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Morton Marcus: He said: If I make up this leaf in the shape of a fan, the day's cooler and drier than any tree. But if under a tree I place before me this same leaf as on a plate, dorsal side up and then its ribs

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set down like the ribs of a fish -- then I know that fish are dead to us from the trees, and the leaf sprawls in the net of fall to be boned and eaten while the wind gasps. Ah then, the grounds are a formal ruin whereon the lucky who lived come

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to resemble so much that does not. The man who wrote those words, is named Marvin Bell and he is a much rewarded- awarded poet who was born in 1937 in New York City and grew up on Long Island. He has had poems and prizes from

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the American Poetry Review, Poetry, the Virginia Quarterly Review, he has had Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. And he is the- currently the Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters at the University of Oregon. He's had

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many books, has won the Lamont Poetry Award, has been given the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as well as a Guggenheim. And Marvin Bell was here two weeks ago, and he and I had a very personal interview which I would like to play for

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you now, in which he talked about his career, and more about the situation of poetry as he found today. And I think you will find this very wise and very provocative on this election night. And so let us go right now to this what I

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consider to be a wonderful interview with Marvin Bell. Well, everybody, this is Mort Marcus and this is one of the many home interviews that have gone on since Sydney, Australia, we've been going to different places around the world. And

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today I'm here with a very old friend, Marvin Bell, who is really one of the important poets in America. He is the Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters at the University of Iowa, but more than that, he's won the Lamont Award of the

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Academy of American Poets, has had a Guggenheim, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, in fact, several of them, and he's won prizes from the American Poetry Review, Poetry, the Virginia Quarterly, we could go on and on. He is a

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very celebrated column, which has been gone for some years from APR, has just commenced again, my old friend, Marvin Bell, Marvin, welcome. Marvin Bell: Thank you, good morning.

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Morton Marcus: It's been years. Marvin actually lived out here in Santa Cruz in 1970, '71, when he was on sabbatical, and he and another famous poet, George Keithley, the three of us all just palled around, unforgettable days. Marvin looks

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terrific, I will not look in the mirror for three weeks now after seeing him. He looks some raw bones in great shape and we've been reminiscing, we're old, old friends. And as two Jewish boys do, we are sitting here with bagels and lox as we talk in

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this interview. I should tell you in passing that Marvin Bell has introduced me several times at poetry reading as- the only man who is allowed to introduce me as Morty Marcus. Welcome, Marvin.

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Marvin Bell: I've known you a long time. Morton Marcus: Yes. Marvin, it's great to have you out here again, yeah, it's been too long. How long has it been in fact? Marvin Bell: You said '70, your memory's better than mine, I

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assume you're right. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I judge things by divorces and things like that. Marvin Bell: As you said George Keithley moved out here that

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year, and you and I and George used to go play basketball. We were athletes then. Morton Marcus: Well, you guys were. I think I was probably finished in the puddle of suet in those days.

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Marvin Bell: Not at all, you were the roughest basketball player of the three and I still remember the feel of your butt backing me up to the basket. Morton Marcus: I don't think that's for air. Marvin, your

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poetry has interested me for a number of reasons. When we were back in Iowa, and you came sort of at the end of my tenure there, I was really amazed to hear your language, what you could do to a line and a sentence really has held me in

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awe for years. I really think that it is the essence of poetry what Marvin Bell can do with a spoken language, make it into a formal English, which is amazing. But what's going on, which I never expected would happen, is the changes. There

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have been a number of changes, and maybe this would be a good time to ruminate, that is you, on those changes. Where has your poetry come from and where has it gone? Our listeners are very interested in things like this.

