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Morton Marcus: Well, hello everybody. This is Mort Marcus and I'm sitting in this famous dining room in which we have interviewed so many of the great poets of America. It is a rainy day in February 1993 and I'm here not only with one of my

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best friends, but really one of the legends himself of American poetry, and that is Lawson Inada who just loves to hear me say this. Lawson, welcome to Santa Cruz. Lawson Inada: Well, thanks, Morton. Yeah, feels good.

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Morton Marcus: As you can see he's full of a lot of words. What we're going to do today is we're going to talk to Lawson Inada about his life and his poetry which are intertwined, and just carry on a conversation for posterity about how Lawson

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goes about things in the world and in the art of poetry. So first, Lawson, if you would just tell us about your early years: where you were born, and what your family was doing and then the first memories of the internment camps.

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Lawson Inada: Okay, I was born in Fresno, California in 1938. And I was the first child and turned out to be the only child. And my dad was just starting his dental practice, he was originally from Watsonville and he had gone to the UC dental

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school and in the meantime, he met my mother who was from Fresno. And so, my dad tried getting started with his dental practice in Monterey and that wasn't working out so well, so then he decided to relocate to Fresno. And then shortly after,

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I was born, and I was living my little old life with- we had family dog named Jimmy. And we were living all about three blocks from what is- what is known in Fresno as Chinatown, which is the Westside business district. And so my grandparents

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had started the first fish store in Fresno in 1912 and so I would spend my time going around by the fish store even as a real little kid. And I'd go with my dog and at home I remember we had a nice house, sort of like this one we're in now and it had

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hedges and had a yard and it was, yeah, we were having a good- good time. And the neighbors were German, Italian, black, Chicano, it was a wonderful mixture, Armenian Basque, and so, I could have stayed there forever. I didn't

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need the war to come along and move me out of our little house on Current Street. And I was also the first grandchild for my mother's side of the family and so my grandparents would come by and get me after work. So they worked all the time, all day.

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And being a child, I would go to bed, of course, at a reasonable time but then my mother said they'd come by about nine and wake me up. And I didn't mind, I loved it because then they would drive me around town. And my grandfather used to drive a car,

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whatever car he had, he always drove it like a Model T. So there were a lot of jerks and bumps and grinds as we ground around Fresno at night, and he'd always take me by the train depot, show me the trains and I'd say, you know, I'd babble

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little things and then he'd take me across town to what is now the very chic and artistic part of Fresno, the Tower District, but they had a tower theater there that had what I call the pika pika on top and what it was was a ball with spikes on it

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that was all neon, And this thing, you know, was really a big highlight, and then they go off and spoil me and buy me some ice cream or something so. Then in the daytime, I would go and hang around and my grandma

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and grandpa and uncles and aunts were working at the fish store. And they would- I have pictures of me in a little stroller, they'd wheel me around. My grandmother would then show me off to all the establishments around there on F Street. There

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was a bar next door, there was a pool hall, there was a shine parlor, there's a Chinese restaurant, there's barber shops. It was a very, very vibrant life that I was born into at the time. And one indelible memory I have of those

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years was this Chinese woman next to the fish store, which was the heart of Chinatown, had a bar, Bon Ton Jenny's Bar, it was called the Bon Ton and I'd go in there and she had this huge jukebox that to me must have been about three stories

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high. And I just hang around, everybody knew me. And they pressed these magic buttons and you know, these records would come out and they'd be played. And I think the first song I learned there was a big hit at the time, "You Are My Sunshine,"

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which turned out later to be by the guy who was the governor of Louisiana and he was also a country and western singer but that was one of the first songs I learned. And then I used to dance along with this other kind of music, which had to be jazz,

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so it must have been Count Basie, Duke Ellington, somebody like that in the jukebox. And I danced around and everybody was doting on me and fawning on me and my grandmother would come and get me and I'd dance around in the store and stuff and so.

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When I look back at it, I was not only being nurtured but in a way, you might say that I was being trained to be a writer, a poet because you know, a poet, as we've been talking, can be many things. You know, we can be a storyteller, we can be an

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entertainer, we can be- we can function almost like a priest or a shaman in ceremonial locations, we can do all these things. And so, the nice thing about it was that my relatives were giving me an audience for my stuff. And then uncles and

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grandparents would come over after work and if it was about dinnertime, and I was really wide awake they'd ask me to perform stuff. And so my mom had a degree in teaching and so she had me memorize poems she'd read to me. She'd say, let's do the,

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"Pied Piper of Hamelin," by Robert Browning and that was a long poem and I'd go along with her and had whole passages memorized, rats about to you know, the Pied Piper leading these rats out of Hamelin and I remember Walter de la Mare's

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poems and Robert Louis Stevenson and my relatives would actually applaud when I do these things. And then I'd sing, and another thing I used to do my uncle's- because I was the only kid around you see, this is before my cousins were born, so my

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uncle's got a kick out of the fact that when you're little, you know, you have a little neck, short neck. And so they used to say, you look like Tony Galento, do the Tony Galento, I don't know, Tony Galento was but they showed me how to do Tony

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Galento, who, you know, had fought Joe Lewis, and later on became a professional wrestler. And so I would, I would swagger around and beat my chest and they'd say, Tony Galento, Tony Galento, but you get the picture. It was a great life

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being where I was at the time. And what happened was when the war happened, all that was gone. Yeah, it was all gone. I don't exactly remember. People have asked me, well, what was it like getting ready? And you know, how did your family react? You know,

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I don't remember because all of this stuff I'm saying goes back to pretty much my infancy, you see, so by the time the evacuation, the relocation happened in early 1942 I was around four, you see, so all of this stuff was happening and I

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was being nurtured since infancy. Morton Marcus: So they they actually, for better use of words, rounded you up, almost when the executive order 9066 was signed, which was in February '42.

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Lawson Inada: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Wow. Lawson Inada: Yeah, I think it was shortly after that, that I don't remember, of course, I don't remember the dates or

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anything. And my parents and my relatives and my grandparents, and of course, all of our neighbors must have been highly distressed. Maybe my parents shielded me from this, you know, or maybe I just didn't know what was going on, maybe I asked,

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what are we doing? Where are we going? They might have said, well, we're just going to go to the fairgrounds, which is where we were shipped to, but it must have been highly distressing, but I don't remember it. So I think they kind of shielded me

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from all that because I'd have been mildly upset because the one thing that I remember is that we lost our dog. And I talked about this with students when I try to teach about experience or I teach this great novel, "No-no Boy," by John

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Okada, just a great novel and it takes place after the camps. And so to try to set it in context, I talked about the camps a bit and to personalize the experience or give the students a sense of about personal lives beyond history, you know, I'd

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talk about things like, you know, we lost our dog. And we had these nice neighbors so, a Chinese gentleman, who was a patient of my dad said, "Geez, Doc, I'll take your dog for you," you know. And this is the dog that I'd go wandering around

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with and people would call my mom and say, [unidentified], hey, Lawson's over here with Jimmy, you better come by and get him but you know, we'll feed him lunch right now. I mean, it was one of those very, very neighborly neighborhoods.

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Morton Marcus: What kind of dog was it? Lawson Inada: It was a German shepherd and it was my dad's dog from before he got married so it was pretty much his dog. And so what happened was we left him with Joe Lai, who was a

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Chinese-American, one of our neighbors, and we left other things, see we had to just abandon things and get out of there. Fortunately, so to speak, my dad, he only had a fairly new Studebaker so he sold that very cheaply and didn't he was only

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renting the house, so he was just getting started in his career. Morton Marcus: Were other Japanese Americans had to leave their property behind and was that confiscated and could they

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not get it back after the war? Lawson Inada: I think a lot of people just sold things very cheaply. They just lost stuff, some of them who had good friends and neighbors, you know, had their property taken care

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of, but I don't know I don't know how people continued to make payments and things on their property, so just, it was just a lot of loss. Now, as I said, my grandfather had started this, the Fresno fish market in 1912, and so he was able to have

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his store run by an Italian family. And he had raised five kids in an old house and so there was a German family said, you know, we'll watch your house for you. And this was fortunate because after the war ended, then we all had a place to come

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back to but yeah, the first place we went to was the Fresno County Fairgrounds. And I knew that too, I knew I was in the fairgrounds, except this wasn't ferris wheel time and cotton candy. And so, in the book I write about some of my legendary

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escapades including getting lost, not knowing where I was, because I didn't. Morton Marcus: Was that at the fairgrounds or was that in one of the camps?

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Lawson Inada: That was at the fairgrounds, it called Yeah, Yeah, Yeah(?). On the coast, we were either put into fairgrounds Morton Marcus: Were there armed guards troops or not yet? or racetracks, which are just huge fenced places where you can

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accommodate a lot of people so- Lawson Inada: There must have been, there must have been because we were, you know, we were behind barbed wire. Something else that happened was that- but the way I look at the

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whole history leading up to it, I don't see it as a single event, let's say, initiated by war against Japan or this was started because of Pearl Harbor. Something was in the works. And if you look at it, something had been in the works against us

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because on the West Coast, there was all this anti-Asian legislation from the first Chinese immigrants to this country people, you know, needed labor in this country, so we were brought into labor but people didn't want to stay

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because, you know, let's say we didn't fit the mold of what America should be, we didn't look American and so, it's a pattern there that goes back to anti-East Indian people, anti-Chinese people, and anti-Japanese people and so we

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had all these restrictions. So people were watching us and they didn't want us to stay, they didn't want us to succeed. And so when the war came, that allowed people to make a lot of money or take a lot of our stuff, just about all of our

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stuff, so- But also, what happened was that- I think what I read is that right after Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ready. They swooped in and they took all of our elders, all of our teachers,

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ministers, teachers, who knows what, meditation masters, Judo teachers, community people. And so, in a way you look at it that way. There wasn't too much rounding up or guarding you needed to do because it's like, Jesus, they got your grandpa

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locked up somewhere and you don't know where he is. And it turned out he was eventually sent to, let's say, Montana or somewhere out in New Mexico. In a way, it seems like they've got hostages and so when it comes time to go, you better just,

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yeah, you better just go. Morton Marcus: You know, of course the J. Edgar Hoover was against this whole internment of Japanese Americans. Did you know that?

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Lawson Inada: No, no, I didn't know that. Morton Marcus: Yes, he advised Roosevelt that this was a very bad plan and very unfair, that the Japanese-Americans were very, very good citizens, and that he wanted Roosevelt to look

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at the German-Americans, because he had already uncovered around 10 spy groups. Lawson Inada: Oh, no, no, I didn't know that, but I don't know if it was political, as much as the monetary that people

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just- Morton Marcus: That would have been local. I mean, that would have been Californians, you know, getting the property and all different kinds of property, cheap or just confiscated.

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Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, if somebody had any vision, they'd have seen that what they're doing is they're locking up all these good soldiers and workers who could contribute to the war effort because they didn't do that to

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us in Hawaii. They took the so-called subversive people who, again, were ministers and everything, you know, elders in Hawaii, they put them away, but they realized we can't put all these people away in Hawaii. We need them for the war effort,

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and ironically enough, as soon as we were put into camps, then people would come by, contractors and farmers and try to get us to help out with the harvest in this kind of thing that wherever we were, because we needed labor, yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Let's move on. You have to give us a very, very quick rundown of the different camps you went to and tell that interesting story about what you found out abouy the [inaudible]. Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not quite sure

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how the grand plan came about, but for some reason we were moved out to Arkansas, out in the Mississippi Delta region. And- Morton Marcus: You weren't at Tule Lake first? It was just

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right from the fairgrounds to Arkansas? Lawson Inada: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And your dad was still with you, your grandfather wasn't. So, it's your dad, your mother and your grandmother.

