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Morton Marcus: Hello, this is Morton Marcus once more and today a private interview with Gene Frumkin, the poet from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is up in California once more after living in New Mexico for a period of 21 years. Before that,

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he was born in New York City, and lived in Los Angeles for a total of 28 years where he edit- where he edited the literary magazine "Coastlines" and also the old "California Review." He is the author of nine books, and his new book, "A Sweetness in

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the Air" has just come out from Solo Press. Welcome to Santa Cruz, Gene Frumkin. Gene Frumkin: Well thank you for inviting me here. I'm very glad to be here.

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Morton Marcus: Well, we are not only here with Gene Frumkin but we are here with an old friend of Gene's, Bob Peterson, well known to listeners of this show, and a fine poet himself and we will just be reminiscing. Gene, tell us something about your

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life just to start the program off. Gene Frumkin: It can be done in three words, or a full volume, I guess. Morton Marcus: Oh, where were you from? How you got from,

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let's say New York to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to New Mexico. Gene Frumkin: Yeah, I was actually born in Harlem in a different time, it was Jewish, in part at that time, but I

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don't remember anything about Harlem now, I remember about the Bronx. We moved to California because of my health, I was a very bad asthmatic. Lived in- we got to Los Angeles before smog did, so you can see how far back this goes.

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Morton Marcus: And how old were you there? Ten years old? Gene Frumkin: Ten. Ten, yes. And lived in Los Angeles for about 28 years, I attended UCLA got a BA in English, that's all I had time for really. Eventually, through the agency of Jack

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Hirshman, whom you may know, I got into teaching on a private level, a private workshop with six or seven people who had trooped out and [unidentified] from a UCLA extension course which they didn't like so, so I had this experience. Than I did

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teach at US- UCLA extension for a couple of years, then resumed the private workshop. This gave me enough teaching experience so that when something opened up at the University of New Mexico I was to some degree prepared. I moved from LA to Albuquerque in

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1966 to take over. I was the only creative writing teacher at that time for 66, Bob Creely had just moved on to SUNY Buffalo, and another the prose teacher, Maurice Friedman, had moved to Maryland. I was the only one there for a while, and I've been

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there ever since. And it's- Alburqerque has been a really nice place to- to live. Morton Marcus: Well, you share Albuquerque with one of my favorite people of all time and that is a policeman there by the

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name of Bob Foster, who is the former light heavyweight champion of the world. And- Gene Frumkin: He's a policeman? Morton Marcus: He's been there, lived in Albuquerque for years.

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Gene Frumkin: Never met him. He's been around in Albuquerque. Morton Marcus: So there Robert Peterson: I have to ask you a question

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Gene Frumkin: Sure. Robert Peterson: I'm always curious about how you got started writing poems. Gene Frumkin: Well, the case is that while I- while I was at

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UCLA, I didn't do any- I had no idea of being a poet the same way I had no idea of being a teacher. I was actually a journalist of sorts and worked on UCLA "Daily Bruin" and eventually became editor of it. The- the poetry came later, a

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friend of mine who still lives in Los Angels now named Mel Weisberg, who was co-editor with me at "Coastlines" had taken this workshop with Tom McGrath and he spoke so highly of it that- and I have just about that time started reading

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contemporary, I guess it would be modern poetry as we refer to it now, for the first time. Before that I had read Chaucer and [unidentified] at UCLA and the romantic poets and so forth, I thought that's what poetry was. The reason I didn't try

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writing any, I believe, is because I know I didn't speak in that sort of language and it had nothing to do with me, and this is all I knew of poetry. But I had picked up prior to this, going into the workshop with- with Tom McGrath I'd read a

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couple of anthologies, the first one being Selden Rodman's "100 Modern Poems." Gene Frumkin: Still in print and then also in the- Morton Marcus: Which is still in print.

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Robert Peterson: Is that one of the first modern anthologies? Gene Frumkin: One of the first, yeah, it's this- it was the first one I picked up- Robert Peterson: We're talking late 50s here?

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Gene Frumkin: No, we're talking early 50s. Really? Yeah. Robert Peterson: Before "Howl."

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Gene Frumkin: 52-53. Yeah, before "Howl." The other one I p cked up was Conrad Aiken's antho ogy in the Modern Library S ries. So I read these poems in oth books with utter and comple e lack of understand ng. I felt exceedingl

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stupid, probably even stupi er than I really am. But the th ng was that I was intrigued, I was intrigued, so that when el Weisberg came along with the idea that I should may e enroll in this workshop f r from Tom McGrath- This was t

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e old LA State on Vermont Av nue, which was at that time ombined with LA City College. his was it was that's how far ack this goes. Anyway, when Mel mentioned this idea I guess I w s primed.

