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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody this is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show. This program is supported in part by our community of contributing listeners. To become a contributing listener, visit KUSP.org. Thank you. And

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support for this program is also provided by a grant from the Holy Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County. And this is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show. And tonight, I'm going to present a phone interview that I

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did two days ago with Clemens Starck, the very unique Oregon poet, who will be in town this coming week as a poet-in-residence at UCSC, and will be giving a reading with me on Tuesday evening at 7:30 at the McPherson Museum of Art and

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History at 705 Front Street in San Francisco. Clem and I are old friends, and we read in the Haight-Ashbury days back in San Francisco, and we're going to be doing an old fashioned 60s reading. Clem Starck really didn't start writing, I guess

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you could say, until he was in his 40s although really he had just stopped writing. He'd written years before that. His first book out, "Journeyman's Wages," was published when he was fifty-seven, won the Stanford Memorial Prize, won the

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Oregon Book Award, and he was given a Witter Bynner Fellowship. His latest book, "China Basin," which came out last year was the runner up for the Oregon Book Award. He's a very unique poet, and let's go right now to this past Friday,

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when I talked to Clem about his life and his trip down here. Clemens Starck: Hello. Morton Marcus: Hi, Clem. How you doing? Clemens Starck: Hey, pretty good, Mort.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, this is Mort Marcus, I'm sitting here in Southern California down in Santa Cruz. And you are? Clemens Starck: I am sitting here in the Mid-Willamette Valley in Oregon.

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Morton Marcus: How's the weather up there? Clemens Starck: It's spectacularly beautiful today, unusually so. Morton Marcus: Great. And-

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Clemens Starck: Sunshine and no snow clouds. Morton Marcus: And you live in Dallas, Oregon which is around, what, forty miles from Portland? Clemens Starck: Oh, no, it's much further than that. It's

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about seventy or eighty miles north of Portland, it's near- it's kind of between Salem and Corvallis, but further west, and in the foothills of the Coast Range. Morton Marcus: Well, it's a long way away and I'm very happy to

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say that you will be with us within the week, and you will be the poet-in-residence down here at the University of California, Santa Cruz. And I will be seeing a lot of you then and also we'll be doing a reading together. And I want some of the listeners

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here to the Poetry Show to get to know you a little bit. So why don't you give us a little bit of your biography, how old you are now and some of the things you've done in your life that are notable, and there an awful lot of things.

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Clemens Starck: Well, that's true. There are an awful lot of things, which I guess are notable. I didn't think any of them were particularly notable at the time that they were happening, but in retrospect, they seem interesting, I guess.

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Let's see, I was born in 1937, the year of the Great Terror in Russia, fortunately, I was not born in Russia. I was born in western New York, a little town outside of Rochester called Irondequoit. So anyway, that makes me sixty-six years old.

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I've lived here in Oregon for about going on thirty years now. But- and I think of myself as an Oregonian, although I'm not a native Oregonian. Morton Marcus: But when did you move to the West?

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Clemens Starck: I moved to the West- the first time I came to the West was back in the late 60s. I was riding freight rains around the country and itchhiking and trying to iscover what I was going to do ith my life. I was eighteen and

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ineteen at the time, and I ound up in Eastern Oregon, hich is quite different from here I live now in Western regon. I wound up working on he railroad on the section gang, and then I moved from there down further south and to eastern Ore

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on to cowboy country, worked on cattle ranches for a year an Morton Marcus: May I interrupt? That just wasn't a college, that a half. I had dropped out of ollege after a couple of years, ecided to take my education to ind myself.

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was one of the most celebrated colleges in America. Clemens Starck: Well, I guess. It was Princeton. Morton Marcus: Yeah. So, were you a good student when you were in high school?

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Clemens Starck: Oh, I was an excellent student, yes. I was a very good student in high school and as a result, I got a scholarship to Princeton. And I went to Princeton and I had no- my idea, I was interested in foreign languages, I was

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interested, I thought maybe that I would be interested in being a diplomat in the Foreign Service. At Princeton I majored in French literature with a minor in German. It was really at Princeton that I discovered literature with a capital L

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which has played- was a pivotal moment for me in the discovery itself and led to my leaving Princeton a few years later, in order to become a writer. And so anyway, that, as I say, that led me to wandering around the country and I wound up in

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Eastern Oregon in the late 50s. And then I went back East, I lived in New York City for a while, I worked on a newspaper in New York, on Wall Street in fact, I was a Wall Street reporter for a trade weekly for a year or so. Got married. And I

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started writing, I started writing poetry when I was twenty-one. All the time that I was wandering around the country I was thinking about writing but had not actually put words to paper. And it wasn't until I was twenty-one that I actually

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started writing. And as soon thereafter I threw a connection, I applied for a grant from an artist foundation in New Mexico and so I spent a year in Taos writing, trying to figure out how to make a poem, then the focus of existence for a long,

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long time, was writing poems. Morton Marcus: Now, let me add something. You did this on your own, in fact, your education really, from the Princeton days on are about doing it on your own.

