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Kenneth Lamb: THE HOLE Who has fallen in the hole has never returned. Who has the hole feels that goes through one end of the soul to the other end. Who lowers down a lantern deep enough to see if the hole could

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ever be filled would find all the words in the world cannot accurately spit out the answer. Who has learned this hole cannot be filled by visible things does not spend time playing too much golf. Who does not know there is a hole will always be empty.

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Morton Marcus: That was Kenneth Lamb, tonight's guest on the Poetry Shows, which immediately follows. And this is KUSP, community sponsored radio at 88.9 FM on your dial. It is eight o'clock, this is Mort Marcus, and this is

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the Poetry Show. And tonight, we welcome Kenneth Lamb for, as if you've been listening to our advertisements this week, his first appearance on radio. And Kenny, welcome to the Poetry Show.

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Kenneth Lamb: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. Morton Marcus: Kenny, tell us a little bit about yourself. You are a native Santa Cruzian aren't you? Kenneth Lamb: That's correct. I was born and raised here in

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Santa Cruz and have spent most of my life here, although I have done some geographics over the years. Morton Marcus: Okay. Do you belong to the Italian section of the old Santa Cruz population?

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Kenneth Lamb: Yes, I do. My mother is a Stagnaro. Her name is Beatrice Mallea Stagnaro. She was born and raised here in Santa Cruz, California as well. Her mother and father both came over from the old country, Italy, about the turn of the

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century. Morton Marcus: Great. And obviously you've lived here, you made a very interesting statement. You've been writing for around thirty years, I know, you made an interesting

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statement that you'd go into Cabrillo College early on in the 1970s but you never felt, quote, and this is to quote you, you've never felt part of the writing community, which was then comprised of many people that moved to this county from other

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areas of America. That's a very interesting statement, and could you speak to that for a second? Kenneth Lamb: Well, I'm not sure that I could elaborate too much on that, I just probably did not feel too much a part of anything

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during that time in my life. I was a serious writer at that time but I never felt that I either was good enough or felt that I could be useful in what was going on here at Santa Cruz. It was changing awful quickly with the University, or becoming

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enlarged as it was doing and the influx of people that were coming from all over the country was just a little too overwhelming for such a small town person like me. Morton Marcus: It really was changing enormously. And I asked

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that question, of course, because I was one of those people coming from different geographical areas in America. And in fact, one of my books, of course, it's a discovery of Santa Cruz and the country of Santa Cruz called, "The Santa

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Cruz Mountain Poems." And so I sort of saw that, as you know, a very definite reference, not only to me, but many of my friends who were moving down here. What I'm trying to say and get out here is that you really represent an older Santa Cruz, a

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traditional Santa Cruz, one that many, many people who may be even listening to this show did not know existed, but which provides the really moral as well as economic and ethical background for this county and especially the city of Santa

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Cruz itself. What was it that made you start writing poetry in this connection, if you can weave them together? Kenneth Lamb: Actually, I think it was the death of my uncle, Batista "Dodie" Stagnaro, in 1968 that probably set it off. I

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wrote a poem for him almost eulogizing him. And it was a way -- he was very close to me -- and it was a way that I discovered that I could express my feelings and it pretty much started from there. I was about fifteen years old, I was a

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freshman at that time at Santa Cruz High School. Morton Marcus: Let's ask something else here and then I want to get into a few poems. What are you looking for in your poetry? What are you attempting to do in your poetry?

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Kenneth Lamb: Well, probably like many other poets that work a long time at their art or their work, I'm trying to discover a new language that goes beyond the English language as we speak it on a regular basis, I think there are a lot

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of different hidden languages in the English language and a pure form of expression that usually takes a lot of time and a lot of effort within, going to paper to try to get into that state of consciousness where one can stumble upon, if you will,

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another form of language that's just a little bit purer than what we commonly know. Morton Marcus: You said at one point that that, well, let me say, put it this way, if I can find it: you do not love

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writing, but you feel compelled to write. Kenneth Lamb: I do feel compelled to write. I feel very suicidal on days that I do not write or if I feel that I want to try to get into other activities that most people do

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on a daily basis, it just becomes uncomfortable for me. Compelled to write, I feel like it's my life blood. I write to survive and through my writing, then, I find a means to live. Morton Marcus: That's just about the best definition of poetry I

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know and the best definition of any art really. And I think especially in the situation poetry is in today, that if you don't feel compelled to do it, don't do it. I mean, there's really very few rewards in it. The creative act itself is the

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big reward and it does, it keeps you going from one day to the next. And therefore, without further ado, let's hear a couple of these Kenneth Lamb poems which I was so impressed with that I immediately invited you to come on the show on reading.

