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Morton Marcus: This is KUSP, community sponsored radio, for Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Salinas at 88.9 on your FM dial. Stay tuned for the Poetry Show. Good evening, everybody listening to Peter Lang on the

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guitar, this is Mort Marcus welcoming you to another Poetry Show. And before I begin the show, I would like to thank everybody out there who so generously showed their support for the Poetry Show on the last push day that we had two weeks

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ago. Thank you very much again, thank you for the support. It really makes Joe and I very happy and certainly will make us look to more interesting programs than ever before. And in fact, I think we're going to have one of those tonight.

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Tonight we are going, well, before I do that and get into the show, let me not forget to also thank Stapleton's Natural Foods Grocery for providing support that helps to make this hour of programming possible. Stapleton's Natural Foods

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Groceries specializes in organic and commercial produce at 415 River Street in Santa Cruz. Thank you Stapleton's. As I was saying, [cut-off]. The 1988 winner of the American Book Award for his novel,

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"Griever," an American Monkey King in China. In fact, it's just going to be the end of this month. I think that Mr. Vizenor is going to receive that award down in the ABA book conference down in Los Angeles. He is also the author of, "Darkness in

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Saint Louis Bearheart," a novel, "The People Named the Chippewa," narrative histories, and, "The Trickster of Liberty," a forthcoming novel. Besides this, he has several volumes of poetry. And he is at present since this last fall, the

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instructor in ethnic, well, full professor I should say, of Ethnic Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He himself is a mixed-blood Chippewa. So tonight, the program, if you haven't guessed, is going to be

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in Native American literatures and if you have a tape that you want to put on, do it now because what you're going to be hearing will be well worth saving. First of all, Gerald, welcome to the KUSP Poetry Show and thank you so much for coming

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down. How long have you been in Santa Cruz? Gerald Vizenor: Teaching this fall, before that I taught at Berkeley, and before that Minnesota, which is my home. Morton Marcus: Okay. Your home is in Minnesota. Are you

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connected with a reservation in Minnesota? Gerald Vizenor: Yes, my family comes from the White Earth Reservation which is in north western Minnesota. Morton Marcus: Okay, you said you've been in Berkeley for ten

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years. What did you do? How did you get educated? What did your education lead to? And what have you done, let's say, for the first thirty or forty years of your life? Gerald Vizenor: Well, when I attended college, there weren't

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any ethnic studies programs or courses in Native American literature. So I studied Asian literatures and history and other things, but it was later after a career in journalism and social services that I came into higher education and especially

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Native American literature. Morton Marcus: Well, tonight, we are going to be talking, as you know, about Native American literatures, and I thought the question I throw you immediately is, first of all, there is no

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such thing as Native American literature as such, is there? Gerald Vizenor: No, it truly is a plural and it's even more complicated than that, because it's work in translation, which arises from song or stories. And then it's also contemporary

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literature, which is written in English. Morton Marcus: What would you say the difference would be from the starting points, and even the purpose of let's say, poetry in particular, from Western literature and Native American

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literatures? Gerald Vizenor: Well, the work that comes to us in translation, and I think most people would recognize some of those beautiful songs of the Navajo, the Beauty Way songs, or the

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Night Chants, some of the song poems, or Dream Songs, as they're known among the woodland tribes, those are, I think, better known than others, but it's so diverse and so rich in oral literature that it's difficult to appreciate it in

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translation completely. And of course, no one can learn 3000 languages to appreciate it in the original, but what I'm getting at is that it's so subtle, so complicated, so much an intimate reflection of each individual culture, and the

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values and worldview of that culture, that a translation just can't be done. I think at best, what we have are re-expressions or transformations. And I think for readers or listeners today, work in translation begins to sound a bit too homogenized, or

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too much like the romantic and very sentimental view of tribal people that they were sort of agents of Mother Earth, etc. I mean, I don't want to work over that metaphor, but the work in translation is not a very good representation of the literature

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that is still unheard for the most part; unheard because it's an oral tradition and we're a print society now, so it's difficult. I mean, I don't think many people would want to take all the time and commitment to listen, since an oral literature

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demands a good listener. Morton Marcus: And certainly, as I've said a lot, our ears have shrunk, especially since the coming of television. Gerald Vizenor: That's good point. One of the aspects of

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difference in traditional societies, traditional tribal cultures, and oral literature is that there's a great emphasis upon listening. Of all the senses, I'm sure that people in an oral traditional culture are much keener listeners than

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people today. Well, you just have to listen to some contemporary music to realize it, people don't listen very subtly. But in literature today, we're moved by eye and not by ear, motivated by eye, by vision, rather than by sound.

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Morton Marcus: I think someone did an estimate and said that most of the imagery used in the last hundred years or so in Western literature is mostly English American literature, 70% of it is visual.

