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Morton Marcus: This is KUSP community sponsored radio for Monterey, Santa Cruz, Salinas and Big Sur. Stay tuned for the Poetry Show. Joseph Stroud: Here, you want to put this on for the break?

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Morton Marcus: And good evening everybody. And that voice as many of you may have recognized seeming to come out of the ether is the voice of Joe Stroud, who will be our guest tonight, Joe Stroud, who 12 years ago took over the Poetry Show with me, a

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wonderful poet, old, old friend, not only to me, but I'm sure to many of the listeners out there. And tonight we are going to talk about Joe and his poetry and some of the really exciting things that are happening to him, as well as his upcoming

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reading at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. I'd just like to say for those people out there that Joe has written two marvelous books and poetry, "In the Sleep of Rivers," and "Signatures." "Signatures" is still on sale I believe at the Bookshop Santa

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Cruz. And he was included and has some wonderful words about poetry in a very fine anthology that came out years ago called "19 American Poets of the Golden Gate." His new book, which we'll be talking about will be out next spring from the marvelous

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press Copper Canyon, and it is a collection of what, 16 years worth of work, I think? At any rate, welcome once more, Joey, it's great to have you on. Joseph Stroud: It's a pleasure to be here Mort.

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Morton Marcus: Well, you don't know how clear you sound. This new equipment is really great. Joseph Stroud: I can't hear a thing with these phones on, but- Morton Marcus: Okay, what you may want to do is plug that into

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the next one. There you go. How's that sound? Joseph Stroud: About the same. Morton Marcus: Okay, well, it ain't working for you, but you're coming over nice and clear. Anyway, what are we gonna

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do tonight, Joe? I'd like to hear some old poems, first of all, and I know you've just gone through with a long ride down from the Sierras and so, this should be very relaxed as the Eric Satie music has a shoot in the atmosphere for the show.

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Joseph Stroud: Yeah, it almost put me to sleep actually. I did come in from the east side of the Sierra this morning, and I thought I'd begin with some- wit a poem from "In the Sleep o Rivers," the book that Capr brought out in 1974. And the po

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m is titled "Praise Poems" The e are very short little three li e poems that were inspired at t e time I was teaching a course n Native American literature t Cabrillo, and I was been read ng Margot Astrov's, wonder ul anthology, "The Winged Serpen

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," and the Rothenburg antholo y, "Technicians of the Sacre ." Also, these poems are of he mood that I've been in recen ly up, spending a lot of time up on the east side of the Sierra. They are these very little shor poems and praise of common

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To the day, for it begins our journey. It is the mountain over our homes. To water, for it is the way of the Spirit. We are blessed with his invisible wings.

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To fire, for it is the voice of God. It is the bright color of all our children. To the horse, for it leads us from this life. It runs in darkness. It bears us across the waters.

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To the bear, for it sleeps beyond death. It follows the bees' trail of pollen. To the father, for he leads the way. He is the hand of shelter, he bears our grief.

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To the mother, for she gives us to the world. She is the happiness we find in ourselves. To salt, for it comes from weeping. It is the saint's pearl, our touch of stars.

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To morning, for it is the open door, it is the welcome of all our friends. To the grass, for it is the blade that does not cut. It is the joy of our sight, our green marriage.

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To the stars, for they are seeds of light. They are the small, pure songs that rain upon us. Morton Marcus: That certainly brings back memories, Joey, and it's good to hear poems again. In fact, we might as well

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mention right now that you will be giving a reading on May 13th with another poet who has not only been on the show, but who has hosted the show, and that is Linda Dobson Fox. Joseph Stroud: Wonderful poet.

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Morton Marcus: Wonderful poet, and will- What will you be reading that night? Joseph Stroud: I don't know yet, I- Probably poems from the new manuscript.

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Morton Marcus: And this is going to be at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, and it will be at 8pm on May 13th and we will announce that again tonight and we'll be announcing it in the weeks to come and I urge everyone out there to really come and hear

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Joseph's poems because no matter what he reads, it's worth hearing. And the new manuscript is really very, very exciting. How about another one from the old books, one of my favorites from "Signatures," for example, is "Proportions."

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Joseph Stroud: All right, this is a poem that's based on a painting by Bruegel. I may be reading a poem later in the evening. It's also based on- on some paintings. This is a painting that I had, reproduction actually, of

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course, that I had hanging in my kitchen for many, many, many years. It's still there. It's been there for about 20 years now. So, it's a poem that's simply a narrative, it makes a narrative out of observing what's going on in this

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landscape painting of Bruegel. PROPORTIONS For years I've lived with Bruegel's painting, "The Harvester's Meal." At first, I noticed just the obvious, the

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men and women in the foreground, sitting on wheat sheaves, eating their simple meal of cheese and gruel. The pensive, sad-eyed man slicing bread, the woman lifting a pitcher of water to her mouth. Then, I moved on to the wheat fields, the straw colors. The

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man with his curved side slashing the long stalks. Another man lugging heavy water jugs in each hand. Three women with sheaves on their shoulders walk on a path that will lead past the thatched roofed houses, toward a grove of trees where

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the tower of a church juts into the sky. For a long time, I watched the dog back in the foreground, a spaniel of sorts, sniffing the earth, it's white tail rigid. Slowly, I became attracted to the expressions on faces. The exhaustion of work on

