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Morton Marcus: Good evening everyone, this is Morton Marcus, and this is The Poetry Show. Tonight's Poetry Show consists of a tape telephone interview I conducted two weeks ago with Jack Anderson, on the occasion of the publication of his new

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book, "Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems." The book is the recipient of the first major US Prose Poetry Award, The Marie Alexander Prize, and is the initial volume in the Marie Alexander Prose Poem Series put out by New Rivers Press. Jack

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Anderson, is the author of eight previous books of poetry. He is also a dance critic for the New York Times, and has published seven books on dance, including "Art Without Boundaries: the World of Modern Dance." Along with the prose poems of Russell

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Edson, W.S. Merwin, Robert Bly, and Charles Simic, Anderson's work has influenced and inspired American prose poets, and is in many ways responsible for the emergence of the forum in this country over the last 30 years. He says of his work, "these are

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prose poems on a range of subjects and in diverse styles, many derived from situations of ordinary life pushed to unusual extremes. Or perhaps those extremes are not so unusual after all, since ordinary life abounds with paradoxes, and can

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take totally unpredictable directions. Other pieces are inspired by fables, fairy tales, but always for adults, meditations both sacred and profane memories, documents, lists, questionnaires, and school room examinations.

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"Traffic," celebrates life's wonders and perplexities. There are commentaries on coffee bartenders, subway trains, and office routines. Little stories suddenly raise big moral problems. Frivolity and melancholy are mixed together,

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replacing a light bulb acquires philosophical significance." My phone call, made from Santa Cruz, found Jack Anderson in his apartment in New York City. Jack, is that you? Jack Anderson: Yeah, here I am, in New York City.

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Morton Marcus: 3,000 miles away, what's the weather like there? Jack Anderson: Now the weather is gray, slightly chilly, and drizzly. Morton Marcus: Well guess what, 3000 miles away in California,

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it's the exact same. As you know, this is a television- a telephone interview. And it really is a celebration of the book that you're just coming out with called "Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems." And this is going to be my radio show for

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the week, and I'm just very excited about the book, first of all, congratulations. Jack Anderson: Thank you very much, Mort. Morton Marcus: Right then, as I've announced the people out

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there, this is the first Marie Alexander Poetry Series winner, richly deserved. Jack, let's now learn a little bit about you. I've already introduced you, but when did you actually start writing, writing poetry?

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Jack Anderson: Writing poetry? Oh, I jotted down all kinds of things in high school. I was the literary editor of the high school newspaper and I continued to write in college and I began sending things out to magazines and mostly getting rejection

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slips. My undergraduate major was theater. I went to Northwestern University and I got such very good theatrical training, that I realized that the professional theatre was probably not crying out for my talents as an actor or director.

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But I was also doing a lot of writing and so I got my Master's in Creative Writing at Indiana, and then went on to the University of California at Berkeley on a teaching assistantship for a PhD supposedly, but I dropped out

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after one year there and remained working for a newspaper. Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of poetry writing and publishing in little magazines. So I've been doing it since I was an adolescent, I suppose, lots of adolescents jo

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down things, and then stop. just kept jotting them down Here I am now, with like nin books of poetry or somethin like that Morton Marcus: Well, I have actually counted eight previous

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books of poetry and seven dance books and you are of course a dance critic for the New York Times. Do you see any connection between your poetry and your- your dance work? Jack Anderson: In some ways, no, because after all, poetry, like

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any so-called creative form of writing is an act of the imagination. You can let your fantasy go free anyway it wishes. Criticism is an act of analysis. You must remain focused upon a specific art object or performance event. But

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often in criticism and certainly in poetry, vivid language, evocative language is something to be desired. And vivid language, I think is especially important in an art as evanescent and as fleeting as dance. So that in your review or

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in your commentary, you can give the reader a sense of just what went on last night in that performance has now blown away, completely. Try and pin down at least some atmosphere about that event. Poetry and dance though, as arts, do have some curious

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similarities, even though they would seem unlikely arts to be allied because after all, dance is an art of solid bodies. It's a very material art. Whereas poetry exists only in little squiggles on a page, the words little bits of type on a page or

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little sounds floating through the air, it's as close to being as immaterial an art as one could probably get. And yet, they're both arts of rhythm, the rhythms of bodies in- on a stage, the rhythms of words on a page, they're arts of space and

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time. The art of body moving across the stage or an art of words moving across a page, or in the cadences of a speaking voice. And a number of people have been involved over the years in both arts. One of the great French poets of the 19th

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century was Théophile Gautier, who was also one of the leading ballet critics of the 19th century, a very important ballet critic in the development of romantic ballet. And here in our own time, Lincoln Kirstein, who helped found the New York City

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Ballet, also published several volumes of poetry. Ninette de Valois, who founded the Royal Ballet in England, has also published books of poetry. And one of our greatest dance critics, one of the most evocative dance critics, Edwin

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Denby, is- was also a poet. So poetry and dance do seem to draw people together at times. Morton Marcus: Absolutely, your own poetry, it's interesting that almost all prose poets that I know of- it's certainly

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American prose poets, are also poets of the line. I hate to say verse, because the verse has such derogatory implications. Jack Anderson: Yeah, Morton Marcus: But line poets write prose poetry, and I think

