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Morton Marcus: This is KUSP community sponsored radio for the Monterey Bay Area, Big Sur, and Salinas on 88.9 FM on your dial. Stay tuned for the Poetry Show. John Gill: As a child, I remember a brick wall, darkness,

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shuttered movement, and sounds that had no meaning or answer. Rustle of clothes dropping, cold click of metal, the shriek of a naked bird, its open beak, swollen eyes. Older, I held lovers in my arms, attacked in saliva and fantasy, the split

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seams of my life working. Trees and sky were digital, reminding me I had no home, only this costly compulsion to forgive everyone. To move into the ghostly field, to see the morning star strike the plow of the moon, my body vanishing as I

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walk, is my answer. I never knew and feared to meet the owner, the knower, till now. Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody. This is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show. And that was the voice and the

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poetry of John Gill, our guest for the night, who is reading from his new book, "New and Selected Poems, Between Worlds." John, welcome. That certainly is a wonderful introductory poem to this evening when we will be talking to you about your entire

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career. And why don't you tell us a little bit about the title, "The Field and its Knower?" John Gill: Well, that's from the Bhagavad Gita, I probably didn't pronounce it right. I just picked it out, and to tell you

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the truth, I've never analyzed the poem. I think it has something to do with me being- memories from my very, very, very childhood, in other words, when I was maybe three or four or five years old, and then it just goes into- I don't

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understand the poem, I'm sorry. Morton Marcus: Well, it's, you know, I mean, I don't know you very well, though we have met on several or a number of occasions. But it seems to really give a sense of your

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character. Your- this costly compulsion to forgive everyone, this sense of attempting to find an equanimity in the world, and in a very concrete physical world and also an erotic world, a world in which spirit touches flesh time and time again, which

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is what certainly I read in this book time and time again. John Gill: Well, that's very nice of you, Mort, you're a good critic. Morton Marcus: As long as I said something nice.

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John Gill: [Laughs] No, you'd be good anyway, I'm sure. Morton Marcus: Let me say out there that John Gill has been a person I have respected for years. He was the sky(?) and along with his wife, of the Crossing Press, when it was one

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of the most important literary presses in the nation, it now has taken a different direction, moved out to California, and now is generally dealing with some what kind of literature, John? John Gill: Well, we do a lot of, and always have done a lot of

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books on- for women, feminist's books, women's books, women's health books, women spirituality. I also edit myself a men's series of books, part of the men's movement, your side might say the pro-feminist men's movement. And I've done some gay

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novels and some slight poetry but I'm very happy about the poetry we do do. We do Judy- published Judy Grahn, we published the essays and the work of Audre Lord. Morton Marcus: Sure.

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John Gill: And many, many good people. Morton Marcus: John, as we ask all the time on this, and especially on a really, I think, exciting occasion, which is when you do have a Selected Poems in your hand, even though I'm sure

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you could have probably had twice as many poems as you have in here: when and how did you start writing? What did- what was the impetus? John Gill: Well, actually, I was in the army in the Second World

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War. And up in Iceland, you might say isolated in this Quonset hut, and I started reading Blake, his proverbs and his, "Songs of Innocence and Experience," and I just liked the sound of it and I like- I was just carried away. I think

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what happened to me is I liked the sound of poetry. I always did. I remember, when I came back, I start reading Keats. And this is- I've never been trained, so I couldn't understand Keats very much, I just thought it was luscious

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sounds. And then I picked up Rimbaud, and he just blew me away. Again, I didn't understand it at all but I knew it was something important to me and I knew that I fell in love with it, so that was it. Just sound in the sense, the sense was

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secondary to my feeling for it. I think that if you absorb it, you know, it's just something to absorb into your system. Morton Marcus: On a visceral level. John Gill: Yeah. That reminds me like, the poem that I really use

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as a sort of a guidepost for my writing happens to be an old anonymous one that was written in the 16th century. This is just a four line poem, but it might sum up my sign of taste or my touchstone, it's called- i 's been named or titled but o

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course didn't have one: LOVER IN WINTER, PLAINETH FOR THE SPRING Western wind, when wilt thou blow, the small rain down can rain? Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed

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again! Morton Marcus: It's always been a favorite of mine. I love the sudden overwhelming of emotion that comes in those last lines, switches the whole tone.

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John Gill: Yeah. Morton Marcus: You suddenly understand what's really being talked about in the first- marvelous. Okay, well, those are great touchstones. So out of the army now, did you go to school

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at that point, or-? John Gill: Well, I went to DePaul University and then I took English courses. And I took so many that there was nothing for me to do but to go teach English when I graduated, sort

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of boxing myself into a corner, right? Morton Marcus: And where'd you teach? [Cross talk] John Gill: About thirteen years. Morton Marcus: And where'd you teach?

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John Gill: I taught actually in New York City in an exclusive boys' school. Morton Marcus: Oh, what was the name of it? John Gill: Browning School for Boys, and I was the fourth form

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master, they called them master in those days. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that's good ol' New York. You have poems in the book -- and if you don't want to read them, you know, just say that you don't -- which sort of talk about your early

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life in Chicago, and I think it's a wonderful series of poems. It may be too long for you to do all of them but it really gives a sense of the city, and then a sense again of the boy growing up, growing up in this case to the forbidden

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world of sexuality. John Gill: I could read one or two of those, perhaps the fourth one, which is sort of fun. Morton Marcus: Okay.

