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Morton Marcus: And good evening everybody, this is the Poetry Show, and you're listening to it on KUSP 88.9 FM on your dial. And this is Mort Marcus, and we serve Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay, Big Sur, and Salinas. Stay tuned.

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And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Poetry Show. This is Mort Marcus and I'm here with a very special guest and that is Greg Hall, the author of, "Flame People," a poet who I have known now for going on twenty-seven years. And

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I will say this somewhat without being accused, I hope, of making statements that are over the top: He is one of the most talented and purest poets I have ever met. And we will be talking to him and listening to new work by him. Jeff- Greg has been sort

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of avoiding the publishing and public domain, but you will get a chance to meet him on the show. Greg, welcome. Greg Hall: Thanks, Morton. Morton Marcus: You're sounding nice and clear. That's great.

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Greg, why don't you, first of all, just read us a poem and let people get a sense of your things. Greg Hall: All right, tonight, I am going to be reading things I've written in the past year. And I'd like to read this poem

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called: MY CONFESSION I wanted to be a man composed completely of white snow with eyes of dark stone, existing only in winter. In the spring, I

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would tumble over a waterfall and assume the pale blue of the sky, resting as a small lake beneath a willow tree. She loves me so much, this woman, trailing her branches in my depth, trembling in twilight as I hold a mirror, offering the gift of

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the first star of evening and a white heron reflected in my face. I love being water even more than being ice. But what I love most is being mist, rising before dawn to shift softly among the pines, feeling my way in semi-dark along the

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riverbank, until I can ascend, transcended, married at last to the pervasive blood of the sun. It is perhaps better to be water than to be a man, but it is almost as good to be a man who can become water, since a woman consists almost entirely of

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light, and the marriage of light and water is honored by all the diamonds of morning. Morton Marcus: And, you know, I know that that's a new poem of yours, Greg, but it has all of the magic and unexpected shifts

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of imagery. It gives the reader, in this case the listener, a way of looking at things that one, is completely unpredictable; two, is extremely concrete; and three, just seems to open a whole new aspect of existence in the world. And this is one of

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the reasons I call you a pure poet because you just seem to have a vision that you can touch in your words, that just sort of lifts us right off of our gravity-heavy bodies and lets us sail through the stratosphere into the dark reaches of the

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universe, where we find diamonds of light. And that's a new poem. You're going to be reading new poems for us tonight, is that right? Greg Hall: Yeah, those are the ones I brought, during the past

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year- Morton Marcus: Great. Greg Hall: Which has been a pretty good year as things go, you know.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, you know, you made a statement, really and, of course, that is a love poem, essentially, so to me it really defines the essence of a macho masculinity which has broken down in the light of the love, let's say, of the Anima,

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the animists' love and found in the Anima, and has opened, let's say, the ice, which is the water imagery in here into water. And what I've loved about your poetry for twenty-seven years is this ability to talk in metaphor, that metaphor becomes

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the real world and to me, this is poetry. People have heard me say this about Charles Bukowski. And the fact is that with Bukowski, he did it less and less as time went on. In his earlier books, he was able to do this. But then more and more, it

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became the pose of the drunk, you know, who is always betting in the horse races and kicking his landlady down the stairs, and he lost the magic, but you have had it and continue to have it. And why don't you tell the people out there what you meant

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when you said, you know, that what a poet has to do is, no one can write a true poem unless the beloved one is present. And let's see if we can get you to define that. Greg Hall: Well, I've- I keep learning a lot from Robert

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Graves, basically, that- I don't have to go so far as to say you can't write a true poem unless you're in love, but I will say that you can't write a true poem unless you're in love. And like- most of us are, probably all of us in some way or another, have

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realized that the one you love doesn't have to be present, or even alive, to be- doesn't have to be physically present, or even physically alive, to be present. In this area, when you come to this place where you approach the poem, or the poem

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is possible and you've got this- most of us have, like, an open page which has nothing on it, and you're coming- it's a strange thing how they- what you actually put in it. What comes to you and what you put on that page becomes the only thing that

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goes on beyond you, you know, it's such a- this kind of undefined thing. And so like, as you know, at best sometimes we are allowed to either choose to- there's a risk because it's like the big yes or the big no, and you just go for it. It's like an

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inner thing where you choose to take the risk, you choose to leap off into this open page. Morton Marcus: Now, okay, this open page now, which is sort of- replaces the beloved, is this whole idea or is this notion

