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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody. This is Mort Marcus, John Fahey in the background and tonight, we are going to interview a local poet and coordinator of poetry readings here in Santa Cruz, Dale Pendell. But before we begin

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tonight's program, let me say two things. One, KUSP thanks Stapleton's Grocery for providing a grant to help make this hour of programming possible. Stapleton's Grocery specializes in organic produce and unadulterated comestibles in

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the Farmers Exchange Building in Santa Cruz. Secondly, I would like to say good luck to Karen Rhodes, who has been on KUSP for eight years. A part of the family sort of seems to leave when each programmer, who has given his time and his energy

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for the community, leaves the station, and I know we're all saddened by Karen's leaving, but she is got some good things going in the San Francisco area. So, good luck, Karen. And at the same time, I would like to thank you out there because this is a

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member supported radio station and I would like to thank you out there, every one of you, who once more showed that you wanted the Poetry Show as you once more subscribed in larger numbers and had us once more meet our quota for the program. So, thank you!

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And you have enabled us to bring about a show, such as tonight's show, in which we will talk to, as I said, local poet Dale Pendell. And as John Fahey tiptoes out of the room, we welcome Dale to the show. Dale, welcome.

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Dale Pendell: Thank you. Thank you, Morton, nice to be here. Morton Marcus: Well, it's nice to have you here. It's been a long time coming. I've meant to have you here for quite some time. As many of you do know, and many of you may not know,

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Dale Pendell is now the coordinator of the Zachary's readings, which occur once every month on a Wednesday night, the first Wednesday of every month, except for this coming Wednesday. And who's going to be the readers this coming

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Wednesday, which I think is going to be November the 9th, actually, is the next reading. Dale Pendell: November 9th we'll have David Swanger, Catherine Anne Alpert, and John Oliver Simon.

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Morton Marcus: Oh, has he come all the way down from Berkeley? Dale Pendell: John's going to come down from Berkeley to be here. Morton Marcus: Great, that's really wonderful.

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Dale Pendell: Haven't heard John read in years and years. Morton Marcus: Right, same here, same here; very, very long time Well, I that's great. In fact if that continues, that'd b wonderful. If other poets wil come from, you know, the Ba

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Area, or somewhere around ther , and read down here that would e really- I think, a re l enhancing thing for people w o say, wow, I haven't heard Jo n Oliver Simon in years and year . So that's good; we'll talk mo e about that and we will adverti

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e that on our next show Dale Pendell: Great. Morton Marcus: But now let's get into who Dale Pendell is, and I know that there are- there's a very interesting story about

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where you're from and how you came into poetry. So why don't you tell us actually where you are from and, you know, how you happened to start to write poetry? Dale Pendell: That's terrifying.

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Morton Marcus: You wanted to wing it. Dale Pendell: Okay. Well, I was born here in California. My parents are Californians. Finding poetry for me was a key to a new freedom. All through my childhood, I had a pretty severe

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stutter, I think was probably morbidly shy. Coming to poetry, which is sort of the fountain of fluency, was like all of a sudden a means of self-expression. Well, I could do with something that I could write.

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Morton Marcus: Well, what happened with the first poetry reading you ever gave? Dale Pendell: My first poetry reading was terrifying. Morton Marcus: Do you remember where it was or what the

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circumstances were? Dale Pendell: It was in Nevada City. I was editing a magazine called "Keowee Kuksu" and we had a big fundraiser in Nevada City at the American Victorian Museum. Will Staple was reading,

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Gary Snyder was reading, Steve Stanfield was reading. And I went to Gary for advice and he says, "Oh, don't worry, just speak from the gut. That's all you have to do." Morton Marcus: That's good Roshi advice, you see. Right? He

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wasn't going to play the game, just speaking the gut. Dale Pendell: Turned out to be pretty good advice, I guess. Morton Marcus: Now those are exciting years for you when you were editing the magazine and living in and around Nevada

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City. I mean, that was at the time when this whole idea of living on the land and actually becoming spiritually a part of it really started to grow. And it obviously revolved in good part around Gary Snyder. Why don't you talk about that for a

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little while. This is what I heard you say, yeah. Dale Pendell: Sure. I had actually moved up into the mountains, kind of moving through Trinity County and then over into Humboldt. And I lived several years in Humboldt County

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in the back country, ended up in Nevada County where I met my wife, Merle, moved there to be with her. There was an idea of re-inhabitation that emerged in the 60s. I can remember old issues of the San Francisco Oracle bringing out an Indian

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looking for a pre-Columbian consciousness, some sort of roots in the land. Well, lots of those folks moved out to the country. Depending on where they went, they found a rural civilization in either intact, or in the case in Humboldt

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County, I think sort of on the wane with the decline of logging up there, and a vision of trying to live together either in communes or in a community. I think in Nevada County, we just sort of spontaneously formed a community where Gary became an

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important member of a community there, but certainly went far beyond him and what he did, and is still thriving. Morton Marcus: And Gary's still there. Dale Pendell: Gary is still there.