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the only one who escapes that is probably Russell Edson. Jack Anderson: I was trying to think of that too, Russell Edson, certainly, and possibly in France, Francis Ponge. Morton Marcus: Right. Do you see a difference in your work? Or do

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you actually use a different approach when you're writing the prose poem, and when you're writing the line poem? Well, I'm not quite sure. That's a very fascinating question. When I read a poem, the form it takes, once in a while, I'll

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know this poem has to be in such- in such a form because that's part of even the basic idea that starts me off on the poem. But in most cases writing the poem, the form suddenly starts- slowly starts to evolve, as I write it. It- The basic

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unit of the line poem is, of course, the line in the stanza. And the basic unit of the prose poem is the sentence and the paragraph. But otherwise you can use many of the same devices, about the only thing you can't do, really, in a prose poem is

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emphasize the line break, or even- even there I suppose you could suddenly end a paragraph abruptly, because you want to pause or a sudden gasp, or something like that. And then, just as abruptly pick up the next paragraph. I'm going to

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read two poems. They're related poems, even though they were not written together. They were written about a year or so apart, but they're on similar themes. One of them is a line poem and the other is a prose poem. So I now say, which each

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is, or should we have a guessing game at the end about this? Let's have a guessing game. That'll be fun. It'll be fun for the listeners out there also. Jack Anderson: Okay. This is something called

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A POEM OF TEA There is a tea that tastes red. Red as a firetruck. There's a tea that tastes green. Green as the bitter sea. There's a tea that tastes brown, a nut brown almost smoky, a tea like smoke

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from a mountaineers cabin. There is a tea that tastes like clarinets, and one that leaves golden tips on the tongue, and one that tries to scrape the tongue raw. But there is one that grows fir there, and one that rolls itself up into a

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fuzzball. There is a tea black as zero, and one that stings like thoughts of zero, and one like the hairs of the head standing up. One shakes down blizzards of evergreen needles. One creeps with sleep into old eyes. One bleeds like berries

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against the teeth, and one has a breath of wild flowers at twilight. There's a tea that tells long stories to children about kittens who talk and wear pretty dresses. There is a tea that makes you swallow hard and swallow hard, and a fierce tea

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that time after time beats its wings, trying to escape through the roof of your mouth. There is a tea that cannot be spoken of, a tea with spices that must not be mentioned. There is a tea of all wisdom that is steeped in the dark, a tea with a fortune

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that you drink down daily. And this is the, I suppose, the sort of companion piece, A POEM OF COFFEE Sometimes, even as you drink it, you cannot say how it tastes.

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Yet you keep on drinking it, day and night. It is the winter morning with the snow still falling. The summer morning with the light on the curtains. It is the hot summer night in the greasy spoon, the cold winter night there because the car

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won't start, when you sit for hours with nothing to do. It is the lead in pencils, the ink in pens. It is rising- it is riding the L past kitchen windows. It is a porch light left on. A light left on at the back of the house. It is a snowy morning in

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winter, a summer light on the curtains. It is the drive across Ohio. The drive across Texas. Trucks shifting gears. The way a Greyhound bus smells. It is listening to the men with murmuring voices who play records on FM all through the

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night. It is driving at night with the car radio booming. It is long talks with mother chain-smoking cigarettes, and an ashtray filled with cigarette stubs. A press room, a seminar room, a county jail in the sticks. It is waiting to change

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buses, waiting to change trains in dim empty stations. It is staying up late or getting up early. It is the first thing after toothpaste. The last thing before bed. It is the winter morning with the snow still falling, the summer morning with

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the light on the curtains. It is a habit, a ritual. Your job, your small pleasure. It is what keeps you going day after day, what makes you get by on your nerves alone. It is what you take in with the Sunday paper. It is printing, a black typeface

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and a piece of white paper without any words. It is darkness in the pencil, snow on the page. It is this piece of white paper with this snow still falling, this light on the curtains, this pencil writing. It is these words before you,

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any time of the year, any time, any day. Well, those are the two. Morton Marcus: And of course, I've got- I cheat on this because I know which one is which.

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Jack Anderson: Yeah. Which one is which? Yeah- Morton Marcus: But it'll be interesting to let the listener out there. I think I'm gonna give them two and a half seconds to choose which one. And while they're choosing, I must say

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that I definitely did see a difference. And tell us- you can tell the listeners out there which one was the line poem, and Jack Anderson: Okay, the poem about Tea, was the line poem, which-

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that's in lines. And there are 123456 stanzas. The stanzas are of unequal length, it's all lines divided into six stanzas. The Coffee poem is the prose poem. And that's a poem in 12345 paragraphs, five paragraphs again of somewhat unequal

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lengths. Morton Marcus: It seemed to me that I was definitely hearing the lines in the Tea poem, but that may be because they were short lines. But it seemed to me in the prose poem that what you

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were using as your basic unit of rhythm was the sentence instead of a line. Jack Anderson: Yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: Do you see a difference? A uniqueness or a

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distinction between prose poems and regular poems? Jack Anderson: Yes, but I'm not quite sure what it is. The- the rhythms in poetry and I mean rhythm beyond the purely old fashioned metrical sense, you do arrange your rhythms in terms of

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the line, the line break means something. The line break can be the- a representative of, perhaps the unit of thought, or a unit of breath, or a unit of attention. The length or the shortness of the line may also contribute to the effect of the

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poem, both when read aloud, and when seen on the printed page. In the prose poem, you do have these blocks these groupings of sentences and paragraphs and so, I suppose, the end result is something, something different although I- just as poetry can

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do a multitude of things with lines, so prose poetry can do a multitude of things with sentences and paragraphs and you can use these sentences to speed things up or slow things down. And sometimes the length of the sentence can help determine part

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of the effect of the poem. One of the poems that I wrote in, that's included in "Traffic," is a poem, which is one single, long, continuous unbroken sentence. And it's this one, it's called, "Golden Moment."

