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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody, this is Morton Marcus and this is The Poetry Show. And tonight a very special show with a poet by the name of Ellery Akers, who has just come out with a book from Wesleyan Press called "Knocking on the Earth,"

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and she has won a number of awards before this book ever came out. Parts of the book won awards from the Poetry Society of America, the John Masefield award in 1980, in 1984, and the Gordon Barber award in 1985, she received an Academy of American

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Poets Award in 1974. She will be our guest tonight- tonight on The Poetry Show. Ellery Akers reading from her new book and talking to us. "Knocking on the Earth." Well, good evening, Ellery.

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Ellery Akers: Hi Mort. Morton Marcus: It's a pleasure to have you on the show, Ellery and I, as you can tell from her ‘‘Hi Mort‘‘ we are old friends. And it is a joy to have you here. I knew- how many years ago

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was it when you were teaching at Cabrillo in Santa Cruz? Ellery Akers: About four years ago I guess. Morton Marcus: And you are a person who has elicited such responses from W.S Merwin. As he says, ‘‘These poems embody a

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quest for directness and for a lost sense of the living world, and a way of speaking for that, a quest for clarity of life and language. These are poems of discovery.‘‘ That's quite a statement coming from him. I consider him the prince of

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American poets and a person who really has tried to do that very thing in his own poems. Why don't you tell us how you came to not only be here, but to write poetry? What-, tell us something about your youth and how it was spent?

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Ellery Akers: Well, actually, I started out writing prose; I think a lot of poets work that way. But I became very interested in nature, and I'm a naturalist and I work out-of-doors a lot. And sometimes I can take a walk and

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I really feel that the things of the world are kind of calling to me in some way, and almost like asking me to speak for them and to be their voice. And something about that, I think, made me a poet rather than a prose writer. I somehow just wasn't quite

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interested in novels, but give me a rock and I want to know what it's saying or what it's thinking somehow. And so I started really writing through my love of nature, I think. Morton Marcus: Where did you spend your time, your early

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years? Ellery Akers: Well, I actually grew up in New York, and I'll read a poem tonight from that experience. It- even as a child, I knew this was not where I wanted to be, in New York City.

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And I've been in California now for about 20 years. And- Morton Marcus: And before that, you were in New Zealand. Ellery Akers: Yes, I spent a lot of time as a teenager in New Zealand, and I even was in the New Zealand repertory company

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and tried to change my accent so that I would match the rest of the company. And I loved that there, too. Morton Marcus: So, did you live in one of the cities or did you live in the country?

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Ellery Akers: I lived in Wellington, but Wellington is a very unpolluted city, is right near all these hiking trails so I kind of did a lot of that then. Morton Marcus: Great. Well, I don't know whether to ask you

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this or not. Would you like to start with the New York poem? Ellery Akers: Sure, I will start from where I started from. Morton Marcus: Okay. Ellery Akers: And this is a poem about childhood, it's a prose

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poem. It's called ‘‘Snow, New York.‘‘ SNOW, NEW YORK In the park, between the brackets of oaks are the other Ellery, that interests me,; as I'm thinking about the book now,

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families, the tiny figures of other children, their mittens hang down like two dark spots. From here, I can see sleds and vents that hiss up steam and delivery boys wheeling on their bikes with the big handlebars. A d there is the place when I wa

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k home from school that the m d woman shouts at me, hunker d over her paper bags filling u with snow as I hold on tightl to my project: the flags of al nations, my favorite Brazil with its blue belt and pellets of stars. And then on to dancing

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school, the cloakroom with its old steel hangers and velvet oats dusted with snow. Then I m walking up and down the ining room, memorizing The Wars f the Roses, and the woman cross the way is in her itchen. Through the snow, I can

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ee her hands move, she is ouching a fish. I declaim to he painted screens, to the Chrysler Building and its swarm f lights that revolve and prick ut the names of cars to the peckled peafowl on the walls, ouching each other over and

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ver. But my mother never ouches us. It is 1956, radiators are spurting, Buicks are burie up to their hoods, snow on m glove, snow stinging my tongu , and the absence now of traffi , the quiet. Snow lobbying agai st the glass as the heat hisses

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that is the only poem really in which snow appears, isn't it? p in the silence and the wom n across the way is slowly bei g blotted out. And so are t e spinning pipes on the roof, nd the vowels, and the tubs of ash sitting in the doorways, shi

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ts clotted to the line froz n solid and heaped with snow. A d I am drawn again and again o the window while pigeons cro n unhappily from the eaves. A d perhaps it is snow that fal s softly and quietly between y mother and father, as they s

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t in the living room and h whacks open the paper with flat of his hand and reads, a my mother murmurs from time t time in her sorrowful, tight voice that goes on falling and falling, burying everything with it.