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Right? Lawson Inada: Right. No, my grandfather was also with us because he was- he was so busy working that he didn't have time to be a minister or a teacher or anything else. So yeah, they

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allowed families to be kept together then. My other- my dad's side, they were out here sharecropping and working farms by Gilroy. And so, they didn't know what was gonna happen but they ended up moving in with us in Fresno before we evacuated

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because they wanted to kind of everybody should be together. So, we were all sent together to Arkansas, and that was in the swamps. And yeah, as I said, what I found out was- see from Arkansas, we stayed there for about a year and then we were

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moved to Colorado desert, Amache Camp in Colorado. But when I visited Arkansas on my own just to show my kids where I used to live as a kid, I learned from a neighboring farmer that we were moved out because the army had captured all these German POW

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and needed an escape-proof place to put them in. So yeah, he said and they put them here and it was pretty escape-proof because as he put it, you know, a couple of guys tried to escape but they were scared back because of the snakes and the swamp and all

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that stuff. Morton Marcus: So it was the middle of the swampy area of Arkansas? Lawson Inada: Yeah of Arkansas. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, when did you get out of the camps? What year was it, do you remember? Lawson Inada: Yeah. Yeah, it was '45. Morton Marcus: They let you out almost immediately on the

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surrender of Japan, which was in August, or did they wait? Lawson Inada: I was out before. Now, this shows kind of the- it's you might say it's tragic or it's really just ridiculous or silly. And I'm learning things all the time, so I think

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it was just this Thanksgiving or something, I was talking with my mom and I was in Fresno visiting them and whenever we drive by the fairgrounds, you know, because it's on the way to town from where they live, my folks live. She's always got something

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to say about, you know, the fairgrounds so then that leads on to other things. So, therefore, this time we were talking and she said, yeah, she says, boy, you know, your grandpa, he was really something, you know, he, when he

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found out that he got a letter from the German people who were watching his house. And they told him that they had to move out of there or something like that, or it was just going to be abandoned. Jesus, then your grandpa went to the

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administrators in camp and said, I gotta go home to my house. I'm leaving tomorrow or something like that. He went home, but then my grandmother went with him. And so, by then it was really ridiculous that what are these people being all locked up

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out here, you know, at government expense, I mean, it was really absurd. My dad in the meantime, and other men who were for F because of physical disabilities, or whatever were needed as labor and so they were recruited to Chicago to a

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munitions factory, you see, so it was really rather ridiculous so. We were released from camp and we came home to Fresno. And I know it was before the war because I remember going out to my grandpa's porch one afternoon, and big, big

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headlines and Russia declares war on Japan. Morton Marcus: And that was around the last two weeks or so- Lawson Inada: I guess so and then shortly after, it said Japan surrenders, you see? So, that was '45. Yeah, yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, what I want to get to here is you're- the human side of this, okay? Because it seems to me that what's most important here and I want to hear just very briefly about your parents' attitude and your grandfather's attitude

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about being in the camps. But then what I really want to hear is what this did to you. Now, you're coming home, the war's going on. Also, was there racism coming out of people in Fresno when you got back?

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Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: And you felt that. But anyway, you just answered that. I mean, what was the human toll on this, for example, with Jeanne Houston. This was a part of history that

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was never even acknowledged to have happened. Their whole families just wiped it out of their memories, as I'm sure you've heard a lot before. What if you can remember it, you know, it was going on in your parents' mind, the idea that

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they were American citizens, the idea of personal dignity, the idea of confusion, hurt, anger, all of which was mixed up in one and you in the center of this as this young boy, you know, who was now around six years old, I guess.

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Lawson Inada: Well, as a kid, I kind of took it upon myself in a personal way where I was very confused, and I felt that somehow, I felt that we had caused this to happen. And I was confused, I didn't know whether I was a Jap or an American. You

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know? It was confusing because see, my uncles and cousins who were in the military and they were fighting, I had one uncle was fighting down in New Guinea, and Australia and they'd sent postcards from there and we were in camp. Then I had uncles and

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cousins who were over in Europe, you know, and it was really while they were in Italy, they were in France, they were in Germany. Morton Marcus: Was that the 442nd regiment?

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Lawson Inada: Yeah and it turned out that some of them stumbled upon this other camp, they're called Dachau. And they were the ones they shot the locks off of that place and they went in there, yeah. So recently, there was a reunion between them and

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the survivors. I think it was held in New York City, it was built as sort of a Bagels and Sushi event. Anyway, yeah, as a kid, it was confusing. And I think, yeah, the other kids, we all felt kind of ashamed about it because it was a very

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shameful that- to be sent away to these places and then you'll see these movies and everything and all these Japs were so terrible, they were always played by the Chinese people. Morton Marcus: Now when did you see those films? Did you see

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them during the war? Did they import these films? Lawson Inada: I remember them during the war, but after the war, you know, that stuff was real big. And so, there weren't any real positive role models around and so yeah, it was

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confusing. So as a kid, I remember just kind of not wanting to think about it, and just being happy and doing what I was doing. Morton Marcus: Now, what was your parents' attitude? I mean,

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they must have been sensing what was going on with you but also they had to handle this for themselves. Lawson Inada: Yeah, well, you know, they had a very- that generation and I think this is so with any immigrant peoples to

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America, the first generation that is born here and settles down and becomes, you know, American and goes to American schools, speaks English, they tend to be very positive and optimistic. And the people who settled here, the immigrants,

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you know, they feel great about this too, to see their kids achieving, going on and doing things. And so that's how it was with my family and with with that generation, the "nisei," that means the second generation. So my mom and my

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dad, they were both born in California and been to these schools and everything and they were just, they were really optimistic, positive, go-getters and the so, we came home and they hit the ground running. My dad picked grapes, picked

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peaches, he picked a whole lot of stuff and then he got enough money to get his dental equipment out of storage and was able to rent a little place and start up his practice. And we had a network of friends and everybody helped one another.

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And we were, so on the surface we were getting right along it seemed. There was a lot of pain and a lot of loss to deal with, though. And to this day, my mother uses the term American to mean white. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she means American. You know,

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she might, let's say she visited me on my college campus and she might say, boy, you have nothing but American students. You know, she was born in California, but I think a lot of people use that term to, yeah, that's what they mean is white.

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Something else that's interesting though, for me is that when we came back to Fresno, Fresno was in the process of change, and because of the war, people were really on the move. And so, my community was in the process of

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becoming all colored, so to speak, all colored. Because as the Germans, the Italians, their generations became, let's say assimilated, they had the mobility to move across town and just kind of, you know, fade into the generic woodwork and

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so, that left all of us colored. So my community rapidly became became all Asian, black and Chicano. And that was wonderful because- it was tough, but it was like everybody was having a tough time you see, so I had just come out of the camps. My

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Chicano neighbors had just come out of, you know, migrant camps or they were, you know, they were having a tough time. And most of my black friends had just come up from the south, you see, so, yeah, it was tough, but- and sure we called each

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other a lot of names and everything, but in another way, we were all there together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: Okay, so you're growing up and well, let me see, should we get on that now? Yeah. You're sort of ignoring what

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happened and you're just going on with your life being a kid. Let's say when you're back in Fresno, okay. Now, sometime during this period, you started to write poetry, okay, or when did you start to write poetry?

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Lawson Inada: Oh, I think I had written little kind of like, little verses in school. My mother has a greeting card I made for her about her birthday and I had all these little- it sounded like a Hallmark card where I told her, I said, you

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just make a wish and I'll get you a fish. But, yeah, you're seeing I was, I don't want to just slough off what happened after the war. Because I'm just thinking that there was a lot of confusion and shame about it.

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Morton Marcus: I mean, this is right after the war. What I'm getting to is that obviously later and maybe when you started writing, you say this really sort of came to the form, but I guess not. I guess there was a lot of confusion that was just

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going on. Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And part of what I think about is how all of us were made fun of in school because of how we talked, you see. Because, you know, school was not

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multicultural, it was monocultural and so, geez, we were never included in things. And so I remember skipping school on days when the war would be discussed, because I knew it was just going to be just awful. And, you know,

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certain days what happened and in certain segments of the school and I would be absent. Morton Marcus: And this is Edison, right? This is Edison High School?

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Lawson Inada: Lincoln Grade. Morton Marcus: Lincoln Grade. So there were whites going to the grade school? No, no, they were our teachers.

00:30:45.060 - 00:31:01.050

Oh? Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, they were our teachers. So, if you had looked at us, we'd look like a kind of a colonized country being taught by missionaries. And that was the atmosphere of

00:31:01.050 - 00:31:14.730

the times, you know, because teachers will talk to us about the melting pot and how we're all gonna become one people eventually. But in the meantime, it was rough being who we were. Yeah, yeah.

00:31:15.150 - 00:31:35.300

Morton Marcus: So again to the poetry. Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah. And then one more thing is that you see, to be Japanese was to be an alien or illegal you know, we were classified as either aliens. Well, this is a Poetry

00:31:35.300 - 00:31:52.520

Show, we got to get to the poetry but since we got on this topic. You see, when we think of poetry, or Japanese poetry, we think of Haiku, you see. Well see, things like Haiku were banned by the government and that anything Japanese was

00:31:52.520 - 00:32:19.160

considered wrong and so we were not allowed, we weren't supposed to be speaking in Japanese. And my grandmother burned photographs, destroyed artifacts, you know, kimonos and things that would reveal her to be so Japanese. And so what

00:32:19.160 - 00:32:35.960

happened was that- and then we were also classified as alien. Like my grandparents who, you know, they had never been permitted to apply for citizenship. And the rest of us who were citizens became non-aliens, you see, so we were

00:32:35.990 - 00:32:52.460

essentially all sorts of aliens and I had relatives who were in the service when the war broke out, they were kicked out of the service. I had uncles who went to volunteer for the service, when the war broke out, and they were classified as aliens, you

00:32:52.460 - 00:33:12.470

see, so it was- so this whole thing about just basically being who we were was not considered good. And so, by the time we got out of camp, we didn't feel so hot about it. So we weren't exactly sitting around studying our culture, but the elders kept

00:33:12.470 - 00:33:28.400

up the tradition. And really, they were writing Haiku maybe, you know, in secret in the camps. Morton Marcus: So, even non-poets in Japan still write Haiku. I mean, this is like something that people do?

00:33:28.720 - 00:33:45.970

Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah, yeah, you know, everybody, everybody writes Haiku in Japan. It's just a thing you do. It's a social custom. But I brought it in because this is a poetry show but what we're talking about is history and but I wanted to

00:33:45.970 - 00:34:01.330

point out because not too many people know all this stuff about the camps and I'm always learning but it doesn't say so much about us, but about other people who would take this kind of attitude and enforce it. But what happened then to us was, it

00:34:01.330 - 00:34:34.870

took us a long while to feel just okay about basically who we were. And it's still taking time so, for me it was- you didn't feel all that proud, you know, I mean you had your pride, but you weren't quite sure who you were and of course, this was before I

00:34:34.870 - 00:34:51.190

went off to college and learned more and got a little more perspective, you know, and really, it wasn't until the 60s when this whole ethnic identity movement started that several of us began to find that we already had a literature, we already

00:34:51.190 - 00:35:04.810

had, you know, a culture in this country. And so, we began to publish some of our elders who had already written, you know, in English. Morton Marcus: Now this "No-no Boy," is one of these?

00:35:04.840 - 00:35:17.710

Lawson Inada: Sure. "No-no Boy," is one and Toshio Mori lived across the bay there in San Leandro. He had a book of stories out with the introduction by William Saroyan. You know, so we had, but we just, you know, that was in

00:35:17.710 - 00:35:36.100

those days where you weren't taught these things in school. And so for all of us, yeah, for all of us, it was you had to find things out on your own. Yeah, and that was you could ask- Have asked anybody from my neighborhood, you know, do you

00:35:36.100 - 00:35:48.460

know any black writers? You know any Chicano writers? You know, any, you know, Asian writers and- What do you mean? What are you talking about? Yeah. Morton Marcus: So let's get back to then the point when you begin

00:35:48.460 - 00:36:13.810

to write and, of course, you know, how did this happen? Lawson Inada: Okay. I surely must have written of some poems and camp because when we were in Amache Camp in Colorado, we had these little, little cheap little booklets that we called

00:36:14.650 - 00:36:32.080

autograph books. And it must have been about the time we were all leaving, because I remember asking some friends for their autographs. They must have asked me for mine and I must have written, responded in kind, because a couple of them wrote

00:36:32.080 - 00:36:55.390

poems in my autograph book. And so, I included them in my book and so these are called, "Poems From Amache Camp." The first one says, "Dear Lawson, too wise you are, too wise you be. I see you are too wise for me. Your friend, Bobby." Now as you see

00:36:55.390 - 00:37:15.880

on the page, you know, he was a tricky guy with words where wise is a big capital letter "Y," you see and you are is, well, it's the letter "U" and the letter "R." He was clever. He was from Marysville and I haven't seen him since then, since 1945. But

00:37:15.910 - 00:37:28.480

I noticed his name was Bobby Hatami. And I noticed that [unidentified] Hatami was running for congress up there earlier this year. I figured that's got to be his kid, that's got to be his kid. Okay, now here's the second one. It says,

00:37:28.510 - 00:37:51.130

"Dear Lawson, I meet you early, I meet you late. I meet you at Amache gate. Always, Naomi." Now, that's Naomi Fukuda and I think she went to Denver after the war. But you know, I love that poem because I haven't seen her since then either, but I

00:37:51.130 - 00:38:02.650

keep thinking that maybe one of these days as an old man, I'll go back to Amache and the dust will be swirling and I'll go by where the gate was and I'll look up and there'll be a woman there.

00:38:07.990 - 00:38:24.920

But I didn't really start writing until I was in the sophomore year in college. Morton Marcus: Were you reading poetry? I mean, you said like your mother obviously had you do the Pied Piper and Walter de la

00:38:24.920 - 00:38:40.690

Mare. So, you're reading poetry, it just really didn't make any difference. So, you just loved your car? You loved your car. Lawson Inada: Yeah, no, it didn't make much difference to me because it wasn't encouraged, you know, in school.

