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Morton Marcus: And good evening once again this is Mort Marcus and you are listening to KUSP, the Poetry Show. KUSP, of course operates on 88.9 FM on your dial. It serves Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Salinas. And on my background, you are listening to

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specially selected music by our guest, Dick Lourie. And I want to tell you a little bit about Dick Lourie and then we will get into him. Dick Lourie is one of the founding editor publishers of Hanging Loose Magazine and Press, which has been publishing

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continuously since 1966. His poems have appeared in a number of magazines including the Colorado Review, Cottonwood, Exquisite Corpse, Massachusetts Review, The Nation, The Sun, Transfer, and he has had several books out. Of one of his books,

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Denise Levertov wrote, "Few poems of the last ten years have moved me as much as some of his." And James Morris said that, "He is one of those poets who can give themselves and their poems to dreams and politics, to love and struggle,

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to so many of the seemingly contradictory forces in our lives." And so it is with great pleasure that I bring Dick Lourie, who has come out here all the way from California and is on a reading tour and visiting Elaine Gill of the

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wonderful Crossing Press out here in Santa Cruz and has been good enough to come on the show. Dick, welcome to Santa Cruz. Dick Lourie: Thank you very much. Morton Marcus: And you're coming in loud and clear?

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Dick Lourie: Good, in my- in the left ear, yes. Morton Marcus: In the left ear? Dick Lourie: That'll have to do. Morton Marcus: Yes, that'll have to do. It's your left ear, but

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it's everyone's left and right ear out on the airwaves of America. Why don't you tell us a little about this music that we're listening to? Dick Lourie: The music is a- that's a CD that's just been

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issued. It's a bunch of songs that were originally recorded in the late 50s and early 60s by a group called the G-Clefs, who were teenagers at that tim, and now they're still singing together, the same five guys, and they're in their- they're my

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age, they're all somewhere between fifty-five and sixty. And I picked that music because I actually as- with my musician's hat on, I play saxophone and I play in their backup band. And some of my poems also have to do with music

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and with that era of music, so I thought that would be nice to bring us in. Morton Marcus: Great. Okay, well, we are certainly willing to hear. Tell us something about your writing. Tell us something

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about your poetry that you think we should know before we get into the poems themselves. Dick Lourie: Ah, well, let's see. For about- I've been writing poetry for about thirty years, and for most of that

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time, my poetry has been written in syllabics, which is a little unusual, and it's something that you don't notice unless you're looking for it. Morton Marcus: Why don't you, for those people out in the

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listening audience, why don't you tell us what syllabics are? Dick Lourie: Well, simply enough, there's a given number of syllables in each line, there is not a rhyme and there is not a repetitive meter, there's not a rhythm that repeats from line

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to line, but the pattern, it has to do with the number of syllables and then my poems are all written in ten-syllable lines. The rhythm of each line varies, but in some way, which I don't clearly understand, counting syllables helps to keep

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my mind, in a way, off of other things. And so, I think the rhythm of the poem kind of developed by itself while I'm distracted by counting the syllables, like it sounds a little odd, but I can't explain too much more than that. And the

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other thing that happened to me when I started writing this kind of poem was that my diction immediately became something that seemed to be characteristic and stayed that way. My poems tend to be a combination of very simple conversational language,

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combined with a fairly complicated syntax, you know. I wrote a sonnet recently, which only had two sentences in it. I mean, something like, you know, something like that happens and it just seems to happen naturally.

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Morton Marcus: That's great. That's great. Why don't you give us a sample of your poetry and I should give one of these FCC warnings out there, which is that if anyone is offended by graphic descriptions, or language which is considered- or

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offensive, be adviced that Dick Lourie writes poems that are of the American voicebox and life on the American streets. Dick Lourie: Since we were talking about the G-Clefs, here's a poem that has something to do with them. This is called:

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APOLLO My cousin the young drummer and his band have that capacity of youth to change endlessly provocatively and at a terrific pace. When I first saw them, they were all black leather and

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torn t-shirts. Their music, "speed metal," was like having a heart attack during a gun battle. When I saw them again, they had a horn section, two lead singers, they wore lots of plaid and suspenders. They danced across the stage, the

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music had more layers, hip hop, grunge, how many identities had they passed through in just these few years of living? The musicians I play with are older and everything seems just the opposite. Their identity, steady as mountains, remains. It's the

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years of living that passed by, even me more than ten years now as a sax player and I have no urge to change my ways. I want to play the blues, I want to sink into r&b and soul and stay there forever. Long live rock and roll. And I think of the

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Perfect Blend in their white suits on stage stepping their hearts aflame with Motown harmony, their day to day jobs didn't matter one left town, some kind of trouble -- he's back, one's in jail, he'll be out soon. Have years and years

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passed? It doesn't matter. They talk about starting again. And the G-Clefs who are my age, oh shit. No one's my age! Who played the Apollo as teenage singing sensations younger than my cousin and have not forgotten how to do it. Their voices shift

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and match, each identity so sure that they look like they're exactly together even when they are dancing in five directions. What shall we say about their steadiness? Nothing. We will just go to hear them sing music intact through almost forty

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years, and as we age into wherever we're heading, we ask your blessing, Apollo. Morton Marcus: That makes me think of a question. Dick Lourie: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: As an artist, you're a musician as well as a poet, what kind of relation do you think there are between these two activities and, you know, what themes do you develop out of this relationship?