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Morton Marcus: What was it like working with him? I'm sure a lot of people out there would be very interested. I mean, Gary has come down here, now probably hasn't been here for around two years, I guess, but people are very, very interested in him,

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his obviously charismatic power and the wonderful quality of his poetry. Dale Pendell: Sure. I look on Gary as my poetry teacher, working with him that closely, editing "Kuksu," reading with

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him, being his neighbor, working on political projects with him, land projects. It was wonderful for me, it was a way to get an education, have access to all of his resources and great ideas. I think it can present its own problems in kind of coming to

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terms then with the teacher and who are- what is one's own voice and trying to find that, and not to get sort of locked into an idea of being a "Snyderette" or something. Morton Marcus: Snyderette. Is that one of the reasons you

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moved down here, or what was then the reason that you came to Santa Cruz? Dale Pendell: I think the reasons were economic. There were a lot of reasons converged at one time to come down here,

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and I had a chance to go back to school which I was glad to get. Morton Marcus: Which- what school did you go to? Dale Pendell: UC Santa Cruz. Morton Marcus: Oh, you did? And was it History of Consciousness,

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or am I- ? Dale Pendell: I had started in a major that I called noetics, later actually split it into two majors and graduated in Creative Writing and Computer Science.

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Morton Marcus: Now I did not know this at all. Dale Pendell: Yeah. Morton Marcus: This is very educational. Well, before we go on, let's hear some poetry. I know that you've written a small

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book of haiku that you've added to over the years, and they're very interesting. And they certainly show- I'm not going to say a Snyder influence because it's not that, but it is an interest and a concern with the East and with a consciousness,

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which is, I guess, I'd say it's Buddhist, with a very, very Buddhist consciousness of the world and the universe around you. And what I think is so nice about, "City Limits Blues," is that you take that consciousness and bring it into the American

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urban environment and try to make it work there, you know. And it's very, very nice set of haiku here. But even the haiku obviously tells you that you're coming in from an Eastern viewpoint.

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Dale Pendell: Oh, yeah, actually, the strongest influence are the poetic standard sources, more- a Japanese poet, Ishikawa, Takuboku, who was a Tonka poet around the turn of the century, one of the first of the modern

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movement. Morton Marcus: Have you ever traveled to Japan? Dale Pendell: Haven't been there, haven't been there, to visit there.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah. Is it a goal? Dale Pendell: Maybe, maybe not. I've been interested for many years and have studied Zen Buddhism. My teacher lives in Hawaii, he's an American, Aitken Roshi. I might be interested in

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going to Japan to meet his own teacher, Yamada, who has a zendo in Japan. That might be that might be fun to do. Morton Marcus: Great. Let's hear some poems you want to read so that- because I think that the way people really get to know a

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poet obviously is through the works he really wants them to hear. Dale Pendell: Sure, we could sit here and blab all night. Morton Marcus: Oh, we will, but [inaudible].

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Dale Pendell: Okay. Maybe I'll start with a poem, it's, "Blues for San Tomas Creek." For some several years now, I've been working as a software engineer right next to San Tomas Creek. So, as much as I can tie the two halves of my life together,

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we'll try it. SAN TOMAS CREEK I had gotten used to walking, afternoons sometimes, when the joggers were back at their desks along San Tomas Creek, as a

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break from chairs, computers, and fluorescent light. The creek is controlled, mostly cemented, but for a block or two still running on a sandy bed, provided an island habitat for a few species of plants, animals, and birds. In the middle of a

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hundred square miles of concrete and asphalt, I took some pleasure in monkey flowers, alder and willow, coyote brush, adventive weeds, brushes and horsetails, veronica, water primrose. A few species, new to me I collected and hung the

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pressed specimens in my office. I began to learn birding, ducks with the seasons, egrets, black phoebe, kestrel, a burrowing owl lived there in a den, killdeer in the shallows, while a young red-tailed hawk soared overhead. For some weeks was too busy to