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Clemens Starck: That's true, yep. Morton Marcus: And so there was no creative writing MFA degrees or anything like that for you? Clemens Starck: No, this was in the days before such things

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existed. I had no idea, I did not set out to be a poet, by the way, I thought that I would write a novel, or novels. But I had no idea how to write a novel, and so I started writing poems as a beginning exercise, and that would lead me

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eventually to writing something more extensive in prose, but I got hooked on poetry and I've never changed direction. Morton Marcus: So, you start to write poetry, even though it wasn't the goal and how, therefore, did you teach

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yourself to write poetry? Clemens Starck: Well, I didn't really know what poetry was, and I got hold of an anthology of British and American 20th century poetry and started reading it. I had read poetry,

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of course, I had read a lot of French poetry when I was at Princeton. And anyway, I chose those poems that- from the anthologies, that really struck me, that really moved me, and I wondered what it was that moved me. What was the trick? What was

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the technique? How did this interesting reaction on my part take place? So, I basically started imitating those poets that I had recently learned about, all the great early 20th century poets, you know, Pound, and Eliot, and Stevens, and

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Williams, and Jeffers, and Frost, and I literally, slavishly almost, tried to imitate them, to recreate their styles. That was my learning process that I did for years. Morton Marcus: And you know that is the process that the great

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poets have used down through the centuries until all of these creative writing programs began. And it's in fact the way, even though I finally went to, you know, Iowa, by then I was publishing, and I also was just looking at other poets. What and

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how did this work? How did it move me so much? And then try to imitate work. And people don't realize this, I tried to imitate the work of Richard Wilbert first, who I just thought was a marvelous, marvelous poet, wrote in closed forms, never could do

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it as well as he could. But anyway, that's for everyone out there. You really learn how to write by just writing and teaching yourself. It's a job, it's work. Clemens Starck: Well, you know it's a technique that's quite

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common among visual artists, you know, to sit in a museum with an easel in front of a Velazquez or a Rubens or a Rembrandt or whatever- Morton Marcus: And in fact-

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Clemens Starck: They imitate it. Morton Marcus: In fact, I'm glad we have Goya's imitations of Velazquez. And that's how as a young man, he actually taught himself, it was one of the ways he taught himelf.

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Clemens Starck: Interesting, I didn't know that. Morton Marcus: Yeah, so anyway, you're starting to write poetry, and then you come back to the West Coast. Clemens Starck: Right. I came back, I came to New Mexico. And

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then my wife at the time was thinking of going to graduate school at UC Berkeley, and so I went with her to to Berkeley, that's how I came to San Francisco in about 1963, something like that.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, and I meet you around a year or two later. Clemens Starck: That's correct. Morton Marcus: And we- actually I met you through a great friend of both of ours, and though we're going to read this Tuesday

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night, I would love to dedicate the reading to him. And that's- that's Bob Peterson and I'll mention it at the reading. Because Bob, after he was in New Mexico, he came up to Santa Cruz and lived around ten years here.

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Clemens Starck: Right. Morton Marcus: But you read a lot in San Francisco and your readings were really legends as far as I was concerned. And the night I met you, I'd come to hear Bob, and I was just blown

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away. And it wasn't long after that, that you, I, and Bob were hanging around together and you and I were doing readings around San Francisco. Clemens Starck: Right, right. That was in the early 60s.

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Morton Marcus: Early 60s, around '65, '66, and then at around '66, you take off. Clemens Starck: Well, you know, I was thinking about that just the other day, you know, I dropped out of Princeton and

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then, you know, then I dropped out of the poetry scene. So I- you know, it's like I'm a professional dropout, you know? Something, whatever it was about Princeton, I felt that I could do better on my own; and whatever it was about the poetry

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scene in San Francisco in the early 60s, you know, I never really felt a part of that scene. I was always on the periphery of it. I've always been a loner. I was working by myself and I, how can I say, well, a number of things

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happened, of course, in my life. I separated from my first wife, and then I went to sea. I shipped out as a merchant seaman in '66, I guess. And basically what that led to was my stopping the writing of poetry for eight or nine years, I just, I quit. I

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didn't do any writing. The first thing that happened was going to sea which was an incredible adventure for me, and it was something that I had actually wanted to do much earlier when I had dropped out of Princeton, and wasn't able to for various

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reasons. But it was as though my life was- was so interesting that there was no need to attempt to put it into words, to make- to make poems out of it. Morton Marcus: Now, those poems you had written up until you

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shipped out as a merchant marine, did you also feel that they had been left behind also? Clemens Starck: For the most part, sure, sure. I told you once, I think, that, you know, some of those earlier poems I

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salvaged and inserted into, some of them I reworked, but some of them I just verbatim took and inserted into my first book, "Journeyman's Wages," which didn't come out, you know, which appeared in 1995, you know, thirty years after the fact.

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Morton Marcus: So, you were all around- your trips took you around Southeast Asia? Clemens Starck: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And did you stop there and sort of live for a

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while in Southeast Asia? What happened? Clemens Starck: No, I was a seaman. And so the time that I spent in Southeast Asia was as a seaman in port. And at that time, this is the, you know, the late 60s. Sometimes those stays

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in port were, you know, as long as a week, which is totally unheard of nowadays, when container ships and super tankers and so forth and so on, come in and come out, you know, real quick turnaround. Seamen don't have the advantages that I

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had then, in terms of staying in port. You know, the other thing, Mort, I should mention in terms of talking about the past like this, is that the other really influential thing that happened to me when I first came to San Francisco in '63 was that I got

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into the carpentry apprenticeship program. I was always trying to say ever since the time I left Princeton, I was always trying to figure out how to make a living, how was I going to support this poetry habit? It never occurred to me

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that I could make a living as a writer, that has never been an option in my thinking ever. I always figured I was gonna have to do something in order to make a buck, in order to do the studying, and the reading, and the writing that was really the

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purpose and function of my life. So I got into the Carpenter Apprenticeship Program, went through the Carpenter Apprenticeship training program and started working construction and that was the time I met you. I was working as a carpenter.