00:38:41.350 - 00:38:53.830

Morton Marcus: What about you and your parents? Lawson Inada: Yeah. Well, my mother continues to even in camp, you know, she would somehow- I think she must have sent away for these things. She'd get me these books,

00:38:55.840 - 00:39:16.750

stories, poems, she got books to me, so- But when I came back to Fresno and was in this regular school system, I was just doing regular stuff. You know, I was going to movies and playing sports. But then when I look back, I find that even though we

00:39:16.750 - 00:39:32.740

didn't have a library on our side of town, we were very literate and very cultured in that. We knew music, and the jukeboxes were our libraries and we knew all that great music which was mostly jazz, and blues, and rhythm and blues, and

00:39:32.740 - 00:39:50.260

we knew all the great performers and the great performers would come through town. Posters would go up and these, you know, T-Bone Walker, these fabulous people would come into town. Morton Marcus: But this is part of the black neighborhood you're

00:39:50.260 - 00:40:01.390

living in now. So this was- it was important that that you were hanging with the blacks and that they were there because you know whites were not seeing these people. This was a real black entertainment.

00:40:01.420 - 00:40:23.860

Lawson Inada: Oh, no, no. And what I figured out is that the reason why Asians and Chicanos love the black music, the black culture was that it was so obviously American, you know? Because it was in English and these people were American, and

00:40:23.860 - 00:40:36.220

they were our friends. And they didn't necessarily gravitate towards, they didn't come up to my house and say, geez, do you have some Japanese records that I could listen to in a foreign language it would play in foreign instruments or, you know

00:40:36.220 - 00:40:51.730

what I mean? Because we had this thing about we all felt rather alienated from the greater society. But here was this culture that was obviously American so we really all got into that. And the by the time I was in high school, like the

00:40:51.730 - 00:41:08.290

great jazz compositions, jazz players, they were like our anthems and theme songs in high school because that was, yeah, but part of it was that it was just great. And part of it was that the appeal was it was so very American and it wasn't the

00:41:08.290 - 00:41:19.940

hit parade stuff that was across town, you see? Morton Marcus: Stuff that I was listening to. Lawson Inada: Yeah, I mean, you know, the hit parade stuff was nice, too. But it was obviously their music, you know, that was

00:41:19.940 - 00:41:26.420

obvious. And it didn't do much for us, it didn't really swing or anything. Morton Marcus: You're talking about high school. You're in high school now?

00:41:26.450 - 00:41:34.950

Lawson Inada: Yeah but through grade school, you know? Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: Well why don't you give us a few names of some of these black artists. You gave us one but why don't you just

00:41:34.980 - 00:41:48.410

give us a string. Lawson Inada: Oh, jeez. We used to love a Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was a gospel singer. There was the Five Blind Boys, the Dixie Hummingbirds. I mean, you know, we didn't discriminate. If

00:41:48.410 - 00:42:06.230

it was on the jukebox, you know, music was music. It was just fabulous. And then of course the great blues singers, Big Joe Turner. Oh, there was- geez, I got so many names in my mind. The interesting thing is, all of our record stores on the west

00:42:06.230 - 00:42:18.710

side were owned by Chinese. They were very hip and they this is what they carried. You go in there and you could listen to the music. They had all the posters, I saw people there, Beretta Dillard, I don't even know the music. But I remember

00:42:18.710 - 00:42:35.390

the names from seeing the posters. And this was before, right when rhythm and blues are starting. But all I'm saying is that they assume the stature in our neighborhood that made them household words. And so names I've mentioned already Count

00:42:35.390 - 00:42:51.590

Basie, Duke Ellington, or, let's say Lester Young, Charlie Parker, you could have probably interviewed us in grade school and we would have known who these people were, because it was just that important to us. Then we also had our own

00:42:51.590 - 00:43:06.500

cultures, too, because we were after a while we started having Bon Odori Festivals again and you know, the Chicano community had it's own 16th of September and we had, you know, so it was truly multicultural growing up like that.

00:43:07.670 - 00:43:23.450

I'll tell you something else that's interesting that just occurred to me last year when I was putting my book together. Another great jazz band that we all loved was this group that would come into town every year, but they were a pretty big

00:43:23.450 - 00:43:37.010

attractions, so they didn't play our side of town, they played the other side of town, but we would go there. But I know darn well, that when we went there to hear this jazz band, we weren't just watching entertainment, we were learning strategies,

00:43:37.010 - 00:43:56.240

survival strategy from that jazz band because it gave us a great sense of inspiration. But the jazz band, I'll tell you, the theme, their theme song was [whistling], the Harlem Globetrotters, yeah.

00:43:58.080 - 00:44:12.010

Morton Marcus: They would come to town and you would look at them as role models and as a jazz group. Lawson Inada: With sweet Georgia Brown and the way they played was jazz and it was all improvised and everything and so

00:44:12.430 - 00:44:19.150

that was very important for us. Morton Marcus: We're talking we're talking about the original Globetrotters now in '47, '48, '50? Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, the Globes.

00:44:21.460 - 00:44:35.710

Morton Marcus: Do you remember any of the guy, Goose Tatum? Marcus Haynes, wasn't that the great dribbler? Lawson Inada: He was the dribbler. Well, you know, all these guys see, because New York is the basketball town right? So

00:44:35.710 - 00:44:44.870

you know, these guys and they used to beat the Lakers too, the Minneapolis Lakers, who were the world champs, they'd beat. Morton Marcus: George Mikan, remember? \ Lawson Inada: George Mikan, Slater Martin. Yeah, but yeah,

00:44:44.870 - 00:45:51.320

the Globetrotters had Nat Sweetwater Clifton. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Well, he would take over for Goose though, wouldn't he? Otherwise he was the second generation. Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah, sure. Well, the House of David

00:44:53.520 - 00:45:06.600

Lawson Inada: Yeah, no, they were- and of course, the you know, the major leagues and everything was segregated at the time, but it was really, really inspiring. It was like, here was this jazz group that maybe they didn't get on the hit parade,

00:45:06.660 - 00:45:20.930

but they were obviously fabulous so we just loved them to death. You know, those were interesting times, Morton, because where I grew up in Fresno, there wasn't a very large Jewish population. And I didn't know these guys were Jewish when I went to see

00:45:20.990 - 00:45:34.700

them. See, there was also a touring troupe, sort of like- called something like the St. Louis Blues or something, this was a touring troupe. It had a one-armed basketball player, or was it baseball? But anyway, these troops would come through

00:45:34.750 - 00:45:49.140

town and they'd have music and everything, they have reviews, you know, halftime and between innings or whatever. There was a one-armed black guy, Boyd Buoy. I think it was basketball, he was fabulous. But they would play this team called House of David.

00:45:51.320 - 00:46:02.180

actually was a softball team. Lawson Inada: Okay, so I saw them too, because it was really interesting because I didn't know who they were. And they were these guys with these big beards, they were great players

00:46:02.180 - 00:46:08.450

though. Morton Marcus: I don't know whether they were Jewish. I just think that they call themselves a House of David because they had a biblical beard.

00:46:08.750 - 00:46:18.570

Lawson Inada: They were Jewish. Well, there may not- Morton Marcus: You didn't see any bagels or anything? Lawson Inada: I didn't know what a bagel was, but they may not have been that many Jewish ballplayers in the big leagues,

00:46:18.570 - 00:46:29.620

either, you know, because I read were Hank Greenberg was not very well-liked with people, the guy had 58 home runs, give me a break. Morton Marcus: No, well, we loved him. But now there were a

00:46:29.620 - 00:46:46.330

lot of us and they were they were in the early NBA and in baseball, Sid Gordon just comes to mind. There were a lot of Jewish ballplayers that time. I remember Harry Boykoff played in the early NBA and he was a big six foot 10 inch guy who was in

00:46:46.360 - 00:46:58.060

the services during the war and came out, hooked with either hand you know, and just hated to run down caught on defense. Lawson Inada: So there was, yeah, everything was kind of segregated in those days.

00:46:58.300 - 00:47:12.750

Morton Marcus: Yeah. So anyway, that's great in background, now you go to Fresno State, is that it? And then what happened in your sophomore year? Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah, okay, I was in Fresno State. It was like

00:47:12.750 - 00:47:28.920

an extension of high school and I would drive to school and everything and I enjoyed it. But my dream was always to go to Cal, you see, because my dad had talked about it a lot. So in my sophomore year, I transferred up there. Now, I didn't know I was

00:47:28.920 - 00:47:49.260

only gonna last a year because I did fairly poorly academically because my problem was I was either in Oakland hanging around in blues clubs, or I was in San Francisco hanging around at the Black Hawk Club because it had all the great jazz musicians. So

00:47:49.530 - 00:48:05.190

that year, I saw all the great jazz musicians, Miles and Coltrane and oh jeez, Roy Eldridge. As a matter of fact, for graduation from high school my parents took me, I was 17, and they snuck me into the clubs to hear all these great

00:48:05.190 - 00:48:12.880

musicians. Morton Marcus: But what year are we talking? What year did you graduate from high school? And then what year were you up in- Lawson Inada: I graduated from high school in 1955. And so,

00:48:12.950 - 00:48:28.080

from '56 through '57, I was in Berkeley. Alright and that was when I saw all these great musicians live. I saw Lester Young, Bud Powell. And in my mind, I think what happened to me was, I had all of these feelings, and I was also taking

00:48:28.140 - 00:48:43.330

some literature courses and the first live poets I saw, were Richard Wilbur and Randall Jarrell. They came to Berkeley and I was fairly impressed because I thought, jeez, these guys are, you know, they're making a living, they're getting

00:48:43.400 - 00:48:59.040

paid to do that, you know, and they were very elegant writers. But I think it was not until I saw Billie Holiday in person and had a chance to talk with her a little bit that she really grabbed a hold of me and I realized, well, here's somebody

00:48:59.100 - 00:49:14.610

doing something with words that I couldn't help but express. So then, yeah, I'd go back to Berkeley and I just started writing what I thought was poetry. And I had taken a course where I was- we read some Walt Whitman. So I said, well, that's

00:49:14.680 - 00:49:30.060

the poetry there so I will just write and stuff, but I'm feeling lonely right now and I'm out here on the fire escape. I'm looking out over the city and you know, there's some ships floating in the bay and just going on and on and on, but I

00:49:30.130 - 00:49:43.330

had all these feelings that had to be expressed. And so, I didn't know what I was doing. And so, but I kind of, you know, got self-started like that and how I really got started was by a wonderful accident.

00:49:45.160 - 00:50:01.060

I knew after that year that in order for me to stay in college and you know, get my grades together, I had to go back home to Fresno, live at home, where my mother would keep me disciplined, and so I went home to Fresno, got into Fresno State

00:50:01.060 - 00:50:20.230

again. And on registration day, I went to the library to register for classes, all right. And I wanted to take this class called Creative Writing because I figured, well, I'm writing this fabulous stuff, you see, about being lonely on fire

00:50:20.230 - 00:50:33.700

escapes and things. Hearing train whistles in the distance, you know, I said, boy, this is the hottest stuff, so it was all scribble in a notebook. So, I go up to this table in the library, and they had a little sign, you know, this is where you

00:50:33.700 - 00:50:51.040

registered for classes and had little signs that English department and this was Creative Writing. This guy is sitting behind this table and I, you know, I said, "I want to sign up for Creative Writing," something like that. And he said, "Well,

00:50:51.040 - 00:51:08.350

you just can't get into this class." I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He said, "You have to submit a manuscript." I said, "Manuscript? Well, you know, what do you mean?" He says, "Well, do you have some writing?" I said, I thought

00:51:08.350 - 00:51:21.970

about my notebook and all of scribblings I said, "Well, yeah, but I don't have it with me or anything." He said, "Can you get it to me?" I said, "No, I can't get it to you right now." And he says, "Well, I'll tell you what, we'll see, we'll see if this

00:51:21.970 - 00:51:38.680

class fills up or not. But why don't you just show up to the first one?" Well, fortunately, you know, I didn't show him that stuff, because I would have not got in that class. That was Phil Levine. But soon after that, when I, you know, got into that

00:51:38.680 - 00:51:51.670

class, we started talking to the poor guy. He had just been sentenced to Fresno. He was- he had been a year at Stanford, you know, on some sort of a fellowship, but then he got a job in Fresno. And so, we started talking right away

00:51:51.670 - 00:52:04.330

because he says, "Man is it always this hot?" I said, "Well, yeah." He said, "Geez, I've been going to the white theater, you know how they have the matinees, the 25 cents, just trying to stay cool." And I said, "Well, where are you from guy?" and

00:52:04.330 - 00:52:17.770

blah, blah, we got to talking and then the funny thing was, right away, we start talking about jazz because he was originally from Detroit. And so right away, he started inviting me over to his house for me to bring some records. And he had

00:52:17.770 - 00:52:28.630

these records and we sit around and talk music. Morton Marcus: So Phil is just very open and very, I mean, he didn't feel there's any difference between teacher and student and things?