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Yeah, I think so. Morton Marcus: And of course, it becomes very symbolic of separation, and very symbolic of distancing people, whereas the rest of the book- except for the letters, which try to do that.

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The letters, which I'm sure you'll get to, they try to bring people together, and nature is much more frequent and much more alive in the- in the book. In fact, one thing that I find in the book is that nature is is preeminent. And then human

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relations go on within that environment, but they're much, much smaller and more abstract than the actual nature itself. Would you agree to that? Ellery Akers: Yeah, I think that's true. I'm just really-

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nature is my subject a lot I think. I'm just really drawn to it. Morton Marcus: Well, that's a very interesting poem and certainly from that sense of separation and New York. By the

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way, it's a great avocation of New York in the snow, which I remember from years and years and years of living there. So it is interesting where that turned in that last, I guess you'd call them paragraphs, it's a prose poem. It's very interesting what

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happens there. And up to that point, I recognize being a boy at school, the same- the same streets. Yeah, anyway, it's just really wonderful. Well, I'm for you reading anything you'd like to- to read. Certainly the first poem is a beautiful poem.

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Ellery Akers: Yeah, I think I'll read that's an even more typical poem. As a poet, I'm kind of a namer and I'm really interested in the names of, you know, rocks and the names of minerals. And this is a poem that has a lot of that and it's also about the

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mystery of night. I'm very interested in night. I write a lot of about night. And it set in the Sierra Foothills in Volcano on Route 88, a wonderful little town. Morton Marcus: Now, let me get to all of these names that you

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give, they're actually- Are they actually the names of the streets and the places? Ellery Akers: Oh, yes, the names that are in this poem are all the street names in Volcano, it's an all-immigrant town, and

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they have these incredible, heartbreaking names and I couldn't resist them for one thing. Okay. It's called: NIGHT – VOLCANO, CALIFORNI I have been walking for hours on a street called Consolation,

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near Jerome, Immigrant, National, past lit houses with orchards and hoses, where meals are being laid. And in the yellow squares, the figures waiver. Well out here, I realize once again, I am alone. Tonight, I don't mind so much. A porch

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light cuts into the darkness like steam and falls oddly, on an aluminum shed, a red roof suddenly pale, a toolbox, a child's bicycle. I think of my friends lifting me across the years, while the plow and the archer follow each other at

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exactly the same distance every night. And the swan floats and points its long neck, and the oaks drowse, valleys in blues. All day I have been reading about the invisible world, the one that's always trying to reach us. What if we could hear

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the small round O's of dirt, the chant of stars and plants, carbon and sulfur calling to each other innumerable to innumerable, a throat at every blade of grass. A dog walks up immigrant, smelling his way home, sniffs me, barks. And it

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seems to me now that the night is a sea, is a mouth full of fish, full of trees, viburnum smelling like turpentine, catalpas thrashing into the wind with their cargo of pods and stars. And I don't miss the day, though the pole I'm holding in

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my hand has turned cold and black as a fossil, and the road seems packed with bones. And now something rises, something has been released, has been waiting, wants to breathe. There is no stopping it, it rinses the streets of Volcano, past the

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rock shop where geodes cool, and feldspar and mica fills the cuff of a trouser leg in a trench, in a silo. Out to the field where crickets clack their legs in the warm, damp hay, and the stubs of sneezeweed, and silverweed call to the sky, or so I think. A man

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coughs, an engine sputters and dies down. I turn down Immigrant. I can hardly see Jerome. Night scours the road of detail, of ordinary gravel, and cancels everything but form so that the soles of trees are unlocked and they pour.

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Morton Marcus: Very, very nice indeed. I don't mean to be dictating poems, why don't you read something that you want to? Ellery Akers: Okay. Morton Marcus: And certainly talk about them, you know.

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Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: By the way, let me say something to you people who've just tuned in, we are speaking to the award winning poet Ellery Akers, who has just come out with a book called

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"Knocking on Earth," which I know is on sale at Plaza Books, and where else? Ellery Akers: Bookshop Santa Cruz Morton Marcus: Bookshop Santa Cruz. Ellery Akers, A-k-e-r-s.

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The book is called "Knocking on the Earth." And we'll be talking to Ellery for the next 45 minutes. Ellery Akers: Great. Well, I thought maybe I'd read some family poems. I've been really inspired by your book and how

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you managed to write about your family. And this one is for my grandmother, and it's not in the book, but I was very close to her, closer than to my mother, and she was very fat, and very warm, and a real life force, and I still miss her. It's called:

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MISSING MY GRANDMOTHER The last time I spoke to you, your voice was suddenly old and indistinct. As if you were listening to instructions from the grass. It's been 14 years, every night the stars revolve

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with their pure heat. Bees pollinated the wreath on your coffin, flying from pistil to pistil as it sank. When I think of you staring up through the gravel, through the embossed steel roses, please, just one more time, I want to say,

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"Crossover." I want to strike the wings from your back or whatever is keeping you. I know my mother opened her legs in the hospital. But I was your child, heaving my arms around your enormous body. A chain of bone, a heap of alkali.