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Kenneth Lamb: Thank you. This poem is called: THE TEA CUP, and it is for my cousin Geoffrey Dunn. The Tea Cup was a restaurant on Pacific Avenue for many years. We drank whiskey, no one brand but lots of it, before hors

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d'oeuvres during dinner, and well after the leaves in those dinky tea cups dried. And we ate the cookies, our fortunes in the kisses sweet Sophie left on the men's bathroom mirror nightly. The last message I gave Don Yee to give to you was wrapped up in

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fish paper dated October 1977, around the time the state started sending some anarchists off off for psychiatric evaluations, around the time you re-arrived from a travel across the waters of the Indonesia blue. But by then, cousin, what

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mattered most -- love of family in the central California coast -- although at hand so seemingly close in reality was far far away. At the table in the distant corner, above the doors to the Plaza Bakery is where we always ate our chow mein. Later

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at the bar, you shot a lot of shit with the wannabes, who looked like little more than shriveled fish heads on soda straws, especially the rich ones. Every evening in the end imminently, usually about two, Don locked the black iron gate

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and Sophie, his daughter, came to sit between us and lit us up every time like the old fourth of July's skies above the then blemishing beaches of Santa Cruz. You said I must have tipped that one university student bartender a house on

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Western Drive, that week we were certain the sardines had returned to Monterey Bay to stay, the week we were sure Sophie was going to give one of us a new native baby with half a Stagnaro face. I don't know now what Don Yee saw in us then.

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Maybe it was the way we somehow managed to stagger down those steep restaurant steps without stumbling or falling, or how we wobbled arm in arm along Pacific Avenue singing, singing third generation Italian-American songs. You didn't know at that

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time if Don Yee knows now who Nicola Sacco and Bartomoleo Vanzetti were. Anyway he had a ton to deal with, I mean, just being an Asian in a slanted country like this, leaves an open wound in any word leaning towards the meaning of freedom.

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Sometimes you and I walked all of the way into the blackout, out onto the war of mumbling delirium until we fell asleep on the gunny sacks piled high in one of the shacks to our family's fishmarket. Other times we floated up Beach Hill,

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sitting for weeks above Cowell Beach on West Cliff Drive, talking in tongues, way, way out of our minds. Once in a while, you seemed predisposed, somewhere else, like back up to Tea Cup with Sophie or something. Once in a while, I

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would sit at the psych ward windows, sort of in the same manner for days at a time, wishing that this bleak future wouldn't have crept up as quickly as we were sure it would do, wishing we were playing ball again back on Mission Street

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before there were traffic lights, wishing we were in the Plaza Bakery, holding on to our mother's hands, while they ordered their Italian rum cakes and we saw Sophie with her father for the first time and said to each other, like we said

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about Santa Cruz, "Isn't she beautiful?" Morton Marcus: That's great, great poem to start with Kenny because that really is sort of the quintessential Californian poem for me. It is extremely personal, it's usually an

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address to a family member, in this case, Geoffrey, and it has as its background a Santa Cruz which in many cases is gone. And remembering the Tea Cup, which for years since the earthquake was just a hole in the ground, and now a new building is going

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up there, and remembering Don Yee, it really recalls all of our pasts, even people who have not been here nearly as long as you. And it- it gives it a sense that it is not personal in the end, which is so important to poetry, but really becomes a

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universal poem about loss, and yet a sense of setting things into an order, into some kind of existence where we can use it as a touchstone for our own lives. So that's just a little bit of interpretation for the people out there who are listening to

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us chatter, how about another one? Kenneth Lamb: NAIVETY Will I ever drum up the nerve to ask enough of the one in me if I was perchance an isolated freckle on the shady side of

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your newborn face, or the single clinging drip of sweat, which stuck to your cheek as you out-lapped open-mouth miscreants, which were disguised as bands of gentle souls, dancing down concrete tangles, all through the song of your

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disconnected youth. Might I have been at the camp of angels, has that flicker of light which wept with you in your den of demons by the dying candle of one more forsaken romance. Or maybe the rusty gate you shoved aside and staggered up and through, in

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search of an out in someone else, or something else, somewhere else? Oh, tell me please, if I was there if merely as a spot of calm you slowly decided to settle on, not far from the family tree of forgotten orphans, to ponder the

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wisdom of emptiness. Could I have been there then or a little later, even deeper drowning in the floodwaters of insignificance or three lives earlier, as that cold sore on your lip you continuously cursed and yet licked so long and

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lusciously that I finally dissolved into an unknown invisibility like an undiscovered word on the tip of your tongue you desire to taste and desperately speak, but could not, but would never let go of.

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Morton Marcus: And who is that addressed to? Kenneth Lamb: That was addressed to myself. Morton Marcus: Okay. Kenneth Lamb: The child in me.

