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Charles Atkinson: Fragmentary Lost. It's familiar things lost: distant hammers that quit at noon and again at four, a n ighbor's vacuum dying, house f nch–cheer, cheer–silent in th heat. Small comforts w

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thdrawn. Acacia, its winter g ld shriveled to a seed pod, a r ttle. The constant wind that b ows offshore, then drops at du k. I miss old habits, walking wi h her, listening to her sa ness. We didn't speak the de perate truth, didn't love ou

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selves enough to say, I want, I eed. Guests at our lives, we lo ked up astonished, knowing we ne ded to begin again in ea nest, even with others' hurt, d smay. Even apart. Morton Marcus: That was Charles Atkinson's reading from his new

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book, "Fossil Honey." He will be our guest tonight on the Poetry Show. Hello everybody, this is Mort Marcus, this is the Poetry Show. Tonight's guest is Charles Atkinson. His first collection,

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"The Only Cure I Know," received the American Book Series Award for poetry. A chapbook, "The Best of Us on Fire," won the Wayland Press Competition. He has been awarded several national prizes for individual poems including the Stanford

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Prize, the Comstock Review Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award from State University of New York at Farmingdale, the Emily Dickinson Award from Universities West Press, and most recently, the Ledge Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in

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half a dozen anthologies, and many literary magazines including Poetry, the Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Nimrod, and the American Journal. He teaches writing at the University of California and

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welcome to the Poetry Show once again, Charles. Charles Atkinson: Thanks, Mort. It's nice to be here again. Morton Marcus: It's been way too long. And it's a great occasion though, because I'm holding two books in my hand. Your brand

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new, "Fossil Honey," from Hummingbird Press. And then, "Because We Are Men," the Sow's Ear collection of 14 of your poems in a chapbook. Actually, it has been a long while since a book of yours has come out as a full volume. When did you win

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that American Poetry Prize? Charles Atkinson: I think it was 1991, so it's been 15 years. Morton Marcus: Where were we then? And where are we now, Charles?

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Charles Atkinson: I know. Morton Marcus: I'm gonna do what we always do on the poetry program. Tell us a little bit about you, where you come from, how you got out here, and then we're gonna go into questions

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about poetry. Charles Atkinson: Well, I'm a New Englander by birth and education, I grew up in Massachusetts, went to college at Amherst College, and spent my first 25-6 years there, moved

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out to California to Santa Cruz to get a PhD degree, and never left. So, I've been teaching there ever since then, mostly in the composition program, writing program and then in the last five, six years, exclusively in the literature program teaching

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poetry writing. Morton Marcus: The question is, when did you start writing poetry? Charles Atkinson: Almost the same time I came to Santa Cruz

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and began my graduate program. I made the mistake of doing both of those things at once and realized as soon as I was into the graduate program, that really wasn't where my heart was, it was with the poetry. So, as soon as I finished the

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dissertation, I turned my back on it and said, the writing is what I want to do. Morton Marcus: Did you work with any of the people who were up there at that time? I guess Hitchcock was gone, wasn't he?

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Charles Atkinson: He was there and then had gone Yeah. Now, I didn't work with any of them, I did sit in on a Bill Iverson course, but I didn't work with any of the other poets. David Swain, of course, is a friend and I've worked with him for

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many, many years. Morton Marcus: Yeah, who also has an award winning book out? Charles Atkinson: That's right. Morton Marcus: I hope to get him on the show in the very, very

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short future. Okay, so why did you start writing poetry? One of these impossible question, but everyone always likes the answer to these. Charles Atkinson: Well, for me, it's always been a matter of

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trying to figure out unsolved issues in my life, there are questions that are just not answered. And they're almost always emotionally based, they're sort of knots of uncertainty or concern, unfinished business, I guess I

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call it, and that's really been the impetus to start most of my poems to try to figure out stuff that I haven't fully understood about my own life, relationships, feelings, and so forth.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, and that sort moves into or it actually can be the answer to what you hope to accomplish in your poems. Charles Atkinson: Well, I guess, in addition to the selfish

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reason of sorting things out and come to some clarity about them, I would like them to be available to other people so that when they hear them, when they read them, they can recognize certain patterns of events that might be common to

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them too. And I hope there's a certain pleasure and a revelation in that, too. Morton Marcus: Right, these two books, just by what you described as, you know, what you do in poetry, these two books

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are very private books and we have not, you know, been intimate friends, we've always seen each other and said hello. And of course, this tells me an awful lot of what's been going on in your life. And figuring out what is happening, how it's

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happening to a life that I think you had pretty well ordered, and knew where it was going, or thought you did. And I say that with a great sensitivity, because I've written a whole volume the same way and never really published it, but over

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the same thing where I thought my life was going where I thought it was going and then the universe has a way of playing jokes on us, cruel jokes, especially when children are involved, right? Okay. I would like to have people out

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there hear some of these. We're really talking, as I said about two books, "Because We Are Men," the chapbook, and then, "Fossil Honey." And we want to just say that, "Fossil Honey," is just not a collection of random poems. It is in four sections

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and these four sections follow very definite patterns. The first is the breakup of your family, and the concern you had for your children. The second is poems that I would say are about fathers and sons. Then there is the section about your mother,

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your relationship with her and her death, and then 'Reading the River," which is more about your father and finally, moves out in the end, from this whole sense of growing and becoming your own person, in what I guess we would say is the mature years. So, I

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would love you to read from each of the sections in any order you want, obviously, you know, you got one through four here so. Charles Atkinson: Well, since I put the book together that way, there is a certain intention in that and why don't I kind of