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Robert Peterson: To go to work. Gene Frumkin: To go to the workshop because I found this writing intriguing. Prior to- I remember how this- how I got into the workshop, or how I enrolled, because I was sick

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with the flu. I used to- it usually would knock me out for a week to 10 days when I got the flu in those days. Got up out of bed in the fall of -- or winter, I guess it would be -- of 51 maybe. And I don't remember exactly I was either 51, 52,

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went over to LA State on V rmont, enrolled in McGrath's w rkshop immediately, went back h me, plopped into bed again, you now, continued at being sic , but I had enrolled. And the prior to the workshop I sta ted writing poems, I thought I o

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ght to get my hand in here you know, the workshop was not to e till spring, wrote about thr e or four or five poems. And whe the workshop began I pre ented with I must say a litt e touch of pride, presented thes poems to McGrath and to the cl

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ss, and he shot them down. Th t was a very accurate aim, on by one, and also in in the w ole flock. I was crawling on m knees for about a week. You k ow, oh, god, what what have I d ne here? I really am stupid. I u derstand nothing about p

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etry. I put the ideas down on the page and then tried to reach- to get those ideas in terms of images, without statements. And this poem became "Elegy for a Tailor." And it's, uh, I guess,

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Tom called it an enormous leap. He was, I guess, shocked out of his shoes that this guy could write in a language that was so different from anything that he'd seen before. And from then on I kept doing that for a while, I had two poems at least,

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one in an idea state and one in images. Robert Peterson: Did you keep track of any of the other people in the workshop? Did they go on- other people go on to make a name?

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Gene Frumkin: Oh, well, Mel Weisberg to an extent, who did, until he got into a- a business of his own and he just didn't have time to write. Now he's retired and started writing again with a very, very fast pace actually. We did have a

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group called the Marsh Street Irregulars, which Tom mentions in his long, epic poem letter to an imaginary friend. The Marsh Street Irregulars, I think he used to live at 2714 I believe Marsh Street. And it was a group that kind of congregated there

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rather regularly and talked, partied, laughed, whatever. That group included, besides Mel and myself, included Burt Myers, included Stanley Kiesel, at times, Henri Coulette, Sid and Estelle Gershgoren. I don't know- who knows if these names

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will be familiar to- Morton Marcus: Burt Myers. I did a special show called Lost Voices. And there was a whole show dedicated to Burt. Gene Frumkin: Well, he was, I thought a tremendous poet and

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good friend, and of course, he died in 79. And so we did have a very interesting lively group, and a little later Alvaro Cardona-Hine joined. And these are my oldest friendships really, with Mel and Alvaro, and Stanley with- with Bert, and

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with Tom. Morton Marcus: So you're still in touch with Tom? Gene Frumkin: Yeah, although I hadn't- I went up in September '86 to a party in Minneapolis celebrating his 70th birthday,

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and that's the last time- I haven't seen him since then, but we've been in touch periodically through the years. Yeah, these are lasting attachments. Morton Marcus: Your estimate about the idea of importance of

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surprise in poetry. Years ago I read an article by Wally Cipher, the art critic who said that the only art that will remain by the end of the century of any importance will be poetry, because the poets continually surprise in their language and

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the visual arts are not surprising anymore at all. And he says the danger of life, as he sees it, is that everything will be done through statistics, and everything will predict a future which will be totally safe for everybody and the world

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will become amazingly dull and boring, and only the poets will change that. But it's interesting that he did not say that the- the painters would. Gene Frumkin: That‘s a very interesting thought, I hope in

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part that it's true. Actually, I hope that poetry survives. Morton Marcus: Yes. Gene Frumkin: That long, I think it's in that kind of situation now [cross talk] survival.

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Morton Marcus: Could I ask you at this time to read several poems? Gene Frumkin: Sure. Morton Marcus: And it seems that all you have with you is the new

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book, which is, "A Sweetness in The Air," so we'll be hearing, not really your latest work because you already are working on a series of long poems. Then, could you tell us about the long poems for a moment because they should be available to people in

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Santa Cruz County since one long poem of has appeared in "Hambone " which is edited by Nate Mack y of Santa Cruz and actually f this radio station, he has a jazz program on this ra Gene Frumkin: Well, yes, I started this somewhat over a

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year ago, the long poems, the- I think the germinating idea was that I've noticed that I have several voices in writing poems through the years and I kind of in different ways like them all at different times. And I don't- I don't see any necessary reason

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why I should be writing in only one style. As has been long thought, I guess that's the style that the [unidentified]. It was sad and I have a kind of a profound disagreement with because in terms of style, I have several like, I'm going to

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use voice and style interchangeably, although I don't think of them that way. In any case, what I- the idea that I had, and I think it stemmed from [unidentified] who wrote about Dostoevsky very extensively and noted the

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polyphony of voices in Karamazov, in particular, various other books. And I thought that this notion could be applicable to what I have been doing anyway, but I would like to put it in a more overt, concentrated form. That kind of

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got me going on these long poems which really- each one is a series of short- shorter poems, some discursive, some lyrical, but in various voices. And the first one of was nine manuscript pages. I've since done seven others and I'm working on a

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ninth and the shortest one is about five pages, which is called, ‘‘Walter Benjamin in Moscow," that's the sixth one in the series. Well, anyway, obviously only one has been published so far.

