00:00:32.730 - 00:00:45.180

Lorna Dee Cervantes: The replacement of Indians, was as much an ecological as a cultural revolution and the human side of that revolution cannot be fully understood until it is embedded in the ecological one.

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This next poem, there's a reference to one of those ecological changes. Hemlock was the predominant plant, according to fossil pollen on the New England forests, and this is a poem called:

00:01:01.020 - 00:02:07.590

FOR THOSE OF US WHO KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE SURVIVORS IN THE WAR FOR KNOWLEDGE We are the hemlock holding the hillside bucking quake seasons and buckling sheets of snowy rain.

00:02:09.010 - 00:02:33.880

We are night shade to the dough home to mold and nesters. We are the spreading roots, the persistent bones. We are the broken fingers proud and plowed, dumbed and shoved into the earth. We are the hands coming back. The green returned

00:02:33.880 - 00:03:06.370

wanderers, nomads, forced upon the plane of war. We are war victims, no more. We are poor rememberers, no more. We are silenced and forgotten children, no more. We are hungry, no more. [inaudible] We think we're the

00:03:06.370 - 00:03:35.050

sun, we are the sun. People are the plants to air kernels to earth. We are what puts out fire. We are [inaudible]. We are the mothers of earth not the earth keeper. We are children of earth, not our Brother's Keepers.

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They have uncovered our seed. desecrated the mother's grave and awakened and magic of another calling. They have discovered sacred secrets about ourselves. We were once more plentiful than buffalo we were once wider than war. We

00:04:01.330 - 00:04:29.250

covered the world without force as the white ancient powder, snow covers both hemispheres like ash and blood [inaudible]. We are all linked by air. We touch the food, we touch and we come back stronger than we were.

00:04:30.980 - 00:04:56.000

We are the mothers of Earth, not the earth keeper. We are children of Earth, not our brother's keepers. And we are returned. We are fulfilling the prophecy. We are an eternal circle. We grow in cultures of saplings around wet ashes.

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Spirits dance in the circles we weave with our dancing and we are happening right away. We are growing in our mother's garden, speading around. Unknown: [Recorded music: Georgia On My Mind]

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Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through. Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind Georgia, Georgia, a song of you. Comes as sweet and clear ad Other arms reach out to me, Other eyes smile tenderly

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moonlight through the pines Still in peaceful dreams I see. The road leads back to you. Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find. Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.

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Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody. This is Morton Marcus and this is The Poetry Show and you were listening before to a little dramatic radio. And it was the work of our guest, Lorna Dee Cervantes, whose first book of poetry, "Emplumada" was

00:08:13.660 - 00:08:28.380

published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1981. Now, as I remember that won the Before Columbus award, didn't it? It won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. She has been a recipient of the of an NEA

00:08:28.440 - 00:08:43.540

grant. Her poems are included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry and the Norton Anthology of American Literature. She is working on a PhD at the University of Santa Cruz, California, Santa Cruz, which I believe she has completed and

00:08:43.610 - 00:08:47.660

will be going to-. Lorna Dee Cervantes: I haven't completed it. Morton Marcus: You haven't completed it. You could have gotten away with it, Lorna.

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No one would have checked out here. [Cross talk] Yeah. I- Lorna is though, and unfortunately, whenever a real star leaves our midst, though you've only been here actually only two years, isn't it? Maybe three,

00:09:05.240 - 00:09:19.630

Lorna Dee Cervantes: Actually, almost five years. Morton Marcus: Lorna for a long time, was it San- San Jose, and she is going to go to the University of Colorado at Boulder where this fall she will begin teaching creative writing

00:09:19.630 - 00:09:31.610

and I'm very happy for her, very lively place there. But we do hate to lose you, Lorna. Welcome to the Poetry Show. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Oh, thank you. I'm pleased to be here. Morton Marcus: Also, if you could sit a little closer to the

00:09:31.610 - 00:09:39.110

microphone. Lorna Dee Cervantes: All right. Morton Marcus: Lorna, where were you born? Lorna Dee Cervantes: I was born in the Mission District in San

00:09:39.110 - 00:09:45.700

Francisco. Morton Marcus: We're about, can I ask the street? I've lived there for years, that's why. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Near 19th and Valencia.

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Morton Marcus: We've got to talk after the show. I lived in 19 between Valencia and Dolores. Amazing right? Lorna Dee Cervantes: My father ran a little Art Gallery there in the early 60s, 1960-1969. Right there on Valencia.