00:52:28.720 - 00:52:42.100

Lawson Inada: Well, he was the teacher. He was a sensei, you know, because I didn't know from nothing, so to speak, because I asked him, I said, Phil, you know, I've taken these other courses. You know, any live poets, you know any American

00:52:42.100 - 00:52:57.490

poets? He says, oh, yeah, here, take this, take this, take this to give me all these books out of his office, and maybe a whole reading list and things like that. And so that's the great thing he did for me as a teacher and I try to be that way as a

00:52:57.490 - 00:53:15.820

teacher too. I don't try to tell people how to write, you know, or force them to be like that, but I try to give them openings. And, you know, let them find and discover things on their own and that's- he really taught me how to read. Yeah, and at the same

00:53:15.820 - 00:53:33.820

time, at that time, he really taught us all the craft of poetry in the formal sense. It was like going to a conservatory. But as far as my poetry was going, oh, geez, it was, again, he could have thrown me out of that class anytime. It

00:53:33.820 - 00:53:50.350

was pretty bad. You know, he gave us an assignment to do some poetry in iambics, rhymed, and you know, in those days, it was like, you had this space on a page and you got to fill it out. You know, you didn't just say, well, I'm going to write some

00:53:50.350 - 00:54:12.460

poetry so, in that formal way, I- so the first thing I turned into him with iambics was, it says, what sort of man was Charlie Parker who blessed the world with bop, the new, something like that, you know, it was awful and went on and on

00:54:12.460 - 00:54:28.330

like that, and he's starting to laugh and everything. So yeah, this is maybe the first week of class when I wrote that, then he knew that yeah, that's what started us talking about music. He's just saying, you know, The Bird.

00:54:29.290 - 00:54:43.810

Morton Marcus: So I mean, I've heard that he's a real tyrannical teacher and throws manuscripts on the floor. And I mean, just, you know, says, "Here's what I think of each one of these poems," he just would throw them on the floor. I mean,

00:54:43.810 - 00:54:55.090

it's hard to think of Phil that way but that's, that's some of the stories I heard. Lawson Inada: Well, you gotta have a sense of humor. You know? That's why I'm laughing. If you're going to be a writer,

00:54:55.090 - 00:55:05.620

what the heck- you got to take it, right? I remember one of my pieces, he said class, listen to this. And he's used to do these things anonymously so he'd say, class, you know he wouldn't mention your names, class, listen to this. This is so

00:55:05.620 - 00:55:20.740

awful. This is so good because it's so awful, and it was a piece of mine that he read. And you know you'd sit there and you get all red, everybody knew it was you. But what the heck? Morton Marcus: He didn't do with anger though.

00:55:21.160 - 00:55:28.300

Lawson Inada: No! Morton Marcus: Here's you know this junk that someone handed in, it wasn't like that. Lawson Inada: Oh, no. In a way, I'm thinking he was like a Zen

00:55:28.300 - 00:55:40.400

master you know, you need a little tap on the shoulders that- He wasn't there to just say, you know, all this is so wonderful but, you know, please keep writing it. Morton Marcus: And then did he really go into, let's say with

00:55:40.400 - 00:55:53.100

you, he really go into the real nuts and bolts and show you what was going wrong in the center of it and how too many words and adjectives and some of you? Lawson Inada: Oh yeah, geez because we were you know, he was

00:55:53.100 - 00:56:12.810

writing in syllabics at the time and sometimes accentual things that you know, you learn in the conservatory and a lot of subtleties, and so I have not forgotten those things. I remember a line that a girl Carol wrote, and he said, listen

00:56:12.810 - 00:56:32.820

to this line, he said, and the line went "the surprising chill of September morn." He says now you see, see the cadence there and, you know, accentships. And so it was like, ooh, boy, you're really a yeah, yeah, yeah. So I treasured that because, again,

00:56:32.820 - 00:56:43.140

you relate it to music. This is like in the conservatory when you learn all that stuff. And then you could either abandon it or you know, continue to use it in some way. Morton Marcus: Have you kept up your friendship with Phil?

00:56:43.390 - 00:56:55.500

Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, fortunately, Phil has been able to retire fairly early and he's got- he's in demand a lot as a teacher, so. Morton Marcus: He has retired now, I know he was thinking

00:56:55.500 - 00:57:09.960

about it a few years ago. Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, he has retired. But he's like, you know, the big coach of the valley, you know. Even if he weren't a poet himself, just his teaching has caused all of this

00:57:09.960 - 00:57:22.230

writing that was just, it was just lying there. It was, you know, lying there like seeds in the valley and I happened to be, you know, his earliest student. Morton Marcus: Were you the earliest student? Whether you're

00:57:22.230 - 00:57:37.450

the first famous student who came out of his classes? Lawson Inada: Yeah, I had just, he had just arrived there and this coincided with my return to Fresno. But- and then if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have met you because Phil said, look,

00:57:38.110 - 00:57:48.540

why don't you stay with this when you graduate? You know, we'll set it up and go out to Iowa. Morton Marcus: When you got to Iowa, what we said was, "See that guy? It's Phil Levine's student, Phil Levine says he's

00:57:48.600 - 00:58:03.560

hot." And it was just like, right, we were at the basketball court looking at the new guy who'd just come up from the minors, you know, and Vern looked you over, Vern Rutsala, right here? And just- everyone's just looking at you, you know,

00:58:03.630 - 00:58:18.970

and just saying, well, let's see how good this guy is. And you were writing in very short lines then, you know, and you just put your first- your first poem on the sheets, and we said, crap, this guy is too good, because we could see we were the

00:58:19.030 - 00:58:34.110

conservatory boys, right? And we could see how you were working those dimeter(?) lines and we were impressed. And so we see, what we had to do after that was get you away from the bad influences. So Vern and I and [unidentified] Mike Harper,

00:58:34.180 - 00:58:46.170

right. We had- we had to just get you in with the good guys, the guys who they hated in the workshop. Lawson Inada: Now as I'm sure you know, that was rather intimidating because I was like the guy from the minor leagues.

00:58:46.170 - 00:58:51.660

Now, you had been there about a year and you knew what was going on. Morton Marcus: We just knew the ropes but we were getting crapped on everyone.

00:58:51.690 - 00:59:02.430

Lawson Inada: I didn't, so I show up, it was good and humbling. Morton Marcus: He was the sharpest dresser in the workshop, folks. I mean, I remember those pants could cut

00:59:02.430 - 00:59:15.700

cheese. I mean, boom, they were such- Lawson Inada: Right, well, I come out of this, you know, sort of a Bebop Pachuco environment of Fresno, then I show up in Iowa in the snow. And the same thing happened to Michael Harper

00:59:15.700 - 00:59:26.040

till he came, you know, he blows in from LA. And yeah, we had to go through a little culture shock but so did you, you came in from East Coast. Morton Marcus: No, I actually came in from the Air Force.

00:59:26.090 - 00:59:39.390

Yeah, but you know, let's get onto an uncomfortable subject for a second. There are a lot of incidents that went on in Iowa City, you were just about the only Japanese-American, I think you were the only Japanese-American in the town.

00:59:39.440 - 00:59:53.190

And they were the farm boys would come in their jalopies and they would yell at you, you remember that stuff? And we would run out in the street and we'd yell back at them and tell them to stop the car, we'd beat the hell out of them. And you

00:59:53.250 - 01:00:04.780

always, you know, remained very, very cool but I mean, how the hell did that feel? Was that an extension or something that was like, even more virulent than anything you'd gone into in California a year?

01:00:04.440 - 01:00:20.130

Lawson Inada: Oh, no, no, it wasn't any different because, like in Fresno, you could go across town into the other side of town, and you could have hassles, so. You know, you'd get angry, or whatever but I was talking with Frank Chin about

01:00:20.130 - 01:00:40.050

this too, because I was the only Japanese-American out there that Was he in Iowa now? Oh, geez, I don't remember Frank at all. I saw and he was the only Chinese-American He came about a year after I got there. And I never met him but I

01:00:40.050 - 01:00:54.120

heard about him because he was playing the guitar and doing folk songs, and he was acting at the time, and he was writing too, but he was in another circle. But we were talking about the other day, how exciting it was, you must have

01:00:54.120 - 01:01:08.160

felt the same way, too, you know, plus, you'd come out of the service, you know, it was this other worlds and snowing and it had a certain glamour to it. It was so different that oh, wow.

01:01:08.200 - 01:01:17.140

Morton Marcus: We were in some ways really special. I mean, you could tell when we looked to walk down the street, they're the guys in the creative writing workshop. Lawson Inada: Right.

01:01:17.200 - 01:01:25.690

Morton Marcus: And we knew if we weren't even paying attention to that, that with each other, there was so much going on, you know. We were discovering so much. Lawson Inada: Yeah.

01:01:26.530 - 01:01:40.960

Morton Marcus: It was really, really a special time. Lawson Inada: Yeah, we felt like the Poetry Show, you know. It was, yeah, I had to get used to it because we were- people took me seriously, we were taking ourselves seriously as poets and

01:01:40.960 - 01:01:57.040

there was the world of poetry to participate in and do great things in, in sort of a very fertile period. That's when you first told me about Neruda and ancient Chinese poetry and it was like oh, so and the whole world of poetry was opening up

01:01:57.040 - 01:02:11.500

because the whole academic scene was breaking open and so, it was very exciting. And then we had this other thing where there were the poets, and then there were those other folks over there, the fiction writers, you know?

01:02:11.650 - 01:02:21.490

Morton Marcus: Them. Lawson Inada: You felt very much of a team. Now, I wasn't participating in the team so much but you played in that softball team, didn't you? It was kind of like all poets?

01:02:21.730 - 01:02:34.840

Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah, that's that's another story. But talk about racism and everything else coming out. I mean, that was What did you call that? What [inaudible] was that? Was it really deadlzy.

01:02:33.270 - 01:02:46.620

Fiction versus Poetry? Well, you know, it was actually the poet's throwing against each other, playing with each other. It wasn't so much that was and what it was was all of the hurts and angers that was stored up

01:02:46.620 - 01:02:53.660

from the criticisms in the workshop came out in those games. Lawson Inada: Yeah. Morton Marcus: You were getting even with the messies and even

01:02:53.660 - 01:03:08.260

justice for a harsh word, you know, things like that. Well, we were coming the end of this. Let me say one thing: I realized several years ago [cuts off]. Beautiful sunny day here, February 27th, 1993 and this is

01:03:08.260 - 01:03:25.720

part two of a talk with Lawson Inada on his visit to the Santa Cruz area, and we talked about Lawson's early days last time and the beginning of his writing career. And I might want to get more into the writing but before then, after seeing Lawson

01:03:25.720 - 01:03:47.380

performing for several days, it became clear to me that there has really been a change and though Lawson was always loving and really projected a wonderful persona from on stage. The Lawson Inada that I've been seeing has lost that edge of

01:03:47.410 - 01:04:05.950

anger, and there is really such a radiance coming off that podium, you know, that I'd like you to talk about what's happening as far as, you know, your reaction to the camps, your reaction to being Japanese-American and going

01:04:05.950 - 01:04:19.900

through all of these really injustices, racial injustices, and how you have, it seemed, dealt with them only in the last few years. I know that one statement you made last night is that there's every day you think about the camps, they have

01:04:19.900 - 01:04:31.850

haunted you. Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, Morton. I don't know if there's anything magical that happened. It's just that, as you know, when you get older, you seem to be freer, you

01:04:31.850 - 01:04:54.200

seem to be able to learn more and get a little wiser. One of the things I was thinking about is, we've been talking and we call ourselves the Iowa boys. There was you me and Vern Rutsala for starters, you know. And so we all meet at Iowa in

01:04:54.200 - 01:05:07.580

our early 20s and in a way, we haven't changed all that much but in another way, we really have, you know. So, when we see one another we say, boy, you've really mellowed, or we're really this or that, and this and that it. Yeah, you have to respond to

01:05:07.580 - 01:05:25.640

life in that way. And that's what it does, you know and yeah. I was also thinking we got to do a book together sometimes, you and me and Vern, so like, the Iowa boys and see what we can offer to the world because in a way, we represent all this, you

01:05:25.640 - 01:05:41.630

know, these wonderful segments of society. Here you are, we meet in Iowa in the Midwest, right? And you come from the Bronx and the Air Force and Vern comes from working class, wet Pacific Northwest and you know, I come in out of Fresno. And

01:05:42.680 - 01:05:58.670

something else I was thinking about because since I don't see you that often, we tend to reflect on how it was the last time or the last time. I remember on- the first reading that I gave was the one that you initiated. And, you know, I'd

01:05:58.670 - 01:06:08.120

like- Morton Marcus: That was a Palo Alto reading, is that what you're talking about? The Paris Theater, yeah. Lawson Inada: Yeah, we read out there in the lobby. And you

01:06:08.120 - 01:06:22.300

know, that was a great experience for me. I think I was very uptight going into it but when it happened, you know, thanks to you, it's, you know, really gave me a place to start. Morton Marcus: Oh, that sounds great. I mean, I just didn't

01:06:22.300 - 01:06:33.640

even think it was that big a deal for you because, you know, you'd just handle it so well, and because you're such a great poet. But that was an amazing evening for me, because so many people showed up.