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read a little bit from each of those sections and give a kind of arc of the book. Morton Marcus: Beautiful. Charles Atkinson: I'll do that and in fact, the first poem I

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read as we opened is from the first section called, "The Foolishness of a Map," which really does chart the dissolution of a long marriage and the pain of that. And it was called, "Fragmentary, Four," because as you can see there,

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there are sections of that poem scattered throughout this, this section of the book and they're like little themes that pop up with variations as you go along. I think I'll read a poem in from the middle of that section. I won't read very many from this

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section because, as you alluded to, it's still probably the most difficult section for me to read aloud in public. But I'm going to read: RING CEREMONY

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She must have slipped it off in their room, after work, a shower, forgot to put it back on. It was easy. Or this morning, familiar reach to the dresser, stopped and left it there. Whatever it took to turn from so many years. He needed

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help, a ritual, but not this. Hold the hand under cold water, soaps his knuckle to work the band free. At the table where they face their limits, he sets it on edge between them, the cross hatching, once a highlight, worn away. His

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initials etched inside in the date when they were almost children, it seemed. On his finger, a pale band edged with callus. Which is it, tender skin, shielded from a chafing world, or two hardy ridges, yoked by something metallic? Now

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she's crying, how they failed at something large. He imagines wanting her again in the old needy way, bond that had kept them from solitude, change. The grown-ups they've become, the ring a charm around their life to bind and ward off. He's

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open-handed at the table, some probing the fingers hollow. She turns over his palm to trace the light bend below his knuckle. The familiar gone and all custom, how do you close a ceremony like this?

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Morton Marcus: You know, that was one of the poems that I really liked, because just saying that the ceremony is the total reverse of the ring ceremony. And again, your poems are very quiet and they have a lot of resonance in them. And

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that one really is to me, a Charles Atkinson poem if I wanted to identify how you worked, you know, because there's a lot of insight in that. There's a lot of really, you know, touching, observing a little detail, which so many

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people have been divorced in this country, you know, observing a detail that we might have done, and we may have sobbed because the significance is great, but again, the poet puts it into words and puts it into meaning, which is ironic,

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but very sadly ironic. Charles Atkinson: I'll read one more from this section. In fact, I think I'll read the last one just to kind of close it off. It's called:

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WATER: TWO MOUNTAIN MEDITATIONS ONE: Tuolumne River. Moving water makes no mistakes, or makes them endlessly without regret. What does it care for lodgepole pine clung to a fissure in the bank? How can

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liken in the lee of the granite soften your loss of love after so many years. The fly catcher, out of shadow, over the [unidentified] back in a single arc, can't help you to return to yourself day after day. The circling deer fly's not a bright

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halo, each bite raises a welt. Early summer, alone, the foolishness of a map. If only your life were as clear as water on granite, if you knew each plunge would take you where you needed to go, you might begin again.

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TWO: Lukens Lake. The same booming wind that drop these pines in the lake drove them to this cove and scattered them, pick up sticks, lodgepole, ponderosa, so many spines on black water. They're like human stories, bare feet seek out

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seasoned backs, stripped and bleached, not the core skin of the newly fallen. You teeter on them over darkness, looking down for something, maybe just relief from midday heat. Who says we find a way, starting over, with only the knowledge of how we

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failed, the many ways. Shapes that look familiar, warp and break in the chop. You want to do it right, but slip feet first into dark toward a bottom you never reach. The coal so sharp, it's a slap. The breath can't hold. You burst the surface into

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light you'd forgotten, each droplet and twig, explicit, pungence of pine, thin air you want more than anything. Morton Marcus: That also is another theme of yours which is the great outdoors. A lot, you spend a lot of time outdoors

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that's part of some poems in the Truckee area, you camp out and things like that. And then you find in nature and nature's image a way to work off them to come into, what's so interesting, the human condition and relationships with others,

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you know? I'm just throwing these things out, you know, and please do continue and talk about this. Let's say, you know, your writing process. A lot of folks don't like to talk about it, but tell us a little bit about it, I think we have

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obviously got away in by what you talk about, but how do you do it? Charles Atkinson: Well, to begin with, it's excruciatingly slow, for me. I have a notebook that I write into by hands, you know,

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nothing on the screen, nothing on the computer. Initially, I just have a pen in my pocket and a notebook. And I do spend time in, particularly in this year, I love being in the mountains. And I'm out to write just without any expectation, just margin to

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margin, whatever comes up. And then I would do a strange thing, which I shut the book for a year, at least and I don't even look at it. And then when I pick it up again, whatever's still alive for me at the end of a year or so's time, feels like it

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might have promise because you know how we feel on fire at the moment with whatever our thought is and then we visit it even the next day and we think what was I excited about? But I figure that after a year or so, if it's still get some juice left in it,

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then it's something I want to pursue, and then I actually start playing with it. I lifted it into a stenographer's notebook and actually write it out longhand again. But thinking about lines and maybe stanzas and, and I'm apt to pull stuff

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from very disparate places, you know, many dozens of pages apart that turned out to have echoes from the same issue or theme. And then if it still has promise, then I come to the keyboard and actually put it on the screen and start playing

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around with it in more detail. And then it goes through, you know, many drafts there, as you know, from your own experience, and as you also probably know, I'm a part of two local poetry groups and bring, I wouldn't dream of bringing a poem to

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pre-publication before I'd run it by both of those groups. Morton Marcus: Okay, how long, I did it tell us about one group, it's composed of David Swanger, Tilly Shaw, Robert Sward, the indomitable Robert Sward, and you, I think is that the whole

