00:01:13.770 - 00:01:29.170

Morton Marcus: In the 1960s she wrote this about the joy of writing: Why does this written doe, this deer bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring, whose

00:01:29.200 - 00:01:50.050

surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head? Does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence– this word also rustles across the page and

00:01:50.050 - 00:02:06.070

parts the boughs of the trees that have sprouted from the word, "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good. Clutches of clauses so subordinate, they'll never

00:02:06.070 - 00:02:23.410

let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pin at any moment, surround the deer and slowly aim

00:02:23.410 - 00:02:42.210

their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life, other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye, will take as long as I say and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities full of

00:02:42.210 - 00:02:57.600

bullets stopped in mid flight. Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so. Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath the little hoofs full stop.

00:02:59.040 - 00:03:18.750

Is there then a word where I rule absolutely on fate? A time I bind with chains of signs? An existence become endless at my bidding? Ah, the joy of writing, the power of preserving, but more

00:03:19.380 - 00:03:41.650

the revenge of our mortal hand. Her name is Wisława Szymborska. And she is obviously Polish, and she is the 1996 Nobel Prize winning poet and she will be tonight's Poetry Show.

00:04:32.120 - 00:04:53.000

Wisława Szymborska, which really looks to us in English as Wislawa Szymborska, but is not pronounced that way, was born in the western, or near the western city of Prowent, in 1923. And when she was eight years old moved to Krakow, the great old

00:04:53.000 - 00:05:13.700

medieval city, which is also one of the cultural centers of Poland, and has lived there ever since. When she grew up went to the university, and for years worked as an editor in a Polish publishing house. Her early poetry was very much Soviet

00:05:14.840 - 00:05:35.030

Socialist Realism. It was very grandiose and was very political and followed all the rules. She has, since the late 1950s, denounced all of her, and denied all of her younger poetry. And she began actually as early as 1957 to develop her own

00:05:35.030 - 00:05:51.140

distinct, and she says again and again, personal style. This personal style really does not deal with politics at all. Even though she said politics usually colors so much of our lives, since we're caught in the political machinations of

00:05:51.140 - 00:06:12.350

different powers, she still observes the everyday world and writes about it in a very, very clear, available style and use of words which make her, even in translation, very, very available to us. And I would suggest, if you are interested

00:06:12.350 - 00:06:28.310

or even just want to write down the name of her Selected Poems in English, which is really extraordinary translation, and it is called, "View With A Grain of Sand," the Selected Poems of, again, I'm going to do this in English and then give the Polish

00:06:29.630 - 00:06:58.040

pronunciation Wislawa, that's W- -I-S-L-A-W-A, Szymborska, S-Z-Y-M-B-O-R-S-K-A. And the way it is pronounced is Viz-wa-wa Shim-bor-ska, and we will be reading her poems tonight. I will try to introduce you to her style, and also make some of my

00:06:58.040 - 00:07:09.560

usual side comments, not only on the poetry, but the difference between her poetry and especially East European poetry and what's going on in American poetry today, and maybe that's a good place to start.

00:07:10.320 - 00:07:31.890

American poetry is by and large, a non-intellectual poetry that deals with experience, and has for the last twenty-five years been most concerned with the experiences of the individual, and has even in some, a lot of cases been called confessional

00:07:31.890 - 00:07:55.230

poetry, as we examine our relationship and our relationships, and our own problems endlessly. Wislawa Szymborska, as her fellow Nobel Prize winner from Poland, is not concerned with that, and I'm talking of course about Czeslaw

00:07:55.230 - 00:08:18.630

Milosz. They are concerned with ideas, they are concerned with looking at the world in the place of the human condition, in the way things operate or in the scheme of things. They certainly contain feelings but usually these are not personal feelings.

00:08:18.630 - 00:08:37.950

And what we're going to find tonight, as I start to read Szymborska's poetry, is that these are meditations, these are soliloquys, they are very witty, very ironic, they are very intellectual, and they are in many cases tongue-in-cheek, and

00:08:37.950 - 00:08:54.110

they are very jest-like in their strange propositions. You got some sense of that certainly in the other poem. The translation that I'll be reading from, as I mentioned, called, "View With A Grain of Sand," is put out by Heart- the

00:08:54.110 - 00:09:07.340

Harvest original paperback company from Harcourt, Brace and Company; it's in all your bookstores, or should be. The book is in print, you can order it in any of the bookstores in town. It is translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak a

00:09:07.340 - 00:09:26.000

d Clare Cavanagh, and won in 1996, actually the year after t was published, it won the 996 Penn Translation Award in he United States. And it is eally excellent, especially arly on when it tries to give ome of the earlier very