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John Gill: Because it actually happened, too. I must have been probably pretty young. This is called: FROM CHICAGO, it's the last section. I was probably digging to China and almost through when somebody

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gave me the exciting news: a naked woman and a naked man are on the roof of the apartment house next door, five flights up. I dropped my shovel and scanned the brick horizon, squinting against the sun, like Adam after creation, wonder

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filling every muscle, sack, and pore, sprouting visionary senses. A naked woman, breast swinging as she pranced, her blinding v and her fat bouncing buttocks; and a man, his bushy crotch, with his flag wagging semaphore. I knew that they must

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be drunk, up on top of the world on a hot tar roof, waving and looking down on the walking dummies below, sedately zipped in their skins, flags and negatives furled. Oh, it was wrong. It was wrong. I mean, to drink and not to be at work or

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quiet in the daytime, and to climb on the roof and prance and shock the neighborhood to bring the cops to drag them off, shouting obscenities? I never did see them up there. Although I looked for weeks, scanning that brick horizon faithfully,

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better than saying prayers, and entered without knowing at another of Adam's worlds. Morton Marcus: Great. I love the description of the first one too, of the sense of Chicago that you're having there. Okay,

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I don't want to obviously say where all of this is going. Did you have a sense of what you were going to write about? I mean, obviously with Rimbaud, the short west wind poem, and before that the Keats. I mean, there's a real-

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John Gill: Jump around, yeah. Morton Marcus: But there's also a sense of the world as magic and the world is very, again, erotic, very sensual. And a lot of these poems are about the awakening to sexuality, the

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awakening to threat, if you will, or the awakening to the- yeah, I guess the erotic would be it. John Gill: [Cross talk] It actually reminds me- what you said that reminds me of something. I have an early poem

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that I wrote, and it's called, "Fragments." Morton Marcus: Oh, I love this poem. It- you know, I must tell you, this is one of the ones I wanted you to read tonight and I can tell you just where it is.

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John Gill: Yeah, it's on page. I got it. Morton Marcus: You got it? Okay. John Gill: This has to do with just like- the starting image was a bit of broken vase.

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A bit of broken vase, a disappearing foot, the contest of Greek youth, perhaps, leg kicked back and flying for the goal. Or some lonely hunter after spoil, hunted in reverse and fleeing wildly Actaeon, the moment that he turned away from

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Artemis, when joy in the world of death flooded his soul with nightmare ecstasy. Or myself having run, now with ease, watching a boy racing down the street, leap up gratefully- gracefully for the curb, as if he were air and could defy body

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twice. A fragment, disappearing quietly from the picture but leaving behind some hope for a leap greater than all the others, invulnerable, wounds that always heal. I guess what I was saying there was that Actaeon, of course, was

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the hunter who spied Artemis in her bath, and she turned him into a stag and her dogs tore him to pieces. So I guess there's something there about women, the fear of women when I was young and at that age. And also, "The leap greater than all

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the others, invulnerable, wounds that always heal," of course, is the world of art, I guess, that I was probably thinking about, without even knowing it. Morton Marcus: You know-

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John Gill: The ideal. Morton Marcus: Yeah, you know, I said that I really love this poem, I wanted you to read it. The last time I was in Greece -- how's that for a pompous statement -- but the last time I

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was in Greece and went to the National Archaeological Museum, I was struck in all of these statues they have there, by this one statue that all there was was an indentation where a foot had been. And I said, I took the name down of the time and who

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they thought the sculpture was and everything. And I said, I have to write about this, because it is about time suddenly disappearing, it is about all the pasts, you know, which remind us about our mortality and yet take us into

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the future. It's sort of this real circular thing and to me, that's one of the things that fragments do and the great leap -- the greater than all the others -- into art, into the spiritual, or into some other realm that we the living can't

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imagine. And for some reason I thought, my god, this was the poem I was never able to write and he just sort of captured that. Even by using the Greek mythology in here, it gives that sense and, of course, you're talking about the Greek youth,

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perhaps leg kicked back and flying for the goal. John Gill: Yeah. Morton Marcus: So I'm not going to write that poem since you've done it so well.

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John Gill: Oh, you'll write another one. Morton Marcus: Maybe about a Greek arm that [cross talk]. Yeah, that's wonderful. Let us go on. You know, you were maturing and obviously then became a publisher-editor at a

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time when poetry was going through a tremendous amount of upheaval. Probably when you were going to school, everything was very, very academic, very, very closed, and yet the Crossing Press never paid any attention to that. It was one of the real

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liberating presses of the 60s. What's your idea of what went on then and what you were trying to achieve in the Crossing Press and your own poetry? John Gill: Well, actually, I'd met a Canadian poet, Earle

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Birney, who's one of the deans of Canadian poetry. And I liked his poems; I wrote him a letter and said, would you please send me your books. And- no, I didn't write him actually, I wrote his publisher. And for some reason, the Canadian publisher wrote

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back months later and said, "I'm sorry, we can't ship books out of Canada. We can't give them to you." Morton Marcus: Wow. John Gill: So I wrote Birney himself and so he gave me all of

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them, of course. And he said in his letter, he said, here's some books you might like. If you know of anybody that would publish my poetry -- I couldn't think of anybody because I didn't know that much and I lived in the country -- so I

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said, "Yes, I can do it. I'll start a magazine called, 'New American and Canadian Poetry'." Morton Marcus: So that's how it happened. John Gill: So I did that for ten years.

