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Morton Marcus: Hello, everybody, this is Mort Marcus and this is one of those interviews on poets who are coming through Santa Cruz. And we're here on a beautiful spring day in April, talking to you with sun glazing the windows and my guest today

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is Gian Lombardo, who has just come in from the east coast, a marvelous young poet, who has been both editing and publishing prose poetry. And Gian, welcome to Santa Cruz. Gian Lombardo: Thank you. It's beautiful to be here and just

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wonderful and you get a breath of spring, I've just come out of winter. Morton Marcus: Right, tell us where you're from in the East Coast.

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Gian Lombardo: Western Massachusetts, it's near the Berkshires. We live up in the hills, we have about seven acres of land. Morton Marcus: Great, do you farm the land, or is it just- ?

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Gian Lombardo: I have a small orchard, about 30 fruit trees. I have peach and apple and some pear. Morton Marcus: Great! How do you make your money? Gian Lombardo: I run a publishing services business,

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you know, produce books and magazines for other, other publishers. Morton Marcus: And you're an editor yourself? Gian Lombardo: Right.

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Morton Marcus: And what do you edit? What's the name of the publication? And what's its purpose? Gian Lombardo: Well, the publication I put out it's a quarterly zine on prose poetry called "Key Satch(el)." And

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basically, it's dedicated to prose poem. Try to keep as wide a variety of the genre as I can to show people what's going on, what's been current. And I like to do it quarterly because instead of once or twice a year, people get something fairly

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regularly and it keeps their attention on it. Morton Marcus: Great. "Key Satch", what does key satch mean? Gian Lombardo: Ah, it's a favorite Italian saying.

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Basically, it's "who knows." It's a saying where if you ask somebody on the street corner in Italy if the bus stops here, they might say, "chi saccia?" "Who knows?" It's sort of a catch-all phrase to denote some sort of fatalism.

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Morton Marcus: Well, I also know that in a parentheses there is, after the "key satch" there is an "l" or "e-l" Gian Lombardo: Yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: What does that stand for?

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Gian Lombardo: It's just- it was just the English transliteration of the phrase and "satchel" was the nearest to "saccia" without getting into jazz overtones. Morton Marcus: Well, I tell you the truth, I was more interested

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in the answer to things and probably the the listeners out there with this. I have been wondering for, I guess, the last year and a half what Key Satch(el) meant and I was not even pronouncing it that way. Yeah, but you also, and this is

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really the reason that I have you here, you're also a poet and you put out several books already. And your work, do I take it that your work is completely in the prose poem? Gian Lombardo: Ah, yeah. I've been exclusively working at last

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since about mid 80s. Before that, I was sort of, you know, mostly prose poetry but still doing some poems. Morton Marcus: When did you start writing poetry? Gian Lombardo: When I was a child, I remember writing, you

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know, poems when I was a child and just normally loved it and just kept on doing it. You know, no matter who would say, oh, you can't do it, and you can't make a living at it, you can't do this, you can't do that. I come from a very practical Italian

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family and if you can't make your bread by it, you know, what's the use of doing it, but it's just something I love doing. Morton Marcus: With a family from Massachusetts also.

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Gian Lombardo: From Connecticut. East Coast. Morton Marcus: What do you hope to accomplish in your poetry? I give you- in 25 words or less? Gian Lombardo: Just to get somebody to see something that

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they haven't normally seen, or see something in a different way than they usually see it. That's my usual, that's my goal in poetry. Morton Marcus: So in a way, do you think that by having

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different perceptions on a situation they might normally have had in a different way, that you're enriching their life, let's say, you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth.

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Gian Lombardo: Well, hopefully. I just- just the sense to bring them out of themselves for a few minutes and maybe go back to life just a little bit differently, that would be my hope. Yeah, that'd be great if somebody can do that because

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that's what I look for in poetry is that it brings me out of my existence and I go back changed. I can't go back the same way that I was before. Morton Marcus: Okay, great. Why don't we hear a poem or two and

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let the people see what the work is like? Gian Lombardo: Okay, sure. I'll read something from the latest book that just came out last year. Morton Marcus: Which is entitled?

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Gian Lombardo: It's entitled "Sky Open Again." Morton Marcus: In fact, why don't why don't you tell us the names of your books. Gian Lombardo: The first one's called "Between Islands." The

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next one, that was a verse into verse translation, and then that next collection was "Standing Room," which was my first prose poetry collection. And then I did a short small chapbook called "Before Arguable Answers," it's always hard to

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say. And then this one's "Sky Open Again," which came out last year. Morton Marcus: Great and I know that there's gonna be a third one and we'll save the second half of the show to talk about

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the new work you're doing. I'm sure very, very interesting indeed. How about reading one? Gian Lombardo: Okay, I'll read the first poem in the book called:

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LIGHT SINGING BEFORE THE EARTH Any moment the sky may darken, and there may be great noise. Any moment like this moment, any moment when the narrow slit of sky above becomes black and gray. Any moment like this

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moment when the two rivers cut into the gorge rise up into the sky in a great rush, shouting as they move upwards in bits and pieces. Wouldn't that be something to write home about? Wouldn't that be a revolution to remember? All at once among the

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light clearing its throat in clips and flashes, and then any moment in the uproar, in the wet out, of the dark, all at once the sky opened again. Light singing before the earth, through rivers rising up, through the mist descending from

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sheer stone walls to a cloud no longer above the vertical horizon. Morton Marcus: And if I can freely make a comment on it, and it actually is about the hope for miracle, and the hope for

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renewal. And in many ways it's what you said your- the intention of your poetry was to make the normal world look new and different but obviously much more poetic. Gian Lombardo: That- I'll tell you this poem is very musical to

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me. I love the music in it and just the way the language transforms and I hope, even just by the sound of the music, that somebody can get into it, regardless of the meaning of it. Morton Marcus: So, sound is very important to you, is that a

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generalization we can make about your work? Gian Lombardo: Yeah, I would add, you know, I would say I'm a lyric poet who's writing in prose. And that being not an understatement, and not taking capital encapsulated.