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Morton Marcus: Great, and the reason we're going over this biography so minutely for people out there is that so much of Clem's life, and especially his work life, begins to be part of his poetry and it's inextricable.

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Clemens Starck: Well, that has turned out to be the case, and it's most ironic to me because of course at the time I became a carpenter, writing poems about carpentry or about the construction jobs was the furthest thing from my mind, I

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thought that I would be writing about Greek mythology, I guess, or some lofty subject matter. Morton Marcus: Okay, we now get to- when finally did you come back and settle down? If that's what happened.

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Clemens Starck: Well, I came back in, you know, I just went to sea for a couple of years, it turned out to be, you know, a very rich experience. And I have drawn upon that in later years as incidents that happened at sea. And, in fact, in the most

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recent book that I just came out last fall, "Traveling Incognito," there, there's a poem or two that draw upon that Merchant Marine experience in the 60s, but I came back and then another interesting thing happened to me and I don't even

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know if you know about this, Mort, because I really did drop out. When I went to sea, I really did cut off my relationship with everyone that I knew, and in the poetry scene in San Francisco.

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Morton Marcus: Well, and you know, Bob and I would talk every once in a while, he said, "Have you heard from Clem?" "I have not heard from Clem, no." And we really had wondered if you were even alive.

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Clemens Starck: Right, right. I don't know that I can really explain why that was. Somehow, internally, I guess it was necessary for me to break away from- from my past. I came back, I guess, in about '69 maybe? And I became involved in what's

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called the Gurdjieff Work. I've met a man who was a teacher of a very interesting, powerful, charismatic man, and I wound up studying with him for a couple of years. And that kept me, I guess, at a distance from my previous life as a poet in San

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Francisco. So, I lived in San Francisco until 1974. Morton Marcus: I'll be darned, you were back in the city. Now I never knew that. Clemens Starck: I was incognito.

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Morton Marcus: As the book says, yeah, Clemens Starck: I went back to work as a carpenter, went back to work out of the Union Hall in San Francisco. And I met a woman actually, who was also a student in the Gurdjieff Work, who is my

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present wife. We've been married thirty-five, thirty-six years now. Morton Marcus: And you have three children, I think? Clemens Starck: We have three kids, right. Which we gathered

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together our family in San Francisco, and then, you know, the city paled on me. And we didn't really want to bring up kids in the city, so as part of that, you know, back to the land urge that a lot of people experienced at that time, we

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moved north. We actually emigrated to Canada, and I lived in British Columbia for several years, worked as a carpenter up there, built custom homes with a with a partner. And one thing led to another and we eventually moved back this side of the

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border and came to Oregon. I spent, again a sort of mirrorin , I guess, my travels around t e country back in the 50s, I spe t three months driving around t e Northwest just by myself in y GMC four by four trying to fi d a place to settle down, a pla

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e to live, a place that we cou d bring up kids, and that I cou d find work as a carpenter. A d eventually I discovered th s place that- that I live in n Morton Marcus: Great. Now, and when did you start writing

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again? Clemens Starck: Well, after I found this place, which was like 1976. I got to- I went back to work this time out of the Salem Local, carpenter's local. This is an old house that I'm sitting

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in right now, it was an old falling down 19th century Oregon farmhouse, totally decrepit that I actually didn't even pay any money for it. It was considered of no value whatsoever. I simply bought the land, but being a carpenter, I figured that I

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could restore it. So I was involved in house restoration at the same time that I was out on jobs making a living, and at some point, in the late 70s, I guess, I sort of got my life together to the extent that I thought maybe I'd try writing

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again to see if it still held any interest for me. It was as though I had quit just, you know, as you well know, writing could be an addiction. And I don't like addictions, I don't like to be addicted to anything. So I cut the habit and then

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wanted to test a while later to see if it was still something that was an option for me. And slowly, slowly, I began to get back into it, into writing. Morton Marcus: And let me see, I think it was Bob who ran into

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you first. He was up either at Reed or he had come to [unidentified]. Clemens Starck: Well, actually what happened was, and this is actually the same way that I got back in touch with you, Mort.

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This was Bob's- when I left San Francisco in '66, Bob was still there, as were you. And then Bob went to Reed, I didn't learn about this until much later. And then he moved to New Mexico and then from New Mexico, he moved to Santa Cruz. I think it was at

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the time that he was in New Mexico that he came back to Portland to give a reading. And I caught wind of the fact that he was going to be, you know, in Oregon, and so I went up and shocked him by appearing at his reading, the same way that I did

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with you a year or so later. Morton Marcus: Right. So this was actually, I'm remembering as the 80s, but my memory- because I mean, I've been up in Oregon so much. But anyway, yes. And I did get the information from

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him. I mean, he called me the minute he got back. Clemens Starck: Right. Morton Marcus: And said "You'll never guess!" And I remember, I think I was sitting in a restaurant, and you came into

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the restaurant, it was in the afternoon and no one was there except a few poets from Mount Hood. And you just came in and I said, "Well, I'll be darned." So, that's how it happened, but you weren't finished yet. And I'm wondering now if it had

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anything to do with your stud es of Gurdjieff that you actuall then went to what was the oviet Union. Why don't you tel us a little bit about Clemens Starck: Well, that's much later in the story. This

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was in the- I've always, you know, I've always been interested in languages. I mentioned that I, you know, studied French and German when I was in college and language has always intrigued me. And I studied Chinese for a while in

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the 80s, just found a tutor, a series of tutors, went to a community college class, and picked up a few tutors, went to summer school at the University of Oregon, did an intermediate, intensive intermediate Chinese class. But then in about 1990,