00:10:02.470 - 00:10:11.650

Morton Marcus: I'll be darned. And then you grew up in the Mission District. Lorna Dee Cervantes: No, no, I grew up- and then I moved to San Jose when I was about five years old. So I grew up in downtown

00:10:11.650 - 00:10:28.310

San Jose. Varrio, that's now called Varrio Horseshoe. Because the freeway cuts right through it and makes a big horseshoe. I guess, I guess there really wasn't a time in my life when it

00:10:28.370 - 00:10:43.950

wasn't just the center of my life. I mean it. I guess I started writing poetry when I was about eight years old. And I guess I just always liked them. My brother was a musician. Oh, by the way, we began with some of

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my brothers music. That was him on flute and percussion, underneath that one poem, but he was a musician and so he was always reading song lyrics. And so, as a little kid, I guess I you know, I liked poems. They were small, like me. And they

00:11:00.870 - 00:11:19.020

seem like lyrics for people who didn't have good voices, so that was me too. And so I wrote, from the time I was eight years old, really always and by the time I was in junior high school and early high school, I wrote about five poems a day, just by habit.

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I wish I did that now, but- Morton Marcus: Who were some of your early influences, if any? Lorna Dee Cervantes: Well, I started off. I wanted to start off this program with Billie Holiday, as well as an old

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ancient African palm breaths. Because sort of, I guess I just like to start off my- my radio airwave thing by just sort of acknowledging black muses, because when I was young, I mean, I read- I read a lot of Romantic poets and the

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Transcendentalists and all that, always being very aware of the class difference, you know, at that time and then in the early 60s when more black poetry was being published, especially the poetry of black women, like Gwendolyn Brooks and early

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Audrey Lorde, and early June Jordan, and those poems as well as a reintroduction of the really early work like Phyllis Wheatley, people like that really had a tremendous influence on me and in a lot of ways.

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It politicized me and it made me- it's sort of- Oh I don't know consolidated my own commitment to poetry and sense of myself, and my place, I guess, as a poet, and- and, and aware too of the importance of where my works' coming from in

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terms of class and gender and race. Morton Marcus: Let's, let's talk specifically about that. You are a Chicana. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Mm hmm, yeah I'm Chicana, and I'm also

00:13:04.210 - 00:13:19.360

half Native American half California Indian. But as I said, I grew up in the Varrio in downtown San Jose and so I'm Chicana, I identify as Chicana. Morton Marcus: And the Chicano movement is not just Hispanic

00:13:19.360 - 00:13:29.970

American. It is women, you know, and all of the music we've played, obviously are the music of women. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Yes. Morton Marcus: So that is the politicizing is very, very

00:13:29.970 - 00:13:44.130

definitely class, Chicano, and then women are all together as one. Yes. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Well, I think that comes to with just an awareness of, of poetry and what it is and what it does and that

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it's always on the side of spirit. And as such, it's always on the side of life. And and when you grow up in a society today- like today, here, you know, with all of these triple and quadruple whammies against you in terms of repression and

00:14:04.890 - 00:14:33.270

the sorts of things that are out to despiritize you, you know, to take your spirit away. And, and the sort of danger that's really involved in growing up poor, young, a woman and that- So poetry is something of the spirit and I think it's not- So

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it's- it's not unusual that that so much of really vital poetry comes to us also through music and through the music and the words of of women, black women, Native American women. And just anyone really who- who ascribes to that spirit, sense of spirit.

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Morton Marcus: Next question I was gonna ask you is what is your poetry hope to achieve? But I think you just answered. Let's hear some of your poetry. I know that you want to read from the new manuscript, that's fine with me. So anyway you want to start

00:15:07.060 - 00:15:16.930

off reading just go, and you want to give the listener out there an introduction, that's fine also. Lorna Dee Cervantes: An introduction- Morton Marcus: to each poem, if you have some words to say about

00:15:16.930 - 00:15:28.030

it. Lorna Dee Cervantes: The worst possible thing is always, what poem am I going to start off with? So I read one in the beginning, that's a little uncharacteristic. And in- I want

00:15:28.030 - 00:15:45.040

to follow it up with another sort of uncharacteristic one. It's kind of a long one. But it's kind of an introduction. Also, it's a poem about growing up in the 60s, coming of age in the 60s, and growing up in the Varrio. And this is a poem

00:15:45.040 - 00:16:04.840

called: TO DAVID WITHOUT GOLIATH, FROM PENNY GLASS David Nicholson, where would I be without you? Nikodemus Greek as you liked to call yourself - skinny 16, squint faced Pole,

00:16:04.870 - 00:16:28.000

face like an Okie man - who would have imagined you a philosopher, jug-eared and chicken skinned in a toga by the baths? You had a stack of sci-fi 20 feet high, gave 'em all to my brother - I spaced on "Monster" mags, "Mad and Beyond", "Tales

00:16:28.000 - 00:16:49.570

of the Incredible," while you and he bluesed-out, dreaming of the playboys you would someday be: He the greatest musician since Chopin, you, the I don't know, something. You were in love with an older woman, a blonde, blue-eyed, 18-year-old

00:16:49.600 - 00:17:11.530

bombshell. "I don't know" you said, "she just likes me." You were the first to say it. I was pretty smart. But not pretty. I called you from the phone booth at The Spot. Watched the men come bumbling out the cantina and get into their cars as we

00:17:11.530 - 00:17:33.760

talked for as long as the sun stayed on the smoky horizon, till it got too black to see. First, I told you, I had heard you play the coolest licks in the park. I called you to say I thought you were real good. That was the year I learned gullible.