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Morton Marcus: Well, I'm going to throw at you a little later, I'll let it sink into your subconscious. What I get everywhere I go, which is okay, how do you explain getting rid of the line when the line is the heart of poetry? And I'm gonna

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let you think about that for a little while, and let the listeners out there be on tenterhooks for the- for your answer on that. But if you have just tuned in we are talking with Gian Lombardo, who has come from the East Coast to visit

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California for a few days. And I asked him if he'd come on the show, and he said, yes, so we're doing an interview way before you're actually hearing this on the air. Okay, Gian, can we talk about that poem thematically, though?

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Gian Lombardo: Sure. Morton Marcus: Yeah, how far off was I about what was going on in the poem? Gian Lombardo: Not too far off, I feel as if there's a poem of

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transitions. In some ways, it transitions from this storm that's occurring to a breaking of the storm and the light coming out again. Morton Marcus: So, actually description of a landscape.

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Gian Lombardo: Well, simplistically, its genesis was, my wife and I, we love the Southwest. I usually take a trip to New Mexico, Arizona, Utah at least once a year. And we were hiking down at the bottom of the Rio Grande gorge. And all of a

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sudden, if you're down the bottom of the gorge, you can only see a narrow space to the sky above you. And all of a sudden, it just got black, and we were in the middle of a thunderstorm. And was- this sudden, as suddenly as it

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appeared, it disappeared. And the sight of the sun breaking up again, and seeing the light on the water and the rain and everything, just that moment was the genesis of the poem. Morton Marcus: I like the word genesis in there, because it's

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got a very strong symbolic edge to it. Yeah, but you know, I- Gian and I have never met before and we've never talked about this poem. The landscape I envisioned was the landscape of New Mexico and the sudden shifts that go on there. So, that's

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very interesting. Gian Lombardo: No, I'm glad it got it quick. Morton Marcus: Yes, indeed. How about reading us another one? Gian Lombardo: Sure, I try to go- I'll try this one, it's

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called: WARM There are lush worlds and there are burnt worlds. There are hills of ash and cinder and there are hills that swim with

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the green. They say life resides in the balances, what was once is now. If you wake in the middle of the night and rise to start the day, they might say you are too early for the day. But when it is dark, you have the grace of not seeing what

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world do you step into. Morton Marcus: Hmm, very nice. How do you get the- do you think that there is a structure that reveals itself? You know, Olson said that you had to let content dictate form. We're working in

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the prose poem now, which really doesn't have a form. And to me, this is one of the most exciting things about the prose poem. That, there are no signs for us to follow. We are inventing the space that we occupy with every single word or syllable. I don't

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think a lot of people understand that. I've just written something about the- Gian Lombardo: It can be fairly esoteric, yeah. Morton Marcus: But it's that even if you're writing in free

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verse, there are people who have come before you that have shown you the way and certainly, this was the case with closed verse. How do you form your prose poems? What makes you know that it's time to stop? Where do you start, what might be a middle?

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Gian Lombardo: They usually come out fairly intact. I know, I will not sit down and say, like, the first poem I read, not going to say I want to write about that experience. That experience sort of comes back to me and it comes out all at once, and I

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don't do a fair amount of revision, that- it's usually there or not. And maybe you can say all the revision and all the editing is done in my mind well in advance. So, when you're talking about, like the form and the content, well it is a little

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staggering to say, I can do almost anything I want with this form, it can be whatever I want it to be, it doesn't have to adhere to any notions of what a poem should be or shouldn't be, I can sort of redefine it at every moment. That to me is the

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best thing about writing prose poetry. It's that enormous freedom you have to create anything out of nothing. And also, I've taught the prose poem, a couple of workshops. And, as about the most terrifying thing for students is

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to say, you can do almost anything you want, you can invent your own rules, and you get some, you know, very, very horrified looks like, you know, I can't deal with this. But then as soon as they start doing it, they're enraptured by the

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freedom of what they can do, and they're hooked on it. Morton Marcus: So, you would say it's intuitive. Whatever you do, it's intuitive. In fact, I mean, I know your work, obviously, and sometimes it's short, and sometimes they're longer. So,

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it's not like you're falling into a sense of a two or three paragraph poem. I mean, it can go on for two, two and a half pages and so, you're just really tapping into this enormous- do I want to call it a chasm because that then closes it? You're

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just, let's go back to the first poem, you're just really opening it to a sky full of possibilities. Gian Lombardo: Yeah well, I like the piece to the form its shape takes is dependent on its content. I mean, it's primary,

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that I don't try to- I don't get like a vessel and try to fill it, I try to create something and then the vessel will be created around it by its own nature as its own being. Morton Marcus: Do you know where you're going from one paragraph

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to another? Gian Lombardo: Sometimes not, it's a revelation to me in some ways. I think a lot of this work that I'm reading from, that's the way I progressed with it, that the pieces would come out

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when they're ready. And I'd have no real idea and then go back and maybe do some fine tuning to it and saying this is not really quite working here, working there. But it has a life of its own and speaking to me, primarily, and then I hope to

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others. If it speaks to me, I'm hoping it speaks to another person. Morton Marcus: Well, I know that some of the many poets out there are going to pick one of those phrases you just made, so I'll

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ask it for them. And that is how do you know when it's not working? Gian Lombardo: It doesn't move me. If I don't feel any, any transportation- not transportation-any transport

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within the poem, if it doesn't lift me from one state to another, or using the Emily Dickinson's term, it doesn't raise the hair on the back of my neck a little bit, then it's not working.