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Morton Marcus: Good, I was gonna ask you to read that poem. Jack Anderson: GOLDEN MOMENT Arriving early for a dentist's appointment one morning, I go into Macy's, which is just across the street, and when I

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enter the men's department, the very moment I set foot among the shirts and ties, Pachelbel's Canon comes over the public address system and the store is flooded with D Major, a key I associate with summer sunshine, and I beam serenely at men

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trying on slacks in front of multiple mirrors and at clerks lifting huge boxes of socks onto a counter with a sign proclaiming that today, all Gold Toe socks are on sale, with special low prices for 10 pairs or more, and already eager

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shoppers have amassed heaps of Gold Toe socks which, although essentially black, gray, and blue, do have gold stitching on their toes, and which, whatever their colors, are unquestionably bargains, I think, as I sweep down the aisle, as if across a

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flowered meadow in the Midi, while Pachelbel honeys the air with D Major and yellow-striped bumblebee-like sweaters blaze from display cases, and then I float out the door and ascend to the dentist high in a skyscraper where, as I sit in a chair with

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my mouth open in perpetual, but silent, exclamation, I realize I have just experienced a golden moment of epiphany. Morton Marcus: Yes, and that's a brilliant use of the sentence. And I love it. And it really, of course, has the effect of giving

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us that sense of of epiphany of moving with- sliding with you, and rising with you, you know, through this whole experience and making all these connections, which are just- are just wonderful. The reason I'm asking these questions is, I've

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been playing with the idea, it was cut out of my commentary on my poem, "The Canary Islands," in the last issue of "The Prose Poem," that really, content is determined, not just by the old closed line system, but when you abandon lines, then something

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happens to your content too. And the reason I'm asking you this, Jack, is, that does not seem to be the case. Your sensibility and your content seem to be equal, whether they're in line poems or in prose poems. So I just wondered if you-

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Jack Anderson: I don't think- I don't think there's any difference in basic subject matter over the years with what I put into line poems and prose poems. I'm, you know, in both forms, what am I interested in? I'm interested in poems about

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cities, applications of moods, the sense of, well, the mystery and fantasy of life, the passage of time. I write lots of poems about travel, both travels to real or imaginary places. I'm interested in fantasy.

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Morton Marcus: Now, let me interrupt you for a second. Since we're now- we've moved into the subject, do you happen to have in front of you, "Jack Anderson on Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems," those three paragraphs that you wrote

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for New Rivers on the book? Jack Anderson: No, I don't. Morton Marcus: Because that center paragraph is a perfect definition of the range of your work. So if you don't have that,

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just go on, describe what you're doing in your own words. Jack Anderson: Okay, as I said, I'm interested in fantasy. Some of my poems out being hope- excessively didactic, take up moral, theological or philosophical themes in the

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broadest and I hope, non-stuffiest sense. Morton Marcus: Well, there's tremendous humor in your- Jack Anderson: Yes, I'm interested in humor. I like funny things. And the whole problem of comedy in my poetry

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in some ways, even when I write comic poems, I don't set out to write comic poems. I don't say to myself, every line of this has to be funny, haha. I begin with a situation that is in some way absurd or ludicrous or incongruous, and then develop

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the implications out of that and they are usually comic implications. But I don't try to strain for effects or push for effects, just as, you know, in an acting farce, to make a farce really effective. All these most wacky, ludicrous situations in

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which the actor's- characters find themselves, the actors must make you believe that the characters are taking the situations very funny, very seriously and are not simply playing only for humor. After all, you can be in a farce in

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such embarrassing situations as for example, I don't know, you might be some husband who for some reason has to hide his wife under the bed and his mistress in the closet because the bishop is coming to pay a call. And that character in the farce

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takes himself and his predicament quite seriously, even though everyone in the audience is laughing at him. Morton Marcus: What I've said about your work is that it's sort of like with- and this is the important thing there-

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there's reality there, you're looking at reality. But what we see is reality in a carnival mirror. Jack Anderson: Oh, that's interesting. Morton Marcus: And it really, the sense of reality is great.