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Gerald Vizenor: Quite right, yeah, in fact, I don't think there are many references in contemporary literature about what characters or narrators hear. Morton Marcus: But what I always tell my students, which is so

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interesting, is that the people in Shakespeare's time actually understood what was going on, not only because it was the everyday language, but because they could really hear all those metaphors, and all of those allusions and references and you

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just can't hear them today. Even if you're looking at them on the page, you can't hear them. Gerald Vizenor: Good to know that, but you would see by hearing-

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Morton Marcus: Yeah. Gerald Vizenor: You would know by hearing, by sound. Morton Marcus: Yeah, your pictures are even that way. Well, what we're going to do tonight is hear some of these

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poems, so why don't you sort of go into the first group that you are going to go into, and talk about it, and then read us some of these things? Gerald Vizenor: Well, I'd like to show some of the diversity of

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traditional literature that's in translation. And some of these songs I've re-expressed myself from the Ojibwe or Chippewa. Morton Marcus: [Unintelligible] section. For the listeners out there, when we're talking about traditional ethnics that are

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literatures, could you give a timespan on that? Gerald Vizenor: Well, rather than a timespan, I'll say a literature that is told and listened to. Morton Marcus: Okay, great.

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Gerald Vizenor: Actually isn't very specific term but the problem with the word tradition is that it invites the suggestion of something static, or fixed and it's not that at all, or literatures, you know, were very imaginative and no one

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story was ever told the same way and probably no one song was ever sung the same way. But let me point out some of the diversity which makes it such a rich and exciting area of literature, the Woodland tribes, many of them, they would be the

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Chippewa, one of the largest, or Ojibwe had a dream song or kind of song poem. And they're very imagistic and quite brief and suggest the Haiku, which is an interesting parallel. I mean, they're not related, but I mean it suggests that kind of precise

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imagery. For example, this is a translation or as I say, re-expression I prefer the idea of re-expression rather than translation: As my eyes look across the prairie I feel the summer in the

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spring. Another: The first to come among the birds bringing the rain, crow is my name.

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These were individuals songs, a singer would own his song. And this may defy some popular notions of communal property, but a singer had his own songs or her own songs, and no one would think of stealing someone else's music anymore than

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someone would think of stealing somebody else's story. I mean, it's- Morton Marcus: Now when would they sing these songs and would they be much longer when they sang them?

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Gerald Vizenor: They'd be repeated. With the re-expression here you see is that it's in print, and I'm reading it as if it were written by an individual author, for a listening audience. But in fact, it's accompanied by drum or flute and

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it's sung, the voice itself is a musical instrument, and it's repeated. The images would be repeated, there'd also be some vocables or sounds to work in rhythmically to the language. Morton Marcus: So let's say one of these poems that you just

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read, which took about, say less than three or four seconds- Gerald Vizenor: Would be a song. Morton Marcus: And it would take ten minutes? Gerald Vizenor: Probably not that long, a few minutes.

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Morton Marcus: That's great. Gerald Vizenor: For example. Morton Marcus: Okay. Gerald Vizenor: The sky- I'm sorry, let me start again:

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The clear sky resounds when I come making a sound. There's something so wonderfully egotistical about that. Or how about this song: The clear sky loves to hear me sing.

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Morton Marcus: I've often felt that way [chuckles]. Gerald Vizenor: This in contrast, say, to the idea of tribal cultures being more communal and avoiding expressions of individualism or ego. The Woodland tribes-

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Morton Marcus: Right off the bat. Gerald Vizenor: The woodland tribes, I think, at least relatively speaking, we're more individualistic. Morton Marcus: Now. The Woodland tribes actually extended all the

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way to the East Coast, right? When there were huge forests, nd went from the East Coast, let s say out to the Mississippi or somewhere Gerald Vizenor: Yeah, to the Plains, we're getting in the

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Plains. Overhanging clouds echoing my words with a pleasing sound. Across the earth, everywhere, making my voice heard. Here's a little longer poem. It actually was a response to in

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the 18th century, in the Great Lakes area, it was a response by a Chippewa or Ojibwe elder to a British military officer, who had sought the support and alliance of the Chippewa in their territorial wars at the time of the French and others.

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And this military officer, this British officer, was hoping to gain the support of this elder and the tribe. And the elder responded in this way, his name was [unidentified], and he said to the British officer, "If you wish to know me, you must seek

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me in the clouds. I am a bird who rises from the earth, and flies far up into the sky, out of human sight. Though not visible to the eye, my voice is heard from afar and resounds over the earth."Now can you imagine someone responding to a

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summons from your draft board, in contemporary time, the response being, "I am a bird who rises from the earth and flies far up into the skies out of human sight?" Morton Marcus: Well, I think one of the things is, we can't

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imagine any of our leaders saying that either. I mean, that's not the way Shultz talks. That's great. Gerald Vizenor: Let me read a different kind of literature and re-expressed, or translated from a Zuni song.

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Morton Marcus: Now we're hearing your translations now, aren't Gerald Vizenor: Those were re-expressions I did from we? Chippewa, now let me shift to the Southwest. And I'd like to

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do two things here: I'd like to read one translation by an anthropologist, Ruth Bunzel from the Zuni and then read a contemporary poem by a great poet, Simon Ortiz, wonderful Morton Marcus: Great.