01:06:33.640 - 01:06:42.520

Lawson Inada: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And we did two shows, and even at 11 o'clock at night, you couldn't move. People were just everywhere, and it was amazing for that reason.

01:06:42.390 - 01:06:52.980

Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah. And when I think about that, you Well, this is true. What I'm saying is, because maybe this know, it's not that anger is bad, you know, anger is just another feeling, that's, you know, it's good, there it is.

01:06:53.490 - 01:07:14.460

But maybe along with how I was at the time, maybe angry or confused in my early 20s, I was also sort of trapped in the craft of poetry, you know, because I was still struggling, working my way. It's like a musician or you're trying to

01:07:14.460 - 01:07:35.520

play jazz and you're really caught up in the bars of the harmony and, you know, the different chords and things and so, I think that lends itself to this sort of tightness that, you know, I had to work my way out of, and you probably found that

01:07:35.520 - 01:07:55.650

same thing too, right? And it just comes from experience and writing and your own personal development and now, you feel like you write whatever you want, do whatever you want. has been on my mind and so, is that there are just people who

01:07:55.650 - 01:08:09.180

remain angry for the whole life. Yeah. Morton Marcus: Lenin remained angry for his whole life. And, you know, they just carry with them these battles and the

01:08:09.210 - 01:08:24.270

disability to stir everything up and just disintegrate everything around them. And a lot of times, I'm not saying you you're doing that, you know, but I mean, it seems as though when you finally do work in your heart, you know, in your soul, through these

01:08:24.270 - 01:08:37.860

things, that what you're really showing and here is this word again, you know, you are life-affirming. And what you've been doing in these series of readings and classes down here is really, you know, promulgating and I, for want of

01:08:37.860 - 01:08:51.450

any other word I'll just leave it this simple is love, you know, and understanding, especially understanding and compassion almost for the people who are victimizing you. Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah. Those are good words: love,

01:08:51.450 - 01:09:08.160

understanding, compassion. Why not? Morton Marcus: And what you said last night at the Remembrance Day Ceremony is, where does anger get you? Lawson Inada: Right, right, right. No, of course, as I said,

01:09:08.190 - 01:09:26.220

in a way, it isn't bad and you can make a whole career out of that but I didn't want to. And I remember a nice thing that Robert Bly said where someone asked him you know, "Mr. Bly, you've had a lot of suffering and everything, you see so many

01:09:26.220 - 01:09:38.790

poets, so many writers and artists who commit suicide, you know, what do you have to say to that?" He said, "Well, no one asks how many plumbers commit suicide," you know. So it's like, let's not get caught up in our own thing so much that

01:09:38.790 - 01:09:55.500

there's, you know, there's a little more to life than that, right? So, yeah, yeah. Something else is that- and I'm sure you can attest to this from your own experience is that you know, as you go through life, you get help, you get help, or it's

01:09:55.500 - 01:10:14.820

there to take advantage of. And for me, it was a very life-affirming thing to me where I went to my physician a couple of months ago. She's a physician from UC Berkeley and she also is a homeopathic physician. So, I've been going to her for

01:10:14.820 - 01:10:30.960

different remedies and you know, the idea is, why not? If she can help me out, and she really has. So, she interviewed me for the longest time just to get a general take on me and find out, you know, how I was doing? And she said, "My, my, boy, you've

01:10:30.960 - 01:10:50.670

really been working on yourself, haven't you?" And that made me feel good because I had to think about it, and I said, well, yeah, I have been so-called, "working on myself," you know, because- and it hasn't been a thing for me where I just did it

01:10:50.670 - 01:11:05.250

because oh, I was so open to development and change. You know, what happened to me was that I, oh, maybe it was about 20 years ago, I started to get sick because I was getting uptight and everything and I was getting an ulcer. And so, that

01:11:05.250 - 01:11:18.660

kind of stuff can get you kickstarted right away. And so, I started to try to find whatever was available that would help me, you know, beyond I didn't want to be stuck in that mode forever.

01:11:19.590 - 01:11:33.000

And so, one of the things I had to do was, I started, a friend of mine was running a group, remember, they used to have these group therapy kinds of things? You know, that was a big thing for me, because here I was, I was teaching in a college

01:11:33.000 - 01:11:44.850

and this group had a lot of younger people in it and everything and so, you know, but I said, I hell with it, I left my image outside, so to speak, and went in there and kind of had to just go in there and deal with things and open up and

01:11:44.850 - 01:12:01.800

express myself a little bit, and I found that helped. And then therapy in itself, is something that I found to be you know, very, very helpful, and I mean, because, you know, we tend to live such enclosed lives, and so here, I can go to someone who

01:12:01.800 - 01:12:17.370

doesn't necessarily really know me and doesn't associate with me in life, but I can- it's kind of like a confessional, you know? You go into a confessional and you can really, really talk, really express things. And so, over the years, I've just stayed

01:12:17.370 - 01:12:32.850

with things and taken advantage of what's available to me. And unfortunately, where I live in Ashland, sort of like Santa Cruz, where you have all this wonderful stuff available to you, like all the foods and you know, cultures, and so, we have

01:12:32.850 - 01:12:49.620

a lot of- I've tried Tai Chi, you know, I found that I've tried a little yoga. I am the kind of person where if it becomes too heavy of a thing on me, then I'll, you know, then I don't want to beat myself up. I say no, I'm not being so great

01:12:49.620 - 01:13:11.730

in yoga, you know, then you know, I can come back to it or try something else. And then in the past four years or so, just through wonderful happenstance, or karma, a wonderful Tibetan Buddhist Lama teacher came into town to give some teachings. And

01:13:12.900 - 01:13:26.370

by studying with him and by attending his teachings, I began to learn a lot, just really see myself in a wonderful way. Morton Marcus: And what was his name? I remember when he [unidentified] that was the last time I saw you, you were just

01:13:26.370 - 01:13:47.410

starting to go to those things. And what's his name? Lawson Inada: His name is Choje Rinpoche, and you know, Rinpoche is just a word for, it's like Lama, means precious jewel. And so, Choje, he started the Padma Shedrup Ling meditation center

01:13:47.680 - 01:14:02.760

in Fairfax, Fairfax, California, in Mill Valley, that area and my family, my wife and sons, we usually come down when he gives teachings. Morton Marcus: Oh, so the whole family comes? I mean, I knew Jan

01:14:02.760 - 01:14:16.050

came, but Tony and Miles also? Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, why not? And actually, they knew more about this than I did, you know? Being a guy, you know, you have a tendency to resist certain things or, you know, out

01:14:16.110 - 01:14:27.740

of defensiveness, you scoff at things and stuff, but when I saw But why are you doing it, in other words, where does the fear this opportunity, and then when I met the man, he's a young guy too, he's around- he's in his young 30s, very fluent in

01:14:27.810 - 01:14:43.320

English. And what he teaches is something that when he says things, you realize, oh, I knew this, but I, you know, I didn't quite have a hold of it, you see. And so, yeah, I'd recommend that to anybody because I thought it was going to be very,

01:14:43.380 - 01:14:59.150

very esoteric, very, you know, I don't know what to expect but instead, he speaks to us in very simple terms. And he tells me things like, he can tell, he says that, you know, you seem to live between a lot of hope and fear. And when he said that I

01:14:59.220 - 01:15:13.520

realized that, you know, in my mind, I try to create wonderful hope. Then I go through all this fear and I kind of boing, boing, boing, it's like ping pong in my head, back and forth, and why am I doing that? It's exhausting.

01:15:16.310 - 01:15:31.280

come from? Does it come out of the, you know, the memories of childhood and things like that? And being Japanese-American- I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure it goes back so far. And, you know, as they say, it's like you're carrying this baggage around and

01:15:31.280 - 01:15:50.780

this is what has formed you, you know, and it can be used in a good way I suppose this baggage, but you know, sometimes you just like to lighten your load and just enjoy the day and just say, well, here we are, you know, isn't this fine? Instead of, you

01:15:50.780 - 01:16:04.520

know, you kind of create these little tapes in your mind that- Morton Marcus: Well, interestingly enough, I do the same thing. I live between hope and fear, not only personal hope and fear, but hope and fear for the human race. And I know that

01:16:04.550 - 01:16:20.720

and this is why I'm saying this, my poetry is a way of expressing that hope and that fear, you see? Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure it's there to express. Morton Marcus: Now, how in all of this, what place does your

01:16:20.720 - 01:16:39.740

poetry play? Are you building or making scenarios of hope? Have they reflected the fear? You know, because certainly, and correct me if I'm wrong, the most important thing you probably do besides live your life, is to write these poems

01:16:39.740 - 01:16:53.030

that you're compelled to write. So, I mean, how does that fit into everything we've been talking about? Lawson Inada: Well, poetry is, you know, it's my compositions if I were a musician, or it's like, it's my texts, you know,

01:16:53.030 - 01:17:18.710

and you like to think you're at your best when you're writing your poetry. You'd like to think that that really is expressing your true self. So what I try to do is create a kind of poetry- And it just pretty much happens anyway because this is one thing

01:17:18.710 - 01:17:34.730

that comes with variety in a lot of poetry over the years is that when you get a feeling or idea you can, you can do it, you can express it. So I'm fortunate in that, not only can I do that, so I feel that I have a lot of range in my poetry and you have

01:17:34.730 - 01:17:49.850

all of this range in your poetry, that it can become very useful so that people can buy the book and they can enjoy it. They can enjoy it like a little, you know, poetry buffet at home, just a range of foods. And at the same time, when you appear

01:17:49.850 - 01:18:06.350

in person you can use those compositions, use those texts in a way that can fit into any situation and it can be useful, and all you're doing is sharing, affirming with everybody else. And it's really the old what they call the win-win situation

01:18:06.650 - 01:18:23.330

because I was just thinking how, since I've been here a few days in Santa Cruz, you know, the first thing I did was I walked into a classroom situation at Cabrillo and you know, that's one situation, a teaching situation, and boy, you can

01:18:23.630 - 01:18:35.510

select certain poems and, you know, give out to that audience. Morton Marcus: And what do you want to give out to that audience? In other words, what I'm saying is what- this was gonna happen later on, but now's a great time to do it in here.

01:18:35.900 - 01:18:48.800

What do you want to accomplish in your poetry? Oh, I'm just trying to say, "Hello! Hey, how are you? How are things going? Isn't this a wonderful world? Isn't this a great life?" I'm thinking about that poem you- the world is

01:18:48.800 - 01:19:02.600

grand, you know, where all the people- all your ancestry is lined up. In fact, that's pretty much it, really and geez, let's check it out. What's the problem? That's very life-affirming, very life-affirming.

01:19:02.960 - 01:19:12.830

Lawson Inada: Oh, yeah, yeah. And of course, as a poet and teacher, you know, you don't just go around saying these things. Otherwise people will say, boy, this is weird, you're coming in and saying, well, it's all

01:19:12.830 - 01:19:27.770

love-one-another-and-be-happy. But you can do it in ways and you can use techniques in your teaching and writing, and humor is one where you can kind of open people up. And I found that even though, as I'm sure you'd agree, the act of writing is

01:19:27.770 - 01:19:40.610

maybe one of the deepest things you can do and it's almost sacred, or it is sacred, let's say, because what's more important for you than to really dealing with yourself and developing yourself. So, I've always had that feeling about

01:19:40.610 - 01:19:55.520

poetry, it's like a very meditative thing. Morton Marcus: Okay, now, that certainly suggests the religious spiritual aspect. All right. What about the psychological aspect? In other words, Is it painful? Is it difficult? Does

01:19:55.520 - 01:20:09.220

it show you pictures of yourself that you had never thought, let's say, with your conscious mind? Lawson Inada: Well, sometimes when you're writing, you surprise yourself by what you have inside and what comes out.

01:20:09.220 - 01:20:20.530

But then, geez, just in the process of writing it, it's a little different from talking, you know, you can talk forever, but when you write, when I write, I don't lie, because geez, you're using all these muscles in your arm, and

01:20:20.530 - 01:20:34.330

everything gets a little harder. And so it becomes, as you said, life-affirming, then you're discovering things about life. And because you're creating it, it always becomes to me positive and constructive. And you can be talking about some of the worst

01:20:34.330 - 01:20:49.750

stuff that you've ever experienced, but somehow, in the doing and part of that might be because it's when you're writing poems, you are like you're writing prayers, and it's a thing that I've- I first found that in Rilke. And so,

01:20:49.780 - 01:21:07.780

underneath my exterior, you know, I've always taken the act of writing a very, very serious and sacred thing. But it's not to say that I couldn't write something that was funny, you see? And then I found that this is a technique that is used

01:21:08.530 - 01:21:20.740

throughout the world by- you know how they have in among the pueblos, they have these clown societies and they come out in a clown before the ceremonies and- Morton Marcus: I think that's the Hopi.