00:17:34.360 - 00:17:59.800

Sure, you said, I'm gullible, to flattery and a pretty face. I wouldn't tell you who I was, just described myself: thin, 16, 5'5'', long hair. Red, brown, green eyes. I know you couldn't keep a beat and I was always a secret liar. Tell the truth in a

00:17:59.800 - 00:18:18.850

thousand disguises. I knew all about music, talked bridges, charts and chops, knew the bands, the Russians, Nietzsche, The Republic and all that those Existentialists were just coming on to. I quoted poetry and Van Gogh, turned you on to your

00:18:18.850 - 00:18:37.090

first peyote mitote and I was a thousand miles away, stepping on glass in a pissed-up phone booth, faking a girl from Willow Glen. My mother has a "pool" and a divorce from my father who's really "rich." Sure, we're paying the rent, but that's only

00:18:37.090 - 00:18:58.840

temporary. She and I'll raise horses just as soon as I find the right place. I asked you if you read. All my life, you said, but I gave it up for cars. I's checked out all your books, "Fahrenheit 451", "1984", "On the Beach". There wasn't one I

00:18:58.840 - 00:19:19.240

hadn't read in that 20 feet of fantasy. The next time I called you I had read everything there was under "autos" in the stacks. I called you just to ask you if you knew how to fix my GTO because I was really a mechanic who was just having this problem

00:19:19.390 - 00:19:41.080

getting started. You were impressed. I could talk to you for years. You said. We talked all of 1968. I talked to you through a butch and a brutal father. You talked me past my mother's divorce and the hidden bottles. Time suspended as much

00:19:41.080 - 00:20:04.750

as me that year, and there it was: guns in the ghetto, the revolution just around the corner. From there I was - stuck in a stinking phone booth, pretending to be me with another face and a steady allowance. And their you were saying you were

00:20:04.750 - 00:20:22.960

sure that the corporations were secretly building underground caverns, mini havens for cosmonauts to hide in while they collected all this money for space, when everyone knew it was mathematically impossible to resist gravity. And when that

00:20:22.960 - 00:20:42.460

first footage came in, you swore it was all just fake. "Just think of the bucks," you said, "hundreds of millions over time." And when war broke out on that same screen, as the bucks and blondes selling Ivory and Cheer, you captured all the

00:20:42.460 - 00:21:01.270

statistics, body counts and names, banking on the hoax of war. Maybe it's just makeup, Hitler and Disney. Those guys can do anything. They can pay to make millionaires of those guys who'll say they'll die. They have enough money. We talked the

00:21:01.270 - 00:21:21.700

ins and outs of power, politics, allegiances of billionaire people who are nothing but ink on paper. You kept me in the library when suicide failed. And when you finally quit your Marilyn: her clothes and the fights and the bitch because she

00:21:21.700 - 00:21:37.720

was really a closet insomniac who watched too much TV, didn't like your hippie friends and stayed up all night just to think of things to tell you like why you insisted on resisting the draft and hiding in your "marijuana nutshell." When it

00:21:37.720 - 00:22:03.790

was really me you were in love with from that very first call. And when it finally came to that: 34-24-36 is what I cross-fingered lied, knowing to you that was kind of skinny. You and her were for sex, you said, but honor is honor. I did it for

00:22:03.790 - 00:22:26.350

honor, told you who I really was. After that summer of love when flowers and peace were more profitable through beautiful lies, and angels were just coming into being in this life. I told you then I wasn't no white girl. But Steve's sister,

00:22:26.710 - 00:22:50.230

the flattest sack in the varrio you despised more than you hated the rich. No bunny in this booth, was all I said and it hung in the air, like the moths, horseflies, and turkey dragons smashed on the glass of the booth. "That's okay," you said,

00:22:50.530 - 00:23:11.260

"you can call me tomorrow." I never called and my phone never rang with your voice on the other end. But it would never have worked. You never could hold your head. I heard you got fat, joined the Air Force, cut your hair. But I dreamed I saw

00:23:11.260 - 00:23:35.020

you on that varrio bus, same hair like a string of gold water, same face pocked like the moon, you swore they'd never get to. I just called you to say you taught me the power of love, you were the best I never had.

00:23:37.640 - 00:23:45.320

Morton Marcus: That's absolutely delightful. It's wonderful. It's just shock full of life. Then you say that's not characteristic. There are not more things in the new manuscript like this?