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poetry, and hear and see and feel the similarities and differences. Gerald Vizenor: This is the translation from the Zuni. It's a song of a Zuni Hunter:

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This day, he who holds our rose, our sun father, has come out standing to his sacred place. Now that he has passed us on our roads, here, we pass you on your road. Divine one, the flesh of the white corn, prayer meal, shell, corn pollen, here I offer

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to you. With your wisdom, taking the prayer meal, the shell, the corn pollen, on this day, my fathers, my mother, in some little hollow in some low brush you will reveal yourself to me. Then with your flesh, with your living water, may I satisfy

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myself. That was a song of a Zuni Hunter, translated by Ruth Bunzel and it was published by the Bureau of American Ethnology. Here is a contemporary poem by one of my

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favorite writers Acoma poet Simon Ortiz, and it's called: THIS PREPARATION These sticks I am holding, I cut down at the creek. I have just come from there. I listened to the creek speaking to the world.

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I did my praying and then I took my knife and I cut these sticks. There is some sorrow in leaving fresh wounds in growing things. But my praying has relieved some of my sorrow. Prayers make things possible, my uncle said. Before I left, I listened again

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for words that creek was telling. And I smelled its smell, which are words also. And then I tied my sticks into a bundle and came home, each step of prayer for this morning and a safe return. My son is sleeping still in this quietness, my wife

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is stirring at her cooking and I am making this preparation. I wish to make my praying into these sticks like gods have taught. Morton Marcus: You know, really something. And Ortiz is writing

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in English of course? Gerald Vizenor: Yes, and the other of course was a translation from an oral song. You can imagine the problems of trying to work, translate, re-express, transform, render a

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song arising from a culture that has no written language to transmit in. First having to record its sound in a written form and then culturally having to transpose values and arrive at some meaning. And still, I think, in many songs as in many

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stories, the power, the visual power, the imagery of these songs, and many stories can defy the worst translations. I mean, they'll arise from the worst translations, in fact, you can't beat them down.

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Morton Marcus: That says something about that. One anthology, two anthologies I've liked very much and if you don't like them, feel free to say so, that really does try to get this is Rothenberg's, "Technicians of the Sacred," and "Shaking the

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Pumpkin," yeah. What do you think of those? I mean, they're not just concerned with Native American literatures out there. Gerald Vizenor: They're very imaginative re-expressions of traditional or oral expressed tribal literatures. And at the

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time, I think that was first published in the late 60s or- Morton Marcus: '68 I think somewhere. Gerald Vizenor: And very popular at the time. What it did, I think, first of all, is that it delivered the idea very clearly

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that tribal literatures are complex, beautiful, lusty, complicated, contradictory. In other words, all of the aspects of human experience were present. Not only that, he even included works- words and references and images about

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ordinary body functions, which had never been expressed in the translations before because they were kind of sanitized. They, you know, had been touched by missionaries and others and it wasn't thought proper to communicate some of the lusty or

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body humor or references to body functions. And that much I truly celebrate in his presentation. They are however still imaginative. They are primarily Rothenberg's vision and re-expression of tribal literatures and they're very

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good at that. He says they are that and he's honest about it and they were extraordinarily popular and did I think establish very well that tribal literatures are rich, wonderful, unpredictable, and complicated.

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Morton Marcus: Well, they've been re-released in the last several years and they actually ran a print for a while. What I liked about them was the second half of the book, which was his explanations, which really took you to the very root of poetry

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and then built poetry up in complexity. Gerald Vizenor: Ethnopoetics. Morton Marcus: Ethnopoetics but, you know, I mean freely interchanged surrealist and Dada experiments to show that they

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were the exact same and coming out of the same impulse. I thought that was wonderful because no longer were we talking about primitive peoples, you see. Gerald Vizenor: I second that.

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Morton Marcus: Which I thought was good. Gerald Vizenor: That demanded Western interpretation to give them meaning. Morton Marcus: Well, let us go on.

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Gerald Vizenor: In line of that, let me show you, or read a couple of other poems to show this incredible diversity of the oral literature in translation. For example, here's a song translated by Ruth Benedict. In fact, it appeared in her book,

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"Patterns of Culture." And it's a Kwakiutl song speech, actually a kind of song speech, expressed orally. And what it shows is the most unusual communal values of ownership, human traits, in fact, what Ruth Benedict calls, "unabashed megalomania," in

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these poems, the virtues that certainly no boyscout or sentimentalist about Native Americans would appreciate at all. But it does show the, in this literature, the wide range of human experience in literature and here's how this

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rather intense song is translated: I am the great chief who makes people ashamed. Now, can you imagine? I mean, who would think that an Indian would say such a thing.

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I am the great chief who makes people ashamed. Our chiefs bring shame to the faces. Our chief brings jealousy to the faces. Our chief makes people cover their faces by what he is continually doing in this world, giving again and again, these

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oil feasts to all the tribes. The reference there, of course, is the Potlatch communal ceremonies, where the energy was kind of reversed as you established your significance and power in the family and

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community by giving things away. And much wealth was represented symbolically by these coppers, or by oil, and especially by how much you could destroy. I mean, if you could actually destroy all of these things, it was an indication that you had an

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enormous amount of wealth and power. The song continues. This is a chief now who's boasting that he's so wealthy and has so much to give away. Again, it's translated by Ruth Benedict: I am the first of the tribes. I am the only one of the tribes.