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Marvin Bell: Well, I don't know and yet I do know. I know this much that I have the feeling that in my case, maybe in everyone's case, poetry is written out of ignorance not knowledge. And after all that's written out of ignorance, the

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stores are deep and wide. I know someone asked me at a reading last night, how do you get started writing? And I found myself saying, "Well, poems begin for me because I stay up too late." [Laughs] Now I've given more particular answers on

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other occasions, and I know more than that about it, but I've come to realize it, what happens is that I stay up so late that I lose that rational part of my mind, that pragmatic point. You see, I was married very young and had a son very young and

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that marriage didn't last very long and I kept the son. So I became pragmatic, I had to make a living. And I think that rational part of a person that holds on to practical matters, for me at least, it doesn't release itself sufficiently

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until very late at night. I wind up doing most of my writing it 2, 3, 4, 5, 6am. I can write other times, and I believe that one should be able to write at other times. But in part it's some sort of flying free at the late hour into, you know, other

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realms of thought or other realms of the imagination. I have changed a lot over the years, yes, you're right to say that. Partly it's the interest in, you know, one writes one's interested in all kinds of writing, at least I am. You

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know, as well as I- you change, your language changes. Morton Marcus: Are you telling me that you've become more and more interested in Asian or Eastern poetry, maybe thought too?

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Marvin Bell: Well, poetry of all kinds, from all cultures and languages, in fact, I did write some versions of what I call ancient Chinese poems. But, you know, [coughs] excuse me, I read a lot of work in translation, I suppose everybody does by now,

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and one of the reasons I think we all do is because work in translation is almost guaranteed not to be like most of the American poetry we see. In some ways, it's going to be different and we grant it its differentness, we don't grant- I

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think we're very stingy in our responses to American poetry. If an American poet writes a great expansive poem worthy of what we think of as Russian poetry, we say, oh, look how pretentious. With a Russian poet we say, boy, those Russians have hearts, you

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know. If an oriental poet writes an a gnomic poem, a very precise brief word of wisdom, we say yeah, those Orientals understand efficiency. And when the American poet writes that, we say how stingy. And when the surrealist Spanish poet writes a

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poem, wild leaps of imagination, we say, boy, can those people leap around. And when the American poet does it, we say how frivolous. We grant permission to people in other cultures writing in other languages that we don't grant

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ourselves, so more and more, in classes, I've been using work in translation. Morton Marcus: That's terrific insight, something that- I have sat and listened to you for a long time. And it's always

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whenever I bump into Marvin again, there's always some new insight coming out. You're absolutely right, we are really not very friendly to our peers. Marvin Bell: Oh, yeah. That's right, we get particularly- we

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get so rational, we get so rational, poetry has no pleasure in it anymore. We get some rational, so bitterly rational. It doesn't have joy in it, it doesn't have play in it, all it has in it is some kind of attention to some kind of

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arbitrary principles that we have made up and need to apply because we've been educated in the classroom. But that isn't the way people feel, it's not the way we feel, there's something else. You know, Robert Frost's famous remark about

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poetry being lost in translation makes a kind of sense, but in fact as Charlie Simic and Mark Strand argued when they put out a book of poetry in translation, an anthology called, "Another Republic," they said, well, maybe poetry is what is retained

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in translation and I tend to think that. Morton Marcus: That's very good, very good idea. Marvin, how about some examples of some of these changes? Marvin's Selected Poems, by the way, it came out, was it around three years ago?

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Marvin Bell: '87. Morton Marcus: From, "Athenaeum," and was one of the last books of that great Athenaeum series that included Marvin, Phil Levine, W.S. Merwin, I mean, really just the

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stellar, the big hitters of American poetry. In many ways, always interesting to see one of those Athenaeum books come out, and certainly yours. You're now publishing, in fact, you might as well say it, "The Iris of Creation," with Copper Canyon

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Press, the Sam Hamill press which does such beautiful work and they certainly have one- done on with Marvin, your gorgeous cover, beautiful print job. And that's out this year right?

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Marvin Bell: Just came out. Morton Marcus: Just came out? Oh, great. Wow. Okay. Marvin Bell: Well, you're talking about changes, you know, I've gone through so many we better not try to illustrate

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them, but I think I feel when I'm writing as if I'm many different people. Not at one time, but at different times of writing, I feel I'm many different people. And I don't feel beholden, I think, I don't know if this is good or bad,

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Mort, but I don't feel beholden to a particular style, or a particular strategy. Now, I'm sure that other people see the similarities among my poems before they see the differences, and I see the differences before I see the similarities, that's

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the way I think it is for all of us. But as soon as I've written one way -- if a way is the right word here -- as soon as I've written one way for a while, I feel impatient. I want to try something else.