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Morton Marcus: Mhm. John Gill: Published the magazine. There was a way of getting- since I did live upstate New York, you know, near Cayuga Lake and in the country, it gave me an audience and it

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gave me contacts, world. And I went from there to doing little chapbooks. Of course, that was a time when the National Endowment of the Arts was also coming in and giving money to poets or small presses, so I was riding the crest of that wave. And

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finally that dried up. And Elaine, my partner, said, "You know, John, we could do something with this commercially." And I had quit my job teaching, I was a professor at the college and I couldn't take the faculty at the faculty

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meetings, so I just quit. So I was in dire straits, you might say, we started the press and we just kept going. Now we've been in business publishing now for twenty years. Morton Marcus: So that's how news started. And of course, one

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of the original publishers of some of my early work that appeared in the "Santa Cruz Mountain Poems," I mean, years and years before we even met. John Gill: Yeah, I remember that.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, well, so this is, again, we've had you on here before, maybe some of the listeners remember how we were talking about those times. The new book, by the way, I should say out there, the new- that th new book tomorrow night wil

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be on sale at the Capitola Boo Cafe. And John will be down the e signing copies of the boo . It's a gorgeous little boo with a Mali figure, which I'l talk to John about in a mom nt. And he will be reading and signing the book at 7:30 tom

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rrow night in the Capitola Boo Cafe. So make it on down, esp cially if you like what you hea tonight and want to meet Joh and even say some words to him What about- you said that you wanted to sort of find a pla e for your poetry, it seems lik

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, to get a sense of place in yo r poetry, and you did live in up er New York State? John Gill: Yeah, I think I went away because I realized that I couldn't live in New York City, even though I did for years

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before I went up to upstate New York. And I had this Thoreau-li e notion that somehow if I g t away from the world -- I wouldn't call it a retreat, b t I was trying to find where I w s and what I was doing, what y life would add up to, and

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I think I pulled away from t e city. And in a sense, I pull d away from like what they ca l the poetry gang too, I'm sur . And I retreated, in a sense, a d then and sort of gathered myse f and went up and lived in t e country for about twenty year

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Morton Marcus: Would you mind- John Gill: I can read some of those poems. John Gill: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Yeah, how about starting off with something more

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Morton Marcus: Anyway, this gives a real sense of place, and ghostly, which on page 73, which really gives a sense of the place. I should tell you that not only obviously am I from New York, but I spent some of the worst time of my life right up

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here, being inducted into the Air Force and being prepared to go over to Korea. And I mean, Sampson Air Force Base was one o the most horrendous places i the world in winter because o that wind coming off the Finge Lakes, it was murder, murder

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gives a sense of the history too because the Great Five Nations- John Gill: That's right and Sullivan, of course, was sent by Washington to conquer the Iroquois, of course were siding with the British. So he came in on his Devastation March and it

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talks about that, and it talks about what these- what that kind of country means to me, even though I lived in it, you know, but I still felt something about it that was very, very hard to reconcile. So this is called:

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SOMETHING MORE GHOSTLY This is not an unkind land, upstate New York, Finger Lakes region, where glacial lakes keep their cold till mid July, and rocky canyons bring the water down past great falls and cliffs

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of shale to fill bony fingers -- Skaneateles, Owasco, Cayuga, Seneca, Canandaigua -- ghostly names, still treading the past, not used. Recreation areas, hopefully on the map, were early bright empire cities -- Elmira, Binghamton, Bath, Geneva,

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Watkins, Glen, Aurora, Auburn -- their Victorian grace and gimcrack gentility linger in a faint smell of dust. A few streets where the way the light is sometimes laid, gray and nostalgic, like the heartless past of empire, and Sullivan's

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stolid March and rape, where even his men -- their war hoops of joy less commanding -- grew tired of destroying such quantities, abounding tons and acres of corn piled and burnt, delightful peach and apple orchards girdled, villages wiped

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out so the savages won't come back. No adventure lift, his raiders saw the land, returned to divide and farm and speculate. "Why them Indians had fine log houses, windows filled with something look like glass, better than what I had back

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east, so we came." Where even now we camp on conquered ground right off the highway and something more ghostly rings us in, a restlessness, a vague fear, the distaste as simple as the weather for this quietly spectacular land whose ancient

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people, Seneca, meant people of stone. The stones remain. Morton Marcus: Terrific reading. Great, read beautifully. If you want to continue with reading some of these poems, please do. John Gill: Yeah, well, I think I must be Scotch or Celtic in some

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way, so I have sort of a dourness about me I think in some of these poems that I realized. There's another one that I sort of liked that's a little more positive, but it takes the settlers' side of the thing. And it has to do with my

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riding on my car every day to go to work past the local cemetery in the country, for the early settlers were buried, and this is a poem about that. Riding down cemetery road, passing cornfields and houses,

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coming up a slight rise, Smith Woods on the left, the cemetery grounds on the right. Pretty is a picture with trees, lots of bushes, and countless rows of headstones: from great big to little, straight and tilted, some decorated with plastic

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flowers and plastic greens. A few ugly crips, a statue in pensive style, either an angel or a daughter. No birds, it's late November but even in spring, it's quiet here. And lots and lots of names, not just son and father and mother and

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daughter or beloved, but real soil-smacking names like Nay, O'Keeffe, Griswald, Tupper, Vander Haven, and Poole. And I thought, almost like I saw, bones pull from the ground, sweeping up and down rows, arms to shoulders, to heads, to

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bodies, to legs clacking up out of those graves swirling to catch arms and dance -- ha, ha! To dance. It took just a minute. I even saw bonnets on the women and huge skirts over petticoats. And why not? I thought. It's possible it happened. Right now,

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even though I looked and saw acres of headstones like patient teeth still biting, everybody danced, everybody had a good time. I guess that's a poem on mortality, I guess you might

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say. Morton Marcus: Okay. John Gill: There's one that I really like also, if you don't mind, that had more to do with- it's like an inner poem, yet it

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combines nature with a whole sense of something larger. It's called: SPRING RAIN Morton Marcus: Yeah.

