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Morton Marcus: [Cut off] Hello again, this is Mort Marcus, and I'm here today with my guest Gael Roziere, who we just heard reading and welcome to the Poetry Show, Gael. Gael Roziere: Thank you, Morton.

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Morton Marcus: This is a most unique book, and let's talk about it first. It is not just a book, but why don't you describe for our listening audience out there, just what this book entails?

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Gael Roziere: Well, the book is a package. The book itself is, let's see how many pages long, about a hundred pages long with many illustrations and photographs in the book. The way the book was put together was very important to me, visually.

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I've taught poetry in schools and I'm always very curious as to what the poet looks like, and so I have of course pictures of myself in the book, and the visual presentation is just important for me. So the book is, I think, pleasing visually

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with the illustrations, and then it's in a naugahyde cover that's silkscreen on the outside, and with the book is a tape, an hour long tape of myself reciting my poems with music. Morton Marcus: Which we heard at least one of the poems from side

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two, in fact, one of my favorite poems in the book, the mermaid poem, which recorded and which has, as you said, musical background to it. Gael Roziere: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Provided by, we might as well give them credit: Gael Roziere: Rob and Rod [unidentified], who provided a whole variety of instruments -- saxophone and drums and different bells and -- it was really a lot of fun doing, also,

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we did it in Rob's basement and that was a totally new experience for me and it was very inspirational. Morton Marcus: Each poem in the book is also bordered, it has a border around it, and contains, I would guess they would be ink

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drawings, right? Gael Roziere: Yes. Morton Marcus: And those ink drawings are by the person who printed it, it's Jerry Kamstra, right?

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Gael Roziere: Uh huh. Morton Marcus: In which he tries to give the feeling of the poems themselves. Gael Roziere: That's right.

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Morton Marcus: So we're coming up to the time when people are considering Christmas gifts and certainly anyone who is interested in giving a unique volume of poetry, I would certainly suggest that they look into this book, which is

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available at all local bookstores. Gael Roziere: At all local bookstores for $12. Morton Marcus: $12, that's not bad. Wow. Tape and the entire packaging, that's an amazing price these days. Are you going

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to have a book signing or anything within the next several weeks? Gael Roziere: Yes, I'm going to have a book signing at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Friday, November the 21st at 7:30, and I

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encourage you all to come. Please, please do. Morton Marcus: Well, it seems to me that that would be an ideal time to both pick up the book, have the author sign it to dear ones that you would want to get this as a gift for. You are

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rather unique, Gael, even the sound of your name, Gael, should tell the people out there that you are international in your interests and in your life. So before we even hear more of your poetry, why don't you tell us something about where you come

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from and where you have been, and you can do that either spiritually or physically. Gael Roziere: Well, I was born in the United States and I lived here till I was ten on the East Coast in Long Island, and my

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parents are French. And when I was ten, I went to boarding school for a year and from there- in Switzerland, and then from there went to Mexico City where I lived for eleven years and I went to a French government school at that time.

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So I was really brought up with three cultures. I always considered myself an American because I had been born here and I went up until the sixth grade here, and so there was a very strong influence for me, and- but my education was French, and

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I was speaking Spanish and my friends were Mexican. And then I was a nurse, and I went to New York City, from eighteen to twenty-one. And then I went back to Mexico and I lived in a village near Oaxaca for several years. And finally, when I was

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around twenty-five I think I came to Santa Cruz, where, two or three years later I started writing, and, let's see what else can I say. And then in the last five years, I've gotten back into medicine by doing body work. I think that's the

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important things in my life, the important things in my life are my family and my poetry and my body work. Morton Marcus: What I always try to do when -- I know that you've been on the program before in one capacity or another, and

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also listened to the program, I hope -- I try to give the readers a way in. What is this book really about. And it seems to me that one thing I can say about it, and I hope that we will trace the poems this way, though whatever preparation you

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have is fine with me. First of all, your linguistic abilities, there are several poems in here in French and Spanish. Gael Roziere: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And then your translations of them from the

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language you wrote them in. And I hope- were you planning to read maybe one or something? Gael Roziere: Yes. Morton Marcus: The other thing is that a lot of these poems,

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the strength in a lot of these poems take their basis from reminiscence -- the idea of memory and art, memory and myth, if you will, which we heard in that mermaid poem -- are very important. So, without further ado, maybe what we ought to do

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is hear some of the poems which hauntingly seem to come back again and again for me in this book, which is Gael Roziere as a young girl, with her parents, her mother, her grandmother, etc. And all I want to say about that to the listening audience

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out there: if you are offended by people talking in a very honest way about graphic sexual matters, please be apprised that some of these poems may contain material which may offend your eardrums.