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It is something that I find has been resistant in readers to the prose poem, that they are not willing to get that sense of disbelief, or that view, which is a different perspective than the very, very literal world in which we live. And I'm not gonna

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take up too much time here. But it seems to me that what your work focuses on again and again and starts off with, is the ordinary everyday reality and then suddenly, we're on a magic carpet. And we're looking at that reality in a new way, in

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many ways, not satirically but even according to the way you have divided this book up in three sections. We're looking at it as wonders. We're looking at it as perplexities, what in the world is going on? And then I think something that all pros

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poets do, is journeys, journeys through the city, journey through the day, journeys through the world, and journeys through the worlds we create. Jack Anderson: Yeah, another thing. Yeah, I, I divided those-

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I devised those subheads for my book myself, I took a lot of prose poems and scattered them across the bed and thought to myself, how are they going to be organized in the book, and then I started devising these very broad categories,

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Morton Marcus: Right, and again, for the listeners out there, this is a collection of prose poems written over 30 years and published in a number of books. And the way you can do this is obviously do it chronologically, and I happened to like the way

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you did it "Wonders," from "Perplexities," and "Journeys." Jack Anderson: To do it chronologically is an obvious and interesting way because you can see how a poet develops. Of course, the catch in that is that you may have readers who

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might say, "Oh, I think that poet's early poems were best, his new ones stink." I mean, there's- that is a risk of course. Morton Marcus: Right, Right. Let's hear some more examples of

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poems, want to read maybe even some ordinary everyday city scenes and just see what you do with them because we want- I want to have more poems on the interview here. Jack Anderson: Okay. Do you have anything in mind right now that

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you have in particular- Morton Marcus: I will let you choose and any one is fine with me. Jack Anderson: Okay. Let's see what's back here.

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Morton Marcus: Oh, well, here's, here's, here's one in which you can use the everyday when it becomes marvelous and it is the second one in the book, and its, "Thimbleism." Jack Anderson: Oh, yes- that- Yes of course. Okay, here it is.

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THIMBLEISM Morton Marcus: I was riding the Staten Island ferry one evening when I noticed a woman on deck wiggling her fingers at the sky. When she wiggled the fingers of her left hand, the stars

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twinkled in the left half of the sky. When she wiggled the fingers of her right hand, the stars twinkled in the right half of the sky. When she wiggled the fingers of both hands, all the stars twinkled together. I stared at her for a long time.

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At last, I could not help but ask, "How do you do that ma'am?" "It's easy," she said. "Just wiggle your left fingers like this. Just wiggle your right fingers like that." I tried it. She was right. It was easy. Soon the stars were twinkling in the

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sky whenever I wiggled my fingers. Fascinated by my new powers, I kept wiggling my fingers harder and harder. The harder I wiggled, the brighter the stars twinkled. After one great flurry of ten fingers in unison, the heavens opened with

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a thunderclap and there in a blaze of light was the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, except that at the top of the pyramid was not an open eye, but a gold thimble. Suddenly, my right hand was trying to push a pen like a needle across a piece

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of paper, and the thimble descended from the sky to help me. "This is your gift," said a voice from a cloud. "Thank you," I shouted back, and after writing this down, I took off the thimble and put it in my pocket. When I reached home and

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told my neighbor what had happened, he said, "It's too bad you don't live in the backwoods South. Because there you could gather all the superstitious people in the county and set yourself up as the leader of a new sect dedicated to the

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worship of the holy thimble. You could call your faith Thimbleism. You'd make a mint off those hicks. But here in New York, no one will believe you. You'll never get famous and you'll never get rich."

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Jack Anderson: Of course, that- that poem turns upon a rather silly pun in a way, kind of lifting pun Thimbleism. Morton Marcus: For symbolism I take it. Yes. In fact, since you've mentioned that, it seems to me that a lot of your poems

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and a lot of other poems that I love, have a resonance in them. It is as though they really are working on a submerged metaphor, that they're working out in a- in very unique ways. Have you ever thought of before? It's sort of is the basis of parable,

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I think. Jack Anderson: Yeah, I liked the parable as a form, the fairy tale- fairy tales for grown ups. I like to see what happens when I start out on the very journey of writing and see where I'm

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going, but always making sure that you know, it's a continuous journey unless the whole point of the piece is have several quite distinct, abrupt breaks in the progress of the- the journey of the metaphor or the journey of the poem.

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Morton Marcus: Great, terrific answer. I'd like to have, and you can select your next poem on this basis, I'd like to have the listeners out there, listen to the- the other things that I love about Jack Anderson's poems and prose poems. It is this

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wonderful sense of the ear that you have for the colloquial language and the wonderful tone of voice you manage, which is at once ironic, and yet wondering and you- you seem to have united them so that they become sort of an understatement. Like he's not

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really- he's not really being satiric. He's not really being ironic- ironic. He's just looking at the world as though it is something marvelous beyond his comprehension, and you get both of those tones at the same time. Now there's a problem for

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you, you probably don't agree with me and I'm going to ask you to look for some poems that do that. Jack Anderson: Wonderfully ironic and wonderfully sincere at the same time

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Morton Marcus: Or innocent-like, it's marveling. Jack Anderson: Well- Morton Marcus: Well, how about the first poem of the book? Jack Anderson: First poem of the book is "Connections," that's-

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that reflects my belief that everything in this world is connected. However, it may be connected in ways that we can't predict or even expect. CONNECTIONS

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We are all connected, one unto another. A bulb in my hallway has burned out. I keep fitting new bulbs into the socket. Nothing happens. Then I find in my hallway a switch I have never noticed before. I flick it on and off, on and off. Nothing

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happens. Three blocks away in their apartment, a wife calls to her husband, "Henry! Come quick! The lights seem to- [cut off] -In which several tones of voice may be going on and the situation gets odder and odder, but it starts I suppose with-

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Morton Marcus: -And we'll return to my telephone interview with Jack Anderson, after I remind you that this program, The Poetry Show, is supported in part by a grant from our contributing listeners, and we thank you for your support. We

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thank you for 26 years of that support. We're going to continue now with the Jack Anderson telephone interview I did two weeks ago, and I will read to you a whole lot of public announcements at the end of the show. So do stay tuned for them.