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Morton Marcus: So in many ways, can you say this is almost a form of meditation? Gian Lombardo: Yeah, I would say that. Meditation, revelation. I think I said I started writing poetry as a child. I think part

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of it was getting caught up with, since I was a Roman, Italian I was brought up with being a Roman-Catholic and as part of the whole idea of the mass being said in Latin because I was old enough to be in those days when they still said the

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mass in Latin, there's a great music to it. And I could sort of, as a child, I just sort of invented my own meaning to the words that were being spoken, to hear these beautiful words going on and just create your own meaning. And I think that was

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the first impetus to seeing what the power of language could do, and the power of revelation or something, meditation language. Morton Marcus: Okay, great. These are- it's interesting, and I hope that the people out there who are working and there are

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people out there who are working in the prose poem, or who have been wondering at it will really use these words. I have- many times on the show I've said that, you know, that art is really revelation to the artist. And he does not know or she does

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not know where they're going. And that's one of the joys is the self-discovery that he or she is getting through words or groups of words. Gian Lombardo: I always love to explore, if it's anything with

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the natural world, is, you know, going down a path, hiking path I've never been on and exploring what's there. Morton Marcus: You know, that you know, you and I ought to pursue that outside of the studio and just ask more and

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more prose poets if this is really what they're doing. That it is this total freedom, this total unexplored territory that they're going into and that there are no signs, and quicksand awaits you at any moment, if not a hairy, bristly

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beasts. Alright, let's hear some more poems. Gian Lombardo: Sure, maybe I'll do something- that's a little different than the ones I've been reading. Morton Marcus: While you're looking, let me ask you another

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question. These first two poems you read, obviously are serious, does humor get into your work? Gian Lombardo: Yes. Morton Marcus: Advertently or inadvertently?

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Gian Lombardo: Inadvertently, and advertently, actually the piece I'll read is called "Epilogue" and I tried to put a little humor into it and is a little more narrative, more- less, less lyric in it, but it's called:

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EPILOGUE There are 15 explanations for the incident. There could be more, then again, I could be lying. There could be just one. There could be none. The doorbell rings, I answer it. A

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beautiful woman stands on the landing. She asks me a question. I catch myself noticing similarities and differences to my wife. I conclude that the differences outweigh the similarities and then my wife's beauty strikes me as something

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I've never quite explored enough. Later on in the evening, she asks, who was that at the door? I tell her it was some woman. Who, she asks. I don't know. What did she want? She wanted to sleep with me. What did you say? I said, come back

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later. We're eating. I'd have to ask. Morton Marcus: Yes, humor. Unlike those first two poems, though, even though they were auras in that first one, this could very well be looked at as a dream poem.

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Gian Lombardo: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And really sort of touching fantasies or subconscious revelations. Gian Lombardo: Or subconscious desires or whatever.

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Morton Marcus: And this is an area that the prose poem has really excelled in over the last hundred years or so and certainly has taken off from Baudelaire and before that, the Belgian whose name escapes me now.

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Gian Lombardo: Bertrand Morton Marcus: Bertrand, yeah. More, let's really get exposed to poems. So there won't be dead air here, while Gian looks for poetry, we are talking with Gian Lombardo. If you've just tuned

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in and this is of course, the Poetry Show on KUSP. Gian Lombardo: Okay, this one is called: BY THE BOOTSTRAP An animal for, excuse me, an animal finally learns to beg. It

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sits and lifts it's paw to hold its heart out. It lowers its head and rolls its eyes upwards. What the animal asks is the reward for this lesson, to go away with hat in hand, so to speak, to slink away with that heart still proffered. Will

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anyone follow such an act? Is there a line forming behind the poor creature? If only it had succeeded, if only something had been dropped into the proverbial hat. Once bitten by gratitude, the animal froths at the mouth. If only the trick had been

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something like counting backwards or divining water. Morton Marcus: Now, let's take a look at that animal. All right, is that animal symbolic? Gian Lombardo: Ah, no, I was just trying to play with the

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idea of- the idea of asking for favors, of begging, you know, sort of begging and it puts both the person who's asking the request and the person who's granting it in a state of sort of mutual servitude. You know, pretty soon, one can't exist

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without the other, one can't exist without the benefits of the other, of the person who's got more. And the person who has got more sort of, by giving also means that to sort of maybe assuage a guilty conscience or whatever, just needs that rush

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of being able to give to somebody else, that sort of mutual symbiosis, of this sort of give and take. And just playing with that idea versus trying to maybe come up with the ideal of, you know, a mutual going back and forth between

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people. That is not necessarily one person always receives and the other person always gives, that there's some, both sides both got it going. Morton Marcus: Now, in that case, what you do instead of,

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you're talking about this abstractly, and it's- it's an abstract notion, but you totally make it physical. And this is actually what a lot of prose writers do, that they make a story out of an abstract concept, or series of thoughts

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that they've had. And I know, you know, that one of the areas, obviously so do you, one of the areas of the prose poem is continually tugging us towards is the narrative. Gian Lombardo: Yeah, well, it's a hybrid. I think one of the

