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Unknown: [Music Playing] Morton Marcus: Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is the Poetry Show. I'm your host Mort Marcus. And tonight we are honoring the publication of a new book by four local poets,

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Robert Sward, David Swanger, Charles Atkinson and Tillie Washburn-Shaw, that has just been put out, this week in fact, from the Small Poetry Press Select Poetry Series in Pleasant Hill, California. And the poets on the show tonight will be

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reading on Wednesday, that's tomorrow night, April 20th at 7:30pm at the Santa Cruz Art League Theater. So, tonight we're going to find out about this book, we're gonna find out about these poets. Almost all of them, I think every one of them

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have been on the show at least several times in the past. And we're going to hear about this work, how it came to happen and I would like to introduce them now. And that is David Swanger. Hello, David.

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David Swanger: Hi, Morton, glad to be here. Morton Marcus: Okay, but you know, I'd be happier if you were here if you would get close to that microphone because these are-

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David Swanger: I'm closer to the mic. Morton Marcus: There you go. These are single direction mics, and if you're off a little bit, they don't pick up anything. So I didn't have a chance to do any voice checks or anything. Robert

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Sward, how are you? Robert Sward: Good. Good to be here, Mort. Morton Marcus: See what I'm doing folks out there as they- as everyone knows, is I'm just seeing as you're coming through.

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Tillie, how are you? Tillie Shaw: Hi, Morton, nice to be here. Morton Marcus: Best, that's the best one yet. She got the best mic, guys. And Charles Atkinson.

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Charles Atkinson: Glad to be back, Morton. Morton Marcus: Oh, wait, oh bah bah. Okay, keep doing that. What did you say, Charles? Charles Atkinson: I'm glad to be back.

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Morton Marcus: Yes. Okay, we're getting quiet. Charles Atkinson: I think I'm glad to be back. Morton Marcus: Yes, you are. Who wants to tell me something about- first of all, this is a group and poetry has always

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lived by groups of poets getting together and reading their work to each other, and being honest and really giving advice to each other. What is very important about that description, though, is that the poets have to respect each other. And that

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really is the essence of what's happening. So, who's going to be the spokesman, and is going to tell us about how this group came about? Charles Atkinson: David.

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David Swanger: All right, I will tell the story briefly. I have been working in poetry and it's been an important part of my life for many years, but I was not in any poetry group and did not have colleagues to critique my poems and did not pal around

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with other writers much and my wife, Lynn, urged that I start consorting with fellow poets. Morton Marcus: Did you want to watch your language? I mean, we are on the air here.

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David Swanger: And that was what she said started. And so th first thing I did was to as someone who was in a established group if I coul join, and I never heard back Morton Marcus: I won't ask you to name the group.

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David Swanger: I'm discouraged, I'm discouraged by this, all poets have to know how to take rejection and strive. I then was fortunate to meet Robert Sward whom I had known not well, but briefly before that, and Robert and Gloria asked me and Lynn to

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come to brunch at their house and this led to further conversations. And I suggested that Robert and I start our own poetry group, the two of us, and we were immediately in trouble because Robert said, I don't want to bring poems, I want to

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bring fiction. And I said, but where's the poetry group? And then I decided that this was a little bit dogmatic on my part. And so after trying as a poetry group, we quickly switched so that Robert brought chapters of his novel in progress and things

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moved along and I brought poems. And then if I remember correctly, Chuck Atkinson heard that Robert and I were doing this, and I see Chuck often an we're good colleagues at th Morton Marcus: Yeah, I should say out there an assumption on

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university, and he asked if e could join us and meet with s. And Chuck came and then Til ie came. And I like what you s id earlier, Morton, that the f ct that we respect each other nd- both as critics and as wri ers is crucial to the endeavor

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We also, I think, like each ther personally, which helps gre my part, but I'm gonna now have them go around. It is very hard once you are publishing, to really get people to be honest with you and criticize you. And these four people here tonight

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have won prizes, have published books. In fact, David, Robert was just telling me last night, the University of Missouri is going to bring out what has to be a third book, really. And Chuck Atkinson's won awards and Tillie, of course, has taught

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literature because not only are you people poets, but you are also scholars and so you bring the whole tradition forward. As for Robert Sward, I don't know. Now rise, Robert knows he's been a legend to me years before we ever met. I was quoting,

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memorizing his poems and stealing his metaphors, bu that's another story. Why don' we go around? David, tell u some, just some of th publications that you've had an awards that you've won

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David Swanger: Well, the most important award to me was the NEA grant that I received five years ago. And I published a couple of poetry books with Ithaca House and one chapbook also. I write in other fields as well. As you know, Morton, I've

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written a book on poetics and the teaching of poetry, and another on aesthetic education. And all the time I try to keep poems circulating among the literary journals, and some of them are published in places like the Georgia Review and

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Poetry Northwest and the Chariton Review, New Letters. And I also send regularly, it's sort of like putting the garbage out each week, I sent to the New Yorker, which has never taken a poem.