00:09:26.000 - 00:09:45.680

ontrolled poetry of Szymborska. nd I would certainly like to ead some of these early poems o you, I'm going to pick poems hronologically and move with hem. Art plays a big part of t, but as you will see, so do veryday subjects, commenting on

00:09:45.680 - 00:09:59.690

he news, commenting on our veryday lives, which really are ot the Polish everyday life but s we become a global village, he really is commenting on our ife. Not that most of these oems have been written since e've had internet

00:09:59.720 - 00:10:18.810

nd all that, but her subject is the human condition. In fact, she is a woman and it is very interesting to hear what she has to say about women's poetry. When the day she was asked about, you know, winning the Nobel Prize, she was asked

00:10:18.810 - 00:10:41.490

by Jane Perlez in a telephone interview in Poland, "I know your poetry is very personal but is it womanly poetry? Is it you know, feminist poetry?" and her comment was, "I think that dividing literature or poetry into women's and men's poetry is

00:10:41.490 - 00:10:57.900

starting to sound absurd. Perhaps there was a time when a woman's world did exist separated from certain issues and problems, but at present there are no things that would not concern men and women at the same time. We do not live in the

00:10:57.900 - 00:11:16.200

boudoir anymore." And in many ways, that is a very feminist statement because she is saying men and women address the same world and live in the same world and there is no separation. Let me read to you a very playful, beautifully translated poem

00:11:17.070 - 00:11:31.320

called, "Rubens' Women," and this is from what she considers her second serious book. The first is, "Calling Out To Yeti," which still had a lot of political undercurrents in it and came out in 1957. This is from, "Salt," which came out in

00:11:31.320 - 00:11:55.950

1962, and it is called, "Rubens' Women," and as you may know, most of you I'm sure do, Peter Paul Rubens was a great painter of the 17th century, late 17th century, who drew voluptuous nude women, and here is her poem and the excellent translations.

00:11:56.450 - 00:12:14.700

RUBENS' WOMEN Titanettes, female fauna, na ed as the rambling of ba rels. They roost in trampled be s, asleep with mouths agape, re dy to crow. Their pupils have fl d into flesh and sound the gl

00:12:14.700 - 00:12:36.240

ndular depths from which ye st seeps into their blood. Da ghters of the Baroque. Dough th ckens in troughs, baths st am, wines blush, cloudy pi lets careen across the sky, tri mphant trumpets neigh the car al alarm. Oh pumpkin plump, oh

00:12:36.570 - 00:12:56.010

umped up corpulence, inf ated double by disrobing and tri led by your tumultuous pos s, oh fatty dishes of love. The r skinny sisters woke up ear ier before dawn broke and sho e upon the painting, and no one saw how they went single fil

00:12:56.010 - 00:13:19.050

along the canvas' unpainted sid , exiled by style. Only the r ribs stood out. With bir like feet and palms, they str ve to take wing on their jut ing shoulder blades. The 13t century would have given the golden halos, the 20th sil

00:13:19.500 - 00:13:44.910

er movie screens, but the 17t , alas, holds nothing for the sk nny and unvoluptuous, for even t e sky bulges here with pudgy a gels and a chubby god, t ick-whiskered Phoebus, the sun on a sweaty steed, riding str ight into the seething bed

00:13:45.150 - 00:14:06.790

hamber. And another one along these lines, and obviously you can see that wit, tongue-in-cheek and irony is her specialty. I will tell you that the poems get much more serious than this even in

00:14:06.790 - 00:14:21.670

their wordiness. Here is, "Coloratura," of course one of the great opera voices. And this is what she does with Coloratura, and what she really is doing is she is making metaphors, but she's also making heraldry out of this like

00:14:21.700 - 00:14:38.450

medieval heraldry. It's in blazing tapestry. So here is: COLORATURA Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree, she spills her sparkling vocal powder: slippery sound slivers, silvery like spider's

00:14:38.450 - 00:15:01.820

spittle, only louder. Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C) for Fellow Humans (you and me); for us she'll twitter nothing bitter: she'll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter; her vocal chords mince words for us and crumble croutons, with crisp

00:15:01.820 - 00:15:20.420

crunch (lunch for her little lambs to munch), into a cream-filled demitasse. But hark! It's dark! Oh doom too soon! She's threatened by the black bassoon: it's hoarse and coarse, it's grim and gruff, it

00:15:20.420 - 00:15:42.650

calls her dainty voice's bluff -- Basso Profondo, end this terror, do-re-mi mene tekel etcetera! You want to silence her, abduct her to our chilly life behind the scenes? To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,

00:15:43.040 - 00:16:04.700

frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws, where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly like fish? And this is what you wish? Ο nay! Ο nay! Though doom be nigh, she'll keep her chin and pitch up high! Her face is hanging by a hair of voice so

00:16:04.700 - 00:16:27.890

thin it sounds like air, but that's enough for her to take a breath and soar, without a break, chandelierward; and while she's there, her vox humana crystal-clears the whole world up. And we're all ears.