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best definitions I've seen of a prose poem, the absolute definition, because once you define it then it'll cease to exist in some ways in my mind, but the best definition I've come across so far, the best working one is, it's not quite a

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poem and it's not quite a story. If it's neither one, then it might be a prose poem. Morton Marcus: It's great. Good. While we're on this, though, there are there are several, but the one that has just come to my

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mind is, and I think I wrote you on this, the one that I consider the perfect picture, which is the parody of the Western and it's the train coming into town. Gian Lombardo: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: And I know it's long, but it's great and it's beautifully written. And I would, this is a whole other area, an extended narrative and I would love you to read it. Gian Lombardo: Sure, I'll do it. It's sort of a narrative that

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happens, but then nothing really happens. And it's called: AN ENDURING SERENITY Sometimes I get down on my knees and pray, the editor of our town's newspaper was saying as he watched the train, what we

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called our lonesome healer, pull into the station. It was 10 minutes late, but the woman didn't know that. What with all the people scrambling onto the train, barely letting the one figure the editor saw descend as he spoke, observing her as she

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made her way in her loose fitting black dress. Slowly passing two men who were lifting crates filled with lemons as fast as they could onto the baggage car. I looked away to check the time by the clock on the church steeple, and when I

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turned back, I saw a man poke his head out of the forward compartment door. He glanced quickly, first toward the engine. Evidently not finding anything there, he then surveyed more intently the rear of the train as he fingered the brim of

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his hat. I'm not sure if the editor noticed him, but the porter did. I saw him pushing his cart along the platform eyeing the man all the while. I saw him stop the cart abruptly when he had noted that the stranger had froze when he

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caught sight of her. When he had watched her long enough, I suppose long enough to ascertain whether she was really disembarking or merely stretching her legs. He waved to the porter who had also begun to study the woman. I'm sure that

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he was trying to figure out if she knew she was being spied on. Afterwards, the station master made an offhand remark about the woman and the man to the porter as he's leaving at the end of the day. Even though it didn't look like it, the station master

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saw everything that was going on, or at least he made it appear that way. He kept count of how many lemon crates were being loaded so the train company wouldn't be cheated the freight costs. He saw the man and woman, he saw the porter and

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observed the furrows on his brow. Maybe he even caught sight of me looking from my open window, how the editor seemed to be bent slightly toward me, as if he were saying something which he was doing. Maybe he even knew what the editor would

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write in the paper the following day. Who knows? But the stationmaster was probably not thinking about that now. He was thinking that it wasn't a secret, as the Porter was saying, it was much better than a secret, or even a mystery. He

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knew that and I knew that as well as I know my own name that's inscribed in my memory and its guardian of each and every breath that passes through me. I knew that as soon as I heard her ask the porter who had sworn off his years of revenge,

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who no longer entered the drug store with a shotgun and his pants stained with animal blood, who no longer wished to remember the names of his family, who would just as soon step on the train and leave forever, but couldn't, because he could not

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bear to see himself out of sight, out of the sight and of the landscape that had been the beneficiary of the curses he had muttered so many years ago, who is now being asked if he had the time, as if anyone could possess time. Least of all someone like

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him, who had no cure for sorrow. He, the porter said so. I know. I heard him but after a pause he told her after glaring at her, the nosy woman, he thought to himself, but instead he said, quarter to noon, he most surely said that. We could not hear him

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because the train's engine let loose. The train's engineer let loose the whistle just at that moment but we saw him. His lips moved, me and the editor, who is just finishing saying, down on my knees and pray, son, that we no longer kill the bearer of bad

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news. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I love that thing. I mean it- every single step along the way is unexpected and yet completely expected. It is as I said to me, it is just like a scene from a Western

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film, but things are not happening the way they should. And what I love is the absolute smooth way, very sophisticated way in which you introduce this never ending army of characters and give the different perspectives on them though this

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is really a first person piece. I think it's an amazing piece of prose. Gian Lombardo: Thanks. I just tried to give the illusion of a story going on, not try to make a definite story, but to work

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with the illusion of a story, the illusion of a narrative going on, to try to make the reader go in and invent his or her own details to the story. And trying to do that in a short space, you have to deal with some of the, you know, the

00:26:35.110 - 00:26:49.840

familiar elements that you have like Westerns and things like that, they're almost like cliches and you try to take those and reinvest them with a new meaning, to sort of working, getting the reader to know certain of the signposts along

00:26:49.840 - 00:27:04.090

the way and being able to enter them without getting hung up on them. I don't know if that makes any sense. Morton Marcus: It makes great sense and it's very, very eloquently said, terrific definition. So, what you are

00:27:04.090 - 00:27:22.180

hearing out there, I mean, it's also full of mood and an atmosphere but it is really just, what, two pages long. And so, what comes in with this supposed piece of prose, very, very lyrical, the rhythms are really very pronounced, is the

00:27:22.180 - 00:27:39.610

poet's power of contraction and suggestion. And that is why I love that and that is why, to me, that is a real prose poem because there is so much suggestion going on that even if there's no symbolism in there at all, the symbolism starts. And

00:27:39.610 - 00:27:55.990

you can start to take this in a number of different ways and a number of different directions. The Woman in Black, who in the end is going to be bearing possible bad news and why you, whoever the eye is, the speaker is down on his knees, is just

00:27:55.990 - 00:28:12.160

fraught with a tremendous amount of mythic information which the reader can then start to make his own or her own story, and her own completion of this event, which you are just setting the blocks up for.