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The chief of the tribes are only local chiefs but I am the one among the tribes. I search among all the invited chiefs for greatness like mine. I cannot find one chief among the guests. They never return feasts, the orphans, poor people, chiefs of

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the tribe, they never return their feasts. They disgrace themselves. I am the one who gives the sea otters to the chief, to the guests, to the chiefs of the tribes. I am the one who gives canoes to the chiefs, to the guests, and the

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chiefs of the other tribes. Very unusual. Morton Marcus: I mean, they're my favorite culture because a lot of these things just turn into bragging contest.

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Gerald Vizenor: Yes. Morton Marcus: And I love that. But you know, I've always argued with Benedict and her interpretation, and I'm sure I'm wrong, but it always seemed to me that the intense competition

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and bragging in these long periods in which the women and everyone else worked so hard to make all of these products, some of them beautiful, which they would either destroy or giveaway. It always seemed to me that the reason behind

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everything was not the great ego of these people. No, it was that they had to get a reason to have meaning in their lives because everything was right there, you reach out you got a berry, you reach into the river and you got to salmon. And so they really,

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to work hard and to really have meaning in their lives, they devise this great idea of making a thing to give it all away, and then you're a beggar, right? And then within six months, you're going to someone else's Potlatch, you're gonna get all

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this stuff they make. That is the greatest idea I've ever heard in my life. Gerald Vizenor: Well, also they were, I mean, they lived in a place where a certain measure of some kind of wealth was possible

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and it was such a rich, natural place. Morton Marcus: That's what I mean that they had to give themselves, you know, some purpose for really going out and working, because they did not have to do that.

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Gerald Vizenor: Well, these practices so offended missionaries- Morton Marcus: Right. Gerald Vizenor: And that they were forbidden for quite a long

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time. In fact, the Canadian government only recently authorized, what an awful word, to authorize a culture, its music, its song, and its practices. Morton Marcus: Some of those Kwakiutl carvings, especially

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the shaman's whistles, oh, they are so beautiful. And spoon handles, just spoon handles alone. Yeah. Anyway, I don't want to [unintelligible]. Gerald Vizenor: Well, another example then is the-

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Morton Marcus: Yes. In fact, why don't we have one more example and then we're going to take our half hour break, which we take a slight musical break. And then I read some of the things that are going on in the community.

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Gerald Vizenor: I'll do one more as an example of a different kind of oral song which has been translated into English. And let me point out that this particular song, which comes from the Navajo is a part of a very complex ceremony. And this

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is just one song of many that are sung at many ceremonies. And in a sense, you can see how unreasonable and unfair it is to take one fragment from a full ceremony, healing ceremony, balancing ceremony, print it on a page and call it a poem. It's

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translated by Washington Matthews, who was the first to translate the first two, let me say penetrate, and then translate portions of the Night Chant or the [unidentified]. His translation, briefly, of one song is this:

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On the trail marked with pollen may I walk. With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk and dew about my feet may I walk, with beauty may I walk. With beauty before me may I walk, with beauty behind me may I walk, with beauty above me may I walk.

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With beauty under me may I walk, with beauty all around me may I walk. In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk. In old age on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk. It is finished in beauty.

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Morton Marcus: Hello again this is Mort Marcus and this is the time when we give you some events around Santa Cruz. First, Playhouse on this station, KUSP, Thursdays 9 to 9:30pm. Episode Three of Introducing Mr. Drostdy, owner of the Commodore

00:31:24.090 - 00:31:37.980

Club, Mr. Drostdy has an overwrought wife who uses the same Paris milliner as Mrs. Desmond. Roger Shelley receives a warning letter from Miss Millison. The Temples decided to go to Paris for a special pair of gloves from a special shop.

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Tune in this Thursday from 9 to 9:30 to Playhouse and I hope you all will, and that's of course, right here on KUSP, 88.9, on your FM dial. As far as poetry is concerned, tonight, Joe is over recording the wonderful Pulitzer Prize winning poet,

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Stanley Kunitz. And you will be hearing that reading probably within a few weeks. But this Friday, Sharon Olds, who Joe has talked about before on the show, very wonderful poet, will be reading at the San Jose State University Science Building,

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Science room, pardon me, number 142 at 8pm. The price is $6 general, $3 for students. And this is all being brought to you from the San Jose Center for Poetry and Literature. That is Sharon Olds, this Friday at the science building room number 142

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at 8pm, so you people out there who have been a fan of Sharon Olds' poetry and I believe she just has a new book out, certainly be aware of that. Now coming up, but oh, yes, okay. Coming up on May 4th, which is not too far away, is the

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wonderful American poet, one of my favorites, Gerald Stern, who has been called a spiritual reincarnation of Whitman. Well, it's a Jewish Whitman if it is. And he will be reading at the Jewish community center of greater San Jose, in Los Gatos.