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sort of the idea that you would get out of, let's say, Sufism? Greg Hall: Yeah, you know, I draw a lot- like a Kabir poems and whatnot, it talks about the guest, you know. I once had a visit from a guest and I became a servant for life. I want you

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to have this visit from your beloved. Probably a little secular in my approach to this, but I'm not a Sufi, but it really doesn't mean that people like us- that's one of the- Morton Marcus: It's one of the meanings of it, oh it's

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interesting, okay. Greg Hall: Yeah, so I like that, you know, people like us, people can see you, and you can go along and you don't see anyone for days and all of a sudden you see someone and they see you,

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and you see each other and those are people like us, you know, and you can see the other, you know. This is like- a lot of things are really, they're not- they're unseen. But the unseen and the invisible I think are two different things, the

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invisible and the unseen. It seems to me that in poems that- but now and then on occasion, you can come across a poem that leaves- you're completely defenseless against, you have to accept what the poem is, and it changes your life. And that's

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what I think- that's why some of us have really stayed with it for so long, because of this potential opportunity of having this experience. And even participating in a [unintelligible] you do write something that has some of this

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quality in it just gets this unseen, invisible thing. Morton Marcus: Now, can you define the difference between the unseen and the invisible? Greg Hall: Yeah. I'll tell you, you know, poets are generally-

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you would go down the street and you'd be invisible. But the unseen is more of relation to the inner thing between you and your true concerns which have- concerning the poem, and what comes through of that. In fact, if a beloved leaps out at you

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from a page of a poem you're reading, then that poet must have been doing his work, you know, because that's an amazing thing. I'm sort of a grateful participant at this point to be in relation to this thing as an opportunity and I continually

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try and keep finding cracks in the wall so I can get back to it, you know. Morton Marcus: Why don't you read us another poem? Greg Hall: This poem is just slightly longer. It's called,

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"Because I Want To and I Can," which is a, I believe it's a line from Lorca, but I thought was a good title for this poem. BECAUSE I WANT TO AND I CAN Whenever the ocean spoke to me, I listened and remembered. All

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night looking up at the ceiling, I no longer heard my heartbeat. I heard the waves and their thunders and whispers and in the mornings, the white cries of the gulls. But teachers gave me and continued to give, there and by, enduring a definitive silence

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born of the constellations of the sea coast, and what she offered to me, wordlessly, in the intervals, always present in the songs they sang for me. The rooms I live in are always rented. I have never owned anything, except perhaps a

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certain right to the changes of light in the sky and on the water. Because it could not continue as a sword submerged under the earth in the stone, my heart insisted and then my eyes agreed to where the flight of the sea coast hawk has bone for

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my body rising through fog to the clarifying brilliance of the pure air threaded by ragged clouds in the sun. The mist above the breaking waves gathered and became my flesh. The wind, invisible prisoner of freedom, married the mist and

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became my skin. Whatever the world says is not what the ocean says and so I must go on arriving and departing, ceasing to move and endlessly moving, remaining endlessly blue and still, and forever rolling towards impeccable rocks and

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breaking, a revelation of sudden white, thunder and whisper, returning to silence and ruled by the moon. Morton Marcus: Well, now, that certainly sounds like a description of the poet. And what you were talking before

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about the invisible poet, in that great metaphor, I love that coming with the image of sword under the earth in the stone, and then becoming body through the ocean, and then just continuing that metaphor and speaking in that metaphor,

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coming and going, always being present and always withdrawing. Beautifully done, beautifully, beautifully done. Greg Hall: You know, I think, in a way, I think if you understand this, unless we participate in the world, we're not in it.

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Morton Marcus: So, even though that was all very metaphorical, that's also very autobiographical, because you do own nothing and you have only lived in rented rooms. Greg Hall: Yeah, it just occurred to me how I might be

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able to learn something from that. Morton Marcus: Well, we don't want you to drown yourself in the sea, though, Greg. I mean, but anyway, no, that's gorgeous stuff. It's again just speaking in a language, which just- I

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mean, it really to me relates to the Kabirs, relates to the Rumis and it's just entered the magical realm where our language is releasing all the confusions and making the clarity great. Could I ask you to go back and read that poem again, especially

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from the point of the sword under the earth. And let's- let the listeners out there just hear how you develop this metaphor of the sea and how you become the sea and those aspects of the sea that become paradoxically permanent and yet

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impermanent at the same time. Greg Hall: The rooms I live in are always rented. I have never owned anything, except perhaps a certain right to the changes of light in the sky and on the water. Because I could not