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a summer day, the openness in the heavy lidded eyes. I kept wanting to see the face of the young woman with her back to me. Deeper in the painting, two people greet and talk, a man and woman, I think. Behind them are two locust trees suffused with

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light, branches and leaves intermingled. That held my attention for a year. I started to consider color, how it blended from the greens of the forest into the gold and amber of the fields, the blue sky muddled with dust. I began to

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dwell on balance, harmony, the music of landscape and work, the burden of earth. Excess and pleasure, the long, difficult craft of living. Recently, I've been following the road in the right background, the way it rounds a small hill and

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disappears into what I imagine is a valley. Always the other landscape the heart dreams and yearns for, a place where we could dwell and trust and walk on through a world renewed and fresh, as far as the mind can create.

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Morton Marcus: Now, Joey, that is a poem about a piece of art, but it seems like a lot of the poem is also about art, about the imagination, and about craft. Would you say more about that in regard to this poem? I mean, it's obvious that the art

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of poetry and here also the art of painting are very important to you, and they really do cross a boundary or erase boundary between living and art. Joseph Stroud: Well, first of all, painting has always

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attracted me deeply. I think that if I had my choice of being able to do something, I probably would have picked painting over poetry, and maybe even music over poetry, but my talents were so meager at those that it was absurd to continue with it. The

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poem is about art, about how to construct a world, how to make a way in the world. I don't know what more I can say about it. It's hard to talk about the poem, for me, the poem pretty much does the business.

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Morton Marcus: It's just interesting to me that it ends with a world "renewed and fresh as far as the mind can create" and there seems to be, you know, tremendous emphasis on this idea that the mind is creating its world.

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Joseph Stroud: The poem goes- points to a place where the painting ends, the painting just hints at this road going around a hill, and of course, you can't see what's beyond that hill. So, the poem imagines another landscape, a place, that- If the

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world that the poem, the painting is dealing with, is the world of work, the world of labor, the world of trying to exist, the poem, and I think the painting, suggest a place of transcendence and I think that's what the poem is trying to do,

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is to reach or at least to suggest something of that nature. Morton Marcus: Great, terrific. And those are two poems from, as I said, two books that Joe has written earlier books that was

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from "Signatures." "In the Sleep of Rivers," his first book, and he then have done a lot of poems over the last, is it really 16 years? "Signatures," I actually I've gotten- Joseph Stroud: "Signatures" came out in 1982. Some of these poems

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go back a few years before that, so the new manuscript includes poems from 1980 to 1997. Morton Marcus: With- you wrote during this period, and I'm sure these are going to be in the book, though correct me if I'm

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wrong, a number of six line poems. It's like you really restricted yourself to a form that you totally made up yourself. And people out there, maybe a number have not heard them, they're really marvelous poems and I know that you plan

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to read several of them tonight. Why don't you do that? These are six line poems worked to the same beats in each line and they're just marvelous moments. Joseph Stroud: Well, they're not worked with the same beats.

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Morton Marcus: Are they not work of same beats? Joseph Stroud: No, they're all six liners, but they're each are different, quite different in terms of accents and syntax and diction, and et cetera. It was it was a curious experience

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coming to these poems. I was working on a poem about my father and it came in at around eight or nine lines, and I was fiddling with it, and I chopped it down to about six lines. And the next day, I was working on a poem again and cut it down to

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six lines, and I did this for two or three days in a row. And then suddenly, it struck me that something's going on here, so I began deliberately trying to write a poem in six lines and I couldn't stop. That spring, I must have written a couple of

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hundred of these little six line poems and there'll be a few of them in the manuscript. Morton Marcus: About how many? Joseph Stroud: Well, see all in all I wrote over wrote about 300

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over a period of about three years, and in the manuscript, there will be 60. Morton Marcus: Great, right? Joseph Stroud: THIS WAITING

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All morning I've been watching the bee among the trumpet vines, thrumming from one bud to another, brushing against them as if desire alone would make them bloom. All morning, I've been waiting for the poem to appear, as it did for Rumi, when

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he beheld Shams of Tabriz, the beloved and words opened like daybreak, like cords of fire within his body. IDLE The perezoso, slow bear, what we call the sloth, who hangs from

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limbs upside down and never moves for days, it's long fur dangling with moss. And when at last its turns it's slow head to peer at you, you've already given away everything you own. You've planted yourself, arms becoming limbs, your spirit

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unsheathing in leaves. COME AND GET IT So little, so much. Seasons, the orchard snowing with blossoms, nightfall and daybreak, systole, diastole. The path leads into

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the woods to the house where the old woman invites you in to admire her oven. Don't go, we plead. We would have been cooked and eaten. We who sit here, gripping our forks and knives. AFTER THE OPERA

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Coming out of the theaters surrounded by people in elegant clothes, jewelry, all the arias finished, no one able to hold the music inside for long. Soon enough, it's gone and it's night in the city. It's all neon and noise. The woman you're with

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stops to adjust her shoe, leans her body against yours for a moment, balancing. FROM TIME TO TIME, TURNING MY HEAD TO SEE In the washed out arroyo through the old part of town, below the

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level of the streets and full of trash, broken bottles, I saw one day while driving the road to Tomatlan the enormous head and bulk of a bull elephant standing in a pool next to the burnt out wreck of a car, and a woman over and over whipping clothes

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against an enormous boulder. BABETTE This is where they lived, Babette and her family, all of them gone now. Babette with her red hair and freckles, tormented

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by the boys in second grade. Babette who never made it into history, whose life mattered only to a few. Babette, a brief incarnation who grew into a woman, then vanished from my life and from yours, all my sisters and brothers.