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I also got very interested in combining these voices with something very prosaic and colloquial. So what I have is a -- as it developed -- is a series of letters going through each of the columns written by, purportedly, a woman, Jewish

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woman of about forty, who tells a second person a "you" -- who may be the author, maybe somebody else, doesn't matter -- some of the things that are happening with her in her life, and these are- these prose bits are- are- look or makes it look

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like poetry, because they're broken up into lines but I think of them as prose. She uses cliches as one does in writing letters, she's intelligent, not an intellectual but it's the first in, "In Awe(?)," is actually she's writing about her

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mother who had a problem with- a problem smelling gas in her apartment in Venice, California. And there wasn't any gas really, what she was asking for was to be moved to a rest home because she was too old to take care of her apartment. Anyway, this

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woman writes about that, of course the mother is really my mother. And then some of the incidents that this woman relates are also mine, most of them are made up. I found- the reason I bring up the gas is that in the letters in

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particular, but also in some of the more overtly poetic passages, there is more and more coming in that has to do with the Holocaust. The gas very subconsciously was a prelude to that. I had no idea that I was going to go in that direction. I

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did want to get some political things in, but I didn't know what or how, and anyway, this is probably the main source of that well, of course, the Holocaust is more than a political event. But anyway, these certain political attitudes, in any

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case- another one- and I've had rather good luck in my limited efforts in trying to publish these poems- Morton Marcus: Right. And for the listener out there, it is extremely difficult to place a long poem in a literary

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magazine. Gene Frumkin: Well, Nate Mackey of "Hambone" was very receptive that I just sent him that one, that's the only one I had typed up; he took it, published it. Since then, one other has been

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taken, this is by Philip Foss who edits magazine called Tyuonyi, out of Santa Fe, out of the Institute of American Indian Arts. And it's a very- I think a very high caliber magazine, probably not very well known, but maybe it will be. Anyway,

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those are the only two places I've sent these. Now, these are magazines that are given to running longer poems, and if you- of course you're perfectly right, it's hard to place them in the usual magazine that- w uld not take any of that

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Morton Marcus: But let's begin to read some of the poems from, "A Sweetness in the Air." And we are talking today to Gene Frumkin, if you've just tuned in, and he is what- why are you here? Are you doing some sort of readings or-

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Gene Frumkin: Well, I‘m just here on my periodic pilgrimage to visit my friends, the Weisbergs, actually, which I did in LA, and my daughter Selena, who has lived in the Santa Cruz area for how many years?

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Selena Frumkin: Five years. Gene Frumkin: Five years, okay. And she works at UCal Santa Cruz. It's just a vacation between semesters and I talked to Bob, see while I was up here, perhaps I could give a reading.

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I really wanted to give it for Selena and her friend, Peter Ellison(?), but this is e en better. But Selena is here nd so I'm doing a little bit o a reading for her in this w Morton Marcus: Great, great. Well, we're certainly happy to

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have you here. These- will, "A Sweetness in the Air," be available in local bookstores? Gene Frumkin: I believe it is available- Morton Marcus: Right now?

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Gene Frumkin: In at least one bookstore because Nate Mackey was good enough to place some. Morton Marcus: Okay. Could you give us the name of that book store?

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Morton Marcus: Santa Cruz Bookshop. Book Shop Santa Cruz. Gene Frumkin: Santa Cruz- Gene Frumkin: Yeah, unless they're out of them, I don't know. As far as I know, that's the only place at the moment but

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there may be other ones, I really don't know. Well, alright, well there are actually a series of eighty-five short poems or stanzas, whatever way you want to think of them. These were composed in Hawaii during my second stay there in-

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actually they were started in spring of 1985 and they just kept coming, almost kind of out of the air; I started with the air. Morton Marcus: You sound as if you do write a lot. Do you try

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to write every day or-? Gene Frumkin: Well, no, I don't really do that, but if I don't write for, let's say two or three days, at least a little bit, I kind of begin getting frustrated and a little

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agitated. And so it's something I just need to do, it's almost a physiological need. And no, I don't write every day, that would be nice, but it just doesn't come every day and many times I prime the pump for the next [cross talk].