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get out and when did was struck by the quiet. No ground squirrels scurried off at my approach, not a single killdeer peeped, nothing moved, it was stilled. Then I saw every leaf and branch of foliage was crisped, and browned, and I

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thought, sprayed. Above the banks in a lone vacant acre between an Intel building and some other high technology building next to the building where I work, next two miles of the same, I gazed at the remnants of an old orchard and

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thought how in one generation twenty-five thousand hectares of the best bottom land in the world is lost for an age. We build robots and a landscape to suit them. Jokingly, I used to tell botanical friends that part of my work was a study of the

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ecology of San Tomas de Aquino Creek. A foreman from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and a busload of boys from the County Farm cleaned it out with rakes and chainsaws in three days. This is my report.

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Morton Marcus: That- it must be really something, I mean, to be a software operator, is that what you call it? Morton Marcus: Engineer, to be a software engineer, and that's Dale Pendell: Engineer.

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just like a whole different consciousness. It's actually in its own way when you think- not- well, please, correct me, because it just seems very strange. The poem really shows this dichotomy, you know, the world that you had lived in, and

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that is so much a part of your thinking, and your life is now on the other side of glass and is cemented in with the same kind of psychology that has built the buildings and has maybe built the computers.

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Dale Pendell: There's something to that. There's- computers are the embodiment of the disembodied, if you can have that. It's sort of like the incarnation of disembodied consciousness, rational, it's all is just pure logic. In that

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sense, it's a formal system. And I have said that, at meetings, the difference between a formal system and a natural system is the Coyote Principle. Morton Marcus: And what did they say to that? They say-

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Dale Pendell: They go, "What is that?" Morton Marcus: And you answered? Dale Pendell: It's what you don't expect. It's sort of the difference between a live system and a dead system. There are

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parallels to mathematical thought and poetic thought. And I may try and read something later, I mean, I keep trying to capture some of this in a poem. It's been a goal. I would like to have poetry as elegant as, say, the equations of physics. I

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mean, it's a cliche but "e equals mc squared" is brief and elegant, no unnecessary words. It says a great deal. It's an equation of power. I would love for my verses to be equations of power in that same kind of way. I think we work the same way.

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Grab a theme, working towards finding the right image, the right metaphor, waiting, getting steeped in the lore of it -- mathematician or physicist getting steeped in the problem, sleeping on it -- and all of a sudden, a breakthrough and

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seeing there it is. So they both come from the muse. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I agree. You know, Whitehead said this, and I think he was absolutely right, but the scientific method in its pure form certainly is the creative method, no matter

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what you're calling it, what art form or what science form. But this is really fascinating, and your articulation of the problem and what you know, how you see it, I think is even more amazing. I had no idea you were a software engineer, so this is

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fascinating to me. I want to go on to talk about this, but I also want you to read more poems. And if you have that as well, you can read the poems in the order you want to. But if you have that poem you were just talking about that would be a

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good time. Dale Pendell: Well, I don't really have that. I'll have to find that as we work our way through it. Maybe I should read a couple of those haikus.

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Morton Marcus: Sure, great. Dale Pendell: It's kind of a silly book. It goes- I wrote these in 1967, they go- It's the oldest thing I have around that I still ever read. They're kind of blue, sometimes I blow some

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harp to go with them. Morton Marcus: Do you have a harp? Do it, sure. Dale Pendell: And the harp comes, I think, this style I think the discoverer of this form -- which I don't really

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like to call haiku; we call them- Steve Sandfield calls them hoops, or I call them hollers -- I think was pioneered by Jack Kerouac. And there's a tape floating around, which you can- which I heard Jack reading his haikus with a saxophonist and it

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sounded great. So he picked up that connection between this short form and the blues lyric. So I don't have saxophone, but I'll try harp here. Sat on the hillside, all day long, still don't want to be

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anything. [Harp Plays]. Trapped in the residential district, hungry for breakfast, and no place to crap. [Harp Plays]. Trucks, railroad train, hurry up, the city madness. [Harp Plays]. Some bar, everybody just talks about how bad their jobs

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are. [Harp Plays]. Just so I wouldn't be broke, wrote this poem, put it in my pocket. [Harp Plays]. Brings a little smile, those tree roots, cracking cement. [Harp Plays]. Tried to express my true feelings, lied, more than usual. [Harp Plays].