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group? Charles Atkinson: No, there's Doug McClellan who is now an [unintelligible] Dion Farquhar and also Joan Zimmerman. Morton Marcus: Oh, sure seven, seven of us. She's done the show

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several times. Charles Atkinson: So, and I always get help from them because, you know, it's that classic issue of I think the poem is utterly lucid, otherwise, I wouldn't have

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written it and then I give it to somebody else and they go, huh? Or what the hell does this mean? Or how can you say that? And, you know, sometimes I listen and sometimes I don't. But the fact is that I get a reality check and I feel like it's really

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necessary. It's helped me over the years to kind of tune my own ear to become more of a reader's ear instead of just the poet's ear. Morton Marcus: To young poets out there who are so excited

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about their work, this is really good advice to let the poem sit and give it a time. Let's say one year would be the time and this reminds me of two things and I know you know, both of them. One of them, of course, is Wordsworth, "A poem is emotions

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recollected in tranquility," which is after the fire is gone. And Robert Frost, you know about Robert Frost and his 365 Drawers. Robert Frost would write a poem every day of the year, supposedly, this may be apocryphal. And he would put

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that poem in a drawer, where he had put another poem the year before. And he puts the new one in, takes the old one out, and sees if there's anything worth saving in that poem and a lot of times he just throws them away.

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Charles Atkinson: I like it. Yeah. No, I've thrown many away in the same way, right. Morton Marcus: But let us go on the second section of the book, then deals with- I got my notes here.

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Charles Atkinson: Parenting, really. Morton Marcus: With parenting as it deals with your sons. And th concern here, and God I know i because I have two daughters, s what is this breakup going o mean to the kids and in my cas

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, and I don't know about your , though it doesn't sound like t from your poems here. But I w s the child of divorce and it w s a really disastrous childhood. I really was abandoned by y mother, never knew my fathe . And so I said, my children wou

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d never go through that. And o and behold, with all t e protestations you make being n such control of your destiny, t didn't happen. And it w s traumatic for me and boy, did I pick up this trauma in bo h sections one and tw

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Charles Atkinson: Yeah. Well, I won't, I won't divulge the final result because I don't know it yet. But, and I don't think I'm the person to speak for that. But when I read a couple of the poems that do, in fact, a few of these actually predate the issue

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of divorce. And the first one is really the first intersection which I'll read, called, "What We Mean When We Say Karma," and really, it's a meditation more on anger and- which I consider you know, perhaps one of the roots of divorce in the world.

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But we get an inheritance, I think, of some of these emotional states and patterns of dealing with them from our parents as much as we get a lot of other things. And one of the things that interested me was the issue of anger because it

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was something that I felt could pass down to me and I felt that I had to deal with it and understand it before I could unravel it. And really, that's this poem is kind of circling around that issue.

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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY KARMA Soup will spill in the hands of a child on the carpet, his shirt, his pants and socks. A mistake to fool when you carry it, he knew or learned. A scald recalls its source. So, who was

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yelling at this child? Not a father or father's father, though the tone is familiar. This is the shimmer of anger itself, that glossy oil that swirls on water, spilled there once in someone's pain, someone bent double, fatigued, bad

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health, a dream congealed, splashed on the surface of a child's clear spring. It's spread in patterns, iridescent from above. A rainbow of colors, sudden world's serpentine in the light. From vessel to vessel it was poured and always found the

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surface, fouled the rim. Wait, stop, you say. Too late. He won't lift his eyes from the bowl, won't cry. It will sink to the depths for a time, for years if the water's cool. The child's face has smoothed in deliberate calm. Look at him by

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candlelight. He's good, so was his father. Morton Marcus: And we are talking with Charles Atkinson and he has been reading from his new book, "Fossil Honey." Charles, where can the listener get a copy of the book?

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Charles Atkinson: It should be now in Bookshop Santa Cruz and I hope this week it will be in the campus Baytree Bookstore, the website at Hummingbird Press, www.HummingbirdPress.com, you can order from there. And I believe that in fact, we are

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linked to Amazon too, so- Morton Marcus: Can you tell us a little bit about Hummingbird Press? Charles Atkinson: Yeah, this is a local collective that as you

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know, was begun by Joseph McNeely from Cabrillo, probably four years ago, and there were, I believe, nine original members of that collective or 10. And they went through their first cycle of publishing all those books three or four a year.

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Joseph has since left and half of the members, the original members, have disbanded. And they have brought on another half to begin a second cycle. And I'm really the first of that cycle to launch this second cycle of four years' worth of

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publishing three or four books a year. So, I'm kind of excited about it, because these poems as you referred to, a lot of them have been around for some time. And though a lot of them have been published individually, I never quite got them all

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published as a volume. I was a finalist in a number of contests but that was the only route I went. And finally, I just decided, I want to get these out there. I want to get them together and, they're history now, their finished product,

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they're an artifact and I wanted to get them out. And so, I got the invitation from Hummingbird and I thought about it and said, yeah, this is the way I'd like to get these out into the world. Morton Marcus: Unfortunately, this is one of the only ways

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that publishing is becoming more regional in this way and much more a matter of a private publishing or group publishing such as this, because to publish a book of poems these days is extremely, extremely difficult.