00:23:47.160 - 00:24:04.320

Lorna Dee Cervantes: The new manuscript is- is very different. That's from- that's from a manuscript I've been working on for about seven years now called "Bird Avenue" and that has more of those sort of narrative poems. And also, the

00:24:04.320 - 00:24:16.220

first poem I read is from that, this new manuscript just got accepted this morning, as a matter of fact, from Arte Publico Press, University Houston. Morton Marcus: Congratulations. That's great

00:24:16.220 - 00:24:26.730

Lorna Dee Cervantes: Thank you! But it's a it's a collection of love poems. It's a book called "From the Cables of Genocide, Poems on Love and Hunger". Morton Marcus: Sounds great. And we will be hearing those of

00:24:26.730 - 00:24:44.370

course, you know, what was so interesting about this? As you know, we're putting together a lot of work by different California poets and poets from all over the Pacific Rim, and you stand out as a Chicana poet. It's just so amazing, but I

00:24:44.370 - 00:24:59.190

couldn't help thinking while you were reading this, that this is sort of like the flip side of Gary Soto's poems. You know, and it's from the totally different viewpoint of the woman, but also different because it's you, your own vision, your own words and

00:24:59.220 - 00:25:11.940

coming back to that phone booth again and again, is a wonderful, wonderful device. Very, very nice poem. As you realize we're getting up to the hour, but we've got to hear at least one more poem before we do, and if it goes over a little, don't

00:25:11.940 - 00:25:21.420

worry about it. The only thing we have to worry about my tape Lorna Dee Cervantes: One more poem? Okay, then I think I'd like to read this one. This one's- this one's pretty new.

00:25:21.600 - 00:25:39.420

This is also from the "Bird Avenue" manuscript. And- I started out- one of my favorite poets of all time is Pablo Neruda. Since the time I was about 15, so this is a poem. And recently, I had some poems accepted- poems accepted for a

00:25:39.810 - 00:25:51.030

high school textbook. And it was funny because right when that happened was right when I was writing this poem, because I was sort of thinking about a high school audience when I wrote this poem, and it's a poem about writing poems, and about reading

00:25:51.030 - 00:26:10.300

poems, and it's called: ON THE HEIGHTS OF MACHU PICCHU While there I sat, perched upon my grandma's swing, fixed upon The Heights of Machu Picchu, the sunset spiders crammed their

00:26:10.300 - 00:26:37.600

beaded curtains studded with the jade of flinted, sparking flies; the dance of spider feet: paws, plea, the bad dream of running, going nowhere, spinning paws like dogs, like prey, silent, webbed across the poles of swing, my play, protagonist and

00:26:37.600 - 00:27:05.020

ploy against the impeccable blue of Califas winters. Women the size of acorns ruled those linen nests. Summers, not so conspicuous, set my sights on autumn and in the drift of smoke, in my wooded future I sniffed the mundane air of

00:27:05.020 - 00:27:33.190

authority. Not for me to heed the action, or ever need a script to toll and tell of all my dead, ticking like a clock, I metronomed my way through lines that caught my hair inside the gears of that machinery of my lifted nation, and pulled me,

00:27:33.700 - 00:28:03.160

head-first under the spell of my imagination. Neruda and the swinging patent leather segunda shoes would sound the hours I sat. My buzzing adolescent frame stilled inside that web of flies, fruit and buried towers. Flowers, air to air, the floor

00:28:03.160 - 00:28:27.070

length curtain of red and clotted blood. Ivy snaked with twisted working arms and rat tails, crickets and their running engines, fenced antenna, silhouettes of boxers poised and winning - all of this. I watched, nurtured with another

00:28:27.100 - 00:28:51.610

eye, listening, quivering, feelers, [unidentified] inside as the poem unfolds. Morton Marcus: That was just wonderful Lorna. We are speaking with Lorna Dee Cervantes. And before we go off, Lorna is going

00:28:51.720 - 00:29:17.970

to say some words about the record we're going to go off with which is Memphis Minnie, and I'm going to ask her to say that in a moment, but I'm waiting for this tape that has gone on way longer than it's supposed to be. So I don't want

00:29:18.080 - 00:29:38.330

to miss a word of this. So I will just keep talking and tell you that this last half hour has been brought to you by Staples-, Lorna Dee Cervantes: Like I said, when I started out, I have Stapleton's Natural Food Grocery, and we thank them for

00:29:34.350 - 00:29:51.560

a debt to black muses and- and I don't make a separation between providing a grant to help make this half hour programming musicians and poets. I think they're all of the same spirit. possible. Stapleton's Grocery specializes in organic produce

00:29:48.000 - 00:30:06.360

And that last poem I read, was, as I said, kind of thinking back and unadulterated comestibles in the Farmers Exchange Building in on being 15 years old at the same time, I was listening. I Santa Cruz. And this record we're going to play of Memphis Minnie.