00:28:12.000 - 00:28:26.250

Gian Lombardo: Yeah, that's my hope is somebody can enter this world and sort of create it. I'm showing you the signposts, I'm getting you there, you know, let the reader do a little work and get through and come up with something. Because I find that's

00:28:26.280 - 00:28:42.090

the best part of any good writing, is that it allows you the freedom to enter it and inhabit it. If it doesn't, to me, it's not as good writing as possible. I think I really hate how children are taught poetry in schools like there's one

00:28:42.090 - 00:28:55.890

correct reading to a certain poem. Like you take Robert rost's "Stopping by Woods in a Snowy Evening," and they're pou ded in that there's a one cor ect way to read this and it' sort of like deciphering a oem. It's not- that's not

00:28:55.890 - 00:29:14.280

riting, that's not literature. t's open to the reader. And the writer, I think if good, lets the reader do something with the piece, and not just sort of sit back and say- be a passive recipient to it and say there's nly one correct way to read

00:29:14.280 - 00:29:29.010

omething. Morton Marcus: Well, it's- Tha is really an excellen definition. And I'm glad tha we've actually ended the, th first half of the show with tha long piece and with your the

00:29:29.010 - 00:29:45.240

explanation of it, it's no really an explanation of it bu an explanation of this kind o writing. And I'm very happy, w have been talking with and wil continue to talk with Gia Lombardo, who is visiting Sant Cruz from the East Coast and wh

00:29:45.240 - 00:29:58.950

is a prose writer whose work have read in a lot of magazine and who I've been corresponding with. So, it's great to meet h m for the first time and to he r his explanations and hear the poems themselves going out n the airwaves here on the West

00:29:59.520 - 00:30:24.150

oast. And we will return with n the next several minutes o the show. And we are talkin with Gian Lombardo, who as I sa d, has been visiting us from he East Coast and this is the oetry show on KUSP community ponsored radio for Santa Cruz,

00:30:24.150 - 00:30:44.520

onterey, the Monterey Bay, alinas and Big Sur. So, Gian, ere we go again and I know that ou have new work that you've een doing. And I would like to ake the last 20 odd minutes of he show to talk about that new ork because it's a fascinating

00:30:44.520 - 00:31:02.150

oncept. And then I would like ou to read while you're talking bout it, or just however you ant to introduce it. Gian Lombardo: All right, I think it's basically based on the I Ching in Chinese Book of Divination. It's always been a

00:31:02.150 - 00:31:16.970

project of mine, I always consulted the I Ching for pertinent questions in my life and used it as a source of gai ing perspective on a proble or something like that, a wa of coming out and seeing ag in, something new, seeing i

00:31:16.970 - 00:31:32.570

in different eyes so you can ga n a little bit more f a perspective, more of a way around working with partic lar crisis in your life or ques ion or whatever. And I always wa ted to try to do something with the text of the hexagrams and n

00:31:32.570 - 00:31:47.450

ver really coming up with an ide of what I wanted to do wit it until a few years ago th t I sort of started feeling ike where I was, as a write , I could start handling, wor ing with it. And I always felt hat there was a flaw in my wri

00:31:47.450 - 00:31:59.270

ing that I was not a self-consc ous writer, that I couldn't say I'm going to sit down and write about, you know, about the leaves falling from the t ees or something like that and ome up with a piece or someth ng. It came to me and I didn't

00:31:59.270 - 00:32:14.450

ort of pull it out and I wanted to try to work with some ort of structure like that. nd the nearest thing that cam to my mind was working withi the I Ching. And going from h xagram to hexagram, and read ng the text and the commentar

00:32:14.450 - 00:32:35.240

es and the symbolism of each h xagram and using that as a b sis to come up with these ort of quasi-narratives, sort f half lyrical, half narrative o sort of create narratives, ased on images versus regular p ot in that way. And the book c

00:32:33.380 - 00:32:48.240

Morton Marcus: And how many pieces are there? me to being that way, stepped th ough and over the course of a y ar and a half worked through nd created the whole Gian Lombardo: There are 64 hexagrams I Ching, so there's 64

00:32:48.240 - 00:33:05.940

pieces and each piece corresponds to the corresponding hexagram, number one to one, and everything like that. Morton Marcus: Can you take a step by step through one of these from title to poem, and obviously, you know, read the

00:33:05.940 - 00:33:15.990

piece at the same time. Gian Lombardo: I can read a piece out. I mean- by going through and- Morton Marcus: Well, you know, the, the actual title actually

00:33:16.890 - 00:33:34.020

relies on- on I Ching. And then really you take off from that, right, let's say, and I sort of would like you to, if you would, read one of the pieces and then show us how it works so that you know you really are taking that leap.

00:33:36.340 - 00:33:51.280

Gian Lombardo: Trying to pry- The easiest one would be- -in some ways the first one, which is hexagram number one, which is just six Yang lines, which would be the straight strong lines, and the piece is

00:33:51.280 - 00:34:08.860

called "Sky upon Sky." If you are told in a dream you can fly, would you jump from a cliff after waking? As you dream you are flying, do you care to wake? Hanging in midair, do you think anything is possible? Everything you know, your books and paint

00:34:08.860 - 00:34:25.030

brushes, your saws and shovels, family, love and fears are all below. You appear as a small speck in the field of the sky. You think if you wake in your dream, you will not fall. Now you look up, see how much air is still above? How much further

00:34:25.030 - 00:34:35.560

you have to climb. If you see anyone approaching fast, do you open your arms? Morton Marcus: Okay, now and the title of that is? Gian Lombardo: "Sky Upon Sky,"

00:34:35.600 - 00:34:49.430

Morton Marcus: All right, "Sky Upon Sky." Is that a quote from the I Ching? Gian Lombardo: Well, it's working with the symbolism of that hexagram, be the two component trigrams of it, to be-

00:34:49.910 - 00:35:08.120

one is a symbol for the sky over the symbol of the sky. So, it's sky upon sky and I just started working with my associations on that and sort of came up coming up with the dream of flight and going up into the sky and finding another sky on top of

00:35:08.120 - 00:35:22.240

that, and working with those images and creating a narrative based on those images. Morton Marcus: Okay, so the titles are always literal definitions of what the hexagrams represent?