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continue as a sword submerged under the earth in the stone, my heart insisted and then my eyes agreed to where the flight of the sea coast hawk has bone for my body rising through fog to the clarifying brilliance of the pure air threaded by ragged

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clouds in the sun. The mist above the breaking waves gathered and became my flesh. The wind, invisible prisoner of freedom, married the mist and became my skin. Whatever the world says is not what the ocean says and so I must go on

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arriving and departing, ceasing to move an endlessly moving, remaining endlessly blue and still and forever rolling towards impeccable rocks and breaking, a revelation of sudden white, thunder and whisper, returning to silence and ruled

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by the moon. Morton Marcus: And it's marvelous, of course, the moon talking about the beloved, I mean, the moon is the poet's symbol of the goddess and the muse. I mean, there's just so

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many great things in there, the wind that is imprisoned by freedom. And we start to enter this paradox that goes on endlessly from that point on. Everything cancelling itself out, yet everything becoming everything at the same time,

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it's marvelous, marvelous. Read some more, read some more. Greg Hall: Oh, this poem is called: FOR ALL THE BEST OF REASONS I love you because the grass is so high, so dark inside its

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green. And because nothing loves the wind as much as the grass. As the wave is to the ocean, so my kisses are to you. The white bird rising towards the sun, your mouth rising inside the red evening. And when the milk is married to the cherries, a

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distant violin cries inside the trees. Morton Marcus: It's lovely. Keep going, read some more. Greg Hall: Well, this one's called, "A Blue Horse Will Never Sleep."

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Morton Marcus: And this is going to be the title of the book that you're thinking of putting all these things together in? Greg Hall: Yeah, this one seems to be a good driver, a title poem or- a blue horse will never sleep.

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Morton Marcus: Sounds good to me. Greg Hall: I think you've seen the blue horse or lived with it. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I think I've been riding it too. Greg Hall: A BLUE HORSE WILL NEVER SLEEP

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One day a blue horse will appear wearing my shirt, and my shoes will abandon the arena, rushing away to a factory without mercy, and all factories are merciless. But no matter what, the pants and wristwatch will chase the shoes and the fiery path blazed

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by my hat. The blue horse snorts a bleak landscape and your mother in the black and white photograph is pacing and wringing her hands. Everyone in this album is distressed; they know nothing is in color, and that we are only dreaming

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because we are not women, and that women live entirely in black and white. And the men stiffly glide disguised as peacocks or else as wounded kings shifting from square to square, all the bishops and knights are lost, and the blue

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horse has every man in check. Because the hoof and the lowering sky are one, because the white and the black are mirrors sinking in the shore break, because women are so very beautiful, we bear the thunder and fiery breath of the blue

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horse. Morton Marcus: That's great. Do you mind if I ask you to read some of these things over again. Now in that one, of course, you get into a whole lot of different kinds of imagery, and

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end up with a chess imagery. Using the idea of chess and the way your mind leaps, I should tell people out there that years ago, Greg was a student of mine -- was one of the luckiest things that ever happened in my life -- and at one point, Robert

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Bly, not nearly as famous as he is now, though very well-known, came down to Santa Cruz and he read until 3:30, in the morning, or something like that. He took in people to show him one or two poems, and he talked to people about it, he was very giving of

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his time. And one of the people he took in to at that time was a bedroom in a little rented apartment that I had was Greg, and he came out of the bedroom and he said to me, "Is that guy for real?" And I said, "He's for real." And we- I drove Bly that

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night all the way up to the city and he just could not stop talking about the poems that Greg had shown him. And that last poem really illustrates what- one of the many things that got him which was the incredible leaping that your

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imagination can do, but you don't lose the reader, the reader can leap with you again into these totally new kind of landscapes and looking at the world. "Women are only black and white," I mean, these are amazingly metaphorical

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statements that seem to talk such a sense of a truth beyond the naive realism we live in every day. Greg Hall: It's part of the role affliction of men is that they see everything in color.

