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Ken Weisner: When a poem happens, I'll have it happen like a new moon. A little more each night, back from the dead, like the slow backwards turn illusion of a fan, actually spinning the opposite direction, blurring into one circle. So the

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night lifts its light backwards across the sky, over another gear of time, until it is complete. Morton Marcus: That was Ken Weisner reading from his new book, "The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians." And tonight on the

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Poetry Show, me, that's your host Mort Marcus, will be talking to Ken about this book and about his poetry. And I sort of don't want to astound Ken when I started this, but I just want to say to the people out there that as a poet and poetry

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teacher, I go from one year to the next, looking for a poet who will suddenly do something unique. Will do something nique with a language, will do t ings by writing about the s bjects that were common to us a l. In Ken's case, the subjects a

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e family, hiking, homage to d ad parents, the wonders of m sic, visiting the tombs of d ad Indian chiefs, just very, v ry commonplace things, but w at he does with them and the l nguage he uses, and the tone o voice he gets, are totally h

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s own, totally unique, and t ey freshen the language and t e art of poetry, which f eshens all our lives. And Ken, c ming upon this book was an a tonishment to me, because I'd k own you for years, but I'd o ly heard one or two poems by y

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u. Ken Weisner: Well, Mort, those are such kind words. Thanks for having me here tonight and I'm really, really happy to be sharing this evening, this hour with you.

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Morton Marcus: Well, that's great. I should say also out there that sounded serious. A lot of Ken's poems are extremely humorous. And why, shall we start with one of them? I'd like you know, here's one which you may not be asked to do. But why

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don't we start with one to your son, which has so many implications to it and it's the poem on page 20, which is called, "The Builder." Ken Weisner: I'd be happy to read that.

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Morton Marcus: And since it was for most of the day a sunny day and a lot of people were at the beach, I'm sure everyone has seen a kid building in the sand. And yet this has such a wonderful resonance to it, to really just building a life,

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building a poem, building a piece of music, building into the future. Ken Weisner: Thanks, Mort. I'll read that, "The Builder," and my son James, who this was written for is just on his way back to

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college, as we speak, on the Amtrak Starlight Express, but at the time of this experience, he was probably 11 or 12, maybe 11. It's called: THE BUILDER, FOR JAMES

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Brings a garden shovel to the beach, digs wide and deep just at the waterline, dogs and bullies edge close, but fade and fade in grudging homage to his emerging goudy spines and regal silvery pools of tidal brine. Through it all, his hands on the

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shovel his hands spinning the bucket, he builds. The builder builds and does not look up. I take his brothers somewhere. An hour later, I return alone. The beach is fuller, hotter, louder, at first I can't find him against the foreground of

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umbrellas, streaming din, and the backdrop of pelican swooping, tearing at fleeting shapes of anchovy. I finally see him or I see his building and then him, kneeling behind it, owning land, hitting water, bringing new water around in

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canals, aqueducts daring, the ocean, taunting it. The builder builds with his power, he grave-robs, invades caresses, commands. I see him pause once to drink a soda after a busy hour. He turns as he drinks and admires not his work, nor his

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flock of admirers, but the enormous flat shelf of sea and the great horizon. One day soon, he will walk away with some lover. For now, he will walk away with a shovel and buckets, leaving his temple to destiny, and other grateful children from

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out of town. The builder packs up and hits home for pizza. Tonight, his bunk bed will have to suffice. Everything he has built, smooth humps, moonlit hollows, embedded shells washed, invaded, some of it will last all night, murmurs the builder,

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still building, glistening, relinquishing all now at the great tide of sleep. Morton Marcus: And then they're just such lines in there that do something, leaving his temple to destiny and other grateful

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children. And he packs up and goes home for pizza, which of course, he's just a kid but it's like we come down from these great moments to the everyday world again, and sleep. And sleep is one of the themes that comes up again and again, in

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this book. You're in bed and you listen to a mockingbird, and you compare yourself as poet to the natural singer, and it's a poem that is wonderfully alive and original and reminds me of the nightingale poem by Keats, but it's totally Ken Weisner's own

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way of doing it. In fact, one of the delights of this book is to see how you use extended metaphors. And you can say the builder in its own way is an extended metaphor. And I'm not gonna push this, a lot of these poems on you but I would like

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you to read, since we're talking about family, which is really the immediate family, children and wife, that nuclear family you have is what the first part of the book is about, I would love you to read what I think is a marvelous love poem. And most

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love poems are so predictable in the way that they're written. And that is a poem called, "The Accompanist." Ken Weisner: Oh. Morton Marcus: And it's on page 16. I'm springing all these

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things on Ken, and I guess one of the things that people can know out there, or don't have to know out there, is that your wife is a wonderful pianist. Ken Weisner: Mhm.

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Morton Marcus: And you've taken that part of her, although in this case, you're the pianist and she in many ways is the accompanist. And it is just a beautiful description of the relationship of husband and wife.

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Ken Weisner: Well, thanks. Morton Marcus: And I'd love the people out there to hear it. Ken Weisner: Well, sure, yeah. Yeah, I'm a French horn player and I've actually had the privilege of playing with her.

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She's a gifted pianist, you know, with a master's degree and as a wonderful pianist, piano teacher in town, it's a delightful part of our family life that, you know, 40 children a week kind of come into the house and play the piano with

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her. Morton Marcus: So she was accompanying you on the French horn, you are the French horn. Ken Weisner: And also it's an homage to her as an accompanist

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because it's one of the things she does best as a musician. Every musician maybe has his or her particular forte and she's just a very gifted accompanist. Morton Marcus: But it goes beyond that doesn't it?

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Ken Weisner: In terms of this poem, absolutely, yeah. Music for me is a- is a figure for all kinds of things, communication and expression. So, this poem is also about place, I think, it's about the woods and the idea of a kind of accompanment that

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nature provides. Morton Marcus: Which is a lot of what part of your poems also. Yeah, the hiking poems, for example, in the Sierras and stuff.