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And I certainly would suggest that you go and see Gerald Stern, he is very witty and very rhapsodic. And then coming on May 20th, and we'll tell you more about that later, is Allen Ginsberg, his first return to San Jose really since around,

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oh, did I say the fourth? Oh, wrong date on Gerald Stern. That is on- oh, we're gonna- okay. I read what was on here but it was the wrong thing. It should be Tuesday, May the 10th on Gerald Stern, and we'll be telling you more about that. Before we again

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turn to our program for the night. Let me just say next week, I will be your host again and we will be talking with E Made Sureya(?) a Balinese gamelan chanter, about the essence of gamelan chanting and poetry, and I think you will

00:33:57.750 - 00:34:14.160

find it very, very interesting. He will be here with several other people and we will be talking about Balinese gamelan in general. But right now we are talking with Gerald Vizenor, our guest, the professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of

00:34:14.160 - 00:34:28.440

California, Santa Cruz. In fact, he is very new. He's just arrived here this fall after ten years at Berkeley. And we have been listening to different translations of traditional literatures and also some contemporary literatures and

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just talking about their backgrounds and hearing them. And I think I hope you are out there getting very different ideas as to just what the diversity and complexity of ethnic literatures, especially Native American literatures are

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all about. So, Gerry, you're on again. Gerald Vizenor: Well, I'd like to share a few more Dream Songs from the Ojibwe, and then some examples of contemporary literature from some of my favorite poets. Listen to this.

00:35:03.550 - 00:35:24.130

This is a song poem, a Dream Song from the triple Ojibwe: Sound of thunder. Sometimes I pity myself while the wind carries me across the sky. Here's another example of a Dream Song:

00:35:25.530 - 00:35:47.370

Those large birds, thunderbirds, surprising me. And in this song, the thunderbird of course, is a popular and common image in literature. The thunderclouds, actually, the great birds in the sky, the thunderclouds. You

00:35:47.370 - 00:36:04.530

could read it: those large birds, thunderclouds, surprising me. Another song: Going to the south, I will bring the south wind.

00:36:06.600 - 00:36:23.850

Here's another song: In the sky over there, they have taken pity on me. Morton Marcus: What's so interesting is that so many of these really do refer to the self, the individual. And it's

00:36:23.850 - 00:36:38.610

really like, okay, here's nature but I, by my saying these words, I define myself in nature. I am here, I am here as an individual. And so going along with the whole idea of the ownership of the songs, I mean, you can really see that like

00:36:38.610 - 00:36:51.750

they are overawed by this gigantic panorama around them and all of this power that's coming at them and they have to finally just stand up and say, listen, you son of so and so, I'm here on two legs, at least for the next 40 or 50 years.

00:36:54.180 - 00:37:07.560

Gerald Vizenor: Exactly in that thought, here's another dream song: With a large bird above me, I am walking in the sky. Morton Marcus: Great, great, projecting totally, yeah.

00:37:07.000 - 00:37:21.700

Gerald Vizenor: Yeah, avian fantasy. With a large bird above me, I am walking in the sky. Another song: I entrust myself to one wind.

00:37:23.560 - 00:37:37.600

Another song: The turtle sitting beside him. Two foxes facing each other, sitting between them. Morton Marcus: That's very strange.

00:37:37.930 - 00:38:03.250

Gerald Vizenor: Let me read them again: The turtle sitting beside him. Two foxes facing each other, sitting between them. Morton Marcus: Wow. Do you have any explanation of those images? Gerald Vizenor: No, but I can visualize the circumstances

00:38:03.250 - 00:38:15.480

under which the song head arises. Morton Marcus: Okay. Gerald Vizenor: The image of sitting with a turtle, probably at a lakeside, a turtle sits, I sit, I move, the turtle moves.

00:38:16.650 - 00:38:40.170

Two foxes facing each other, sitting between them. Foxes do move very cautiously and do hold their escape distance. Wolves do to a certain extent, too. They'll make themselves visible but they'll hold an escape distance facing each other,

00:38:40.560 - 00:38:53.730

sitting between them. Morton Marcus: Let me ask you, Gerry, are you very much versed, and when you grew up, were you very much versed in the land and in hunting, and you know, all of those things that people live

00:38:53.730 - 00:39:06.880

off the land are concerned with? Gerald Vizenor: Why I'd have to be equivocal and answer yes and no. I was a hunter, I spent a great deal of time outdoors, but I think for the most part, people living in Minnesota would

00:39:06.880 - 00:39:24.490

have a hard time not doing that. So that's why I'm equivocal. I mean, in the one sense, I think I had a special access because of a particular kind of lifestyle. On the other hand, many, many people have similar experiences, you know, Indian or

00:39:24.490 - 00:39:42.460

not. Perhaps what made some difference, I mean, I say perhaps what made some difference because I'm not the best interpreter of my own, you know, the values of my own development or experience, but we're storytellers and the best