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Morton Marcus: Do you find that your books, like when you get a manuscript together, that sort of ends like one whole phase of your work. Marvin Bell: It's worked out that way but, you know, there's

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a lot of work that never gets into the books. There's work that gets written and doesn't get finished. There's work that gets finished but doesn't get touched up. There's work that gets finished, touched up, and published in a periodical but

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never makes it into a book. And there's work that has made it into a book but never made it into the Selected Poems. Morton Marcus: Well, why don't you read a few of these poems? Marvin Bell: Okay, let's start with a poem to Dorothy. You

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know, Dorothy, my wife? Morton Marcus: Dorothy, a long time I haven't seen her, but, yes. Marvin Bell: Okay, well, this is a poem that appeared in a book

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called, "Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See," that book appeared in 1977, so that will give us something anyway. Morton Marcus: One of my favorite books of yours, by the way.

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Marvin Bell: Oh, thanks. And this poem is to my wife and it has a problem. The problem is how do you write a love poem? Everyone knows what a love poem says, and as your listeners will hear, I found a place to start. This is:

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TO DOROTHY You are not beautiful, exactly. You are beautiful, inexactly. You let a weed grow by the mulberry and a mulberry grow by the house. So close, in the personal quiet of a windy night,

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it brushes the wall and sweeps away the day till we sleep. A child said it, and it seemed true, "Things that are lost are all equal." But it isn't true. If I lost you, the air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow, someone would pull the weed, my flower.

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The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you, I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep. Well, I always like to read that when I get a chance because it gets Dorothy's name into the program.

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Morton Marcus: Good. Morton Marcus: So this has become family program, that's Marvin Bell: Okay. what we want. Again, you know, something I didn't mention, I

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mentioned the language, but it is that imagination that suddenly picks up the totally unexpected metaphor or image, and makes it a conceit which is both [unidentified] and full of pathos at the same time and that really works beautifully. Let's

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hear another one. Marvin Bell: Let's try, this is the first poem in, "Iris of Creation," [coughs] excuse me, it's called: DARK BROW

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The dark brow of the creek wrinkles over time as if something had been born there. Scavenging all night, the water that runs there brings things from time past. Some of these things are the wrappers, the coats, of what it meant to say,

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"I tasted," or "I felt." And this, whatever it is, is not that. All of us have felt the fatigue of dark water, the burden massed at yard's edge, and in the line of the garden beyond the onions, there are fresh tears. I do not say we

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should live forever, for who could bear it, only that we should one day enter completely into life. In the beginning, as at the end, there was nothing, though "was" is the psychic's verb, the one that proves the existence of a current by rising

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after it has passed and shaking its head furiously, spraying water. "I was," we say. "Therefore, I am." We also believe, a piece of us has washed away and may be worth something.

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Morton Marcus: Who are your early influences? This is a little later than early, but who were those influences when you started writing? How did you know that you wanted to be a poet?

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Marvin Bell: Well, I came to poetry by way of other art forms: music, I was musician for many, many years; photography, what used to be called creative photography before the universities accepted it and there were so many

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photographers; a little bit of film work and pottery. And my influences were as much out of those fields as elsewhere. As far as poetry goes, you know, I feel influenced by any poem I read that I like. Williams was certainly an influence among the

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big mommies and daddies of American poetry. I adore Emily Dickinson, but it would be pretentious of me to say she's an influence. I don't think she can quite be an influence on anyone as far as the language goes, it's a singular thing that

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may even be true for Stevens. I think- well, you know, I remember being asked to come out and be part of a panel that was going to talk up in San Francisco about, let's see, I think it was Whitman, Pound, and Williams, if I recall correctly.