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THE YEARS LIKE CROWS COMING HOME TO ROOST Outside my window a single crow over the grove, 40 years ago, and when I look again there are legions winging into the trees, their shapes like sable embers flaming into black tongues,

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squabbling among themselves and the ruckus, unspeakable syllables of some primal alien world, calling down the night to cover them. WAKING ON THE SHINING PATH

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Riding the night bus to Ayacucho, jauncing, lurching into sleep, dreamless and then suddenly waking, like dropping off a cliff. The bus stopped, a village square somewhere. The driver was shouting to a man who's waving a pistol. Outside

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the window ghost limbs of trees, fluorescent in the street lamp. HEAR THAT PHONE RINGING? SOUNDS LIKE A LONG DISTANCE CALL Death is talking on the phone, long distance to somebody. I'm outside the booth, waiting to call home, impatient, trying not

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to be obvious about it, while death yammers on. Now and then, looking over in my direction, his empty gaze not meant for me I hope, as I think of that poor guy on the other end, grasping the phone, not ready to hang up.

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THESE NIGHTS, PASSING THROUGH Between us and death are all the days and nights from which we fashion our life. Don't bother to count them, they won't add up to enough. All evening, I've been listening to Netania

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Davrath, singing songs from D'Auvergne. The music quieting in me the way stars dissolve in the dawn. And a couple of more, these are poems of homage. HOMAGE TO ROLF JACOBSEN.

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The yellow jacket keeps crashing against the pane, trying to get out. All along, it's only a matter of opening the window, finding the words and you're out there in the other larger world. To the dead, paradise is the sidewalk you stroll down,

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looking in windows, humming, stopping for coffee. HOMAGE TO THE BLACK WALNUT IN DOWNTOWN SANTA CRUZ Late afternoon, trudging from the bank to the bookstore, I stop and look up at the black walnut on Cedar Street, into its

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green canopy of leaves and immense curving limbs. A tree is a place, not an object. It's an island in the air, where our sight may live a while, unburdened and free from this heavy, earthen body.

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Morton Marcus: As many of you can tell out there, these poems show a lot of travel to a lot of places. Joe has been to Asia, South America, many, many places and a lot of the poems are actually written, or the beginnings of those poems, were

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written in those locales. As we leave those six line poems, and I take it all of those are going to be in the manuscript? Joseph Stroud: Those will be, yes, those will be in the manuscript.

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Morton Marcus: Now, your manuscript has been taken by Copper Canyon Press, as I said, what's it going to be called? Joseph Stroud: "Below Cold Mountain" Morton Marcus: "Below Cold Mountain," which is homage to

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one of your favorite literary forebears, who is Hanshan. And just for the people out there and the young poets out there, are you finished with that manuscript or now, you're going to keep going over that thing since what you had when you

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signed your contract was like a 20-month wait for the book to come out? One, are you positive of all the poems that you're going to have in there and that they're in there already? Joseph Stroud: No, not completely. The first section,

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these little six-liners are pretty set, I mean, I'm still working some of them over but that's pretty, I mean that section is pretty established. The poem, the book is in three sections, each section is 30 pages long. The first section,

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the six-liners and the third section, the longer, more formal poems, are fairly complete. It's the second section that I've been working, still working over a lot since the manuscript was first taken and I'm still working on that section now.

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Morton Marcus: And what's in that section? Joseph Stroud: The section is titled "Homages and Voices." And it's a section that's composed of some translations, some versions of poems from foreign language, and some sort of

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casual poems that I call, "Homages," I'll be reading some later this evening. Morton Marcus: And these will, of course, be the wonderful poems, there are love poems you [unintelligible] got from the

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Sanskrit and other places. Joseph Stroud: Right, there'll be some of those in there. There'll be a poem of Jules Supervielle, there'll be some versions that I have of Isa, and then poems and various voices

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from various persona that are not translations or versions from other languages, but are just a different voice speaking. Morton Marcus: Great, great. Let's hear some more poems. I take it the next one's going to be in the book, too, and it's

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one of the homages, or homages, and this is the homage to the thief, I think. Joseph Stroud: Homage to the thief. These are a little different then. More casual sort of poems.

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The landscape of this poem is where I- Is this cabin on the east side of the Sierra in Shay Creek. HOMAGE TO THE THIEF In snowshoes and pulling a sled loaded with gear, water, food, I

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made my way up to the cabin to find someone had broken in, someone big enough to crash the door open, splitting the jam. It might have been the black bear from last summer, except who had been here took a great interest in liquor for I found bottles

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scattered about. A carving knife was missing and a compass, nothing much else was messed with. Buddha says we don't own anything anyway. He's right, of course. we don't even own these bodies we wander around in. And for some of us, maybe most of

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us, it's an ill fit. I, for one, don't think I'll be coming back, as some doctrines claim, but if I did, I wouldn't mind if I reappeared as an egret, solitary, spending a lot of time in green fields, or on the banks of rivers, or lifting, rising

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into the sky at dusk, winging into the night. Dear thief, if you tried to break into my worlda` then, you would discover there wasn't a lock, no door, no walls, you would find that you were already inside, standing under a huge sky in open

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country, you would discover how impossible it is to steal what you already have. Morton Marcus: And do I take it this was written on an event that happened up in the Sierras?