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She found me walking on the beach, not even a moon to explain why I left. [Harp Plays]. I couldn't say yes, I couldn't say no. That was three weeks ago. [Harp Plays]. I thought I could write to escape my sorrow alas. [Harp Plays].

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Another crummy night thinking of all the things now I should have said then. [Harp Plays]. The way I left, they didn't need to say, don't come back. [Harp Plays]. Remembering Esau, I suddenly remembered that life is more than these present months of

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sorrow. [Harp Plays]. Morton Marcus: Very nice, very nice indeed. And the harp really adds something extra in punctuation. And in fact, I even read them in a totally different way, I heard them in a different

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way when you read them. Very nice. Well, let us go on. Believe it or not, we've already been on for half an hour, it doesn't seem that. And so maybe one long-ish poem and then we are going to take our normal half hour break.

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Dale Pendell: Okay, I think I'm an incessant experimenter, maybe that's part of my technical side, formally speaking. I'd like to read from a collection I call, "In Progressions." And it's much more technical than what I usually write. It's

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trying to put together a montage of the important references, images, and ideas around an idea, and I keep adding to these through the years. This section is called, "Deaming," and it's on the idea of the Doctrine of Signatures.

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Morton Marcus: Could you tell the listeners what the Doctrine of Signatures is? Dale Pendell: That's the medieval idea that the God gave everything a mark, a signature so that we could know what it

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was useful for. It was used in Plant Lore, particularly, to learn the medicinal value of plants, sunflower's connected to the sun, the iris is good for the eye, walnuts are good for the brain, they have the signature of the brain in their

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shape. Scott Buchanan has an interesting book on the Doctrine of Signatures where he argues that that's still what we're doing, though we're using microscopes, and telescopes, cloud chambers and so forth. And along with signatures is the

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whole idea of divination. Does the world have meaning? Is it random? Or what is randomness? Is there any such thing as chance, really? Randomness is an idea, it's an idea which is- it's almost our mythology, it's sort of the God at this point. I

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think it's important to see that it is an idea that everything has meaning, coincidence has meaning. So that's what I'm playing with here. There's a long series of 1s2, 2s2, 2p6 that I will read, that's the electron shell structure of an

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atom, okay? The scene of this is the mountains above Los Angeles; I went on a hike there once. This is called: DREAMING We hiked over to Mount Lowe, top of Rubio Canyon, big resort in

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1910, now just ruins -- cracked foundations, cypress trees in a row, like some deserted sacred grove. Chaparral come back in the walkways, artemisia, empty babs, deterra climbing over the fallen columns of the granite hotel meant to surpass in

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grandeur and impression the temple of the caves of Elephanta. Laurels, wind, Athens or Delphi, good place for dreaming. Chewing laurel leaves, [unidentified]. The new science is returned to divination. Laboratory animals slid open,

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entrails quivering on a petri dish. Or leptons spiraling in a bubble bath, physiognomy encouraged. Tortoise shells, hexagrams, life on a double helix, the high priestess. Graves said, Apollo's priest wore the laurel instead of

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eating it, Hierophant. A Leningrad hotel serves tomatoes in a salad cut and dabbed with mayonnaise to look like Amanita Muscaria which they say is poisonous. The Pythonas, chewing laurel leaves, spoke in hexameters. The barbarians

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consult her also, caravans of gold threading their way overland from Sardis. The whole outward visible world with all its being is a signature of the inward spiritual world. [unidentified], the signature of all things. There are three

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things by which the nature of man and if everything that grows is revealed, chiromancy, which concerns the extremities, as for example: the feet, veins, the lines and wrinkles. Physiognomy, which regards the constitution of the face and of the parts

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belonging to the head [cut-off]. Equals hearth, by semantic assonance, equals Proto-Indo-Pean root [unintelligible] by Grimm's Law. Cur(?) equals charcoal equals carbon, Latin cognates. Carbon

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equals tetrahedron, sp3 hybridization, Schrodinger wave equation. Tetrahedron equals fire, Plato, Phaedrus, QED. 1s2, 2s2, 2p6, 3s2, 3p6, 3d10, 4s2, 4p6, 4d10, 4f14, 5s2, 5p6, 5d10, 5f6, 6s2, 6p6, 7s2, half-life, 24,400 years. Cross section:

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1026 Barns by Glenn T. Seaborg, poet. Nine plus four equals thirteen, unlucky, too much sulfur. The teeth grew into soldiers, discoverer of plutonium. Buddhaghosa says, "As for the four postures -- walking, standing, sitting,