00:30:01.440 - 00:30:21.150

just want to play this also because it's radio. And it was so wonderful to grow up around here and be exposed to all the [Recorded music: In my Girlish Days] different kinds of music and this following one is one that I

00:30:21.260 - 00:30:47.700

was exposed to, from a radio station, public radio station. This is Memphis Minnie, "In my Girlish Days," and I just want to say that the spirit that comes through this musician, songwriter and poet, is just one I'd like to share with you. This

00:30:47.800 - 00:33:18.580

is Memphis Minnie, "In my Girlish Days," and this is dedicated to all women who still have their girlish ways. Morton Marcus: And that was Memphis Minnie. We are going to continue talking to Lorna Dee Cervantes in a moment. But

00:33:18.610 - 00:33:35.020

first, I would like to make several announcements. One is, "Playhouse," Thursday at 9pm, radio drama from National Public Radio. Raffles, AJ Raffles has been called the greatest burglar in the history of literary roguery. Such was the success of

00:33:35.020 - 00:33:49.570

horning- of horning stories in Great Britain that Raffles nearly eclipsed the popularity of Sherlock Holmes. Now in [unidentified] Playhouse number four, Raffles, "Gentlemen and Players". When Raffles and Bunny are engaged for cricketing weeks

00:33:49.900 - 00:34:05.320

at country estates, the playing of cricket can hardly be said to be their chief preoccupation. Bunny is an incredible ladies man, while Raffles takes an understandable professional interest in his fellow guest's portable property. That is this

00:34:05.320 - 00:34:23.170

Thursday 9pm radio drama from National Public Radio right here on KUSP. Of more local interest and certainly you don't hear this on radio, but I hope you will be there: There will be the poetry prose reading series at Louden Nelson Community Center

00:34:23.170 - 00:34:39.340

this Friday, Jack and Adele Foley from Berkeley with Robert Sward right here from Santa Cruz. Robert who has been a guest on this show several times. An evening of performance poetry, dance and music at 7:30 Friday, May 26. That's this

00:34:39.340 - 00:34:55.360

Friday, Jack and Adele Foley with Robert Sward. So plan to make it down to the Louden Nelson Community Center at 301 Center Street, Santa Cruz. Again, 7:30 this Friday, for this performance poetry evening with Robert Sward, and Jack and

00:34:55.360 - 00:35:13.570

Adele Foley. Then, on the first Wednesday night of the month from 7:30 to 9:30pm that is June 7, a Porter Gulch Review reading with Linda Fox, David Thorne and Sarah Walsh at Zachary's because these are the Zachary's Readings. Zachary's is at 819

00:35:13.570 - 00:35:26.950

Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, and June 7, they will have the Porter Gulch Review Reading with Linda Fox, David Thorne, Sarah Walsh, all of whom have work in the new Porter Gulch Review, which is at your newsstands right now. And speaking of

00:35:26.950 - 00:35:44.170

magazines, this is what is known in the trade as a great segue, speaking of magazines, several weeks ago, my guest was Francisco Alarcón. And he was talking about a new edition of the Quarry West Magazine, which is put out at UCSC and this new

00:35:44.200 - 00:35:59.200

edition was Chicano and Chicana poetry. And Lorna Dee Cervantes, our guest tonight, was the co-editor of that magazine. Do you want to say a few words about it Lorna? Lorna Dee Cervantes: Yeah, it's it really represents one of the

00:35:59.200 - 00:36:16.660

first times and about 10 years where there's been an anthology of Chicana and Chicano poets from the Bay Area. It's significant also because there's quite a few very outstanding Chicano poets, Chicana and Chicano poets that come from-

00:36:16.870 - 00:36:37.780

from this area. And what with the depletion of funding for little magazines and alternative magazines in central culturales, Chicano art cultural centers in the cities, there's been less and less funding and so- so nothing like this has come out

00:36:37.780 - 00:36:56.200

in- in at least 10 years. And so we have a sampling of about 40 different poets including some previously unpublished poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. Um, but that's available through UC Santa Cruz.

00:36:56.780 - 00:37:09.620

Morton Marcus: It is a beautiful magazine with some wonderful poets. Not only does Lorna have work in there, and Francisco, but one of my favorite young Chicano poets, Vincent Martinez, who I think is-

00:37:09.620 - 00:37:12.820

Lorna Dee Cervantes: Victor Martinez- Morton Marcus: Victor Lorna Dee Cervantes: Oh, yes. Morton Marcus: Who is just, I think sensational.