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There are some big events coming up but I do want to make sure we get in the entire telephone interview. Here we go back to my calling Jack Anderson in New York two weeks ago. Jack Anderson: A JOURNEY BY RAILROAD

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Morton Marcus: I was on an express with no stops scheduled. Yet the train slowed as it approached a platform, then braked to a halt. No one knew why. At last, a voice came over the public address system, "This is the conductor speaking. The

00:32:25.300 - 00:32:41.650

engineer has decided to stop here because this town has one of his favorite restaurants. He invites you to follow him for a real taste treat." Laughing nervously, we spilled onto the platform and straggled up Main Street. Well, I had to admit, I

00:32:41.650 - 00:32:59.140

do like a nice meal. Still, this is a pretty odd way to get to know a restaurant. I also had to admit that the town wasn't much. In fact, it looked dumpy. We passed block after block of ramshackle houses with sagging porches and at last reached the

00:32:59.140 - 00:33:17.050

restaurant. "Here we are, folks," the engineer shouted. I can't say I felt heartened. The joint seemed hardly more than a saloon. Yet good meals can sometimes be had in unexpected places. A shuffling waitress slapped down a gravy-stained

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menu. "Well," she said, "What will it be?" Most of the items had already been scratched out. Yet I managed to order. It took a long time for anything to arrive, and then all the hot dishes were cold. But after looking around at my fellow

00:33:33.490 - 00:33:50.200

passengers, I decided they were no better off than I was. Several were complaining about dirty forks. One had found a bug in the soup. The engineer was sitting at the bar. Even though he was the one guy who claimed he liked the food here, he was

00:33:50.200 - 00:34:04.930

eating very little. But he was drinking quite a lot, and the way he teetered on his barstool made me suspect he was plastered, a suspicion confirmed when he fell unconscious to the floor. Where upon the bartender and the cook carried him off

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into the kitchen. And that was the last we saw of him. What, we wondered, would happened now? The conductor got up, cleared his throat, and said, "I'm afraid we're stuck. The engineer, as you see, is indisposed. And because our

00:34:22.450 - 00:34:38.620

train is still on the track, no other trains can pass through. So until our engineer regains his health and can move the train, I suggest we find accommodations at some hotel." "Ain't no hotels here," the waitress interjected, "no motels

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neither." "Then what I'd suggest," the conductor sighed, "is to go through the streets knocking on doors in search of hospitality." We did. But either no one responded or the doors were slammed shut when our needs were made known. And when I

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heard what sounded like a shotgun going off, I beat a hasty retreat. We gathered, crestfallen, back at the restaurant. "Is there anyone here who knows how to drive a train?" the conductor asked in desperation. Of course, no one

00:35:10.720 - 00:35:28.120

did. Suddenly he turned to me. "What about you? You look pretty smart." I blushed to hear it. "I bet you've even been to college." Which I couldn't deny. "So come on, drive this train for us." And before I could protest, he was dragging me back

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to the depot. When we reached the engine, he rummaged around and pulled out an engineer's cap, a blue chambray work shirt, and a pair of bib overalls. "Try them," he said, "it can get pretty greasy in there." I put them on. To my surprise, they

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fit rather well. I even fancied I cut a good figure in them. Maybe it won't be so bad, after all. It's actually nice and cozy here in the cab. And is there anyone who didn't want to drive a train as a kid? Then the conductor, as good a soul as

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ever I've met, showed me where the whistle was. What a brave sound it makes. Listen, how lovely. And look how the tracks shine up ahead. Let's go. Yeah, that's absolutely marvelous. And the irony in your

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voice that had that marveling irony in it, and I love when you just extend these narratives because a lot of your prose poems or a lot of you prose or your, your line poems are narratives also. But I've got to admit something here on the air

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and it's not really an admission, it's a point of inspiration. My poem, "How I Came to Own the World," was written after I first read "A Journey by Railroad." Yeah, and the first page especially coming into the town, you can almost

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fit this as a character into that- that town scene, "A Journey by Railroad." So I think this is how one writer sort of inspires another in strange places in the psyche, you know? Wonderful, let's hear some more- some more poems and certainly if

00:37:15.820 - 00:37:33.240

there's anything you would like to go over that we've not gone over so far, just interject. One thing that I have- one thing that I do, especially in prose poems, is take certain forms of prose that are not necessarily

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associated with poetry and make poetic use of them. For example, it's possible to make prose poems out of lists, or documents, or examinations, questionnaires and so on. And I have done that sort of thing in different types of ways.