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John Gill: It's on page 78. This is sort of like a mood poem. What could be sad, sorrowful leaps of the imagination. Rain falling in the garden on the peonies, on the snowy green hydrangeas, what leaps? And on the crisp tea roses, tiny

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fingerling leaps. Suave, erasure, thunder, bumbling. Swallows weaving low baskets of rain, damp hearts of flowers opening. Later when it will be day or even the other, not to be mentioned, night, where leaps are indeed leaps, toes come out

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to hug the darker shadows, their soft sacks of skin pulsing much faster than the night seems. Cold rain in the garden and hot, hot leaps. I am swimming in my mother's body. I leap, my father leaps, we leap again and again.

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Morton Marcus: Yes, that's a poem that I like very much. And whenever you do get into your father in this book, there's around three other times, he's a very mythic figure. He doesn't come off as flesh and blood, but he comes off as a mythic

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presence, from a presence that was there when you sneak into the room, and then look at his drawer- John Gill: Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: And things like that. But what I would love you

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to do in connection with that last poem is read the two poems of the Aztec peoples. In fact, I don't even know that the second one is an Aztec poem, and that is on page 9 and 10. They are marvelous poems. I know the first one is the epigraph to the

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book or part one, but is the second one yours? Because that's marvelous also. John Gill: Yeah, the second one's mine, but actually, that's part of what I meant by the title of the book, "Between

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Worlds," because I somehow got caught up in this- between worlds, Aztec world, this world, and we are part of it. I mean, somehow that I saw, I just felt the connections. This and there's a prologue to the whole book, really, which is actually

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a translation of- from a real- another Aztec, a real Aztec poem that goes way back, of course. And here, this is: THE AZTEC POEM What am I to go with, those flowers which have closed? Will

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my name be nothing sometime? Will I leave nothing behind me in the world? At least flowers, at least songs. How is my heart to work? Perhaps we come in vain to live, to come like springs upon dry earth.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, that is such a marvelous poem. John Gill: Yeah, that's from a book titled, "Poems of the Aztec Peoples." I'm sorry I don't know, the- Morton Marcus: That's just marvelous because I'm always

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looking for poems that keep me alive. And that really does it because, first of all, you know, he says that, "We at least have flowers and songs." You know, if we don't know what we're doing here, if maybe we're doing nothing here. And then says, he

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makes this leap, you know, and says, "Perhaps we come in vain to live to live. And perhaps we come like springs upon a dry earth." And that going back to, you know, the songs and the flowers, I mean, we're here to make some joy.

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John Gill: But some of those some of those early Aztec poems were written by the noblemen. Morton Marcus: Yeah. John Gill: And they're beautiful.

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Morton Marcus: That's why I was- but your poem on the next page is equally as marvelous. John Gill: Well, you know, I don't like to analyze my own poems too much but it occurred to me that we're a

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violence-prone civilization, not too different now -- you'd say, well, yeah, different -- but the Aztecs and the Mayans were violence-prone, with their sacrifices and so forth. We have our own way of doing it, you know, with all the guns and the

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killings and, of course, I won't have to say any more about that. So I took the sun, which is the Aztec power that they worship the sun was we should too, and I took that and sort of talked about the Aztecs and came back to where we are today. And sort

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of, well, we'll see. Anyways, this has no title: The sun, the biggest flower of all, each day it rises dripping in the east to spread its crimson shadow on the lawn. The Aztecs held their victims down, body arc in a taut bow, heart

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rushing the rib cage, breath by suspended breath, then, with expert thrust and twist, they scooped the muscle from its bowl, held it up still pulsing to the sun, the sun renewed and fed. Thus they could rejoice, the flower of death blossoms,

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becomes the flower of life to warm us all. The sun, the biggest flower of all, each day rises dripping in the east to spread its crimson shadow on the lawn. Morton Marcus: Marvelous poem. We are talking with John Gill in

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celebration of his, "Between Worlds: New and Selected Poems." We will return with Mr. Gill after a short break and I want to remind you also that John Gill will be reading from his book and signing books tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Capitola

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Book Cafe on 41st Avenue. Now we will take a musical break and come back with some PSA- We'd like to make some announcements as we usually do at this time with the Poetry Show. And KUSP thanks

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Stapleton's Grocery for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Stapleton's Grocery specializes in organic produce and unadulterated comestibles in the Farmers Exchange Building in Santa Cruz. And we thank them,

00:30:35.800 - 00:30:59.900

they have been a marvelous steady support of this show. Dennis Morton has been just grand. Thank you, Dennis. And in fact, we want to thank everyone out there who has been helping us to make a KUSP Spring Roll a never ending success,

00:31:00.260 - 00:31:22.880

which it has been. In fact, what we would like to do is remind you of the 17th annual auction because the 17th annual KUSP auction will take place at the Octagon Museum and Abbott Square in downtown Santa Cruz from June 1st to June 6th. We produce over