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Morton Marcus: Do you usually use sequences as a basis? Do you find that you're actually writing not one poem but a series of poems, either in the same style or on the same theme? Gene Frumkin: This has happened more and more lately, yeah, in

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recent years that one thing leads to another and little cycles come out. Morton Marcus: It sounds like you're really in tune to that voice inside you that's just relating to everything around

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you. Gene Frumkin: Well, I hope so. Something's happening anyway and I guess like almost all writers, I like to think that what I'm doing now is much better than what I did ten years ago from

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some objective estimates by other people. At least they seem to bear that out, the people I trust seem to feel that the later stuff is stronger; so I hope they're right. Morton Marcus: Great. [cross talk]

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Gene Frumkin: Let me read some of these. And this book is in four sections; the first one is called: IN HAWAII Someone has poured mock-orange into the winds, early November

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ONE trades that glow hardest near the clouds, gray expressionists blocks among the blue ones de Kooning might have used to TWO

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preserve these days. A mistake of course to believe a painter A sweetness thickens the buds of winter, here in this land where lives in the sky, yet those white petals shattered on the grass give evidence of an art sheltered on high furious grounds.

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the earth swells each season with mangoes and pineapples, papayas, and the coffee beans of Kona. Weeds leech onto the principle of amplitude, but even they carry the odor of chocolate berries. If harsh cries disturb the night, they must be those

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illiterate macaws who have misheard the dreams of their darkest [unintelligible] of ancestors. THREE Today the city sways, caught in the vice of heavily armed air,

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white mock-orange petals litter the streets like confetti from Queen Liliuokalani‘s last parade. In the Washington Place palace where the governor now lives, her portrait looks at the viewer with all the marble clarity of a shrine. The city

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sags again, almost bowing to the trade's mastering force and the citizens fly along the currents laughing at this carnival ride, this pitching through time. Then, the Queen laughs too. FOUR

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Yet I give little attention to the sea, have never immersed myself in its beauty, its literal waters. Perhaps it is the salt in my eyes and throat and nostrils. Perhaps I fear a deadly baptism. A man of sugar, I collect the day's rain in a

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can. I heat it and sprinkle in two teaspoons. I call the rain a delicacy, the root grower, maker of fields and orchards. Then, I'm less afraid of the sea. FIVE

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Oh, honey, [unidentified] doxologies. Even we who listen behind the churches come forward into brazen light. The bodies of women and men, brown in the various hues of sand, stand in themselves as praises under a heavy sun, of song of beaches

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and spewing waters. Who but God can hear and not believe so simple a gospel, pious foam, creamy flesh. Let me interrupt here. I don't know exactly really how much you want me to read, but I-

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Morton Marcus: No, that's fine. We're moving towards the half hour so I'm listening. Now, what- are there any particular stanza or arrangements? I mean, I'm looking at the poems now and it seems like you've got [counting] three, six, ni

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Gene Frumkin: Right, there isn't an arrangement for these. The first poem that I read is eight lines, second is nine, third is ten, and back down to nine and then to eight. And then from there, it goes to ten to twelve, back to ten to eight. Then to

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twelve to sixteen which is the longest, back to twelve, back to eight, and then in reverse back to eight, nine, ten, nine, eight. So this kind of developed again was nothing that I nothing preconceived, but i seemed to me to give a wav

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effect, at least in my own min and which was- seemed to work ith Hawaii. And that's the rrangement that goes all the ay through, so from that- and hat also, of course, was a hallenge trying to do it that ay.

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And it is divided into four sections: the first one, "In Hawaii," is most directly concerned with Hawaii as a place when I was very interested in that, as place that in its odd way it has, I think, a contact point with New Mexico in the

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sense that there is a feeling about the sacredness of the land, and that's a very strong feeling in New Mexico and likewise in Hawaii. So while the landscapes are very different, that feeling, I guess helped me- put me in touch with the whole

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Hawaii aura and the feeling for that, at least the people I was with felt that. And I think that's where this whole series had its initial beginnings with that big abstract feeling. I should say that the actual writing began because in

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November of '84, I smelled a sweetness in the air, which I thought was honeysuckle. And it brought me back to one of those sort of involuntary memory things, Proust- very kind of Proust-like, to Los Angeles when I was about seventeen or so, and

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I was talking to a girl outside -- it was my first affair, actually -- I was smelling honeysuckle, spring I guess it was, way back. So anyway, this triggered off in sort of minor ways what the madeleine dipped in the tea did for Proust, this

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whole thing. I later found out that what I was smelling was not honeysuckle, but mock-orange, which looks and smells much like honeysuckle. So that was the little bitty thing that started this poem. Usually my poems do begin with little bitty things.