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Morton Marcus: Oh, the childhood, great. Kenneth Lamb: From many years ago. Morton Marcus: That, you know, has those wonderful images that seem to just be totally surprising. Every once in a

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while on the show, more than once in a while, I tell people out there many of whom are budding poets, you know, where they can learn something from people on the show. And that's one thing I want them to listen for in your work. One, not only

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is your work so concrete, physical, which is so necessary for poetry to be, but your images are so surprising. And one thing that I think all art has to be is surprising. It can't, the language can't work the way it works in the everyday

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world, which is something you were alluding to. It has to be able to make us see the situation and see the language in a totally new way, that surprises us, and therefore, allows us to enter the world of the poem, and in doing that,

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enter the world in which we live in a much more meaningful way. Don't hesitate also to introduce these poems and make some comments on them because the people out there, you know, need anything they can get to really partake of the poem with you,

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and it gives you a chance to do that. Kenneth Lamb: This next poem is called, "Sometimes," and it was written for Tara Ohta of the Ohta family that was murdered here in 1971. And it was soon after that that Santa Cruz

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California, was recognized as t e murder capital of the world, nd she was my girlfriend at he time of the murders. So t is poem is entitl SOMETIMES

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I still feel like killing John Linley Frazier. Sometimes I drop a tear on your grave, wrapped in a love poem. Sometimes I bring bright spring flowers from other worlds for your mother and father, or cinnamon taffy for your two tiny brothers, who are

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all tightly buried beside you. Tara Ohta, sometimes the sun explodes right in front of my meaningless face and everything in this world stops growing. Snow and crow become the same color, fire and water turn into one element and share a common

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heat, burning chill. Now and then I stroll Castle Beach, skipping stones like distant dreams across the sea, every one of them sinks to the bottom. Sometimes I shadowbox on the path of the pacifist along Soquel Drive but I have not been

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back up Rodeo Gulch Road since we drove back from the murders scene. The look in your eyes then was so far away, three light years could have stood easily between us. It was never a question of how long you would live, only how long you could

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endure -- four years, each second an empty century crawling into darkness. The last two delirious decades I sometimes drag along with me, sometimes I let them go. Sometimes I pray for the soul of this country. Sometimes at night, I remember

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the evening when the stone Buddha in your backyard came to life while we carved out our futures together, for each other, on little paper hearts. Sometimes I skip stones across unknown oceans, sometimes I wonder when you will return to

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me with my sleep stitched into your night gown. Morton Marcus: Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. You know in that poem, you say, "sometimes I pray for this country," and if lying has become an honest thing to do in

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America, and I'm quoting you, is there anything poetry can do to change the deceitful course of its nature? And I take this is a social comment on what's going on in the country generally. Kenneth Lamb: It is social, and it is also political, both. I

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would like to think that a poet or a group of poets someday could somehow change the consciousness of the current movement of this country. I would like to think that words once again could have true meaning. I think they have lost

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a lot of weight from time or probably a century ago or so. I just see a lot of emotional dishonesty with words via television, the internet, most politicians. It's just a real trying time right now.

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Morton Marcus: Therefore, you obviously feel that poetry does have a definite place, or can have a definite place, in changing the future of the world. Kenneth Lamb: I believe it can and hope to believe that it will

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at some time. Morton Marcus: Great. Well, let's hear some more Kenneth Lamb poems. We are talking with Kenneth Lamb, the Santa Cruz poet. And we've been talking about Santa Cruz, his relation

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to Santa Cruz and his work and his thought and his life and if you've just tuned in, I think you're in for a very, very interesting forty minutes yet and so here is Kenneth Lamb again, reading some more poetry.

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Kenneth Lamb: This is a poem entitled: POEM TO THE DECEASED ME, It was originally written for Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and probably Bill Clinton as well but I turned it inward, so here we go.

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You climbed the clinically dead tree, thought by thought, all roots rotting. With a wrinkled mind, memory a maze of lies, you with those eyes that saw only what they wanted to see, they never looked inward. You, with your ears deafened by the words

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from your own speeches spoken to stadiums of skeletons. You, who locked your heart in a vault and kept your wallet empty, the first dollar you made you stole and glued it to the bottom of your right foot. He has you with the Rolex pierced through the

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septum of your nose, you who wouldn't let time go, you were lost in the moment in search of the moment. You, living the full life in the hollow shell, with borrowed masks you never returned and never removed. You, with your feelings you denied

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because they denied you. You were a Christian on Sunday, all right, but only for an hour. You, slick as grease, who are no more, were no more, than extensions of your own habits. You the environmentalist with alligator shoes, a bald eagle

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belt, and a red fox laying breathless over your shoulders. You who pitied no one, everyone pitied you. You that did not know you while tooting the whistle of the fool, preaching freedom from the podium of your own dictatorship. You, the

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pacifist, who packed a gun in every pocket, tossing parties for the poor to turn a handsome profit. You the plagiarist, the imitator, the imposter. You, whose head I've held down now a decade in the sewer of my soul. It's just when I think you've

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spent your last breath that you pop up from my sea of silence to taunt me. Morton Marcus: Now that's interesting. It's the second poem like that you've read in which you're really looking at