00:31:22.880 - 00:31:37.130

ten thousand catalogs, which lists hundreds of items in the auction and goes to press at the end of the month. Now is the time to give us a call if you'd like to donate a service or merchandise to the 17th annual KUSP radio auction. Call during

00:31:37.130 - 00:32:00.470

the day, 476-2800, that is if you want to donate something to the 17th annual auction which is taking place on the first or the sixth of June. Call 476-2800, or if you're out of the area, 1-800-655-KUSP. Okay so it is returning to downtown Santa

00:32:00.470 - 00:32:15.740

Cruz, the auction, that's marvelous. It's been a while. Also to stimulate all six senses at the closing celebration of "Behold: Life Anew" with works by visual and performance artists Bruce Lee and Diane Martel, this Saturday, April

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24th at 5pm at the Art League. Lee will present "Boundary Conditions," a piece about the distances and intimacy between humans. And Martel gives us "The Majesty of Aliveliness," a performance on life renewal and transcendence. These special

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performances are part of the closing celebration for the Santa Cruz Art League's exhibition, "Behold: Life Anew." The Art League is located at 526 Broadway in Santa Cruz. KUSP, that's us, is pleased to co-sponsor this event.

00:32:56.620 - 00:33:15.880

And Garrison Keillor's American Radio Company will be broadcast live from San Jose on May 15th. KUSP and KQED FM and the Center for Literary Arts will present this performance at the San Jose State Event Center. The show begins at 3pm and runs until

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5pm. Tickets are now available at the San Jose State Events Center box office, walk up only. From city box office in San Francisco or through Bass Tickets, by phone or Bass Outlets, including the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. For more

00:33:31.330 - 00:33:54.790

information about Garrison Keillor's coming appearance in San Jose, call KUSP at 800-655-KUSP or 476-2800 and that is- call up during the day for information on that. Now last but not least- well not last, but next to last:

00:33:54.820 - 00:34:11.080

penultimates, what you always hear me advertising every Poetry show that I'm here is Wednesday night at 9pm, KUSP presents the popular pairings of Oscar and Tony Award winning actors with short stories by acclaimed contemporary and classical

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authors, Selected Shorts, Wednesdays at nine. This week, "The Duchess and the Jeweler," by Virginia Woolf read by Irene Werth and, "The Adventures of a Reader," by Italo Calvino read by John Shea. So tune in tomorrow to one of my favorite

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shows on KUSP, "Selected Shorts." You'll have a marvelous time and get in touch once more with the spoken word, coming magically alive and evoking words in your magical minds. Lastly, may I call your attention to a play for poets

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and lovers from the Celtic Verse Theater. The Art League of- Theater of Santa Cruz is featuring a rare presentation of the comic drama "Under Milkwood" by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He is renowned for his rich, colorful language, scarcely

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matched anywhere in the English tongue. And it is a marvelous play of voices as we watch the town, Laugharne, where Dylan Thomas grew up and spent most of his life come alive in a memorable series of characters as we travel through a whole day

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in "Under Milkwood." Regular shows are each Friday and Saturday night at 8pm through April 24th, with a special low-income affordable show on Sunday, the 18th. That's coming up this Sunday- no, it came up last Sunday. So you're coming up

00:35:33.870 - 00:35:56.370

on the last weekend of this production of "Under Milkwood" at the Art League Theater 8pm on Friday and Saturday. You can call 475-2012 for added information, 475-2012 in area code 408.

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Well, dear listener, we will now get back to the evening at hand, which is a talk with the poet John Gill, who has just released, "Between Worlds: New and Selected Poems," through Hanging Loose Press of New York. And we have been talking to John

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about his early years, about where he lived, and he's been reading us poetry about all those different areas. And as I said, tomorrow night he will be signing copies of his book and giving a reading at the Capitola Book Cafe on 41st Avenue. So

00:36:31.910 - 00:36:48.740

John, after that rather long break- John Gill: Morton, I'd like to read a poem that just sort of deals, you might say it's like a fable, dealing with a midlife crisis. It's called:

00:36:48.780 - 00:37:00.740

THE MAN AND THE YOUNG GARDENER Morton Marcus: Wonderful. John Gill: Why are tears salty and hot? I'll tell you. Once upon a time, in the land of pleasure, honey, and gull(?),

00:37:01.310 - 00:37:15.200

there lived a man who was growing old. He didn't like it, of course, but he didn't know what to do. His sons were grown and left home. And his wife was no help, since she had decided that her magic tortoise was broken, and that her only

00:37:15.200 - 00:37:32.630

recourse was to grow old and to die a good death. The man saw no point in this, nor to her constant discussions of how they should retrench, sell their big house, buy a small one, live near town, except, except, finally, the coffin in the

00:37:32.630 - 00:37:47.480

ground. Let her wither up and die, he thought, he was not ready. He had an urge to dye his white hair to a pleasant shade of brown, the way it used to be in his youth. But how could he suddenly appear before his friends and acquaintances? They

00:37:47.480 - 00:38:03.830

would ask questions, or worse, not say anything but give him snickering or pitying looks. Wouldn't just hair grow out? And when it rained, wouldn't the dye run? He thought next of keeping himself busy by going to meetings, attending concerts,

00:38:03.860 - 00:38:18.530

plays, and lectures on up to date topics. He also brought a puppy and a kitten to live in his house. But these activities didn't solve anything because when he came home late at night after a lecture or play, and sat on the edge of his bed to remove

00:38:18.530 - 00:38:34.580

his shoes, his bones grumbled and his mind collapsed, just like a deflated balloon. And when he looked in the bathroom mirror, the lines on his face and neck, and his lackluster eyes and his soft paunch, he wondered where his life had

00:38:34.580 - 00:38:49.370

gone. Things went on this dreary way until one day as he was sitting in his study -- as he usually did in the morning after breakfast -- he looked up from his desk, which faced a picture window, and saw a young man pushing a wheelbarrow in the

00:38:49.370 - 00:39:10.370

garden. It was the new gardener. He was tall, thin, loosely gated, and quite handsome, with dark glossy hair, sporting a neat mustache. As the man set there, the young man saw him watching and saluted him with a friendly but restrained gesture.