00:37:12.820 - 00:37:23.500

Lorna Dee Cervantes: Outstanding. Morton Marcus: I gave a reading with him in San Jose in the fall and he just knocked me out. And these two poems are just wonderful poems by him. Gary Soto is there with Gary Soto's

00:37:23.500 - 00:37:34.060

second poem, the one on his father is one of the most powerful poems I think I've ever read by him. It really is a new dimension in touching his emotions, which he's not had in other work. So it is really worth going out there. What

00:37:34.060 - 00:37:49.690

you're not going to get, unfortunately, is the wonderful evening, which we told you to go to on this station, which featured food and drums and guitars and just some young poets getting up reading their poems for the first time and

00:37:50.830 - 00:38:04.060

professional Chicano poets. It doesn't even sound- professional poets, getting up there and doing their thing. Some of them were like, stand up comedians. They were so funny, they were really wonderful. That evening is- is history and very pleasant

00:38:04.060 - 00:38:18.940

history. But you can get the magazine, which is just beautifully put out, I understand that the cover was actually a silk screen. [crosstalk]. And there are only 700 of those covers. It's really an extraordinary collection. So

00:38:18.940 - 00:38:33.850

if you're keeping up with poetry as it is today, and the poets who are around, this is, as Lorna says, the first collection in around 10 years of what amounts to be 40 writers, prose writers and poets. So it's well worth your time and your money

00:38:33.850 - 00:38:47.550

and its in all bookstores in the county. Lorna, let's get back to your poetry. What are you going to read us now? Lorna Dee Cervantes: Um, well, I guess I'll read a couple from that anthology. From the Quarry West Anthology. Since I ended

00:38:47.550 - 00:39:02.670

with a Neruda poem, I'll begin again with Neruda poem. This is a poem called: PLENOS PORERES: Fully Empowered Does it fill you with power? with water? with stone? to

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create a want so ceaseless. Hear the creaking of moon as she reaches to see hair full of shimmering jellies and diadems lost in the craters. There's a skull and crossbones in the fix of the rip in the breakers incessant breaking of cradle and

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rock, all night, all tied soulstice to soulstice. She bends and bears the bending of water as you filled me with child, so I felt I would give birth to it. What do I do with the key to this city? This door to you that never opened fully?

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Do I change my life into yours? Do I do what the women dare? Do I abort it now that the earth rests with the weight of it? Do I love you less? Do I spit in the moon's single eye? Do I survive, do I? Plenos poreres, and singing?

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That poem comes from this new manuscript. It's called "From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger". And this is the- the manuscript that's just going to be coming out next May. And they're all- they're all love poems. Here's one that's

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from the Quarry West. This is a poem called "Walking Around". And it's for Jay it's dedicated to someone with a background that's very different from mine. "Walking Around", oh, this is also sort of a note with a poem, it takes its title from-

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Morton Marcus: Right. Can we make that clear for people who just came in, the last poem, though it has the title not only of a Neruda poem, but a Neruda book- Lorna Dee Cervantes: Right

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Morton Marcus: -is not Neruda, it is Lorna Dee. So, and this one, the same way, Lorna Dee Cervantes: Although I'm using Neruda's title: WALKING AROUND

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It's the waves, he says. The closest I've ever come to eternity is the ocean. It's the closest I've ever been to infinite desire, and the fulfillment of salt. I was born here. I've got brine in my billowing hair. I've got grit,

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enough for a continent. There's a foundation here beneath the gentle lapping of the have and have-nots of distance; there's a horizon of difference here, Plymouth Rock under the shoal, and the baleen of migrating whales, the gentle ignorance of

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natural selection. Tell me some things. Tell me about travels and the ark of your baggage. You can ballast the levee with the blastings. Slag, cut to a fine aperture, is as good a master as not. This I know. Deceit tells its tale. It's winter. The

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heartbeats of sea lions pound into the wood of the pier. On the rock, the golden wolves' eyes catch the searchlight of the lighthouse. They can't help it, for the look of the light drives them to this blind alley where I walk, heavy with the

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towing of ancestors, along the coast where my grandmother's grandmother dived for oysters now extinct. I can't see them, but the eyes tell all they're there, lounging in their velvet pajamas. Lords have an element, but dumb to the light that

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blinds them, that reveals them now in the flesh. Precious few have seen it. Fewer among them have touched it passed the kelp. Fish eye the boats, masters of none but the palate. I watch the stolid seals preen their blonde whiskers. I see the sleekness of

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their leap onto the pilings and wonder at impossible distance and the weight of things. That cloud bank, for instance, the darkness behind it that's either storm or a trail. We could walk, I say, we could let go these horses and watch the waves of

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their hooves fly eternally into a sunset. That's what was said, before the cavalries came. Walk with me, will you? You and I walk. Morton Marcus: Very beautiful.