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yourself as though you're looking at yourself in a mirror. And yet you're looking into yourself, you're just not looking at your reflection. More interesting in that case, because the original vision is like the mask of Reagan and Bush

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and instead of taking a quick shot at them politically, suddenly you realize how much of them is you. I take it that's what's going on, right? Kenneth Lamb: Absolutely.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, I mean that- that is marvelous. That is a very, very high conscious way of doing things. Continue, I want you to get in as many poems as you can. Kenneth Lamb: The next poem is called:

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FEAR There are houses in the mind, some are empty, and some are inhabited with rooms of families and these families survive by nibbling on thought. And sometimes these families grow so

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large, they become all of the thoughts. And the person who owns them seldom sleeps, and walks around a lot in circles, for years believing everything he thinks he is afraid, will happen.

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Morton Marcus: I love that poem. It's one of the poems that you sent me. And I'm going to ask you to read it again. It's an extended metaphor, which just gives the idea of the house as being a place where all your thoughts are, and it's an

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extended metaphor of fear. So here's Kenneth to read that again. Kenneth Lamb: FEAR There are houses in the mind, some are empty, and some are

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inhabited with rooms of families and these families survive by nibbling on thought. And sometimes these families grow so large, they become all of the thoughts. And the person who owns them seldom sleeps, and walks around a lot in circles,

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for years believing everything he thinks he is afraid will happen. Morton Marcus: And as Kenny looks for his next poem, we're talking with Kenneth Lamb, if you've just tuned in, the Santa

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Cruz poet who is reading from his work, and we are talking with him about what he's trying to do in poetry, and the importance that he thinks poetry has for the world today. Kenny. Kenneth Lamb: OCTOBER DESSERT ON WEST CLIFF DRIVE

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Autumn, the artist again, pressing leaves in the book of winds, a colorful history. My own not so vibrant, perhaps a half-page essay, merely explaining that it was just a one-breath breeze, which blew me completely away. Out here on the

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cliffs, someone else is writing on air another version of the same sad tale, simple as sand, and complicating every aspect of existence. After a strawberry sunset, there is this hot chocolate dusk pouring over the bay, which lays on a plate like

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a pancake. Wanting one more basket of peaches and oranges, one more scoop of rainbow sherbert on the sea's horizon, just for dawn I turn against the night. Morton Marcus: Great, beautiful visual pictures there, really

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nice. I love pressing leaves and the book of the winds. And that's really looking at things that the other poets have talked about, but seeing it in totally original way is what the continuous tradition of poetry is for each new generation.

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Rattling on here, just keep reading. I think actually, we have time for maybe one more good size poem, and then we're going to take a nice break. Kenneth Lamb: I spent a lot of years on the wharf in my

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childhood. This poem is called: THE ODOR OF THINGS Flies are back and forth near the porch licking fish juice from faded black boots, same sort of afternoon it was for

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many years on the wharf -- salty, smelly, breezy, clean in different dirty ways -- thought there might have been a move to escape the fate of my ancestors but no, no, I have returned like the flies to the stinking world of fish, where one must wear the

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smile of the smelt with a number one hook stuck through the lip just to survive. There is fragrance to the stench, warm, stiff, sweet, cooked crab, anchovy paste, bacalao swinging from string. But then there is rot, decay, forgotten fish in

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boxes, a month in the walk-in and still undiscovered. The smell of death is everywhere here, sustaining life. If you have been born in a fish market and raised, and the bloodstained smock, and the seamen's cap, and the boots and the wool socks

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have become a natural wardrobe, and the scales of the fish is the only music you have ever danced to. And the flies, the flies can call you by name, it is hard on the head, hard on the heart to try to turn back or away because that is who you

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are. And if mama calls, on the phone or through the spirit, and she is filled to the gills because she too, is hooked, she will remind you that our fathers and brothers all died young on this very same pier, died with their boots on, then inevitably

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you will almost hear your own soul wail without ever shedding a tear. You will almost always have to wake up before the sun, before the flies, and stick your feet down inside that odor. Morton Marcus: {Cut off] -the Santa Cruz poet and we've been

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getting to know him a little bit and listening to some of his marvelous personal poems about family and Santa Cruz, and people who he mentions and places that he mentioned really are integral to the history of Santa Cruz, where it has come

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from, and I hope with a strong family values and sense of Old World ethos, will have a strong part in where Santa Cruz is going. So Kenny, what are you going to read for us now? Kenneth Lamb: I'm gonna read a poem called:

00:29:29.130 - 00:29:48.180

WOMEN NAMES A timeless hour, nights in the net, schools of squid are squirting out ink in another ocean. On another boat bearing a woman's name, a fisherman has been rocked to sleep with the

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sky falling backwards. Where is the catch? I really was writing his poem on water before the gales passed beyond this moment. It seemed so long ago, when the one wave with the whole story broke up on stones, when most of the boat bows in Santa Cruz