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Morton Marcus: An image- Gene Frumkin: An image, a phrase very often, even a little tune sometimes, who knows? Occasionally, actually, you have an idea, but usually it's something like that In any case,

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the four parts of the book, first one "In Hawaii", the second one was called, ‘‘In General,‘‘ which was supposed to deal with certain things a bit more abstractly, and the third one, and the third one is called, ‘‘In Disguise,‘‘ in

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which I pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman. Somehow this came to me as something that I would like to try to do for a time, at least, not that I didn't want to pretend to be a woman, but I wanted to pretend to be a man

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disguised as a woman. And so to a degree, it rep- [cut- Morton Marcus: We've been talking with Gene Frumkin, and he has been telling us about the structure of his new book, "A Sweetness in the Air," and we had gotten all the way to part

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four, Gene, so why don't you tell us about that. Gene Frumkin: Part four is called, ‘‘In Language,‘‘ and I thought I would like to play a little bit more. I guess the language writers were to some degree a source of this. I'm not

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a language writer by any means, I trust the forgoing stuff that I read before would indicate that. I am interested in their sort of experimentation and did a little bit of that in this fourth section.

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Robert Peterson: Did you- Gene Frumkin: Cause it's all- after all poetry is in language. Robert Peterson: Could you explain to me what these language poets are trying to do? I‘m not too clear.

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Gene Frumkin: Well, I think they're- Robert Peterson: What they think they're trying to do. Gene Frumkin: Well, okay. It seems to me that one of the things they're trying to do is put less emphasis on the

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aesthetic side of language and more into the notion of language as investigation, or that language is to be investigated rather than to be seen from something of a distance and appreciated for its beauty or whatever. So-

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Robert Peterson: Do you understand this, Mort? Morton Marcus: I don't understand that, but go on. Gene Frumkin: Well, it's just that if you check Gertrude Stein, let's say, as something of a model, which many of the

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language writers have done, then maybe you'll get an idea of the sort of tinkering that some of them do. The language writers are by no means monolithic. They seem to me very different in their approaches, and I think that's to the good, and there's

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a number of them whose work I truly do admire. Morton Marcus: Could you- could you give us the name of those writers whose work you're do admire? Gene Frumkin: Those that come to mind who in different ways I

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feel in touch with are Michael Palmer, Clark Coolidge, Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scala ino, Ron Silliman, certain y a couple of others, but tho e ones that come to mind. Morton Marcus: And they are all actually Bay Area writers.

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Gene Frumkin: They are, then there's Charles Bernstein who I'm also interested in who lives in New York. So there is a Bay Area, New York axis. And in New Mexico, actually, there is a kind of linkage also, primarily through Lee Bartlett, who is on

00:34:37.390 - 00:35:01.780

our faculty who has written about the language writers in such magazines as "Critical Inquiry," and various other essays and has invited a great many of the Bay Area writers to read in our reading series down at the university.

00:35:01.870 - 00:35:17.230

Robert Peterson: When you were talking earlier about voice, tone of voice, how would that kind of thinking fit in with the language by the-? Wouldn't it tend to- isn't the sense of voice rather absent? I mean, isn't it likely to be absent

00:35:17.230 - 00:35:29.990

when there's more or less just experimenting around it? Gene Frumkin: No, I don't think that's true in- I think there are definite voices and those people- Morton Marcus: Michael and Leslie, definitely.

00:35:30.050 - 00:35:51.740

Gene Frumkin: Yeah, Clark, and I think there are definite voices there. They are all quite distinct from one another, I shouldn't say, I don't know that much. I suppose there are some meshings and stuff like that, but no, I think they're- they

00:35:51.740 - 00:36:05.140

have their own distinctive way of doing it, and for some, at least, apparently a real viable way. Morton Marcus: One of them I found in language school is that in the end, it seems that the language itself becomes the

00:36:05.140 - 00:36:16.630

topic, it becomes very hermetic. Gene Frumkin: That's the problem as I see it also, yeah. The poem's character this extreme where languages is the experience-

00:36:16.660 - 00:36:37.690

Morton Marcus: Right. Gene Frumkin: -lacks weight, I mean, it's a problem that I have listened to because I really don't experience- all my experience in language, exactly, some of it feels to me

00:36:37.720 - 00:36:59.080

pre-language, and certainly there are some incidents that one of my voices is just trying to trace certain incidents that are important to me. And I want those incidents- and the language has to be subverted toward those incidents rather

00:36:59.080 - 00:37:11.460

than being paramount in itself, rather than the experience being at the service of the language. Morton Marcus: Gene, I don't know how you plan this but since we are talking about the language [unidentified], would