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And so I reread some Whitman and when I was rereading Whitman I was thinking, well this is it, this was the only way to write, this is the only way to think, this is it, this is the greatest poet who ever lived and [unidentified]. And then when I

00:17:07.740 - 00:17:17.940

was reading Pound, I thought, this is the greatest poet who ever lived, this is the way to write, there is no other way to write, this is it. And the same thing happened, of course, when I read the next poet. It happens to me all the time. One poem

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that I respond to can so engross me that I feel affected by it, which means to say, I am one way or another eventually to be influenced by it. So there's so many poets. I like William Stafford's way of thinking about things sometimes, here's a guy

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who appears to be in public the kind of sweetest man who ever lived and he may even be that. He's also tough as nails. I like that. I like ideas in poetry, but not the kind of ideas that are run up the flagpole with, you know, in the form of a large

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pennant that says "ideas!" I like the kind of ideas that are, I suppose, metaphysical ideas, they're put in terms of the physical evidence in terms of the landscape. And lately I've been indulging myself in more and more metaphorical thinking,

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this book, "Iris of Creation," ends with a 360-line monster that is highly abstract at times, thoroughly metaphorical, quite philosophical. Morton Marcus: Is that going to be on sale here in town?

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Marvin Bell: It's up to the bookstores. {Laughs] Morton Marcus: I'll try to do something about that. But, you know, what I hear and what's very interesting to me and maybe interesting to the listeners out there, is a man who is just

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turned into fire by poetry. He just loves his poetry, he loves to read poetry, and of course, you've been, and are, a legendary creative writing teacher in Iowa and other places. You don't think so? He's smiling but it's true and his

00:18:51.710 - 00:19:05.570

energy and his insight have really formed a lot of writers in this country. But one thing I found, and you probably do not find it with the classes that you teach, is that the person who comes to poetry writing workshop now does not have that

00:19:05.570 - 00:19:21.560

level of poetry, is not turned into fire, or does not come to the burning bush of poetry as such, and just loves it, lets them consume it. In fact, most of my students do not even read poetry, you see, and Joe's students do not read poetry. And

00:19:21.560 - 00:19:32.690

this is to me the great tragedy that we came to poetry through the love of the poem and continued love of the poem. And so what you say over there is something that was said very beautifully, but yeah, it changes us. I just can't tell

00:19:32.690 - 00:19:42.900

people enough what a great poem or a poem that I like, it doesn't even have to be great, you know, does to me. I just say, read it! But of course no one's reading it. Marvin Bell: Ah, that is a consideration, yeah. [Coughs]

00:19:42.900 - 00:19:55.680

Excuse me. Boy, what to say. I do teach in an unusual situation there at the University of Iowa in what's called a Writers Workshop. And mostly those students are self-motivated and a lot of them are on fire, but they're not all on fire. I

00:19:55.680 - 00:20:07.530

suppose maybe they weren't all on fire when you and I were there as graduate students all those years ago, graduate and undergraduate, but obviously, w were all older, you remember And it was somewhat disreputabl to be at the so-called Writer

00:20:07.530 - 00:20:19.290

Workshop. There weren't- I don' know if there were any others or certainly not more than couple of others and we had al found our way there b circuitous means and it's tru because we needed to. You hav students coming to you I'm sure

00:20:19.290 - 00:20:30.240

as I do, who have a question o their minds, who are not qui e saying, and after a while one intuits that the questio is, "am I any good?" And I lways feel like saying, well, f I tell you you're not, are ou going to quit? Because wh

00:20:30.240 - 00:20:44.990

t I've concluded is that writ rs are people who are helpless n t to w Morton Marcus: That's all it is, I agree 100%. That's all it is. And I can't tell if anyone is going to be in five or ten years

00:20:45.200 - 00:20:59.840

suddenly singing like the majestic bird of heaven, I just can't tell, but it is, are you going to stay in the game? You know, and a lot of it has to do with luck, you don't get killed in a horrible accident or something like that. But when I

00:20:59.840 - 00:21:05.700

have these reunions with you and with other people, we're still doing it. Marvin Bell: Oh, absolutely. Morton Marcus: That's what it's all about.