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Morton Marcus: Well, you're in great company and I'm not just talking about me. I think- well, we could tell stories about that, how people have gotten into the New Yorker trying to read New Yorker poems for years and figuring out the magic words

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to put together. Robert, how about you? Robert Sward: Well, I guess the last time I was on the show was with the, "Four Incarnations," book. Morton Marcus: Why don't you tell us what that was?

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Robert Sward: What- what that was? Morton Marcus: Yes. I mean, you'll see because you're not talking to me, you're talking to 40,000 listeners. I don't want you to get nervous.

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Robert Sward: "Four Incarnations," was, is my new and selected poems, poems of 1957 up until 1991, there's new work to add. Morton Marcus: And who published that?

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Robert Sward: That was done by Coffee House Press. Morton Marcus: I've heard of them. Robert Sward: Right, had dinner last night with Gordon who did actually a wonderful presentation, I thought, at the

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Bookshop Capitola, 41st Cafe, talking about the whole history of publishing. I've been sending work out for many, many years. I started when I was- I went to the US Navy, right out of high- right out of high school. And that's really- they taught me

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how to type and I became ship's librarian and I began writing and hanging around bookstores. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I was picking up poetry magazines, and I started sending my work out. And I'd get written rejection slips

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sometimes from Time Magazine. I didn't know what a poetry magazine was really, right at the start. I did actually publish in the New Yorker eventually. That was one of my goals and it's a poem to this day I don't understand. I mean,

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I've been thinking they're into ublishing incomprehensible poe ry as far as I'm concerned. I published about a dozen book of poems over the years and his is my second novel, tha is- As a group, by the way, it turns out that all fou

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of us by coincidence happ ned to be writing about family And that really led to the publ cation of this book, I mean, four very different writers, a l of whom to respect one anot er and so forth, but still str king on a com

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Morton Marcus: And what was the title you agreed on for this book? Robert Sward: "Family." Morton Marcus: Oh.

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Robert Sward: Original title. And mine is the prose contribution, the fiction contribution to the publication. Morton Marcus: To which David frowned sadly. Tillie, how about you?

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Tillie Shaw: Right, well, I've been teaching poetry for many, many years, and I've also written a book about it, but it never really occurred to me that I might write it and then I started developing the hankering and-

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Morton Marcus: When was that because you know, I know students of yours and when I said- several of them I told you'd be on the show tonight and they said, "Tillie writes poetry?" I said, "Why, yes."

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Tillie Shaw: I've been sneaking around about it. I actually start- I signed up for Women's Voices one summer and when I went in I had no idea what a poet, you know, what it was to write poetry and when I came out the other end, I was starting to

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do it. Now, I've done it a lot, but I haven't bothered to send it out. And so now that I'm retired, I actually am doing more of it. Morton Marcus: How are you enjoying retirement?

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Tillie Shaw: Oh, I love it. I don't know how I ever did anything else. Morton Marcus: Ah, music to my ears. I'll be there soon. Just wait for me, I'll be there. Chuck Atkinson or Charles

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Atkinson, I don't know whether he likes Chuck and I'd better not get that from me. Charles Atkinson: As you prefer. The last time I was here, Mort, was when I was reading from, think the volume that won th

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American Poets American Boo Award in poetry in 1991, whic was, "The Only Cure I Know," an then the next year, I won chapbook prize from Waylan Press, the Wayland Pres Chapbook with the "Best of Us n Fire," which is a col

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ection, interestingly enough, o family poems also arou d a different collection. And I ve been going on since th n, and in the process of bring ng together, I hope, anoth Morton Marcus: Okay, I'm just putting you up here so that we

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can get to hear. You insist on sitting far away from the microphone so therefore it's very uncomfortable. And there are, you know, mics that are directional, it's just swinging around wherever you want to sit or anything, but these are just

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not them. Well, it's a fascinating story, and I love to hear it because it means you know, that people are working together in the community again, not being isolated as, let's say, David felt that he was, and that alas really has been going

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on here now since the 70s when the real energy that was going on, and people were meeting and yelling at each other and reading their poetry to each other. It's dissipated. I think it's really in many ways dissipated in the country. So

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it's good to hear that not only are four poets working together, but the four poets of your caliber are working together. And what I'd like to do now is, if you would, get a sampling of some of these poems, and since we started by talking to David,

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Charles, why don't we start with you. So here's some- some of Charles Atkinson's poems from his book that has just come out this week, "Family," and again, I remind the listener out there who's just tuned in that all four poets will be reading from

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this book, which will be for sale tomorrow night, April 20th at 7:30pm at the Santa Cruz Art League Theater, which is on Broadway, just right down Broadway, 526 Broadway, thank you, Bob. I'm going to put that down here, remind me. So,

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Charles. Charles Atkinson: Sure. I'll just say by way of preface that the poems that were in a previous volume, the chapbook on family called, "The Best of Us on Fire," tended to focus around