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Morton Marcus: Very nice, obviously a new poem. Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Great. Very, very nice stuff. Ellery Akers: It's a- I guess nature in my work is always kind

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of a life force. And this actually happened at my grandmother's funeral, those bees were pollinating the flowers on her coffin seemed like a real signal. Well, I thought I'd read another family poem and this is a prose poem

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about my relatives in Texas. And it's called: TEXAS NURSING HOME, a visit from her son and seven daughters. And I'll try to read it with a Texas accent. But anybody who is from Texas will know that I'm just faking it, really.

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Mama lay in the bed, looking small and frail. By her side was an open bible, and the brittle paper kept making whispering noises in the wind while the curtains blew in and out, and they could all hear the jets of the sprinkler spurting ''phut,

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phut'' onto the dry grass and the ''cooroo, cooroo'' of the ground doves as they scratched in the pokeweed and gravel. Evelyn's husband, Wendell, had decided not to come into Mama's room, as the room was small, and he wasn't family. So he sat

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outside on a small chair, and through the visit, they could all hear the clink of his cufflinks as he mopped his brow and his voice as he chatted with the nurses. ‘‘Well, now, that's a heavy load.‘‘ The trouble was, no one knew how to begin to say

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what they wanted to say to mama. And so they all stood around, the seven sisters with their hats, and suits, and dresses, clutching their purses and handkerchiefs, their stockings whizzing against each other as they shifted from foot to foot.

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When Tony looming over the bed in his huge blue suit, sat down and pressed her hand, thin and dry as a leaf between his two large ones. ‘‘How are you, mama?‘‘ And she, as if we called from some distant place, "I‘m alright.‘‘ "Cooroo, cooroo" the

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ground doves kept up their noise outside the window, picking up pieces of tansy, goosefoot, and crabgrass. A plane droned across the sky, and a radio blared and quieted as the door opened and closed. ‘‘Why, Tony,‘‘ she said. She lifted her hand so slowly

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they all watched it rise, touched his hair, let it float back down to the sheet. ‘‘Why, Tony? Your hair, your hair is gray.‘‘ ‘‘I'm fifty mama, fifty,‘‘ he said, catching her hand, while behind him the sisters swayed and shifted in

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the room as if a breeze had passed through a fleet of sailboats and left them gently bobbing on the water. Someone she didn't remember was holding out a flower, a tall blonde girl. Well, they were all tall, the [unidentified]. ‘‘It's Ellen

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Mama, you know, Tony's child. She brought you a flower‘‘. It was a wilted Morning Glory, the head flopping down, undignified. She rallied. ‘‘Put it out there.‘‘ ‘‘What mama?‘‘ ‘‘Put it out there in the field and let it grow.‘‘

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, the- that poem, by the way, for the listeners, is in the book. Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Very, very powerful. We said that Merwin

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had, you know written this- some of these words for you. But have you ever read his family poems? Ellery Akers: Yeah, they're very moving. Morton Marcus: Very good poems.

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Morton Marcus: One of them is called ‘‘The Drunk in the Ellery Akers: Yeah. Furnace‘‘ Ellery Akers: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Excellent, excellent poem. Ellery Akers: I love that one. Morton Marcus: I would have- had wished that he would have done more on it. But he was moving on to the moving targets and-

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Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: -a new approach. Ellery Akers: Yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: Okay, Ellery I let you continue.

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Ellery Akers: Well, I have one, which is sort of about cheering myself up. It's called “The Case for Solace.“ And there is a kind of word that needs explaining in here, and that's the word “holdfast“ and a holdfast is the root of a seaweed and it often

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anchors the seaweed to the sea bottom by wrapping around a stone and the kelp's floating on top of the ocean, and the holdfast is way down there at the bottom of the ocean. THE CASE FOR SOLACE

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I go down to the beach with its lengths of kelp, one with a holdfast clutching a pebble. “It doesn't matter how small it is,“ the harbormaster says, "it does the job." I don't miss you so much. I'm surprised. Maybe it's because the sky is always

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changing, cumulus to stratus, stratus to altostratus, altostratus to rain. At the Grebe Dive Shop, the black rubber suits and flippers smell pungent, and the divers advise against the tide. Shark stories and cases of beer. At night, I

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sleep calm hearing the cutters and scows, the moan of the buoys, and "put-put" of the huge rusted Ginza Star as it switches engines and enters the straight. Maybe it's the rain, it doesn't matter how small it is, or the swallows flying around my ankles

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in the cut grass, picking up bugs my feet release. On the cliffs, ailanthus and clover fall straight down to the water. It's summer, I forget what else should matter. Morton Marcus: And that's one of those poems that I was talking

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about before where, really, and it's- it's very- the touch is very light and very subtle as you talk about this within the first six lines, you say, “I don't miss you so much. I'm surprised,“ that is the only reference to another person.