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Ken Weisner: Yeah, I do love that. And I'll go ahead and read this? Morton Marcus: Yes. Ken Weisner: Okay. It's called, THE ACCOMPANIST, it is for Kit

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and it begins like this: She's right with you in any time. You feel her give at the moment you come in, or pull back when she knows you'll take it slow, or phrase in an echo of your line. And always, like soft

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foliage beneath the bloom, or the birds that fly in, fly out before the storm, or the ticking and creaking of the house where you were born, or the rain that settles in and soothes you with its sound. The hands that work your tired back, a place that

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surrounds you, loves you today and is determined to grace the swell of your song. And you thank her for her shoulders and her arms that dip and sway and her eye that flashes, touch, and her fingers that are so brilliant, each itself an

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earnest musician running like a sprite to charm the woods where you run, the branch where you sing. Morton Marcus: And that "you" I take it [unintelligible] so you're talking to yourself and in the end you become the

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singing bird. Ken Weisner: I think so but I think the, "you," is the accompanist throughout, for me. I love the figure of music and I noticed it in retrospect I don't sit down and plan to write music

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poems, you know, but I noticed that as my life has developed over, you know, the 20 years it took to put a book together and I've just noticed that the motifs arise from life itself and you talked about how the ordinary inhabits poems like

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"The Builder," you know, just the pizza, the bunk beds, the piano, the people you live with, and I feel like poems should elevate us, but also they- I just love the literal. I love the everyday. And music for me is the everyday, it's also the

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closest thing I have to thinking about the exquisite in terms of really communicating, really relating to another in, you know, all things that poetry might want to do to, to relate, to express, to bring people together, so it just is a great

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figure. I've loved having that happen in the poems. Morton Marcus: Well, let's ask you some basic questions. We went right into the poems. Where were you born and when? Ken Weisner: Well, I was born in 1955, a few days, well, on July

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17th, I say a few days after Weldon Kees jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge because I was just talking about that with a friend the other day, and that was in Oakland. And so, I grew up in the Oakland public schools and always came to Santa Cruz

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since 1963 probably, first in the woods around Corralitos, and then eventually living here as a student, and then for good in the early 80s. Morton Marcus: When did you start to write poetry and what

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was your original impetus? Ken Weisner: Well, it was a death of my father in 1970, so I was 14, I believe. And I wrote my first poem that day and I was interested in writing before that, but hadn't written poetry

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really, until that day. Morton Marcus: That's very interesting because a lot of your poems have the imagery and the movement of reaching for the miraculous, reaching for not redemption, but almost

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immortality in many ways. I think of one poem in particular, and I, you know, I'm going to let you take over what poems you want to read when, but I'm thinking about, "The Catch," in particular poems that, again, seem to be so mundane, you know,

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two kids playing baseball, but it becomes much more than that. It becomes that wonderful moment that every male sees in sport, the moment of immortality, the moment when we go beyond ourselves.

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Ken Weisner: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Which is what the poet tries to do, too, you know, and there is that reaching towards the spiritual all the time in these poems.

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Ken Weisner: Yeah, that's- I appreciate how carefully you've read and think about the poems, Mort, and I'm flattered by that. There's a poem called, "The Arrows of Glory." Morton Marcus: I love that one.

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Ken Weisner: Because that- that's the poem that reminds me most about what you're saying. And I remember so clearly, thinking about poetry all the way through high school and all the way through those years college is, as miraculous. So

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when it was great, it was just such a relief. It was one of the best things in the world to discover Neruda. That was as good as a Super Bowl or World Series. And I think the the idea of real human glory and the best about humanity which is sort of

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come in the in those moments of reading great poetry. And so, in some ways and you know, maybe you're connecting that with looking for a father, I don't know, that may be true too. But I know that in the sports poems, they always are more than

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sports. There's always some other love of the miraculous. Morton Marcus: But let's hear, ARROWS OF GLORY. There, I must say I'm impressing myself enormously tonight because instead of getting into a lot of commentary, we're just getting

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right into the poems, which is good for a change. Ken Weisner: Well, this was dedicated partly to a childhood friend Richard Dorito. I remember Richard Dorito and the thrill of a high spiral like

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a spear thrown as far as possible. We were boy hunters, saving the tribe, honoring the goddess with each short catch, each victory. We knew each other's tendencies, Rich and I, rhythms of curl or juke, stop and go. Hills, bushes meant

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nothing compared to the grail gathered in, juggled for a moment on the glory of the fingertips. Besides, Rich and I were democrats in a republican neighborhood, and fatherless, we were comrades, so our connections were even sweeter,

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each touchdown a message of just how far one could go with ideals. Without religion, or farming, this was as powerful a mystery as we had in our neighborhood until lust entered in. We made top secret maps on one another's hands saying,

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you'll be open, if not just hook or fly. And when you see the bomb go full speed, in jeans and sneakers on the asphalt street at dusk, glasses rattling in fog with a pounding hope we'd reach out like the stars with the most passionate tips, lunges, dives

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into the ground cover, the ivy, always expecting the utterly amazing. Another "best ever" even past dark. Our mom's calling us in, wanting just one last "unbelievable" again. It's hard to read that ending because there's so much in there

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for me, but if you really just read it straight. Morton Marcus: Well, it's hard to do that sometime. I mean, so I know that I've got choked up on reading some poems when suddenly I get back to what the original experience was and what

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it means. And someone you know, which is James B. Hall. Ken Weisner: Sure. Morton Marcus: Remember what in the last years of his- in fact, I've written about him in my new book. He is the character in the

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"men don't cry" thing. When we start to read the stories and we would break into tears. Ken Weisner: Right. I didn't realize that about- Morton Marcus: Oh, man. It just happened again and again, in

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those last years that he was down here. And I just thought so much of that. Why, why is he crying? Is it the beauty of his own words? Is it that he realized, you know, he had such a great reputation? And for some reason it just folded with time

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and nothing to do with him, he was writing as strongly as ever. Ken Weisner: Yeah. Well, you know, I'm also thinking about what you said about sports and now it's the March Madness and the basketball stuff. And everybody, I think what they

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really want is a miracle, don't you? Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah. Absolutely and to be a participant at that moment when the human being goes beyond being just a human being.