00:39:11.180 - 00:39:23.930

The man was pleased. And from that day on, he made it a habit to greet the gardener from his study window. In fact, he found himself anticipating their silent greeting so much that one day when the gardener didn't show up, the man felt

00:39:23.930 - 00:39:40.670

disappointed. He thought of the young man's face, his features, his walk, his patient filling of the wheelbarrow, and his slow gait as he wheeled it away. He sighed deeply because the young man was not there, and he pined all that day and the next day.

00:39:40.670 - 00:39:55.070

On the third day, there was the young man again as cheerful and good looking, as if he hadn't been away at all. The man was so suddenly joyful, that he realized he had filled his mind with a young man to the point where the rest of his life was

00:39:55.070 - 00:40:12.980

meaningless. What good was anything without the young man's presence? To see his youthful form, his slim hips, his bobbing walk, his shy vigor. The man felt love flood his heart. He didn't account it strange because it was so vivid, so

00:40:12.980 - 00:40:29.090

destined. Of course, while he felt all these things, he also knew somewhere that he was being a fool. But it made no difference, he was reckless who had been timid all his life. But shall I go on to the details of how the man came out of his

00:40:29.090 - 00:40:45.680

study one day, how he worked alongside the young man and talked to him finding out about his life, how he tried to woo the young man who was flattered and repelled, how the man suffered, being so close and so far away at the same time, how

00:40:45.680 - 00:41:04.250

the man turned on the spit of love roasting in his lust, and how finally the young man in his kindness and cruelty told the man that he was too old and awkward to help him in the garden. Then the man cried hot, salty tears. Tears hot is his

00:41:04.250 - 00:41:24.380

passion, and salty because salt preserves while it kills, like the impossible highways of the sea trying to overwhelm the land rising up, then subsiding only to rise again. The man cried for many days in his study, pacing back and forth, looking

00:41:24.380 - 00:41:48.410

mournfully out the window. Then one day he stopped pacing, dried his eyes, sharpened a pencil, opened a notebook, and sat down at his desk, where without once glancing up, he began to write. Morton Marcus: Hey, would you like to tell us about that

00:41:49.850 - 00:42:00.490

fable? In other words, it very much isn't it like, "The Fragment?" John Gill: That- yeah. Morton Marcus: After the physical life, you know, goes,

00:42:00.520 - 00:42:14.710

the only way one saves one's youth because though there is certainly an edge, you know, of homosexuality and homosexual attraction in the poem, it's really the older man and the younger man, it's looking back at the youth and the real-

00:42:15.700 - 00:42:27.800

John Gill: [Cross talk] Probably has narcissism, the narcissistic in some ways self looking back at the youth, at your own youth. Morton Marcus: Yeah and then the way of saving it is that great leap, which is the leap into art.

00:42:28.130 - 00:42:39.350

John Gill: I guess you're right, Morton, I never thought of that. Thank you for that observation. Morton Marcus: I should also say that the book is composed not only of free verse poems, but also of prose poems. And-

00:42:39.000 - 00:42:52.660

John Gill: That was a more of a prose-like poem. Morton Marcus: More of a prose-like piece and others are prose poems. This is more like a parable, or even a fairy tale in many ways with its language. But so there are a lot of forms,

00:42:52.660 - 00:43:05.050

different forms in here that you use. And the book looks different as you just thumb through it. You see there are short lines, there are long lines, you know- John Gill: I don't rhyme, of course, but I tried- I tried in

00:43:05.050 - 00:43:19.390

the last few years to get away from the idea of a line, just say, well, I just write it and see how it comes. I'm not going to pay attention unless it comes naturally, unless the line is there to begin with, you know? I bet you there's one thing here

00:43:19.390 - 00:43:36.160

that's kind of fun, it's more philosophic, on page 84. And I don't know why I wrote this one except you always, you know, they always say that poets can write about anything, or that people can write about anything, poets shouldn't be restricted by

00:43:36.160 - 00:43:49.390

anything. So I thought, well, heck, I can do a poem sitting on the john, so I did. Anyway, this has to do with my ancestors and life and everything else. Morton Marcus: And then this is another prose poem?

00:43:49.450 - 00:44:02.860

John Gill: Yeah. It occurred to me the other night, sitting on the john and staring blankly at a bath towel, my mouth open, that there's an awful lot of animal nature in us. My ancestors, Scottish sheep

00:44:02.860 - 00:44:20.350

herders, probably stared at the hill mist while guarding sheep, their lives oozing away in front of their noses. Nothing going on, but so easy and lovely it was that all was forgiven, forgotten, like the airy mist around them that gathered or

00:44:20.350 - 00:44:41.860

dispersed so intimately, so grandly. And if a sheep died or gave birth, or if their own misfortunes and joys were recorded, it went along with the same animal stare out of a face untouched by time and traveling light. No matter the agonies

00:44:41.920 - 00:44:59.920

inherent in our lives, the bathroom stare redeems us and makes us one. All things breathing in the same light at the same level of eternal dumbness, which is our gift from the gods.