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[crosstalk] two shortest examples, now, unless you have a particular one that you want to hear No, no, in fact, I was going to ask you a question on this and I'm more than happy to have you read several, what I call this-

00:38:08.450 - 00:38:24.050

how's this for being stuffy? This is the use of parodying mode- different modes of discourse. And- and you just do this continually and I was going to ask you when we were talking way back in the beginning of this interview, when you said

00:38:24.050 - 00:38:38.960

that there is the difference between criticism and the poem. It's the- one of the ways that it gets united, is in these modes of discourse when you're supposed to use analysis. And what happens is you almost parody them by taking them

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somewhere where they were never intended, and you are a master at that. So let's hear several examples, please. Jack Anderson: Okay. I'll begin. I'll begin with TRUE OR FALSE QUIZ

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Morton Marcus: Great. Jack Anderson: One, a yellow cat is sitting in my doorway. True or false. Two, There are mysterious footsteps in the hall. True or false. Three, they are planning to murder my

00:39:06.190 - 00:39:27.940

sister. True or false. Four, I am hungry. True or false. Five, my breath smells either of garlic or of toothpaste. True or false. Six, I had a letter published pseudonymously in yesterday's Times. True or false. Seven, I shall have sex

00:39:27.940 - 00:39:51.070

tomorrow. True or false. Eight, someone is sending me money. True or false. Nine, someone is thinking of someone else with my name. True or false. Ten, all this is really an attempt to describe a mystical experience. True or false. Eleven, boys were

00:39:51.070 - 00:40:11.170

playing ball in the street when I wrote this. True or false. Tweleve, on my dresser are three coins and a ticket stub. True or false. Thirteen, the light over my sink has burned out. True or false. Fourteen, there is another questionnaire like this

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on my desk. True or false. Fifteen, I have started smoking again on the sly. True or false. Sixteen, I am not wearing any underwear. True or false. Seventeen, I love you. True or false. Eighteen, I'm telling a lie. True or false. Nineteen,

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when I go into the bedroom, something surely will happen. True or false. Twenty, if I'd walked with you last night, we would have seen the stars. True or false. And I'll read another sort of non-poetic poem based on

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non-poetic source material. And I think this is kind of appropriate because, you know, I'm speaking to Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz is a great University Center. And people at universities are always looking for subjects for term papers, or

00:41:10.990 - 00:41:31.510

theses, or dissertation topics. And so I have prepared an alphabetical order this list of RESEARCH TOPICS Ablex, bannigans, chirmotherapy, delsterism, eglipsoids, the

00:41:31.510 - 00:42:01.240

Fredonian heresy, gnittering, hachifrage, inner thrilling, jarp, Kalongistan, legnum deposits, mollography, neo-delsterism, obscure wadings, patlotic hexameters, quiddling, regarpetude Semajian scholarship, tixeprocity, usht,

00:42:02.620 - 00:42:24.620

the varnish plebiscite, woadle, xurathenia, yaridian fits, zedaphobia. Morton Marcus: When that poem was first published in a literary magazine, after it was published, a reader wrote to me

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and said that she had tried to look up all of those words in a dictionary and couldn't find most of them. And the words that did exist didn't seem to make any sense anyway. Of course, that was my whole point. I was deliberately trying to have a

00:42:43.910 - 00:43:02.930

list of very pedantic-sounding, pompous words, that sounds like something very profound, and yet they don't mean really anything. The words may be imaginary, but in this world and in many universities, pedantry, pomposity are very real.

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Hear, hear. Yeah, they're wonderful. I- just to ask, do you like to look in dictionaries and find strange words? Jack Anderson: Yeah, I, I do fool around in dictionaries. I know that there are people who are addicted to dictionary

00:43:22.040 - 00:43:36.440

browsing the way some people are addicted to crossword puzzles. No, I don't go that far. But I find dictionaries fascinating volumes. Morton Marcus: Great. There is what I consider, again, one of

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these submerged metaphors, is what I call it. "He lives among us," and this, the way it opens up, let me- let me just say this. Jack Anderson: Yeah,

00:43:47.720 - 00:44:02.150

Morton Marcus: One of the things that you do that I think is so important, and I think is so important in the kind of poetry you write, which is again, both line poetry and prose poetry, is that you surprise us and when these modes of discourse don't

00:44:02.150 - 00:44:18.350

do what they are "supposed to do," you surprise us, make us look at that part of our lives in a new way. And therefore you extend and enrich our sense of the possibilities of the world. And I think this is very important. And I think it's

00:44:18.350 - 00:44:34.610

beginning to disappear from a culture and when it does, I think that culture is in a lot of trouble. So you're sort of, I think it was Wally Seifer[?] said this, he found surprise going out of so much of American life 25-30 years ago or more,

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and he said, the only place he thought the surprise would be left, and therefore it was sort of a sacred, though communal repository, was in poetry, and I'm afraid he was right. Jack Anderson: Well, this is

00:44:48.830 - 00:45:06.200

HE LIVES AMONG US Elvis lives, he walks with us, he talks with us, he is always there. He has a farm in Wisconsin, a grocery in Seattle, he is a barfly in the Bronx, a bum who sleeps on cardboard over

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gratings, he's in the chorus at the Met. He's a sheriff in Missouri, a church organist in Duluth, a faith healer in Kentucky. He used to be a Baptist, but now he's Jewish. He's a graduate student at Yale, an aide in the stacks at the