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Ken Weisner: Yeah. Morton Marcus: The breaking of the four minute mile, no human could do it. And you see, then it was done it, it occurred and it- it enlarges us all.

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Ken Weisner: Yeah, well, it's a shame that we don't have a poetry page instead of a sports page, I've always thought. Morton Marcus: Well, how about a poetry page and a sports page together?

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Ken Weisner: Okay. Morton Marcus: I'm gonna go with you. Obviously, there are a lot of tones of voice that come in here and hearing you read your poems, which is amazing the way I hear them on the page, which

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is not that way with, you know, a lot of poets. I'm gonna let you start reading what you want to read. Ken Weisner: What I want to read? Well, now that's a tough one. Where should we begin? I think my son Matthew might be

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listening. Why don't I read the poem for him? Is that all right, good timing? Morton Marcus: Terrific. Ken Weisner: Okay. I've read a poem for my oldest son, I'll

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read one for my younger son. And this is after Breton and, you know, I think I believe that poetry is about freedom, too, and having a poem that's after the surrealist celebration of languages. To me, it's about pure freedom, pure expression

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and the way that fun and true expression of love really come together in that kind of language. There's no fascist dictator can win against language like this, I hope. So this is for Matthew, after Breton, and he was about, you

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know, nine when I was talking about him here, now he's in high school so he's probably embarrassed. FOR MATTHEW, AFTER BRETON With his sleep of light, his forehead of stained glass, his

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eyebrows of eagles and arches, doves, his freckles of turquoise and mosaic, my son with his chest of grandfather clock, his lungs of weight and counterweights, chains and pulleys, my son with his shoulders of Venetian

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colonnades, his chest like a bushel of apricots, his smile like a handshake. My son with his grin like a cucumber, his feet like cattle, his knees like moon rocks, his skipped like tick tick of a music stand, his heartbeat of Toscanini, my son

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with his laugh like a bowl of soup, his hands like bread, his tongue like gray wolves, my son with his legs like stiff wind, and his legs like changed money and his feet like an ice house. My son with his hands like factories, his eyes like

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outerspace, his pupils like pre-history, his irises like featherbeds. Morton Marcus: And that of course is based after one of Breton's most famous poems, which is the one with

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description of his wife. Ken Weisner: Yeah, shoulders of champagne. Right? Yeah. Morton Marcus: And it's featured in, "Great Book," of the early 70s by Jerome Rothenberg.

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Ken Weisner: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Which talks about the different kinds of poetry coming out of primitive poetry and especially talks about this kind of poetry, which he calls praise poetry.

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Ken Weisner: Right. Morton Marcus: Which isn't just to praise an object, but is to name it continually from all different perspectives, so that it comes into an almost magical existence. Now, you have a lot

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of praise poems. Ken Weisner: Yeah. Morton Marcus: So, shall we read even another one, since we're on praise poems? And of course, that's the poem about cheese and

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that is not as surrealistic as the Breton is but it shows the wonderful sense you have of the sound of language and just the listing of words that can become magical. And young writers out there, this is a wonderful way to start writing poetry, which

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is the praise poem, take an object and then just name the different aspects of it or the different classifications it may be in and do it with tremendous concrete nouns. And a real send you a sensuous sense of the objects themselves.

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Ken Weisner: Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: And this is called, "Ode," as I remember? Ken Weisner: Yeah and I work as a poet in the schools with the great Patrice Vecchione for many years as her protege and praise

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made so much sense to teach in the schools. It's a great reason for poetry. It's probably the only good one, praise, and this one, "Ode," is the one that the editor wrote me back when he accepted and asked me if it was about sex, cheese or poetry. And

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did I tell you that story already? Morton Marcus: No. Ken Weisner: Okay. Well, so you can tell me what you think. You've already voted for cheese.

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Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah? Ken Weisner: It's called ODE. The edams and gorgonzolas, the soft white bellies of gouda, along the sky of the tongue, the drifts of saliva melting

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cheddar, throwing up ladders, tossing up a line from scrambled eggs, like chewing sensation itself, its soft bed of pleasures, its deep pores and roots, its chasms and flowers. The coolest dampest cheeses of the marketplace sliced like

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custard, saltier with a few stones, mystery of cow where several shadows meet and form a moon at double star, flavor of photosynthesis and birth. Smells pricking the back of the nose like blankets being beaten. Those buds are fresh and ammonia

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on cleaning day but murkier, underground a cave where a birth has taken place. Invisible gardens, the blessed molds, mysterious country cheeses, sweat part grass and dirt, part light. The strange Norwegian goats, heaviest chocolate

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cheeses of American dairies or the eerie white discs of mozzarella, the hat that becomes its wearer, the light that melts into the skin. Or the blues, the roquefort full of chunks of nutritious mold. The breathing leaves of the salad, the garden

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vegetables tasting of earth and air want to wrap themselves around it, be smudged and sullied, it reminds them of roots, their home in the earth, the dark recesses of the mouth. Morton Marcus: Well, an answer to that editor, it's all three

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at once. Ken Weisner: Okay. Morton Marcus: Delightful. Yeah, let me see I've actually listed several of them down here. Well, you know, we can just go on from

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here on. Another kind of poem that you'd like to read. Ken Weisner: That I would like to read? Morton Marcus: Yes, I don't want to start dictating. Ken Weisner: Well, why don't you give me a hint, I feel you know,

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kind of open about that. You want to give me one word and I'll free associate to a poem? Morton Marcus: Well, why- you know, one that I love well, there's so many of them. I do love "The Mockingbird's

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Insomnia," but that's okay. "Itzhak's Crutch," let's do "Itzhak's Crutch," at least before this half hour is over. Ken Weisner: All right. Morton Marcus: And again, this is a meditation that opens

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beautifully beyond itself. And it's very understandable the way it starts. Why don't you tell us about it? Ken Weisner: Well, you know Itzhak Perlman, maybe I should have brought that CD with me today to play at this moment. At

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any rate, I'm sure the listening audience knows, or can soon know, the great violin playing of Itzhak Perlman, this is an homage to him. And by paying homage to him, I also find a way to think about my Jewish ancestry and my cultural

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identity. I'm assimilated, too, but I understand him as a Jewish artist in this poem, Bloch's, "Three Pictures," is a- Ernest Bloch is a Jewish composer, he's mentioned in here, and Perlman grew up in Israel and had polio.