00:45:03.070 - 00:45:23.920

Sort of redeems us. So- Morton Marcus: Keep going. If you want to read some of these, we can talk about influences. And I would mention that because you have in part two of the new poems some portraits of people,

00:45:23.920 - 00:45:39.700

one you've mentioned which is Rimbaud, and then you have Thomas Eakins photographs Walt Whitman, an area that I think some of your most marvelous poems, a long book-length poem called, "The Diary of Peter Doyle-"

00:45:39.750 - 00:45:56.730

John Gill: Yeah, that's the story of Walt Whitman and his, you might say his love affair or his love of Peter Doyle, a streetcar conductor, a seventeen year old streetcar conductor. Of course, Whitman was probably in his 50s or 60s of the time, but

00:45:56.730 - 00:46:15.870

they had a very, very close relationship for four or five years. I went into Peter's mind actually and imagined that Peter Doyle, Whitman's friend kept a diary, and imagined how he would record their relationship. The funny thing is, another poet

00:46:15.870 - 00:46:27.870

years ago when it first came out, when I saw him, he says, "Gee, I didn't know that Peter Doyle wrote a diary," he said, "where'd you get that?" I sort of laughed. I didn't- I didn't put him down or anything but I- it occurred to me as kind of

00:46:27.870 - 00:46:36.600

funny. Peter was pretty illiterate, I mean, he wrote a few letters. Morton Marcus: Yeah, there is a photograph of them, isn't there, in which Peter is sitting with sort of a little Derby hat-

00:46:36.870 - 00:46:49.140

John Gill: Turned up? Yeah. He and Walter sort of facing each other and smiling at each other. It was a nice relationship, very nice. They had his problems, so anyway, that's a longer poem of mine.

00:46:49.420 - 00:47:04.590

Morton Marcus: Anyway, there is a selection of that in the book, the back that ends the book. And- but anyway, you might want to read some of these portraits, Machado, or- John Gill: I don't know if people would know- I do have-

00:47:05.640 - 00:47:19.860

maybe if I, since we're talking about Whitman, maybe I can do the poem here on page 35 called, "Thomas Eakins." Now, Eakins of course was a famous painter, and everybody in Philadelphia knows Thomas Eakins. And he was also a photographer and he photographed

00:47:19.860 - 00:47:33.600

a series of photographs of Walt Whitman. There's one photograph in particular that this came from, and it's Whitman very- it's almost as if you're floating away. His hair is like an aura around his face and he's sitting on these animals skins

00:47:34.230 - 00:47:47.970

and he's very old, very, very fragile, but it's the most beautiful, most beautiful photograph. Anyway, this is my take on that particular photograph: THOMAS EAKINS' PHOTOGRAPHS OF WALT WHITMAN, 1887

00:47:49.580 - 00:48:14.210

Surprised by the camera, so close, on the verge of a cliff, and possible stampede, beard and hair a wild crown flying, your eyes agape, could you be sanctified at this late moment by camera kiss, great shaggy creature sitting on skins, hands

00:48:14.210 - 00:48:33.170

gripping the arms of the chair, almost paddeling the skies. Dip to the water and drink, Walt. I've got you now on plate. Are you the affectionate comrade I've been looking for, born of the harsh mother of this continent with that shy animal

00:48:33.170 - 00:48:55.640

look in your eyes? Surprised by the hunters, the [unidentified] even as you entice them, wrap them in your embrace. Here, you pose so vulnerable, like a child moments before its face blurs in tears. I see you this way forever, Walt, about to leave

00:48:55.640 - 00:49:20.240

us. But the camera lies or tells only a partial truth. "Apart from the pulling and hauling, we stand, both in and out of the game." Freed by what we've captured, beyond ordinary pleasure, ordinary pain.

00:49:21.140 - 00:49:36.020

Of course those lines, "Apart from the pulling and hauling we stand both in and out of the game," that's- those are lines that Walt Whitman wrote, of course. Morton Marcus: This is a perfect time to read a poem that I know

00:49:36.020 - 00:49:49.850

you wanted to read and which we, if we didn't take a break, we probably would have gone on to immediately. Again, it talks about your father and it brings in the Aztec order of things, that's on page 54, "Like the Blank Side of the Moon."

00:49:50.090 - 00:49:58.400

John Gill: Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: I know that was a poem you wanted to read. And since Whitman is the father of us all, to give it a good segue, maybe this is the perfect time to read that.

00:49:58.690 - 00:50:17.320

John Gill: Okay. Yeah, this talks of course about the Aztec practice of- they had their sacrifices and they also flayed victims' skins. I don't know how they did it, but this is what they did. And I somehow, I- oh well, I'll just read the poem

00:50:17.590 - 00:50:31.660

instead of blabbing on about it. My father died, of course- maybe one thing I can say is that my father died without my really getting close to him, and so my father's spirit always does seem to hang in front of me, you know, even to this day. He was

00:50:31.660 - 00:50:43.750

on the other side of the country when he died and he kept saying, "Oh, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. If you come, you'll alert your mother and she'll get worried." So I said, "Well, if you want it that way, that's your call," and I refused- I didn't even go to

00:50:43.750 - 00:51:06.490

his death or his funeral. Anyway: LIKE THE BLANK SIDE OF THE MOON My father's spirit hangs in the dark, he is always there. And as I move it moves, a loose second skin breathing long after he's

00:51:06.490 - 00:51:31.270

dead. I honor him. He has become ritual. I've become the Aztec priest putting on the flayed victims skin and dancing, so I wear my father from the inside, looking out to see the fallen world rise again.