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Joseph Stroud: Yes. Morton Marcus: Sorry about that. Interesting, and this is when, how long have you been writing the homages? Joseph Stroud: Do you say homages, too, or is it just?

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Morton Marcus: That's true, that's a good way to do it. Homages, okay, gotcha. Joseph Stroud: How long I've been writing them? Well, some came about three or four years ago with these six-liners, there

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were a few in there. These are within the past year or so, the ones that I'm working on now. Morton Marcus: Great and are these these ones from the past year?

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Joseph Stroud: Yes. Morton Marcus: Can we read one more, the one to Marie, and then it will probably be time for break. Joseph Stroud: Sure, okay, "Homage: Marie." Marie is the

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name of a dog, my dog or Sam's dog, Ellen's dog, our dog. I should say that Marie is in a lot of these poems, it's very curious now that I think about it. HOMAGE: MARIE

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It's true I talk to my dog, talk and talk as if she understood. I tell her the most intimate details of my life and she looks up at me, pleased, it seems to me, even happy, though mostly what I tell her is sad, pitiful, a kind of incoherent babble. But

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she reads my voice for timbre, for those pauses and tones, she understands better than I do, those murmurs which mean I'm finally reaching the end, and it's time, she knows, for the payoff, where I will go and get her leash, and we will walk

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outside, and then it's her turn. It's her life that we follow and it's my happiness in being pulled through her world. Morton Marcus: And we are talking with and hearing the poetry of Joe Stroud and the former co-host of this program,

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an old friend. And we will be back with more poetry by Joe for the second half of the show. So I'm going to- Joseph Stroud: If Mort can speak and put this on at the same time.

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Morton Marcus: If I can even see this thing here, but let's just do that. Joe, you keep speaking and I'll signal you when to just say nothing. Joseph Stroud: Say nothing, okay. We're going to listen to

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some songs of D'Auvergne, one of the earlier poems mentioned that this Netania Davrath. Mort put it on number 12, that's sort of a lullaby, it's very nice. This is Netania Davrath, "Songs of the D'Auvergne," music composed by Joseph Canteloube.

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Morton Marcus: And we will let that beautiful music sound behind us as I give you a few public announcements. First of all, this Friday, April 25th, at Louden Nelson at 7:30pm, the monthly readings' theme will be autobiography in April, and will

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feature Leon Tabori, Rose Ellen Mesdoris, Catherine Malcolm, Raymond Wile, and Jeremy Millbach, so put that on your calendar. A wonderful reading series that has been going on for three or four years now that's this Friday, April 25th

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at Louden Nelson, and they're theme readings and this month's reading his autobiography in April. Also, I want to alert you to the reappearance of an old Santa Cruz favorite who has been living in Oregon for years and that is Flora Dorum(?) who has a

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new book out. She will appear with a musician playing behind her on Tuesday, April 29th at 8pm at What is Art Cafe in Santa Cruz which is on North Pacific Avenue, opposite of- Well, right near the Wilson's plumbing agency. That's Flora Dorum(?)

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back in Santa Cruz for a brief visit, reading from her new book that's at 8pm, Tuesday, April 29th at What is Art Cafe. Also, I want to thank everyone out there for their signing up and contributing and saying we love poetry in the recent spring roll

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that we had here at KUSP. And also, KUSP is happy to bring you the grand finale of the second annual Big Sur Jazz Fest to be recorded Sunday, April 20th. The concert features Dimitri Matheny, Harvey Wainapel, Bill Berry, Madeline Eastman and many

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other top notch West Coast players. Further information about the Big Sur Jazz Festival, call 667-2654. And now, we're just going to go right back to Joe Stroud because I want to hear a lot more of this poetry. So, Joe, we were reading the, or

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you were reading and I wasn't reading, I was listening enraptured or wrapped one way or probably both. You're reading from a new set of poems, which will be in this new manuscript of yours and they were homages, I don't know why I have trouble

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with that word. Joseph Stroud: Homage. Morton Marcus: It's homage- Joseph Stroud: Homage.

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Morton Marcus: That's why I have trouble with the word, I don't even have it right to begin with. And you had just read an homage to Marie, your wonderful dog, who is just full of love and deserves as much poetry as she can get. Continue on.

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Joseph Stroud: I'm chewing something, I'm- Okay. Morton Marcus: You didn't think we're coming on this fast, right? Joseph Stroud: No, I though- Just a second. I have a glass of

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water here. Morton Marcus: Okay. Let me just say that Joe will be giving a reading with Linda Dobson Fox at Loudon- at the Bookshop Santa Cruz on May 13th, at 8pm, and that is the National Writers

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Union Readings that happen every month at the Bookshop. And this is what I would urge you to go to, two really fine poets. And Joe will be reading some old poems and a lot of these new poems from the manuscript which will be brought out next spring

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at this time, I'm sure by Copper Canyon Press. Joseph Stroud: This is "Homage: Doo Wop." Do you know doo wop, Mort? Morton Marcus: Yes I do. It's spelled, H-O-M-A-G-E, right?