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my children. And I found myself since then writing poems more about my own parents and about my siblings. And so most of the poems that are in this group are focused in that way. And in the first one I'll read is a poem about my father, which really

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grew out of the experience with him following the death of my mother. It's a two part poem, and it's called: HAIRCUT. It has an epigraph from Wordsworth, a familiar one to most people,

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"The child is father of the man," and it's in two parts. Number 1. He's wintered alone since she died. Now in May, I see how alone. Right off, he wants to cut my hair, the thing he did best. I'm wary, but how to refuse, an old sheet pinned

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at the neck, the same kitchen stool in the sun. I'm wrapped and silent and 12 years old again and know what I want, long on the top, but he'll cut it fast and short. No talk, dark clumps dropping into my lap and I'll wear a cap till it grows

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back out. He'll stand over me forever, sunglasses aglint, those gun metal scissors clicking up my neck. Instead, he runs the comb through my tangles lightly like a woman finding her way. The scissors creep by my ears, shy cricket, a coolness

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comes to my temples. He works gingerly, one side at a time to the last careful clips above my eyes, steps back and sighs, what do you think, have I lost the touch? A breeze on my nape. How do you tell a father he's lost one touch and found another?

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2. You know, he says, I could use one too. It's true, now that she's gone, he's grizzled. I shake out the sheet, give him the stool and part his fine strands with the comb. Not much off the top, it's all I've got. I know that voice, but it's warm

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in the sun. With the steady snips, his eyelids droop, his chin, and he's gone. Now and then he starts and settles. There, I stand back and keep the scissors going, not to wake him. The doves brooding in the maple. The stiff brush on his neck

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brings him to, then to wash it at the sink the way she'd do. Under the stream, his neck so thin, his baldpate gleams, dry the water pooled in his ears, wrap him in a turban and he's off to comb it the way he likes over the bare spot. I'm sweeping

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up his long white wisps, my wirey salt and pepper. When it comes back, a shy grin I've never seen, "like a new man," he says. Morton Marcus: And that was Charles Atkinson, one or four

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poets were talking to tonight who have work in a new book which has been put out and just released this week. Four poets from Santa Cruz with work on family. Next we'll hear from Tilli Washburn-Shaw, Tillie?

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Tillie Shaw: Yeah, that my group of poems in the book is focused around my mother who is by now in her mid 90s. I don't even know if I should read the one I'm going to because I haven't changed the names and it's she at her most obnoxious, getting

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rid of her toxins. THREADINGS(?). My mother's 94, seems as if she'll live forever, though she truly doesn't want to. Nothing she craves more than to die

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quickly without passing through pain. Which however, doesn't stop her from getting angry when a table Sadie and Lois looked a certain way at each other right after she says something. They think she can't see them. She's blind but she sees that all

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right, knows all the while they are secretly talking and laughing. Sadie deliberately speaks too low for her to hear and is always asking personal questions. She finally had to tell her to stop. My mother's voice tightens, "Sadie isn't

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very bright, hasn't contributed to the household, not once, not even one piece of chocolate." All these words don't mean the way they sound, took me a while to learn not to sue them, let them be noisy air pockets in her pipes, her late life rackety

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flowing. So she wants to die but she still sees as far as her blind eyes let her. She thinks Helen, the new person, gets too much attention and tells Peggy so, who listens but doesn't do anything about it. Of course she wants to die but when she gets

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sick, it hurts and her child fears take over. She has to clutch things. She's afraid of the dark, draws her curtains carefully each night and shuts the door to the rest of the house so she won't look into unshaped blackness, out of which

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her selfish, older sister jumped when she was too small, and scared her half to death. She still wants to die but how is she going to remember? Next come the comforts of arguing. I'd rather not drive her to church on Sundays. Why can't one of the

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Christians do it? A church should take care of its own. Any daughter as old as I needs a free day on Sunday for something like prayer to get to know herself again. She answers reproachful that she doesn't have to go, she can stay in her

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orange chair, talk to God there. She says it's a small church, it can't take care of everyone, that's too much to ask of it. I suggest it's sometimes too much for me too, but she insists right back with family it's different. Surely she doesn't

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know how I throw away each day she's touched, my life, a heap of things pushed from me, not able to smell my own scent, hardly sure I want one. I wonder what it'll feel like when she's not here to grouse and talk back, makes me think of when the

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old cat died that I was always scolding for scratching the sofa and pestering me at meals. He'd gotten so mixed up with every part of my life, seems his hairs were everywhere afterwards, the very Dickens to get them out.