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Morton Marcus: Right and so what you're struck with whenever you see him is of course he is always on crutches and he is dragging on the lower part of his body. Ken Weisner: Right, you know, and what you're more struck by

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is the music but for whatever reason I'm risking noticing that and meditating on it, it's a little bit of a risk to do that because it's not what I go around doing with my life, staring at a man's crutch, but in this case, I think it flowers

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into something that [unintelligible]. So, ITZHAK'S CRUTCH, for Itzhak Perlman Lies next to him wherever he is, you can look at it while he plays Tchaikovsky or Ernest Bloch. Perhaps it's a kind of

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violin that never got to be a violin, a leg that never got to be a leg. Of course, the music is wonderful. You could ignore it but imagine if it were yours, depending on it, and dragging through the streets of a city, your city or a whole different

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place, a glowing concert hall, or perhaps some refugee town, some Jerusalem. Of course, it symbolizes something different for everyone: loved ones crying, soldiers in the yard, a family turned by war, polio as your eye drifts with the sweetness. He

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plays sitting down, Bloch's, "Three Pictures." Between pieces, you watch him move his legs with his hands. Trees that are not trees, notes that are seeds in a winter's garden, things other than what they are, and 100 times more. Things in

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plain view: a boy that is not a boy, a barber's son, his fugitive limbs, fingers impeccable, torso powerful, a body, an instrument, scaffolds of the ecstatic. And you will also hear in him: men who are not men, ghosts who are more

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than ghosts, history that is more than history. Morton Marcus: And there are lines in there that are just so rich. The way you move out of the description of the crutches into, of course, it symbolizes something different for

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everyone, and then move into a whole different aspect of it. And then start to say things like, "Trees that are not trees and notes that are seeds in a winter garden," and then the poem blossoms from those seeds, as the music blossoms into more

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than a man's broken body, "Things other than what they are and 100 times more," which really almost are key lines to all the poems in this book, things being more than what they are and then finally, as poet and you hope as human being, "A

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body, an instrument, scaffolds of the ecstatic," and that moving upwards, you know, so many of your poems, and you may not have even thought of this, moving into high places or flying, always are in these poems and that's why I said

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they're like spiritual ascents, they are their flights. And I know that you think of other images for your poems, but these are there, and that the last lines are just beautiful because, yeah, that's Jewish, but it's everybody's history,

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you know, and it's the music that just makes us more that includes all the past. Ken Weisner: Well, you're very kind, Mort. Morton Marcus: It's there.

00:27:42.410 - 00:27:57.650

Ken Weisner: It's wonderful. Thank you, yeah. Morton Marcus: We are about to take a break and what I would like to do here, since we are going to be playing Vivaldi's- the song by Vivaldi that the great Bartoli is going to sing

00:27:57.860 - 00:28:18.980

is that maybe what we should do is read that poem. And tell the the listener out there that when we take the break it is going to be at least part of that song that is Vivaldi's, "Sposa son disprezzata."

00:28:19.050 - 00:28:36.750

Ken Weisner: Yeah and then and this is a, you know, just a song on a compilation of Cecilia Bartoli, who was a fine singer. And it's wonderful that we can play the music, it's such a rare possibility. Radio is perfect for this, Mort. And it's a song

00:28:36.750 - 00:28:57.630

she sings about, "Il mio sposo, il mio amor, la mia speranza," you know, my husband, my love, my hope. And the fact is, she's been betrayed by her husband, or in the story that Bartoli is singing, the art song, the woman has been betrayed. And then the

00:28:57.630 - 00:29:14.640

poem kind of thinks about how the song itself tries to heal that wound and so it's another use of music really, I think is, you know, thinking about music and poetry as healing. And this is my one poem that kind of tries to do that. So I'll read

00:29:14.640 - 00:29:22.370

it and I guess you'll play the music later? Morton Marcus: Well, we'll play the music almost immediately. I want to say a few things about the poem itself and then we'll- Ken Weisner: Okay.

00:29:22.400 - 00:29:28.010

Morton Marcus: I will make a signal to- Ken Weisner: All right. Morton Marcus: The gentlemen, who is indulging us here, and then we'll play the song.

00:29:28.000 - 00:29:42.670

Ken Weisner: The thing is that she holds the note so long when she is cycling through the kind of arpeggios and the thing is that it's the same syllable she's holding the whole time, which is the word hope, so it's just remarkable.

00:29:44.110 - 00:29:58.720

VIVALDI'S SPOSA SON DISPREZZATA In this song about a faithful wife betrayed, "Che feci mai?" What did I do? I was astonished at how the spare single verse and brief refrain made one particular word take flight

00:29:58.720 - 00:30:16.930

within its vowel, "Speranza," it flew. In a six minute song on the warm current of grief, the sopranos soared again and again, the full 30 seconds just on the updraft of that one vowel, as if the meaning of the song weren't grief at all, but rather the

00:30:16.930 - 00:30:39.160

possibility of hope in a vowel, as if singing were making, naming her grief. She was too good for him. How freely and completely she flew, over and over, veiled, yet soaring, Bartoli the interpreter for as long as her breath would hold.

00:30:45.520 - 00:31:02.170

Morton Marcus: Good and there's a description of hitting this one vowel for 30 seconds, which is so beautiful. And then again going into what I find in your poetry again and again, as if the song weren't grief at all but the possibility of hope. We

00:31:02.170 - 00:31:15.130

can take that into the the hiking poems, which we're going to hear in the next half hour, we can take that into, "The Catch," we can take that into, "The Arrows of Glory," see. And so anyway, I'd love to hear you read this again and have the

00:31:15.130 - 00:31:29.500

people out there really listen to this language on how precise these words are trying to describe what words really can't describe, which is the experience of hearing this performance by Bartoli of this song by Vivaldi.

