poem by Paul Blackburn having to do with the New York subway

00:39:56.360 - 00:40:10.580

system. I took a Coney Island of the mind, to the Coney Island of the flesh, the Brighton local riding past Church Avenue, Beverly, Cortelyou, passed avenues H and J, Kings Highway, Neck Road,

00:40:10.580 - 00:40:25.740

Sheepshead Bay, Brighton, all the way to Stillwell Avenue, that hotbed of assignation, clickety-clack. I started reading when I got on and somewhere down past Newkirk reached number 29 and read aloud. The crowd in the train

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looked startled at first but settled down to enjoy the bit even if they did think I was insane or something. And when I reached the line: "The cock of flesh at last cries out and has his glory moment, God," some girls sitting opposite me with

00:40:39.690 - 00:40:54.540

golden hair fresh from the bottle began to stare disapprovingly and wiggle as though she had ants somewhere where it counted. And sorry to say, five lines later, the poem finished and I started to laugh like hell. Aware of the dirty

00:40:54.540 - 00:41:09.720

look I was getting, I stared back at her thighs, imagining what she had inside those toreador pants besides her bathing suit and, well we both got off at Stillwell. Watching her high backside sway and swish down that street of tattoo

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artists, Franks twelve inches long, past the wax museum, and a soft drink stand with its white inside, I stepped beside her and said: "Let's fling that old garment of repentance, baby!" Smitten, I hadn't noticed her two brothers were behind me.

00:41:28.140 - 00:41:40.980

Clickety-clack. Horseman, pass by. Morton Marcus: Well, that's an interesting poem because it seems about a guy just trying to pick up on a girl but it is filled with allusions. First of all, it's filled with Lawrence

00:41:41.010 - 00:41:56.400

Ferlinghetti's, one of his last poems, "Coney Island of the Mind," which of course, this poem is a Coney Island of the mind, it's just a conglomeration of a lot of ideas. He is reading number 29, a stream of conscious poem which is actually based on

00:41:56.400 - 00:42:14.400

Molly Boone's last section of Ulysses, so it's an erotic poem that he's reading when he is looking at this young woman. But then a line like, "let's fling that old garment of repentance baby," that is actually a contemporary redoing of Omar

00:42:14.400 - 00:42:28.260

Khayyam in Fitzgerald's translation, "Come fill a cup and in the fire of spring, the winter garment of repentance fling, the bird of time has but a little way to flutter, and the bird is on the wing." So he's making a lot of references and

00:42:28.440 - 00:42:39.400

what's that last reference that he makes there, two horsemen pass by? Robert Sward: Reference to the poet, W.B. Yeats who as an epitaph wrote something like, "cast a cold eye on life, on

00:42:39.400 - 00:42:52.720

death; horseman pass by." Morton Marcus: Right and of course, it is the epitaph for Blake- for Yeats, and what's so funny about it here is, he realizes that he is about to get beaten to a pulp by the two

00:42:52.720 - 00:43:05.650

brothers. So he is- the thing that he thinks of right before that happens is a poet's epitaph. But it's all in good fun. Here's another one. And in the New York City subways, I don't know maybe people in the cities think of sex more, but

00:43:05.650 - 00:43:16.720

how many times I have done this, it is called, "The Once-Over," giving someone the once-over is to look at them really quickly and deciding what you want to do with them. And here is this again, the wonderful continuity between people sitting in a

00:43:17.020 - 00:43:28.490

railroad car. Robert Sward: THE ONCE-OVER Morton Marcus: The tanned blonde in the green print sack in the center of the subway car, standing, though there are

00:43:28.490 - 00:43:43.670

seats, has had it from 1 teenage hood, 1 lesbian, 1 envious housewife, 4 men over fifty (and myself), in short, the contents of this half of the car.

00:43:44.740 - 00:44:04.240

Our notations are: long legs, long waist, high breasts (no bra), long neck, the model slump, the handbag drape, and how the skirt cuts in under a very handsome set of cheeks 'stirring dull roots with spring rain,' sayeth the preacher.

00:44:05.830 - 00:44:26.040

Only a stolid young man –– with a blue business suit and the New York Times, does not know that he is being assaulted by her. So. She has us and we her, all the way to downtown Brooklyn, over the tunnel and through the bridge to DeKalb Avenue we go,

00:44:26.370 - 00:44:41.900

all very chummy. She stares at the number over the door and gives no sign. Yet the sign is on her. Well, there are many of these poems and we have around time

00:44:41.900 - 00:44:57.730

for two or three more. I certainly would like to read two more myself. What about you, Bob? What would you- Robert Sward: Well, this is a favorite poem- I mean, I love 7TH GAME, 1960's SERIES, and it's from "The Cities" and it's

00:44:52.070 - 00:45:07.240

this. It's called: Paul Blackburn talking about the World Series twenty-five years ago. Nice day, sweet October afternoon. Men walk, the sunshot

00:45:07.240 - 00:45:23.560

avenues, Second, Third, eyes intent elsewhere, ears communing with transistors in shirt pockets. Bars are full, quiet, discussion during commercials only. Pirates lead New York 4-1 top of the 6th, two Yankees on base, one man out.