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lying -- the natural gait of someone who is dominated by greed is graceful, gently and evenly he puts down his foot. The hate type walks as though digging up the ground with his toes, abruptly he puts down his foot, abruptly lifts it up. The

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delusion type walks with troubled gait, hesitantly puts his foot down, hesitantly he lifts it. Brook is to book, as breast is to beast, the liquid kiss of Saraswati. Streams of rhyme, stream is to steam. It may not be right but it sure

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makes you think. Then the wind sprang up. Viscous clouds piling in the west, [unidentified] sensing the unseen enemy behind the door, Marilyn Monroe's dress blowing, or [unidentified] conversing with birds, or Eric Dolphy or Fulcanelli. It's going

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to rain. The witch, Toypurina, tattoos from her eyes to her breasts, woke from her dreaming, rubbed red ochre on her forehead, put feathers in her hair, hiked down the mountain and led a revolt to wipe out Mission San Gabriel Archangel,

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1785. Laurel leaves, [unidentified]. Paintings on the rock near the spring, yucca brushes, lonely nights, vision. Morton Marcus: We are talking tonight with Dale Pendell and we will be back in a few moments. We are taking our break a little

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late tonight. This is Mort Marcus again and before we get back to Dale Pendell, let me make some announcements because there are many things going on this week and next weekend. If you have a

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pencil and paper certainly take them down. First of all, tomorrow night October 26th at 8pm in the San Jose Memorial Chapel, that is tomorrow night, October 26th at 8pm in the San Jose Memorial Chapel, there will be award winning poet and

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journalist, Ed Sanders, founder of the world renowned satiric folk rock group, The Thugs, who I'm sure most of you, remember, at least some of you should remember. And his Selected Poems have just come out, in fact, from my publisher, and he is I'm

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sure on a tour because of that, and he will be reading Wednesday, tomorrow, October 26th, 8pm at the San Jose State Memorial Chapel, it's Ed Sanders. And then Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucille Clifton -- as you know both from Santa Cruz --

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Jack Gilbert, and Gerald Stern, will take part in a three-day writer's residency entitled "Shaping the Line," Friday through Sunday, November 4th through 6th at San Jose State University. On Friday, November 4th at 8pm, Lucille Clifton and

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Gerald Stern will read their poetry in the San Jose State Engineering Building auditorium. That's right on campus, anyone can direct you there. On Saturday, November 5th at 8pm, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Jack Gilbert will read their poetry

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also in the San Jose State Engineering Building. For additional information, dial 1-924-4598, that is 1-924-4598, that should be two wonderful readings if you want to know more about the classes they're going to teach. Again, that's

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Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucille Clifton, Jack Gilbert, and Gerald stern. Meanwhile, at the Louden Nelson Community Center on Friday, October 28th at 7pm, Joan McMillan, Mark Bradlin, Deborah

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Abbott will read and there'll be an open reading afterwards but that is Friday, October 28th at 7pm for Joan McMillan, Mark Bradlin, Deborah Abbott, and then an open reading to follow. One other thing that I must mention to you will be on

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November 1st, the fourth in the women's writers readings, In Celebration of the Muse, the 1988 six readings, and on November 1st, Amber Sumrall, Ann Taylor, Patrice Vecchione, and Anita Wilkins will be reading at the Louden Nelson Center again,

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Center and Laurel Streets in Santa Cruz at 7:30. That is Tuesdays, 7:30, at the Louden Nelson Center on Center and Laurel Streets, November 1st. Amber Summerall, Ann Taylor, Patrice Vecchione, and Anita Wilkins, as part of women

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writers reading In Celebration of the Muse, the 198- the 1988 season. So I am now going to once more pot down John Fahey and go back to talking with Dale Pendell who has revealed himself not really

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to be the man I thought he was, which is yearning towards the East, but a person who is- that interesting conjunction that is going on more and more, the mind of a physicist intersecting with the mind of a mystic. And what do you think of that statement?