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Morton Marcus: You see, I think this is great you can expand on this. And it's amazing because if the sense of women just being able to see black and white not only narrows their world but of course makes it richer for the narrowness, and then the images

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you give in men about their wounded kings and what's the other thing they are? The one right before that. It's just, it just- you want to stop. Greg Hall: He's stiffly glide disguised as peacocks-

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Morton Marcus: Yes, marvelous. Greg Hall: -or else as wounded kings. Morton Marcus: And what you certainly have with kings, you get the jewelry and everything like that. But the peacocks, of

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course, bring color into it immediately. You know, and of course, strutting like a peacock, showing off all of this flashy, meaningless color, you know, and moving from the idea of the women are black and white is also moving from photo album

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imagery, the past and generations, women as mother, I mean, the suggestion of these images just go on and on and on. And I, you know, they just- as always just take my breath away. Where does he get this stuff from and how does he make these

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connections? Can you read that again because what you're really trying to come to grips with here is the sense of the male and the female. And just- if you would read it again, please. Greg Hall: THE BLUE HORSE WILL NEVER SLEEP

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One day a blue horse will appear wearing my shirt, and my shoes will abandon the arena, rushing away to a factory without mercy, and all factories are merciless. But no matter what, the pants and wristwatch will chase the shoes and the fiery path blazed

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by my hat. The blue horse snorts a bleak landscape and your mother in the black and white photograph is pacing and wringing her hands. Everyone in this album is distressed; they know nothing is in color, and that we are only dreaming

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because we are not women, and that women lived entirely in black and white. And the men stiffly glide disguised as peacocks, or else as wounded kings shifting from square to square; all the bishops and knights are lost and the blue

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horse has every man in check. Because the hoof and the lowering sky are one, because the white and the black are mirrors sinking in the shore break, because women are so very beautiful, we bear the thunder and fiery breath of the blue

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horse. Morton Marcus: Now, of course, then what is the blue horse and I will take- yes, he sounds just like the one who can unite the two images and pierce them, and that is the poet.

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It's a terrible truth, you know, this- I was reading this thing by Lorca translated to English, this little infinite poem, where the- it gives a whole system of logic because roosters can only fly above- they can't fly above snow will have to eat graveyard

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grass for centuries. And the logic of this thing was tormenting me, and I was actually pacing up and down. And I think what I understood was for me, whatever the blue horse is for me, whatever the blue horse is for me that was

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watching him and he had to write this poem because roosters can't fly above snow, they will have to eat the grass of the graveyards. So you find your own system of logic.

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Greg Hall: I was trying to escape Lorca's poem and so I wrote this poem. Of course, I wasn't able to escape, but it turned out to be a poem. I mean, some people, they write a poem and you can't escape it, you know?

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Morton Marcus: Well, I mean, I certainly want to copy that. I just want to go into it again and again. Why don't you read us some- well, let's see what time- yeah, one more and then we're going to take a little musical break.

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Greg Hall: Great. Morton Marcus: In fact, if there's one that has any kind of Lorca imagery or Spanish imagery in it, since we're going back to the Gypsy Kings, that might be appropriate, but if you don't

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have one, don't worry about it. Greg Hall: I must have one like that. Morton Marcus: In case you're tuned in while he is shifting papers, we are- our guest tonight is Greg Hall, the Santa

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Clara poet and author of, "Flame People." And Greg, what was the anthology because from that meeting with Bly, I keep forgetting the name of the anthology. Greg Hall: [Cross talk] called, "News of the Universe."

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Morton Marcus: "News of the Universe," right. And then you can fly- find Greg Hall's poem. What poem was that? Greg Hall: In the book is called, "The Voice of the Power of This World," but it's actually if you'll mark- cross

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it out in your book and call it, "I Love the Snakes," that was the original title and I like it better. Morton Marcus: And not only was Bly that impressed, but he actually wrote an introduction for your first book, talking

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about what made your stuff so magical, so I'm not standing alone here, folks. Anyway, read on, Greg. Greg Hall: This is a poem called: AGAINST A WORLD WITHOUT THE COLOR BLUE

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It is the morning of the bird versus the elevator. When the gun is fired, both began to rise. And though chrome and hydraulic armor are impervious to bullets, the bird wins every time. This is why the governments had declared the

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illegalization of the color blue. They are opposed by the sea, the sky, and the eyes of women. Even the black eyes of women are seas of darkest blue, because in the eyes of women, life is breathing as a restless ocean, and the sky itself,

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raining or flooded with sun is present. So the bird outruns the elevator and I swim or fly inside your eyes forever. Morton Marcus: Great. Again, we are talking to Greg Hall and we will be back talking to Greg after we have a short musical

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Greg Hall: [Cut off] -small lake beneath a willow tree. She loves interlude. me so much, this woman, trailing her branches in my depths, trembling in twilight as I hold a mirror, offering the gift of