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Gael Roziere: So, I think the first poem I'll read is one of my last memories I have in the United States before leaving for boarding school when I was ten: FOR JEAN SEBERG

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It was our last night before leaving ten years of childhood for a Calvinist boarding school in Switzerland. A red-haired woman sang to a guitar by the restaurant on the beach where our parents staged a farewell bravura. My sister and I played

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among tense and unfamiliar company, excited to be able to stay up so late. Suddenly in the parking lot, we witnessed your fighting. You were very famous, you had just starred in Joan of Arc. Natalie and I could hardly wait to tell our friends you

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were there. You were going to be married in the fall, much later I learned you had divorced, remarried Romain Gary, had a child, aborted, I read about several depressions, last year heard that you had killed yourself. But then we heard your

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screams, door slamming, the sound of blows, of running, Natalie and I stared fascinated, made ourselves tiny behind fenders till we were able to run to our brother. He was with his fiance, yelled at us to forget it, none of our business. Later

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we sat on a white lifeguard seat with you between us, your hair short like a boy's. I barely dared look at you. Time held in this torch-lit background gray sand and dark pebbles, black moonlit horizon. Your arms around our shoulders, we gazed

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at the dark Long Island Sound. I think you talked about the moon, promises, life isn't easy but wonderful. I heard your tear-broken voice answer our questions about Europe. I felt like a grown-up who had tasted sorrow.

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Morton Marcus: Gael, that poem had particular interest to me because I have been one of those people -- and I wonder how many there are out there, if you are out there send me a card -- who traced the tragic career of Jean Seberg who was found in her car,

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locked in her car, in a Paris street just several years ago, dead of an overdose. Jean Seberg, for those people who don't know, maybe we should have introduced them to it before the poem, was an Iowa farm girl. And Otto Preminger, the great

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director-producer from Hollywood, said he wanted to make Saint Joan, or Joan of Arc, the film "Joan of Arc," and wanted to find a new face who would incorporate the spirituality and the innocence of Joan of Arc, and he

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discovered Jean Seberg. And that launched her very, very much onto what we are hearing the anecdote in this poem, which is a life of torture, of bewilderment, and eventual destruction by others, men mainly, and then finally by

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herself, and it was a real tragedy. She was not also a great actress. She was just a very plain Iowa girl who suddenly got thrust into this jet-set international scene, and it was really something. She was very much the next door neighbor

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who just suddenly could not handle the various mental games and cruelties of the world. Gael Roziere: And, you know, I remember here she was- I think her first husband was French and she was all of a sudden in an

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international type scene and very sweet, she was a very, you know, sweet next-door girl. I only met her that one time but she definitely made an impression on me. Morton Marcus: Her husband, Romain Gary, is a wonderful

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French writer, both for his autobiographies and for, I think some of his novels, one of which is made into a real sleeper Hollywood film, which is about the man who tries to go out and stop the destruction of the elephants, which starred Errol

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Flynn and Trevor Howard and I forget the name of it- years ago. But he also made another, there's another film made by him in the last ten years or so, it wasn't made by him, but on one of his books, which was part of his reminiscence about his

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mother. Gael Roziere: Yeah, and I think he committed suicide a few years ago. Morton Marcus: Well, this is interesting and it's a wonderful

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poem to start with, because it introduces us into the milieu of the book, and I was hoping that you would read some of the poems, please continue to read. Gael Roziere: So the next poem I'm going to read goes from

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where I came from to where I went, which was Mexico, and it's called: DEATH IN MEXICO CITY Blackstone, triangle, tip-sharp, soft sky, glides down mountain

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slopes, sprinkled rocks, sharp outline, down, sky now far away and vague to a valley dark, yes, pool of black and dark red blood drowning, twisted eyes, flattened skulls, mouths gorging, fat humps then thin, black corn aimless in the wind,

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breathing, move side to side, side to side, stopped by thick blade in valley, dark heart. Morton Marcus: Which is another one of the kinds of poems in the book, if I may say so, they are very loose, long lined, and

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ultimately shortline reminiscences. And then there are these sudden lyrical explosions of images, which either deal with place or deal with painters, such as Picasso, and Kandinsky.

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Kandinsky, Chagall. Continue. Gael Roziere: And in the book, there are several poems that deal with Mexico and with France, and I was noticing,

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actually, just recently that there seemed to be with both of these countries both the dark side, and then the lyrical side. So, from the death in Mexico City type images, I'd like to go into the more lyrical images that come through the language

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and also through a dream. I've done a lot of work with my dreams which continues to be, I guess, the theme in my most recent poetry, and the tool that I use the most are dreams. And this one's called:

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THE POET, and what I would like to do is I'd like to read it first in Spanish, and it's a short poem so that you can perhaps share my love for the Spanish language, and then go directly into English.