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Charles Atkinson: Right, I've noticed that. Morton Marcus: And reading of poetry, the reading of anything is just diminishing. For you and I it's sort of a different universe now, you know, because we live by the book and we live

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by the word. Charles Atkinson: Right, It's true. Morton Marcus: Anyway, so who are some of the people now in the collective, I know Ken Wiesner was-

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Charles Atkinson: Ken Weisner and he has stayed with it. Morton Marcus: Oh, good, and I love his book. That's great. Len Anderson's another one. Charles Atkinson: They have been, I would say, the

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particularly the core group that has started this second process around and they've been just central to it. Tilly Shaw? Morton Marcus: Yep. Charles Atkinson: Deborah Spencer?

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Morton Marcus: Wonderful poet. Charles Atkinson: Yeah and we have, let's see, there's we have several new ones, Barbara Bloom is in the new group. Morton Marcus: It's about time for [unintelligible].

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Charles Atkinson: Amber Coverdale Sumrall, David Sullivan is in it. Maggie Paul is in it. Joanna Martin is in it, and I think I may be leaving someone out but I forgot who that would be. Anyway, there's about a dozen of us.

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Morton Marcus: Why don't you read another poem from the second section of, "Fossil Honey," your new book for people out there. Look for it at the Bookshop Santa Cruz and if you can't find it, ask people at the information desk where it is

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because I could not find it on the poetry shelf. Did you go down and have a look? Charles Atkinson: Yeah, it turns out that Bookshop Santa Cruz has agreed to do a display for Hummingbird Press. So at the far

00:26:45.350 - 00:27:01.970

end of the poetry, alphabetical poetry shelf, there are the Hummingbird Press books. And this is the first of them, it should be faced out so it should be visible. So, it was not filed alphabetically at the time.

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Morton Marcus: Okay. Charles Atkinson: I'm going to read WHAT ANGEL. Chest deep in Lake Tahoe's breathless cobalt, my oldest decides to take a stand. No longer content to be dunked,

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shrieking like his brother, who expects to be heaved away over and over, this silent pillar has planted his sturdy legs wide in the wrestler's stance he knows. We lock fingers, press palms, and I'm stunned by the hard strength come into him so

00:27:36.170 - 00:27:55.070

quickly, he hasn't claimed it before. Should I be surprised? Both back from a week at camp, it was enough to quick squeeze me at the neck while his brother still lept into my spread open arms and hung on. Now, these arms are shaking, two drawn

00:27:55.070 - 00:28:11.960

bows. We lean in what looks to his mother I'm sure like a clumsy embrace but we know as a slow grinding, neither one of us can break till I slide a leg behind to throw him over hip and quick, have to drop my weight like his to keep from being

00:28:11.960 - 00:28:30.710

tossed. Only my extra pounds and years practice let me catch his leg at last, up-end in him with a grunt that sears my throat. He turns into a graceful dive, comes up smiling, though his chest is scratched, the fling handfuls of bottom sand, that

00:28:30.710 - 00:28:50.960

hiss just short on the water, not a blessing, but a truce. Thunderheads are bulking down the valley. The scarred ledges above Emerald Bay waver in the heat, Im wheezing and something aches out of joint down low. I weave into shore, drop on the

00:28:50.960 - 00:29:11.870

hot sand, it's grip a comfort on my cheek, the world is wheeling west. I loved him as a child. I may learn to honor this figure against the sky, whose shadow follows across my sunburnt back, who will throw me down next year and hold me under just long

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enough. Today, I know what he wants, and I'm not ready to let it go. I don't want to see him for a while. Morton Marcus: And what also gets in there is not only father and son, but the very title of your chapbook which is, "Because

00:29:33.350 - 00:29:42.490

We Are Men." Charles Atkinson: Yes. Yeah, a lot of meditations on maleness in the world, and all the baggage that goes with that. Morton Marcus: Right.

00:29:43.800 - 00:32:17.310

We are talking to Charles Atkinson and talking about his new chapbook and his new book of poems, and we will return after a short musical interlude. Hello again, this is the Poetry Show. And this is the time of

00:32:17.310 - 00:32:34.230

the Poetry Show when we announced some local poetry events and we've got two excellent ones coming up. This Tuesday on the 28th of November, in the Attic, A-T-T-I-C in downtown, Santa Cruz at 7:30, 10 poets, five young poets from

00:32:34.230 - 00:32:54.300

UCSC and five young poets from Cabrillo will read from their work. I urge you to go see what's new and evolving and also get to know the Attic which is a wonderful space. Then on December 7th, at the Capitola Book Cafe, a star-studded

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reading, David Swanger, who he mentioned before and has just won the Missouri Prize for selected poems. Gary Young, the William Carlos Williams Award winner two years ago, and the redoubtable Joseph Stroud, former co-host with me on this

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program, really a wonderful poet, who, of course, as I hope every listener here knows, was the Witter Bynner award winner this year from the Library of Congress. So, you've got three heavy hitters, as we would say, with baseball jargon, who will

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be reading on December 7th, and new voices the week before them on the 28th. So, we are now talking with Charles Atkinson and about both his new book and his chapbook. So, we will continue, we're still talking about the second section,

00:33:51.300 - 00:34:04.890

"Fathers and Sons," or "Parenting," of "Fossil Honey," the book that has just come out from Charles. Charles Atkinson: Well, why don't I fast forward about a decade in this section on parenting just so you see how

00:34:04.890 - 00:34:15.930

things do change in relationships and I'll read the last poem from this section called: CREATING GROWN SONS. It has an epic epigraph from Wallace Stevens, "Nothing has

00:34:15.930 - 00:34:33.900

changed, except what is unreal." I used to study gestures at the airport gates. This is how the fathers do it, clap a sunburnt arm around a strapping shoulder. One quick squeeze to skirt the touch in silence, push away and

00:34:33.900 - 00:34:53.310

start the banter. I know what's expected, but I have grown more impulsive and wave my arms above the crowd. I elbow forward, strain, and fold his muscled back without a word. We rock back and forth, eyes shut, a channel boy that cleaves the

00:34:53.310 - 00:35:18.130

roiling current. When we break I stammer, at last, I've missed. Okay, inadvertant crokes. Still, the tear surprised me, the PA crackles, luggage tumbles to the carousel, all my father missed. Morton Marcus: How old are your boys now?