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'91, I got, well, I came into contact with a Russian woman. I was actually, at this point, this was actually through Bob Peterson, I was teaching a creative writing class at Willamette University in Salem, which as far as I'm concerned

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was and still is the ultimate irony that I've never have taken a real creative writing class should pretend to teach one. Anyway, I was sharing an office with a visiting Russian professor and she could not speak English very well. And so,

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one thing led to another and we made a little playful agreement that I would tutor her in English and she would teach me Russian. I had no particular interest in Russia or Russian language other than reading Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and so

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forth. So, but that led me to begin the study of the Russian language, which I did for several years, through first the woman that I mentioned, and then various native speakers at Oregon State University, which is where I had wound up working

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as a carpenter. So anyway, after a few years of self study, I decided to go to Russia, so I spent a summer in St. Petersburg, practicing my Russian and absorbing the incredible ambience of St. Petersburg and Russia. Then I

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went back there a couple years later, actually through Willamette University. I was chaperoning a group of a Willamette students on an exchange program that they have with the University in Simferopol, which is the capital

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city of the Crimea. So, I spent a time in Russia and I still maintain my Russian studies. I don't speak it very well, but I read it all the time. And while I actually take a course, I meet one on one with a Russian professor at OSU once a week.

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Morton Marcus: It's great, it's great. All this has found its way into your poetry and I would like you to tell me how you work. I know that, well, you know, maybe we should read one of these poems. Why don't we read, since we're talking about

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Russia, why don't you read one of the Russian lesson poems, which is been collected into a chapter of its own but now is in, "China Basin," your latest book. Clemens Starck: Right. Well, let's see which one could we do?

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We could do, well, all right, try this one. This is called, "Lenin's Typewriter." This is a little story which basically takes place in St. Petersburg when I was there in 1994. So, it goes like this:

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LENIN'S TYPEWRITER, when it starts out, you know, I was a tourist basically, although I was living there with a Russian family, but like any tourist in a foreign city, I spent a lot of time sitting on park benches. So this begins on a park bench in

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St. Petersburg. Sparrows and pigeons, no squirrel, crows. A tank on a pedestal, T-34, photograph this with the weeds overtaking the wrought iron fence and the shattered statue of a young

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pioneer. Remember, first there was the revolution, then there was the war. Defenders of Leningrad, take your position: one with a shovel, another a rifle, you shall be cast in bronze. Trash on the sidewalk along the canal, dogshit and

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broken glass. A marble plaque commemorates V.I. Lenin having hidden out here once, July of 1917. And in the small name is Lenin's typewriter, squatting there like some infernal dream machine, still spitting out in Russian letters, recipes for

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revolution, clickety, clackety, clack. Ink stand, green felt, a gooseneck lamp and the trusty underwood. What more do you need to change the world? But those prescriptions went awry. They're selling them on the street for souvenirs. Come to Russia and

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bring cash, maybe you can make a deal on an icon or a cathedral, a typewriter or a tank? Morton Marcus: Now, that was written ten years ago. It sounds- although that was written ten years ago-

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Clemens Starck: Yeah. Morton Marcus: It sounds awfully contemporary because those deals are going on right now. Clemens Starck: Those deals are going on big time.

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Morton Marcus: Big time, yes, indeed. It's all deals now. Well, one thing you just exposed us to also is your incredible nuances when you read. I mean, you really were even back in 1966, a legendary reader. And as I said, just knocked my socks

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off. You, well, let me see, we read together last year up in Oregon. And I did notice that you read one or two poems, but usually you do not read your poems, you know them. Clemens Starck: That's true. That's true and the reason for

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that is because I compose them in my head before I ever write them down. Morton Marcus: Right, let's talk about that methodology a little bit.

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Clemens Starck: Sure. Morton Marcus: Well, let's go through it this way: most people are taught in creative writing classes to keep extensive notebooks, to keep images and let them develop later on, or

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they may develop years later. That is not the way you work. Clemens Starck: No, it is definitely not. You know, it's probably by default, Mark, you know, or Mort. I always thought that I should be keeping a notebook all the time that I was

00:29:56.580 - 00:30:10.320

riding freight trains around the country and so forth. I should be, you know, keeping a notebook and writing all this stuff down. I tried from time to time, but I was never very successful at it. So, probably my methodology, as you say, has come about as a

00:30:10.320 - 00:30:33.360

result of an inadequacy, an inability to keep a notebook. What happened really was, you know, at that time when I met you in the 60s, that was my first, my first exposure to public readings. And I soon learned that, you know, you're

00:30:33.360 - 00:30:45.450

talking to an audience, you're trying to tell them a story, you're trying to tell them something, you're trying to convey some information to an audience, well, if you know [cut-off].

00:30:45.300 - 00:31:06.600

And to present poems to audiences, you know, in San Francisco at that time, we're talking of, I set myself the exercise of not writing down the poem, of composing it entirely i my head, so that I knew it an that that proved as such a fr

00:31:06.600 - 00:31:22.020

itful, such a fruitful ex rcise because all the- it's a though one thing led to an ther rhythmically an Let me ask you, is it dangerous driving with you? in terms of the sounds of the l nguage itself, it became much

00:31:22.320 - 00:31:42.000

ore organic, I guess, then a c nstruction that was made with a typewriter on a piece of paper. And of course, as a result, I was able to recite those poem without referring to the p ge. So, when I began writing aga n, after that, you know, nine

00:31:42.000 - 00:32:00.900

or ten year hiatus that I ta ked earlier, I took up that e ercise again and that's my mod s operandi, that's how I work. I don't- I make the rule I don't write down, I'm superstitious about it, in fact I don't write own the damn poem until I've

00:32:00.900 - 00:32:19.170

ompleted it in my head. And f course that's a little decep ive and when I finally do pu it down onto paper then begins n extensive process of rewriti g and revision. But, you know, f r me about sixty percen of the work is done completely

00:32:19.170 - 00:32:36.540

n my head, talking out loud t myself. One of my best times or composing is driving. I ave, you know, a fifty minute co mute to my job, and I talk to m self for fifty minutes in th morning, fifty minutes at nigh working on poems.