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carried women names. Morton Marcus: Kenny, let's just sort of ask some personal things, take a little break from the poetry. What are some of the poets, poets who have had a major impact on your work? I

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mean, it is established, though you haven't said it, that not joining the literary community, what you've done is you really worked out all your poetics on your own, which is really the best way to do it. I mean, you know, classes in poetics are,

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they're really in many ways phony because you find someone else's shortcuts and you don't discover all the things you have to discover about writing. With saying that, then, there must have been poets, however, who really gave you direction and

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inspired you. Who are the poets who have had the most impact on you? Kenneth Lamb: W.S. Merwin would be one who probably has had the most influence on my writing, and I've read just about

00:31:10.620 - 00:31:27.210

everything that he's ever written. And also, I studied a little bit of Pound because I know he studied Pound, but I also grew very fond of the Fresno writers, Philip Levine, Gary Soto, and Larry Levis, the late Larry Levis. I actually

00:31:27.210 - 00:31:42.500

spent a month with Larry Levis 1981 and I really enjoyed his work, and I know he was greatly influenced by Philip Levine. Morton Marcus: And in fact, I'll tell you Levine and I talked shortly after Levis' death, he was really broken up. I mean,

00:31:42.680 - 00:31:53.570

Levis was his one of his favorite students, if not his favorite student. So yes, it's a very, very tight group, all of those people. Kenneth Lamb: But also I had influence, Allen Ginsberg was

00:31:53.570 - 00:32:11.390

one, "The Howl," poem was just something that, you know, I read over and over again. I was around towards the little later part of the Beat Generation, and him and Gary Snyder. Lew Welch was another favorite of mine that walked away into the woods

00:32:11.390 - 00:32:26.600

of Sierra Nevada and never came back. And I also was fond of a gentleman by the name of Weldon Kees, who they found his car running on idle on the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955. So, but probably Merwin, he would probably be the greatest

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influence on me, I would say. Morton Marcus: Well, those names if anyone wants to call up and ask the spelling to some of those name, that is a great little library right there. And you've named, believe it or not,

00:32:38.540 - 00:32:55.100

except for Larry Levis, who was younger than I was, you've named those poets who are the major influences on my work, how about that. What in particular, if anything, which phase of Merwin's work, I mean, he's gone through so many different

00:32:55.400 - 00:33:06.550

phases. Kenneth Lamb: There was actually just one phase from about 1963 to about 1971, I think, was his greatest work. Actually, now there's information coming out and there's been some articles

00:33:06.550 - 00:33:22.300

written that Sylvia Plath had a great influence on him and changing his style, which really broke open in the free verse with a book called, "The Moving Target," which was followed by, "The Lies," which is followed by, "The Carrier of Ladders,"

00:33:22.300 - 00:33:37.870

and which also then was followed by, "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment." Those four books right there, I think were robably his peak time. verything that he's written ince then, to me, is just not s connected totally in each

00:33:37.870 - 00:33:49.630

ook. There are some great ieces in each book that I have ead, but nothing as solid as hose four books put together, o '63 to about '71 for me. Morton Marcus: You know, I agree with you, 100%. But right

00:33:49.630 - 00:34:08.320

before, "The Moving Target," there was a book of his and I think that's the one that Plath had the biggest influence on. Plath through Robert Lowell, and it was a book called, "The Drunk in the Furnace." And that is where I see influence on because

00:34:08.320 - 00:34:17.590

they have very personal poems, they have family poems, and they're marvelous. And he does it in that one volume and he never comes back to it. Kenneth Lamb: His whole consciousness changed right

00:34:17.590 - 00:34:28.120

about that point, yes, you're absolutely correct. Morton Marcus: Marvelous. Kenny, let's hear some more of your poems and your introductions are great. I'm sure they're helping people out there, too.

00:34:29.140 - 00:34:39.240

Kenneth Lamb: This poem is called: TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, and it pretty much speaks for itself. I gave you all of the money I had then. I forget how much now

00:34:39.240 - 00:34:57.360

but it wasn't enough. It was though after dusk when the stars appeared cold, closer together, cuddled in clusters like a reflection of brief recollections of an Alzheimer victim's mind. Our memories were no less scattered, separated by

00:34:57.360 - 00:35:15.990

the smashing symbols of time or perhaps simply misplaced by our own spiritual retardedness, for we chose to be so many other people at different places in the same life. Why the widespread feathers of the decomposed dove would re-gather

00:35:16.020 - 00:35:34.590

here, in a single moment on this Santa Cruz balcony overlooking Monterey Bay, is far beyond me. Here, where age finally caught up to us, here where our looks were no longer an asset. Here where who we thought we might have been, we discovered we

00:35:34.590 - 00:35:54.150

never were. Here where our vessels of light instantly dimmed into diminutive slivers, disappearing through the skin of darkness. Two weeks before Christmas, and if Jesus himself would have resurfaced in the flesh, to inform me that you,

00:35:54.150 - 00:36:15.600

Suzy Nixon would be discovered five days later, in seventy-two parts behind a massage parlor in Seaside, California, I would have told him to his face he was a liar. It was 1984, I think, my recollection, like the air, growing thinner and thinner.