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Dale is saying, "What do I do with that?" But certainly science plays- Dale Pendell: I'm working with that. Morton Marcus: Okay, certainly science plays a very, very large

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part, or at least 50% in what you're doing now and it's actually the way you're making a living. Dale Pendell: Yeah. Morton Marcus: So let us continue the talk, we were

00:39:05.590 - 00:39:19.090

talking, and let us also read some more poems. Maybe we want to just start off with more poems. If you missed the first half of the show you missed a wild discussion. I should tell you the Dale who at one time was up in the Nevada City area,

00:39:19.540 - 00:39:35.170

living off the land, very good friends with Gary Snyder, is now a software engineer. And we have been talking about the intersecting of those two ways of looking at the world, and Dale has been saying some very, very interesting things. Dale,

00:39:35.200 - 00:40:04.590

how about another poem or two or more. Dale Pendell: Sure, I spoke of myself experimenting and this is kind of a playful experiment with a Chinese type. It's called, "Exiled in America," and it's the name of my press. I

00:40:04.620 - 00:40:28.550

work for a company in the valley that makes laser printing systems. I get to- my work is designing the engine handling, kind of a- what do they call it? Morton Marcus: I don't know this is-

00:40:28.540 - 00:40:37.150

Dale Pendell: Three B or something. Anyway, I get to try these machines out. Morton Marcus: Oh, I see, great. Dale Pendell: Okay, anyway, so I've been able to produce a few

00:40:37.150 - 00:40:56.780

of these books, and I call it "Exiled in America Press." So this is: FOR PO CHU-I AND AMERICA For two years now I have spent my days in an office, wondering,

00:40:57.200 - 00:41:16.760

is there a sun? Is there an earth? Facing deadlines I apply my mind to complex analyses and diagrams. I'm tired at the end of the day. What kind of a poet's life is this? Dropping a famous name in front of a colleague evokes only a

00:41:16.760 - 00:41:39.320

quizzical expression. So like one of the old poets, exiled to a distant province, I take some comfort in a letter, your visit, old friend, and that wine we drank all night. Morton Marcus: Are there many people who are writing poetry,

00:41:39.320 - 00:42:06.810

actually? Are there other people who are writing poetry or interested in poetry where you're working? Dale Pendell: Ah, not where I'm working, I don't think. There are quite a number of poets who work in technical fields, Greg

00:42:06.810 - 00:42:26.690

Keith's a very fine poet, he's- what did he call himself, a bit monkey? Morton Marcus: And what- You have to define that for me. Dale Pendell: That's a computer programmer. I'd like to go on

00:42:26.690 - 00:43:00.110

and read a new poem that I wrote for my grandmother, it's called, "Good Rags." I guess it's an elegy. She's still alive and next month will be ninety-eight. And I decided I wanted to- I had this poem; it's been in my mind for some years and I finally

00:43:00.110 - 00:43:24.210

said I want to write that so I can share it with her. My grandmother was born in 1890, grew strong, grew up quickly. Her mother died. She liked me and we grew close. For grandmother, things grew better with use. Partly this was

00:43:24.210 - 00:43:44.370

thrift, partly just that a thing one had was almost always preferable to a thing to buy. For this reason, hand-me-downs were a way of life: beds, sheets, aunts, uncles, bicycles; cousin to cousin, family to family, threadbare shirts

00:43:44.400 - 00:44:05.760

dissolving off your shoulders, grandmother keeping track of it all with an infallible recall. Used things were to use, while new things were most often gifts and thus for show. New knives unused hanging in a knife holder in the kitchen, a cutting board

00:44:05.790 - 00:44:26.550

from someone, a piece of plywood beside it to set over it if one really had to cut, the old fifty cent carving knife in the drawer. From her I learned there were rags for ordinary cleaning, and then good rags for special jobs like windows. Mostly we had

00:44:26.550 - 00:44:49.200

make do with the lesser rags even then. One day she cornered me in the pantry and whispered, "Do you save string?" I considered, realized that I did, and said, "Yes." She leaned closer and in a conspiratorial tone said, "Me too." I felt

00:44:49.230 - 00:45:10.710

admitted to the inner membership of the secret elect. Grandmother was a wizard for dirt, sought for like a prospector for gold, taught me that money was dirty, that you had to wash your hands after counting it, which, if you think about it, is really pretty

00:45:10.710 - 00:45:30.240

obvious. Grandmother would climb up on a stool, move a vase, and take a swipe behind it where I had just cleaned with a rag -- though probably not with a good rag -- and then showed me the dirt, staring back at me dumbly from the pristine cloth. Thought

00:45:30.240 - 00:45:50.460

of her some years after, a thousand miles away in Texas, Jose called the goat, showing me where I'd missed cleaning the latrines saying, "Come on, man, we all use these, we all got jobs." Oh, grandmother, like the material objects you preserved

00:45:50.520 - 00:46:15.570

and exhausted, you yourself, used by all of us, through the use have grown better, and now are nearly used up. When it's all gone, it's over. No waste, no want. I too, would be used. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that is a very interesting idea. I've

00:46:15.570 - 00:46:27.540

often thought that Ben Johnson has wonderful words on Shakespeare, it's too bad that Shakespeare never got to hear them. And with a lot of elegies, I feel that way. Certainly the person would appreciate it when they are still alive.