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Dick Lourie: That's a good question. For a long time, I think there wasn't much relation, I really did have tw separate things that I was do ng. In the last few years, I th nk one thing that happens is th t as a poet, you know, it is th

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s kind of isolating and is lated activity, you write, an you get to perform, so etimes and if you're lucky you et to perform, you know, you' e standing up in front of usua ly a few people, and it's a real it is that kind of single pers

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n activity, and music for me i exactly the opposite, it's a co lective activity. I don't play the saxophone by myself, usua ly. I perform with bands and t's a collective, joyful expe ience, usually with a lot of p ople out there dancing and maki

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g noise, you know, quite the pposite thing from poetry. And he other thing is, I think in t e substance of things, of the usic and the poetry, I mean as a poet, you know, like most ther contemporary poets I sort o , I look ahead. I consid

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r myself, you know, more or les a contemporary-modern person in what I do. And as a musici n, being a musician nouris es the part of me that really wants to be traditional. I mean I play the blues, I play r&b mu ic, I play stuff that used t

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be popular in the 50s and 60 , and I get great joy out of goi g back, you know, and doing hings in a traditional way. S that, you know, in that way, I think that that's part of the re ation between those two, what y u also asked about-

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, about the themes, does this have anything to do with the themes of your poetry? Dick Lourie: Well, I guess I have fairly limited themes in a way. I mean, I write a lot of poems about music, I write poems

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about politics, I write poems about my personal life, and sometimes those three things intersect. You know, I think the poem I just read is really about both music and my own personal development and aging and so forth. But that's- so the music

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comes in there as a theme sometimes in the poetry along with, you know, politics and personal stuff, which is- Morton Marcus: Let's hear from a poem that would, let's say, expand into politics.

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Dick Lourie: Okay- Morton Marcus: If you were planning on doing that, I don't want you to start- Dick Lourie: No, I was-

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Morton Marcus: Very smoothly turns umpteen pages, and finds- well, he didn't find, but it's still very smoothly. Dick Lourie: I was having a conversation earlier today with my friend Elaine Gill, who's here watching us in the studio,

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and I've been friends for more than thirty years, so we talk about all sorts of stuff. We were talking about politics today and I've written a poem- I actually have a series of poems about American presidents, I think it must have started with

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Johnson. And I've pretty much gotten to each president with one or more poems. So this one is, this is the Bill Clinton poem. It's called: REST EASY BILL CLINTON

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I got a note from one of my muses saying he wanted to remind me I have fallen behind in my now twenty-five-year project of poems about our Presidents. I'm up to date on Bush as Peter Pan, Carter as good cop, Ford as fool, Nixon as scumbag, and

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Johnson as wounded steer. I haven't tagged Ronald Reagan yet, but I think I need to get right on to Clinton. Even this early, things are only too clear. Question: has Bill Clinton betrayed the left? This depends on what you are

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expecting. Would you say Pat Boone betrayed rock and roll? Over the last forty years, have the giant TV networks betrayed our culture's humane values? Has Arnold Schwarzenegger betrayed the great tradition of Shakespearean acting? Bill

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Clinton, you were expecting maybe George McGovern? Ron Dellums? Tom Harkin? This was the first election I recall where a moderate Republican disguised as a Democrat ran against a shithead disguised as a moderate Republican. Rest

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easy, Bill Clinton. When my complete Presidential Poems are published, I will not accuse you of betraying the left. Morton Marcus: Great, how about another one of those? Dick Lourie: Another one of those, okay. This is actually a

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poem that really is a little bit longer and it sort of does music and politics together. This is a poem about one of the people in politics that I truly despise in a special way, who was Lee Atwater, the- He was the chairman of the Republican

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Party, those of us with longer memories remember, and he was also- I mean he did- he was the mastermind of the Willie Horton racist poster campaign in the 1988 election. Morton Marcus: Now, can you tell us a little bit about Willie

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Horton because out here a lot of people don't know about that. Dick Lourie: Okay. Willie Horton was a black criminal, and during a program in Massachusetts that had prisoners released for weekends, Willie Horton went out and committed some crimes. And

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this kind of lapse in the program or, you know, this kind of violation of the rules of the program was something which Bush made a great hay with during the '88 campaign. And he had posters with Willie Horton's face plastered all over the place,

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associating them with Dukakis and, you know, Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts. And it was a blatantly racist campaign and I mean, it was disgusting, I thought, and this was Lee Atwater's doing at that time, he was Bush's campaign

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manager. And he was also a guy who came from the South and played the guitar and purported to really love black rhythm and blues music, which maybe he did. But this was very puzzling and infuriating, the whole thing. So it's a long explanation but