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the first star of evening and a white heron reflected in my face. I love being water even more than being ice but what I love most is being mist. Rising before dawn to shift softly among the pines, feeling my way in semi-dark along the riverbank

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until I can ascend, transcendent, married at last to the pervasive flood of the sun. It is perhaps better to be water than to be a man. There is almost as good to be a man who can become water since a woman consists almost entirely of

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light and the marriage of light and water is honored by all the diamonds of morning. Morton Marcus: Just beautiful, Greg. Keep reading, choose the next one. I know you've chosen poems to read for this half

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hour. Greg Hall: [unintelligible] this one's called: THE TERRORIST Try to understand I didn't come to bring anyone any peace, but

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to exalt everyone in the center of the ocean. A teardrop of plastic pierced by a detonator. I want to do to you what the moonlight does to the jasmine flowers. Coyote on the freeway, dreaming inside the sonata of raindrops, monitoring invisible

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griefs that condemn us all to our silences. Please help me, I am lonesome for your presence. I need you to confess that you are living. I can't go on having the earth and the sky all to myself. Has anyone seen the light on the sea? Has anyone been slowly

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roasted over the slow fires of an inescapable and hopeless love? If there is one among you, who knows a desert hiding inside 3am? Write to me. General delivery, avenue of precarious dreams, city of inevitable necessity on the planet called

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the Earth. Morton Marcus: Greg, before you go on, could I ask you to read that one again? Greg Hall: Sure.

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Morton Marcus: This is called, "A Terrorist," and again, you know this is something that you've been doing for years, you take almost like a news item from the day and within one half line, presto change-o. You have just pierced beyond the heart of

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the news into the heart of the universe and the heart of the human species. And the great loneliness in this poem, the great loneliness of the terrorist, who is also the poet, the man, the woman. It's amazing. Yeah, please read it

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again. I love the imagery here of teardrops, that- and hell, the plastic explosive, the teardrop of plastic explosive that one bit of nitroglycerin, you know, that becomes so much more than just an angry destructive thing here. It

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becomes its total opposite. Please read it again. Greg Hall: THE TERRORIST Try to understand I didn't come to bring anyone any peace, but to exalt everyone in the center of the ocean. A teardrop of

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plastic pierced by a detonator. I want to do to you what the moonlight does to the jasmine flowers. Coyote on the freeway, dreaming inside the sonata of raindrops, monitoring invisible griefs that condemn us all to ourselves is. Please help me, I

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am lonesome for your presence. I need you to confess that you are living. I can't go on having the earth and the sky all to myself. Has anyone seen the light on the sea? Has anyone been slowly roasted over the slow fires of an inescapable and hopeless

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love? If there is one among you, who knows a desert hiding inside 3am? Write to me. General delivery, avenue of precarious dreams, city of inevitable necessity on the planet called the Earth.

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Morton Marcus: Okay. Keep going. Any comments you want to make on these as introductory or anything, please, you know, feel free. Greg Hall: Well, you know this- I was reading this- we were

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talking earlier of leaving on- I was reading his book, "Love in the Time of Cholera," And I began to get upset, you know, after say the first fourth of the book about this hopeless love affair. And after a while, I couldn't go back to reading

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the book and I couldn't stop reading it either. I was pacing up and down. I finally forced myself to go on. But in the meantime, I wrote this poem in order to cope, so I could go back and and read more.

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Morton Marcus: Right. Greg Hall: And it's called: WE WON'T LET HIM SMOKE UNTIL HE AGREES Suddenly, it was tonight. I was both reading and not reading.

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The word swelled, hands on the page, Fermina Daza and her illusory love, short-circuited [unidentified], also certain critical functions of my passive response system, so that I began longing to find this woman. I don't care if she died long ago,

00:34:36.440 - 00:34:52.040

I'll find her descendant and complain so bitterly with the power of the most seductive and brutal attorneys of history that she'll retract the entire scheme of her emotions and take him back. For a violinist, that dresser in black, that

00:34:52.040 - 00:35:09.740

[unidentified], that saint Florentino Ariza. If I can't find her, I'll kidnap Marquez, and force him to rewrite the story because I cannot bear this. I can't even sit or stand or sleep or stay awake until this most outrageous situation

00:35:10.070 - 00:35:25.070

is resolved in favor of the lover. Yes, I'll get Marquez, he is now the only one who can help us. Ariza and myself will search him out wherever he is hiding. And after that, we're going after Neruda.