00:36:17.370 - 00:36:32.700

Morton Marcus: Now Kenny, I know you're you're looking for the next poem, but I'm going to stop right there. That poem is so perfect. Its diction is so perfect, it's choice of words is so perfect. I mean, simply all it's doing is trying to figure

00:36:32.700 - 00:36:49.260

out how time has passed, which is a major theme of yours and about this girl who is obviously murdered in a horrible way. Every poet has written something like this all the way back to François Villon, or back to the Romans, for heaven's sakes. But

00:36:49.710 - 00:37:05.430

the language here, the imagery here, is just so perfect, so surprising, so deeply felt, I'm going to ask you to read it again for the people out there now that I've explained to them. Just here, to me, this is what true poetry is really composed

00:37:05.430 - 00:37:22.980

of, this sense that the language is new and brings you into an experience, you might have read in the newspapers, but it was never this experience, it never went into your soul. Kenny? Kenneth Lamb: "Sometimes-" that's not the poem.

00:37:23.160 - 00:37:36.030

Morton Marcus: Okay. I threw him off folks because he was looking for the next poem and I'm asking him to read the one he just read. So I'm going to take up some time here and tell you that you're listening to Kenneth Lamb, if that last poem affected

00:37:36.030 - 00:37:54.720

you as much as it did me. And he is reading his poetry, this is the first time actually he's read his poems on radio. And Kenny, he was born and raised in Santa Cruz and belongs to the great old Genovese fishing tradition, which was and is so

00:37:54.720 - 00:38:04.710

important in the very essence of what makes Santa Cruz Santa Cruz as well as its history. Got it? Kenneth Lamb: TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS Morton Marcus: And that's it. Perfect timing also.

00:38:06.010 - 00:38:24.520

Kenneth Lamb: I gave you all of the money I had then, I forget how much now, but it wasn't enough. It was though after dusk, when the stars appeared cold, closer together, cuddled in clusters like a reflection of brief recollections in an

00:38:24.520 - 00:38:44.170

Alzheimer patient's mind. Our memories were no less scattered, separated by the smashing symbols of time, or perhaps simply misplaced by our own spiritual retardedness, for we chose to be so many other people at different places in the same

00:38:44.170 - 00:39:02.800

life. Why the widespread feathers of the decomposed of would re-gather here, in a single moment on the Santa Cruz balcony overlooking Monterey Bay, is far beyond me. Here where age finally caught up to us. Here where our looks were no

00:39:02.800 - 00:39:22.660

longer an asset. Here where who we thought we might have been we discovered we never were. Here where our vessels of light instantly dimmed into diminutive slivers, disappearing through the skin of darkness two weeks before Christmas. And if Jesus

00:39:22.660 - 00:39:44.140

himself would have resurfaced in the flesh to inform me that you, Suzy Nixon, would be discovered five days later in seventy-two parts behind a massage parlor in Seaside, California, I would have told him to his face he was a liar. It was 1984, I think, My

00:39:44.140 - 00:40:02.290

recollection, like the air, growing thinner and thinner. Morton Marcus: And that dove of memory coming together, it's magical stuff. I'm going to stop praising him because I'm just probably embarrassing the hell out of you. But continue on.

00:40:03.190 - 00:40:18.170

Kenneth Lamb: This poem is called: WRITING FOR MY TRANSCRIPTS I learned to swim in shadows of schools of sardines. Before I could walk, I shouted lies to the public from on top of the

00:40:18.170 - 00:40:38.000

bottom of a fish box, selling crab cocktails, four bits a piece on an unstable wharf out over the sea instead of Kinney Garden. Was taught English in a pool hall, speech on a salmon boat, my teacher a Malayan from Bali with a Tahitian accent,

00:40:38.330 - 00:40:59.300

this language, too, broken like an ocean of whitecaps. At the School of Shattered Hearts, we wrote in ink of burgundy, where I graduated with honors, even directing a class on loneliness although all we did was cry. The University of Success made

00:40:59.300 - 00:41:19.070

people pay the price. I remember learning in the class on giving, how to take so well. In later years with pockets full of thousands I saw in mirrors only the face of failure, a rotten plum stuck to the bottom of a dumpster. In a shriveling decade

00:41:19.070 - 00:41:38.450

at shrinking age, near the Institute of Isolation, where Gods without followers and angels with clipped wings sat in shade giving sermon after sermon, over and over, I wrote my thesis on those who were legends in their own minds: me,

00:41:38.450 - 00:41:59.030

myself, and I. Before my funeral at finishing school, I knelt for a solid century in a spaceless room, hearing everything in a lecture on nothingness, and where in one unforgettable moment, three silent saints assured me my future had long