00:39:42.460 - 00:40:08.080

among them in my family, a great uncle and a grandmother who are terrific storytellers. Playful, ironic, oral gestures that stimulated a kind of a visual imagination rather than a descriptive explanation. What I mean by that is that I would ask

00:40:08.080 - 00:40:32.380

my grandmother about the number of children she had, playing genealogist and and minor family historian.She would say in response, she would respond with stories about the children. She really didn't think of them as a group, say nine. I mean, it

00:40:32.380 - 00:40:48.610

wasn't a group, it wasn't an abstract quantity. And the truth is, I don't think she had counted them that way. I don't want to make this so romantic, but I meant, she really had some difficulty. And some people might think that's a loss of

00:40:48.610 - 00:41:05.560

memory. Not at all. It's in part a different worldview. And some of those experiences are not always unique just to some tribal families or mixed-bloods but, I mean, that happens in all families everywhere. Some of those things depend upon the

00:41:05.560 - 00:41:20.530

values of oral expression, and listening, and stories in responses to cultural experience through stories. I think I was blessed in that way to be exposed. Morton Marcus: Okay and one of the questions I've not asked

00:41:20.530 - 00:41:26.210

you, how did you come to decide to be a writer? You just answered it, didn't you? Gerald Vizenor: Yes, yes. Morton Marcus: Right, yeah.

00:41:26.960 - 00:41:44.420

Gerald Vizenor: And of the point being that I could tell stories and think of stories long before I ever had the ability to write very well, I mean, long before. And I think I define myself as a kind of storyteller writer long before I could really write very

00:41:44.420 - 00:41:56.300

well at all. Morton Marcus: Do your novels, for example, do they pursue sort of an oral storytelling quality? Gerald Vizenor: Most of the characters in the book do tell

00:41:56.300 - 00:42:16.040

stories. I have characters who tell things through stories, so there are stories within stories. I do point a lot and have the narrator and the characters point. What I mean by that is that they gesture orally in a visual way, they say

00:42:16.070 - 00:42:27.170

something about the environment which might appear to be distracting at first but in fact, creates a visual environment too. Morton Marcus: Great.

00:42:27.200 - 00:42:38.200

Gerald Vizenor: Before they can act of it. Morton Marcus: Well, I look forward to reading, "Griever," which I've been looking for sinuously in the county and not ound, but that's another subject. Let us continue on

00:42:38.000 - 00:42:45.980

Gerald Vizenor: Well, let me share a couple of poems by two This is N. Scott Momaday's poem: with- very well-known American-Indian writers, contemporary writers.

00:42:46.580 - 00:43:10.490

N. Scott Momaday, a novelist, "House Made of Dawn," for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. And he's also a poet and has published several books f poems. This particular song po m is from the anthology entitle , "Carriers of the Dream Wheel

00:43:10.940 - 00:43:42.060

" and it's from his poem that t e title was take This is the wheel of dreams, which is carried on their voices, by means of which their voices turn and center upon being. It encircles the first world, this powerful wheel. They

00:43:42.060 - 00:44:11.730

shape their songs upon the wheel and spin the names of the earth and sky, the aboriginal names. They are old men, or men who are old in their voices. And they carry the wheel among the camps saying, "Come, come, let us tell the old stories. Let us sing the

00:44:11.730 - 00:44:25.020

sacred songs." That was a poem by N. Scott Momaday. Morton Marcus: That really is a great definition of poetry and its power. Yeah, as I listened to that, and I, I know that you

00:44:25.020 - 00:44:36.990

are sitting here talking about the real importance of individual songs and of singing and what amounts to me what what poetry really is. And I'm thinking, okay, you're talking to this into a culture that doesn't give a damn at all about

00:44:36.990 - 00:44:49.980

the poet, maybe the one culture that cares less about poetry than any other in the world. And it's very strange and here we are sitting on this poetry show, maybe with fifty to a hundred people listening to us who are the last poetry listeners in the

00:44:49.980 - 00:45:00.360

American culture. Gerald Vizenor: On the coast, on the edge. Morton Marcus: Right, that's gorgeous. He's a wonderful stylist, also. Oh, it's just really something.

00:45:00.690 - 00:45:09.650

Gerald Vizenor: He has a new novel coming soon called- Morton Marcus: Now was he still at Berkeley when you were there or? Gerald Vizenor: No, he was still at Stanford. And about five

00:45:09.650 - 00:45:29.600

years ago he moved to University of Arizona, in Tucson. Morton Marcus: Which is the area he's actually coming from? Gerald Vizenor: Well, his father's Kiowa and from Oklahoma, but the family, N. Scott Momaday lived many years

00:45:29.600 - 00:45:45.060

at Jemez Pueblo where his parents taught school. And then he attended the University of New Mexico and then Stanford. Morton Marcus: But I was just saying I thought he taught at Berkeley. Didn't he teach at Berkeley?