00:32:41.640 - 00:32:55.530

Oh, no, not at all. Driving is pretty mechanical, I mean, it's two things going on at the same time. Morton Marcus: We are going to take a little break here. Clemens Starck: Okay.

00:32:55.560 - 00:34:23.490

Morton Marcus: And then we will come back and I will come back on the line as you will hear, so just stay on the line and I'll be back, okay? The Board of Directors of KUSP and the Pataphysical

00:34:23.490 - 00:34:38.370

Broadcasting Foundation meets monthly and the public is invited to attend. This month, the meeting is on Monday evening, February 23rd, beginning at six o'clock at the KUSP Studios, 203 Eighth Avenue in Santa Cruz. Call the station

00:34:38.370 - 00:35:05.790

during business hours for more information. Our numbers are 476-2800, 476-2800, or 800-655-5877, 800-655-5877. And stay tuned right after the Poetry Show for Elizabeth Shepley and "From the Bookshelf" reading this time Francis Ford

00:35:05.790 - 00:35:23.640

Coppola and The Oranges of Little Italy. So, do that and I wanted to say that we are talking with Clemens Starck, the poet from Oregon who will be in Santa Cruz this coming week and will be up at UCSC, and who I will be reading with this

00:35:23.640 - 00:35:42.960

Tuesday night at 7:30 at the McPherson Art and History Museum at 705 Front Street in Santa Cruz. So, let's get back to the telephone interview right now but do keep that reading in mind because Clem and I used to read together in the 60s in Santa

00:35:42.960 - 00:35:58.830

Cruz, back to the Clemens Starck interview. I'm back on here and we've done the business that we have to do, one of which is advertising reading. There are other poets who have used this method, Robert Creeley used this method.

00:35:58.830 - 00:36:10.860

Clemens Starck: Is that right? I didn't know that. Morton Marcus: And I don't even think he revises. In fact, we had quite a little panel discussion on this fact because he was saying this is the only way to really write spontaneous

00:36:10.860 - 00:36:24.570

poetry. And I said, but you write it in your head over and over again and he said, well, yes, I do. So I said, so you're revising in your head. The other person was Hart Crane. And Hart Crane would astound people at drunken parties, which he was

00:36:24.570 - 00:36:32.400

usually a member- Clemens Starck: Right. Morton Marcus: -or a participant, I should say, by suddenly asking for a piece of paper and coming out with these

00:36:32.400 - 00:36:43.830

perfectly rhymed, metered poems. But then what people found out was, he had actually been writing these poems in his head for six to eight months. Clemens Starck: Sure.

00:36:43.990 - 00:36:59.770

Morton Marcus: So, but it's very fascinating, and it certainly lets young poets out there, I hope, know that there are many different ways of composing a poem. I, for example, do not keep notebooks. I don't want to take notes to write a poem. I

00:36:59.770 - 00:37:13.960

organically get into poems also, it's the work of the poems, and I never can write them any other way except with a pen by my hand, you know? It has to come and it has to be bodied forth. Clemens Starck: Right.

00:37:14.050 - 00:37:20.350

Morton Marcus: And I mean, I've never even attempted to write anything by typewriter, computer, or anything like that. Clemens Starck: Right. Morton Marcus: Anyway.

00:37:20.860 - 00:37:31.570

Clemens Starck: Well, that's what I do too when I finally come to the point of putting a poem down on paper, I always do longhand first. Morton Marcus: I would imagine that. You know, what we did in

00:37:31.570 - 00:37:43.410

the [unintelligible] from the beginning there very briefly, were your family working class family? Were they- Clemens Starck: Not at all, not at all. You know, I mean I have this reputation as a carpenter poet, you know, I'm a hyphenated

00:37:43.410 - 00:38:02.460

poet. But my dad was a white-collar worker. He was- neither of my parents went to college. He worked as a research chemist actually at the Eastman Kodak company in Rochester, went to night school. Wonderful, wonderful man, died some years

00:38:02.460 - 00:38:20.400

ago, I regret that- one of the deep regrets of my life is that he never lived long enough to see me achieve the modicum of success that I've had as a poet. He always totally supported all of my errant ways and was always very interested in everything I

00:38:20.400 - 00:38:27.430

was doing and so forth, but- Morton Marcus: And he knew you were writing poetry? Clemens Starck: Oh, sure, sure. I would always send my poems to my father.

00:38:27.850 - 00:38:35.850

Morton Marcus: Oh, that's wonderful, that's wonderful, yeah. Clemens Starck: I was very fortunate. I had wonderful, wonderful parents. My mom is still alive, she's ninety-one

00:38:35.880 - 00:38:49.470

years old, lives here in Oregon also. Morton Marcus: Uh huh. Okay, that's great. So anyway, we now come to the poetry that you have really been producing for the last, what should we say, twenty years? twenty-five?

00:38:49.590 - 00:39:02.700

Clemens Starck: I guess twenty? Let's see, what's that, yeah. Morton Marcus: And so by the time your first book comes out, which is, "Journeyman's Wages," you are fifty odd years old? Clemens Starck: Fifty-seven, yeah.