00:41:59.030 - 00:42:15.890

ago passed with flying colors. Morton Marcus: We are and have been for the past forty-five minutes speaking with Kenneth Lamb, the Santa Cruz poet, if you've just tuned in. Kenny's poems have appeared in Punta Del

00:42:15.890 - 00:42:28.530

Sol and the Porter Gulch Review as well as other magazines. And we're just going to continue, Kenny? Kenneth Lamb: My wife won't let me come home unless I read this poem. It's called:

00:42:28.530 - 00:42:48.850

THE APARTMENTS, she said you need one with some humor. There's always a problem, always something wrong: a plugged sink, a leaky faucet, a bloody nose in apartment number two that won't stop bleeding, an overflowing toilet, a toilet that won't

00:42:48.850 - 00:43:07.300

flush, a cracked toilet seat, a toilet that keeps singing, the endless screaming in number six. I have offered the woman a gun, the hot water heater, animal bones in the garbage disposal. I have told them, "no," a hundred times. The rents and the way

00:43:07.300 - 00:43:26.290

they stagger in, my wife says the money even smells of liquor. Kids and their candy wrappers, balls, and bats, and rocks, and broken windows. Wet gobs of gum on the stairways, swear words in fifteen languages spray painted on the wall I just recovered

00:43:26.290 - 00:43:45.580

yesterday. Another eviction, the Friday night knock on the door early Saturday morning, cops and the same questions all over again. An overflowing washing machine, one more missing dryer, cars without mufflers, bicycles without tires, looks like a

00:43:45.580 - 00:44:04.240

junkyard, the owner's coming Monday, oh my god. "You cannot hang your clothes on the balcony, for the 99th time!" The front door to twelve has been busted down again, third time in fifteen days, no drugs at this complex. "You have cockroaches

00:44:04.240 - 00:44:21.940

you say? Well, I'll be damned." "I said six people in a two bedroom was fine, but not half of your country." The phone is ringing, "I'll get it honey." "Hello, yes, yes, a three bedroom, two bath, clean and quiet, bug and drug-free with

00:44:21.940 - 00:44:35.470

carpet. Uh huh, as new as old can possibly be." The stains are free, and lots lots more. Morton Marcus: Now, is that you're the manager of a housing unit?

00:44:35.740 - 00:44:57.280

Kenneth Lamb: Yes, several years ago in another city we tried it. Morton Marcus: We tried it, okay, that poem does say we tried. Okay, while you're looking, I know that you also read Charles Bukowski. And you know that he wrote in, "To the

00:44:57.280 - 00:45:13.880

Whore Who Took My Poems," "but as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets, but not so very much poetry." Would you like to comment on that? Kenneth Lamb: I could comment on that by I guess saying that Paul

00:45:13.880 - 00:45:29.600

Cezanne probably started painting when he was about thirty-five years old and he gave up banking at about the age of forty, I think, and for the next thirty-seven years, started painting. And I don't think that he was very good at the

00:45:29.600 - 00:45:48.200

beginning, but he stayed with it and died along the roadside. And thanks to him, for he was the one I think that truly discovered Cubism at about the age of seventy-six years old, and Picasso stepped into right after that. Probably, if he

00:45:48.200 - 00:46:03.560

would have been judged as an artist at about the age of fifty, probably would have said no, he wasn't there yet. Not judging someone till they're buried in a grave is a great idea. I do agree with the statement that there are

00:46:03.560 - 00:46:17.840

probably a lot more poets than there are poetry out here, but but you never know where it's going to come from, or when one picks up a pen. If the consciousness is right, if they do their homework, there's no telling where that person may

00:46:17.840 - 00:46:31.920

go. Morton Marcus: And I will interpret that, doing their homework, as really learning how to use language and craft to its best ability. I take it that's what you meant. Yes?

00:46:32.220 - 00:46:40.950

Kenneth Lamb: Yes. Morton Marcus: And I say that because many young poets out there do not want to do their homework. They just want, they consider to be the consciousness but not the homework, and

00:46:41.250 - 00:46:50.390

obviously, you have done the homework. Okay, keep reading Kenny. Kenneth Lamb: This poem is entitled: BARBED WIRE FENCES

00:46:52.820 - 00:47:17.060

My cousin now crosses his eyes, dots T's, he feels still his wife sweet breasts, full of milk in his skinless hands, how long he believes he will never leave her behind. Each time he writes, it is the same letter over and over, like a phonograph needle

00:47:17.060 - 00:47:38.090

stuck on a record scratch. If only she would have departed two seconds earlier, if the baby hadn't cried the moment it did, if her head hadn't turned, if the semi didn't slow or swerve, if he, my cousin, would have traveled with them and drove, he