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Ellery Akers: Uh huh. Morton Marcus: And what it does is it evokes and suggests a whole relationship that is now over. And then you go on with the nature.

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Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And you're trying to figure out why you are not surprised at your reaction? Ellery Akers: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: And then finally, the only thing that comes back to the gone partner is “I forget what else should matter,“ that just the continuance of nature is more important than any relationship.

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Ellery Akers: Yeah, I actually wrote that after breaking up with my boyfriend; it's one of those experiences you think is the end of the world. And then you realize, well, maybe it's not the end of the world.

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Morton Marcus: Because nature is going on Ellery Akers: Nature is going on and things keep going on. Morton Marcus: And that's the interesting way that you get human relationships into your poems.

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Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: That it's a nature dominance. Ellery Akers: That's interesting. Yeah, I think that's true. Well, I'll read maybe one more if we have-

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Morton Marcus: Before the break, okay. Ellery Akers: Yeah. This one is called “Alive with the Others.“ And it's again, it's about a lake in the Sierras I've camped at for some years, and and my feeling that everything in the

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world is alive and has some kind of consciousness, it's not just us. ALIVE WITH THE OTHERS Mist rises from the lake, one layer unpeeling at a time. And

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the lake speaks for the deep recesses of slag and rhyolite. Fish barge and prowl in these water. The old jawbone fish, mullets, lung fish with their fins borrowed from [unidentified] and files. Turtles with their snouts sprawl

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on a log, snakes [unidentified] each other in the water, and the brilliant thrushes spread into a leafy cluster. Trees, each with its neighbor, hear them, each to the other in the night. Beach, maple, elm, hickory, each with a different slap of leaf. The way

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my sister and I used to sing to each other, I under the coverlet, she behind the dark bolster. Beyond question, there is enough light. The rock is moving so slowly inside but it is moving.

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Morton Marcus: That really is lovely. That works almost like a ghazal without any beginning or end because it's just really couplets, the listener can hear that, it's couplets which really do not connect with each other. And they're just all of those

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things and how we are alive with others and other things. Ellery Akers: Yeah Morton Marcus: Just a sense of memory, and just beautiful set of images.

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Ellery Akers: Well also, I'm really interested in the sound of words and there's this "each" a lot, "each" and "beech." That kind of sound I was kind of like trying to almost rhyme through the poem.

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Morton Marcus: Very, very lovely, very nice poem. We are talking to Ellery Akers on the occasion of the publication of her book "Knocking on The Earth," and we will return after a small or short musical interlude and hear more of the

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poems and talk more with Ellery. This is Morton Marcus once more, and KUSP thanks Nicholas van Angle for providing a grant that helped make The Poetry Show, the last half hour possible. Nicholas van Angle is a real

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estate agent in Carmel. Thank you very much, Nicholas, really appreciate your donation. And we appreciate the donations of all those people who at the big push that we just did, supported not only The Poetry Show but KUSP. This is your station, we thank

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you so much for all of your support, and I hope you're enjoying the show tonight. The show tonight as we get into making our announcements is with Ellery Akers who is the author of the book "Knocking on the Earth," which has just come out.

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Ellery will be reading tomorrow, that is tomorrow night at Cabrillo College at 7:30 in the fireside- I'm sorry, she'll be reading on Thursday at Cabrillo College at 7:30 in the Fireside Lounge. That's Thursday for tonight's guest Ellery Akers,

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everyone is welcome, the reading is free. So 7:30 Thursday, I will announce that again. Other readings and events: Poetry Thursday, April 20, that is the same time that Ellery is reading, half an hour later, though at 8pm at the Porter

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College house at UCSC, Jim Barnes, Native American poet and editor of Chariton Review, author of several volumes, including "La Plata Cantata," new- new this year from Purdue University Press. Jim Barnes will be reading at the Porter

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College House UCSC, 8pm this Thursday, April 20. And let me alert you for a reading on April 28 at Louden Nelson Community Center presents the readings of Poetry and Prose featuring Lorraine Kolanovic, Harry Stall, and Myles Payne, that is Friday,

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April 28 at 7pm we will announce it again next week of course. It‘s at Louden Nelson Community Center 301 Center Street in Santa Cruz, the reading time begins at 7pm. So we are speaking tonight- but let me have one more announcement:

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Playhouse, Thursday night at 9pm, Radio Drama from National Public Radio, Ed Asner and Nan Martin as George and Myra Babbitt at an all-star Hollywood cast of more than 30 actors. Episode 26 this Thursday at 9pm: Mayra has returned from a long

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stay in New England, has made it difficult for Babbitt to get away for an evening with [unidentified] and the bunch and he hesitates to join [unidentified] in the Good Citizens League. Eyes are upon Babbitt, something's gotten into

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him, but nobody knows what. That is Playhouse, Thursday night 9pm Radio Drama from National Public Radio right here on KUSP. And we are here once more with Ellery Akers. And Ellery, we are just- I'd like to have you talk about anything you think is

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relevant or maybe even irrelevant. We're listening to your poems, they are poems filled with a wonder of nature and the continuous life that teams in nature, and goes on from one generation to another, one day to another.

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Ellery Akers: Yeah. And also, I think one thing that comes back in my work a lot is- is sort of working through loss and transcendence. In fact, one of the last words in the book is the word ‘‘hope,‘‘ I mean, it's not ‘‘the last word‘‘ but

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there's a sort of sense of that there's a working through things and coming out to more optimistic, you know, more hopeful ways of being. I thought maybe I'd read a longish poem, and it's called- it's about a job I had in Florida working

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with emotionally disturbed kids. And it really made an impression on me and it's called: WORKING AT A SCHOOL FOR EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED CHILDREN In the morning, someone unlatched the gate, the cows

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shuffled into the wrong meadow mooing. Everyone suspected Steve, tan and moon-faced, for he loved to stroke their thick, clotted fur, but it could have been Dale Ellerbeck who set fire to the sofa, burned to a heap of charged springs. Sometimes I

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would take Steve and Phil to the bayou where houseboats puttered up and down the water, while water hyacinths clogged propellers, so the owners would lean over their engines and clean out the chewed bulbs reeking of chlorophyll. Manatees

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drifted by with big lipped mooney smiles, but Steve would be asleep, and Phil holding his fishing rod stiffly, as if he could learn this thing. Fun. I tried to make him laugh, but it wasn't easy. A freakish owl in his glasses, twill coat and hat

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in the Florida heat. He never went anywhere without his psychology books, professorial, he was always willing to discuss his case. And then there was Buck who lunged for cigarette butts and crammed them into his mouth, swilling a whole pitcher

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of water, kneeling under the coffee pot with his mouth open so he had to be tackled and grappled in the lunchroom by three of the strongest men. Evelyn weeping, her mop of hair turned to the wall. Liz, staring at her wrists, striped from

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dozens of careful cuttings. Richard lurching on one leg, grinning, "turkey lurkey, turkey lurkey." At night, the sound of the rain [unidentified] hit on the tin roof. Next day, the cream colored petals of dogwood fell off slowly, one by one.

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Mornings, I took Lester to the marsh, limpkins picked their way across the mud. There were shotgun shells in the road, rootlets, vines, virginia creepers, big splayed palmettos, but Lester would go on banging his head against his knee.

00:33:12.290 - 00:33:36.230

‘‘1,2,3,‘‘ ‘‘Lester, a snake,‘‘ ‘‘1,2,3.‘‘ he would shout when the lunch bell gonged. ‘‘Go home. Go home now.‘‘ Amanda, sweeping out the courtyard full of leaves that rasped under her broom, muttered under her breath. We were all crazy,

00:33:36.290 - 00:33:56.840

including the staff. There was something about the heat, thick and odorous, the grass sopping with dew, snakes, chiggers on all the logs, my armpits and belly peppered with them. That made me restless. So I would sit hunched on a tractor, watching

00:33:56.840 - 00:34:16.970

the ground doves, in the alfalfa, the hayricks and pitchforks, listening to the cows slurp water from a tub, the rabbits restless in their cages, their feet slipping and flopping over the wires. At night Maude knocked softly on the screen

00:34:16.970 - 00:34:37.670

door and Buck kept walking and stopping across the lawn searching for cigarette butts. His impetigo covered legs blotchy under the moon, his bandages flopping night after night like a ghost who would never get better. Still, Liz

00:34:37.670 - 00:34:59.630

stopped bringing us her wrists as if they were limp, exquisite flowers. Dale Ellerbeck went to college. Evelyn got well. But Lester went on banging his head and chanting in the same methodical way. Phil continued to wear his dark coat on the

00:34:59.630 - 00:35:21.470

hottest days and speak knowledgeably of Freud. And at night, I would go for long walks, sniffing the breeze that drifted in from the land, smelling of pitch pine and swamp, and count the stars, Rigel, Algol. but there were too