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Joseph Stroud: Doo wop is a song, kind of singing from the 50s. Much it was acapella, but sort of slow, slow dance music. The poem mentions a few of the groups that- that would sing this sort of music, Moon Glows was one of the groups and The

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Penguins was another group. And some of the lines in the poem are taken from lyrics from those songs, back when, many years ago, music of the 50s. HOMAGE: DOO WOP

00:35:16.890 - 00:35:33.120

There's so little sweetness in the music I hear now. No croons, no doo wop or slow ones, where you could hug up with someone and hold them against your body, feel their heart against yours, touch their cheek with your cheek. And it was okay, it was

00:35:33.120 - 00:35:47.820

allowed. Even the mothers, standing around at the birthday party, the rug rolled back in the living room, didn't mind if you held their daughters as you swayed to the music. Eyes squeezed shut, holding each other and holding on to the song

00:35:48.210 - 00:36:05.850

until you almost stopped moving. Just shuffled there, embracing as the Moon Glows and Penguins crooned and the mothers looked on, not with disapproval or scorn, looked on with their eyes, dreaming, as if from 1000 miles away, as if from over the

00:36:05.850 - 00:36:23.190

mountain and across the sea. A look on their faces I didn't understand, not knowing then those other songs I would someday enter, not knowing how I would shimmer and rive, jig like a puppet, doing the shimmy shimmy coco bop, or glide from

00:36:23.190 - 00:36:41.430

turn to counter turn within the waltz, not knowing how I would hold the other through the night and across the years, holding on for love and dear life, for solace and kindness, learning the dance as we go, learning from those first awkward

00:36:41.490 - 00:36:58.090

shuffling steps, that sweetness and doo wop back at the beginning. Morton Marcus: Yes, very interesting. I played some Louie Primo for my wife who had never heard him before and she was

00:36:58.090 - 00:37:15.970

delighted. And what she said is, you don't have this kind of joy in music anymore and it's true. And I never realized until she said that and your poem just really captured that there's so little sweetness in the music I hear now and I think that really

00:37:15.970 - 00:37:34.570

is symptomatic in what is going on in our society. If you just put your finger right on it, those were times of joy and longing, but there was always a sense of essential sweetness and possibility and for some reason, it just really seems to be gone

00:37:34.570 - 00:37:41.620

now. Joseph Stroud: I still think it's around, Mort. I don't think it's disappeared. Morton Marcus: It's not completely disappeared? Okay.

00:37:42.810 - 00:37:51.690

Joseph Stroud: I just haven't been listening to it. Morton Marcus: Maybe it's because you can't hear it on any of the airwaves anymore. Joseph Stroud: This one is HOMAGE: SUMMER/WINTER, SHAY

00:37:51.690 - 00:38:08.630

CREEK; IN THE SHINING. I've got my chair and a good book and I'm sitting out behind the cabin in a shaft of sunlight, reading. A couple of stellar jays who are my friends perched themselves on branches

00:38:08.630 - 00:38:24.920

in the ponderosa and sugar pine. They can't read the book I've got, but they can read me and they watch very carefully for that moment when my hand reaches in to my pocket and pulls out some crusts of bread, which I toss out over the forest floor

00:38:24.920 - 00:38:44.030

and the jays spring off the limbs and streak down in a blue blaze, scoop the crusts and are back on their limbs again, chortling. This is the way of my life these days, lazing, serene, but not so indolent, not so torpid that I won't get up now

00:38:44.030 - 00:39:08.270

and then, grab my chair and move to another spot over there by the cedar, to that new place, shining now in the sun. MANNA Everywhere, everywhere, snow sifting down, a world becoming

00:39:08.270 - 00:39:33.470

white. No more sounds, no longer possible to define the heart of the day, the sun is gone, the sky is nowhere and of all I wanted in life, so be it. Whatever it is that brought me here, chance, fortune, whatever blessing each flake of snow is

00:39:33.470 - 00:39:59.510

the hint of, I am grateful. I bear witness. I hold out my arms, palms up. I know it is impossible to hold for long what we love of the world, but look at me. Is it foolish, shameful, arrogant to say this? See how the snow drifts down. Look how

00:39:59.510 - 00:40:19.420

happy I am. Morton Marcus: You know, Joey, for years, I know as listeners do not, that you've been trying to write poems about Hanshan and those two poems are perfect Han Shan peoms. Absolutely and yet

00:40:19.420 - 00:40:36.880

they're not Hanshan, they're Joe Stroud and you just incorporated that spirit in both of those poems, marvelous. Joseph Stroud: I- that last one about- with the lines how happy I am, I had- did this poem in my poetry workshop a while back in.