00:35:27.950 - 00:35:41.760

Morton Marcus: Great. So the reading becomes so serious to you that you've got to write these notes of help for coping. Greg Hall: At least one of those things [unintelligible] against identification. But in this case, I couldn't get out of it.

00:35:42.960 - 00:35:49.860

The book ended well, I guess. Morton Marcus: Well, you also said earlier in this program, and when we were at dinner tonight, that you're defenseless. There are those poems you're defenseless

00:35:49.860 - 00:35:57.750

against, and of course, you were talking about yourself. Greg Hall: Yeah, of course. Morton Marcus: That's great. Keep going, keep reading, read us something else.

00:35:59.150 - 00:36:18.230

Greg Hall: There's a shorter poem called: MY WOMAN OF SALT AND FOREVER Near you, the sea is never distant. Your skin contains the definitive light that sings within the water. Your salt

00:36:18.230 - 00:36:36.080

defines the flavor of your vastness and even the moon is only living when reflected in your face. Morton Marcus: Great. Greg Hall: You know, I wrote a series of poems, I guess, you

00:36:36.080 - 00:36:48.530

know, we could all do this our world as it applies to us. Like if we had a bank, what kind of bank would it be? I did a series, one was called, "My Illness," "My Confession," this one's called:

00:36:48.530 - 00:37:00.620

MY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY Morton Marcus: Okay, go. Greg Hall: The world they're selling is not the one I want, so I'm choosing a world that I can love and I'm making it one

00:37:00.650 - 00:37:18.950

hour at a time. Here I want an empty beach where the wind can dance without any clothes. And over there, a room in which I can defend myself against love. When her luminous, tender rage confronts my tender and fiery darkness. Please include the

00:37:18.950 - 00:37:35.450

abalone, the heroine, a driftwood fire. Fear(?) materials are essential. A continuous and persistent hunger of being drowned in the cold fire of the moon, a collection of wet roots fresh from the earth and clotted with soil.

00:37:36.770 - 00:37:53.040

Rain that never ceases to fall and desire that rushes, an unrelenting river that causes even the silence to sing. Morton Marcus: You know, these are all poems -- for the people out there, we're talking to Greg Hall -- and all of these poems

00:37:53.040 - 00:38:06.750

were written in the last twelve months. And I think that the listener out there can hear that there are certain images now that are coming back again and again -- ocean moonlight, the things of the shoreline, you know, the objects of the

00:38:06.750 - 00:38:18.630

shoreline -- and you're weaving them in and out. And, you know, I mean, I haven't heard your stuff in a long while. These are all love poems, these are tremendous love poems. And you said you had been reading a lot of Lorca.

00:38:19.440 - 00:38:30.300

Greg Hall: Yeah, I was and I- You know, one thing that really struck me when I got this book, "A Hundred Love Sonnets," by Pablo Neruda- I can't remember the translator. Morton Marcus: It's, oh, it is, "A Hundred Love Sonnets," yes,

00:38:30.300 - 00:38:43.420

that's one of the later books. Greg Hall: In the introduction, he makes a statement that we don't have a tradition of love poems in English. And I started thinking about that and I said, why nobody's writing them? It's

00:38:43.420 - 00:38:50.800

not acceptable. Apparently, or there- it has to include be ironic, or someone- have some other major problem that makes it a different kind of a poem. Morton Marcus: Right.

00:38:50.860 - 00:39:03.020

Greg Hall: But I mean- I thought, well, I'll do it. Morton Marcus: Why not? Greg Hall: Because, you know, the poems that I really love, they come from that direction, you know. The ones that give,

00:39:03.800 - 00:39:20.100

you know, the ones that give life, the kind of poems that just don't go- don't leave you after you read them. Morton Marcus: Great. Well then, there's no reason not to. Oh, how can I forget her name? The great short story writer- Jeez.

00:39:22.170 - 00:39:40.230

Anyway, she has said this for years that, you know, she is looking for an American poet who can write love poems, because every one just becomes so either ironic or just so unimaginative and just follows, you know, the same kind of language and the

00:39:40.230 - 00:39:58.620

same kind of pathway, not doing anything new. Gina Berriault, the great Gina Berriault. And so whenever she hears a poet's going read a love poem her ears prick up, but it always disappoints her. So I wonder what she would think of these.