00:45:45.000 - 00:46:00.150

Gerald Vizenor: He did one year in comparative literature. And I think he taught a year or two at Santa Barbara. Well, another of my favorite writers, James Welch. Morton Marcus: Oh, wonderful poet who now is hardly writing

00:46:00.180 - 00:46:14.590

poetry anymore, it's mostly prose. Gerald Vizenor: "Fools Crow," his most recent novel, a historical novel, and his very popular and brilliant, ironic and cunning novel of "Winter in the Blood." This poem by James

00:46:14.590 - 00:46:32.190

Welch was also published in that anthology entitled, "Carriers of the Dream Wheel." This is James Welch. The end came easy for most of us, packed away in our crude

00:46:32.190 - 00:46:55.140

beginnings in some far corner of a flat world. We didn't expect much more than firewood and buffalo robes to keep us warm. The man came down, a slouching dwarf with rainwater eyes, and spoke to us. He promised that life would go on as usual, that

00:46:55.140 - 00:47:14.460

treaties would be signed and everyone, man, woman, and child would be inoculated against a world in which we had no part. A world of money, promise, and disease. James Welch.

00:47:17.280 - 00:47:38.270

Morton Marcus: Very good. Now, what about some other things? Gerald Vizenor: Well, about all I have with me left are a few haiku poems that I've written myself. I think what I'd like to do is present just a few thoughts, images, ideas in haiku

00:47:38.360 - 00:47:56.060

poems, I've written original ones, to play with the similarity to the Chippewa dream song, and a number of interpreters and critics pointed out that similarity. I'll read just a few from my book called, "Matsushima," which means Pine

00:47:56.060 - 00:48:12.890

Island. It's the place in Japan, Matsushima, where Basho, the most brilliant of the Japanese haiku poets, found the most beautiful place to be, and [unidentified] it off. Morton Marcus: Do you think that you were drawn to haiku because

00:48:12.890 - 00:48:26.360

of these dream songs? Gerald Vizenor: Well, I'd like to think that but I think that's a romantic weakness. I'd like to think I'd be drawn to it anyway. I can't be completely sure about this, because in the military I

00:48:26.360 - 00:48:42.470

was sent to Japan. And so I came upon it you might say, by chance, I mean, thanks to the United States Army I discovered the Japanese literature and especially haiku and I'm forever grateful to the United States Army for that.

00:48:42.860 - 00:48:53.000

Morton Marcus: I'm sure they are very [unintelligible]. Gerald Vizenor: They've made a note of that. Morton Marcus: It's just wonderful to hear some praise for our military in this day and age.

00:48:55.760 - 00:49:14.030

Gerald Vizenor: Here are a few haiku images. The first one I'd like to read is in honor of Basho, one of the great Japanese haiku poets. Calm in the storm, Master Basho soaks his feet, water striders.

00:49:17.270 - 00:49:37.730

This Haiku about the common green fly I wrote in a restaurant where there were a lot of green flies, and it was, in fact, the part of a filming. It was taking poetry, poets and poems into small towns, right on the street, right in businesses

00:49:38.450 - 00:49:57.110

and talking and reading and seeing what people felt about it and it became part of a television program. And I went into a tiny restaurant in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, with a television crew and the owners and their daughter agreed to

00:49:57.110 - 00:50:12.350

listen and then they agreed to respond honestly about this haiku image: Fat green flies square-dance across the grapefruit. Honor your partner.

00:50:14.660 - 00:50:30.560

So I read that at the counter in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, "fat green flies square-dance across the grapefruit, honor your partner," and the waitress snickered and then said to the camera, "Well that ain't what we do to green flies around here."

00:50:48.920 - 00:51:04.310

Morton Marcus: Well, I wouldn't mind you reading some of those poems you've already read again. The Ortiz poem, and I love that poem by N. Scott Momaday. Just to hear that again, maybe just say a few more words. Let's just actually talk about what you're

00:51:04.310 - 00:51:18.970

doing up at UCSC. What are your responsibilities? To teach Native American literatures obviously. Gerald Vizenor: Well, I teach several courses. I teach one course in, once a year, in fiction writing. And I teach

00:51:19.120 - 00:51:40.900

Native American literature and there are several approaches to that. There's the literature and translation and then I also teach the contemporary novel and poetry by Native Americans. And I teach courses in images and symbols, especially in the film,

00:51:42.070 - 00:52:00.290

commercial, stereotype images, in Westerns especially. Morton Marcus: We just had a program at Cabrillo about the images of American-Indians in Hollywood films, and it's around a two hour film or something like that, and it played at

00:52:00.290 - 00:52:09.950

Cabrillo. Do you know, the one I'm talking about? Gerald Vizenor: There's a five part one produced by public television. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that may be it, yeah, maybe. Why don't you

00:52:09.950 - 00:52:21.740

for our listeners out there sort of list some anthologies that you might have, if you can think of some off the top of your head, that they might want to read or fiction writers they might want to read, books they might want to read and, you

00:52:21.740 - 00:52:32.510

know. Just out there right now just run for a pen or a pencil. And here are some, not only traditional bodies of work, but you know, contemporary. We've talked about James Welch before, and maybe that would be of interest to them.