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here's the poem, it's called: PORTRAYED IN RHYTHM AND BLUES, it's got two parts. 1. Former National Republican Party Chairman, Lee Atwater, had many

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opportunities to integrate his love for black music with his career and politics, for example, as Bush's campaign manager, it must have been his feeling for the music and for black people themselves that made him so comfortable with

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using that photo of a black man's face as a way to attract white folks. Likewise, the sweet soul music featured at inauguration festivities, few, besides Atwater would have grasped the importance of appealing to older middle class

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blacks as middle class rather than as black. And then his brilliant masterstroke, Chairman of Republican Party as Howard University Trustee. I imagine the first meeting of the board, a pink Cadillac pulls up, it's Lee Atwater in his gold-sequined

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suit, rings flash on his hands, a sharp valet carries his guitar, Atwater says, "I can dig it, soul brothers, I'm your soul man." But it didn't work out. Disappointed that the students couldn't understand his respect for them and his love for the

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music he was forced to withdraw from the board. When the Howard students claimed that there might be some doubts about his sincerity, perhaps, because all these years they have been listening too, but hearing different things.

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2. But now that guy is dead, and of brain cancer. So if I wasn't respectful of the dead, I'd make some joke about how his thinking had been sick for a long time anyway, and so forth, but I

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won't do that. Instead, I'll give him credit for his public letters of regret to Dukakis and others. Though I noticed he didn't repudiate the man his slimy cleverness helped elect. My naturally generous nature will let that pass and I will

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credit him with really liking the music, which makes his betrayal of it all the more unforgivable. So I know that if there are private hells for those who deserve them, there is a special hell for Lee Atwater. They've given him an office but

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there are no phones, no campaign to run, no one to manipulate, there are no inaugural balls where soul music can be made to lick the presidential shoes, instead, through all eternity, Lee Atwater sits behind a big desk listening to Pat Boone's

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Greatest Hits. Morton Marcus: Okay, how about some more personal poems? Dick Lourie: Some more personal poems? Okay. I got a couple here. My mother had an 80th birthday party recently and I

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was faced with the challenge of writing a totally straightforward and honest poem about my mother and deciding whether to read it out loud at her 80th birthday party. Morton Marcus: Did you do it?

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Dick Lourie: I brought her the poem and I gave her the choice, she said, yeah, go ahead. This is a poem and it's called: THEORIES OF ALIEN ABDUCTION: POEM FOR MY MOTHER'S 80TH BIRTHDAY

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Like everyone else, I could easily be convinced that I was kidnapped at birth, put to sleep for ten years, taken to this planet and raised by kind strangers starting about age eleven. This idea would have explained my mystification at

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twenty-five. I have no resemblance to these people I have called my parents. Maybe these dream-like childhood memories were implanted when I was brought here from my far-off home. At thirty-five, I was certain of it. Since then, I've

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grown less sure. Until in my fiftys, I look closely at my mother who seems almost familiar, isn't this my own deep need for music? Don't I recognize these geologic forces clashing far below her surface? Can this anxiety about checking

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the gas on the stove and locking the front door be coincidence? Or the gift for easy talking the capacity for devotion? So I'm about ready to acknowledge her as my source: welcome, mother, to your eighty-first year. I should live so long and in such

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spirits -- at last. I am compelled to abandon my theories about alien abduction, concluding that I am Doris' child and I alone understand what this means. And this is a poem called:

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EBBETS FIELD, which is about the place where the Dodgers used to play in Brooklyn, some of us remember. Because I decided not to have sons or daughters, certain doors closed while others keep falling open behind me though I've tried

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to force them shut: like the gate into Ebbets Field where as a child, I saw the Dodgers play -- whatever it is that broke between me and my father stands holding that portal wide. Beyond it when I turn to look is the unattainable sweet green that

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makes me cry, so I try not to look, but up ahead, the doors are closed. And on the radio Peewee Reese's son is describing their annual trip to the Hall of Fame celebration where they share a hotel room lying in the dark while cool mist rolls in

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off Lake Glimmerglass. Morton Marcus: You know, I have been inundated so many times this year with people talking about their fathers, males talking about their fathers, and the only way they could relate

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to them was through baseball. Dick Lourie: Mhm. Morton Marcus: And about half of these people, writers, talk about Ebbets Field, and that is what they remember: their father

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teaching them how to fill in the scorecard, and everything like that. Literally, it must be around twelve different pieces of writing, pieces of radio that I've heard this year on that subject. I wonder how old are you, Dick?

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Dick Lourie: Fifty-seven. Morton Marcus: Okay, obviously, if you went to Ebbets Field, that's fine. Dick Lourie: Yes.