00:45:23.950 - 00:45:39.190

What a nice day for all this––! Handsome women, even dreamy jailbait walk nearly neglected: men's eyes are blank, their thoughts are all in Pittsburgh. Last half of the 9th, the score tied 9-all. Mazeroski leads off

00:45:39.190 - 00:45:54.950

for the Pirates, the 2nd pitch is simply, sweetly CRACK! belts it clean over the left-field wall, blocks of afternoon, acres of afternoon, Pennsylvania Turnpikes of afternoon. One diamond stretches out in the sun, the 3rd baseline

00:45:54.950 - 00:46:11.060

and what men come down it, the final score, 10-9, Yanquis, come home. Morton Marcus: And that was at a time when the Yankees come home had an awful lot of meaning to it. Well, I want to read two

00:46:11.060 - 00:46:25.340

more, so let me go it over quickly. Here's another subway poem- well, maybe I'll read that last. Here is a poem in which he goes on a search, and what he's really searching for as he walks through the city is for his totemic animal, that is his

00:46:25.340 - 00:46:35.780

spirit guide, and what he's looking for is self-definition and this very romantic search becomes very comic. And here is what it becomes: THE SEARCH

00:46:38.120 - 00:46:49.400

I've been looking for this animal for three days now, and four nights, not finding him. Probing into the corners of my mind to find him, glancing at store windows and into the faces of women.

00:46:50.420 - 00:47:08.750

Sometimes, I think this animal is a bird, but then again, not. Once I was sure it was a lizard, facing my left trouser leg at a pet-shop window, crouched, with his tongue darting out in primeval coldness. But I found myself looking again the

00:47:08.750 - 00:47:25.800

following day. So neither very hot blooded nor cold blooded. Those early creations, it is small, it has four legs and fur. I saw it almost under the dark brows of a Puerto Rican child in

00:47:25.800 - 00:47:42.810

the street, a garment worker. Her belly was small and round and it was growing. But she saw I looked at the thing, and it changed in her eyes, and she was a woman. I have a woman, that's not what I was looking for.

00:47:44.280 - 00:48:04.380

My cat gave me a clue. He was lying on his back, his feet in the air, asleep. The thing was the mixture of attitude in his face, the sublime trust and disdain, careless, sure. Turned out the animal I was looking for was a hamster. You

00:48:04.380 - 00:48:16.560

find them in cages with treadmills, which seems to me a symbol. This from a magazine someplace with a set of pictures. Mine was not in a treadmill. He lay on a ledge in the sun in the

00:48:16.560 - 00:48:29.100

window of a shoe-repair shop in Sixth Avenue. His legs stretched out behind him, sideways, for he lay on one side in the sun, washing his face with one paw like a cat, ignoring the traffic.

00:48:30.080 - 00:48:49.540

And having found him out, I didn't know what to make of him, except that he was a small fat rodent and looked careless, that he was a mammal and sure. And as we come up towards the end of the show, Bob, can I have

00:48:49.540 - 00:49:09.430

you read one of his last poems? His last book and the last poems he was working on from 1967 to 1971 when he died, was a book of journals and the book is out from Black Sparrow, as are the Selected Poems. And what is so interesting about this is that

00:49:09.430 - 00:49:23.410

these journals are the journals of a trip he made when he found that he was going to die of cancer of the esophagus. He wandered back to all the places he had been in his life, in Europe, in the United States, he actually came to California for

00:49:23.410 - 00:49:39.640

the first time, and he set down his goodbyes and the goodbyes to the world, and the book becomes amazingly moving, because it talks about the goodbye to tradition, the goodbye to life, and it suggests that the earth is going to be absent of him,

00:49:39.640 - 00:49:55.150

but he is taking this last chance to luxuriate in the wonder of being alive. And we will sign off with that and before we do, I want to remind you that Joe Stroud's poetry class from 7 to 10 at Cabrillo is still open. If you want more

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information on it, call 479-6424. Next week, Joe will be your host here and he is going to have Paula Jones and Barbara Boone as his guests. This has been a "Lost Voices" program, the poetry of Paul Blackburn, who died fourteen years this

00:50:15.220 - 00:50:29.410

September 13th. Robert Sward: This is Paul's journal for: JUNE 1971, annotated "110 in the shade." He writes, this is about three months before his death:

00:50:29.810 - 00:50:49.880

Sitting in the tub, waiting for the ache in my shoulders to go away, nerves slow down, the muscles relax. The tax is refunded in full. I feel the skinniness of arms, the bony chest cavity, front and back, as I soap up. It's something else

00:50:49.880 - 00:51:09.020

for the fingertips to remember, I haven't had a body like this since I was fifteen. What is it the ribs remember, the clavicles, the wing bones so unfleshed. To recognize the differences in the quality of flesh though, something else. A

00:51:09.020 - 00:51:19.580

doomed man planting tomatoes, backyard of a house he lives in belongs to somebody else, kneeling on the earth, his hands move earth feeling earth.