00:35:18.610 - 00:35:31.990

Charles Atkinson: And they are now 30 and 27. So, they are tumbling grown men completely in their own lives. Morton Marcus: Well, the third section is, "Let Go," and tell us a little bit about that.

00:35:32.200 - 00:35:49.870

Charles Atkinson: Well, I was going to say I had a complex relationship with my mother but who doesn't. And so, this was a way of sorting that out, but it was brought into sharp focus because she suddenly developed a brain tumor and died within a

00:35:49.870 - 00:36:05.200

six month period and she lived on the East Coast and I would periodically go back there and see her. And of course, when you see somebody in that fragmented way, their deterioration is really quite dramatic and shocking. So, the section of

00:36:05.200 - 00:36:18.910

this volume called, "Let Go," is really drawn from the title poem of it, which is in five sections, which traces that decline and I think I won't read that it's a long poem really. But I think maybe I'll just read one section in the in the

00:36:18.910 - 00:36:23.980

middle, which is really the heart of it, I would say. It's called: I can hardly step into the room for your moans and thrashing, ROOT FEAR

00:36:31.520 - 00:36:50.840

for how they roll you on your side, those jolly commands, coaxing their heavy child, the gown's ridden up on your hip I see bed sores, shining before a new sheet settles its harsh benediction. They said, you wouldn't know who was here, even

00:36:50.840 - 00:37:10.580

close by your head. But your gaze, roaming the ceiling, drops to my face and suddenly you're still. Your one good hand, who would have guessed the left, creeps over the sheet to my cheek, to the back of my neck and pulls me down to your sour

00:37:10.580 - 00:37:33.740

breath and wild gray hair. Through the gurgle I tried to hear what you have to say, not what I wanted. You seemed so ready at first, born toward your heaven on a current of faith and work. Wherever it led, you'd follow, except here. Except here

00:37:33.890 - 00:37:55.220

on a stony bed, root fear standing in knots on your forehead, your neck. Oh, my mother, don't ask for my help, for my lie. Go on, past verything you loved and ontrolled. Nothing I know wi l take you there. Let g

00:37:59.240 - 00:38:18.020

Morton Marcus: Now, it makes seem a little callous to talk about something else. This book is in many different kinds of forms, or shapes, even. A lot of the verse poems are broken up into shorter line poems and then they have a lot of italics in

00:38:18.020 - 00:38:31.510

them and then the fragments are a prose. Charles Atkinson: Right. Morton Marcus: So, um, in fact, you know, when you say that you do a poem, by thinking about it for a year and then really

00:38:31.510 - 00:38:45.640

starting to make poetry out of it, a lot of these almost have forms, they're in tercets. They're four line stanzas, five line stanzas. Talk a little bit about the forms itself these poems took and how they came about.

00:38:45.670 - 00:38:54.690

Charles Atkinson: There's even a couple of sonnets in here too. Morton Marcus: Unrhymed? Charles Atkinson: No, they're perfectly rhymed Petrarchan sonnets. [unintelligible] If I slipped it by, then it means it

00:38:55.110 - 00:39:00.900

worked. Morton Marcus: It worked well besides looking for them and I'm gonna ask you to read one of them. Okay, but tell us about this first.

00:39:00.900 - 00:39:18.360

Charles Atkinson: Yeah, well, for me, form really does follow function and I write well into the poem before I start thinking what stanza shape or even line length is going to be like and it really grows organically for me out of, I think, that the

00:39:18.360 - 00:39:33.930

cadence of the the words and whether they want to be clipped or extended, you know, meandering or taut and then the stanza issue really comes when I see how things start to fall and where I want the pauses to be. So, I love stanzas, actually, I

00:39:33.930 - 00:39:48.780

like the elegance of them, and I like the regularity, and I like being able to work within the regularity of both lines and stanzas and still say something that seems organic and graceful. And, you know, that's my goal at least, so. But sometimes it

00:39:48.780 - 00:40:03.210

doesn't work out and sometimes they're just blocks on the page and particularly in the first section that you alluded to, the prose poems, that that are all dream poems, just sort of came as dreams that are just intact, blocks just came out that way

00:40:03.210 - 00:40:17.340

and they feel like- I felt like I just couldn't tamper with those to make them anything but prose poems, they were just pieces of language that came out. I didn't want to shape them. And then the fragmentary poems also from section one are

00:40:17.340 - 00:40:33.600

kind of at the other end of the spectrum, they're are all 16 line four stanzas, kind of very tight lyrics and I decided to follow that form all the way through and intersperse them throughout the section. So, it grows slowly, the issue of form

00:40:33.600 - 00:40:41.430

grows slowly for me as I hear what I'm saying and how I'm saying it right now. Morton Marcus: Can I ask you to read one of the Petrarchan sonnets?

00:40:41.640 - 00:41:01.230

Charles Atkinson: Yes, I would be happy to. I just gotta find out where it is. Why don't I read- Morton Marcus: See, there are two facing each other. When you know, you know.