00:37:11.460 - 00:37:32.860

you mind reading from part four first, and- so that the listeners out there can get a sense of what you're talking about and how you're going at this. Gene Frumkin: Alright, I don't feel that these efforts in terms

00:37:32.860 - 00:37:52.150

of language writers are very sophisticated examples. Let me read: NUMBER 77, here. How valuable it is to describe something exactly as it is, in

00:37:52.150 - 00:38:16.900

words that re-place that certain actuality. I say of mock-orange, its aroma combines with ordinary air. Everyone breathes for a while, but different air, the habit of breathing changes. In identifying the fact, I make an equation without changing

00:38:16.960 - 00:38:43.990

anything. The reader continues to breathe, the air imagines. Okay, that's just my way of- I don't know that the language writers, if they ever got into a meeting all together would draw me out immediately on hearing this or whether in some way they

00:38:43.990 - 00:38:54.090

would feel that it has something to do with what they are trying to do. As I said, it's not- Morton Marcus: Well, reading your poetry over the years, that poem illustrates what all of your poetry has, which is a

00:38:54.090 - 00:39:02.120

very, very firm anchor in the everyday world and in the world of experience and image. Gene Frumkin: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And you see, that anchor seems to me to be cut

00:39:02.120 - 00:39:19.910

loose with the language poets and then you'll hear things like, we would rather read the criticism than we would the actual reading of poetry because the critic, if it's a guy like Jacques Derrida, is really- it's so much more interesting to read

00:39:19.910 - 00:39:31.860

his language and his style and where it takes him than it is to read the actual work itself. I mean, you know, statements like that sort of make me climb walls. Gene Frumkin: Mhm, well, I think it's true that in some cases of

00:39:31.860 - 00:39:54.360

the language writers the criticism is indistinguishable from even the imaginative writing, you know, it's they all- they come together, they fuse. I think the- that sort of part of myself that is -- through the years has been kind

00:39:54.360 - 00:40:08.190

of surrealistic -- is maybe a part of me that attaches to the language writers. I'm not saying that they are surrealistic, although a superficial reading might give that- Morton Marcus: Give that impression.

00:40:08.000 - 00:40:26.780

Gene Frumkin: Give that impression. But that is one of my styles, voices, whatever you want to call it, which I'm trying to work in also into this new long series that I mentioned earlier in the program. And some of this stuff here is kind of

00:40:26.780 - 00:40:41.910

that way. But you're right, basically, I do feel anchored to every day stuff, trivial things like smell, mock-orange in the air. Morton Marcus: It's great that you read that because that did

00:40:41.910 - 00:40:59.070

connect to the poems you had read before the break. But if you have another one or two of these- Gene Frumkin: Alright, I'll read: NUMBER 80, this is what-

00:40:59.570 - 00:41:03.890

Robert Peterson: I was hoping you'd read 78 because [cross talk] Gene Frumkin: All right. Robert Peterson: Would you let me read some of it?

00:41:05.690 - 00:41:21.000

Gene Frumkin: Pray do. Robert Peterson: Just wanted to give it a go. God exists under many di ferent aliases, one of them be ng the subject [u identified]. For example, a ma

00:41:21.000 - 00:41:41.610

stands in shadow under a tr e. A woman dances by in sc rlet leotards. Elsewhere, the ca el, the owl, someone pulls an [u identified] in a suburban tw light so that there gathers an essence, which is the fugue of a dream. The time graphs en

00:41:41.610 - 00:41:59.740

eavor onto the summery lake, wh ch streams the sky. People go by thinking of a subject, woman, ca el, man, owl. Gene Frumkin: That's good stuff. Morton Marcus: Let me just say first for the audience out

00:41:59.740 - 00:42:14.080

there, if you've just tuned in, that was Robert Peterson, who's an old friend of Gene‘s and who is joining us on the program. Again, though, that, again is the surrealistic taking of different images and putting it together, very, very vivid. And

00:42:14.260 - 00:42:24.920

it's relating things that may be abstract, but I mean, it's very specific images, and very, very specific things. Gene Frumkin: Yeah, well, even my abstract poems, I think, in part two of this book would-

00:42:25.400 - 00:42:40.580

Morton Marcus: Do the same thing. Gene Frumkin: I- yeah, I hope would do that, because I'm really concerned with sort of specificity, even in abstraction because that seems to be th genesis of it. But it wa

00:42:40.580 - 00:42:56.180

interesting to hear Bob read th poem because Robert Peterson: You heard [unintelligible] [cross talk] Gene Frumkin: I don't hear myself when I read it to myself or read it orally, having somebody else do a very good

00:42:56.300 - 00:43:11.780

job. Robert Peterson: You were going to read 80. Gene Frumkin: Yeah. Oh, 80, I was looking back earlier there, alright.