01:21:21.850 - 01:21:35.170

Lawson Inada: Yeah and the idea is that this makes people laugh and it kind of opens them up and then opens them up for the teachings. And I know that Tibetan Buddhists do the same thing. And I think you know, many societies, when you think

01:21:35.170 - 01:21:49.370

about it, they use things to open you up like humor. Morton Marcus: Well, these are the holy fools, these are my favorite people and I love them. But what you're saying, to sort of round this off, is that really your impetus is

01:21:49.370 - 01:22:10.670

spiritual, and- rather than psychological. In other words, when Anne Sexton writes, it's psychological and she gets bogged down in all of this pain, you know, and all of this, sadistic interrelationships and revelations of the self. But

01:22:10.670 - 01:22:25.730

with your revelations, what I'm hearing is that you're saying that this is all very, very spiritual, moving on to a plane of prayer, a plane of hymn for the wonder of the organization and sacredness of the world.

01:22:26.470 - 01:22:41.110

Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I've been talking about working on myself and developing myself because then that can come out in the poetry and Anne Sexton, I think, is a good example. When she was feeling all right, when she was

01:22:41.110 - 01:22:58.030

doing good, boy, that poetry just was so beautiful. And yeah, I saw her one time. I went down, this is when I was teaching in New England, I heard that W.D. Snodgrass, you know, whom we had known about an Iowa was going to be giving a reading out at MIT

01:22:58.030 - 01:23:12.880

in Cambridge. And so I drove down and they said Mr. Snodgrass couldn't make it but instead we have this person named Anne Sexton. Everybody said, oh, shucks, but you know, by then I knew her work. I thought she was just fabulous and I talked with

01:23:12.880 - 01:23:27.190

her a little bit. And we corresponded even where she was one of those generous people who said, geez, well, you know, if you're having trouble getting publishers, she says, I have as much power as a puffball with my publishers, but if I could

01:23:27.190 - 01:23:42.410

suggest anything to you, and then you know, but she had some major ups and downs, and- But yeah, so it all comes back, right, it comes back to you. Morton Marcus: Let's go on to the, the idea of poetry now,

01:23:43.460 - 01:23:58.010

there it was a kind of poem that you were writing for a long time. And you write many kinds of poems, you got really a wide range, and I want to talk about what mostly it seems like you're doing now. But there's a kind of poem that I want to ask you

01:23:58.010 - 01:24:12.080

about whether I'm right or wrong, okay? And I've described it in several introductions to you even though you read none of those poems. And these were long poems, you see, that it seemed to me were really, um, composed. And I want to use that word and

01:24:12.080 - 01:24:24.140

though that double sort of sense, they were composed as a musical composer would compose a musical suite, a jazz musical suite, you see, and would you agree with that? Lawson Inada: Sure, sure, yeah.

01:24:24.140 - 01:24:38.960

Morton Marcus: And you use repetition and puns, and the repetition of lines to move your mind along until you got deeper and deeper. And it seemed to me, tell me whether I'm wrong or not, that you're almost sort of creating chance that would take

01:24:38.960 - 01:24:55.360

you in deeper and deeper to yourself, Lawson Inada: Well, you know, sure. The muse and music are practically one, really, and since my earlier influences and training were in music pretty much, I just sort of used that

01:24:55.450 - 01:25:13.930

when I came to poetry, but no, I've consciously listened to a lot of great music. And as you do, and then, you know, why discard that when you write poetry and so, sure, I might use a role model like, say, Bach and the "Brandenburg Concertos," or

01:25:14.410 - 01:25:31.810

Coltrane, "A Love Supreme," and see how they develop their compositions and see how they apportion things out and oh, yeah, I've used- I've learned a lot from, from the great ones like that. And it is musical and it can include the chant

01:25:31.810 - 01:25:48.130

elements are, of course always there in poetry because, you know, really, you know, the Bible, all the ancient philosophies and religions were full of poetry or were actual poetry. And so, I like that because you know, more and more

01:25:50.530 - 01:26:11.800

we're having a place for poetry in a ceremonial situation. So, you know, here at Santa Cruz, I worked a classroom situation, then I worked more of an entertainment kind of situation which was at the Capitola Book Cafe. Well, you know, we were

01:26:11.800 - 01:26:25.690

just in a corner of the bookstore/restaurant while life was carrying on and so I had to come up with more of a storytelling, entertaining kind of thing. And so, because people were milling around and cash registers were cranking, and so

01:26:25.690 - 01:26:46.810

I had to, you know, have poems for that occasion. And then we did more of a straight artistic situation, a straight reading at Cabrillo, you know, and then last night at UCSC, taking part in the Day of Remembrance commemorating the February 19th

01:26:46.840 - 01:26:59.860

day upon which President Roosevelt signed the executive order which created the camps, the internment camps for Japanese-Americans. That was more ceremonial, obviously, in a place like that, then you need some kind of a chant-like

01:27:00.670 - 01:27:15.660

quality, you know, so- But it is like being a musician, as you know, where you got to be able to play, you know, you got to play birthday parties and big concerts and play in churches. Morton Marcus: Your work I mean, my favorite are those long

01:27:16.260 - 01:27:30.540

suites and because the place you come to in most of the wonderful love poems, the jam, everything where you come to in most of them is really, and this is almost your exact words, a place where I can stand, you know. And you just, you really are

01:27:30.540 - 01:27:46.440

creating almost a landscape for yourself where there is a solid foundation in this world. And I mean, they really bring me to tears because they usually get very poignant, they are very much concerned with people as well as the spiritual life but

01:27:46.440 - 01:28:00.450

they're rooted in people and experience. But what I've noticed now even in, "Legends from Camp," what you've chosen for, "Legends from the Camp," is the poems are getting very simple and that your readings have also been getting very

01:28:00.450 - 01:28:18.780

direct, very simple. You even describe what's going on in the poem so that everyone will understand them. It is the persona now who is very, very loving, very, very wise in the projection of a man who has broken his life down into the

01:28:18.780 - 01:28:36.390

simplest but most essential components. And the word ceremonial, all of those things you just described, are all ceremonial. And in ceremonies, things have to be clear, they can be esoteric at times, but everyone in that audience

01:28:36.390 - 01:28:49.650

understands the esoteric quality of them also, and so you're making everything very clear. And I think the success of what you've been doing here, and disagree with me, has been the clarity but also the person and the manner in the way you're

01:28:49.650 - 01:29:04.500

presenting that. I mean, it is really with love, it is really with you know, let's understand and have compassion and really, you know, just be thankful that we're here and this is- The humor is still there, very definitely still there, but

01:29:04.500 - 01:29:16.480

there's that edge, that cutting edge, that could come really into your readings early on, is really gone. Lawson Inada: Oh, I could still, you know, I could change instruments and bring that out and, you know, have some of

01:29:16.480 - 01:29:38.260

that, why not? You know, let that- let that go out there. Yeah, it just comes back to wanting to write these different kinds of poems and let them be. And I was just, while you were talking, I was thinking, Mort, the kind of reach you have,

01:29:38.290 - 01:29:59.260

which, when you think about is rather rare, you know? What I found in all my years of meeting different writers and artists, is that a lot of them are so caught up or maybe it's fear or defensiveness, but they end up being really self-obsessed and

01:29:59.470 - 01:30:15.160

very ungenerous kind of people. So it was very rare to me to meet an Anne Sexton, an Edward Field, a Denise Levertov, that when you're a young, struggling writer, and you meet these people, when you talk to them after they give a reading or

01:30:15.160 - 01:30:28.690

something, they say, "Oh, well, no kidding. are you a writer? Well, have thought about, or tried this, or-?" You know what I mean? It's just, and so you're very rare in that way and it shows in your work and the range of your work, because I was

01:30:28.690 - 01:30:41.770

thinking how a lot of my poems that come from music were intended for performance with music, and in some cases, certain occasions and events where I perform these with music, but you've done all that, plus more, you've done things

01:30:41.770 - 01:30:56.170

with dancers, you know, and you've worked your way. And then when you look at it, in a grander, global way, you realize that, geez, poetry with music and dancers, well, heck, you know, they've been doing that. They've been doing that in, I

01:30:56.170 - 01:31:13.330

don't know, Indonesia or you know, since BC, or whatever- This is just- Well, you must have been humbled. Because here we are, you know, guys like us who are in America, in this rich country, and we've studied at the Conservatory and are

01:31:13.330 - 01:31:28.390

considered artists. But you must have been humbled when you met those Australian aborigine artists, right? Morton Marcus: That's the word. Yeah, I- To tell you the truth, not really, because, I mean, I knew how integrated they were

01:31:28.390 - 01:31:42.610

into the universe. And that really is their appeal, whether you use that word or not, I mean, they're there, they're there. You're trying to get there, they're there, you know? And we would try and do the strange thing of bringing them

01:31:42.610 - 01:32:02.440

to the Navajos, you know, and having the Navajos share with them and the Hopi and the Pueblo got in it and they really didn't give a damn. Why should they share information with other people? They're there. They're already there. And the ones that

01:32:02.440 - 01:32:15.850

we were going to bring over originally really were interested in sharing the information, but then one of them died, another one got ill, you know, so we had to get other aborigine painters, and these guys really weren't interested

01:32:15.850 - 01:32:31.270

in sharing information, they were just there, you see? And no one had made it clear before they took off, that part of this tour, was going to be swapping information among traditional peoples, you see? And so, especially when we got to the

01:32:31.270 - 01:32:48.910

middle of the Navajo Nation, I mean, it was it was just wild, they would not talk to this very high very, very high, you know, what was sitting well, medicine man, you know, and he got furious. I mean, he, you know, like, hey, who are these guys,

01:32:48.910 - 01:33:04.570

you know? And, oh, man, it was just funny, but we realized, hey, this is all bull to them, you know? And they love to do their paintings, you know, and of course, they make enormous amounts of money on this, on the paintings, but I mean as far as

01:33:04.570 - 01:33:14.890

sharing everything else, man, no, they'd rather talk to me about hunting kangaroo and how you prepare kangaroo meat, you know? And so yeah- Lawson Inada: It is all one thing, it sounds like it's all

01:33:14.890 - 01:33:24.390

one thing. Morton Marcus: Everything is, it's the past, the future, the present is all one thing, the spiritual and the physical life is all one thing, it is the most integrated, astonishing thing.

01:33:24.510 - 01:33:39.210

We- you know, you and I have not talked about their paintings. Before you leave, I've got to show you some of these things because you can put them vertical, you can put them horizontal, they are all the same, there is no up and down. I

01:33:39.210 - 01:33:50.760

mean, it's just so astonishing, you know? Lawson Inada: I want to write a poem that you can put it up and down and put it all over the place and you got something. Morton Marcus: And we will sit there and you'll finally jump

01:33:50.760 - 01:34:02.340

out a building because it's impossible for us. And yet, everything they put on paper or onto this canvas, I mean, it's just automatically that's their perspective. So, oh yeah, it's strange.

01:34:03.030 - 01:34:18.960

Lawson Inada: I love that, I love that stuff because, you know, I love to feel ignorant and I love to feel humbled. And I found that where I live in the Pacific Northwest, you know, to think that these people had, let's say totem poles or baskets

01:34:18.960 - 01:34:33.690

or anything, I'm never gonna be able to write anything that good because I don't have the context, you see? And this is what I'm [cut-off]. Morton Marcus: You're talking about the context, so we have to

01:34:33.690 - 01:34:47.780

reach out to the context of these people. Usually, traditional peoples because some, they are so alive still to the land, and the universe and the oneness of all those things. Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah. You know, the way poetry is, or a

01:34:47.780 - 01:35:04.250

lot of serious literature, it seems our context has become the ivory tower, it's the campus. And I made a conscious effort to try to do things off campus because I found that, you do something on campus, it's like there's an invisible barrier or

01:35:04.250 - 01:35:21.290

a shield that the rest of the community feels. And they don't feel comfortable, just, you know, coming into your parking lot and coming into these buildings and, and so whenever I get a chance, I try to go out there to community situations.