00:40:37.630 - 00:40:53.740

I got a comment back on it the following week from a student who said that, you can't say that in the poem. You can't say, "I am happy" in a poem and I thought about that and my response is that I've been writing poems for almost 40

00:40:53.740 - 00:41:11.740

years now and I'd like to think that I've finally earned the right to say that. Then, I begin to think about it and I don't know, I can't think of any other poem in English that says that, that says I'm happy. But the only poem I can that I could

00:41:11.740 - 00:41:22.390

come up with was Keats's poem to a nightingale where it says the nightingale is happy. It just seemed like a very curious thing to me. Morton Marcus: Well, the person who would make statements like

00:41:22.390 - 00:41:38.860

that was James Wright, in his great breakthrough poems and that, I think, is what's stunned everybody. I mean, he was just willing to make these statements that no one had ever heard in English poetry before. That didn't bother me at all. It

00:41:38.860 - 00:41:53.050

seems to certainly come right out of the poem and seems to be earned by the poem itself. In fact, both sections of the poems, these both are part of the same poem, "Summer/Winter, Shay Creek." And they both have that sense of the joy in the

00:41:53.050 - 00:42:05.380

moment and in the simple experience and Hanshan's applauding from his Cold Mountain heaven, let me tell you. Joseph Stroud: This one is a change of pace. It's still an

00:42:05.380 - 00:42:31.180

homage poem but it's a- it's a prose poem, more realistic, kind of a catalog list. It's titled "Homage To The Word-hoard," and word-hoard is an Anglo-Saxon concept for the proto-poet, the scop. The Anglo-Saxon singer would call upon a certain

00:42:31.600 - 00:42:52.270

collection of words, special words, formulaic words, in composing his poems on the spot, very often commemorating a great battle or the friendship between two lords or whatever. And they called it the word-hoard. And that's what this poem is about.

00:42:52.450 - 00:43:10.160

HOMAGE TO THE WORD-HOARD Lord, help me but my mind's a blank today, only a few words bubbling up, words like no, or glum, or dull. But there must be thousands of others down there, rattling their cages, clamoring

00:43:10.160 - 00:43:30.980

to get out. All kinds of words, big ones, scrawny ones, heroic and muscular ones, coy, loony words, words tasting of clothes and licorice, cross-dressed words wearing feathery boas, quantum words, kaons and koans. Singularities, black-hole words

00:43:30.980 - 00:43:45.320

sucking up light, love, and loss. Exploding word, supernovas, words like wormholes into other worlds. Ancient words, Neanderthal words rubbing together to make fire. Cro-magnon words rubbing together to make magic, spells,

00:43:45.530 - 00:44:00.680

incantations to sail the dead off to the underworld. Words that make the blind see, that make the lame walk. Words queueing in iambs and goose-stepping in trochees. Verse libre words playing tennis without a net, and yes, I must

00:44:00.680 - 00:44:18.200

admit it, bad words, embarrassing words, words I do not mention. And ugly words too. Words with blackheads, whins, squatty warts sprouting tufts of stiff hairs. Blubbery words. Jean-Paul Sartre words dripping ennui. Words smoking a

00:44:18.200 - 00:44:32.630

cigarette, raising the Marlene Dietrich eyebrow and looking down from a great height. Words you wouldn't be caught dead wearing, virgin words, cocky words, sluttish words, whispered-in-the-ear words, Etruscan words, words from lost

00:44:32.630 - 00:44:48.260

tongues, unknown alphabets, words that can't be translated, words that will put you in jail. Words with fur and teeth, wolf words wandering the plain, bringing down antelope. Words that tear out the throat, words that singe, sing and burn. Words

00:44:48.260 - 00:45:03.500

that calm and soothe, grunt words, snarls, guttural words, vocables and syllables. Words like the sound of doves murmuring and immemorial elms. Words crackling like fire. Big Sky words, cloud words, the clumsy words of first love,

00:45:03.860 - 00:45:21.020

words like lucre, like treasure. Wedding words, the keening words at grave sides, healing words, words tumbling down in a waterfall of long golden hair. Words you could climb, words turning a toad to a prince, my words, your words, totem words,

00:45:21.080 - 00:45:38.120

Stonehenge words, words lost in the pit at Chichen Itza. Words you can eat, creme brulee words, words like a web among the lilacs. Drunk words, academic words, sweet words run softly till I end my song. These words I have shored against my ruins.

00:45:38.990 - 00:45:58.280

Words I would kneel down before, all the way down, touching my forehead to the floor. Words like a guillotine, unswerving, absolute. Words that will make you a martyr. Just-trying-to-stay-afloat-words, treading water. Words to keep

00:45:58.280 - 00:46:17.690

from going under, from breathing the dark waters. Waiting words, maybe a ship will pass by, an island will rise up. Maybe this will be the day I crawl ashore and you will see my word prints in the sand, leading towards the jungle. There, the fronds

00:46:17.690 - 00:46:36.900

rustling, closing behind where I have disappeared into a new world, a luminous existence. A world so perfect, there's no purpose for a poem, no need for words. Morton Marcus: Great. Now, you make one of my endless comments.

00:46:37.530 - 00:46:51.030

This goes where the Bruegel poem goes, it goes towards transcendence. And that footprint in the sand, I have seen that in another poem of yours, "The Signatures," the Chinese wise man look for to invent the Chinese language.