00:43:12.170 - 00:43:29.790

80 We, scholars of the heart, waiver at the literal, observing Queen Anne's lace in the froth of water, or we decipher a coat of arms. This, the happiness of poets, sniffers of cherry

00:43:29.790 - 00:43:53.490

laurel, high vaulters, dopers and denoters. High in reverence but cherry laurel, alone in the world, refers to nothing whose only echo nothing is. Speech effect, false flowers of water, blueprints for Star Wars, objects of the world all

00:43:53.490 - 00:44:18.080

consumed by speech and its restlessness, its risk to be ultimately safe. Seems to me that this one is one of a kind of mimicking of the language writers and to a degree also a critique of them, you

00:44:18.080 - 00:44:32.570

know, a bit of fault-finding. Morton Marcus: Especially the word, ‘‘safe.‘‘ I mean, I think in the end to me, and I like Michael Palmer and Leslie Scalapino's work, there is in the end turning away from a

00:44:32.570 - 00:44:43.790

world that is getting increasingly difficult to live in. And you can just listen to the words in your head, which I know that in the crisis periods in my life is exactly what I did and it was not fruitful at all.

00:44:43.000 - 00:45:15.940

Gene Frumkin: Well, it can be that, but I also think whethe the Zeitgeist is responsible or whatever is responsible, I reall do commend the language writer for trying to carry imaginativ writing into some differen channels. And I think whethe

00:45:16.510 - 00:45:37.570

all of it works or doesn't - well, in no case would all of i work -- I think that that alway is a good thing to do becaus out of this can come renewal who knows what will happen. An if we go back, or try to g back, let's say to the olde

00:45:37.570 - 00:46:02.380

forms of modernism, which was of course, sponsored by the ne criticism, I think that's wher the decadence might lie. But don't say I think the language writing is at the opposite end of that at least. Oh, I mean, here are precursors and all of

00:46:02.380 - 00:46:21.460

hat, but I think it is trying o do what Tom McGrath urged very early on in my writing ca eer, that is surprise. And they do, for instance, [cross talk] hey do require Robert Peterson: I would like to say something here, which is

00:46:21.490 - 00:46:42.190

again about language poems, which I admit I'm only cursorily acquainted with, but I tend to distrust it, believing- I believe that there's an awful lot to be said, and that much can be said by imbuing very simple words with certain kinds

00:46:42.190 - 00:46:57.790

of passion. And that one waits for these words to come along and to be hooked up with the right kind of emotion and passion, and this is what makes it interesting, this is what makes poetry interesting for me. Not moving box around and

00:46:57.790 - 00:47:16.030

experimenting but waiting for usually pretty simple words that you care about and then suddenly take on new auras. If you wait, and I'm convinced that you can say all kinds of wonderful things. If you're content to wait for these valid, ordinary

00:47:16.030 - 00:47:29.800

words to take on the meanings they take on, you're keeping- if you keep your ears open, your eyes open, ears and eyes open. And I tend to think there's something a little too calculated and cool but we're talking about-

00:47:30.130 - 00:47:39.720

Gene Frumkin: Well- Robert Peterson: -hermetic, more towards it fits that probably, I mean, you tend to get sort of hermetic meanings. Well, the person obviously cares about this, but well, I don't know,

00:47:39.750 - 00:47:51.430

it's not- The words aren't doing what they're supposed to, which is go from you to me and come across like little paper airplanes, you know, but you understand. Gene Frumkin: Yeah, well-

00:47:53.080 - 00:48:06.640

Robert Peterson: I just had to say that because it's fun. Gene Frumkin: Well, yeah, I guess I must, to a large extent, I agree with you. However, I don't think it's an either or situation. That is-

00:48:07.860 - 00:48:25.220

Robert Peterson: There's room for everybody. Gene Frumkin: Well, language people, for the most part, are agonistic to the usual narrative idea. They, I guess, would prefer to blow up these narrative bridges and work with

00:48:25.220 - 00:48:44.660

some other way. And so I can see that and in the work that I'm doing now, some of the work sort of subscribes to that. But on the other hand, as I mentioned before, I have these letters going through which are strictly narratives. I mean, they're

00:48:44.780 - 00:49:06.380

prosaic narratives. And for me, that's very essential because without those particular passages, it would seem to me that the other stuff, what I [unintelligible], the real poetry, would indeed fly off like black paper airplanes or

00:49:06.380 - 00:49:29.960

actually balloons and never be seen again. But it's the narrative that I hope provides the glue that will make some of these other things stick together. So certainly I take issue with this idea that narrative is passé. I really