00:31:29.560 - 00:31:34.660

Ken Weisner: And then they get to hear the song? Morton Marcus: And then right after that, we're going to hear the song. Ken Weisner: Okay, then I'll do it. Okay.

00:31:35.470 - 00:31:51.970

VIVALDI'S SPOSA SON DISPREZZATA In this song about a faithful wife betrayed, "Che feci mai?" What did I do? I was astonished at how the spare single verse and brief refrain made one particular word take flight

00:31:51.970 - 00:32:09.310

within its vowel, "Speranza," and it flew. In a six minute song on the warm current of grief, the sopranos soared again and again, a full 30 seconds just on the updraft of that one vowel, as if the meaning of the song weren't grief at all, but

00:32:09.310 - 00:32:28.480

rather the possibility of hope in a vowel, as if singing we're making, naming her grief. She was too good for him. How freely and completely she flew over and over, veiled yet soaring, Bartoli, the interpreter for as long as her breath would hold.

00:36:29.350 - 00:36:46.900

Unknown: You're listening to the Poetry Show on KUSP Santa Cruz 88.9 FM, KBDH San Ardo 91.7 FM. Morton Marcus: And that was Cecilia Bartoli singing that very last moment, that unbelievably long and breathless

00:36:46.900 - 00:37:05.740

and breathtaking syllable that Ken had written about in the last poem that we read. And we are talking with Ken Weisner tonight and we will get get right back to him and his wonderful new book, "The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians," after

00:37:05.740 - 00:37:22.270

a few PSAs. First of all, come for high energy poetry, check out the Rubber Chicken Poetry Slam, an open mic at Morgan's Coffee and Tea in downtown Monterey every second and fourth Wednesday of the month. This month's slams are April 10th and

00:37:22.270 - 00:37:44.830

April 24th at 7pm, signup begins at 7pm. I just want to tell you also that this is National Poetry Month. Coming up and on April 10th- 8th , 10th and 12th the friends of the Santa Cruz library will be presenting a huge book sale on March 28th,

00:37:44.860 - 00:38:05.350

April 7th, 27th and 29th. Poetry Santa Cruz is going to be doing readings at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. Many many different things, KUSP has all of these people CALPIRG, Santa Cruz Digital Arts, Poetry Santa Cruz as sponsors, and as celebrants

00:38:05.380 - 00:38:19.810

of National Poetry Month. And I do want to tell you also right after this show, stay tuned for "From the Bookshelf," which will be hosted tonight by Gary Shapiro, who will read another of his hilarious stories. This one's entitled, "Sex Education."

00:38:20.020 - 00:38:38.170

I'm going to stick around for that one. I mean not because I like the subject beside probably need the education, that's at 9pm tonight on Sunday as we continue this hour and a half of speech and the spoken radio. I also want to tell you without

00:38:38.170 - 00:38:55.810

blowing my own horn, but what the heck, that I will be- the Monday after this coming Monday, April 8th, on Eric Scheck's(?), radio gram show, talking about my new book, "Moments Without Names." And then that night I will be signing and reading the

00:38:55.810 - 00:39:10.630

book- from the book at the Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7:30 and that is on April 8th, Monday, April 8th, Eric Scheck at noon, Bookshop Santa Cruz at night. We are talking with Ken Weisner as I said, and we are talking about, "The Sacred Geometry of

00:39:10.630 - 00:39:31.210

Pedestrians." And as usual, these hours go way too fast. Ken, so I would like you to pick up poems that you would like to write about. Certainly, you are an English teacher, and I'm an English teacher and spent many painful hour correcting papers

00:39:31.210 - 00:39:42.310

and never wrote a word about it but certainly you have in, sometime during this half hour, I'd love you to read, "Marginalia," which- Ken Weisner: Shall we do it now?

00:39:42.640 - 00:39:49.990

Morton Marcus: Why not? Ken Weisner: Okay. Morton Marcus: Page 70. Ken Weisner: Oh, thanks. I'm glad, it's actually 72.

00:39:50.740 - 00:40:09.610

Morton Marcus: Oh right, because it's all the- right. Ken Weisner: So, "Marginalia," is about the joy of the profession, the real work of teaching at De Anza Community College, which is a wonderful place to work, and I think I

00:40:09.610 - 00:40:20.070

actually wrote this while working at at UCSC and as a graduate student, it's called: MARGINALIA It's sad to work at night in the office with the light burning

00:40:20.070 - 00:40:35.940

but looking out at the dark, each paper another path into a wild country where there are no companions. If I pick mangoes, I pick them alone for someone else. And I'm usually left with not even a photocopied mango, just a memory or description of

00:40:35.940 - 00:40:52.680

mangoes, an entry on tropical fruit. Comments we call them, we readers of the graveyard shift. This obscureist of graffiti, these loving epitaphs, this encouragement longing like the Tibetan Book of the Dead to liven things up. You know, there

00:40:52.680 - 00:41:08.160

really is no decent background music for reading papers. This one in front of me, 30th in a stack of 36 suggests Chopin's, "Funeral March," or something dreadful by Delius. Look, I really don't mean it. There's a wonderful voice somewhere in

00:41:08.160 - 00:41:25.050

this jungle, this Brazil of prose, marginalia, my machete, my princess, samba me into the dark heart, show me the skill and patience of monks who copied Bibles, decorated, gilded painstakingly in the dim light of monasteries, the word while

00:41:25.050 - 00:41:42.840

Gregorian chant floated up to them where they stood, hunched over tomes. Yes, we are privileged in our work, I know. Miles, if those monks had had "Sketches of Spain," they couldn't have helped but enjoy the change of pace. This is fine

00:41:42.840 - 00:41:56.520

for a while but it ends as it always will with just you my love and me scratching away earnestly while the cat preens then dozes at the kitchen table, to the lovely quiet of the dead of night.