00:46:51.050 - 00:47:02.780

Joseph Stroud: Oh right, yeah. I don't think this poem is going to be in the manuscript. It's a fun poem to read, but I don't know, yet. Morton Marcus: Are you going to have any prose poems in-

00:47:03.170 - 00:47:10.820

Joseph Stroud: There will be some, yeah. There'll be about three, but they'll be in the in the final section. Morton Marcus: And have I seen those before? Joseph Stroud: I think. I think you have.

00:47:10.880 - 00:47:21.470

Morton Marcus: Yeah. What about the person dying in the back of the truck, being killed in the back of the truck, weaving that with your friend's mother and everything like that? That was one of the first ones

00:47:21.470 - 00:47:25.640

you wrote. Joseph Stroud: I don't remember that one. Morton Marcus: You don't? Better look for it, it's a great one. Joseph Stroud: Okay!

00:47:26.750 - 00:47:35.690

Morton Marcus: Anyway, let's go on. Joseph Stroud: Okay. Here's a short little poem. This poem will be in the second and- rather in the third section. It is called:

00:47:35.730 - 00:47:57.810

FERAL The plaza of the gypsies under the ruined castle, a spring pouring into a stone basin where burros and horses drink since before the time of Cervantes. A taverna. Fierce sunlight at

00:47:57.810 - 00:48:23.280

noon, the plaza empty, absolute stillness. Even the cicadas stunned by the heat. A plate of olives, goat cheese, cucumber, cobblestones and whitewashed walls, a day like marble, solstice, crushed rosemary, holding on with everything I

00:48:23.280 - 00:48:43.110

have. Wheat fields the color of fawn, bread, black figs, gripping hard with mind and heart clenching, holding on to what's human, this moment, this place where I make my strict joy.

00:48:45.550 - 00:49:04.180

Morton Marcus: You know, one of the things that comes out of your poetry, Joe, is, besides its absolute seriousness, although there certainly is some humor in your poems, is a sense of the fact that poetry saves us and certainly saves you. And

00:49:04.180 - 00:49:20.740

there's just no kidding around that poetry means are you going to live for another day, and words like holding on, you know, being able to survive into another day are extremely important. And even though that prose poem on the words and all

00:49:20.740 - 00:49:37.690

the words inside, which I think is terrific, it starts out with glumness, with boredom, with again that inability to make connections and almost losing that grip and then it gathers the power, the poet power, the word power to go on and finally

00:49:37.690 - 00:49:52.810

transcend and enter the wonderful world of connection through language. And I think, it's just a statement, I'm not even asking a question, but this is one thing I think has been really forgotten in so much poetry, the real sense of the

00:49:52.870 - 00:50:12.040

urgency of it, especially in the light of all the poetry slams and poetry performances. Joseph Stroud: This next poem is one that I really did try to get at something. It took- I've tried to write this poem for

00:50:12.040 - 00:50:35.410

about five years, I tried it every conceivable way I could think of, and it would never come, I could never get it to work. And this year, this spring, I promised myself that I would keep at it. And one day, I asked myself the question, well,

00:50:35.410 - 00:50:53.140

who am I writing this for? Who is the audience for this poem? And as soon as I understood who it was, I got the first line. I got the tone of the poem, I got the line length of the poem and it just, from there on it went. I mean, I still worked on it a

00:50:53.140 - 00:51:12.980

long, long time, but it was it was a poem that- one the most frustrating poems I've ever had, in terms of writing. It's called, PROEM which is not some new coined term for cross between prose and poetry. It's just- A proem is a word that

00:51:12.980 - 00:51:29.100

means, an old, old word that means interlude, rather prelude, that means beginning. I want to tell you the story of that winter in Madrid where I lived in a room with no windows, where I lived with the death of

00:51:29.100 - 00:51:47.970

my father, carrying it everywhere through the streets as if it were an object, a book written in a luminous language I could not read. Every day I left my room and wandered across the great plazas of that city, boulevards crowded with people

00:51:48.000 - 00:52:06.720

and cars, there was nowhere I wanted to go. Sometimes I would come to myself inside a cathedral under the vaulted ceiling of the transept. I would find myself sobbing, transfixed in the light slanting through the rose window scattering

00:52:06.720 - 00:52:27.720

jewels across the cold marble floor. At this distance now, the grief is not important, nor the sadness I felt day after day wandering the maze of medieval streets, wandering the rooms of the Prado, going from painting to painting, looking into

00:52:27.720 - 00:52:49.290

Velasquez, into Bosch, Bruegel, looking for something that would help, that would frame my spirit, focus sorrow into some kind of belief that wasn't fantasy, or false. For I was tired of deception, the lies of words, even the gypsy violin,

00:52:49.560 - 00:53:10.260

its lament with the dagger inside seemed indulgent, posturing. I don't mean to say these didn't move me. I was an easy mark. Anything could well up in me, rainshine on the cobblestone streets, a bowl of tripe soup in a peasant cafe. In

00:53:10.260 - 00:53:30.180

my world at that time, there was no scale, nothing with which to measure. I could no longer discern value. The mongrel, eating scraps of garbage in the alley, was equal to Guernica in all its massive outrage. When I looked in the paintings mostly

00:53:30.180 - 00:53:50.010

what I saw were questions. In the paradise panel of "The Garden of Earthly Delights," why does Bosch show a lion disemboweling the deer, or that man in hell crucified on the strings of a heart? In "The Allegory of The Seven Deadly