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[In Spanish] I am a poet, she said, and walked naked, sandals, red socks, thick wool. Buys an airplane ticket, travels. Fellow passengers are aghast, such an attire. The poet, perturbed,

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still continued, alone, firm in her flesh, woman. Morton Marcus: Gael, since you read the poem, "Poet," which I had marked, let me ask you at this point, what are you attempting to achieve in your poetry?

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Gael Roziere: Well, that's always a kind of a difficult question for me to answer. I'm trying to be the truest to myself and find myself in my life, I mean, that's what gives me a purpose to my life and makes me happy. And I am in love

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with many arts, and I've done acting and dancing, and if I could, I would have loved to have been a painter and a sculptor. And my mother was a poet, so I was brought up with a woman who I would hear counting meters and working with words.

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As we drove along in the car, she had a habit of talking out loud, so I could hear her working all the time. And perhaps because I was in these three countries and had these three languages, I love words. And I love poetry in the sense

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that I love the sculpture that I can do with words on the page, I love the sound of the words, the music that it creates. I love the enormous depth, that feeling that I can reach with poetry, the directness of words. There's definitely no beating around the

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bush as to what you mean. And it allows me to find my spirit and to soar with it and to connect with other human beings on that deep level of feeling and spirit so it really gives my life meaning.

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Morton Marcus: Great. Well, before the show, Gael was telling me that she was inarticulate; I think that was quite an articulate answer, Gael. Okay, well, you mentioned your mother and I don't know whether that's what you were

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planning to read next. Yes, because there are some very interesting poems about her and a friend of hers, and I hope you read that long elegy, if you planned on doing it, which is titled, "Migi," is that how you pronounce her name?

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Gael Roziere: Oh, Migi. Morton Marcus: Migi. Gael Roziere: Oh yeah, you know I wanted to do it and then I decided not to do it but I'd love to do it because I actually

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have never read it before. Morton Marcus: How about then without my interruptions, a p em or two on your mother and t en, "Migi," okay? Gael Roziere: Okay, that'd be great. All right.

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MADRE ERMANA(?) You're kneeling pale, gray, gray, your dress and strained white the two moles of collarbone. The skin on your face pulled tight, blue shining through your veins like mine. A

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pool of brown, brown eyes, streaked black tears, huge droplets like rain dripping from a broken gutter to a pool at which I stare. You seek God to answer: girl or boy? That warm lump in your belly, so there, dreadful to feel, girl or boy.

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You rock forward, face always upward, over hands clasped in knuckle prayer. I saw only the eyes that drew me to your way, way wail, penetrating all the dark gray cliffs where you had gone, yellow flowers on lean stocks that touched the dark,

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dark sea of death. Girl or boy, I walked to the sand, heard again and knew when you dropped the yellow flowers, a spring of little heads, and ran, your hair all strews of undone, your eyes open, down the dark rocks to the churning sea of your lover

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drowned that I, born too late, had lost you. My hands cup a white jellyfish, I close them softly, that black, black eye in its center stares back. I want to save that poem. That was the first poem I ever wrote

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and I'm very fond of it for that reason. And it came as I was traveling by plane and had all of a sudden this incredible urge to nearly vomit words and the only paper available was a vomit bag that was in the front seat. And so I took it and I just

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wrote whatever came, and I was very fortunate because at that time, I had just started going out with a man who I eventually married, Steve Wiesinger, who's a writer and a teacher of poetry. And I showed it to him and he was extremely encouraging

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and told me it was great, it was wonderful, it didn't need any editing. It was one of those very lucky poems that hardly needed any editing. And that really was the kind of booster that I needed or the pillowing and the comfort that I needed to

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continue writing and exploring. I've done a lot of teaching of poetry and I think the support and the encouragement that we can give to young people and to anybody to write and express themselves and create art out of their experiences is extremely

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valuable. So, by Morton's request, I'm going to read this poem: MIGI, which is quite a long poem but that has also been very important to me and I'll tell you why when I finish.

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Migi's dead. What am I looking for with such frustration through her desk that looks like my mother's? A clue, maybe a photograph of her niece and nephew, they're her only living relatives. Migi wills them her house in Capri or maybe they

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came to her when she was dying, and she left the house to the cook. Mother doesn't know. Mother's holding a striated lake stone that Migi gave her. She puts two little onyx frogs on it. "Migi's dead," she says, "Migi's dead." Migi and mother

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in Long Island, a cottage. Migi likes to garden, a hot, hazy day. I must be seven or eight, with mother and Migi and my little sister, a rowboat. No, we're waiting in a large pond surrounded by big, dark green trees that cast long shadows.