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Morton Marcus: Thank you, Tillie. That was Tillie Washburn-Shaw, second of four poets whose work is found in the book, "Family," that we're discussing tonight and the third poet we'll be hearing from is the legendary Robert Sward, who

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has been on the show, gosh, Robert, well, a lot of times. Robert Sward: A couple times. This is a section from, "A Much Married Man," a novel in progress. This section's called: 1957

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Noah was 15 and his mother's car wreck marked an end to the days of hava and honey, an end to whatever glue it was that held the world together. Before her death at the Sabbath meal, his mother lit the candles and his father gave him his blessing. He

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would place his hands on Noah's head and recite the benediction, first in Hebrew and then in English. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he send us light into your life and deal graciously with you, may he look favorably upon you and grant you

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shalom, peace. Soon after the funeral, back from a Borscht Belt gig, stand-up comedian David Newmark, the smell of whiskey on his breath, punched the son in the head. Unfairness has to start early, he explained. And don't you make me

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feel guilty by crying, I won't have that. I won't have a son of mine blubbering away at the dinner table. Here, here's a handkerchief. Listen to me now, the world is unfair, some goodbyes are more terminal than others, our notion that we have

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control is meshuggah, crazy. We say God wouldn't send anything I couldn't bear, that's meshuggah. God Himself is meshuggah. Take us a little of Abraham and the Bible. Why should you love Abraham more than someone else and then ask Abraham to

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slaughter his son? And God's love of the Jews, what is that if not meshuggah. Meshuggah. Not having said goodbye to her, his dead on arrival mother, no agree for years, and his father though he went on traveling and performing in nightclubs, went

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on telling jokes, never spoke of her again. After his mother's death, Noah, big for his age, would periodically charge arms swinging into a group of five or more of his toughest classmates. All brutes have the same face, he cried pounding with his fist

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on the undifferentiated mass of bodies. Sometimes he'd hallucinate; he'd see his dead mother present, however briefly, in the bodies of 15 and 16 year old boys. Frightened, fearful of losing his mind, he'd go on punching. What if we were

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pounding not only on their bodies, but on her body? Well, fuck it, he thought. She must have somehow chosen to die and she deserves what she gets. Punching out his classmates seemed as good a way as any to break with her, to say goodbye,

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terminal goodbye. Ha, you listen to me, Mom, I'll give you a terminal goodbye. Bam. In his blind flailing, he was as likely to strike a Jew as a Goy, he didn't discriminate. He'd simply curse the others for being other, curses kicking and

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punching high school buddies for whatever membrane of difference he felt separated him from them. In Noah's kamikaze moments, the will to strike with his elbows and fists combined with a longing to merge his body with their bodies, his heart with

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their hearts. At such times, whatever grief, whatever madness he felt erupted, it was transformed into joyous rage. Of course, he knew he was not about to merge with anyone, he just felt ready to pound on his classmates and willing to pay

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the price he let loose. Thus, bloodied or not in these encounters, Noah found them on the whole, warmly satisfying, bruised, cleansed, laughing, ecstatic, Noah knew joy. Joy, which be it confessed, he never knew when his mother was alive.

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Morton Marcus: Robert Sward reading a section from his new novel, "Much Married Man," which is in this book of four poets called, "Family." And for you people who are listening and wondering what we're going to do, we're going to come back

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after the break, and we're going to go around possibly two more times each. But before we take that break the fourth of the poets, the redoubtable David Swanger. David Swanger: When I was a kid and wandering around Newark, New

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Jersey and Irvington at age five, six and seven, something that's probably not advisable for a kid today, my father provided me with a mnemonic device whereby I could remember my grandparents' phone number, and he said, "Sing it to the

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Blue Danube. Oh Waverly six, two eight, two nine," and I've never forgotten that phone number and it emerged in this poem, which is called: OEDIPUS IRVINGTON

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Waverly six, two eight, two nine, sing this to the tune of the Blue Danube and you will know how to call Grandma and Grandpa, and you will never forget the phone number of the cleanest house in the world in Irvington, New Jersey, where you

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are left to be admired and fed sweets while your mother gives birth to someone you will ignore as you ignore your father, except that he brings you toys or forgets the toy he was supposed to bring but mom loves you. You tried to be bad as hard

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as you have tried anything, harder. Still, she thinks you are wonderful and this goes on for years, forever. Your life is a silver screen on which you win Oscar after Oscar. But now you want to retire from the movies and it's as if you're in the

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mob, there's no leaving with your shoes on. You'll have to wear cement galoshes to break this contract, which stipulates only success, excellence, hazel-flecked eyes, the girl's love, of course, your mother's eyes.

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Morton Marcus: David, since that was so short, why don't you read another one of the short poems, either "Afterlight" or "Sycamores." David Swanger: Alright-

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Morton Marcus: Equality of time. David Swanger: I'll read a different short one. Morton Marcus: Okay. David Swanger: "Style," which is dedicated to my daughter Alyssa,

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who is an artist. And one of her teachers or advisors said that she shouldn't use black in her paintings. STYLE There are so many rules, it takes good luck to live long

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enough to break them. To undo the manifestos profoundly requires, I guess, more than longevity. Style is the ultimate morality of the mind, says Whitehead, as if the mind were a rector, standing austere at the door or elegant on the chair's

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edge, overhearing this conversation between you and me. I hope you will not listen to teachers who say never paint in black. Paint in black, bathe in black, wear black at your wedding, something so moral, it resonates you into Gothic

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thunder and everyone blinks and cannot believe anything they knew before. Send them into the cave of their hearts, my heart, send them into the deep, deep dark. Morton Marcus: David, Thank you very much. That was David

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Swanger. If you're hearing a siren on the radio, that is not the people coming for David because of the poems. It is very hot in the studio and we have opened the window, so you're just hearing the natural sounds of America. We are going to take

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a break now, we're going to come back and continue to hear more from this intriguing book, "Family," by Tillie Washburn-Shaw, Charles Atkinson, David Swanger, and Robert Sward. And we are going to take a short musical break, however, now.