00:16:29.270 - 00:16:44.420

And just another one of these light poems called: BODYBUILDERS' CONTEST, that I asked you in your mind to think of the contortions that bodybuilders go through in a bodybuilding contest, th different poses of flexing thei

00:16:44.420 - 00:17:03.820

muscles, flexing their bac muscles, their abdomina muscles, their pectorals, etc And here's how she sees it wit her mordant wit From scalp to sole of foot, all muscles in slow motion. The

00:17:03.820 - 00:17:20.990

ocean of his torso drips with lotion. The king of all is he who preens and wrestles with sinews twisted into monstrous pretzels. Onstage he grapples with a grizzly bear, the deadlier for

00:17:20.990 - 00:17:43.940

not really being there. Three unseen panthers are in turn laid low, each with one smoothly choreographed blow. He grunts while throwing his poses and paces. His back alone has twenty different faces. The mammoth fist he raises as he

00:17:43.940 - 00:18:10.390

wins is tribute to the force of vitamins. Well, that is her being her most witty, but I would like to go on now to more visionary poems. And she wrote- most of her poems are poems of insight because they are explorations of ideas and

00:18:10.390 - 00:18:27.280

experiences we have. Again, notice how impersonal all of this is, even though there is definitely a voice in many cases, it is like the voice of a different actor who is delivering a soliloquy. And here is the speaker in water, and

00:18:27.280 - 00:18:46.600

everything that's being talked about here is water. And notice again how it is being emblazoned and made into a tapestry. WATER A drop of water fell on my hand, drawn from the Ganges and the

00:18:46.600 - 00:19:11.290

Nile. From frost ascending to heaven off a seal's whiskers, from jugs broken in the cities of Ys and Tyre. On my index finger, the Caspian Sea isn't landlocked anymore. And the Pacific is the Rudawa's meek tributary, that same stream that

00:19:11.290 - 00:19:31.990

floated as a little cloud over Paris in the year seven hundred and sixty-four on the seventh of May at three A.M. There are not enough mouths to utter all your fleeting names, oh water. I would have to name you in every tongue, pronouncing all the

00:19:31.990 - 00:19:53.350

vowels at once, while also keeping silent for the sake of the lake that still goes unnamed and doesn't exist on this earth just as the star reflected in the lake is not in the sky. Someone was drowning, someone dying was calling out for you

00:19:53.740 - 00:20:15.520

long ago, yesterday. Water you have saved houses from fire, you have carried off houses and trees, forests and towns alike. You've been in christening fonts and courtesans' baths, in coffins and kisses. Gnawing on stone, feeding rainbows in the

00:20:15.520 - 00:20:39.040

sweat and the dew of pyramids and lilacs. How light the raindrops' contents are, how gently the world touches me. Whenever, wherever, whatever has happened, is written on the waters of Babel.

00:20:43.770 - 00:20:59.970

And this is the other side of her, and again, she will take objects and suddenly make symphonies of them, and you readers and lovers of poetry, I think you could see that "Water" could safely be fit into the odes of Pablo Neruda. Again, a

00:20:59.970 - 00:21:20.160

very accessible poet. Here she has a conversation with stone, again, very ironic. And again this is all from the book from 1962 called, "Salt." CONVERSATION WITH A STONE

00:21:22.190 - 00:21:40.160

I knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me. Let me come in. I want to enter your inside, stone, and have a look around. Breathe my fill of you." "Go away," says the stone, "I'm shut tight." Even if you break me to pieces, we'll all still be

00:21:40.160 - 00:21:59.300

closed. You can grind us to sand, we still won't let you in." I knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me, let me come in. I've come out of pure curiosity, only life can quench it. I mean to stroll through your palace, stone, then

00:21:59.300 - 00:22:16.070

go calling on a leaf, a drop of water. I don't have much time. My mortality should touch you." "I am made of stone," says the stone, "and must therefore keep a straight face. Go away. I don't have the muscles to laugh." I knock at the stone's