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Library of Congress. He works selling popcorn in the multiplex at the mall. He's shacking up with a floozie on the outskirts of Detroit. He's having an affair with James Dean on their Texas ranch. He goes around in drag. He's made himself into a

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Native American, renamed himself J. Turquoise Talltree. He's lost weight, gotten skinny. His hair's falling out. He's bald as an egg. He's grown a long beard. He stands in line on Tuesdays at your bank. He's in look-alike contests everywhere and never

00:45:55.610 - 00:46:18.260

wins a one but seek him out, you'll find him. He's alive and well, is hidden yet among us, now and forevermore. Amen. Now, writing that I began with this sort of bemused and amused by this whole notion of people who are constantly sighting

00:46:18.290 - 00:46:38.180

Elvis, here, there and everywhere. You know, all these Elvis sightings. And, of course, I wonder if some of these people even realize just what Elvis Presley might look like, even if he were alive. I mean, they imagine him, you know, back in

00:46:38.180 - 00:46:54.530

his heyday as the singer, what would Elvis look like now? And of course, there is the whole cult of a celebrity in which people treat certain celebrities, not only in pop music, but sometimes my own field of ballet, as though they

00:46:54.530 - 00:47:15.800

were religious icons and so I do have a kind of religious poem here. You know, a lot of people would like to proclaim that Jesus lives, and Jesus may indeed live. So this poem is proclaiming that Elvis lives. And the statement after that is

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a parody of an old hymn, he walks with us, he talks with us. That is based on the hymm, "Oh, he walks with me and he talks with me." It's an old hymn about the presence of Jesus. And, of course, then the poem ends with this resounding, "Amen." And so

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Elvis is turned in- been turned in some kind of saint or religious icon before I'm done with him. Morton Marcus: Which he has, and it's a it's a very again, a very American poem. It's a very- it's satiric. It's satirical, if you

00:47:49.670 - 00:48:07.460

will, about our, as you said, our worship of celebrity and yet at the same time, it also says, hey, look, Elvis, as i.e. Jesus, if you want, really is in all of us. So it's got all of these resonances going on, you know, which is a wonderful richness

00:48:07.460 - 00:48:24.740

that poetry can have. Let me ask you something for the people out in radio land. What- Who are your favorite prose poems or prose poems, the poets that you admire, and may have even influenced your work?

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Jack Anderson: Well, uh- Well, let's go back to [crosstalk]. Let's begin in Europe for a seminal courtesy. The classic ones of the 19th century, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, though I don't think I particularly write like either of them; then in our

00:48:45.360 - 00:49:09.720

own century certainly the whimsy of Max Jacob has made its effect upon me; and even though I'm not that detailed a writer, I'm fascinated by Ponge, Francis Ponge. His poems are terribly detailed descriptions of objects, and yet they're not

00:49:09.930 - 00:49:29.070

simple categor- categorizations, or classifications of these objects. They're often written with a real sense of wit, as well as precision of details. And then a Russian poet of the 1920s, who was finally silenced because his work was considered

00:49:29.070 - 00:49:48.450

too odd and subversive. Now, if I pronounce his name correctly, it's Daniil Kharms, and he seems to be almost a kind of Russian precursor of Russell Edson, because in both of these writers' poems, you have wild situations, unlikely violent

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things happening in a farcical manner, and when people talk in either of those poets, they don't just talk, they screech, they holler, and they yell. So amongst American poems- I think- poets, I think like almost every other prose poet writing now, I

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have certainly been influenced by Russell Edson, but amongst others, what else? I like the sense of melancholy and mystery of W.S. Merwin. As someone who is interested in philosophical speculations and in fairy tales, and in folk tales and

00:50:32.370 - 00:50:39.030

theological musings, I like the works of someone named Morton Marcus. Morton Marcus: Oh! Jack Anderson: Yeah,

00:50:39.030 - 00:50:49.790

Morton Marcus: Wow. Jack Anderson: Yeah. Morton Marcus: I'm supposed to be a fan of yours, Jack. Jack Anderson: And something quite different in- all

00:50:49.790 - 00:51:05.700

together, I've been amused by the little collections of prose poem stories about rural life and Jim Heinen. Morton Marcus: Very nice, yes. Jack Anderson: It's published And I like a lot of the fanc

00:50:59.000 - 00:51:21.570

Morton Marcus: Yes, right. Of course. and whimsy and detail that ca be found in Robert Bly at his best. And also this, because I'm interested in, as I say, in folk tales, and fairytales, I like that element in both the prose

00:51:21.570 - 00:51:34.820

poetry and the line poetry of Charles Simic. Jack Anderson: That- that's, that's a bunch. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that's that's good. And if listeners out there want to get the spelling of some of these names,

00:51:34.820 - 00:51:50.750

do call up and look for a book called, "The Prose Poem," by Michael Benedikt, who himself is a prose poet, and- [crosstalk] And that is sort of like one of the most difficult books to find, everyone has a patched up copy of it.