00:35:21.470 - 00:35:47.840

many, after all, and the light had been sent from a place too clear, too cold, too far away. Morton Marcus: Now, in the poem, is it that the stars have a clarity that the confusion of- of human life and especially the

00:35:47.840 - 00:36:03.620

mixed up human life of these poor kids just don't have? Ellery Akers: Yeah, yeah, a lot of my poems are about the sky, or have the stars in them, this feeling of changelessness and, you know, something that's- But on the other hand, it's sort of

00:36:03.620 - 00:36:20.090

sad in a way, because it's almost like they can't really fix anything and- down here. So that's something a lot of my work is sort of about the spiritual world in a way, but it's sort of about that in a very funny way. It's about how

00:36:20.240 - 00:36:34.370

the things of this world, or this virtual world that isn't somewhere up in the clouds, that this is kind of the spiritual world, down here, and I write a lot about plants and they all seem very charged to me.

00:36:35.140 - 00:36:49.210

Morton Marcus: You know Yeats felt that the only way we could get out of the cycle of generation and just- and die, and the civilizations die, was through art because art is permanent, it's almost Platonic, but at the same time in his

00:36:49.210 - 00:36:57.980

older years, he said, but there's a paradox here because you still have to choose the body and you have to choose the life around you. Ellery Akers: Yeah.

00:36:58.020 - 00:37:08.730

Morton Marcus: And so he gets this whole metaphor of you cannot separate the dancer from the dance, you see, which is the fleshiness of the dancer. The main thing, which is the dance, but you don't have one without the other?

00:37:08.760 - 00:37:12.500

Ellery Akers: Yeah Morton Marcus: So that in a way seems to be what you're talking about too. Ellery Akers: Yeah.

00:37:13.620 - 00:37:28.470

Morton Marcus: Well, do you have a poem that you can read us about more of that spiritual side. Ellery Akers: Well, I've got this long, long poem and it is about this. And it's also about dirt, I mean, the stuff we walk

00:37:28.470 - 00:37:48.870

on. And my feeling is this is not just junk, you know, this is- this- this is the spiritual world. And the poem is really about actual soil, but it's also about the spiritual world. And in the poem, the speaker is a spirit or an angel who's giving

00:37:48.870 - 00:38:02.730

me advice, and looking down on the earth from up above, and the poem's in five sections and I'll just pause between each section. Morton Marcus: Right, and I should add that this is the final poem in "Knocking on the Earth" and this is the tour de

00:38:02.730 - 00:38:17.470

force poem. Ellery Akers: Thanks. I like it too. It's called: ADVICE FROM AN ANGEL Today, I saw one of those Digger pines you love so much,

00:38:17.980 - 00:38:46.390

uprooted. It's nice needles in shambles, tan, flaking, and the wheel of its roots still holding clods of dirt: twenty kilometers of roots tangled in that vast shelf, a thousand kilometers of root hairs and nodules, delicate as the teeth of radishes‘,

00:38:47.410 - 00:39:18.320

bulbs, tubers, and embedded in bits of loam and hornblende, unseeing, staring, the tiny blind eyes of pebbles. I know you're afraid sometimes but that's all right, it's those voices from childhood, quarrels, drinking– the sound of the ice

00:39:18.620 - 00:39:41.210

knocking in her glass as she stumbled down the hall towards your door. It's understandable. And the glacier does look frightening up there on its cirque with its hooks of ice. But down below are the fields and pastures full of vegetables,

00:39:41.690 - 00:40:09.920

cauliflower squats in the caked earth, its blue furred leaves smelling of rubber. And there are tubs of melons, cranshaw, summer squash, potatoes dug from the loosened soil, dropped in burlap, smelling of mold still spotted with dark crumbs...

00:40:12.780 - 00:40:41.160

If I have any advice, it's this: watch the moon as it rises with all its money and spends it carelessly on drift and cirrus. But above all, love the packed earth loaded with coal, boles from the old carboniferous swamp stumps, slivers of chalk, shells

00:40:41.160 - 00:41:10.950

of mollusks, boreal slopes, bitter escarpments, shale, hardpan, alluvial gravel, bits from the early seas: holding the powdered bones of cattle, holding the old shoals. Below the stump, where the bluebird sits, and preens its

00:41:10.950 - 00:41:35.490

chest, and crooks its wing, and flicks, and preens, below the stones, below the rubble of the sink, under the glacial erratics, where springtails leap and scatter in the snow, ten feet down, were cold toads bivouac between clumps away from

00:41:35.490 - 00:41:58.110

the wind shear, and earthworms steer towards each other through the dirt and lie wrapped in balls for shelter, below the centipedes, millipedes, where the ants and the silverfish wander, under the slump of crust, where the heat thuds,