00:47:38.090 - 00:47:58.430

thinks this would have never happened. Instead, he moves inside these ifs, a kind of concentration camp, where he has all of the prisoners and all of the guards, where he starves himself, punishes himself, degrades himself, walks daily

00:47:58.430 - 00:48:19.070

down into the shower room and gases himself because he cannot stop thinking there is a way to replace circumstance, that there is something left to figure out. When I see my cousin, he says, "Talk to me." So I do. I speak a few words between the barbed

00:48:19.070 - 00:48:45.980

wire fences, wondering which one of us is on which side and if we both have found this form of incarceration to our liking. Morton Marcus: And that in many ways is yet another mirror poem because you're the one who asks those questions. And also, you

00:48:45.980 - 00:49:07.570

don't know which side are you on, or which he's on in the end. Kenneth Lamb: IN BETWEEN LIVES Spending days in trees, each afternoon reaching for wings, flying through woods, weeks into months around splintered clocks,

00:49:07.810 - 00:49:30.550

working at the shelter of homeless leaves, following the footprints of the legless one, slaving for years, separating voices in the city of echoes, decades later discovering none were mine, finding my path after a century of solitude through

00:49:30.550 - 00:49:53.020

swamp land by crawl. Shedding shadows, selling tongues, leaving every one of my words for dead, throwing gold nuggets back into creeks, just for the splash. Drifting off on a bed of sand, reawakening inside the eye of an ant in the belly of a

00:49:53.020 - 00:50:13.520

dragonfly, giving memory to dust, breath to the winds, where I am at this moment I will be again, fluent in the language of the spirit. Morton Marcus: Great and that is several great images that I'm

00:50:13.520 - 00:50:32.150

just writing down here. We have approximately time for one, at the most, two short poems. and please do continue. Again for those people out there, we're listening to Kenny Lamb. Kenneth.

00:50:36.500 - 00:50:52.850

Kenneth Lamb: This poem is entitled: RETURN TO BE The boy on Cowell Beach is me three hundred sixty-two moons ago, twenty-four thousand five high tides later, the same

00:50:52.850 - 00:51:14.750

grunion flung from sea to sea, a wax dream dripping into September's seams, one glassy wave against marble cliffs shattering. And here he prefers working as usual for clam shells and sand dollars, scholar of informality, with a mind full of

00:51:14.750 - 00:51:35.030

deserted castles. Not a shadow known ashamed to call out his name, or follow the tracks washed away by the unattached hand of the instant vanishing, are they now as he was then, no older, but often under the same sort of ocean of air, or water,

00:51:35.240 - 00:51:58.640

in darkness, in light, never resisting the drowning, nor reaching for any illusion to keep comfortably afloat. Morton Marcus: Great. I think we got time for one more. Kenneth Lamb: And thanks to Mort Marcus, he helped me clean up

00:51:58.640 - 00:52:17.870

this last poem, and it is entitled: A NATIVE PROGNOSTICATION, and I wrote it for my wife Renee. Before gathered, shadows scattered, breaking up sleep. Somewhere else I happen to wake as someone else, in a cold and

00:52:17.870 - 00:52:36.260

empty bed of early morning. Light was collecting, slashed masks torn off yesterday's blistered faces for future fires. I touched through smoker's smog, fingers of dawn wrapped around the neck of day, other throats choking on

00:52:36.290 - 00:52:56.750

half-swallowed mountains of ash. Hearing haunting flutes playing human melodies, I followed those notes into woods of spiritual maladies, dancing alone to my own symphony of feelings. I found my lost eyes floating upside down in a sinking skiff

00:52:56.750 - 00:53:16.580

twelve years from now, across wind-whipped Pacific seas. Our daughter was near the foot of Cowell Beach, etching out with stick and sand her first and last real love poem. With long, thin, breakable nights hanging like ancient stalactites,

00:53:16.850 - 00:53:37.280

summers shade and rolled away in those trees on trains of trucks, leaving the gutted redwood forests. And from wherever I was witnessing in that last known June hollow moons melting on summer fingertips. You said I saw Ohlone women inside of oak

00:53:37.280 - 00:53:57.110

trunks with mortars and pestles and their woven hands continuing to powder eternities of acorns. You said I held on to you for the longest time, like a muscle still attached to a broken leg of the Pleasure Pier.

00:53:59.720 - 00:54:09.080

Morton Marcus: That was Kenneth Lamb, our guest tonight, a Santa Cruz poet. I hope you enjoyed the evening and the poetry as much as I did. Kenny, thanks so much for coming down. Kenneth Lamb: Thank you for having me.

00:54:09.080 - 00:54:17.630

Morton Marcus: We'll do it again. Kenneth Lamb: Thank you. Morton Marcus: Okay, great. Now, you out there, the Poetry Show will be back next week. It will be Anita, it will be Dennis. But

00:54:17.630 - 00:54:24.080

right now stay tuned for "A Boo Before Bedtime" with t e redoubtable Billie Harris. S e you in three week