00:51:51.230 - 00:52:01.680

Jack Anderson: My own copy has just split itself open down the Morton Marcus: Yep. I used a lot of different kinds of tape to middle. hold mine together. It was a cheap Dell paperback. And I

00:52:01.680 - 00:52:17.790

don't know whether they know what they had. I was just with Vern Rutsala up in Portland, and he just found another copy at the famous bookshop up there, that I won't mention, and it was in excellent shape. So let us envy him. At any rate, this is

00:52:17.790 - 00:52:31.440

48 minutes already that we have been talking. Why don't we end with some poems, Jack? Jack Anderson: Okay. Let's see. How many poems? How much time do you have? [crosstalk] Let me know when to stop.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, I mean, I can go a little over what I want. But we're right now at almost 49 minutes. So maybe a one long one and maybe two short ones. Because there could always be the last phone call.

00:52:48.030 - 00:53:11.700

Jack Anderson: [crosstalk] No, that's too morbid. Morbid- not morbid one, but a sad one. As we've discussed before, I'm interested in the passage of time, in many ways, time in poetry and time in the world. And as I've gone through

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difficulties in my own family as people aging, there's the whole problem that many of us are reluctant to admit that our loved ones, our parents, friends, relatives, and so on, will one day grow old, and we do all kinds of things to try to

00:53:30.690 - 00:53:47.800

deny that possibility. This is a poem called MY MOTHER GROWING OLD Shortly after she had to move into the nursing home, she lost interest in seeing the snapshots of our trips. She who had loved

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to travel and was always eager to know where other people had been. Now she scarcely looked at the photos we brought her when we visited. Or she'd furrow her brow and ask, "Just what cathedral did you say this is? And where was that castle? I

00:54:05.620 - 00:54:23.770

can't keep this stuff straight." And she'd brush the pictures aside. There soon came a time when she never even glanced at them. But something started happening to the photos. I first noticed it in that one I took at the Grand Canyon. A shadowy

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figure stood by the guardrail I hadn't seen there before. It had been hazy at the canyon and nothing in that shot was very clear. Yet, after staring for a while, I had to admit, "You know, that could almost be Mother. She didn't go along with

00:54:41.170 - 00:54:58.120

us that year, did she?" And of course she hadn't. After that, she kept turning up in photos of other places I knew she'd never been. That woman on the Acropolis striding toward the Parthenon. that was surely Mother. And there was Mother

00:54:58.120 - 00:55:15.850

beside an Alhambra fountain, Mother in a Venetian gondola, Mother at the Tower of London, and on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Mother had entered all our photographs. Last summer in Paris, I unexpectedly saw her. One morning when we were

00:55:15.850 - 00:55:32.740

strolling to Notre Dame, I saw a Mother sipping coffee at a cafe table with a fine view of the cathedral. What shall I do? I wondered when I came near her. She certainly isn't expecting me. She doesn't look as if she needs anything. Yet, how can I

00:55:32.740 - 00:55:53.920

go by without speaking to her? So though you held back, I went over and said, "Good morning, how nice to see you here. Fine Day, isn't it?" She looked up slightly surprised. But after a moment, she smiled and replied, "Yes, indeed, such lovely

00:55:53.920 - 00:56:07.840

weather we're having." Then because neither of us could think of anything more to talk about and she still had her coffee and seemed happy to be there, I said goodbye and we parted.

00:56:09.370 - 00:56:26.590

Morton Marcus: That's a wonderful change of mood and tone, to show just some of the wonderful range of your work and in your line poems there are a lot of love poems also, and very, very gentle, lyrical moments. We've been talking to

00:56:26.590 - 00:56:41.710

Jack Anderson, who's "Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems," is just come out. The first Marie Alexander Poetry Series Award from New Rivers Press, Jack, It really has been wonderful. Thanks so much for doing the interview with us.

00:56:41.950 - 00:56:55.510

Jack Anderson: It's been a pleasure to talk with you, Mort. Morton Marcus: And that was a telephone interview I conducted two weeks ago with Jack Anderson. He was in New York City on the occasion of his just winning the first Marie

00:56:55.510 - 00:57:13.840

Alexander Prose Poetry Award from New Rivers Press. Some announcements before we leave for the night. On December 1st, we will do a memorial reading for Greg Keith at the Bookshop, Santa Cruz. I say we because I will be reading poems by Greg,

00:57:13.840 - 00:57:28.930

Stephen Meadows will be reading poems more than me, and Amber Coverdale Sumrall, and Greg's widow, Susan Horton Keith. You may have tuned in several months ago when Susan and I discussed Greg's work and his life and read some poems then, but now,

00:57:29.110 - 00:57:45.700

you can come and hear poetry, their favorite Greg Keith poems for this marvelous poet who died all too young. On Tuesday, December 1 at 8pm. On December 4, there'll be an evening of autobiography at the Louden Nelson Community Center

00:57:45.700 - 00:58:05.680

Readings, which begin at 7:30. And I do want to alert you for the reading on Friday that same night December 4, from 7 to 10pm at Holy Cross Church on High Street, in honor of Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz, the great Mexican nun, intellectual, and

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poet. Gary Soto, the great Chicano poet, will be reading as well. Francisco X. Alarcon, Claire Braz Valentine, and Gabriella Gutiérrez, so, look forward to that on December 4. Stay tuned now for "From the Bookshelf," hosted by Billy

00:58:23.920 - 00:58:33.880

Harris. Tonight she brings us Judith Babcock Wylie, author and travel journalist who will be reading from her "Travelers' Tale" series of books.