00:41:06.240 - 00:41:17.760

Charles Atkinson: I'll read, "Accommodations." This is another on page 50, this is another parent-child poem, father-sons poem. ACCOMMODATIONS

00:41:18.110 - 00:41:37.550

There you are, rounding the final buoy when a gust yanks the main sheet hard, you haul in and feel nothing till the muscle tightens on its tear, a steel blade in the back and now at the dock your coy. Next time kids, you'll win, but it's a modulated

00:41:37.550 - 00:41:59.420

joy. You're not 25 and immortal, even sailing, ideal for the young at heart, is hazardous. Wind surfing? Be real. Hard to believe you were once that material boy, outracing pain, now it's a berth. Still, you're not crushed in quarters this

00:41:59.420 - 00:42:19.100

cramped, the harbor is teeming with life. What's wrong with loving the things within reach, the nearby? You stand on the dock and wave bon voyage, unrushed and more cheerful than they, hiked out in harness, wet butts, wet sails skimming the

00:42:19.100 - 00:42:38.340

foam, wanting mostly to fly. Morton Marcus: Butts and whats, an amazing rhyme but you know, when I read "be real," it was so perfect in there and great rhyme also, you know with ideal feel and steel. They can it is yes, a

00:42:38.340 - 00:42:55.080

perfect Petrarchan sonnet. Charles Atkinson: Great. Well, that's the goal is to actually do it without letting on that that's what it is. So, how about if I close this third section of the volume, with a last poem for

00:42:55.080 - 00:43:13.530

my mother, well, it's really not the last in the volume but the last in the section. And it's interesting because it came- I wrote a lot of poems in which I chewed on my complaints and so forth with her and all my righteousness and then I thought

00:43:13.530 - 00:43:22.730

I was done with it. And then a few years later this poem arrived and it felt like a kind of blessing, a gift for me to be in a different relationship. It's called: SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

00:43:24.700 - 00:43:46.120

A small miracle to ride a bike, a plane on edge, defying the grave force unless too late, you stop to consider. My mother found it impossible, the art of angels. No one taught her of course, no wonder in her final hours, she fought so hard to

00:43:46.120 - 00:44:05.440

stay upright, thrashing on a cranked up bed. Still, she taught her children to wheel out of sight, as if it were their birthright. I'd wobble, feel her run alongside, let me talk away terror. Then lighten the pressure on my back until I

00:44:05.440 - 00:44:26.740

didn't know if it was her or me rolling down a graveled road with no idea, and finally, no fear. Now, I'm learning the rest with model bruises, road rash, broken bones. When there's no riding the tilt, sliver of clairvoyance between knowledge

00:44:26.740 - 00:44:48.820

and fact, that's when to soften, exhale, become a supplicant, a lucid arc as we hurtle toward pavement that takes us back more gently. So, I would have given a lot to read her eyelids, the pressure of her palm in those last quiet moments of tipping

00:44:49.060 - 00:45:09.460

and knowing, whether she learned it all at once. Morton Marcus: These poems are very moving and , you know, I really suggest that people go out and buy the book, their poems. They're the kind of poems you want to spend time with,

00:45:09.460 - 00:45:25.720

quiet time with, and especially for, you know, mature people out there who have gone through a lot of life's vicissitudes. I heartily recommend it. And again, we are talking with Charles Atkinson and he has been reading from, "Fossil Honey."

00:45:26.770 - 00:45:35.620

Charles Atkinson: Okay, shall I move into the final section? Morton Marcus: Absolutely. I want you to get to, of course, "We Are Men," as well. And believe it or not, we only have 15 minutes left.

00:45:35.620 - 00:45:49.360

Charles Atkinson: All right, I'm going to read the first poem or the second poem in this final section, which is called, "Reading the River," and that, of course, refers to the way a river guide reach the water, the current, and it's called:

00:45:49.350 - 00:46:07.420

HAIRCUT and it has an epigraph from Wordsworth, that very famous one, "The child is father of the man," which probably cas a shadow over this whole volum . It's in two sections. ONE. He's wintered alone since she died, now in May, I see

00:46:07.780 - 00:46:25.360

[unidentified]. Right off, he wants to cut my hair, the thing he did best, I'm weary, but can't refuse. An old sheet, pinned at the neck, same kitchen stool in the sun. I'm wrapped and silent and 12 years old again and know what I want, long

00:46:25.360 - 00:46:44.260

on the top, but he'll cut it fast and short, no talk, dark clumps dropping into my lap and I'll wear a cap till it grows back out. He'll stand over me forever, sunglasses a glint, those gun metal scissors clicking at my neck. Instead, he

00:46:44.260 - 00:47:04.780

runs the comb through my tangles lightly like a woman finding her way. The scissors creep by my ears, shy cricket, a coolness finds my temples. He works gingerly, one side at a time to the last careful clips above my eyes, steps back and sighs, what

00:47:04.780 - 00:47:25.490

do you think, have I lost the touch? A breeze on my nape. How do you tell a father, he's lost one touch and found another? TWO. You know, I could use one too. It's true, now that she's gone, he's grizzled. I shake out the sheet, give him the stool

00:47:25.670 - 00:47:47.480

and part his fine strands with the comb. Not much off the top, it's all I've got. I know that voice but it's warm in the sun. With the steady snips, his eyelids droop, his chin, his gone. Now and then he starts and settles, there. I stand back and

00:47:47.480 - 00:48:07.070

keep the scissors going not to wake him. A dove is brooding in the maple. The stiff brush on his neck brings him to, then to wash it at the sink the way she'd do. Under the stream, his neck so thin, his baldpate gleams. Dry the water pooled his

00:48:07.070 - 00:48:25.730

ears, wrap him in a turban, and he's off to comb it the way he likes over the bare spot. I'm sweeping up his long white wisps, my wirey salt and pepper. When he comes back, shy grin I've never seen, "like a new man," he says.