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Creamy, cool, mud gushes in between my toes which curl with pleasure. We're hunting for watercress. Around the corner, a small Greek temple like in one of the books granny reads me. We're engulfed in water lilies, mother calls them "nénuphars."

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Migi speaks French and Italian, she used to be a model and tells us in her singing way that some rich American lady, is it the one with a temple? fell in love with nénuphars while visiting a foreign country and brought back some for her pond and now

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streams and rivers and brooks and ponds are being swallowed by them. It's hot and humid, typical of summer in Long Island. Three or five swans glide toward us, eyes unwavering until we're separated by only a few water lilies. Mother breaks

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the silence and warns us that swans have a mean bite. Now in Migi's desk, I come across a letter addressed to me by my mother. The handwriting is bold like the letters she wrote me when I was in boarding school. It's been a long time since

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she's written me a letter and I am thoughtful, but this is not what I am looking for. Everything's dusty, pale green, and salmon. Migi was an interior decorator. When I came to New York, mother asked her to help me and I shared her flat for a

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while, but she was having a hot love affair and wanted privacy. I think she was afraid I was going to stay indefinitely because I was terribly lonely. She taught me how to use an espresso maker. I heard her talk about her niece and nephew,

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perhaps she showed me a picture. There are papers all over, I find a picture of my mother and a clipping of her wedding to my father. I'm not familiar with it. Mother's coming out of the church into a long dark tunnel. She's young, innocent looking,

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like a lake. I'm struck by the resemblance to my younger sister. I know I am in the picture, yes, there hidden among the bridesmaids, French girls I'm not familiar with. At eleven I'm extremely pensive. Migi never married, or maybe she was

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divorced. She lived for a long time with a well-known painter, a bastard, mother said. Se ended up not being able to have children. There were medicines in her bathroom. Migi used to call me and my little sister her wild strawberries. The last time

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I saw her she was sitting in a nightclub with an older couple. She watched with pleasure as I danced. I went over and pecked her hello, didn't thank her enough for helping me choose the hot Mexican colors for my apartment. Her correspondence is

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fact as though she'd be back in a minute. The paper is yellow and fragile. I'm afraid to disturb her clutter, personal as my mother's. Wish I had hugged her, written letters, left some kind of evidence. I didn't know she was dying.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, Gael, you said that you wanted to talk about that poem. Why don't you say a few words on it and then we're going to take a break. This is, by the way, the Poetry Show, and we are talking today with Gael Roziere, on the

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occasion of the publication of this very unique book and tape called, "Witness to a Landscape," Gael's first book of poems. Gael Roziere: What I wanted to say about this poem is that it

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taught me a very valuable lesson because Migi was one of the first people I had been close to who died, who I knew who died. And when I wrote this poem years later, I realized that people can die suddenly without one knowing it, and I didn't want to

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have regrets. And so I've kind of- it's changed my way of dealing with people in a way. Never knowing when death is going to strike and always trying to tell people my feelings for them, and just be on top of it so that if people

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do die, I'm not left with regrets. And this has been particularly important because my father just died a few months ago, and it was very helpful to always keep that in mind during the last two or three years of his life.

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Morton Marcus: We will take a musical break now and be back with some announcements and another at least twenty-five minutes some to hear more of Gael's poetry. Gael Roziere: [Cut off] -the book, if I find the poem. Here

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we go, okay. VOYAGE My father and I are traveling by train somewhere south of Paris. He wears one of his impeccable dark suits. I rub my cheek into

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the cashmere texture of his coat. The weather is gorgeous, the way he likes it. The train comes to a stop. I look out the window and see that we are near Châteauroux where Hubert and Isabelle's son was killed in a head-on collision, age twenty.

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My father looks strained. The train station looms rectangular, like some sterile war memorial, softened only by amber light. Is this where we're going to stop? A strange woman is in a compartment with us, her newborn son gurgling as an infant will.

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She leans close to my father and asks, "Why don't you stick his hand into your mouth?" And the dream opens at the seams with the sound of the baby, the surprise on my dead father's face.

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The reason I chose to read this poem is that I gave birth to a little boy, Kyle, who's five months old now. And the ideas of death and birth have been very much consuming me lately, especially as my father just did die. So the next poem I want to

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read deals with a nuclear issue. Morton Marcus: But before we go on from there- Gael Roziere: Yeah. Morton Marcus: If I may, obviously, we have been allowed

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into your private life in these poems. And what seemed to me very interesting was the place that your father does play in it. There's very definitely a Scylla and Charybdis that pulls on you in two ways. One is the female figure represented by

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your mother, very sensitive, very artistic, and the other is your father, of whom there are two very, very striking poems in the book, one, what you estimate as the big change in him but which gives him his persona, which is the war and which gives

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him his persona as hunter/killer and revolves around the use of guns. And I was hoping that you might even read another one, that might be enough for you. Gael Roziere: No, that's fine.