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Morton Marcus: It was a time that when I was there, too, though I didn't have a father so I just was out of that kind of thing. But it is fascinating that I'm almost thinking now of trying to do an anthology of "Man to Man: Ebbets Field

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Remembered." [Chuckles] Dick Lourie: Not a bad idea. I guess it says something about where writers come from, and they come from Brooklyn. Morton Marcus: Oh, okay. Yeah, there's that play we can do on

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"come from," but that's all right, Brooklyn is everywhere. Brooklyn is a microcosm. Yep, well, I have some great memories from back then, and obviously you're a Brooklynite? Dick Lourie: Well, not exactly. I- my family came from there but

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I was born in New Jersey, pretty close to the, very close to the New York side. I used to go all the time into Brooklyn. Morton Marcus: You know the rest of the family in Brooklyn? Dick Lourie: I had my grandparents in Brooklyn.

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Morton Marcus: And Lourie actually is a Russian name? Dick Lourie: Lourie? Yeah, it is a Russian name. It's a Spanish-Jewish from the 14th century, probably. And then- Morton Marcus: Elaine looked up "Russia," she says, "Oh, I

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didn't know that." Yep. Well, I'm going to get on some other stuff during the second part of the program, but let's just ask a very simple question, you know, why do you write poetry and what is the vision you come out of in writing poetry?

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Dick Lourie: I started as a musician, but I soon realized there was no money in it, so I decided to go into poetry. Morton Marcus: Because there's so much money in it, right? Dick Lourie: Yeah. [Laughter]

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Morton Marcus: You're gonna be my accountant, Dick, I can see that right now. Dick Lourie: Maybe I miscalculated here, something went wrong. When I write poetry, you know, there's- once I

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decided to try it, you know, and I liked it, I mean, it's a combination of feeling like it's something that I can do well, and feeling of responsibility in a way. I mean, it's really true about the, you know, what Shelley said about the poets,

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you know, as the unacknowledged legislators. There's just, you know, there's a certain- what a poem does is it, you know, to the best of the poet's ability, it really says something as true as I can say it, you know. It's not writing an essay, and it's

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not painting a picture, it's something else, you know, it's some kind of construction of language which really conveys something that I both think and feel is true. And now, that just seems to me to be a very important thing to do. I mean, I

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work with kids sometimes and I encourage that in kids, the vision, you know, what kind of vision I envision of the world or something like that. I mean, it must be the same for any artist, but for me as a poet, I often feel like there's nothing

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that might not turn into a poem, you know, things that I hear on the radio, which I referred to just in one recent- the Ebbets Field poem, you know. Things that I see, things that I read, things that people say, a lot of stuff that people say that comes

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out in a poem, I mean, almost anything. So I think a poet's or an artist's vision of the world is really that anything that's out there can have greater meaning. You know, anything that's out there can have a kind of symbolic or poetic meaning,

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so I'm sort of always aware of that; I think that's the way artists are. Morton Marcus: Great, that's a great answer. We are talking to Dick Lourie here. Dick is from Massachusetts. Now, he works for

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the University of Massachusetts Press as an editor. Dick Lourie: Well, not for the press, but for the for the University's Publications Office, yeah. Unknown: [Music]

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Morton Marcus: And this is Mort Marcus again and before we go back to Dick Lourie, with music that does not exactly match the reading that we've been hearing, I just grabbed something very quickly. I do have some announcements and they're both

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actually from the National Writers Union. First of all, there will be reading on November 9th at 8pm at the Pope Gallery of the National Writers Union poetry group, which includes some poets you've heard on this program before who are

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really marvelous, that's Bernice Renwick, David Thorne, Philip Wagner, Donna Longo Stein, Bonnie Shell, Dan Phillips, Mike West, and Joan Zimmerman. And in fact Joan of course has been a host of the Poetry Show. So that is November 9th at 8pm at the

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Pope Gallery, which is in Downtown Santa Cruz, a marvelous space for reading and a marvelous gallery that everyone should get to know and patronize. Then the very next night on November 10th, at 7:30pm at the Thunderbird

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Bookstore in The Barnyard at Carmel and there is an admission price, David Alpaugh and Ruth Daigon will read their poetry. David Alpaugh's full length collection of poems is, "Counterpoint," and received the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize

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which included publication by Storyline Press, a press that was started actually right here in Santa Cruz and now is up in Oregon. And Ruth Daigon, as many of you may know, her collection of poetry, "Between One Future and the Next," is an excellent

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volume but she is also the editor of Poets On which she continues to edit from Marin County now. Again, that is the 10th of November 7:30pm, down at the Thunderbird Bookstore, located in The Barnyard at Carmel, there is an admission

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price. And I want to thank everyone out there for their marvelous enthusiasm during pitch night here, their great support of the Poetry Show, and we are very, very pleased and happy and it

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certainly gives us confidence to go on and bring you the poets live and the recorded readings that we do. And we just hope that you will continue to stay with us and we hope that we continue to enrich you with the poetry we bring your way.