00:22:16.070 - 00:22:32.930

front door. "It's only me, let me come in. I hear you have great empty halls inside you, unseen, their beauty in vain, soundless, not echoing anyone's steps. Admit you don't know them well yourself." "Great, an empty, true enough," says the

00:22:32.930 - 00:22:52.250

stone, "but there isn't any room in here. Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste of your poor senses." "You may get to know me but you'll never know me through. My whole surface is turned toward you. All my insides are turned away." I

00:22:52.250 - 00:23:11.180

knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me, let me in. I don't seek refuge for eternity, I'm not unhappy. I'm not homeless. My world is worth returning to. I'll enter and exit empty-handed. And my proof I was here will be only words

00:23:11.660 - 00:23:30.290

which no one will believe." "You should not enter, you shall not," says the stone, "you lack the sense of taking part. No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part, even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good

00:23:30.290 - 00:23:50.510

without a sense of taking part. You shall not enter. You have only a sense of what that sense should be, only its seed, imagination." I knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me, let me come in. I haven't got two thousand centuries, so

00:23:50.510 - 00:24:05.870

let me come in under your roof will you, stone?" "If you don't believe me, just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same thing. Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said. And finally, ask a hair from your own head. I'm bursting with

00:24:05.870 - 00:24:31.020

laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter although I don't know how to laugh." I knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me, let me come in." "I don't have a door," says the stone. Now, what's that all about? That's about Szymborska's

00:24:31.470 - 00:24:46.800

feeling that there are two separate worlds: the worlds of things and the world of the human being. And the worlds of things have their own existence parallel to ours, and we can never approach them. Because we're asking intellectually

00:24:46.800 - 00:25:07.440

because we are not a part of the natural world, we are separate beings from it. And one of the things that separates us is our ability to ask questions and to think, which she prizes greatly, though she also realizes we lose things because of that. Let me

00:25:08.070 - 00:25:25.800

continue reading from her next book, which is, "No End of Fun," in a very, very fascinating poem called, "Born." And in this poem, she goes to meet her lover's mother. And this is one of the most personal poems, though it isn't really personal

00:25:25.800 - 00:25:42.810

at all. She's just a character in here who you can well imagine, and she may even be a speaker who is just a character going to meet her lover's mother and thinking about it while she's in the same room. So it's sort of like a soliloquy being

00:25:42.810 - 00:26:00.760

thought in the head of a woman entering her lover's mother's house. BORN So this is his mother. This small woman, the gray-eyed

00:26:00.790 - 00:26:30.010

procreator. The boat in which years ago, he sailed to shore, the boat from which he stepped into the world, into un-eternity. Genetrix of the man with whom I leap through fire. So this is she, the only one who didn't take him finished and

00:26:30.010 - 00:27:00.250

complete. She herself pulled him into the skin I know, bound him to the bones that are hidden from me. She herself raised the gray eyes that he raised to me. So this is she, his Alpha. Why has he shown her to me. Born. So he was born too, born like every

00:27:00.250 - 00:27:31.390

one else, like me, who will die. The son of an actual woman, a new arrival from the body's depths, a voyager to Omega, subject to his own absence on every front at any moment. He hits his head against a wall that won't give way forever. His

00:27:31.390 - 00:28:03.560

movements dodge and parry the universal verdict. I realized that his journey was already halfway over. But he didn't tell me that, no. All he said was, "This is my mother." I think it's a beautiful poem. The words are so precise, the

00:28:03.560 - 00:28:21.440

experience is so fascinating and where she goes with it, where she goes with it is where so much of East European poetry goes -- so much Polish poetry, so much Russian poetry, Yugoslavian poetry, even though I guess we can't call Yugoslavia

00:28:21.440 - 00:28:38.270

anymore -- and that is it goes to the big questions, the questions of metaphysical speculation: why are we here? How are we here? Where are we going to go? Is this world the only world we have? And if so, how do we live it as originally

00:28:38.270 - 00:28:59.450

and fully as we can, or is that even worth doing? And these speculations will come up in her poetry again, and again. I will be reading, continue to read many of those as the evening continues. In fact, here is another one from her next book

00:28:59.450 - 00:29:23.090

from, "Cloud Could Have," from 1972 and it's called, "Letters of the Dead." And though I will be reading a poem about war later on, I want you to remember that Szymborska was twenty years old, actually seventeen at the time that the Nazis moved into

00:29:23.090 - 00:29:47.990

Poland, and spent the entire war as a late teenager and early woman in Poland in this horrendous situation of the Nazi occupation, after their blitzkrieg into Poland, which started World War II as I'm sure all of you know, but here's her:

00:29:48.050 - 00:30:09.280

LETTERS OF THE DEAD We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods, but gods, nonetheless, since we know the dates that follow. We know which debts will never be repaid, which widows will remarry with a

00:30:09.280 - 00:30:31.840

corpse still warm. Poor dead, blindfolded dead, gullible, fallible, pathetically prudent. We see the faces people make behind their backs. We catch the sound of wills being ripped to shreds. The dead sit before us comically, as if on buttered

00:30:31.840 - 00:30:50.350

bread, or frantically pursue their hats blown from their heads. Their bad taste, Napoleon, steam, electricity, they're fatal remedies for curable diseases. They're foolish apocalypse, according to St. John. They're counterfeit

00:30:50.350 - 00:31:11.410

heaven on Earth according to Jean Jacques Rousseau. We watch the pawns on their chess boards in silence even though we see them three squares later. Everything the dead predicted [cut-off]

00:31:11.410 - 00:33:25.280

-factions in us, the future. And we are reading the poetry of this Wislawa Szymborska and we will be back in a moment. Morton Marcus: And this is the Poetry Show and tonight we are

00:33:25.490 - 00:33:44.990

looking at the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska, as you can tell I have trouble with that. And really no PSAs tonight but just to tell you about Jennifer Lagier who has been on this radio station, the publication of her first book, "Where We

00:33:44.990 - 00:34:03.980

Grew Up: Poems About Growing Up In California." She will have a signing to celebrate the publication of the book, 4:30 to 6:30pm, Friday, December 17th. That's this Friday at the Thunderbird Bookshop in the Barnyard in Carmel. So that's

00:34:04.010 - 00:34:21.110

Jennifer Lagier, the publication of her first book, "Where We Grew Up: Poems About Growing Up In California," Friday, December 17th at 430 to 6:30pm, Thunderbird Bookshop for you people down there in Monterey or Carmel, of course, that is in

00:34:21.110 - 00:34:37.610

the Barnyard. Want to- Dennis, one of my co-hosts as you well know, Dennis Morton just called up and said no one out there should miss Dana Gioia's article on the history of Bay Area literature, which is in the current Hungry Mind, which you

00:34:37.610 - 00:34:55.640

can get free of charge of the Capitola Book Cafe and the Bookshop Santa Cruz. And also I'd like to remind you out there, the excellent poet, Joe Stroud, who was my co-host on this program for years, will be giving the poetry workshop at

00:34:55.640 - 00:35:11.360

Cabrillo College on Monday nights from six to nine this spring, that'll be the end of January. Do sign up for it, just call up Cabrillo College, ask them how to do it, that's Joe Stroud's poetry workshop on Monday nights from six to nine.

00:35:12.770 - 00:35:35.570

We're going to continue with Miss Wislawa Szymborska, which looks like it should be pronounced Wislawa Szymborska, and I'm reading from, "A View With A Grain of Sand," these wonderful prize winning translations of this 1996 Nobel

00:35:35.570 - 00:36:00.410

Prize winner from Poland. And I will be moving on right now. I just read, "The Letters of the Dead," before I was reading from a book called, "Could Have," 1972. And here is a poem called, "Autonomy," which really just I think has a wonderful metaphor

00:36:00.950 - 00:36:23.500

that I would wish to share with you. AUTONOMY In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two. It abandons oneself to a hungry world, and with the other self it flees. It

00:36:23.500 - 00:36:44.350

violently divides into doom and salvation, retribution and reward, which has been and what will be. An abyss appears in the middle of the holothurian's body, between what instantly become two foreign shores. Life on one shore, death on the

00:36:44.350 - 00:37:08.800

other, here hope and there despair. If there are scales, the pans don't move. If there is justice, well, this is it. To die just as required without excess, to grow back just what's needed from what's left. Well, like the worm, we too can divide

00:37:08.800 - 00:37:34.360

ourselves, it's true, but only into flesh and the broken whisper, into flesh and poetry. The throat on one side, laughter on the other, quiet, quickly dying out. Here, the heavy heart, there "non omnis moriar." Just three little words, like a

00:37:34.360 - 00:37:56.290

flight's three feathers. The abyss doesn't divide us. The abyss surrounds us. And there is that irony, mor than deadly serious in the en as she finds even in books, yo can imagine, like Nationa

00:37:56.290 - 00:38:13.720

Geographics with some biologica article on the division of th lives of amphibians, you know once they get their arms cut of , worms and things like that. et me go on because I do want o get as many of these poems- 'm not reading them as fast as