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This is the Poetry Show and before we get back to our guests, I'd like to tell you that KUSP thanks Stapleton's grocery for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Stapleton's grocery with stores in the Farmers Exchange in Santa

00:31:08.230 - 00:31:24.340

Cruz and now offering fish and poultry next to Trader Joe's in Capitola. And I just want to as usual give a special thanks to Dennis Morton and Company who have been sponsoring this show for years and who have been out in the community just really

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making sure that such things as the Pacific Rim Film Festival do happen. So give the folks at Stapleton's some of your business. I would like to call your attention to the auction that is going to happen here on KUSP and in fact has been

00:31:43.630 - 00:31:59.770

happening. In fact, you should be part of KUSP's radio auction. Do you have a treasure to contribute, a service to provide? Get your name on the air, be in the auction catalog, be part of public radio. The 18th annual KUSP radio auction

00:31:59.980 - 00:32:16.720

will be held June 1st through June 5th, at the Octagon Museum next to the McPherson Center for Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz. You'll earn goodwill, get on-air exposure, feel self-satisfaction and help KUSP in the tradition of great

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radio. So why not call 476-2800, that is 476-2800 or 1-800-655-5877. I'll repeat that: 1-800-655-5877 or if you're local, 476-2800 for more information and do it during the day, because there's no one out there now. I also would like to

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talk about, there are two great literary events happening within the week, that is within this week, and I would like to call your attention first of all to our guests which are the first of these great events. And that is that Santa Cruz readings on

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Wednesday night April 20th, 7:30pm, when our four guests tonight, David Swanger, Tillie Shaw, Charles Atkinson, and Robert Sward will be reading from the book and maybe even some other poems and you'll be able to get a copy of the book

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if you want and it certainly is a lovely little book, really a nice little printing job. The next night, on Thursday, the great Mexican novelist, Carlos Fuentes, will be leading a wonderful series of musicians and poets, and, of course, prose

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writers, in Viva Zapata Three, which is going to occur at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on 307 Church Street in Santa Cruz. Tickets are at the Palomar Restaurant and at the door and I do think it's probably going to sell out. Information can be

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gotten on 429-3444, 429-3444. There will be a reception where you can meet Mr. Fuentes, I will tell you it is a little steep but if you've got money, and you want to meet one of the great authors of the latter part of the 20th century, call 429-6757,

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429-6758, pardon me. Now, Tocara(?) is going to be doing music there, marvelous group. I've worked with them on some gigs with them. They are really terrific. Francisco Alarcon, who used to be teaching up here at UCSC, a dynamic reader, just a

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joy to hear all the time and no longer is with us. He is at Davis, where he is teaching now. He will be back, and let me see, Herrera. What is- It's an incredible poet. I'm looking at Juan Philippe Herrera, a marvelous, marvelous

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Hispanic-American poet who will also be on it, as will several other groups, music groups. So try to make that this Thursday, 7:30pm. It's going to go from actually 7 to 1 AM in the morning, and one of the things that's going to be presented is

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an hour long play, which really recalls the hero of this event, Viva Zapata, saying you know, Zapata, what have you left us? And is really sort of tying in Zapata's mythical reputation with what's going on in Chiapas. So, I think this is really a

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marvelous chance to hear some great poetry, great music, see some terrific drama. Oh, I've got the names here. Aida Hurtado, and Francisco Alarcon, poetry by Juan Philippe Herrera, dancing to Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeno Band, wow. And Tocara,

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food and drinks, books, photographic and art exhibits. Emiliano Zapata, a multimedia experience presented by Arte Andriago and I would do it. I know that Manuel Santana has his latest paintings down there, always good to see new work that

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Manny is doing. So, try to make it down there, it really is an event which you should take part in. Now, I'm going to take Motown and actually it's been pretty quiet in the background anyway, and I'm going to get to all our guests here again. And

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over there to auxilary mic number four. Friends, we are back on the air and what are we going to do here again, we are talking to Tillie Washburn-Shaw, Robert Sward, David Swanger and Charles Atkinson, who have formed a literary group and

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selection from each of their work on family has been published in a book called, "Family," which has just come out. And they will be reading tomorrow night at the Art League Theater at 526 Broadway at 7:30. And we're going to go around and