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Morton Marcus: But certainly Father's Day, another coming to grips with your father, but showing that you don't want this. And I would think that the birth of your son now is to see this- another male coming into the world, but a male for whom

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you have totally different hopes in this line. And it's what I see, and sometimes more than others, gives you this mythic sense, this sense of almost historical, the historical consciousness of the race, and how it is changing, that goes on

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in a lot of these poems, and that, "Madre Ermana(?)," we heard it in there certainly. It allows you to take different segments of time and sort of intertwine them, move fluidly from one time to another, and I hope the readers, the listeners,

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have not been confused by that, and can hear that this is very purposely done, and gives a wonderful sense of continuance and movement backwards and forwards to what you're doing, and the thought process that's going on in your work.

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Gael Roziere: Well, that was really wonderfully said, Morton. So I think I will read then the two short poems on my father. Well, one, I'll read one, "Father's Day" on my father. FATHER'S DAY

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Father's Day, no telephone call. We celebrate your 80th birthday. Most of the presents have to do with shotguns, hunting, your hobby. Gold picture frame, children, an inscription about hell. Mother's out of the picture. Natalie made you a

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modern sculpture. Anne and Arnold gave you a painting. I slip in a book about Gandhi. You take one look, say, "How interesting, I'll be sure to read it," then pile it on top of the books about shotguns. We do not look at each other. I sign

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it, "To dad on his 80th birthday, love, Gael," like an epitaph. Your hair ruffles in the wind. It has taken us a long time to get here, this redwood forest where enormous ferns unfold, and you've been very patient. Walking has become so

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difficult, each step a crack in some irretrievable distance. You lean forward, stoop, your hand on my shoulder. Now, under the birches, you've rested. Your eyes are watery and stare at me as though I were air held in space by a silhouette of your

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mother. You are born, she dies. You are old, she's young. You hold, I am born, she's dead. You hold, grab us to your chest. It didn't work, this gobbling up, my heart next to yours pumps to keep you alive. I give you back this sweep of arm, this will of

00:31:50.290 - 00:32:08.680

iron, codes of honor. You slam your fists on the dining room table, domain, territory, your voice a dam broke loose. It was a good hunt, we killed three thousand, the pigeons in Spain, nothing like it. Had I been a son, I would not have survived.

00:32:09.940 - 00:32:28.300

This promenade has been long in the making. I am thirty-five, my father is eighty. He hangs on. I lift him gently to his feet, come on, it's time to go up the hill. Morton Marcus: And that seems to be quite a poem of

00:32:28.300 - 00:32:45.040

reconciliation. Gael Roziere: Yeah. You know, I think it's very important for, at least it's very important for me to really go through all the depth and the complexity of the feelings towards those that have

00:32:45.550 - 00:33:06.340

raised us, so to come out on the other side and find out kind of who I am, and not just be carrying my family luggage without discerning who I am. Morton Marcus: Well, as you said also, you- there is another side

00:33:06.340 - 00:33:17.380

to Gael Roziere and that is a political side. Gael Roziere: That's right. Morton Marcus: And they're very personal. Certainly, I hope we hear some of these now. In fact, some of them I'm going to

00:33:17.380 - 00:33:29.740

request and ask you to talk about because my favorite poem in the book, Gael, is coming up. And by the way, folks, Gael is reading both from the book and from new work. Gael Roziere: So what's your favorite poem in the book,

00:33:29.740 - 00:33:34.090

Morton? Morton Marcus: I'll tell you after you read your poem. Gael Roziere: Okay, so I'm going to read: LIFE YARDS

00:33:36.190 - 00:33:55.390

As a child, I heard about Cold War, fallout shelters. Petrified, I switched to Elvis on the radio. Now I'm busy, my job, my house, I don't want to think about nuclear war, nuclear waste in my backyard seeping through. I scrub my walls, empty

00:33:55.390 - 00:34:14.200

the dishwasher, curl under my roof. I dream a man is running on the beach, screaming at the top of his lungs for his child who's missing. I'm going to die and the fat warmongers are going to die also, they don't want to know about it either. The inner

00:34:14.200 - 00:34:33.700

killer has gone external, burns after flesh and muscle. What's the media's role in all of this? Just as I'm entering the cradle of myself, discovering the billions of years before me and the unheard generations that cry for survival. Down, down to the