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Now, as you also know, longtime programmer and host of Saturday's Child and Castle Cottage, Joanne King died Wednesday night with loved ones by her side, she was fifty-nine years old. Joanne was the producer of Saturday morning

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children's programming on KUSP. Throughout her work on radio, Joanne strove to stimulate and expand the cultural horizons of young people and their families. She taught children's literature courses at Cabrillo College and Monterey Peninsula College and

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maintained involvement in Area Arts Organizations which presented- presented programs from poetry to music. Her positive energy and work will be missed throughout the Central Coast region. KUSP will carry on Joanne's work in quality

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children programming and will maintain the Castle Cottage program with several hosts. A memorial service will be at 2pm Saturday, November 11th at Cabrillo College theater. The celebration of literature, music, and poetry will be open

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to all. Children are encouraged to come to their families. A fund has been established to pay Joanne King's final medical expenses, donations may be sent to the King family and I will read this address twice: The King family at 125 Woods Street,

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125 Woods Street, Santa Cruz, California at 95062. You people, and especially your parents and your children who have grown up with Joanne on the station, again, the memorial service will be at 2pm, Saturday, November the 11th at the Cabrillo College

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theatre. Joanne really was a wonderful person to work with and to know and it is a great tragedy because she was just opening, as many of you know, her Cultural Center which she had been wanting to do for years when the cancer struck her.

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So, we will continue now with our program and our interview with Dick Lourie who is here from the East Coast. He is now living in the Boston area and working for the University of Massachusetts Publications. But Dick, you're also, and have been

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for thirty-five years, one of the editors of both the press and the magazine by the name of Hanging Loose, and you have been working with the same people for- my ear thing is going off. You've been working with the same people for more than thirty

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years. I mean- yeah, so give us the names of those other people, they're poets who, well, people may know out there. Dick Lourie: The the magazine was started in 1966, it was actually started by- it was the successor to another magazine

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called "Things," which ran for about three issues which was started by Ron Schreiber and Emma Jarrett. I joined Ron Schreiber and Emma Jarrett in turning "Things" over into "Hanging Loose" magazine. We were joined shortly after that

00:33:38.040 - 00:33:57.420

by Robert Hershon, and fifteen years later by Mark Pawlak. And Ron and Mark and Bob and I now run the magazine, there's four of us retired, so we're still doing it. Morton Marcus: Now, do you guys all get along all the time?

00:33:59.370 - 00:34:14.490

Dick Lourie: Just like family. Morton Marcus: Good diplomatic answer. Dick Lourie: So, yeah, I mean, we do, I mean, you know, we argue, but we have mutual respect and we manage to keep

00:34:14.490 - 00:34:19.280

going. Morton Marcus: There are similarities in your works also. Morton Marcus: Oh yeah, I mean, there's definitely commitment to Dick Lourie: Oh, yeah?

00:34:20.800 - 00:34:46.150

sort of a zany quality, and real y a sense of the spoken languag Dick Lourie: There's a sense of spoken language, and in fact, one of the things that's evolved for the magazine is that the way we accept or reject poems for the magazine, we send around a

00:34:46.150 - 00:35:04.570

batch of poems that someone has sent us, we send it by mail to each other, and everyone votes yes, no, or maybe on a given poem, and we keep track of that with a sheet of paper. Then, we have a meeting every three months, and at the meeting, we

00:35:04.570 - 00:35:18.280

take all these manuscripts and we put them in the middle of the table. And we go around, we read them out loud one by one. The manuscripts that have all these votes on them -- yes, no, or maybe. But while we're sitting around the table reading, we

00:35:18.280 - 00:35:39.250

disregard previous votes and we vote all over again, just on the basis of what we hear as it's read out loud, so yes, you're very perceptive about that. I think part of what we do at Hanging Loose is this commitment to poetry that's very alive when

00:35:39.250 - 00:35:50.800

it's spoken. Morton Marcus: Robert Hershon, who I've been corresponding with, he uses the word lively again and again. And it is really amazing how that magazine, which I also subscrib

00:35:50.800 - 00:36:09.340

to, I mean, it's lively, it is alive and a tremendous variety in what you publish and the voices and concerns in there. And it's delightful to see a magazine after thirty-five years, you know, keep its vitality like that.

00:36:09.000 - 00:36:19.830

Dick Lourie: That's good to hear. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're trying to do. And by- while we're on the subject, we're always looking for new people, you know, anybody out there, by all means, send us some work.

00:36:19.870 - 00:36:37.620

Morton Marcus: If you want to just give the address. Dick Lourie: Sure, Hanging Loose is at 231 Wyckoff, W-Y-C-K-O-F-F Street, Brooklyn, New Yor 11217. You know, sent four o five poems, cover letter, jus thge usual stuff, send stori

00:36:37.620 - 00:36:54.540

s, we publish fiction. We ave a special section of each ssue, every issue of the magaz ne, a special section set asi e for work by high schoo aged writers. And, in fact, we've published two anthologies of work that's originally been i

00:36:54.540 - 00:37:08.200

the magazine by high school wr ters, and we get terrific high chool age writers. So anybo y out there who's that age, by ll means, send us stuff. Morton Marcus: Why a poetry editor, with everything that