00:41:58.380 - 00:42:04.860

You- so, Mort, you know the the feeling, the dead of night? Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah. Ken Weisner: The lovely quiet. Morton Marcus: And you're just there with the paper and that's

00:42:04.890 - 00:42:20.930

become your lover and it is a mass of a tangle of neurosis, jungle-like neurosis. Ken Weisner: Well, not always. But in this case, yeah. The writing we do on on each other's work is really kind of a

00:42:20.930 - 00:42:36.650

forgotten writing, it sometimes feel like, I care a lot about my students. Sometimes I feel like I've written beautiful marginalia and then where does it go? Do they even read it? But, you know, it's great work, but it has that loneliness in

00:42:36.650 - 00:42:47.960

it. Morton Marcus: Well, to me, you also find joy in it, which is something that I would really have had to have been reminded of the last 10 or 15 years that I was teaching because the joy

00:42:47.960 - 00:42:59.650

had gone out of it for me. Ken Weisner: And some of my favorite people, you know, have been the teachers who could teach and write and edit all at the same time. I always looked at those- you've done that.

00:42:59.680 - 00:43:06.790

Morton Marcus: Yes. Ken Weisner: And I just think it's a great life, it has that balance. Morton Marcus: Well, you certainly have been doing it,

00:43:07.510 - 00:43:18.730

read some poems that you want to read. I guess we really- Ken Weisner: I'm gonna have to tell you that you have to help me maybe at the very end, if there's one I just I'm dying to read, I'll let you know.

00:43:19.090 - 00:43:25.360

Morton Marcus: "I Could Change Worlds," for example? Ken Weisner: What, you like that one? I love it. Morton Marcus: Well, no, I mean, at the end, if you wanted. It's sort of a perfect ending poem.

00:43:25.390 - 00:43:34.510

Ken Weisner: An ending poem. Morton Marcus: How about, you know, "Responsible Backpacking," if you want? Ken Weisner: Sure, yeah. I haven't gotten to read that so

00:43:34.510 - 00:43:51.610

often. It's a newer poem and I don't think I read it at the book launch. I backpack with my son every summer just you know, for a week or less, you know, kind of a one trip to be with him. And a couple poems in here came out of those trips. There's

00:43:51.610 - 00:44:05.830

no one else in the poem, actually. I wrote it kind of as a, in the end, as a poem of backpacking, one imagines alone in a tent and it becomes something really more about the imagination than anything else.

00:44:06.370 - 00:44:22.780

RESPONSIBLE BACKPACKING Studying topographical maps by flashlight, imagining trail conditions, snow levels, questionable forwards, so even when the light fails and I roll the map into a tent pocket,

00:44:22.960 - 00:44:39.820

lines, contours, whirls still crowd the mind, vivid, free-floating, I can actually still study it for a few minutes. All the while, the spring wind knocks its breath down the high canyons and then as the topo starts to fade, it

00:44:39.820 - 00:44:56.080

hits me and I picture you. You are formations and curiosities and set out inch by inch with renewed scholarship and enterprise across farthest corners, boundaries into the untold while.

00:44:58.540 - 00:45:07.900

Morton Marcus: It's great and I love you know, "all the while, the spring wind knocks its breath down the high canyons," just little phrases like that. Ken Weisner: Yeah, you know that feeling when the wind comes up?

00:45:07.930 - 00:45:21.670

Morton Marcus: Oh yeah, but you also- what it manages to do in such condensed words is to give this span a sense of space outside. It evokes all of the landscape beyond and the depth of it behind summit.

00:45:21.850 - 00:45:27.160

Ken Weisner: I'm a big fan of Gary Snyder, he does that really well. Morton Marcus: Yeah, he does it beautifully. Ken Weisner: And also I've got a really good writing group, they

00:45:27.160 - 00:45:34.020

don't let you get away with less. I don't catch a little [unintelligible]. Chuck Atkinson, Tillie Shaw, Ross- Morton Marcus: Very good, all of them very, very good.

00:45:34.020 - 00:45:41.310

Ken Weisner: Sometimes it's the editors but I can't take all the credit, Morton. Morton Marcus: No, you can take it. Ken Weisner: There's another- should I read the other one

00:45:41.310 - 00:45:50.790

about the wind? Morton Marcus: The SUMMER WIND, HIGH SIERRA. Yes, absolutely. I was gonna suggest that next. Ken Weisner: It's about that same wind in the High Sierra. It

00:45:50.790 - 00:46:03.570

says, A roar like living oceanside, currents of air gathering and amplifying, rolling down from passes, gale force, through valleys to where you sleep battered by the avalanche of

00:46:03.570 - 00:46:19.560

noise in the tent you'd batten down with all your rope and ballast, sticks and stones and still it fills and tugs like a sail, straining spars. There are ridges you don't want to be on right now, that's for sure. Your tent, the old growth pines, the

00:46:19.560 - 00:46:37.590

lichened granite itself, the inner ear like barnacles and enemies thirst and lean with each gusting tide. At least no wildfire, no smoke. Count your blessings there but the roar of creation, the thrall of cacophony pinned, hunkered down,

00:46:38.250 - 00:46:56.280

your tent a life raft in the sea of sound. Morton Marcus: It's great. No, it's really gives the sense of- it now comparing it to an ocean in its own way with the roar of creation is great and it brings me back to Händel's, "Creation."

00:46:57.840 - 00:47:09.570

Ken Weisner: Oh, now that's cool. And also just the sound of that wind- it's so much about sound, you know. Morton Marcus: Not Händel's, "Creation." Ken Weisner: Haydn's "Creation." Yeah, that's what I was- I made

00:47:09.570 - 00:47:19.410

the same mistake you did. Morton Marcus: Because of course I'm thinking of Händel's "Messiah." Ken Weisner: But that idea of sound being central, it is for

00:47:19.410 - 00:47:26.550

me, you know? Morton Marcus: It comes back to music all the time. Ken Weisner: And just the sound, I think I'm an aural, you know, A-U-R-A-L kind of style of writing.