00:51:32.290 - 00:51:41.590

Of course, that's continuity, the father and son. I'm sure, Morton, you've looked in the mirror and said, "Oh, my God, I look like just like a father," or you would do a gesture, you'll say something and you'll be stopped and say, "Oh, my God,

00:51:41.590 - 00:51:54.580

that's my father speaking. It's me." Morton Marcus: This is just beautifully done. I mean, not only because it's so spare but it's very, very meaningful, just stressing the very, very primitive ritual gesture of it,

00:51:54.730 - 00:52:06.280

just great. John Gill: On the inside looking out, yeah. Morton Marcus: We are a few minutes away from abandoning this studio. And why don't you read one or two more poems that

00:52:06.280 - 00:52:20.470

you really wanted to read? John Gill: I wanted to read one, if I could find it. It's called, "Before the Thaw." And the reason I want to read it is it's written for Lyn Lifshin and I know she came here and read a

00:52:20.470 - 00:52:30.050

few years ago. Morton Marcus: She's been here several times, right. John Gill: Yeah and she came up to Trumansburg years and years ago, we had a sort of a commune at that time, and we were

00:52:30.050 - 00:52:41.720

putting on poetry shows and things. And Lyn, I think, was in love again, she's perennially in love, as she wasn't paying any attention to me. Of course, I as getting just a little a noyed.

00:52:41.720 - 00:53:00.050

BEFORE THE THAW, for Lyn Have you seen me at all, riding country roads right down the center, the blinding light from the snow everywhere, going to milk barns to buy milk raw? We're looking out at the barns

00:53:00.050 - 00:53:18.830

from the study window, just waiting for them to collapse forever. Indian ghosts underground, suburbs advancing in shock waves, the highway belting along from the city, taking that cornered field of evergreens. The hawk reduced

00:53:18.830 - 00:53:35.910

from the dead tree by the pond. If so, you already know what I mean about country pleasures and are waiting like me for the thaw. That's a little bit of a sour take on country, but yours even

00:53:35.910 - 00:53:48.970

in the country you feel the impingement, you know, of people moving out and moving in and everything disappearing. Morton Marcus: And do you still keep in touch with Lyn at all? John Gill: Once in a while, every couple years, she'll write

00:53:48.970 - 00:53:58.240

me and tell me what's happening. Morton Marcus: Now she was out here and she had done a film. John Gill: That's right. Morton Marcus: And so we showed the film, a lot of people came,

00:53:58.240 - 00:54:12.760

and she discussed it and things like that. But she'd been out here around two or three other times years ago, and actually I'd been back there and stayed at her place and we had a very nice time. That was when she was still married and that was

00:54:12.760 - 00:54:22.840

coming to an end, and I'm afraid I walked right into her house, yeah, into that whole thing. Yeah, how about one more poem and then I think we are going into the stratosphere.

00:54:22.960 - 00:54:33.700

John Gill: Okay, this is a little short one that again goes back to country. It's called: JARS OF JAM, it's about a man, an old timer who lives by himself in the country.

00:54:34.410 - 00:54:56.370

Jars of jam that his mother made on the shelf and his mother dead. Should he eat the jam, watch it mold, or throw it away? Preserve it further? Not likely. And the taste, delicate jelly crab, tart currant, blackcaps losing their flavor to neutral,

00:54:56.670 - 00:55:18.000

to nothing, to bad, faster than he could ever eat. He sits at the kitchen table unutterably sad. Morton Marcus: Well, it doesn't open things [cross talk] it sort of closes and everyone now has a glum look on their face. We have

00:55:18.000 - 00:55:31.320

been talking, I have been talking -- unless I become two people -- I've been talking with John Gill, whose "New and Selected Poems, Between Worlds," has just been released by Hanging Loose Press of Brooklyn, New York, a beautiful little

00:55:31.320 - 00:55:49.890

book. And tomorrow night, John will be reading and signing copies of his book at the Capitola Book Cafe on 41st Avenue. I hope that you will be out there, that starts at 7:30 and say hello to John, tell him you heard him on KUSP. I would

00:55:49.890 - 00:56:08.820

like to thank Courtney, John M. Courtney and Associates Physical Therapy for providing a grant in support of the next portion, of the second portion of our show. John M. Courtney and Associates Physical Therapy at Dominican Rehabilitation Services on

00:56:08.820 - 00:56:23.610

Frederick Street in Santa Cruz specializing in spinal, joint, and sports injuries. Thank you, Mr. Courtney, thank you for coming aboard. Thank all you out there. Next week, Joe will be back with you. I will be back two weeks after that with an

00:56:23.610 - 00:56:40.470

interview and a reading by Alicia Ostriker, the wonderful w iter from New York, a very p ovocative lady whose articles a d prose pieces have been t king the literary world by s orm. And she's been out here f r the last several months and n

00:56:40.470 - 00:56:57.390

one seems to know she's here, s do tune in two weeks from n w. Stay tuned for Larry Blood i "Out Front Outback,' which is coming up next. And you know what you're listening to? You're listening to KUSP community sponsored radio here on Monterey

00:56:57.390 - 00:57:02.670

Bay, 88.9 FM on your dial. See you in two weeks, fo