00:35:23.470 - 00:35:36.850

Gian Lombardo: Literal, sometimes figurative, I sort of had no system of each time I would do these things the same way. Each time I sort of approached the hexagram and the text and the symbolism in a different way and sometimes the

00:35:36.850 - 00:35:54.430

symbolism, in this case, the symbolism brought me into it, and in other cases it would be the text or the commentary. Would there be something that that struck me as being what I saw was the key point of that hexagram, or the one that

00:35:55.120 - 00:36:07.990

allowed me into that hexagram the best and then work with that. Morton Marcus: Okay, let's go on to some others then, just listen to some of these, because I I found them absolutely

00:36:07.990 - 00:36:19.480

intriguing. Gian Lombardo: Well, actually, I know this is getting off the point, but I've been starting to use this manuscript to read from in readings. And what I've been doing is before the reading,

00:36:19.480 - 00:36:33.700

I'll have people with index cards and just write out questions as if you were doing the teaching yourself. And then having people pick out the hexagrams at random during the reading, I have no set, you know, hexagrams that I'll be

00:36:33.700 - 00:36:50.530

reading. Somebody will pick up, pick out of the hat number 12, I'll read number 12 but before I will read it, I'll pick out a question at random and read that for that particular person's question and see the synergy or whatever is moving between the

00:36:50.530 - 00:37:04.930

question and the text that I'm reading. And I found that's been fairly successful readings. It brings people into it, they have an investment, they're creating these questions, and they're sort of looking at each piece, you know, waiting for their

00:37:04.930 - 00:37:17.830

question to come up, and what's going to happen with the text that I'm reading and how's that going to apply? I think it's worked very well so far. And I like it for the fact that it makes the reading come alive for the people in the audience.

00:37:18.520 - 00:37:33.820

Instead of just sitting around passively receiving poetry, they're there actively getting into it and inhabiting, in some ways, the frame of the poetry because they now, I've sort of given them an interest. T ey want their question answer

00:37:33.810 - 00:37:40.770

Morton Marcus: Now, that sounds great. In fact, I would suggest Gian Lombardo: Yeah. Morton Marcus: in which you can read these things in any that you put this in the beginning of the book. So you

00:37:40.770 - 00:37:56.490

know, that this can be played. I'm thinking of Cortázar's " opscotch," different way. Right. And certainly, this would be a way that would bring the reader closer to the work itself. Or

00:37:56.490 - 00:38:10.170

now, let's put it this way using jargon, interactive. The interactive I Ching. Okay, great. Let's, let's hear some more of these. Gian Lombardo: Okay, this one is number 38:

00:38:10.590 - 00:38:24.590

OIL AND WATER The rope you hold begs the question, how to tie a noose and toss it over a branch. Put it over your head to see how it fits. But before you can braid that deadly knot, someone grabs

00:38:24.590 - 00:38:40.970

the other end and runs. You dig your heels in, with the rope taut, the other circles around you, you twirl describing a smaller orbit to keep from being wrapped in the line. Soon the world's a queasy blur, who will let go first?

00:38:42.440 - 00:38:57.590

Morton Marcus: Okay, since that is short, I'm going to ask you to read that again and remind the audience out there that the title now is either the direct meaning of the hexagram to the I Ching, or it is being figuratively played with from

00:38:57.590 - 00:39:13.430

the beginning and then Gian goes off on his own where his imagination takes him. So here we go. Gian Lombardo: Okay. OIL AND WATER. NUMBER 38 The rope you hold begs the question, how to tie a noose and

00:39:13.430 - 00:39:30.590

toss it over a branch. Put it over your head to see how it fits. But before you can braid that deadly knot, someone grabs the other end and runs. You dig your heels in, with a rope taut, the other circles around you, you twirl describing a smaller

00:39:30.590 - 00:39:42.620

orbit to keep from being wrapped in a line. Soon the world's a queasy blur, who will let go first. Morton Marcus: Okay. Gian Lombardo: And this one actually came out of, not the

00:39:43.430 - 00:40:06.620

the symbolism but the text and the commentary. The Chinese scholars would be writing on it then he wrote that this one had sort of the familial relation of older sister to younger s ster. And I just started w rking off of that and getting i

00:40:06.620 - 00:40:15.830

to my own family of my mother a d her older sister and what t ey were going through. Morton Marcus: So, the rope is really an umbilical, it's the umbilical of relationships.