00:47:26.550 - 00:47:44.220

Morton Marcus: Very visual. I mean, these images are very, very visual at the same time. So go from here? Ken Weisner: You name it. Morton Marcus: Okay. Have an inner dog talk about extended

00:47:44.220 - 00:47:57.000

metaphors, again, that are very original. And again, these are these are things other people have written about, but you've just really made them fresh. And no matter what you say about you know, that poetry group, I know every one of those poets, I know

00:47:57.000 - 00:48:11.340

their poetry and every one of their poems, that is the style is- each one of them is completely different. So what each one of them comes away from in that group, which is what you look for, is each one's unique voice.

00:48:11.370 - 00:48:18.570

Ken Weisner: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Which you all have, so you may help each other but you don't have to thank them that much. Ken Weisner: Well, it's also Sherman Murphy's helped him and

00:48:19.530 - 00:48:35.100

David Sullivan and Rosie King. It's my- but, "Inner Dog," is a is a poem that is in a section called, "Inner Dog." And it's the place where I kind of try to put the more irreverent poems. I have a whole lot of irreverent poems and I have a sardonic,

00:48:35.130 - 00:48:49.050

kind of angry side to myself and it didn't find much of a home in this book, the book took a shape of something more like, I'm finally getting this book out; it's got to have the best part of me in it and my best foot forward and all the love poems

00:48:49.050 - 00:48:57.000

for children and, well, "Inner Dog," lets in a little bit of the other stuff. So maybe this dog is kind of a- is a little bit wild. Morton Marcus: Okay.

00:48:57.510 - 00:49:06.360

Ken Weisner: Should I read that one? Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah. Ken Weisner: Okay. INNER DOG After a day's loping through bird country. Oh, and I should

00:49:06.360 - 00:49:18.090

say something. I'm sorry. It really goes back to my childhood in Corralitos in the old Lager dumpsites up there. That's what the landscape of a lot of this poem is, it'd be a dog's paradise.

00:49:18.510 - 00:49:30.520

INNER DODG After a day's loping through bird country, dog wants nothing better than to shag out, privately dreaming of wood rats, nosing, sniffles, burrowing root mulch, where there is tasty

00:49:30.520 - 00:49:45.970

corpse and garbage, where hunters buried ragged cans, blacksmith square nails sharper than tetanus, medicine bottles of opaque violet colored glass. Also a sodded roll of paper to annihilate or an abandoned nest to scour and shake with flabby

00:49:45.970 - 00:50:01.240

jowls. Worrisome squirrels give him a lurch toward some nasty tick tree to spring under. Dog wants out. Paw and nails on glass or sometimes a warmer moan like scratch my stomach, you cad. Wide open grass to kick through, the shape of play

00:50:01.240 - 00:50:17.560

turned fierce, the flying to arise where they gather alone, the glory of loping through the pasture. Now I can see those glassy shapes of sky. Now I can smell the dead in the stars, I can stand to listen to them with my long tongue scrolling and

00:50:17.650 - 00:50:36.570

dripping. And I can breathe in this chill night, where the senses burn with inner dogs, the dead in heat, who throw back their saucy heads and cry. Morton Marcus: And there he is, inner dog. There's also another

00:50:36.570 - 00:50:54.120

poem that sort of gets to that irreverent side of you in a very, very clever way which 18th century poets would have loved and that's your argument with writing about and thinking about baseball. And so there, that would go certain perfectly with

00:50:54.660 - 00:51:04.710

the latest poem. Ken Weisner: Sure. Morton Marcus: And it's very, very witty, which a lot of these poems are not witty, and they don't have that sense of wit.

00:51:05.460 - 00:51:14.760

But they're much more serious and much more, in many cases rhapsodic. Ken Weisner: Well, if anybody decides to get the book who happens to be listening and they want to read my most irreverent

00:51:14.760 - 00:51:23.580

poem, it's, "In Jesus's Name." It's a very irreverent poem and a kind of a scary poem, and I love it, but I'm not going to read it on Easter. Morton Marcus: You're not gonna read that piece? Okay.

00:51:24.420 - 00:51:36.210

Ken Weisner: So I'll read, "I Don't Want To Love Baseball." Morton Marcus: Right. Ken Weisner: And, you know, it's not that that Jesus isn't a beautiful individual, but just that this poem is about kind of

00:51:36.210 - 00:51:48.420

the condition of being in spiritual denial, so it's a scary poem. I could read it, but you know, I think that's the real- more of the darker poem in here. "I Don't Want To Love Baseball" is fun.

00:51:48.420 - 00:52:00.480

Morton Marcus: We will have time for it right after this, so- Ken Weisner: "I Don't Want To Love Baseball" is to me, it's that self-deprecation, which I think if you don't do too much of it, isn't it essential? Because you can't you know, let

00:52:00.480 - 00:52:12.090

your ego run rampant. And so there's a lot of that in here that egos are horrible things. So, baseball unfortunately gets burdened by egos. I DON'T WANT TO LOVE BASEBALL

00:52:12.600 - 00:52:26.370

I'd rather love something far more important, feelings far more heroic, operatic, significant. I don't want to love baseball. I don't want to love the body, gloping, judging, diving into grass or space. I'd rather love the problems of men.

00:52:26.610 - 00:52:41.430

I'd rather love facing the needs of men, seeing, serving those needs. I don't want to love baseball, childhood that should have long been packed away in a cardboard case. I don't want to love an object, inarticulate like a ball, though baseball's a

00:52:41.430 - 00:53:00.090

language after all. I'm touched by a great play as by a great speech but I want more from life than the rhetoric of the body, routine animal glory, day to day the refusing logic, never over till it's over,to grow up. I don't want to love baseball

00:53:00.090 - 00:53:16.920

because it's not real, not real unity, pluralism, piece or nobility, as we fans make it out to be. I have this dream of baseball which I get a few key hits, make some great plays, am a champion just once or is once enough? Perhaps a modest yet

00:53:16.920 - 00:53:29.940

notable succession of championships? I don't want to love baseball. Morton Marcus: See, but you keep- because that's a great rhetorical argument with keeps defeating you but it's more than

00:53:29.940 - 00:53:43.500

you think. It doesn't have to do with the fact that you're not a Barry Bonds because the lines that started out is, "I'd rather love something far more important, feelings far more heroic, operatic, significant," and then later on, "I want more

00:53:43.500 - 00:53:50.700

from life than the rhetoric of the body," but you can't get out of the rhetoric of the body. Ken Weisner: Yeah. Morton Marcus: You see, once more, it's the yearning, you

00:53:50.700 - 00:54:01.650

know, that happens in the Sierras, that happens in the spiritual life that you want. But, you know, irony of ironies and you know this because your tongue is in your cheek, you know, you can't get rid of the body.