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get as much of the poetry and prose of these wonderful writers as we can. We're going to reverse the order now and we're going to start off with David Swanger. David Swanger: Thank you, Morton. You know, there are all

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these famous quotes about families that range from Tolstoy to Twain to Frost, and so forth. And I was trying to think of my own metaphor, and the only thing I could think of was kneydl, or matzah balls in chicken soup. That, being in a family is like

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being a matzah ball in the big soup, and it's not always pleasant. This poem has nothing to do with soup, but it has a lot to do with family, family beyond my immediate family. It's called:

00:37:49.720 - 00:38:06.530

SONG In this house live the father and the mother and the myth of the mother and the chorus, the three children joined in singing the song their father led in praise of the mother. In this

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house lived the son, the eldest among the three, who knew he was the blond dream his mother had. She told him so, that his name in the Bible meant beloved. In this house live the heavy second son, who was lucky not to be first, not to be loved too much,

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and who sang songs to the mother with earnest insincerity and saved himself. In this house, the daughter was also blonde and a good singer. She was the wholy plausible princess in the kingdom of lies, the sweet daughter, like white flowers,

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applause on a littered stage. In this house, the father sang with his eyes closed, so nothing would intrude, so everyone's anguish would be walled in the way the affluent deranged are enclosed by pleasant institutions. In this house, the

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mother was everywhere listening to the long song she was writing, which only she knew was about sex, about the split hoof of her lust, while her family thought it a lullaby. In this house, while the father was not looking, while the second son

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found reasons not to come home, while the sweet daughter smiled into the black hallway of her life, the mother was busy. In this house, whose walls she had made permeable and breathy the mother sang to her first son, the dark, dead song of her

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desire, which put him to sleep, desperate to silence what her words meant. Morton Marcus: Thank you, David. And Robert Sward is next. Robert Sward: Another short section from, "A Much Married

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Man," novel. And Noah Newmark is a journalist, he's 47 years old. He's been married five times and his spouses, Shelly Levine, Anna Jones, Dolores Divine, Natasha Kaminski Alejander, come to life in the book against the social sexual background of the 50s,

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60s, 70s and 80s. This section is called: 1988 On good terms with his ex wives, the fifth marriage in trouble, Noah decided to send out a questionnaire, a Gallup poll to

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see if he could gain some needed insights. What did he do wrong? What could he do to win back Holly Hollander? Noah's questionnaire, Dear, Shelly, Anna, Dolores, Natasha and Holly, please reply to any or all of the following at anything

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you care to: 1. What attracted you? What made you agree to get married in the first place? 2. What were your ideals about marriage before we married? After? What now? 3. One telling anecdote that summarizes our marriage, 4. What was the best

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of it? 5. What was the worst? 6. Funniest moment, 7. Moment when you knew it was over. Is there such a thing as an irrevocable act or deed which having occurred represents the turning point or end of a relationship? When you talk about our

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marriage, assuming you do, what do you find yourself saying first? Yeah, I was married to a newspaper man, etc. If a friend asks you for advice before marrying a writer, what would you say? In your mind, what are the great moral and social

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issues of the day? May I quote you if needed? Thank you for your cooperation. Morton Marcus: Okay, thank you, Robert. Tillie Washburn-Shaw? Tillie Shaw: About my grandfather, Daniel B. Shumway.

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1. Whatever it was he was thinking, his wife did, a man shut away from the warmth of bodies, apart from everyone, all alone in himself. 2. What my mother told us happened the day her own mother

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died, the grandmother I never knew. After four years of strokes, which could come anytime, eating breakfast, washing her clothes, just talking. During these years, my mother was 11, 12, finally 14 and she took her mother walking

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each day after school in the old part of the city, letting her hold on to her young arm the way she didn't like her to, while she watched the other girls playing outside together. At home, whenever a stroke came, my mother helped her up the steep

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back stairs of the dark house to her bed, where she would sleep it off and wait to be her mother again. When the big one hit, her darning needle darted out into the air followed by the thread, zigzagging after it and the darning egg skidded ahead of her

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onto the floor. 80 years later, the last time we are all together, when my mother reaches this point in her story, her arm loops crazily into the air, then abruptly shoots down. 3. So, there she was, at the end of the death day, barely 15,

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standing at the foot of the stairs, afraid to be alone. She climbed up to the third floor to her sister Anna's bed, the same sister she ordinarily fought with. She could hear her breathing as she tried to not to think and to go to sleep. But at

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two or three in the night, he joined them at the top of the old house and entered her side of the bed. Not her sister's side, she explains at 94, saying I was always the warmer of the two, Anna was too standoffish. At first he didn't do anything

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and held her still, then began to touch her and hold her. She could feel the pressure of his body moving back and forth against her and the hard nod at its center pushing between them as his hand stroked her over and over. That was all.

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4. Did her sister not know he was there in the room beside them? She never said. All three of them passed their lives not talking of the things they thought of, not knowing what the other not remembering what, not wanting to almost losing.