01:35:21.290 - 01:35:35.270

And I found that churches and temples are great places because they're already very, you know- I'm sure theater and drama comes out of the church because you know, in there you got the stage and the audience situation, and I'd say a couple of my most

01:35:36.380 - 01:35:53.060

successful poetry readings have been in situations like that, where- A friend of mine asked me one time to write a poem for his wedding. Now, you know, that's serious stuff, you see. And so, you know, you don't want to just say, well, I guess I'll just be,

01:35:53.180 - 01:36:11.630

you know, artsy fartsy or something about this. This is the real context or it's not entertainment, or it's not or maybe it is, but it's not anything that is remote from your life but this is life, you know. And then when my uncle

01:36:11.630 - 01:36:29.030

died, we were very close, my aunt asked me to read a poem at his funeral, you see, and that was maybe my greatest publication because I wrote a poem for him about his love for rivers and mountains and I gave it to her. And that's the only

01:36:29.030 - 01:36:44.150

copy and she published it by having it framed, so to speak, and on her wall. And so that's, let's say, my major publication that's on my aunt's wall, you see, and so, yeah. I think- but I'm humbled by all of this great art in the world that we may not

01:36:44.150 - 01:36:57.320

necessarily think of as art, you know, like- You asked me about, maybe my work is becoming simpler, well, I'd love to write something as simple as a quilt, you know? You go to quilt shows, and you see like, ooh, that has all of this sweat in it and it

01:36:57.320 - 01:37:09.410

has all these, you know, the family skirts and dresses have been, you know, cut up and put into this quilt, plus it keeps you warm. Morton Marcus: Now, I know you just got to the great Navajo

01:37:11.600 - 01:37:23.990

weaving show. Lawson Inada: Oh yeah, that influenced me too, or, you know, the Navajo and the Tibetans have this thing of creating these mandalas, whether you call them sand paintings or something, and

01:37:23.990 - 01:37:40.370

then what trips you out is that then they destroy them and see or they have to be destroyed, you see? And I'm not quite there yet but I'd love to write a poem so simple, and then you know, we take in the backyard and burn it up and get rid of it, but then

01:37:40.370 - 01:37:53.230

it must have- it was there then it did something, you know? Morton Marcus: The aborigines have their sand paintings, too, then the same thing happens too. That sort of trying to get the aborigines and Navajos together. These paintings, which I'll show

01:37:53.230 - 01:38:11.380

you now, they have been taught by white people how to put them on canvas. And so now they're like, you know, permanent and we can all in our ways appreciate them. But you know, going back to this, and I'm not humbled by, maybe that is the right word,

01:38:11.380 - 01:38:33.490

maybe it's not for me, by other people. I just am infused with such a sense of wonder, and well-being and love for the- and this is the way it is. My brothers and sisters, you see, because I, though I am American, and I won't doubt it, I think

01:38:33.490 - 01:38:49.720

there is another brotherhood and sisterhood, which is the artists you see from all the different cultures, you know? So I am related to Rimbaud, I'm related to Baudelaire, but I'm related to these Aborigines also, you know? We have, in the end, the

01:38:49.720 - 01:39:06.880

same sense of unity of all things, that guides our writing. Our writing, really is a series of connections that people have never thought of making before. And so, I just feel this tremendous outpouring, you know, of love and, and unity with all

01:39:06.880 - 01:39:22.150

these different people in the earth. And it just makes me feel so good about the human race, because I believe that art in the end really saves the human race, and really makes our lives worth living, because it puts it into a context, you see, of

01:39:22.270 - 01:39:34.390

showing where we're going in this huge interplanetary wagon Lawson Inada: You know, one thing I've learned, Morton, from train. staying with you, and I knew that before, but it really

01:39:34.390 - 01:39:50.740

became clear to me, is that here, I've been here for a couple three days and what it's been for me it's like, it's been a quick course in culture for me, just by staying at your house because you've got all these great books, most of which

01:39:50.740 - 01:40:08.980

you've read, and you've got them filed away. And so I've been staying sort of like in a museum and a library and, you know, I'm amazed because I don't have it covered the way you do, you see? And you know all this stuff and just this morning I was

01:40:08.980 - 01:40:27.070

thinking, should, let's say, Cabrillo College go broke or should UCSC go broke or whatever, they only need to hire you because you're this repository of culture and history and there's not that much that you don't know because

01:40:27.160 - 01:40:31.990

you just go and look through these books and they're worn out books that you know all. Lawson Inada: I haven't finished yet, Morton. So you're this Morton Marcus: That's probably-

01:40:35.050 - 01:40:45.840

wonderful repository and you probably know science also, I would guess? Morton Marcus: I try. Lawson Inada: Okay, so you know, all of this stuff, and it comes

01:40:45.840 - 01:41:03.930

out in your poetry, so that's why you have this great range to your poetry. And I think it's also- I think it was in the cards for you culturally, because you're really a scholar poet, and probably in some ancient tradition, and maybe

01:41:04.170 - 01:41:23.910

even if you were never directly exposed to or trained in that tradition, you're really kind of like a world rabbi, scholar, poet, musician, singer, storyteller, you know. And so, it's emerged in you in that way where you really are a serious

01:41:23.910 - 01:41:38.470

scholar, you see, and I know that I'm other things. I'm this or that or other kinds of things, but- Morton Marcus: Well but you and I have also been talking about this little tobacconist down in Fresno, George Nazar. You see,

01:41:38.650 - 01:41:52.930

now, it just so happens that Nazar does know about a lot of things, but there are these people who I meet, who know nothing about maybe more than planing wood and putting the wooden structure of a barn together, but they have that

01:41:52.930 - 01:42:08.830

wisdom, just from what they're doing in that, you see, that with all of what you have just been talking about my range, you see, they cut right to the heart of that. And I'm sure that you know, Choeje, is the same way.

01:42:09.580 - 01:42:24.880

Lawson Inada: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Morton Marcus: I do appreciate it, I do appreciate what you're saying and I do feel that way. I like to encompass the whole world, you know, and feel like what I'm really doing is

01:42:24.880 - 01:42:43.680

embracing the planet belly to belly. Lawson Inada: Right, yeah, and that's what I get. My term for it is being humbled or inspired or, you say infused. You know, that's the way we try to live because, wow, it's a wonderful

01:42:43.680 - 01:43:01.380

world. And, you know, in your poetry you're talking about the feeling, the connection with brothers and sisters, human beings, but that also is evident in your work, this includes: insects, plants, whatever creatures, and beans or rocks

01:43:01.380 - 01:43:14.020

that are out there. And you know one of the words, if I check through all your books, one of the words that is a very common note that you strike is "stars." Morton Marcus: Almost too much.

01:43:14.000 - 01:43:27.830

Lawson Inada: Because I know that when I use the word "stars," I feel like I'm borrowing. Now, you know, this is a B-flat note I'm borrowing from Morton because, you know, so you feel that connection. Yeah and that's the exciting,

01:43:27.890 - 01:43:44.410

affirmative thing that I find going on in the world. And this is the kind of thing that we try to give out, and, in a way, play our sort of rabbinical roles and share it with others and give it back and show them that they of course, have the same thing, why

01:43:44.470 - 01:43:59.900

not? And they, in their own ways, they know more than we do, and they have more skills than we do in their own ways. And someone else that I've been working with lately is William Stafford. And so, since this is the Poetry Show, I know that,

01:43:59.960 - 01:44:15.580

you know, listeners know who William Stafford is. And he lives in the state of Oregon, too, and I saw him a couple of weeks back. And I realized that even though we come from very different environments, we work in about the same way. He's just

01:44:15.650 - 01:44:30.940

a little more energized than I am, you know, he gets up around 4 or 4:30, he starts writing. But I've seen his notebooks to see how he writes, it looks a lot like your notebook over there, you know, but he's devoted to it. And to him, this

01:44:31.010 - 01:44:46.440

is his meditative, reflective time. And so by the time seven o'clock in the morning comes along, and you know, life comes along, then he's pretty much done with his meditating and writing, whatever you want to call it. But he read a poem and

01:44:46.500 - 01:45:02.180

he used the word, home and tone and poem and these kinds of things. And as he said, it struck him that the key in which it was written, obviously, that he discovered later on after he had written the poem, was "ohm." He said, and so he of course

01:45:02.250 - 01:45:17.800

knows that there must be power in that particular syllable. And so and- but this gets back to what we were saying earlier about trying to write something so simple. I wouldn't mind writing something that you know, was a syllable that was ah or

01:45:17.870 - 01:45:33.750

ooh, or something and people said, boy, is that good! Morton Marcus: You know, you were talking about the- we're talking about the ceremonial, which is a great, great word you came up with to talk about this, I mean in presenting poetry

01:45:33.750 - 01:45:50.700

readings and you are a master up there. I mean, you were great before, you're now untouchable. What I want to ask you is this: there's a lot of performance poetry going on now and you have now jumped into that around two to three years ago with the

01:45:50.700 - 01:46:05.640

poetry to jazz, because that is performance poetry. Why don't you talk a little bit about coming back to your favorite subject, music and jazz music, and now you've joined with musicians, and not only do you perform your poems, you've

01:46:05.640 - 01:46:20.520

written special poems for this. So, in other words, this is really a complete section of your work and your range. And why don't you talk about this kind of reading and presentation, and maybe poetry performance in general?

01:46:21.860 - 01:46:29.210

Lawson Inada: That's what they call it now, right? And nowadays, have you seen any installations and- you see those? Morton Marcus: No, no, no.

01:46:29.480 - 01:46:44.030

Lawson Inada: Installations? At our college art gallery, it's right down the hall from where I teach all of them, so I'd always go by there. One day, I went by there, and I heard all this hammering and so, I go in there, and there was a woman in there

01:46:44.030 - 01:46:59.600

on a stepladder, just hammering these beams into the walls and ceilings. And I said, "Whoa, you're getting- you're getting ready to have a show?" You need to take a break? Anyway, Mort, all we're talking about is, you know, there are these new terms

01:46:59.600 - 01:47:14.810

for things and all I found is that you know, what's really going on in culture and the arts is, you know, it's just old as the hills but you've got these new terms for it. So, what I've been doing, and I started it before the performance poetry

01:47:14.810 - 01:47:31.790

idea came about was, I was working more out of a jazz mode, or I considered myself to be not so much blending with jazz musicians, but when I work with a great pianist, like Mel Walden, for instance, I figured I was standing in relation to

01:47:31.790 - 01:47:47.300

his piano playing the same way Billie Holiday had stood when he played with Billie Holiday, or the same way Coltrane had stood when he played with Coltrane. And so, with my background in jazz, I, you know, I was, I'd like to think that I work within

01:47:47.300 - 01:48:05.840

the tradition and I come out of the tradition and function more like a horn or percussionist or something like that, and so- I didn't find any, anything awkward about it, but to me it just blended in because we work in the same tradition. And so I

01:48:05.840 - 01:48:22.460

think that's what's happening with what they call performance, it ends up that we're all working in the same thing together. But there are a lot of wonderful new ways, as you know, of the things to do that are really also ancient, doing

01:48:22.460 - 01:48:38.630

things with dancers, for instance, you know? Has anyone interviewed you? You should- Morton Marcus: No, I just do the interviews. Lawson Inada: Now, I'm the guy from living up in Oregon. Tell

01:48:38.630 - 01:48:50.140

me about this dance thing, how do you work that out? Morton Marcus: You're not gonna get me into this, this is going to be your interview. Well, I do want to go on with this. So, you know-

01:48:50.660 - 01:49:04.490

Lawson Inada: I'll tell you why I do it because I love to do it and I also find that this gets us away and gives us a way of outreach to the community and it gives the community a way of accessibility to us. Because you know, most people out there

01:49:05.180 - 01:49:20.510

aren't the ones who are prone to showing up to poetry readings on campuses, and they may not read all that much poetry on their own because, you know, a lot of poetry, maybe not in Santa Cruz, but geez, like where I live, you go into a Walden Books or

01:49:20.510 - 01:49:33.710

something there may be an Emily Dickinson book, a Walt Whitman, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and this stuff will be all stuck in a corner, what they call literature. I think it's kind of funny that in bookstores, they got a little section there

01:49:33.710 - 01:49:51.830

called literature, so- But you do something with music, you know, dance, movement, whatever, slides, you know? I like to do that too. Then you got something that the people feel they have access to and it doesn't seem anything that's so remote and

01:49:51.830 - 01:50:10.250

esoteric and, you know, it really works in grade. And another way that I've been working lately and you know, we've been talking about this, too, is working with kids. And so I love to get in these situations where you can read

01:50:10.250 - 01:50:31.040

poetry to kids. And I go into public schools as you do, and you work in high schools and grade schools with whomever. And I like to also- Sometimes kids watch you live, you know, they may not necessarily be all that open to someone showing up and

01:50:31.040 - 01:50:46.550

then reading something off a page and so, I like to go in and tell stories, you see, which are, they may be classical stories, they may be really poems that I've sort of just integrated into my life. And I kind of tell the poems and so,

01:50:46.550 - 01:50:57.850

but it comes out in another way that is live and it's very, very direct. And- Morton Marcus: Well, you know, this, this interaction with the community, before we even get on with the kids a little bit, the

01:50:57.850 - 01:51:09.670

very interesting thing which I never realized before and of course are all over the, "Legends from Camp," your new book, is that you really write occasional poetry and you don't bat your eye on it. If you're called for some environmental

01:51:09.670 - 01:51:24.580

group or a Japanese-American group, or anything, you don't think about a pre-existing poem that you have but you write a poem for the occasion. It's not Hallmark greeting card verse, I mean, it's serious poetry. But why don't you talk about a

01:51:24.580 - 01:51:38.210

little about why and how, you know, you create poems for those specific occasions? Lawson Inada: Well, I had to start doing this because, you know, with the 60s I started getting invited to places and

01:51:38.540 - 01:51:53.900

not only was poetry in demand in ethnic circles or for different occasions, but you know, poetry readings became a thing and I had to read, realize I had to read in these very diverse situations. And so, I figured if I could write something for that

01:51:53.900 - 01:52:08.840

occasion, for that place, then if I could do it, then it would be much more effective. And so it wasn't that I was just coming in, dredging in something and being my old self that I had been last year, but this is something very specific for very

01:52:08.840 - 01:52:23.060

specific time and place. And oh geez, I had to do work one time in the Japanese town in San Francisco, they asked me to work a luau. And they wanted some poetry there because you know, poetry is a wonderful thing that can fit in and geez, I couldn't

01:52:23.060 - 01:52:36.620

just show up and read a couple of Haiku because I followed- Okay, there was this huge hall in San Francisco. A luau was going on, there was a buffet tables, people were eating, and they had this entertainment going on at the same time. I

01:52:36.620 - 01:52:52.550

followed some Samoan fire dancers and I was squeezed in before a big drumming troupe came in, or something and so I, you know, I had to do some stuff. And in some cases, if I have time, I ask some musicians or whatever to join me.