00:54:01.950 - 00:54:13.170

Ken Weisner: Yeah, longing and yearning. Morton Marcus: And a great way to talk about it. Okay, do you want to read the Jesus poem? Ken Weisner: I might just have to pass. I think maybe there's

00:54:13.170 - 00:54:22.680

someone out there will buy the book as they- Morton Marcus: Which they should do and again the book that we are talking about out there, we're talking to Ken Weisner, and his new and first book, which is called, "The Sacred

00:54:22.680 - 00:54:38.250

Geometry of Pedestrians," and you know, let's say a word or two about the publishers of this book. This is the first book by a new cooperative publishing house right here in Santa Cruz called Hummingbird Press. Why don't you say something about

00:54:38.250 - 00:54:52.400

it? Ken Weisner: Right, well, Hummingbird Press was it really originated by Joseph McNeilly, fine poet and teacher at Cabrillo and Len Anderson of Poetry Santa Cruz. They invited

00:54:52.400 - 00:55:11.180

people in to a collective. I was privileged to be asked if I was ready to go first and I said okay, I had three months to put thia together and each individual in the, among the nine people, I think it's all first books, with one exception.

00:55:12.440 - 00:55:34.010

All poetry first books, people who haven't somehow published yet and people that Joseph wanted to see published. We do both volunteer labor. And we also volunteer money towards other people's books, so at that point, if we sell 150 books out

00:55:34.010 - 00:55:49.550

of the 550 we get, we begin to make a profit individually. So it's a wonderful sort of publishing enterprise with collective elements that creates a community. I love it. I mean, there are nine of us now and maybe we'll do nine more after

00:55:49.550 - 00:56:02.540

we're done, you know? It's in three years, so it's three books a year. That's wonderful, its rich. I mean, three years from now there'll be nine more people with first books. George Lober, a remarkable poet who I've gotten to know more recently

00:56:02.540 - 00:56:15.660

since we share this enterprise. His book is next, it'll come out in a few months. It's called, "Shift of Light," and it's terrific and then the Tillie Shaw after that. Morton Marcus: Oh, great. You know, I've told Tillie several

00:56:15.660 - 00:56:30.390

times she really should have tried to get a book together, she's a very unique poet also. They're very good looking books. I mean, they really are put out lovingly, and I urge everyone out there go down to Bookshop Santa Cruz and I hope Capitola

00:56:30.390 - 00:56:36.960

Book Cafe and pick up Ken Weisner's, "The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians." Ken Weisner: And then tomorrow night we have our reading I mean, Tuesday night.

00:56:36.960 - 00:56:45.630

Morton Marcus: Okay. Why is that not here on my PSA sheet? Ken Weisner: It should be. Morton Marcus: It definitely should be so. Ken Weisner: Tuesday night, I believe at 7:30, we should

00:56:45.630 - 00:56:53.070

double check that. Morton Marcus: Bookshop Santa Cruz? Ken Weisner: Bookshop Santa Cruz, the Hummingbird Press will have it that's on April 2nd, so I believe it's Tuesday night,

00:56:53.490 - 00:57:05.910

and we'll all read one or two of our own poems and then read someone else's poem in the collective and I've work around and my book will be there and Joseph will be there to talk about the press and its future.

00:57:06.150 - 00:57:21.240

Morton Marcus: Okay, that is this Tuesday Bookshop Santa Cruz in downtown Santa Cruz. For all the poets of Hummingbird Press and come down and see what's being done, hear more about the press and hear all the poets in it, reading their own poems,

00:57:21.240 - 00:57:35.460

some of their own poems and each other's poems. And we have got maybe one more minute so, Ken, take us out of here with the poem that you want to read, that will take a minute. Ken Weisner: That will take a minute?

00:57:36.480 - 00:57:49.150

Morton Marcus: Or less. Ken Weisner: Or less. Well, I'm going to read one that I never read, but it if it's okay, unless you have a selection. Go on? Okay. it is, "Swimming Before Dawn," it's a poem that

00:57:49.150 - 00:58:02.860

that is new. And I went through a period of time where I swam before dawn in order to survive long days of work, and it was really my spiritual life, "Swimming Before Dawn." I read it because you talked about longing and yearning.

00:58:03.040 - 00:58:14.830

Morton Marcus: Well, I had this marked as one of the things to read because this is the perfect example of the extended metaphor, doing what you said, so go. Ken Weisner: It's kind of an Easter poem too, maybe, because

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it's about coming out of the darkness. SWIMMING BEFORE DAWN Desire becomes a mantra of the body like breath, an altered state where longing becomes longing, bass notes vibrating

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like power beneath the strokes of the breath, the steady engine, the idle of longing, a noun, a verb, desire, in monotone, beneath the sharp edges of the surface, block stones, these words all day, the hum, the drone. The rhythm of

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swimming and prayer, music of the kind that hopes underwater, every movement of my arms and legs, every glance of my arms or legs, every breath in this movement towards sunrise. Born to be born, what one crippled thing can I sing? Each sealed

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envelope of the hand, caress messages, slice surfaces, close the eyes to endless space, close the eyes to infinite darkness. I will never reach it, only outward, hand over hand over a cold black sky.

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Morton Marcus: And we have been talking with Ken Weisner tonight, his new book, "The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians," is where most of all these poems came from. This is Mort Marcus and the Poetry Show, stay tuned for "From the Bookshelf" tonight

00:59:41.180 - 00:59:49.790

hosted by Gary Shapiro, who will read another of his hilarious stories, this one entitled, "Sex Education," that's coming right up now and we're off.