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5. Two summers later her father got crushed. She was not even looking at the German Grammar he'd given her to study up for college, instead was busy dancing each night with the sailors pouring into the port on their way to the Great War. In

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her freshman year she had a breakdown and had to come home. A woman doctor examined her body, kindly told her it was intact. Toward the end of the war, someone helped her half-sister, Neda, to leave Germany by the North and come

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live with them. She was the oldest daughter her mother had had by her first husband, the German who died young, some years before she married my grandfather and changed her life. Neda looked at her two American half-sisters and

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stepfather with silent, starving eyes. She was seven years older, riper and more soaring but she returned to Germany less than two years later, because something wasn't right. What wasn't right as my half-cousin, Astrid, Neda's daughter, who had

00:45:59.010 - 00:46:13.020

driven all the way across the country so we all could be together, always busting our head to understand things, people that hushed up long ago. Then my mother blurting out in turn that Neda was lonely, father too, they probably will-

00:46:13.020 - 00:46:30.510

they both, you know had needs. Whereupon I next had to ask as her daughter how she knew to say this, and there comes just dropping out of her at 94, a story she had never told anyone. She corrects herself, she had told someone once, her

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stepmother, because Mary, her father's much younger second wife and former student had asked her once. Mary, whom she grown so close to after the two married, asked her many years later when her father was long since dead about the nine years

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he lived alone with his two almost grown daughters before remarrying, had he ever? And my mother told what she'd never told in the burst of it, not stopping to wonder how Mary knew to ask. Mary Quimby Shumway, grandmother I knew and loved,

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second wife of Daniel B. Shumway, the well-known German scholar sporting a goatee in the formal picture I have of him, to cover, my mother said, a weak mouth. In the other family picture, my head is tilted happily on the side, and he's

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holding all three of us in a bed-time armfull, sweet smiles on each face, not even noticing the photographer and flood lamps we ordinarily hated. Morton Marcus: Thank you. That was Tillie Washburn-Shaw and

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now, Charles Atkinson. Charles Atkinson: I'm gonna read a shorter poem. It's called, "Separation," and title is self-evident and it grows out of the event with my brother. It also talks about, as I suppose

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most poems do, about other things, and one of them being my own relation to language, I suppose, to writing, to poetry itself and probably it also depends on I guess what we call the classical family of Western nostalgia.

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SEPARATION Why is it when you call to say, "it's over brother, 10 years and the children," I push it away. Wait, think of that hillside pasture, glassy day in Vermont, sweet windfall, September smoke,

00:48:30.570 - 00:48:52.380

high clouds trailing east. The perfect day for a marriage and exactly the place, struggling field, windbreak scarlet with sumac, finch bending over the golden rod. Remember? Don't spoil it now. I won't say it but it's what I do. Turn to the

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land, the weather, leafed and feathered things. It's easy to imagine them and here they are, vivid as dawn on the slope of Katadyn, immaculate and sudden, not like the human story with it after hurt, how two, nimble and kind, with a chance for joy

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together, couldn't find it. So hard to let go the tale we were told, that happiness is what we deserve, that goodness and mercy will follow us. We believed it then, on a bright stubble hill, so if I say thrush call, alfalfa, sharp west wind, I'm

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keening for what's whole and unmarred and not us. Now, try me again with the truth. Morton Marcus: Charles, we're gonna start again. Could I ask you to read another poem?

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Charles Atkinson: I shall. This one called, "What Angel?" And for those of you who may know some of my other poetry, it will be a little more familiar in that it deals with my children, but my children, as they oddly do, have been growing up and

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this starts to talk about a little different relationship. WHAT ANGEL? Chest deep in Lake Tahoe's breathless cobalt, my oldest decides to take a stand, no longer content to be dumped

00:50:30.140 - 00:50:49.820

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

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

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

00:51:29.060 - 00:51:47.570

pounds and years practice let me catch his leg at last, up-end him a grunt that sears my throat. He turns it to a graceful dive, comes up smiling though his chest is scratched, to fling handfuls of bottom sand that hiss just short on the

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water, not a blessing, but a truce. Thunderheads are bulking beyond the valley. The scarred ledges above Emerald Bay waver in the heat. I'm wheezing and something aches out of joint down low. I weave into shore, drop on the hot sand, its grip

00:52:09.320 - 00:52:31.790

comfort against my cheek, the world wheeling west. I loved him as a child. I may learn to honor this figure against the sky, whose shadow falls across my sunburnt back, who'll throw me down next year and hold me under just long enough. Today, I know

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what he wants, and I'm not ready to let it go. I don't want to see him for a while. Morton Marcus: Thank you that was Chuck Atkinson and Tillie, would you mind if I went and sort of equalizes timeout.