00:52:33.560 - 00:52:52.520

Gerald Vizenor: There's a new anthology of contemporary Native American poetry about to be released to by Harper and Row and it'll be published in hardbound and paper so it'll be accessible in a low-cost edition. And I think the exact

00:52:52.520 - 00:53:06.630

title is, "20th Century Poetry by Native Americans." And- Morton Marcus: You're in that? Gerald Vizenor: Yes. It's edited by Duane Niatum. Morton Marcus: No, I know him. Yes, he's done some great, great

00:53:06.630 - 00:53:19.180

jobs before. Gerald Vizenor: And he also edited the anthology I just read from, "Carriers of the Dream Wheel," which was also published by Harper and Row. And that's, I think, still available in a

00:53:19.180 - 00:53:43.330

paper-bound edition. There are so many books to think about and there had been so many wonderful things published in novels. I think, Leslie Silko's novel, "Ceremony," is just a brilliant, wonderful work. And I would urge that above all others, the first

00:53:44.350 - 00:53:52.900

novel by a Native American contemporary writer. Morton Marcus: Do you know Janet Campbell Hale, you know her work? Well, what do you think of her; and she has two novels out now.

00:53:52.900 - 00:54:13.300

Gerald Vizenor: "The Jailing of Cecelia Captures," her novel, very powerful writer. James Welch, of course, "The Winter in the Blood," is just a brilliantly crafted, concise, and powerful, ironic novel. And Momaday's, "House Made of Dawn,"

00:54:14.140 - 00:54:37.750

probably the most moving and powerful short work that anyone could read about Native American, contemporary Native Americans is by Momaday and it's, "The Way to Rainy Mountain." It's three voices telling about the migration of

00:54:37.750 - 00:54:59.260

the Kiowa, from the Rocky Mountains to the Southern Plains. Those three voices are a brilliant insight into the way of telling about a myth. The first voice is that mythic voice, the second voice is a kind of ethnographic historical

00:54:59.260 - 00:55:17.170

voice because that information is known too, and the third voice is Momaday's poetic description of his own journey on the same route. "The Way to Rainy Mountain," a beautiful, powerful, moving, and very accessible-

00:55:17.530 - 00:55:28.000

Morton Marcus: Is that still in print? Gerald Vizenor: Yes, it is. It was originally published by the University of New Mexico, and then it was issued in a mass paperbound, Ballantine, I think. Now, however, it's been

00:55:28.000 - 00:55:39.940

republished by the University of New Mexico. Many other writers- Morton Marcus: Well, so okay, Leslie Silko's, "Ceremony," which is in paperback? Gerald Vizenor: Yes, it is.

00:55:41.290 - 00:55:45.850

Morton Marcus: James Welch's? Gerald Vizenor: In paperback. Morton Marcus: Okay, and the title of that again was a winter?

00:55:45.880 - 00:55:53.550

Gerald Vizenor: "Winter in the Blood." Morton Marcus: "Winter in the Blood." How about, "Griever," by Gerald Vizenor? Gerald Vizenor: Yes, I don't mind promoting that. "Griever:

00:55:53.550 - 00:56:13.320

An American Monkey King in China," is in paper and hardbound by Fiction Collected. And a new novel I've finished, which should be out any week, any month now, I mean, it's very close. Its title is, "The Trickster of Liberty." And it's

00:56:13.320 - 00:56:27.660

a story of a whole family of tribal tricksters from the White Earth Reservation who go out into the world and do these compassionate tricky things to make it a better place to live. Morton Marcus: Sounds great. In fact, I've been trying to find,

00:56:27.660 - 00:56:43.020

"Griever," because it's such a great title that and I'm a fan of, "Monkey," the great Chinese novel. Gerald Vizenor: Well the title, "Griever," comes from the main character whose name is Griever de Hocus. And his mother named

00:56:43.020 - 00:57:01.740

him Griever because she learned from a circus performer about griever time. He taught her that at least once a week, she should grieve and it'll heal her and make her feel better and in touch with her feeling. And so she has done that and has lived

00:57:01.740 - 00:57:15.980

a long and rich and wonderful life and to show respect for that learning, she named her only son Griever. Morton Marcus: Sounds great. Could you give us maybe just the first line of that N. Scott Momaday poem and then we are

00:57:15.980 - 00:57:28.940

gone and we're making way here. We want to thank Plaza Books was provided a grant that has helped make the last half hour of programming possible. Plaza Books is located on Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz. We appreciate their support. Please

00:57:28.940 - 00:57:45.020

everyone out there, stay tuned for Tim Folger's "Things Ain't What They Used To Be." Next week, as I said, I will have E Made Suryayo(?), a gamelan chanter, who will be here talking about Balinese gamelan. Tonight's guest Gerald Vizenor,

00:57:45.290 - 00:58:01.460

the novelist, poet, and professor of Native American Literatures at UCSC. Thank you so much for coming. Certainly, we want you again. And here we end the show with these words from N. Scott Momaday which I think sums up everything we've

00:58:01.460 - 00:58:15.020

been talking about and I think literature, period. Gerald Vizenor: This is the wheel of dreams, which is carried on their voices, by means of which their voices turn and center upon being.