00:53:50.010 - 00:54:18.390

Sins," gluttony, pride, sloth, anger, envy, avarice, despair, which am I most guilty? Why in Juan de Flandes' "Resurrection of Lazarus" is the face of Christ so sad in bringing the body back to life? Every day I returned to my room, to my cave

00:54:18.390 - 00:54:37.530

where I could not look out at the world, where I was forced into the one place I did not want to be. In the Cranach painting, behind Aphrodite with her fantastic hat, her cryptic look, behind Eros holding a honeycomb, whimpering with bee

00:54:37.530 - 00:55:00.060

stings, far off in the background that cliff rising above the sea, that small hut on top, is that Cold Mountain? Is that where the poet made his way out of our world? My father had little use for poems, less use for the future. If he had

00:55:00.060 - 00:55:24.240

anything to show me about his life, it was to live here, even in a room without windows. One day in the Prado, in the Hall of the Muses, a group of men in expensive suits, severe looking men of importance, with a purpose, moved down the hallway

00:55:24.240 - 00:55:47.760

toward me. And I was swept aside politely, firmly. As they passed, I glimpsed in their midst a woman in a simple black dress with pearls, serene, talking to no one, and then she and the men were gone. Who was that? I asked, and the guard

00:55:47.760 - 00:56:06.540

answered, "the queen, the queen." In my attempt to follow to see which painting she would choose, I got lost in one of the Goya rooms and found myself before one of his dark paintings. One from his last years, when the

00:56:06.540 - 00:56:28.560

world held no more illusions, where life was examined in a ruthless, savage anger. In this painting a woman stood next to death; her beauty, her elegance, her pearls and shiny hair meant nothing in his presence. And he was looking out from the

00:56:28.560 - 00:56:49.020

painting, looking into me, and death took my hand and made me look, and I saw my own face streaming with tears. And the day took on the shape of a crouching beast and my father's voice called out in wonder or warning, and for every moment I

00:56:49.020 - 00:57:12.300

held on made it that much harder to let go, and death demanded that I let go. And then the moment disappeared like a pale horse, like a ghost horse disappearing deep inside Goya's painting. I left the Prado, I walked by the Palazzo Reale with

00:57:12.300 - 00:57:34.470

its 2000 rooms, one for every kind of desire. I came upon el Rastro, the great open air bazar, a flea market for the planet where everything in the world that has been cast aside, rejected, lost, might be found, where I found Cervantes, an old

00:57:34.500 - 00:57:51.720

dusty copy of Don Quixote and where I discovered an old mirror, and looking into it found my father's face in my face, looking back at me. And behind us, a Bruegel world, crowded with the clamor of the market, people busy with their

00:57:51.720 - 00:58:14.190

lives, hunting, searching for what's missing. How casual they seemed, in no hurry, as if they had all of time, no frenzy, no worry as the Castilian sun made its slow arch over us. The same sun that lanced the fish on crushed ice in the market

00:58:14.190 - 00:58:34.950

stalls, fish with open mouths, glazed stares, lapped against each other like scales by the dozens. And the Spaniards, gaping over them, reading them, like some sacred text, like some kind of song or prophecy, as they made their choice, had it

00:58:34.950 - 00:58:55.410

wrapped in paper, then disappeared into the crowd. And that is all. I wanted to tell you the story of that winter in Madrid, where I lived in a room with no windows at the beginning of my life without my father. When the fascist officials asked

00:58:55.410 - 00:59:20.130

Picasso about Guernica, "are you responsible for this painting?" He looked back at them and answered slowly, "No, you are." What should I answer when asked about this poem? I wanted to tell you the story of that winter in Madrid, where my

00:59:20.130 - 00:59:46.170

father kept dying again and again inside of me. And I kept bringing him back, holding him for as long as I could. I never knew how much I loved him. I didn't know that grief would give him back to me, over and over. I didn't know that those

00:59:46.200 - 01:00:07.010

cobbled streets would someday lead to here, to this quietude, this blessing, to my father within me. Morton Marcus: That was Joe Stroud and we have been listening to Joe Stroud's poetry this hour on the poetry show.

01:00:07.370 - 01:00:25.310

Joe will be reading with Linda Thompson Fox on Tuesday, May 13th, at 8pm at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. I would urge everyone who loves poetry to be there. His book, "Signatures" is out and is on sale there. His new manuscript from which most

01:00:25.310 - 01:00:34.140

of these poems were read tonight will be out next spring, and the title again, Joe? Joseph Stroud: "Below Cold Mountain." Morton Marcus: "Below Cold Mountain." Joe, thanks so much

01:00:34.140 - 01:00:42.000

for coming on. You, of course will be on again and I can't wait for the book to come out and you'll be on at that point, I'm sure. If you will [unintelligible] Joseph Stroud: Oh, I'd love to Morton right.

01:00:42.300 - 01:01:02.370

Morton Marcus: Thanks a million. Stay tuned for Book for Bedtime. This is Mort Marcus on the Poetry Show. We will be back next week. And I want to tell you this is KUSP, 88.9 FM on your dial in Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas, Big Sur. And

01:01:02.400 - 01:01:06.660

let us go back to this beautiful music and thank Joe once again.