00:39:02.700 - 00:39:13.440

Morton Marcus: And this teaches people out there patience. Clemens Starck: Yeah. That's what I say. I mean, there's two things you need to be a writer: one is persistence and the other is patience.

00:39:16.060 - 00:39:27.490

Morton Marcus: "Journeyman's Wages," I have given this book to a lot of different people, and it just is a breath of air to them, it's certainly other carpenters I've known. Clemens Starck: Oh, yeah.

00:39:27.550 - 00:39:38.350

Morton Marcus: Who many of whom want to be poets and are very serious about it. And also, you've been anthologized now in a lot of work poetry anthologies. Clemens Starck: Right.

00:39:38.710 - 00:39:45.370

Morton Marcus: Because the truth of the matter is, most literature does not concern itself with the work of the writer. Clemens Starck: Right.

00:39:45.450 - 00:40:03.660

Morton Marcus: And you have shown that this is a rich mine, and I love your poems. They are not only grounded in your work, but they are very much influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry.

00:40:03.880 - 00:40:13.810

Clemens Starck: Well, that's true. That's something we haven't mentioned, yeah. But actually, you know who turned me on to Chinese poetry? That was Bob Peterson. Morton Marcus: Bob Peterson was another- you know, I mean, we

00:40:13.810 - 00:40:33.520

can do a wonderful anthology of just you and Peterson. The voice, extremely American, really captures the voicebox of American speech, but the sensibility, even though the topics are American, the sensibility is really a bridge

00:40:33.520 - 00:40:49.210

to what was going on in China a thousand years ago. Clemens Starck: Well, I think that's true. I think that's true. You know, I've been far more influenced by Chinese poetry in translation than I ever have by any traditional

00:40:49.210 - 00:40:57.280

English poetry. Morton Marcus: Interesting. Clemens Starck: I find it much more compatible. I find myself reading both Chinese and Japanese poetry in translations

00:40:57.310 - 00:41:05.020

all the time, I mean, that's my steady fare as far as reading goes. Morton Marcus: Have you- you've obviously read Red Pine's new translations.

00:41:05.020 - 00:41:18.730

Clemens Starck: Oh yeah, absolutely fantastic book. Morton Marcus: Listen, my friend, since we've now talked about it, I would like to hear some of these poems. Maybe start off with poems from, "Journeyman's Wages," in which

00:41:18.760 - 00:41:35.640

this American voicebox is concerned for work and yet this sensibility that permeates it, which is Asian, shows itself. So, could you read some of those? Clemens Starck: Well, okay. Why don't I just start out with this

00:41:35.640 - 00:41:51.600

one which is actually the first poem in, "Journeyman's Wages." All these poems that I've written about carpentry work, about construction jobs, have to do with a particular job that I've worked on, they're very specific, and they really serve

00:41:51.600 - 00:42:11.760

for me as snapshots or, you know, little vignettes of particular jobs I've worked on. This one is a job that I worked on here in Salem, a bridge over the Willamette River coming out of Salem, the- called the Marion Street Bridge, and the title of

00:42:11.760 - 00:42:34.590

the poem comes from a page of the blueprints that we were working off of to build the bridge. It's called: WILLAMETTE RIVER, MARION ST. BRIDGE: PIER 5, GENERAL DETAILS The sun slams into us like one of the pile drivers down on the

00:42:34.590 - 00:43:00.990

gravel bar. The crew I'm on is erecting forms for concrete piers. Machinery roars, earth shudders, cottonwood leaves turning gray with dust. Companions of duty, is this our assignment, simply to be here packed in these heavy bodies,

00:43:01.560 - 00:43:27.870

dumbfounded, while time drags and the river slides quietly by? I signal the sun to slack off a little, but nothing happens. I keep on signaling anyway. Morton Marcus: And, you know, I wonder if such poets as Su

00:43:27.870 - 00:43:37.860

Dongpo were workers if they wouldn't write that same kind of poem. Clemens Starck: Well, I would hope that were the truth. Of course, they were all bureaucrats.

00:43:37.890 - 00:43:47.280

Morton Marcus: They were bureaucrats, right? Clemens Starck: They were civil servants. Morton Marcus: Okay, give us some more. Clemens Starck: Well, here's another one. This is actually

00:43:48.390 - 00:43:58.740

another job of remodeling a house. I've done a lot of remodel work as well as new constructions, so this is just called: REMODELING THE HOUSE

00:43:58.000 - 00:44:22.060

The next step was to tear out the dormer some half-assed handyman cobbled together, ruining the lines of this old house and build it back again, proper. Now, every true apprentice knows there are principles to reckon with,

00:44:22.750 - 00:44:45.370

spirit level and plumb bob. So, I honor the man who taught me the soul is a house and you build it, joining the wood, driving the nails home. Morton Marcus: You know, Clem, that's a perfect example of what

00:44:45.370 - 00:45:05.500

happens in your poems. I mean, it's so simple, but the words and what you're saying begin to take on ghostly resonances and they become metaphor and they start to talk about way, way more about than building a house and so they begin to resemble

00:45:06.190 - 00:45:21.730

Zen koan in many ways. And that is just the perfect poem that does this. He is building the house, he's building your soul, and it's just wonderfully done, and you used words right out of your profession, spirit level.