00:37:08.200 - 00:37:24.040

you're doing -- the music, the poetry, your obviously regular job -- why do you continue to be a poetry editor? Dick Lourie: Well, I'm not sure if it was the kind of thing where a poetry editor was, you know, where I worked on one

00:37:24.040 - 00:37:39.220

magazine, and then I went to work on another one and work on another one, I'm not sure that I would keep it up. I mean, this is as you said before, Morton, is something we've been doing for thirty years; it's part of my life. And there is something

00:37:39.220 - 00:37:56.170

very, very fulfilling in being able to, I mean, it's not only your own writing, but being able to have something where you can say this is the kind of writing that I like, you know.This is the kind of writing that I think is important and I'm going to

00:37:56.170 - 00:38:07.060

put it out there for other people to read, both in the in the magazine and in the books, you know. It's a good, it's a good feeling to be able to say that and to be able to do it, I mean, really. And then of course, there's the money, I

00:38:07.060 - 00:38:19.320

mean we're all tremendously rich from this. Morton Marcus: But I mean, when I read the catalog, I mean, I was amazed. How many books do you have out there now? Dick Lourie: I think we have probably about sixty titles,

00:38:19.410 - 00:38:33.720

that is to say in addition to the magazine we've put out, somewhere between sixty and seventy books. Another thing, of course it's a small press, you know, we put out seven hundred or a thousand at a time, it's the usual small press run, but

00:38:33.900 - 00:38:46.740

in the years that we've been publishing books, we don't let books go out of print, Hanging Loose titles stay in print and so- Morton Marcus: Abby Bogomolny has just come in, a fellow New

00:38:46.740 - 00:38:54.270

Yorker, who's- Dick Lourie: I can tell. Morton Marcus: -who is next. So she's lit up, I saw her standing out there saying, "I know those accents, I know those

00:38:54.270 - 00:39:12.060

references." How are you doin, Abby? Well, while we're doing, what do you got on tonight? I might as well do the promo right now. Okay, that's Dean Meredith, director of the Santa Cruz

00:39:12.060 - 00:39:27.950

Ethnic Arts Network will be in and the program you're doing tonight's named? Radio Q. Okay and what is Radio Q, Abby? Abby Bogomolny: It's transgendered radio [inaudible] Morton Marcus: Say that right here? Okay.

00:39:28.740 - 00:39:43.770

Abby Bogomolny: Okay, well, we cover the whole gay and lesbian spectrum, being bisexual and transgendered, for the Monterey Bay. Also this evening, we have Diane Grooms, and Lindsey Johnson, and Sally Schwartz from Woman Care and they will be

00:39:43.770 - 00:39:57.540

talking about the upcoming benefit "Dance for Inspiration." It's a benefit for breast cancer awareness. Morton Marcus: Thank you, Abby, and so that's my promo for 10 o'clock and now back to Dick Lourie, that gives him a chance

00:39:57.540 - 00:40:13.500

to take a break. Dick, how about reading us more poems, okay? Your choice: personal, interpersonal, political-personal, personal-political- Dick Lourie: Tragical. historical, pastoral, musical.

00:40:13.650 - 00:40:20.700

Morton Marcus: We got it. Dick Lourie: Here's one, I mean actually something else we were talking about earlier. This is called: BAGGAGE

00:40:22.620 - 00:40:43.920

When I think of myself in my mother's body, I imagine some kind of bag with me inside it. When my friends tease me, it's often about my suitcases, brief cases, shopping bags, shoulder bags, gym bags, milk crates, backpacks, and instrument cases.

00:40:45.210 - 00:41:02.910

I am the man of a thousand containers, born from the child with his baggage always packed to travel between divorced parents, famous for my car's back seat, my basement, my study, the clutter I try to stuff everywhere so I can just

00:41:02.910 - 00:41:23.490

have it with me and not be forced to choose what of my past it might be safe to throw away. Stop me before I pack my things again, bringing them out to the car each morning on safari to the office. Keep me from showing up at band rehearsal with my

00:41:23.490 - 00:41:43.440

luggage carrier, tape recorder, wireless mic and attachments, extra long cables, spare amplifier, just in case -- they tell me I'm only the sax player, why do I have more stuff than ten drummers? And why do my weekend trips resemble

00:41:43.470 - 00:42:03.570

diasporas, vast tribal migrations, why indeed, or as Doctor Kriegsfeld great wise-ass of therapists used to say, "who should we ask?" How do you expect me to choose which parent to keep, what thing I won't need on my next trip? I can't do that

00:42:03.570 - 00:42:17.060

any more than I could decide to just throw it all away and climb back into the bag. Morton Marcus: Great. You know, we've got some of these tapes, do you want to play one of these?

00:42:17.150 - 00:42:29.400

Dick Lourie: Well, we could try it as an experiment here. Let's see what happens. Morton Marcus: We've got the blues, yeah. We got "A Girl Has To." Now which one do you want to do, and do you want to read

00:42:29.400 - 00:42:35.040

along with this? What- what are we gonna do? Dick Lourie: Yeah, I think what we're going to try to do is- let me just find the script. Morton Marcus: Sure.