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Marvin Bell: It's beautiful to see old friends who have been at this for twenty, thirty years. Everyone chooses whether to have a lot of it in their life or n t, everyone chooses for himself or herself, how much of an inn r life to have. Poetry is o

00:21:18.620 - 00:21:31.760

r inner life, let's face it. I has changed us, we've bee changed by it and it's a way o life. It's not just a way o thinking, though it is that, it's not just a way of feeling, hough it is that, it's not jus a way of expressing and recor

00:21:31.760 - 00:21:43.460

ing one's thoughts and having a visible object one can look b ck at and perhaps intuit the past from, though it is th t, it's something else. Maybe t's all electrochemical, maybe i 's what happens when we're wri ing, or maybe it's what happens

00:21:43.460 - 00:21:58.610

hen our brain and our metabo ism are functioning the ay while we're writing. I d n't know, I don't want to make t o much of it. But the results, n . I watched my sons, who are ow thirty and twenty-four, ecome artists. I never planned

00:21:58.610 - 00:22:14.420

his, I never recommend it to hem, one's a country music inger and composer, the other as a science brain who quit it. e had made it as a science write , he quit it to go into theater And at first, like any good pa ent, I worried and said,

00:22:14.420 - 00:22:30.350

h my goodness, how hard is it to make a living. Now do they r ally want to suffer all this And then I realized, you know, once you hung around with peopl who have a way of life, o are seriously into the arts, it's very hard to do witho

00:22:30.350 - 00:22:40.350

t it afterw Morton Marcus: Unless you're really rebelling and hate your parents, just don't want to have anything to do with it ever. You don't want to read ever, you know, something like that. But

00:22:41.070 - 00:22:57.000

that can be the opposite effect. It's true, and it is our inner life. And you can tell a student, I can tell a student who has had that experience, which is really the experience of getting the words right, maybe only for yourself, maybe

00:22:57.000 - 00:23:09.840

it won't be for the critics out there, but when you get the words right that says something that you've never thought about before, never could express before, never even knew that you were moved by, you can never share what that experience is

00:23:09.840 - 00:23:19.350

like, the experience of creation, with anyone else who hasn't gone through it. Now, it doesn't only have to happen in poetry, it can happen in painting, it can happen in music, it can happen in science.

00:23:19.710 - 00:23:33.210

Marvin Bell: Yes, it can, yes. Morton Marcus: And it is that moment when you make a breakthrough and you kiss the tush of God. [Laughter] It is- there is nothing like it and we just keep coming back to it

00:23:33.210 - 00:23:44.070

again and again and again. You know, and I know that when you go into schools, this is what you're talking about, this is what you're trying to turn people on about, this is where your energy comes from. And I've never thought different, I've

00:23:44.070 - 00:23:56.340

never talked to you about it in these terms, but I mean, this is it. You used to do- you had round twenty quotations that you would throw out in a rea ing and since I've been to so any of your readings, I hear the same quotations. I'm sure the

00:23:56.340 - 00:24:09.020

've changed over the years now but they were those little spa ks that would ignite the fir . Remember the one by the Spa ish poet, Machado? Which one is t? Marvin Bell: Just four lines, a quatrain that say: "People

00:24:09.890 - 00:24:24.560

possess four things that are no good at sea: anchor, rudder, oars, and the fear of going down." Morton Marcus: Great, yeah. That's wonderful. And to come to a Marvin Bell reading, and this is going to be presented after

00:24:24.920 - 00:24:35.340

that, is really to have an evening of enjoyment as well as provocative stimulation. Marvin Bell: That's nice of you o say. Morton Marcus: Well, that's what poetry should do for us. And it

00:24:35.340 - 00:24:50.240

should be both of those things --enjoyment as an entertainment -- and really an attempt to tap areas that if we're not poets, we don't tap, the poet taps for us, it takes us to things. Marvin Bell: That's true, there's another side to this,

00:24:50.240 - 00:25:03.350

Mort, and I should say this: that intensity, the high we get from writing and from reading things that affect us, that's one side of it. But there's another side of it that I feel we got to make sure to mention because people who are beginning