00:45:22.030 - 00:45:34.660

Clemens Starck: Sure. Morton Marcus: You know, and the double-meaning quivers, you know, and begs to have the two simultaneous meanings. Clemens Starck: Well, you know, my feeling is more that- I mean,

00:45:34.660 - 00:45:56.590

I don't set about to write the cosmic poetry or to set up reverberations on cosmic levels. But my idea is that if you bear down hard enough on something very specific, very physical, very, very concrete, I should say, something very, very

00:45:56.590 - 00:46:09.260

specific and if you bear down on it hard enough that it will have a kind of cosmic resonance, because that's the nature of the universe. Morton Marcus: It's great, and that's a great comment. That's a

00:46:09.290 - 00:46:23.770

terrific comment. Clemens Starck: Here's another one, a little short one, because this is an important poem for me because, you know, I mentioned earlier that I had apprenticed myself to Pound and Eliot and so

00:46:23.770 - 00:46:41.920

forth and so on my, and I never mentioned actually that my eventual, my real teachers, that I considered my teachers, were William Butler Yeats and a Scottish poet, Edwin Muir. I absolutely idolized these men and I idolized their work, not

00:46:41.920 - 00:47:01.270

the men themselves. I really could care less about the men, frankly, but the quality of their poetry was so moving to me, so powerful. And so that was when I was writing, you know, very- because both these men wrote in metrical form, regular

00:47:01.270 - 00:47:14.800

metrics and rhymes and traditional English poetry. But when I started working construction in the early 60s, when I started working as a carpenter, and wanted to bring my own life, my experience on the job site, for example,

00:47:15.490 - 00:47:32.470

including all those wonderful words like spirit level, and plumb bob, and so forth and so on all the names of tools. A carpenter, you know, is a very old, old, profession, very, very old English words that are still used in contemporary carpentry.

00:47:32.950 - 00:47:48.520

I found that writing in traditional forms just didn't cut it, and it was at that point, it was for that reason, that I really broke out of writing in rhymes, in traditional metrical forms, and started experimenting with

00:47:48.820 - 00:48:06.280

free-verse forms. And this is, what I'm going to read now is one of the first poems that I wrote in this new way of writing, in a free-verse. This is, actually this is a poem that is in three parts. And I'm only going to read the third part,

00:48:06.520 - 00:48:22.310

but it documents, say, my experience as an apprentice carpenter in San Francisco in the early 60s. It goes like this: Already this year, I've built a Serbian Orthodox Church, and a

00:48:22.310 - 00:48:45.590

mortuary: Chapel of the Sunset, 26th Avenue and Irving, plus a number of other less tangible structures. My union dues are all paid up, and I plan to continue in the trade: bookshelves for a crippled lady, a cage for a boa constrictor.

00:48:46.430 - 00:49:02.540

The country is going to hell but a good mechanic can always find work. Morton Marcus: Great, yep. So when you say you know, that's just Part Three of a poem called, "Raising the Grain,"

00:49:04.820 - 00:49:17.900

when you just read that, do you consider each one of the three sections to be sort of their own poem. Clemens Starck: Yeah, sure. In this particular case, sure, sure.

00:49:21.410 - 00:49:32.930

Morton Marcus: Okay. We are, believe it or not, we have already done forty-five minutes. Clemens Starck: Oh my God. Morton Marcus: See what happens when you're having fun. And I

00:49:32.930 - 00:49:40.910

would say we've got really around another ten minutes to go. Clemens Starck: Okay. Morton Marcus: So I want you to read a few more poems, talk

00:49:40.910 - 00:49:53.930

about them, and talk about things that you want to talk about. Again, obviously, the whole first part of this program is to have people get to know you and where the poems are coming from. And now, I think it's, you know, been time for

00:49:53.930 - 00:50:05.510

the poems themselves. Clemens Starck: Okay. Well, let's see. You know from what you mentioned of this book, "China Basin," Morton Marcus: Which is your newest book?

00:50:05.720 - 00:50:14.030

Clemens Starck: Well, it's actually not the newest book. It's the newest full-length book- Morton Marcus: "Traveling Incognito," then you're saying- "Traveling Incognito," is the newest traveling- "China Basin,"

00:50:14.030 - 00:50:27.940

was published 2002. And a couple years ago, it was a you know, it was just a finalist for the Oregon Book Award this November. And, "Journeyman's Wages," won the Oregon Book Award. Clemens Starck: Yeah, "Journeyman's Wages," won the

00:50:27.940 - 00:50:36.780

Oregon Book Award Morton Marcus: And the William Stafford prize? Clemens Starck: And the William Stafford Memorial Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, which was a really

00:50:36.780 - 00:50:48.510

good deal for a poetry because that meant it got some play in all the bookstores around the Pacific Northwest. So it's done very well, it's gone, it's just about sold out of the second printing and about to go into a third printing.

00:50:49.690 - 00:51:04.900

Morton Marcus: That's great. And I've got to tell the people out there that that Oregon Book Award is one hell of an award because the writers up there, the poets up there, are numerous and wonderful. It is quite a competition.

00:51:05.230 - 00:51:14.870

Clemens Starck: Yeah, there are some good writers in this state, no kidding, no kidding. Morton Marcus: Okay, my friend, go. Clemens Starck: Well, you're leaving it up to me to choose a

00:51:14.870 - 00:51:37.760

poem, I don't know we talked about the sea and that experience. Actually, maybe I'll do that, I'll read a couple of poems that were written, you know, many years after the fact but draw upon the time I went to sea in the 60s. So here's one

00:51:37.760 - 00:51:55.330

this is called: AMMO, this is from, "Journeyman's Wages." Ammo ship, ammo ship. Mostly, we hauled asphalt, tens of thousands of drums of asphalt. The master plan called for

00:51:55.330 - 00:52:21.610

Southeast Asia to be a parking lot. If it wasn't asphalt, it was bomb. The bombs were for the enemy. One trip, four days out of Southern California and heavy seas, the cargo began to shift. We climbed down into the hold with shoring timbers and wedges.