00:48:31.760 - 00:48:46.670

Why don't I jump ahead, there are some poems really about his last days also. And I'll jump to this one called, "Father Fragments," which is a little bit retrospective. It's in four sections.

00:48:46.940 - 00:48:56.480

Morton Marcus: I hope you'd read this piece, these are wonderful Haiku. And we were talking about- Charles Atkinson: Oh, no, I'm not going to read the Haiku. You want me to read the Haiku?

00:48:56.510 - 00:49:11.060

Morton Marcus: No, that's okay. Since I mentioned it, people out there, when you pick up the book, go to "Notes My Father Never Sent Me," they're just marvelous Haiku and done 5-7-5. Charles Atkinson: Yeah, they're formal poems. This is:

00:49:11.060 - 00:49:26.190

FATHER FRAGMENTS ONE. He's sitting on a splintered dock, the coast of Maine, white hair blown across his forehead, squinting out to sea, big hands on knees. His dogs beside him, head on pause.

00:49:26.850 - 00:49:47.880

I took the photo 30 years ago, unhappy with the world, just in from somewhere, impatient with my splendid life. He looked placid, so did the dog and the coast, dark furs down to tidal rocks, dories moored, noses to the wind. I had no idea what he

00:49:47.880 - 00:50:05.700

was thinking, or how to ask. TWO. A night phone call can feel like someone's heartbeat, long distance even, seems they're lying at your side to trace a summer constellation, breath against your ribs. With him, it

00:50:05.700 - 00:50:22.020

was more like overhearing a stranger on a crossed line, a life you know nothing about, talking in fragments to someone who's not there. His voice rose when I called, but you think he was a busy man, the way he couldn't hang up soon enough.

00:50:23.350 - 00:50:41.230

THREE. He wouldn't part with the ring, but promised I'd get it, a talisman from way back. Before he learned, he knew nothing about love, except what she could coax from him. Even before, she'd begun to reproach him for an easy thoughtlessness

00:50:41.230 - 00:50:58.780

he couldn't shake all the way back to when he was glitter and shine, alone. Onyx set in gold, clean through its midnight face, a crack from when he dropped it. Here's a reminder of how loving has a price.

00:51:00.130 - 00:51:17.530

FOUR. Here's the strange part, his hands were huge. In all his life, when I asked to try it on, the ring would spin on every finger. When I finally sorted out his things, it slipped on snug, and hasn't budged.

00:51:23.470 - 00:51:38.620

Morton Marcus: So should I turn to the chapbook? And the chapbook is organized also because the chapbook is mostly- after the first poem, which you may well want to read. It's all about your brother and the breakup of his marriage.

00:51:38.620 - 00:51:54.400

Charles Atkinson: Well, a section of it is that way but then, you know, there are a number of poems around that. My conception of this book is really sort of my version of men in the world, men out in the world and largely other men

00:51:54.400 - 00:52:04.540

besides me, you know, looking out at how they make their way and how they sort their lives out for the most part. Morton Marcus: Are you going to read, "Because We Are Men," the title poem?

00:52:07.540 - 00:52:15.970

Charles Atkinson: I would like to at least read the last one. Would you like me to read the first one too, the title poem? They're quite different, one is very dark and the other is a little bit-

00:52:16.090 - 00:52:25.800

Morton Marcus: Just the way you want to read it, but I want to ask you, are you the veteran that you're remembering, or? Charles Atkinson: If you have to ask that question, then the poem has worked.

00:52:26.250 - 00:52:43.890

Morton Marcus: Okay because there was a lot of imagery in there from when I was in, and I think, I knew Charles was a veteran or okay, that answered my question, so. Charles Atkinson: Yeah. Okay. Why don't I- think there's

00:52:43.890 - 00:52:53.850

probably time to read that. All right. BECAUSE WE ARE MEN. This is in four sections. ONE: Awake. those war whooping days, we retrieved the paper,

00:52:53.880 - 00:53:10.080

dog eared on the steps in the damp and spread it first thing on the counter with coffee. What was it that riveted us to the carnage ahead of politics, hope, bitter amusement, comics, even the sports. Page one, our helicopter downed in the desert,

00:53:10.260 - 00:53:29.490

engine failure, the entire crew. We dipped our flags, a tragedy. The President was heartbroken, visited the homes in Vermont, in khaki(?) to assure the old and soon to be old, each body bag was cared for. A few stood, limp placards at a corner, honk if

00:53:29.490 - 00:53:44.370

you love peace, dancing for a wave. A few picketed the post office. No one burned the recruiting station. Where were the remains discovered? In what positions did they die? It was the details that finally seduced us.