00:34:33.700 - 00:34:56.920

deepest chambers, purple waters, gentle as my mother's breast, I swim. A certain coolness, a stillness here. Under magenta walls, where birds rest and call me upward, to blossoms and terraced fields, rich with wind and people who will be heard,

00:34:57.160 - 00:35:14.080

who will not be babes slaughtered, change the tide, build life yards for posterity, life yards, living, love. Morton Marcus: An interesting poem because I am very much involved in my thinking, and have been for the last several

00:35:14.080 - 00:35:29.230

years, on how we can write political poems, social poems, and this one seems to be very successful to me because you've kept it personal. And because you are very much voicing not the strident, you know, we will march together, we will save the

00:35:29.230 - 00:35:46.570

world, but the very, very human concerns and almost approach this from a negative way, like we're lost. And very, very moving and it really captures a lot of things that have to be said in a very moving and not propagandistic kind of way, so a

00:35:46.600 - 00:35:59.380

very successful poem. Gael Roziere: You know, Neruda said that political poems are the hardest ones to write, and that certainly is my experience. You know, I'm very concerned about many political issues, and

00:35:59.380 - 00:36:17.440

I write quite a lot about it and yet really, there are not very many come to- are finished products because it's so hard for me to keep it out of the propaganda, to keep it personal, to keep it clear and strong. It's very hard work. Those are

00:36:17.440 - 00:36:25.630

the poems that I struggled the most with. Morton Marcus: If you wanted to read more, I'm going to see which ones you want to read. I was going to ask you to read the ones that you didn't plan on doing.

00:36:25.690 - 00:36:44.680

Gael Roziere: All right. Well, let's see, I wanted to read: A LOVE POEM FOR STEVE, Steve's my husband. I heard myself say the other night, "I love you," and I was afraid. Howls of my past, you know, that here in this self of

00:36:44.680 - 00:37:11.290

mine, this rising surge, this unfolding crimson opens to the sea of me. I bury my head in your soft Buddha-like panza, my lips find no end, just a sinking deep, two pools of diving starfish, meandering serpentine woman's glee.

00:37:13.570 - 00:37:25.300

I know which is your favorite poem. Morton Marcus: Here comes the guess. Gael Roziere: "Recipe for a Bath!" [Laughs] Morton Marcus: No, not quite actually. Well, I'm going to

00:37:25.300 - 00:37:40.960

save it if you can guess it until maybe the end because it unites everything we've been talking about. But since we were on the political, how about the very, very clever, humorous and yet scathingly angry, "Five Ways of Disliking Pineapple?"

00:37:41.020 - 00:37:48.790

Gael Roziere: Okay, yeah, let me find that. Morton Marcus: "Five Ways to Hate a Pineapple-" Gael Roziere: "Five Ways to Hate a Pineapple." Morton Marcus: And let me just describe this: these are two

00:37:48.790 - 00:38:04.390

pages that open up flat, in the center is the drawing of a pineapple which has been cut in half and is about to fall over on both sides, and almost attacking it on all sides are five single lines, each one is a way to hate a pineapple.

00:38:05.020 - 00:38:14.170

Gael Roziere: Yes and again, I really have to give credit to Jerry Kamstra for the marvelous illustrations he did with this book. FIVE WAYS TO HATE A PINEAPPLE

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One: a pineapple smells of baked sun, sweat, and red earth. Two: a pineapple is a big landowner in Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, someplace poor. Three: a pineapple sips daiquiries by the Gulf & Western pools. Four: a pineapple is a yellow coiffeur

00:38:37.240 - 00:38:47.080

on a cherry-eyed ham. Five: a pineapple is split open with a machete. Morton Marcus: Great ending. Gael Roziere: Thanks.

00:38:48.580 - 00:39:05.170

Morton Marcus: I mean, there is where you can say nothing, except I guess directly that is except in two and three, but the other three sections totally say so much more than the lines themselves say, and especially that end, you know, you're just

00:39:05.170 - 00:39:13.600

holding yourself back to let the image do it. Gael Roziere: I haven't read a sexual poem and- Morton Marcus: Okay. Gael Roziere: I certainly-

00:39:13.660 - 00:39:25.300

Morton Marcus: Everyone out there has been warned before, so we will hear no calls to the station. Gael Roziere: Don't want to leave out that very important part of my life.