00:38:13.720 - 00:38:36.290

wanted to. Here's another poem alled, "Psalm," and I will just ead it without comment- so I an get it done the way it hould be. Here is: PSALM, and it really is wonderful. It talks about the

00:38:36.400 - 00:38:57.260

boundaries that we've made between nations. And of course, the psalm is a song of praise and prayer. Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states! How many cloud float past them with impunity how many desert sand shifts fro

00:38:57.260 - 00:39:13.370

one land to another; how man mountain pebbles tumble ont foreign soil in provocativ hops! Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers or alights on the roadblock at the border? A

00:39:13.370 - 00:39:29.830

humble robin, still, its tail resides abroad while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it wouldn't stop bobbing! Among enumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant between

00:39:29.830 - 00:39:50.990

the border guards left and right boots, blithely ignoring the questions: "Where are you from?" And, "where are you going to?" Oh, to register in detail at a glance, the chaos prevailing on every continent.! Isn't that a privet on the far bank,

00:39:52.010 - 00:40:09.890

smuggling its hundred thousandth leaf across the river? And who but the octopus with impudent long arms would disrupt the sacred boundaries of territorial waters? And how can we talk of otter overall, when the very placement

00:40:09.890 - 00:40:30.650

of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom? Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes of Russia as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, a

00:40:30.650 - 00:41:02.810

conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Oh what is human can truly be foreign, the rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind. And here's another poem, again, confronting as she always does,

00:41:05.150 - 00:41:29.800

the world and how it is leaving us all the time and studying what is left and she calls this, "The Classic." THE CLASSIC A few clods of dirt and his life will be forgotten. The music

00:41:29.800 - 00:41:49.990

will break free from circumstance. No more coughing of the maestro over minuets. Poultices will be torn off. Fire will consume the dusty lice-ridden wig. Ink spots will vanish from the laced cuff. The shoes, inconvenient witnesses,

00:41:50.080 - 00:42:07.270

will be tossed on the trash heap. The least gifted of his pupils will get the violin. Butcher's bills will be removed from between the music sheets. His poor mother's letters will line the stomachs of mice. The ill-fated love will fade away.

00:42:07.750 - 00:42:25.750

Eyes will stop shedding tears. The neighbor's daughter will find a use for the pink ribbon. The age, thank god, isn't romantic yet. Everything that's not a quartet will become a forgettable fifth. Everything that's not a quintet will become

00:42:25.750 - 00:42:45.280

a superfluous sixth. Everything that's not a choir made of forty angels will fall silent, reduced to barking dogs, a gendarmes' belch. The aloe plant will be taken from the window along with dishes of fly poison, and the pomade pot. And the view of the

00:42:45.280 - 00:43:09.460

garden (oh, yes!) will be revealed, the garden that was never here. Now, hark! ye mortals, listen, listen now, take heed, in rapt amazement, o rapt, oh stunned, o heedful mortals listen, o listeners, now listen, be all ears.

00:43:13.390 - 00:43:46.360

And of course, that is a poem about the death of a composer and how everything will die at that Bach-like composer's death except his music, when we will begin and can listen forever. Here is a poem called the death of animals. And again, the

00:43:46.360 - 00:44:03.940

viewpoint is very interesting, the skewed perspectives of things. We're seeing things here from above and again, the idea of the dead and how animals die here and as we see them is it's scrutinised from a different viewpoint. Again, so many of

00:44:03.940 - 00:44:22.060

these poems stimulate our thinking, they are provocative, and they both stir our minds and our emotions. So here is, "Seen From Above." And many of you have seen a dead beetle below you on the path or in a field, and that's how we start.

00:44:22.060 - 00:44:40.520

THINGS SEEN FROM ABOVE A dead beetle lies on the path through the field, three pairs of legs folded neatly on its belly. Instead of death's confusion, tidiness and order. The horror of this sight is

00:44:40.520 - 00:45:06.250

moderate. Its scope is strictly local, from the wheatgrass to the mint. The grief is quarantined. The sky is blue. To preserve our peace of mind, animals die more shallowly: they aren't deceased, they're dead. They leave behind, we'd like to

00:45:06.250 - 00:45:25.060

think, less feeling and less world than us, departing we suppose from a stage less tragic. Their meek souls never haunt us in the dark. Animals know their place. They show us respect.