00:25:03.350 - 00:25:18.560

to write aren't- they're not within reach of that yet. And they should understand that getting into motion is most of the battle and the stamina that you spoke of is the rest of it. There's a way in which poetry writing is easy; it's the

00:25:18.560 - 00:25:36.380

easiness of, if you'll forgive me this reference, zen. It's- I mean, how is it that the way I was always through the door, that ease with the materials -- that painters perhaps know instinctively but poets don't because language is the

00:25:36.380 - 00:25:51.830

language, if you will, of our education and the penalty for education is self-consciousness -- poets don't understand right away. One of the things poetry teachers who happen to be poets often can do is give the student a sense of what is easy and

00:25:51.830 - 00:26:06.650

freeing about it, giving them the permission to use language in ways that doesn't have academic self-consciousness about it. Oh, yeah, poems must listen to themselves as they proceed, absolutely, but there's a kind of ease, too, to it. I

00:26:06.650 - 00:26:21.470

mean, people who want to write should go ahead and do it. Morton Marcus: Very good advice, and most of the people out here in California will do that. The problem then is the next step, you see, which is revision, and that is the dirty word. That's

00:26:21.470 - 00:26:35.060

the new taboo word in the English language for young poets, which is something that you and I could not comprehend when we were young. I mean, we maybe have been very unhappy with people criticizing what we were doing but we always knew

00:26:35.060 - 00:26:43.480

that revision was the name of the game, or at least half the game. Marvin Bell: That's true. I think I understand probably what's going on. When you and I were writing, even though we

00:26:43.480 - 00:26:59.020

might have been committing free verse [laughter], a lot, free verse was not the style of the age. A formal verse and accentual syllabic rhyming stanza was the style of the age. Now, free verse -- though that covers a wide range of

00:26:59.020 - 00:27:12.070

possibilities -- is the style of the age, though there are many good formalist poets around still, of course. And in revising free verse, it's sometimes very difficult to see how to revise it. You know, when a poem is written in meter, and

00:27:12.070 - 00:27:24.400

perhaps rhyme too, there's a way in which one can look at the circuit and see that it's broken and sloppy in a certain place, it's not going to hold up and one can fix that place in a way. That's not usually possible with free verse, one has to get back

00:27:24.430 - 00:27:37.390

into the intensity of the moment of creation. And so for some of these young people -- I'm playing devil's advocate here -- for some of these young people, becoming a better poet is not a matter of fixing up the poem they've written but writing the

00:27:37.390 - 00:27:52.120

next poem, learning to write a better poem. Although you're absolutely right, of course, they've got to be able to listen in class to how other people read the lines, and that's crucial. One has to be able to step back from- from the fire

00:27:52.120 - 00:28:02.920

within which one composes and see what it is one has composed. Not everybody can do that, just as you said, not everybody, alas, is sufficiently on fire and want to read things that burn.

00:28:06.220 - 00:28:18.250

Morton Marcus: I'm waiting sort of to the end of this tape. I don't know whether it's going to forever, but it looks like it is, so let's just continue on. Why don't you read another poem and tell us a little bit about it.

00:28:17.910 - 00:28:31.950

Marvin Bell: Okay, here's a poem that's called, "Poem After arlos Drummond de Andrade," And ade was the great Brazilian poet writing in Portuguese, of cou se. And the truth of the matter is that this poem isn't after ny poem by Andrade, but it has

00:28:31.950 - 00:28:43.950

in it what I took to be at the t me something of the spirit of s me of his po Morton Marcus: And I just, you know, to me this is just the only time we're going to spend together. Unfortunately, because

00:28:43.950 - 00:28:57.600

Marvin's moving in one direction and I'm moving in another and we're just, you know, like two ships in the night, and you can't use that metaphor. [Laughter] I would like to know, you know, Marvin Bell, I just like to hear you think about

00:28:57.600 - 00:29:16.950

things. How has this poetry scene changed. You know, there was things going on that were just starting that you and I had no idea about back in the early, really early 60s, I'm talking about '59 and '60, and [cough] -- but that's alright, a cough

00:29:16.950 - 00:29:34.200

is good for the air, it gives it different qualities -- and then it's gone in a different place since then. I'd love to hear you, you know, say what has happened to poetry in the last thirty years, Marvin. Thirty years is what it's been.