00:39:26.500 - 00:39:38.380

BEFORE DINNER I talked to a friend today, not the kind of friend I usually share intimacies with but still, a good friend, standing outside a Portuguese Festa Hall, eating linguiça under the elms, the

00:39:38.380 - 00:39:52.030

town band playing, queens and princesses, mothers and children. I leaned over and said that it was most curious. Had she ever heard of sexual peaks for women? Thirty-one, thirty-two, somewhere in there, because I was feeling so horny

00:39:52.030 - 00:40:06.940

these days. Was it my age and having different dreams and fantasies? And you know, I told her, I started all kinds of new experiments, imagining sun and moon and ocean, I was just gesticulating, chariot gods, stone pillars. Think of the

00:40:06.940 - 00:40:22.930

Aztecs, did you see Picasso's collection? The one with the minotaurs? I was pacing, pulled at her arm. Yesterday, I saw myself as a kitten, folded my legs around him, then I was a cat, sweet, black, and satin. My friend has glasses, and all of a

00:40:22.930 - 00:40:35.260

sudden I realized that her eyes were nearly falling out, I mean, bigger than the glasses. I looked at her seriously, don't you feel your sexual juices exploding? Does hot weather affect you? My friend was nodding, looked alarmed, and all

00:40:35.260 - 00:40:52.840

of a sudden I became conscious of a big ear, my husband's ear, like a shell right in the middle of the conversation, he once was her lover. Sex, is it like a vessel? Like communion? Pouring of sacred ointments, washing of the feet? That night I talked to

00:40:52.840 - 00:41:07.690

another friend, she whispered, "Sexual peaks can be devastating to men. It's true when they're not used to it. Don't laugh, they can become impotent." And I turned around and looked at my husband, saw him smiling, no, it's flesh. And I thought of St.

00:41:07.690 - 00:41:29.110

Francis of Assisi, talking to the animals, flowers and lions, the mouth of the river, profound depths, space enormous, and like a panther, made love in the evening before dinner. Morton Marcus: And that has, you know, that reminiscent, that

00:41:29.110 - 00:41:42.070

roll to it. It was really interesting to hear that, "Madre Ermana," was the first poem you would have written because that was almost like in one fell swoop discovering your style, discovering how your mind works, and how to get it down on paper.

00:41:42.340 - 00:41:59.860

Very, very interesting. Okay, we have got around five minutes, so what else did you plan on reading? Gael Roziere: Well, I want to hear which one is your favorite so that I can read it and then I want to finish with another

00:41:59.860 - 00:42:14.590

poem. Morton Marcus: Great, okay, This to me is a poem, folks, which is full of the current political situation, as it becomes part of the psyche, and yet at the same time is part of myth, poet's

00:42:14.590 - 00:42:31.420

identification, history, everything, and Gael just said it, in my view, she knew exactly what I was talking about. I think this is a really haunting poem and brings everything you've done in the other poems into one -- I don't know, I'd

00:42:31.420 - 00:42:43.660

like to use a word more than package -- into, well, just into one luminous being, but it is really a haunting poem, and it is called, "Shadows." Gael Roziere: Thank you, I want to say about this poem that I

00:42:43.690 - 00:43:00.280

worked in Dream Theater with Wilma, and this was one of the dreams that was played out and it's a very powerful dream and a poem. Morton Marcus: And I'll say that and it's a powerful poem.

00:43:01.300 - 00:43:15.480

Gael Roziere: Yeah, it's the poem actually. SHADOWS We are fedayeen, a man, his wife, and their child. I am their servant. I wear a white jelaba as they do, and a male

00:43:15.480 - 00:43:35.340

and female in one. We are on a rotten ship. The little girl stands over gnawed out boards and stares at the sea that laps up little white tongues. She is dressed in a white skirt and blouse, white socks and black patent shoes, holds on firmly to

00:43:35.340 - 00:43:54.780

her father and mother's hand. Suddenly the boat lurches and the girl screams. I leap over and embrace her as the sea curls and shoots up. When we are in London, we find out that the wife's sister has been seized, back in the native land, and

00:43:54.780 - 00:44:13.620

certainly raped and killed. Mud houses, sand. Her white-bearded father is most probably dead too. Their death was to be expected yet the sadness is enormous, wrenching nausea, though only for a moment. It's a question of survival, clarity

00:44:13.620 - 00:44:31.740

like light. The oil lamp flickers. After dinner I sit at my master's right side. His wife goes out of the house across the patio for some light in the kitchen. We are silent, about to check the blades of the ivory and silver knives that lay

00:44:31.740 - 00:44:48.960

beside him, when out of the corner of my eye on the white wall opposite me, I see the shadow of a hooded figure, leaping swiftly off the roof outside the French door that leads to the garden where the woman has gone. They are here. I

00:44:48.960 - 00:45:08.940

look over at the blades and catch my master's eye looking at me, he understands, reaches for the knives. It is time, he says. Morton Marcus: Besides the fact that it's a narrative, it is just really chilling and full of atmosphere and done with an