00:45:26.410 - 00:45:49.600

And so the dead beetle on the path lies unmourned and shining in the sun. One glance at it will do for meditation. Clearly, nothing much has happened to it. Important matters are reserved for us, for our life and our death, a death that always

00:45:49.600 - 00:46:13.860

claims the right of way in everything. And again, I think you can see this theme of the separate- a lot of last poems are regarding the separation of the animal world and the world of objects from our world. Here's, "The

00:46:13.890 - 00:46:33.090

Terrorist, He's Watching," and there are a lot of news items, and suppositions on things as different as, you know, her ideas of pornography and the attitude towards pornography and things like that. "The Terrorist, He's Watching," and

00:46:34.170 - 00:46:46.050

terrorism, certainly a part of our lives for the last thirty, forty years, though it's been around for much longer than that, and coming with us into the new millennium, here is: THE TERRORIST, HE'S WATCHING

00:46:47.980 - 00:47:11.350

The bomb in the bar will explode at 13:20, now it's just 13:16, 1:16. There's still time for some to go into the bar and some to come out. The terrorist has already crossed the street. The distance keeps him out of danger, and what a view, just

00:47:11.350 - 00:47:34.120

like the movies: A woman in a yellow jacket, she's going in. A man in dark glasses, he's coming out. Teenagers in jeans, they're talking. 13:17 and four seconds is the time. The short one, he's lucky, he's getting on a scooter, but the tall one, he's

00:47:34.120 - 00:48:01.660

going in. 13:17 and forty seconds. 1:17 and forty seconds. That girl, she's walking alone with a green ribbon in her hair. But then a bus suddenly pulls in front of her. 1:18, the girl's gone. Was she that dumb? Did she go into the bar or not? We'll

00:48:01.660 - 00:48:25.780

see when they carry them out. 1:19, somehow no one's going in. Another guy, fat, bald is leaving though. Wait a minute, looks like he's looking for something in his pockets and at 1:20 minus ten seconds, he goes back in for his crummy gloves.

00:48:29.320 - 00:48:56.410

1:20 exactly. This waiting, it's taking forever, any second now. No, not yet. Yes, now the bomb explodes. And again, that viewpoint, the terrorist's viewpoint, it's more than that, it is a game of chance, the world is chance and

00:48:56.410 - 00:49:16.540

this comes up in her poetry again and again. Chance, in many ways rules, there is no divine order up there. And so many East Europeans who lived through World War II, grew up in World War II, have this sense of trying to hold the chaos of the

00:49:16.540 - 00:49:38.440

world together. But I will continue and "The People on the Bridge," the first four poems of that book, which was published in 1986, I think are absolutely magnificent, and I will try to get through them all. The first one is called, "Archaeology,"

00:49:38.440 - 00:49:59.470

and again, notice these are subjects that really invite abstract thought, and I think a lot of what happens to her in the middle part of her career is that she almost is writing essays instead of poetry. She's just talking in very abstract

00:49:59.470 - 00:50:13.600

terms, then she becomes much more concrete and physical again. Here is some of those poems, and "Archaeology" from 1986. ARCHAEOLOGY, and that of course you all know what that is. And

00:50:13.600 - 00:50:31.440

again, these are like soliloquys. Well, my poor man, seems we've made some progress in my field. Millennia have passed since you first called me archaeology. I no longer require your stone gods, your ruins with legible

00:50:31.440 - 00:50:52.560

inscriptions. Show me your whatever and I'll tell you who you were, something's bottom, something's top. A scrap of an engine, a picture tube's neck, an inch of cable, fingers turned to dust or even less than that, or even less. Using a method

00:50:53.100 - 00:51:13.320

that you couldn't have known then, I can stir up memory in countless elements. Traces of blood are forever. Lies shine. Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light. If I want to (and you can't be too sure that I will), I'll peer

00:51:13.320 - 00:51:32.940

down the throat of your silence, I'll read your views from the sockets of your eyes. I'll remind you in infinite detail of what you expected from life besides death. Show me your nothing that you've left behind and I'll build from it a forest

00:51:32.940 - 00:51:54.600

and a highway, an airport, baseness, tenderness, a missing home. Show me a little poem and I'll tell you why it wasn't written any earlier or later than it was. No, no, you got me wrong. Keep your funny piece of paper with its scribbles. All I

00:51:54.600 - 00:52:12.570

need for my ends is your layer of dirt and the long gone smell of burning. And that of course is the arrogance of the archaeologist, but also showing how unimportant and vulnerable the dead are

00:52:12.570 - 00:52:22.740

which we've heard in one or two other poems. Here is the title poem from the entire collection that was done by the translators and it is: VIEW WITH A GRAIN OF SAND

00:52:27.370 - 00:52:47.510

We call it a grain of sand, but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect, or apt. Our glance, our touch, mean nothing to it. It doesn't feel

00:52:47.510 - 00:53:08.780

itself seen and touched, and that it fell on the window sill is only our experience, not its. For this grain of sand, it is no different from falling on anything else, with no assurance that it is finished falling, or that it is falling still.