00:52:47.690 - 00:53:05.160

Robert, hello there. This is Robert Sward again. Robert Sward: If it were possible for a man to leave himself, Noah would not leave. Another divorce, that's what he wants. He imagines coming across the headline at a supermarket

00:53:05.160 - 00:53:20.340

checkout counter, "Much married man divorces himself: San Francisco, California Journalist Noah Newmark, 47, today became the first person in history to divorce himself." What follows is a copy of the Dear John letter, the feature writer left

00:53:20.340 - 00:53:37.260

himself. Noah Newmark, I've had enough. We're incompatible. I want out of this relationship. I want out of my skin, goodbye. Noah nods. He imagines a temple, a synagogue on wheels, belonging to a reformed congregation, the synagogue, its engine running,

00:53:37.260 - 00:53:52.200

spewing exhaust is shaped like an airport bus. Looking at it from the outside, he sees a bride and groom, Howie's(?) the bride. She's standing under a huppa, a canopy of white silk. He's unable to identify the groom. One side of the bus is

00:53:52.200 - 00:54:06.150

filled with all the people he has left or divorced, the other side is filled with all the people who have left or divorced him. Shabby Sugar, Chagall-like clouds [unidentified] are playing violins. Meanwhile, standing by the driver's seat,

00:54:06.150 - 00:54:21.540

an elderly Rabbi busies himself making change. Sorry, he says, no transfers. Noah sees his mother, dead for over 30 years. His mother's mother, his father's father, his father's mother. There I go again blaming people for being dead, he says

00:54:21.540 - 00:54:34.920

to his mother. Mom, I'm sorry. God, forgive me. I never even said Kaddish for you. When Shalom Aleichem's mother died, she had six sons to say Kaddish after her, says his mother. Mom, I'm sorry. I just want you to know I still mourn. My whole

00:54:34.920 - 00:54:50.220

life, I mourn for you. There's a Jewish thing when a son gets married, he divorces his mother, she answers. Five times you divorce me, Noah such a son, what am I to think? Mom, could you forgive me? Look, I've even divorced myself for God's sake.

00:54:50.640 - 00:55:02.100

Noah, you're still my son, of course I forgive you. Morton Marcus: Thank you, Robert and David Swanger, got something short for us? David Swanger: Sure, I'll do one of the short ones you mentioned

00:55:02.100 - 00:55:22.710

earlier, "Sycamores." This is for my son, Max. SYCAMORES. I've planted Sycamores, trunks the width of candles, leaves which have no past wave like handkerchiefs. Soon, I will be a

00:55:22.710 - 00:55:47.880

rusted blade, my children careful of me as I grow smaller and more lethal. What sudden difference does anything make arriving or disappearing? The good green of saplings is slow and we hear loss in the forest years after a tree hits the

00:55:47.880 - 00:56:01.710

ground. Morton Marcus: Thank you very much, David Swanger. This has been a show presenting four poets: Tillie Washburn-Shaw, David Swanger, Robert Sward, and Charles Atkinson, all of whose

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work is collected in a new book called, "Family." And obviously it shares a common theme they've been reading from this book tonight. And tomorrow night, this book will be on sale and they will be reading from it at the Art Center League at 526

00:56:16.830 - 00:56:31.410

Broadway at 7:30pm. So, try to make it out, give them an audience, I think you'll be very rewarded and I'm sure you were impressed by what you heard tonight. I would like to then remind you that on Thursday night, there is Viva Zapata

00:56:31.410 - 00:56:51.360

Three, which will feature the extraordinary Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes as well as Juan Philippe Herrera, Francisco Alarcon, Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeno Band and Tocara among others at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium and it will start at

00:56:51.360 - 00:57:06.960

seven o'clock and it will go from 7pm to 1am, one of the literary events of the season, as is the reading tomorrow night of, "Family." Finally, I would like to remind you of my favorite KUSP show besides the one that's coming up right now,

00:57:06.990 - 00:57:22.530

Out Front, Outback with Larry Lark, stay tuned, and that is Selected Shorts which appears, or is heard, at 9pm on Wednesdays on the station, and Selected Shorts continues to bring you these wonderful popular pairings of Oscar and

00:57:22.530 - 00:57:38.790

Tony Award winning actors with short stories by acclaimed contemporary and classical authors. A lot of stories tomorrow night by such people as SJ Perlman, Chet Williamson, Andre Dubus, et cetera, et cetera, and John O'Hara as well,

00:57:38.790 - 00:57:58.440

so do stay tuned for that. Next week, possibly a surprise. On his way to us from Mexico, the redoubtable George Hitchcock, ad hoc painter, poet, Rack on Tour publisher, one of the real legends of San Francisco and Santa Cruz. We are trying to get

00:57:58.440 - 00:58:12.240

a hold of him as he wins his way up from Mexico to appear on a joint show that Joe and I will do here talking about his reading the next night at- or the next afternoon at UCSC. So, do stay tuned for the Poetry Show then. This is Mort Marcus

00:58:12.240 - 00:58:23.220

thanking our guests, thanking KUSP, thanking Larry who, Larry Blood, who is so patient with me and thanking our guests again. See you next week.