00:39:59.070 - 00:40:19.900

Greg, go on read some more, please. Greg Hall: This is called: AFTER THE SUN ROSE INSIDE THE ABALONE As if there were no tomorrow, the lightning runs out ahead of

00:40:19.900 - 00:40:37.600

the thunder. Your voice rises among the trees, and then the breaking waves accompanied by the orchestra, the regiments of late married to the armies of salt. After I became water inside me, the fear of winter died. Even the velvet terrors of

00:40:37.600 - 00:40:55.480

night sailed without remorse. The married stars, wordless under a burden of light, accomplish the mute circumference of the sky, and never asked me for a kind word, or even one tear and joy no longer migrates. In darkness or

00:40:55.480 - 00:41:16.850

in light, joy sings inside the air and the simplest, most beautiful thing of all is just to breathe. Morton Marcus: We got plenty of time. We're still up, we got around eight minutes left. So anything that you want to say

00:41:16.850 - 00:41:27.860

about the poems and continue reading, great. Greg Hall: Well, you know, I'm sort of partial to this one, it's called: RESURRECTION

00:41:30.420 - 00:41:49.560

Because I came injured, day light tried to heal me, but as the night, who embraced me when only darkness could fight darkness, and I was darkness disguised as a man. I watched the stars slowly pass by my window, I waited until the sky

00:41:49.560 - 00:42:08.280

was abandoned by the moon and always that thin spiderweb clouds drifted from my shoulders as I poured ever deeper into nothing, which surrounded me as I smoked and dreamed, and went on loving like a stone -- mute, terminally resigned, absolutely

00:42:08.280 - 00:42:27.660

without comfort, and yet in love. Finally, I knew I had fallen in love for the black hours and was far beneath the surface, days and then weeks passing as luminous strange fish which alone lighted my fingers as they grasped at the walls of

00:42:27.660 - 00:42:46.320

woven air. When it was that I began returning, I cannot recall. Something shifting inside me, it was just the way a new continent begins. A buried fire surmounts indescribable pressures and mountains suddenly begin flying through the sky.

00:42:48.090 - 00:43:05.820

Grass green and fragile, cracking and snapping concrete, at last welcoming the breathing of the wind, curved and slender and claiming that virgin green suddenly no longer a prisoner of the earth, but married forever to the impalpable glass of the

00:43:05.820 - 00:43:22.700

air. Morton Marcus: Okay, marvelous. You look like you want to say something. Greg Hall: I was thinking of, you know, it's not exactly guilt

00:43:22.700 - 00:43:36.440

or remorse but as long as you feel like, well, you know, people could always get up and make a sandwich if they're feeling tense, you know? So I figured everything's got to be all right.

00:43:38.070 - 00:43:44.780

Morton Marcus: Okay. Greg Hall: What about one called, "Permanent Vacation?" Morton Marcus: Sounds good to me. In fact, I'd love to go on one.

00:43:45.320 - 00:43:57.650

Greg Hall: I know I was working in this place and I heard this Mose Allison song, "Your Mind Is On Vacation," that's pretty good. But anyway, I started thinking. This is called: PERMANENT VACATION

00:43:59.760 - 00:44:19.410

An empty decade will serve as kindling, but the time has definitively arrived for the fire. Choose: would you rather gather aluminum cans or abalone shells? The house is burning and you are late for your life. The monkeys go on chattering in the

00:44:19.410 - 00:44:37.500

treetops, so why go on being afraid to sing? Your only choices seem to consist in what you decide to buy. Your work is a prison, you don't love your wife, you don't even like your friends. Your children are killing you, even you wish you

00:44:37.500 - 00:44:58.110

were dead. It's outrageous and it continues not because you're saying yes but because you're saying no, no, no, and keep on saying no. You're killing yourself and I am lonesome. You're needed here in the orchard, having a great time,

00:44:58.920 - 00:45:13.340

wish you were here. Morton Marcus: And, you know, that is something we have not discussed so far, which is your humor, which a lot of these are very quite serious problems, but the Greg Hall humor, which is

00:45:13.340 - 00:45:28.700

very unexpected, and yet when it hits, you know, it just seems absolutely right. Terrific, yep. That is the unhappy life, the empty decade used for kindling, you know, there is only one other person I know of who has used imagery the way you have,

00:45:28.700 - 00:45:51.590

especially with modern objects, and that is- Yeah, this is what happens when you get old, Greg, it means you forget names. The great Russian poet, whose wife remembered all of his poems and brought them over here. Oh, he's incredible. And I see his face

00:45:51.590 - 00:46:01.400

right in front of mine. Well, and he was executed, finally he died in the 30s. Greg Hall: Mandelstam? Morton Marcus: Mandelstam? Yeah. Are you a fan of Mandelstam's?