00:53:10.730 - 00:53:27.320

The window has a wonderful view of the lake, but the view doesn't view itself. It exists in this world, colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless. The lake's floor exists floorlessly, and its shore

00:53:27.350 - 00:53:45.560

exists shorelessly. Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry, and its waves to themselves are neither singular not plural. They splash deaf to their own noise on pebbles neither large nor small.

00:53:46.680 - 00:54:11.820

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless, in which the sun sets without setting at all, and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud. The wind ruffles it, its only reason being that it blows. A second passes. A second second. A

00:54:11.820 - 00:54:35.700

third. But there are three seconds only for us. Time has passed like a courier with urgent news but that's just our simile. The character is invented. His haste is make-believe, his news inhuman.

00:54:40.070 - 00:54:55.430

And again the separation of worlds, you know, we put so much importance in things. Let me give you an example of this. Everyone is getting a millennium panic, but the fact of the matter is our calendar is just one of many calendars which are

00:54:55.430 - 00:55:12.050

calculating different times and different senses of what a year is. But we're so important with our time of things, this must be the only calendar and the only new millennium. Another poem: CLOTHES

00:55:13.800 - 00:55:28.140

You take off, we take off, they take off. Coats, jackets, blouses, double-breasted suits, made of wool, cotton, cotton-polyester, skirts, shirts, underwear, slacks, slips, socks, putting, hanging, tossing them across the backs of

00:55:28.140 - 00:55:47.640

chairs, the wings of metal screens. "For now," the doctor says, "it's not too bad. You may get dressed. Get dressed, get rested up, get out of town, take one in case, at bedtime, after lunch, show up in a couple of months, next spring, next year."

00:55:48.480 - 00:56:03.600

You see, and you thought and we were afraid that, and he imagined, and you all believed. It's time to tie, to fasten with shaking hands, shoelaces, buckles, velcros, zippers, snaps, belts, buttons, cufflinks, collars, neckties,

00:56:03.600 - 00:56:28.140

clasps, and to pull out of handbags, pockets, sleeves a crumpled, dotted, flowered, checkered scarf whose usefulness has suddenly been prolonged. And I would suggest certainly that because I will not have

00:56:28.140 - 00:56:45.690

time to read more, the end and the beginning in the book by that name, and then, "Elegiac Calculation," "Cat In An Empty Apartment," both of which are about the death of her second husband and are really unique. She looks at her husband's death

00:56:45.750 - 00:57:07.260

as the cat being betrayed by its master, but I would like to end with her poem, "Slapstick," which talks about angels which everyone loves so much, and what two angels concern themselves with. And this is how it goes:

00:57:07.320 - 00:57:20.030

SLAPSTICK If there are angels, I doubt they read our novels concerning thwarted hopes. I'm afraid, alas, angels never touch the poems that bear our grudges against the world. The rantings

00:57:20.030 - 00:57:38.660

and railings of our plays must drive angels, I suspect, to distraction. Off duty, between angelic, that is inhuman occupations, angels watch instead our slapstick from the age of silent film. To our dirge wailers, garment renders, and

00:57:38.660 - 00:57:56.060

teeth gnashers, angels prefer I suppose, that poor devil who grabs the drowning man by his toupee or, starving, devours his own shoelaces with gusto. From the waist up, starch and aspirations, below, a startled mouse runs down his trousers.

00:57:56.240 - 00:58:11.510

I'm sure that's what they call real entertainment up there. A crazy chase in circles ends up pursuing the pursuer. The light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a tiger's eye. A hundred disasters mean a hundred comic somersaults turned over a

00:58:11.510 - 00:58:30.440

hundred abysses. If there are angels, they must, I hope, find this convincing, this merriment dangling from terror, not even crying Save me, save me, since all of the takes- since all of the films take place in silence. I can even imagine that the

00:58:30.470 - 00:58:50.270

angels clap their wings and tears run from their eyes from laughter and looking at us, if nothing else. I've been reading the poems of Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry from Poland. I've been reading

00:58:50.270 - 00:59:07.970

from a book called, "View With A Grain of Sand." It is in all bookstores. I urge you to stay tuned for "From the Bookshelf" which will be beginning in just a moment. Tonight brings us the inimitable Gary Shapiro, local teacher extraordinare, reading a

00:59:07.970 - 00:59:14.510

selection from, "Rule of the Bone," by Russell Banks. This is Mort Marcus, I'll see you in several weeks.