00:42:35.000 - 00:42:53.870

Dick Lourie: What we're going to try to do is, we're going to tr to play the tape and then we'r going to try to have me do th poem along with the tape, and t intervals in the poem I wil Morton Marcus: I hope so. I don't know if the sax- if we're

00:42:46.430 - 00:42:58.730

also play the sax. Sounds easy Do you think it'll work set up to. You're going to have to play the sax into the mic. Dick Lourie: Okay. Morton Marcus: Can we do that?

00:42:58.940 - 00:43:11.960

Dick Lourie: We can do that. Morton Marcus: Choose which one, blues or "The Girl Has To." Dick Lourie: The Blues in F, this is a commercial "music minus one" tape as they call it where you've just got the rhythm

00:43:11.960 - 00:43:21.440

tracks on the tape. Morton Marcus: Okay, you're going to have to keep your headphones on, so that you can hear because we're not gonna hear it in the studio.

00:43:21.500 - 00:43:25.070

Dick Lourie: Right. Morton Marcus: So- Dick Lourie: We're not going to hear the tape in the studio? Morton Marcus: No.

00:43:25.430 - 00:43:29.480

Dick Lourie: Oh, but I'll hear it in the headphones? Morton Marcus: In the headphones. Dick Lourie: Okay. Morton Marcus: This is an experiment. This is experimental

00:43:29.480 - 00:43:43.100

radio only on KUSP. Dick Lourie: And I'll just say something about the title of the poem to get my sax here. Morton Marcus: Abby, can you tilt the mic maybe? So, again

00:43:43.100 - 00:44:06.770

I'm going to probably have to take the step. Dick Lourie: Let's try this here. Morton Marcus: Okay, now the only trick is if you have been doing your yoga lately-

00:44:07.130 - 00:44:24.230

Dick Lourie: Yeah because I'm going to speak into the- I'm going to talk into the mic. Okay, now we've got the mic up a little bit. The poem is called, "Twelve Bar Blues," and actually, the poem is about the blues, which is why I decided to

00:44:24.230 - 00:44:37.180

put it to this music. Morton Marcus: You know, I think we can lift that a little more and then you won't have to bend that far. And then, you know, and then- then you can just lean down but not so much, and I'm

00:44:37.180 - 00:44:51.160

going to control the volume here. Dick Lourie: Okay, so the poem- there's some blues lyrics in the poem and the blues lyrics are taken from a Jimmy Lewis song called, "How Long Is A Heartache Supposed To Last?"

00:44:51.970 - 00:45:02.450

Morton Marcus: Are you ready? Dick Lourie: The poem is called: TWELVE BAR BLUES. I'm ready. Morton Marcus: Okay, I'm going to run the tape. Give me

00:45:02.450 - 00:46:53.270

cassette two here. Okay, cassette two is on, here we go. Dick Lourie: Each verse of the blues tells a story in three parts: a proposition is made then repeated and then we're told its outcome. Or you could say each verse tells a story

00:46:53.690 - 00:47:19.700

about birth: father, mother, and then child, told over and over very slowly. Each verse of the blues tells a story in three parts: a proposition is made then repeated and then we're told its outcome. Or you could say each verse tells a story

00:47:19.880 - 00:47:47.210

about birth: father, mother, and then child, told over and over very slowly. One, we start to play someone sings a line, maybe, "Bach and Basie used to be my thing," what do you mean, father? But he won't answer, we have to wait for our mother to

00:47:47.840 - 00:48:13.670

speak. Two, "let me tell you people," the verse goes on, "Bach and Basie used to be my thing." We're more anxious now. Mother, please explain, but it's too late, a child is coming soon and- Three, so the singer moans, "but since that woman left me,

00:48:13.850 - 00:49:29.810

all I listened to is BB King." The story's told, the child is delivered, but suddenly what should be the final chord is taking us to another verse. [Plays the saxophone]

00:49:47.990 - 00:50:16.700

The music has brought us around again to the next retelling. We are so tired, always trying to get it right but each time the child seems to slip away: we're afraid of losing it. We keep on playing till we're exhausted and they turn out the lights. The

00:50:16.700 - 00:50:38.030

singer leaves the stage, we put away our instruments, happy we tried and sad that we failed, but how close we came this time to finding a home for that blues child so far out there drifting and drifting on the blue night waves.

00:50:39.530 - 00:50:56.180

Morton Marcus: A technological first, here at KUSP. That was the live voice of Dick Lourie, the live saxophone of Dick Lourie, all recorded on one microphone as he stood on his head, and then balanced on his left hand.