00:46:36.030 - 00:47:08.160

Dale Pendell: This is a piece I was experimenting with a Jeffersian line. I love Jeffers' long line and wrote this poem during the Iran Contra hearings down at the hot tubs. And the lines came and I wanted to write them down and I didn't have

00:47:08.160 - 00:47:26.310

anything to write on. Then I realized I can write it on money, so: POEM WRITTEN ON A DOLLAR BILL: THE IRAN CONTRA HEARINGS, it seems election time is apropos to read this.

00:47:29.060 - 00:47:47.570

That integrity is rare should not surprise us. Outrage produced the machine gun, the death camp, and mutual assured destruction. Still, we grew up believing that those of character ought hold the positions of responsibility. The

00:47:47.570 - 00:48:08.660

gun runners we hear now disgust us as much as the politicians who fawn on them. They lie like adolescents, some crudely, some like the Marine Corps yes-man who puts a quaver in his voice, proud to lie for his boss. Ex-police of a deposed dictator

00:48:08.660 - 00:48:28.040

are called democratic. Perjurers and profiteers are called patriots, mercenary cutthroats freedom fighters. Good liars are rare also, the President's henchmen shift beneath the questions of the Congress, itself curiously reticent to

00:48:28.040 - 00:48:51.050

demand the form, if not the fact of the law of the land. The essential questions are never asked. Sandal-clad bodies crumpled before a wall. History, like Sandino, lies in a shallow grave. Our Constitution, thick with wealth and privilege, is

00:48:51.050 - 00:49:09.470

worse than some, better than others, but only despised by young republicans or vulgar Marxist who have never had to live without it. Even pretensions have value. Truth, it's said, is like a bell, or like bamboo struck by a pebble.

00:49:10.430 - 00:49:32.240

These rantings may not help but neither will cynicism; demand truth, even if you don't expect it. Outrage is disturbing, but not unsane, waves beat the cliff, then the mist settles, speak what is after you feel the calm. Saying what you see and

00:49:32.240 - 00:49:50.250

know is not a matter of beliefs, not a question of parties. Presence stands for itself. Simple questions need no insistence to be heard, nor repetition to make them true. Morton Marcus: A lot of very interesting things in there,

00:49:50.940 - 00:50:07.890

especially about truth even if you don't expect it and insist on getting it. I mean that very clearly and aphoristicly says what- that is a lot of things that are being forgotten these days. Dale, we are coming up to five minutes of the hour. I'm

00:50:07.890 - 00:50:16.350

going to have you read some more poems and while you're reading it, if you can do two things at once, think about what your final words are going to be. But why don't you read some more poems?

00:50:19.120 - 00:50:48.250

Dale Pendell: Okay, I'm trying to jump around, grab things out of different parts of my life and scattered psyche. "Last Specimen," specimen refers to plant collecting. I am a pretty fair field botanist.

00:50:49.840 - 00:51:07.550

LAST SPECIMEN In the bank of a gravelly wash, a mile from the road in Saline Valley, I found a desert paintbrush; not a rare plant, just one I don't have in my collection. The brilliant

00:51:07.610 - 00:51:30.020

scarlet-tipped bracts of the inflorescence were still enfolded. Kneeling down, I gently pulled them open to inspect the corolla, then saw still a child. It's not that anyone else would come by here, that you live to blossom alone

00:51:30.050 - 00:51:52.730

here beneath an empty sky means that somewhere a soldier won't die. That on a dry planet near a star in sickness, it will rain. I may not really know that, but I return with an empty press. Morton Marcus: Very nice poem. Very, very nice.

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Dale Pendell: Well, I would just assume close with a poem. Morton Marcus: Okay. Dale Pendell: I'd like to- Morton Marcus: We actually still have time, I mean four minutes

00:52:04.250 - 00:52:43.490

goes a long way. Dale Pendell: Well, yeah, I'd like to read a poem called, "The Bluewitch," from a planned collection of a poet's guide to plants. This one is kind of mixed. I put- sometimes to try

00:52:43.490 - 00:53:17.720

and get the whole picture out, I throw four or five shovelfuls into the hopper. I hope that works in this poem. Bluewitch is a metaphor, I'm not advising anybody to go out and eat bluewitch. See if I can find this poem.