00:40:15.840 - 00:40:29.190

Gian Lombardo: Yeah, I sort of- within this I had a really difficult time getting into this because my mother was suffering from Alzheimer's disease at that time, and her sister, her older sister was taking care of her most of the time and they were

00:40:29.190 - 00:40:44.940

both at odds with each other. And Alzheimer's is a terrible disease and changes one's behavior. And from, you know, two Latin women who really loved each other, it turned into a very sour relationship because of this disease, and I had a

00:40:44.940 - 00:41:02.610

hard time writing this one because I kept seeing that image of the two sisters. And finally, I think, at a certain point, I came up with the image of two stars, like a double sun, and start working working with that. The idea of gravity as an

00:41:02.610 - 00:41:20.700

umbilical cord between them, a rope between them, also a noose between them because without centripetal force, the gravity of bringing both suns together and they both would erupt into a huge supernova and destroy them both. Well, so there were sort

00:41:20.700 - 00:41:32.880

of layers on this relation. Morton Marcus: It is layers within layers. Great, wow. Okay, go on to another one. Gian Lombardo: Let's see.

00:41:39.440 - 00:41:55.610

Morton Marcus: I should tell the listening audience out there that one of the things Gian does is he designs and lays out books in publishing. And to read his manuscripts are- just to read beautifully laid out pages with great design to them.

00:41:57.780 - 00:42:21.330

Gian Lombardo: Okay, I'll read number 40, THE GREAT EGRESS. So many things bind for one gravity, leg irons, tendon and skin, gift wrapping. Some unbind like the light that like the key that floods your car with thousands of volts, wind that

00:42:21.330 - 00:42:38.550

sends leaves far from where they fall. Touch that flag knotted around your neck, your shoes bow tied string once undone trips you. The buckle, creating a circle from your belt, if unclasped what happens to your pants? A pair of lover's hands

00:42:38.550 - 00:42:56.130

bound with a silk cord when uncoiled grasp the small of your back. Someone is plastered over the windows and doors so fast you wonder how you ever got in. Don't worry, palpate the walls for the slightest indentation, wield sledge and pick to hack an

00:42:56.130 - 00:43:09.180

opening from which you can stick out your head and taste the first drops thunder shakes from the sky. Morton Marcus: Could you read that again also? Gian Lombardo: Sure. I just thought it was appropriate for

00:43:09.180 - 00:43:27.020

the remains of El Nino here, but: THE GREAT EGRESS So many things bind, for one gravity, leg irons, tendon in the skin, gift wrapping. Some unbind like the key that floods

00:43:27.020 - 00:43:43.310

your car with thousands of volts, wind that sends leaves fire from where they fall. Touch the flag knotted around your neck, your shoes, bow tied string once undone trips you. The buckle, creating a circle from your belt, if unclasped

00:43:43.700 - 00:44:00.950

what happens to your pants? A pair of lovers hands bound with the silk cord when uncoiled grasp the small of your back. Someone is plastered over the windows and doors so fast, you wonder how you ever got in. Don't worry, palpate the walls

00:44:00.950 - 00:44:21.580

for the slightest indentation, wield sledge and pick to hack an opening from which you can stick out your head and taste the first drops thunder shakes from the sky. Morton Marcus: Okay. Okay. And there the idea of egress, we're

00:44:21.580 - 00:44:42.100

moving from being bound in to freedom. And actually, it's a series of images that portray that and the suggestion in the end is breaking out, or freedom and of course, in all different aspects of that [unintelligible].

00:44:42.840 - 00:44:57.750

Gian Lombardo: Well, if you want to go into the I Ching a little more. I mean it's based on these component trigrams and only a certain number of them. So, you have a repetition of themes, of symbology so it sort of wafts through the book that, you know,

00:44:57.780 - 00:45:10.110

like gravity in the first piece I read becomes something a little different in the next piece because of the context it's in. And it's looking at those things and seeing how things change within the context that they are- that they're

00:45:10.110 - 00:45:29.160

enclosed, how things work that way. And I'm always interested in picking apart things and looking at them again. I think the poet Bill Corbett has a great title for a book of his. It's like, the title says, "Don't Think, Look," and I think

00:45:29.160 - 00:45:39.900

that's a great you know, motto to live by, it's like, look first then think, don't think first and then look because you're only gonna fulfill, you know, what, your preconceptions. Yeah.

00:45:41.250 - 00:45:56.820

Morton Marcus: Great, very good. Why don't- I'm just gonna let you read now so we hear, we hear more of these things. I think that the listeners out there are clear as to what's happening and again, I will just say as I want to do every 10 or 15 minutes:

00:45:57.210 - 00:46:13.860

This is the Poetry Show on KUSP, community sponsored radio for Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay. And we are talking with Gian Lombardo, who is visiting the West Coast from the East Coast. Gian Lombardo: Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you

00:46:13.860 - 00:46:19.320

for inviting me. Morton Marcus: Oh, it was a delight. The minute you told me you were coming out, I knew that there was going to be a show with you.

00:46:20.530 - 00:46:30.910

Gian Lombardo: But let's see, oh, I'm going to read, this one's called "More for Us", more for us. And it's number eight. And actually, I want to just explain a little bit I was telling you about how I was having people, you know, do

00:46:31.120 - 00:46:47.770

questions before, and do that. I recently read this, the last piece in the reading, and the question that came out before this- So this was in response to, was Will Clinton serve out his four year term. So keep that in mind as I'm reading this.

00:46:49.000 - 00:47:02.680

Most arrives singly, even though there are occasional groups of MORE FOR US two or more. Watch how they leave their clothes, some roll them up quickly and hide them. Every once in a while someone

00:47:02.680 - 00:47:17.560

will take the time to fold their clothes and search for a chair, a banister, or a branch on which to drape them. Then there are other ones that remove their clothes slowly, letting them fall where they may, their skin an emerging soul approaching the

00:47:17.560 - 00:47:35.020

others swarming about you. One rubs thumbs in small circles against your instep. Several tongues trace different routes along your chest. Many hands and mouths find themselves everywhere, cooling your temples with ice, warming your belly,

00:47:35.740 - 00:47:50.380

someone's sex slides back and forth on yours. All day and night, as one leaves a few more join, as if they could have no peace until they rested with you, wildlife intent on drinking their fill.