00:52:22.720 - 00:52:49.630

The bombs in their fragile wooden crates tossed about like restless sleepers. A nightmarish screech of nails pulling and wood splintering. The rest of the trip, morale was low, not even the cook's special blueberry pancakes helped. The

00:52:49.630 - 00:53:17.560

people the bomb were for, scattered, deer at the start of hunting season. They knew we were coming and they were scared too. So here's, you know, here's another one that is also a

00:53:17.560 - 00:53:45.340

little- you know, it is interesting to me that these vivid experiences that have happened to me are still viable, you know, thirty years later, and that in order to tell them, in order to convey them to you, it's, well, it takes a lot of

00:53:45.340 - 00:54:06.250

work, it takes a lot of effort to tear them down to the bare essentials of the information that I want to convey. So here's another, just a little story. This was an incident that happened to me the first trip I made to sea, sailed out of Long

00:54:06.250 - 00:54:20.990

Beach for the Far East. And a strange thing happened en route and we had to put in at Honolulu for four reasons that you will hear when you hear this poem. It's called: HONOLULU

00:54:20.000 - 00:54:49.100

It was all new to me. When the crew messman went berserk, we were three days at sea. Long Beach to Yokosuka on an MSTS charter. First, we had to catch him. He was fast and crazy. Then, he was straitjacketed, sedated, and chained to a bunk

00:54:49.160 - 00:55:15.860

in the ship's infirmary. Under new orders, we changed course, steamed north for Honolulu, docked two days later, put him off, and took on bunkers there. That night, standing gangway watch, the warm Hawaiian air, redolent with the smell of

00:55:15.860 - 00:55:46.490

diesel fuel, I thought of the crew messman, both his arms were covered with tattoos: dragons and roses, names of women, elaborate patterns of blue and red. Morton Marcus: Yep, it's great, it's great. And you know, you

00:55:46.490 - 00:55:59.320

also have poems about being at sea in, "China Basin." Clemens Starck: Yeah. Morton Marcus: You have, "Yokohama," and "At Sea." Clemens Starck: "At Sea," right, right, want to hear that?

00:55:59.410 - 00:56:12.880

Morton Marcus: Sure, any one of those you want to read. Clemens Starck: Well, this, actually, "Yokohama," is a good one because that's actually what I mentioned earlier that I had pilfered from my earlier manuscript, a few poems over the

00:56:12.880 - 00:56:26.950

years. And this is one actually I did, I wrote this pretty much when I was at sea just shortly before- this may be one of the last poems I wrote before I quit writing for nine or ten years. So it's called:

00:56:26.950 - 00:56:49.970

YOKOHAMA, and, you know, the reference in here is to the great Japanese 17th century Japanese Haiku poet, Basho. Wondering why not a single plum tree grew in the holy compound of the Ise Shrine, Basho was told there was no special

00:56:49.970 - 00:57:19.400

reason. Hot night on Isazaki Street, big yellow moon, storefront TV. After six full innings, Tokyo leads Hiroshima five to three. What is this anyway? Japanese bartenders look like American bartender. Son of a bitch, drunk in Yokohama and

00:57:19.400 - 00:57:37.550

Basho isn't here. So, that's my little tribute to Basho. He's also one of my favorite all time poets. Morton Marcus: And a great one indeed. Believe it or not, we're

00:57:37.580 - 00:57:45.650

running out of time here, Clem. Clemens Starck: Oh my gosh, okay. I'm going to wrap it up. Morton Marcus: Well, I would like to hear a couple more poems.

00:57:45.830 - 00:57:54.800

Clemens Starck: Okay. Morton Marcus: And you may want to do some from, "China Basin," or from, "Traveling Incognito-" Clemens Starck: Yeah, from the new book.

00:57:54.860 - 00:57:58.760

Morton Marcus: Are you going to be able to have some of, "Traveling Incognito," with you? Clemens Starck: Yes, I am. Morton Marcus: Great.

00:57:58.940 - 00:58:14.270

Clemens Starck: I bring copies of all the books. Well, here this is the last poem in the book, see how we are for time, after that if there's time for another one, maybe, but if not, this is a good one to end with. It's called:

00:58:14.000 - 00:58:39.190

A LESSON IN PHYSICS One by one, the old barns are collapsing. Just last week, one went down on the Peoria Road. You couldn't say it was unexpected, racked as it was, and leaning a little more out of

00:58:39.190 - 00:59:06.340

plum each time I passed. I'm closing in on sixty-five myself, and although I've been partially rebuilt with certain adjustments made to my anatomy, I won't last long. A new roof and some cross-bracing would have bought that old barn a few more years.

00:59:07.870 - 00:59:34.640

Triangulation makes a difference but in the end, gravity takes over, which is why levity is so precious while it lasts. Morton Marcus: And that was an interview I did with Clemens Starck who will be the poet in residence this coming week at

00:59:34.640 - 00:59:53.510

UCSC but with whom I will be giving a reading at the McPherson Museum of Art and History this Tuesday evening at 7:30. Try to make it, we're going to do a reading as we did back in the 60s in San Francisco days. But right now, stay tuned

00:59:53.510 - 01:00:10.070

for From the Bookshelf hosted by Elizabeth Shipley, who tonight brings us the lovely voice of Andy Griffin reading "Francis Ford Coppola and The Oranges of Little Italy" and "San Ysidro Saturday Night." Take it away Andy and Elizabeth.