00:45:08.940 - 00:45:25.030

absolute economy of means. It's almost the prognostication for a future I think a lot of us do not want to think about. Gael Roziere: Well, also on the personal level, it was a turning point for me because it was one of the first times that in my

00:45:25.870 - 00:45:56.410

deep unconscious, I was taking up the knives to fight against the dark forces that were out to kill me. And prior to that, I was tended to be overwhelmed by those dark forces. While here I was definitely taking a stand and fighting internally for my

00:45:56.410 - 00:46:23.620

survival and on a larger level. I feel that that is something that we all have to do to make this a better world and to be efficient as warriors, is to fight the darkness and the evil forces within us and come to terms with them and not project

00:46:23.620 - 00:46:44.800

them onto others. Morton Marcus: [Laughs] Gael was saying, "Did I just say all that?" Well, I'm glad that that brought forth all that. But a wonderful poem and just amazingly evocative, incredibly

00:46:44.800 - 00:46:56.320

evocative. You wanted to read one or two more poems? Gael Roziere: My last poem. Morton Marcus: Okay, that would be perfect, great. Yeah. Gael Roziere: It's a small poem that has just been put out by M

00:46:56.320 - 00:47:11.600

Press, which is an a new press in town and they have made- what would you call this? Morton Marcus: Would it be a broadside? It's a very small broadside. It's a card, really, and it's got an envelope too and

00:47:11.600 - 00:47:24.570

everything, so- Gael Roziere: Yeah, and it's a very nice idea to send these as gifts to people and they're available through the Celebration of the Muse Series, which is happening on Tuesday

00:47:24.570 - 00:47:39.030

nights, every other Tuesday. And this one is called, "Breaking the Frozen Sea," which is actually the title of my next book. One of the wonderful things about having finished this first book is that I feel it's made it so much easier now,

00:47:39.030 - 00:47:52.170

I mean, I'm well into, if not halfway finished with my second book, and it just seems like getting over the hurdle of the first book makes everything else- at least the second book is much- is coming much quicker to me than the first one which

00:47:52.170 - 00:48:13.500

took ten years. So: BREAKING THE FROZEN SEA My mother dives into a frozen sea, the one who finds the depth of a poem. She goes the deepest of anyone, slowly descends, each

00:48:13.530 - 00:48:39.270

word, a rung on the ladder. Barely breathing, she measures the pressure, sinks a bit further as small bubbles surface. This is her element. I am proud of her feet, although finally it has little to do with accomplishment, yet nervous. She

00:48:39.270 - 00:48:53.260

is so deep. Morton Marcus: Thank you, Gael. We have been talking today on the Poetry Show to Gael Roziere on the instance of her book, "Witness to a Landscape," which as I said, is a wonderfully,

00:48:53.260 - 00:49:08.830

beautifully packaged book and tape with music of Gael reading the poems in a leatherette binding. And you will be able to purchase that book and hear the poet read and also possibly have her sign it -- t's a really a wonderful gift idea -- on

00:49:08.830 - 00:49:28.090

Friday, November 21st at the Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7:30pm. That's Friday, November 21st at 7:30pm. Let me remind you of several things. First of all, the preceding hour of programming was made possible in part by a grant from Plaza Books

00:49:28.090 - 00:49:49.120

and Stuff on the Pacific Garden Mall. This Thursday at the Greater Jewish Community Center of San Jose, though it's in Los Gatos, on 14855 Oka, O-K-A, Road in Los Gatos, Yehuda Amichai, the leading poet of Israel will be reading from his poetry in

00:49:49.120 - 00:50:04.750

translations by Stephen Mitchell, the wonderful translator who has emerged in the last five years. And this Sunday from 3 to 5pm at the Stevenson College Coffee Shop, Miriam Patchen will read love poems by her late husband, the

00:50:04.750 - 00:50:19.570

seminal American poet Kenneth Patchen, with music by George Demsich, in an atmosphere of abstract stained glass hangings created by Lou Churchill, so try to make that. Again, that last one is the poetry reading by Miriam Patchen this Sunday,

00:50:19.780 - 00:50:39.640

November 16th from 3 to 5pm at the Stevenson College Coffee Shop. This is Mort Marcus. Next week, Joe Stroud will be back with you again. And two weeks from today, I will do another birthday program on the poetry of William Blake. If you have

00:50:39.640 - 00:50:56.440

any Blake poems you'd like me to read or discuss, why not drop a card to me care KUSP and it will be done. That's two weeks from today, Joe Stroud next week. Stay tuned for Leon, who is already starting to heat the oil in the "Jazz Kitchen," which is

00:50:56.470 - 00:50:58.630

on next. See you in two weeks.