00:47:52.600 - 00:48:02.740

At the end of that reading, everybody was rolling on the floor. Morton Marcus: You know and it's something that we haven't talked. We have talked a lot about a lot of things in this

00:48:02.950 - 00:48:21.070

45-50 minutes. And that is the idea of accident and how accident works in a lot of these pieces and how, though you use very specific language, at the same time it is, it is nonspecific, so it allows itself to open up into many different

00:48:21.070 - 00:48:37.000

directions. And certainly, by doing what you've done at the readings, you're allowing accident to have its magic connections in a whole lot of different ways. And that certainly the Clinton thing is, is marvelous, for example, if

00:48:37.000 - 00:48:42.940

you would have read that and someone had asked the question about Clinton two years ago- Gian Lombardo: It would have- It would have been different. Morton Marcus: Exactly!

00:48:43.020 - 00:48:58.020

Gian Lombardo: So it is- there's some sort of serendipity going on. Yeah, it also has its brighter points. Also, I think during that reading also has some negative connotations because there are a couple of elderly people in the audience

00:48:58.020 - 00:49:13.650

too. And I- I sort of froze when I got the question, I suppose that was from one of them but I don't know if it was or not. But it sort of was chilling in a moment that the question was saying, will I live to see the end of the summer? And the piece

00:49:14.040 - 00:49:33.810

that got selected was something that had a very, very bleak viewpoint and I felt very shaky in reading it, that- the response to that question, you know. I hope that person will make it through the summer. But it's sort of like that. Those,

00:49:33.840 - 00:49:46.050

those are the things you sort of leave yourself open to. Morton Marcus: Well, let me throw something at you here. It is interesting that when you start doing this, and we have certainly a history of being called many different things,

00:49:46.050 - 00:50:05.100

that is as poets, that we've had different roles, and certainly the role of prophet, using all of these manners of things that we're messing with here. As you'd mentioned, you may be better than prophet because it's clear is oracle is operative

00:50:05.100 - 00:50:18.930

there and it can make you very uncomfortable. Because one thing we've done as American poets, and I certainly can see that with you here is, we've attained great humility as the listeners out there, we'll say, more you haven't, but we've attained the

00:50:18.930 - 00:50:32.340

humility. We don't want to really say, what the power behind what we're doing, and messing with these words that seems to be coming out of nowhere and with some people, according to their spiritual or religious orientation seems to

00:50:32.340 - 00:50:46.200

be coming to them from another power and talking through them. I think that's one of the reasons you felt uncomfortable. Here suddenly, was the more powerful image of the poet suddenly emerging, it seems out of nowhere.

00:50:47.500 - 00:51:04.510

Gian Lombardo: Yeah, it just sort of you can go either, you know, what are the old Dionysian or Apollonian viewpoints and, to me it's even going back to that the poem speaks to me first and is a revelation to me, then it works to a revolution to

00:51:04.510 - 00:51:15.460

somebody else. And I hope it's working. If it doesn't work as that then I think the poem has failed if it doesn't evoke something for somebody. Morton Marcus: Right, I agree. How about hearing several more

00:51:15.460 - 00:51:27.800

of these and then I think we are about to leave in around four minutes, believe it or not. Gian Lombardo: Okay. Actually, I think you threw out the question about the, the prose poem and why forsaking lines and I just

00:51:27.800 - 00:52:58.340

want to take- Morton Marcus: Okay, great, let's do that. Gian Lombardo: Quick shot at that and from basically from my That is a perfect place to end, and though I was going to have

00:51:32.790 - 00:51:53.040

own viewpoint, is I think I started writing prose poems, and I started, I think, in college and reading Baudelaire and as well as the French surrealist, I remember Éluard and Breton. nd just seeing what they could do with that form made in so

00:51:53.040 - 00:52:12.780

e ways- looking at lines and h w to figure line breaks and wh t you're going to do with it, t blew it away. Just the fact th t you can now organize a poem or a piece of writing on the basis f of sentence and paragraph an using that instead of the line

00:52:12.780 - 00:52:29.880

and stanza seemed to be a way t do virtually anything you w nted to; it opened up new orlds. And I like the fact tha it's opened up new worlds a d I like the fact that a lot of ther people are seeing it that w y, and doing their own experimen

00:52:29.880 - 00:52:42.990

ations in it, and coming up with some marvelous writing b doing so. Not to say that you c n't still write poems and it's l ke, you know, I'm not gonna o and say, oh, the death of a n vel or death of the poem or, yo know, stuff like that. But it

00:52:43.410 - 00:53:01.790

s like, there is room for everyb dy and the prose poem is a way o - that hasn't been mined before too well and it's, it's open fo discovery. you read more poetry I think we will leave it right there. We

00:53:01.790 - 00:53:15.650

have been talking with Gian Lombardo, a prose poet, an editor of a prose poem magazine from the East Coast who you'll be hearing a lot more of. And in fact, if you read the small magazines, you already know that there's a lot of his poems out

00:53:15.650 - 00:53:25.620

there. Gian, it has been marvelous. Thanks again, joy for me to come. Morton Marcus: My pleasure. It's Mort Marcus, I'll be seeing you all out there in another several weeks, and I hope you enjoyed

00:53:25.620 - 00:53:26.040

the show.