01:52:52.970 - 01:53:07.190

Something else I had to do was Ken Kesey threw a thing in the University of Oregon gymnasium we called a "hoo-ha." And he had given out these little clickers, you know, those little things called cricket clickers, and he and then people were throwing

01:53:07.190 - 01:53:22.220

frisbees all over and everything. And I was asked to take part in that. I followed the guy, the world's oldest man who played the musical saw, he played the "Home on the Range." So you got to do stuff that responds, that corresponds to

01:53:22.220 - 01:53:36.770

the situation. I've worked a lot of these different situations, including public parks in East LA, where the people out there playing their radios and their picnicing, and here you come and there's a stage there and you know, you're going to read some

01:53:36.770 - 01:53:49.790

poetry? Get out of here. Morton Marcus: Okay, but now, let me ask some more specific about this. One, on a lot of these occasions, it certainly seemed to me in Headwaters, for example, you're really digging

01:53:49.790 - 01:54:04.910

down where poetry comes from. But in some of these other cases, are you trying to set up real performance, dramatic incidents that will grab people's attention? Lawson Inada: Yeah, it all depends, it all depends. Maybe a

01:54:04.910 - 01:54:20.240

lot of poetry goes back to ancient ceremonial and ritualistic rites. And it also goes back to when we used to sit around the fire and tell stories. And so- or performed before- let me tell you what I saw today. You know, I was

01:54:20.240 - 01:54:34.550

walking over this bear comes by and this and that, and this is what he did, he look like, you know what I mean? That could be a kind of poem, too. And so, all I'm saying is that, geez, you just tried to be ready for all of these. And people have said,

01:54:34.550 - 01:54:46.400

boy, you're an occasional poet. Well, you know, I think that's great. I love that. You might say, well, geez, so is Maya Angelou. Morton Marcus: Now, what about the, again, with the jazz? I

01:54:46.400 - 01:55:00.440

mean, you do have really pre-written poems in this, and you've really pushed your art and- in those poems, you know, so it would seem as though these would be a different level from going to East LA or, you know, appearing before after the fire

01:55:00.440 - 01:55:17.230

dancers. Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, even though I did some of my jazz poems, I guess they're called jazz poems but they're not necessarily always jazz. It's music working with music. And

01:55:17.230 - 01:55:32.470

you have to scramble. I came up with a technique that I devised appearing in an LA public park, where I repeated each line, and the reason I did that was because for one thing, maybe the people didn't speak English who were listening to me. And so

01:55:32.470 - 01:55:45.640

maybe repeating it helped out. And also they didn't hear me the first time around and the musicians were playing along with me. And so after I developed that technique, and which I still use, I realized that it's also kind of like the

01:55:45.640 - 01:56:02.590

blues too where you repeat yourself, repeat these lines and I get a lot of kick out of doing these things. But you know, what is life if not just a series of occasions, and if the occasions- If you write the poem well, it can function in any occasion, it

01:56:02.590 - 01:56:16.870

just happened to be written. It's like you were commissioned, you know, you were commissioned to write this composition for this particular, you know, like Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," I think, was celebrating the end of World War

01:56:17.380 - 01:56:29.560

II, but you know that composition is played in any occasion, it's wonderful. Morton Marcus: But Lawson, okay, let's go back to these long musical suites, which in many ways really are personal lyric

01:56:29.560 - 01:56:41.230

poems. Lawson Inada: Yeah. Morton Marcus: It would seem to me that they would work terrifically in a performance of jazz and poetry, but do you use

01:56:41.230 - 01:56:49.200

them? I told you so? Lawson Inada: Do I use them? Yeah- Morton Marcus: Remember I told you so? Lawson Inada: Yeah, in some cases, I have to be my own band

01:56:49.200 - 01:57:06.780

if I don't have a musician to work with. Then I've got to kind of hum and sing and this and that, and so I feel okay about that because, you know, I did come from a music background. And so, yeah, I feel comfortable doing that, you know, like, I'll

01:57:06.780 - 01:57:21.870

hum a few bars of "Blue Monk" or whatever because if people don't know it or I want them to hear it as it goes through their shirts, it comes with the performance territory. Morton Marcus: Okay let's go on to legends now. Let's go on to

01:57:21.870 - 01:57:38.040

legends. You see that's repeating the line twice in case they're not hearing either. In this one, would I be right or wrong in saying that really in the suite, if you will, in "Legends," you're really trying to come to terms with the whole

01:57:38.040 - 01:57:53.490

experience of the camps. And then I'd also, as you've been eloquently describing what the legends are, how legend becomes, especially the introduction of the book, you know, we talked about that. But I mean, when I talk about the personal lyric,

01:57:53.490 - 01:58:09.270

I'm talking about really going into yourself, which are not in these occasional poems, and really sort of coming up with a place, you know where you again, I come back to this image of yours, where you stand, how you get to stand at a certain place.

01:58:12.870 - 01:58:28.020

Lawson Inada: Yeah, what I was trying to do with the legend poems was, as I say, in the introduction to that camp section, you know, I try to hold my own personal experience or the collective experience up into the light and see what it

01:58:28.020 - 01:58:46.410

really means to everybody else. And in a way those are- they happen to be taking place in camp, and that's crucial, but they're also archetypal moments that shed some light, I hope on the human condition. You know, that not only that we do these

01:58:46.410 - 01:59:02.340

things to ourselves, but look how life is, and look how wonderful life can be also that these things are going on. And so, my hope was that, even though I'm talking about something that seems like ancient history to some, is of

01:59:02.340 - 01:59:17.130

course, something that still lives with us, it still lives with me all the time. And so, I'm trying to learn more about it and then give it out to people and show that it's really ours. Yeah, whole camp experiences, it really belongs

01:59:17.130 - 01:59:31.010

to everybody. Morton Marcus: Now, there's certainly the one little poem that I must mention when- "Lost Boy," I mean, every kid has been lost, as you say. And the resonance here is that not only

01:59:31.100 - 01:59:44.060

have we been lost and that's been terrifying, but here you are lost in so many ways, because you have been removed from the environment of your home which is Fresno and you know, it just so happens that's the Fresno County Fairground but

01:59:44.240 - 02:00:00.410

it could have as far as I was concerned, be, you know, the camp in Arkansas. And that made it so much more resonant, you know, and so much more frightening because you really, you really were lost in your psyche and in who you were as an

02:00:00.410 - 02:00:11.990

American, a Japanese-American, and that's what really gave it an added resonance. Lawson Inada: There you go. Yeah, yeah. So you're dealing with yourself as a kid being lost and then if you write it

02:00:11.990 - 02:00:28.730

right, it has this resonance that deals with lostness, or foundness also, you see. So that's where the meaning is for everybody. You know, I was down in LA about a month ago, and they had this wonderful exhibit of, see in all humility, I'm

02:00:28.730 - 02:00:43.220

writing about the camps in retrospect from my child's point of view. But there were these other people in camp who were like, let's say, my parents' age, my grandparents' age, who sometimes were just stuck with time on their hands, and

02:00:43.220 - 02:00:58.190

idleness and boredom, and many of them expressed themselves in art. And so there was a big exhibit of paintings done in the camps and they were just wonderful because they were in the camps and they showed certain things about the camps,

02:00:58.190 - 02:01:10.910

but at the same time, anybody could look at them and to relate to them because the ones that were done right where they were just- So you had these wonderful landscapes with, let's say Mount Shasta in the background and a person in the foreground and

02:01:11.210 - 02:01:24.930

watching it through barbed wire, and it just, it conveyed this other feeling that went from the specific to the general. Morton Marcus: That's it, the universal as well. Lawson Inada: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you just can't toss

02:01:24.930 - 02:01:42.060

away the specific because you know that that's where it came from. But it was, oh, yeah, it was- If it's really working as art, it's really working. You know, I had another flash on the occasional where, I keep saying humbling, but this really was

02:01:42.060 - 02:02:01.560

humbling. I was designated as a- in the state of Michigan they have this thing called the Martin Luther King - Rosa Parks Artists in Residence Series. And so, I was asked to be Artist in Residence there at Wayne State University in the heart of

02:02:01.560 - 02:02:22.740

Detroit for several weeks, it was a couple of years back. And where I stayed was close to the Detroit Art Institute. And I mean to tell you, I went into there, and it's huge, and they have this one huge room that's all Diego Rivera. And it looks

02:02:22.740 - 02:02:38.790

to me like they either had that room there, I would guess maybe they had the room there, or they have asked Diego, what do you want? And he said,okay, let's do a room and they do this huge room. And then he puts up sort of a mural about the auto

02:02:38.790 - 02:02:53.670

industry, which turns out to be all of America and the Americas and the world. He puts it on all the walls and the ceilings and everything is his room. And so, boy, you talk about something he did for the occasion, and you see him working on this for a

02:02:53.670 - 02:03:05.100

number of years. He's on the scaffolds and everything, it's really- yeah, have you seen that? Morton Marcus: I- actually I've seen a documentary on it, and how he was commissioned to do it. Yeah, well, they weren't

02:03:05.100 - 02:03:14.940

happy with that. I tell you. No. Lawson Inada: It looked like the Sistine Chapel or something. You know, I'm sure they wanted something like a little commercial billboard praising you know Ford Motor Company but

02:03:16.140 - 02:03:32.540

you see it's cosmic, as they say, it's universal because you know Ford cars come from metal, right? So he has to show the whole earth and the universe at work, oh boy. Morton Marcus: Let me go out with this because the red light

02:03:33.170 - 02:03:44.210

is flashing. First of all, I really want to ask around two more questions. Are we going to have to wait 20 more years for your next book? Lawson Inada: No, no. I don't know what the-

02:03:44.210 - 02:03:53.840

Morton Marcus: That's a promise on the air now. I've got that on air. Lawson Inada: That's a promise on the air. No more 20, you know, yeah in getting me to do this book.

02:03:53.900 - 02:04:05.450

Morton Marcus: And Frank Chin was, God bless him. Lawson Inada: Yes, but- Morton Marcus: But you know, the other question comes as you have a steamer trunk full of poems, right still? Now, are you going

02:04:05.450 - 02:04:17.770

to take those and make more books out of them? Lawson Inada: I think I will. I was thinking of collecting some of those, but I want to do what you've been doing where you said, you've written a whole book of poems within several

02:04:17.770 - 02:04:29.620

weeks. And so, I want to wait for that right moment where I get an opening and, you know, I can always, we can always collect our old stuff, but I'd like to have some opening, some insight come to me and then there'll be this whole new book-

02:04:30.530 - 02:04:41.180

Morton Marcus: Which will happen but then they see those old poems get pushed farther and farther back. I mean, "Asian Sister, Asian Brother," one of my favorite poems is not in a book yet.

02:04:41.600 - 02:04:53.960

Lawson Inada: They'll be you know, it'll come out on TV, not available in stores, they're kind of Golden Oldies. Morton Marcus: Right, right to the author, right? Several more questions, and I really think I know the answer to this one:

02:04:54.200 - 02:05:06.830

where do you go from here? It's, you know, what does the future hold? And I think I know the answer now. Lawson Inada: Highway 1. Because I came over on 17 and I found that to be such a scary road that when I leave in an hour or

02:05:06.830 - 02:05:20.450

so- Morton Marcus: Not that future, the future of your work! You're gearing yourself up for that long drive. Lawson Inada: The future of my work. Well, I got a couple of

02:05:20.450 - 02:05:35.510

projects I'm doing. I'm doing one, that's going to be a music and poetry tape with William Stafford and one of my neighbors, a composer, Todd Barton. And then I'm going to write a catalog copy for the Oregon Issei Immigrant Pioneer

02:05:35.510 - 02:05:45.160

Project, it's going to be a traveling exhibit. And so, I've got to write the catalog and I think it'll be in poetry, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be in poetry, you see? Yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: What an opportunity to do what you want.

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What's so great about what seems to be going on with the Japanese-American community out here, not all you talked about and everything is that [cut-off].