00:49:29.960 - 00:49:42.400

disagree but there is always a little story there somewhere. Robert Peterson: You've got he good story. Morton Marcus: Well, why don't you read from the other sections because this has been a fascinating show, but we have

00:49:42.400 - 00:49:56.770

not read very much poetry, which doesn't bother me at all. And the things that have been said, especially about the language poets, I think are very important for people out there to hear but I would also like it to be backed up with some of the

00:49:56.770 - 00:50:09.190

work of Gene Frumkin so that we can hear the word singing in our ears with some. Gene Frumkin: Well, [unidentified] singing when nobody hears, but I want to go back to section two from which I

00:50:09.190 - 00:50:36.710

haven't read yet, the section that's called, "In General," and this is one of the longer sixteen-liners: NUMBER 27, and of course it takes off from 1984, Orwell's 1984 and- which was a book that I was teaching in Hawaii in a

00:50:36.710 - 00:50:57.310

lit class, and 1984 was one of the texts. We know that Winston Smith was the last man, we know he died and others went on living. Truth wavers like the leaves in windy moonlight. A passage begins between those who wander in the

00:50:57.310 - 00:51:16.780

forest or those who stand waiting for the lights to change. We know how little the stars affect the fragrance in our bones, or the merciless affections of those who love us. The horizon changes with every flick of anyone's eyelash.

00:51:17.230 - 00:51:42.400

Remember us, Mr. Smith, as you relive certain motions of your last life and the slowness and morbidity of the planet, too heavily weighted by human power. The mock-orange, frail as its aroma, borders the unfathomable death of what we know, even as

00:51:42.430 - 00:51:54.670

[unintelligible] man, Orpheus returns to us with another new song from the dive below. Morton Marcus: Does mock-orange play a big part of the book, I mean, is it-?

00:51:54.900 - 00:52:11.520

Gene Frumkin: Runs all the way through, yeah, that's- you've heard it I think probably several times already, that's the sweetness in the air. For me, although this might not be poem, more of a spead in particular, but my feeling was

00:52:11.520 - 00:52:38.160

very, very happy at the time that I was writing these, with where I was, with the poem that were happening, so to say, I think to me it‘s an upbeat book. Let's see, I thought I would read one from the, "In the Sky," section, man pretending to be a

00:52:40.680 - 00:52:59.120

woman. NUMBER 39 actually says this: Of course, I am only pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, writing poems from the idea of various women. I lack

00:52:59.120 - 00:53:22.400

the body, the nature of a woman's ministrations. As woman, I have not suffered the politics of rape or brutality in the courtroom. These poems are second-hand, the first hand being occupied by my own cock, even so, I don't lie in style

00:53:22.880 - 00:53:42.320

whose language offers itself as an equator between two worlds. I, in making these words, share the feminine conscience in embryo, a toddler who must express its knee, it's true mimicking of redemption.

00:53:44.510 - 00:54:04.520

Yeah, it's sort of a reflection of it, not to mention the sexual fantasies which accompany these writing of these poems, so that sort of gets in there too. There is a poem that, if I can find it, that I would like to read which- yeah, that's:

00:54:04.520 - 00:54:24.590

NUMBER 26, which actually explains the formal arrangement of these lines in terms of numbers and so on. Symmetrical fragments, the conductor explains, we extend a theme from eight bars to nine and ten, back to nine and eight,

00:54:25.280 - 00:54:46.010

lengthening the extent of the sweet melody still lingering at midnight over these high Manoa streets. We developed this theme, the conductor says, in bars of eight, ten, twelve, then the reverse. Sweetness is extensive this way, allows

00:54:46.010 - 00:55:07.280

itself range, backwards too, continuing from eight, this time to twelve, to sixteen, and back so. Real [unidentified] of mock-orange, repeating extensively sheet to sheet, especially, the word winds, their sensuality, the conductor

00:55:07.280 - 00:55:23.690

waves, waves, his hands. In the reeds, the seeds, it's all numbers. Morton Marcus: Gene, we actually have time for one more poem. So, that hour goes very quickly.

00:55:27.620 - 00:55:33.200

Gene Frumkin: Well, maybe the last poem in the book would be fitting, right? Morton Marcus: Okay, great. Gene Frumkin: NUMBER 85

00:55:36.980 - 00:56:02.780

Slowly we notice, or we notice the slowness of mock-orange dissipating. Having enjoyed the air and we the air's low hanging, a vast relief over the hungover city. Now, mock-orange, almost de-scented, leaves us with a simulation of sadness,

00:56:03.230 - 00:56:26.480

and as-ifness. The primordial smell of salt water rests heavily now on the sweet, old laurels, which we absorb slowly arising and sinking. [Cut off]