00:41:58.350 - 00:42:27.800

nickel and magma, and the pulse of the core ticks as a watch ticks, there is a calm hand, the palm facing down. I know it's in your nature, to want air, ozone, to float, to be free. But stick with what you know, you'd be surprised at the

00:42:27.800 - 00:42:53.270

effect of sheer blundering and doggedness. To evaporate is nothing: to sprint, to travel. It's weight that divides the known and unknown worlds. It's your boots that impress us, your squads of boulders and your heavy wadded soil. And in your

00:42:53.270 - 00:43:19.130

oceans it's those blue blots we notice. the shadows of clouds that float like tanks and make the sea look deep while all around the turqoise shallows dazzle and the sea lettuce sparkles, and the kelp... Do you remember on the tablets in the

00:43:19.130 - 00:43:42.890

graveyards in Rome, the matrons hold out their hands and their dead sons kneel under them. Those hands: it was their weight you noticed, and when you look down loosestrife and mullein bungled up between the graves, someone pedaling by chinked a

00:43:42.890 - 00:44:08.510

bicycle bell and, under your shoes, the grass sprang up, already busy, repairing itself. Didn't you notice how heavy you were? It's the same weight that pulls down birds from the air, leaves, boulders, anything that falls. And there is so much

00:44:08.510 - 00:44:31.550

falling. From up here we can see them, the dark lines attached to every living thing and then to the soil. They look like strings, or pulleys. But it's all right. It connects you with the earth and all its grit. Would you believe me if I told

00:44:31.550 - 00:44:57.890

you it was all all right? Look: a calm wave of heat blows through the brecchia and sandstone, a calm wave of light. Clouds release their arms. Across the ridge dusted with little feathery Diggers, rock doves clutter and disappear and

00:44:57.890 - 00:45:18.700

clutter back again. The quality of hope is bent, and lies in the light, sweet sand. Morton Marcus: Well, that is indeed a beautiful poem and how you're going to follow that one I dont know. I mean, it is the

00:45:18.700 - 00:45:31.510

vision of the whole book and it is certainly- is that one of the prize winning poems? Ellery Akers: Yes, it is. And I wrote this poem, as I write actually quite a lot completely outdoors in a tent. And it was

00:45:32.200 - 00:45:46.330

actually getting kind of rainy and I knew if I left my campsite and left where I was camping that I would lose it. It was just one of those poems is just given to you, they are not very many poems like that. But I knew I had to stay and write the

00:45:46.330 - 00:45:59.090

whole thing down. So I didn't even go out and get supplies. I was down to, I think, some canned beans, and I decided I really had to keep that one going. Morton Marcus: How long does it take you to write, obviously

00:45:59.090 - 00:46:08.000

first draft? Ellery Akers: Oh, yeah. Well, the first draft I would say was about two weeks. And then it took me about two months to get it in shape. But-

00:46:08.000 - 00:46:19.150

Morton Marcus: And then what- didn't it win one of the John- John Masefield awards? Ellery Akers: Yeah, it did. Yeah. Morton Marcus: Well, he would be proud of it. He really would. It

00:46:19.150 - 00:46:28.090

is a lovely poem. We still have time. So if you would want to read some new poems, or some more poems from the book that's fine. Ellery Akers: Well, maybe I'll just read one poem from this

00:46:28.090 - 00:46:49.060

letter series. I'm going to read it on Thursday at Cabrillo College, and it's a long narrative poem, and I wrote it again outdoors. And I was camped in the Sierras on the Emigrant Trail, and I had no inkling that I was going to write a poem

00:46:49.060 - 00:47:07.690

about the pioneers, but I think something about being there, it just kind of seeped into my consciousness or something and I wrote a whole series of letter poems. And this piece is about a woman from Boston who marries a man named Joel and he takes her

00:47:07.690 - 00:47:24.640

to a homestead in Nebraska, and then on a wagon train towards California. And this first letter is when she's at her homestead in Nebraska, she's writing back to our sister Ana, who stayed in Boston, and she's really quite homesick, I think

00:47:24.640 - 00:47:51.570

for Boston. And it's called: LETTER TO HER SISTER: NEBRASKA 1846 Dear Ana, tonight there is a long, slow cloud moving outside the doorway like a dazed sheep. But I miss you, miss watching

00:47:51.570 - 00:48:17.190

the evenings with you falling so gently and variously. It is also much harder than we thought, Ana. When we built this side house I never imagined the nights I would lie awake, touching the hard, dry wall, or the locusts pelting the field,

00:48:17.790 - 00:48:42.030

horrible. The goat is sick. When I go in the barn it follows me with its patient eyes and lies in the corner, and heaves. Joel is away so much. I don't know what to do. Do you remember that old woman, Florence, who used to sell eggs and snarl at us with a