00:50:56.180 - 00:51:04.820

Dick Lourie: Yes. Morton Marcus: And who was the group, tell us who the group was on tape? We were doing this with a group on tape. Dick Lourie: The group on tape was- this is a commercially-sold

00:51:04.820 - 00:51:22.430

record in a series which I don't remember the name of the group, but it allows you, as a solo musician, to play your solo along with the background music. Yeah, they used to call it "music minus one," and now they're called karaoke, this is

00:51:22.430 - 00:51:32.540

just the same thing for blues. Morton Marcus: Well, I'll tell you in my earphones and looking at the dial here, I was jocking the sound up and down, and it looks like we really got it so-

00:51:32.540 - 00:51:44.570

Dick Lourie: Well, good. Morton Marcus: Let's hope we didn't waste the efforts. Anyway, we are talking with Dick Lourie from Massachusetts who is touring. Obviously you can tell, he puts on quite a reading with

00:51:44.570 - 00:51:54.500

a lot of music, a lot of humor, and a lot of very poignant personal and political poems. Why don't you read us a couple more, Dick. Dick Lourie: Okay.

00:51:54.500 - 00:52:07.570

Morton Marcus: Believe it or not, this hour has just about disappeared. Dick Lourie: This poem I like because it's new, I always like the new ones. It also sort of- what we were talking about at

00:52:07.570 - 00:52:25.090

the very beginning about my style. After I wrote this poem I realized that it does seem to have, it seems to be pretty characteristic of the style, it's a sonnet and it's actually written in two, seven line halves, and each one somehow

00:52:25.090 - 00:52:40.840

turned out to be a single sentence. It's called, "The Sonnet: They came for the Indians, and I said, that's not me." I think that's [unidentified] Niemöller quote, or paraphrased. Some people, I think, have found this poem

00:52:40.870 - 00:52:52.540

offensive, and that's good, that's the way it's supposed to be. Morton Marcus: And I have warned the listening audience out there that some of this language may be a little too radical.

00:52:53.050 - 00:53:03.570

Dick Lourie: Well, here it is: SONNET: THEY CAME FOR THE INDIANS, AND I SAID, THAT'S NOT ME When the 1995 World Series pitted "Braves" against

00:53:03.630 - 00:53:25.560

"Indians" the great excitement of Native Americans, seeing their cultures celebrated on national TV with such colorful imagery, soon led other ethnic groups to demand that some teams be renamed for them. So it was that during the next football

00:53:25.650 - 00:53:46.830

season, the Washington Guinea-Wops faced the Green Bay Yids with their mascot, Kikey, who does the comic Jewish accent wrapped in a green and white prayer shawl, which for laughs, he dips into the Gatorade moaning, "Oy veh ist mir," after

00:53:46.830 - 00:54:08.450

every touchdown. Morton Marcus: Okay, and how about one more to- Dick Lourie: How about one more poem to end the show? Okay, well, this is a favorite poem of mine called:

00:54:08.480 - 00:54:25.760

SPRING "The Morris dancers are at it again," I said to my wife who was stretched out on the couch in her attractive black tights and the sky-blue sweater (color of her eyes). Reading the Boston

00:54:25.760 - 00:54:42.110

Globe in which looking over her shoulder I saw the headline about the Rhode Island guys up at dawn yesterday to celebrate the first day of spring in the customary fashion of Morris dancers while she and I marked the same occasion with a long

00:54:42.110 - 00:55:00.920

slow walk on the beach at Rockport where we had first decided almost fifteen years ago to get married. "Ah, synchronicity!" I thought, heading upstairs to my desk, a glass of red wine, an empty notebook page because I had

00:55:00.920 - 00:55:21.170

suddenly recognized my remark about the dancers as an exact ten-syllable line, the line I have been using for just now thirty years since my friend Mitch suggested I try it and out came my first syllabic poem: sad young man on a New York City

00:55:21.170 - 00:55:40.220

beach -- that was long ago and some years before I met my wife and began seeing how essential it is to celebrate spring. Morton Marcus: It's great and that's a great goodbye to Dick Lourie. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:55:40.250 - 00:55:42.860

Dick Lourie: I really appreciate it. Morton Marcus: It was- Dick Lourie: I enjoyed it. Morton Marcus: Good.

00:55:43.160 - 00:55:56.090

Dick Lourie: A technological miracle, let me add. Morton Marcus: Let's hope that it came out. That was Dick Lourie visiting us some from the East Coast. We hope that he will be seeing us again real soon. And this is Mort Marcus now,

00:55:56.090 - 00:56:12.650

saying next week I believe Patrice will be with you, and reminding you that on November 11th at 2pm, Saturday, at the Cabrillo College Theatre, there will be memorial services for Joanne King, all you people who have enjoyed her children show

00:56:12.650 - 00:56:33.560

throughout the years. Stay tuned to Radio Q, which is the gay, lesbian, bisexual report program with Abby Bogomolny, and I sign off with again this very inappropriate music, which is the sacred music of Johannes Brahms. Oh, and maybe we can

00:56:34.130 - 00:56:46.550

sign off with something much more appropriate here. And here we go, we are going to do "Th Girl Has To," s Dick Lourie: This is the G-Clefs again. Morton Marcus: And this is the G-Clefs and we sign off and I'll

00:56:46.550 - 00:56:48.200

see you in three weeks.