00:53:20.450 - 00:53:38.600

Morton Marcus: While Dale is looking, if you've just tuned in, we are talking with Dale Pendell about many things, about his life as a computer programmer and- not a computer programmer, a software engineer, and as poet, editor, many of his

00:53:38.600 - 00:53:55.760

experiences and I'm just taking up time here while he finds, or attempts to find, the poem, and I think he's just about got it now. Next week, Joe will be back and in fact, next Wednesday -- I should say though I've not received the letter yet --

00:53:56.060 - 00:54:11.390

Gerald Stern will be reading down in Santa Cruz. I believe, this may be wrong, at Porter College the day before his- two days before his reading in San Jose, so you'll be able to see Gerald Stern here. I'm sure we will have an announcement by the

00:54:11.390 - 00:54:39.100

time Joe's show goes on the air next Tuesday. Anyway, Dale is now going to read us his poem, "The Bluewitch." Dale Pendell: Okay, and there's some images here to the three graces. And that's from Edgar Wynn's book on Pagan mysteries

00:54:39.820 - 00:55:07.450

and the Renaissance. Ficino had a medallion cast that showed them in that characteristic form with two facing forwards and one between them. They built a whole cosmology around them. Okay: BLUEWITCH

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Saucer eyes, corolla rotate, three sisters, three graces, amore, hair silvering like the moon, three fates. Heavy wheels moving, wooden carts carrying girls with dilated eyes, hay, and faggots. Atropos with the scissors are more my thread

00:55:34.300 - 00:56:00.490

knotted with hers in your hands. And I danced, bluewitch. Sorcerer's cherry, blackberries suck in dreams. And in good company -- potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant -- all pungent and thick with yellow stamens, agnate, bitter alkaloids through

00:56:00.490 - 00:56:24.460

the whole bunch. Belladonna, deterra, henbane, a little deaf in a bittersweet draft. Ficino's three graces, pulchritudo, her hair falls with the hush, cheeks arching high, desire arching, jetts arching, their hands clasped, then they undressed,

00:56:25.390 - 00:56:49.270

steam rose from the bath. Are you ready? Who could answer -- feel like Adam with no fig leaf -- yes and we are off. Cities beneath us. Lights, the coast, years swirl by. I see lights on boats, hang on, hold close for turns. Lights on boats on a

00:56:49.270 - 00:57:16.690

black sea, stars swirling, the vortex, birth of thought. Saw the three of them sit, legs spread, feet together, giants, breasts hanging like cheeses, vulvas tall as a man settling in heavy folds thick to the earth. In the deep shade, the night

00:57:16.720 - 00:57:39.010

shade, the beautiful woman, the servant of love, voluptuous, in sticky dreams, flying dreams, dwell(?)berry ointment smeared like semen on gooey thighs. Your pupils are wells, I fall through and find mountains, ranges unexplored, lavender thighs,

00:57:39.070 - 00:58:00.430

body smell of wood smoke, lizard skin. There are petals on your breasts, blue skin, blue nipples, violet hairs on your pubis, a blue swan and blue doves rising beneath you. The purple dawn in your trace. I drink your warm green blood and

00:58:00.430 - 00:58:17.280

sprout, naked, quiet, glad at the core. Morton Marcus: We have been talking with Dale Pendell, and he has been reading from his poetry and talking with us tonight. Thank you, Dale. Certainly have you back on again

00:58:17.280 - 00:58:30.540

and can tell I don't think this conversation has even been scratched at, but it has been fascinating for me and I'm sure a lot of people out there. Next week, Joe will be back. I certainly urge you to listen in and listen in for "Things Ain't

00:58:30.540 - 00:58:42.840

What They Used To Be" with Tim Folger, which is coming up in a moment. I'd like to sign off now by saying that Plaza Books has provided a grant that helped make the last half hour programming possible. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific

00:58:42.840 - 00:59:00.570

Garden Mall in Santa Cruz. We appreciate their support. And I will also give the hour call of the station for Tim so he doesn't have to do that, he can come right on. This is KUSP, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas. KUSP is a member supported radio

00:59:00.570 - 00:59:13.290

station, we serve the Monterey Bay, Salinas Valley, West Santa Clara Valley, and Big Sur. KUSP is a National Public Radio member station. This is Mort Marcus saying that I'll see you in two weeks.