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Lorna Dee Cervantes: Thank you Morton Marcus: Very, very beautiful, every poem you've read so far- just absolutely lovely. Um, we are getting believe it or not, like 11 minutes to the hour. Those poems

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that are in the magazine, are they in any manuscript? Lorna Dee Cervantes: That's- those- The poems that are in the magazine are all from this brand new manuscript "From the Cables of Genocide."

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Morton Marcus: So when you say- therefore, the person you're talking to in the poem actually is a lover, because [crosstalk] but it certainly could be any of us [crosstalk] it transcends- Lorna Dee Cervantes: They're- They go- The poems in this

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manuscript go from being love poems to being anti-love poems. Morton Marcus: Oh, let's hear some anti-love, break the mood. Lorna Dee Cervantes: You want an anti love poem- Morton Marcus: -and then we'll go back to love poems to pick-

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I mean, that's one thing I love. In Donne's “Songs and Sonnets” he's fervently in love and love is transcendent in one poem, and in the next poem he's- love is impossible, all women are cheaters, you know. Then he turns right around and he goes

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back. And it's just wonderful to see the richness and the range. And by the way, there's certainly richness in the range that you've been reading this tonight. Lorna Dee Cervantes: This is- this is a poem called "Death

00:45:39.680 - 00:45:58.400

Song II, Litost." And Litost comes from Milan Kundera's "Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and this is the definition: Litost is a word with no exact translation, a feeling that is the synthesis of many others; grief, sympathy, remorse and an

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undefinable longing. Litost is a state of torment caused by a sudden insight into one's own miserable self. First comes a feeling of torment, then the desire for revenge. And this is a poem about jealousy, I guess.

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DEATH SONG, LITOST: I keep hoping she'll die, but I think it's me with my lumps at the breast, heart stalled on a dare, growing exclusion at the base of my vase. Your roses please, but the note renders in

00:46:37.250 - 00:46:58.190

a foreign calligraphy some webbing of duck feet dangling from the noose like a yanked ginseng man. I keep hoping he'll die, that man who keeps her from you, who keeps parting the curvature of the earth as seasons slug on, forgetting,

00:46:58.400 - 00:47:21.560

stalking, colliding like cars against the calendar of your steady ruling. Show me a map where the countries aren't women. I know all about us exotics in the hot house of your dreams. I watch a spiderwoman as she beats up the bitch. Rita

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Hayworth, she had it coming! as I pummel the distance between us into nothing. And nothing works. And what don't work won't fix. I pick up the thread, what's left of grandma's chain-of-hearts, and the clay feet of the pot it's stuck in, bonsai to the

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bone. I break it at the neck as I look at her, spitting spiders of blood. Morton Marcus: Yes indeed. Charlie Simic and I did a poem which was called "Give Me Back My Little Rags", which was 13

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curses. And they're just wonderful. And I mean, if poets write about love and they do love things, they have to as vehemently hate and spew venom. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Here's the- here's another one that's it's

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like that. This is a poem called "Raisins." I wrote this in a bus depot one Labor Day weekend stuck in Salt Lake City on my way home and there was nothing I could do but sit there from seven o'clock in the morning until six o'clock at night when

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my bus was leaving. And so I wrote this poem, and I do have to say, excuse the language. Morton Marcus: Yes, okay. Thank you very much. What I have to do at this point is to say that if any of our listeners are

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offended by raw language or sexual references, please turn your dial, because that is what will be in the following poem. Lorna Dee Cervantes: This is a poem called RAISINS: Raisins are my currency to date, slightly seedy, prickled as my

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nipples, black as pubis, colored as my opened eyelids. I tongue you frictives into vowels. I suck you to the scabs you were, forbidden fruit. Reminders. Never mind the way I found you deserted in the depot stall. No matter how this small red box

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was once a child's. Lost wonder, you're the gift of grace swept up off the bathroom floor. You're my only food today, the day I left you, paper husband, widowed name. Our final meal was sweet, you hovered over me, an open package, beating blades to

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froth, teething me the way I like it, both lips bit and shriveled as our last fuck you. You are black with rust and will restore my blood. You're my prize of faith, stave against starve. I eat it. Grateful for the brief exchange, 28 tips of

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fate. Three good sweats they soaked in sun as you now soak my spit, sweet as acid, damp as rot. This hunger, as your memory, feeds by chance. Morton Marcus: Okay, where we still have more time, actually,

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according to the length of the poem, so- Lorna Dee Cervantes: Yeah, I have sort of a lot- I'd like to end on this- this, this one. It's also a love poem. And just about ends this manuscript as well. And it's a poem called "On

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the Fear of Going Down." And it's pretty much my last word on falling in love, I think, and if there could be a last word for that, but this poem starts off with two quotes from Antonio Machado, Spanish poet, and the first one is, "Man owns four

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things which are useless at sea: anchor, rudder, oars, and the fear of going down." And the other one is, "Pity the man who sees the water running and says, the thirst I have cannot be quenched by drinking."