00:46:01.490 - 00:46:06.020

Greg Hall: I like his poems. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Greg Hall: Sure. Morton Marcus: But I mean, he would do that, "Empty decades

00:46:06.020 - 00:46:17.990

for kindling, it's now time for the fire," you know, what is it this century? The vertebrae which is the bridge between the last century and this century is a beast that we have to live with, you know?

00:46:18.050 - 00:46:31.280

Greg Hall: You know, no, actually, I don't want to disturb anyone's sleep but I think people should take a better look at what's going on right here. You know, I mean- well, maybe it's better not to, I don't know.

00:46:31.760 - 00:46:39.100

Morton Marcus: Sure, yeah, you can make any political statements you want. Greg Hall: Yeah. Just- Morton Marcus: But certainly, that last poem was what that was

00:46:39.100 - 00:46:54.850

all about, you know. And the interesting use of the words "no, no, no," like, what we're doing is not just saying, you know, I hate everything, we are denying, and we are not saying yes to life. We're not in that orchard and, you know, we don't

00:46:54.850 - 00:47:06.700

look at it that way. We just think that, well, we're complaining about an untenable situation, no, we're saying no to our lives. So again, you know, you just put things in such a way that they just- you force the reader to shift the

00:47:06.700 - 00:47:17.850

way he's even seeing a simple thing like yes or no. Greg Hall: You know, paradise seems to be a problem for a lot of people, but I found out that it used to be an orchard, that orchard and paradise were the same thing.

00:47:17.880 - 00:47:23.430

Morton Marcus: Yep. In fact, we used to call it the Garden of Eden. Greg Hall: That's a good one. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that's a good one. That's okay, we can-

00:47:23.430 - 00:47:35.620

we ruined that one too. Let's have some more before we have to leave here. Greg Hall: Oh, I probably got time for one more, it's called: THE WATERS ARE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

00:47:37.820 - 00:47:54.890

The herd of swine ran back inside the man. Mary married into Herod's family, and the pillars fell down fatally injuring Samson, freeing up Delilah who married a eunuch, already bald and certainly no threat. The continents shifted

00:47:54.890 - 00:48:11.180

back and New York City, geographically speaking, became the Kansas City of the New World. Impassively I watched these events. I knew the Vesuvius of the human soul was interruption. When Atlantis rose from the waters, I bought a

00:48:11.180 - 00:48:26.990

wetsuit and took a red-eye to the east coast of what used to be Africa, but now is the new Bronx because I heard there were men of knowledge there, conversing with dolphins, and I took a rented bicycle and rode it off the end of the pier, and

00:48:26.990 - 00:48:44.360

my arms were already struggling as I fell into the sea. When I woke, a dolphin was pushing me onto a sandy shore, Dostoevsky and Robert Graves lifted me and carried me into a garden. Dostoevsky spoke saying, "We are not many."

00:48:47.990 - 00:49:00.320

Morton Marcus: Great place to end. If you've just turned in- tuned in, we are talking or have been talking with Greg Hall whose work can be found in "News of the Universe." And I guess I'm one of the few people who have this marvelous early book

00:49:00.320 - 00:49:10.040

called, "Flame People." I hope we'll be hearing more of you, Greg. I hope you're coming out into the public and will let us hear more of these marvelous poems of yours. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.

00:49:10.070 - 00:49:21.860

Greg Hall: I really appreciate being here tonight. Morton Marcus: Great. It's great seeing you again, as always. This is Mort Marcus and I just want to tell you that Abby Bogomolny and Radio Q will be here next. But next week, Abby

00:49:21.860 - 00:49:40.460

will be doing the Poetry Show. And she's going to take it over on her own just for next week and bring in some of her own poetry guests. So let us depart now, I will be back on the 17th with the writers of "Coastlines." I believe it's the

00:49:40.460 - 00:50:00.020

17th and that is the new anthology that on November 10th, next Sunday from 3 to 5pm, you can get a copy and there is a book signing of the eight poets at 406 Windsor Street, that is 406 Windsor Street, the corner of Pine in Santa Cruz. 406

00:50:00.020 - 00:50:17.300

Windsor Street corner of Pine for the book signing of "Coastlines" and a cup of tea next Sunday from 3 to 5. I hope you enjoyed this show tonight. I hope you enjoyed hearing Greg Hall, and thank you all so much for the marvelous support you

00:50:17.300 - 00:50:22.430

gave KUSP, for reaching our goal here on the station.