00:53:45.020 - 00:54:05.210

TWO: Eastbound, above Chamonix, the B52s would refuel, headed for desert targets. Farmers arose in the dark, woodstoves kindled, tea water singing, milking time. Hearing a rumble, they'd look upslope to the sleeping massif. A good year so

00:54:05.210 - 00:54:23.840

far, no slides, please God. Already dawn in the fishing village on Crete, at the bakery window a boy standing on one foot, choosing, turning the coins over and over. At the sound, he'd squint up, silver winks in a blue deep as a

00:54:23.840 - 00:54:41.510

headache, he decided on baklava. In the sands outside Baghdad, the mind stopped, wouldn't approach the smoldering tanks, their treads flopped off, big Sandbach toys, the stench of hair and nails that at a broil. It wouldn't look inside at the

00:54:41.510 - 00:55:00.200

harvest of justice, the boiled fruits of freedom, but it would, it did. They lived by a bridge on the Tigris, strategic route. She woke to the glass caving in. The children rush toward her and on past wearing their shirts on flame, dust rose from where the

00:55:00.200 - 00:55:16.160

stairway began, the screaming stopped. Where were the children? 500 baked while they slept in a shelter, the stretchers carried their charcoal into the light, whether we imagined or not, they kept coming piled on flat bit,

00:55:16.280 - 00:55:33.280

carried off through the throngs. Is this what we wanted to know? Why we read on? THREE: On target. More ugly still, because we are men, we know. When slate dark, the phantoms lumber to the runway,

00:55:33.280 - 00:55:50.020

nose to tail, liftoff and shutter the earth for 20 miles and the general calls it history in the making. And even though it will shake us awake years from now, on an August night, still to imagine we are what makes the desert quake for hours

00:55:50.020 - 00:56:07.360

on end, nothing besides tumescence or death's husky whisper brings a man so alive. Throbbing east under quiet stars, we're the ones chosen to separate light and dark, friend and foe on an amber screen. A line's been drawn and crossed;

00:56:07.510 - 00:56:25.750

who will deliver the promise? For this moment, doubt and the difficult feelings drop away. Go on. We hum an old song, brothers, sisters, careful not to think of those down there who will evaporate, astonished before they imagine what rains

00:56:25.750 - 00:56:42.150

from the cipher we become in a white noon sky, pure, potent, far ahead of our incandescent trail. Morton Marcus: Powerful, you know, a poem of mine called, "Men Who Cry?"

00:56:42.510 - 00:56:50.920

Charles Atkinson: Yes, yeah. Morton Marcus: Well, this reminded me of it right off the bat. Charles Atkinson: Trying to get behind that facade. So, how

00:56:50.920 - 00:57:01.480

about if I close with the final poem of this- I could have book-ended this volume and I went from the first poem to the last poem, hopefully for a little redemption here. Morton Marcus: And now, can people also get " Because We Are

00:57:01.480 - 00:57:08.500

Men" in the Bookshop? Charles Atkinson: Yes, it should be available. Morton Marcus: And is it under your name or is it in the display?

00:57:09.340 - 00:57:17.830

Charles Atkinson: It's not even there yet, but it'll be there next week. Okay. This is called: SATURDAY MORNING and it has an epigraph from Meister Eckhart,

00:57:18.370 - 00:57:35.370

which says, "If the only prayer you say in your whole life is, Thank You, that would suffice." Two more friends dead inside a month, two you loved and didn't tell. You were thinking of them of course. Try a solitary walk

00:57:35.370 - 00:57:56.430

downtown, a stranger to your life, as if this were Amsterdam, Kyoto. Try quiet, like an honest friend, let the day unfurl if it can. But cottages with blistered paint, thumbnail gardens gone to seed, doorstep cat licking a sore, detritus beneath a hedge,

00:57:56.520 - 00:58:13.080

a human noise, lawnmower snarling at dogs, dogs at walkers, leaf blowers, power saws, everyone out to dominate something. Stillness, a neighbor's swing needs oil, sirens on main, a small plane churning it's banner all over

00:58:13.080 - 00:58:32.460

town, buy this. A mockingbird, amped with [unidentified] testosterone, policing his domain, tree to pole to fence, impossible racket, an empty prayer on a Bedlam, Sabbath. Father and mother at a counter, strangers back to back, each

00:58:32.460 - 00:58:50.520

with a child. The boy in green pajamas, rubber feet, slips from his stool, shuffles off a pickle held aloft, thin finger squeaks on the bagel case. Father rattles the morning paper, sighs over something important. Mother decorates bites with jam, so

00:58:50.520 - 00:59:08.820

many choices, wipes her girls clean fingers, pats her head. All week she must have missed her child who wants to slurp cocoa and follow the pickle boy. You don't know their stories. Why this sudden, unreasonable love for them all? Fog stained,

00:59:09.150 - 00:59:27.450

Ginko fans unfurl, mysterious erotic confetti underfoot. That bird again, feather-flux on a phone line, cascade that's never the same, warble, chirp, whistle, stutter gavel, audible gossamer stitching the yards. Behind it, the motorized

00:59:27.450 - 00:59:50.610

orchestra tuning, swelling. Stop, you would have said, old need to choose, a two cycle engine or a bird song. No, just listen. His Datsun coughed the way, she hummed her one tune, and still, they're gone forever. Forget choice, what you like.

00:59:51.210 - 01:00:08.220

Everything wants to be included, even the "not this," even grief. Morton Marcus: Thank you very much, Charles for being with us tonight. That was Charles Atkinson and he was reading from his new chapbook which will be in Bookshop Santa Cruz next week

01:00:08.220 - 01:00:25.290

called, "Because We Are Men," and his full length book which has just come out called, "Fossil Honey." Great Christmas presents here, folks. Really serious, meaningful poetry. A delight to have you on the show. I'll be back in three weeks out

01:00:25.290 - 01:00:44.580

there. Remember on December- this coming Tuesday, the 28th at the Attic at 7:30, 10 young poets, five from Cabrillo, 5 from UCSC, and on December 7th, David Swanger, Gary Young and Joe Stroud, 7:30 at the Capitola Book Cafe, I'm Mort Marcus

01:00:44.640 - 01:00:45.870

saying good night.