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This is ON THE FEAR OF GOING DOWN: Boats on the bay call the willing daggers of fins and fish tails sleek in the wake of the breaking tide. They swell with light as sails slap, and the lockets and chains chime Chinese

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music in the pentameter wind. We're going down where the sun first cut apart a horizon of all it's ice and bruises. Now opening with the shark's teeth of spring, a light this fine is the line of bone on the ridge of your nose appears a beacon, a

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quest resting on miles of shallows and the winding of signal begins its descent. Cover me, will you? The set sun gives out and comes away all painted mercury, plunged in the cold of insomnia shadow. I emerge like the face in the vase no one

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sees. The smell of your sleep going down or the mark of your skin when my pressing has left lies persistent as the promise of rain. And what if age should need my face to a handsome dime or the blusters of winter widow my black linen nest at the nape

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of my neck longing for your errand kiss, I sleep alone and count the nights fleeing ribs, 36 twigs at the foot of the shaking tree, 42 beatings of my sudden heart. Fall but for your yellow light, a sword of daffodil oozes from the line of

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my emptiness dawning and the stalled hulk at the road sounds a warning, an owl's breath calling out fog, or the tear of blindness passing in my heart. What of these boats who have nowhere to go but the sea and the sea, which has nothing to

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share, but the lives we pull from her gullet. Hide them again, from my sight, these wooden boys, these stick sailors going down for the final count. I wear you like a love that is really a sweater. I love you like the filling of slew. I

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don't know where to take off, above the barren ghost trees at the heart of your river, or if my wings would hold more wind than a sleeve. Could you tell that the pilings have shattered and the decay, does it come to you? Brittle that hand as a

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sound that falls silent. We're going down. There where whales break water and the bears who have returned to an element they once despised, ride hunger beneath the bowels now loaded for arrival. They are leaning on their nets. They are taking what

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comes to them. The catch of their lives is the sea. Morton Marcus: We've been talking with Lorna Dee Cervantes, listening to her poetry, for the last hour. I thank you very, very much Lorna. It really is beautiful,

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beautiful poetry. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Thank you. Morton Marcus: Um, now you're- unfortunately, as you people have been listening for the whole hour know, people who

00:56:22.700 - 00:56:34.100

don't, Lorna, who I've been trying to get on the show for the last year and a half, have one difficulty or another, is leaving us and is going to Boulder, Colorado, where she will be teaching creative writing at the University of

00:56:34.100 - 00:56:43.730

Colorado there. Are there going to be any last readings for you before you leave? Lorna Dee Cervantes: Yes, as a matter of fact, I'll be at the Foothill Writers Conference at the end of June. I'll be there

00:56:43.730 - 00:56:54.840

for I think it's a five day conference. So I'll be available for workshops and looking at people's manuscripts. I'll be doing a reading there. Morton Marcus: Well, that is one of my favorite literary

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conferences, one reason I'm on the permanent staff, but I'm not going to be there this year because I'm gonna be out of the country. Too bad, I would have- who knows we may have read together, it would have been wonderful. Let me give a plug

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for it. If you're looking for a writing conference this year, this writing conference is $25. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Its extremely cheap. Morton Marcus: You've got Lorna Dee Cervantes, Jim Houston, Al

00:57:17.340 - 00:57:22.140

Young Lorna Dee Cervantes: Gary Soto Morton Marcus: Gary Soto [crosstalk]. Lorna Dee Cervantes: Robert Haas,

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Morton Marcus: I- it's just unbelievable. It is the most incredible thing you've ever seen. And it's there's people just waiting for you. Creative writing workshops, panel discussions, every writer reading new work, it really is,

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I think one of the best writing conferences in the whole country, and certainly you cannot beat the price. So you'll be hearing me give more plugs for that. But anyway, Lorna, thank you so much. Thank you for the poetry, it's wonderful. It's

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just too bad that you're leaving. Again, I want to remind you of the reading this Friday, Jack and Adele Foley and Robert Sward at the Louden Nelson Community Center this Friday 7:30pm, it will be, not just a poetry reading, but an evening

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of performance poetry. Again on June 7, the first Wednesday night of the month, we'll have a chance to announce it again next week from 7:30 to 9:30 at Zachary's on the mall. There will be Linda Fox, David Thorn, and Sarah Walsh for the Porter

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Gulch Review Reading. And Joe will be with you next week. I would just like to say, Plaza Books has provided a grant that helped make this last half hour programming possible. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz. And

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we do appreciate their support. This is Morton Marcus until two weeks from now, and I want to put on a Billie Holiday record of my own, which I think expresses the love and expansiveness that we've heard from Lorna Dee Cervantes. So

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until two weeks, this is Morton Marcus saying good night.