00:48:42.030 - 00:49:05.250

face as big as a pudding? Oh, Ana, I'm beginning to understand. Just lately, when I pass the school yard, the children playing make me angry. And I want to call after them like a crazy, "Fools, you don't know what's coming." I don't

00:49:05.250 - 00:49:27.570

mean to worry you, there are good times. At night the stars stitch the hills together with such clarity, I am astonished. I like picking the cabbages, and in the morning when the sun falls on the floor, the cat licks my hand. It wants salt I

00:49:27.570 - 00:49:50.040

suppose, but I take it as tenderness. Do you remember our first house in Boston with a piano that loomed in the corner? I used to wake up early and pad on those thick carpets to watch morning enter the dark windows. There are no windows here,

00:49:51.060 - 00:50:09.030

flower is dear and the nights are getting cold and full of frost. Thank you for the tablecloth. The whole- the peom goes on, it's a whole series of letters she writes back to her sister.

00:50:10.290 - 00:50:19.320

Morton Marcus: And she moves through the Great Basin all the way to California Ellery Akers: Yeah. She moves in, she settles in Volcano, which is one of my favorite spots.

00:50:19.350 - 00:50:27.480

Morton Marcus: Now, did you write all of that outdoors, all the first time draft of it? Ellery Akers: Yes, I wrote everything out-of-doors. Morton Marcus: And this is actually the use of masks here,

00:50:27.480 - 00:50:35.580

I mean, this is a voice speaking through you. Ellery Akers: Yeah, it's a persona poem, really. Morton Marcus: It's very powerful. All the poem taken together- the individual poem are fine, taken together it's a

00:50:35.580 - 00:50:43.020

very, very powerful picture and works very, very well. Ellery Akers: Yeah. Morton Marcus: We have time for one more poem. May I request it? Ellery Akers: Yes, of course.

00:50:43.540 - 00:50:53.500

Morton Marcus: I think this would be perfect to end this with, again getting back to your persona, and a very tender, open, loving poem to the earth, which is ‘‘Walking Through the Grass at Night.‘‘

00:50:53.530 - 00:51:04.540

Ellery Akers: All right. Great. Morton Marcus: And in case you wonder, we are listening to Ellery Akers who has written a book called "Knocking on the Earth," who won a number of awards for the poems in it. She

00:51:04.540 - 00:51:14.070

will be reading tomorrow night at Cabrillo College- Ellery Akers: Thursday Morton Marcus: I'm sorry, why do I that? She will be reading on Thursday night, again, Thursday night at Cabrillo College, 7:30

00:51:14.100 - 00:51:26.370

at the Fireside Lounge, which is actually the cafeteria. And come on out, it's free, and you can meet Ellery in person. She is a delightful person and a wonderful poet. Would you read this wonderful little poem for us?

00:51:26.400 - 00:51:42.670

Ellery Akers: Of course it's called: WALKING THROUGH THE GRASS AT NIGHT Past the basketball ring that sticks its face lonely into the harsh light, I walk quickly over the loud cement, put my hand on

00:51:42.670 - 00:52:09.070

the cold flank of a boxcar. And as I step off into the deepest field the grass puts on dark gloves to touch me. A car throbs down the street and is gone, one red light blinking. I am alone. The odor of dark is all around me. The cicadas are shrilling,

00:52:09.550 - 00:52:31.110

their throats are lined with water. It is almost November and I'm twenty. I swim towards his loneliness with both arms o Morton Marcus: A lovely way to end this reading; thank you ver much Ellery. Plaza Books ha provided a grant that helpe

00:52:31.110 - 00:52:44.490

make the last half hour o programming possible. Plaz Books is located on the Pacifi Garden Mall in Santa Cruz. W appreciate their support, I' sure they appreciate your poetr , Ellery. By the way, it is- j st so happens that Plaza Books

00:52:44.670 - 00:52:57.300

is carrying Ellery‘s books of poetry, as is the Bookshop Sa ta Cruz. So if you want to et "Knocking on the Earth," nd I certainly suggest that yo do, it's a lovely little book, eels great in the hand, with a ovely illustration of forest

00:52:57.300 - 00:53:12.000

n the front. Please do come o the reading on Thursday night 7:30, Cabrillo College n the Fireside Lounge. It is free, everyone is welcome. Stay tuned for "Things Ain't What Th y Used To Be" with Tim Folger. This is Morton Marcus, I'll be

00:53:12.000 - 00:53:22.830

back in two weeks, Joe Stroud he e again next week. Thanks for joining us. I enjoyed the show. And I'm sure that you did. T ll then this is Morton Marcu sayin