00:29:34.230 - 00:29:41.580

Marvin Bell: But who's counting? Morton Marcus: But who's counting? Certainly not us anymore. Marvin Bell: Well, you know, one of the great things about having

00:29:41.580 - 00:29:53.190

children is that then oneself really doesn't have to grow up. [Laughs] Morton Marcus: Wait till the grandchildren come. Marvin Bell: [Laughs] Well, sure it has changed. I Well, I think

00:29:53.190 - 00:30:02.700

one of the- one of the great influences has been all of the work that has come into translation in English and become available to us. Morton Marcus: I give Bly credit for that, I do.

00:30:02.760 - 00:30:16.020

Marvin Bell: I think Bly is one of the people I indeed think wh se most valuable service to literature has been his work as a translator. Now, I know t at his translations have in t em what some people regard as inaccuracies and stuff l

00:30:16.020 - 00:30:29.960

ke that, but like Ezra Pound was as a translator, Bly has transla ed things according to the spi it and the life of the language nd I think he's been terrif Morton Marcus: Yeah. Just as on aspect of this, I read hi

00:30:29.960 - 00:30:43.250

translations of Machado, an Trueblood's translations of M chado, as everyone's saying t at Trueblood is a scholar and Tr eblood knows the language, t ey're dead. They're swollen pan akes on the page and Bly's, inac urate as they are, have the fi

00:30:43.430 - 00:30:59.290

e because he is underneath t all a poet. Marvin Bell: That's right. And he's going to become one of the [coughs] excuse me, people responsible for this, that I think has been one of the great things. Now the scene has

00:30:59.290 - 00:31:13.600

changed. the worst part of the changes, I think, and I suppose this affects every aspect of American life, is that there's an awful lot of careerism and networking out there. It seems at least as if there's much more of it than there ever was. I

00:31:13.600 - 00:31:27.880

don't know, you know, how valuable all these publications are, these contests and new markets to send poems to, prizes to apply for, fellowships to apply for. So it seems to me if one is seriously involved in something when it comes to learn

00:31:27.880 - 00:31:42.340

about that stuff, one doesn't need to have professional publications. The best thing about being an artist is that one can be an amateur. Amateurism has value that professionalism does not have. Yes, it might seem easy for me

00:31:42.340 - 00:31:54.250

or you to sit here having published books and say this, but I'm talking out of the same attitude I had before I published any books. I wasn't thinking about books, I was thinking about the poem at the moment, being associated with

00:31:54.250 - 00:32:05.620

people who were also interested in the thinking that was involved, the feeling, that was involved, what might become of me someday that would have a relationship to this poetry, what might become of the poetry, but not in terms of immortality,

00:32:05.770 - 00:32:23.170

posterity, professional stuff. I think that- it's produced a kind of career poet. And again, I think real poets are people who helped us not to write. Career poets are something else, I think we have a great many of them now. On the other hand, on

00:32:23.170 - 00:32:38.260

the other hand -- you know, I always feel both ways very strongly -- we don't criticize people for playing baseball badly just because there are professionals who play it well. We don't criticize kids for playing soccer badly and

00:32:38.260 - 00:32:55.090

continuing to play badly when they're adults just because there are people like Pele and Beckenbauer. And so perhaps this is fine. It's possible that- I think it's very difficult now for the critics, what few we have and such as they are, it's

00:32:55.090 - 00:33:08.710

very hard for them because they're so used to naming the top five, the top ten, the top twenty, the top fifty, and they can't do it. They continue to do it, but their choices are so transparently arbitrary that no one takes it seriously. We have

00:33:08.710 - 00:33:28.930

a great many terrific poets in this country, and a horde of pretty darn good poets. And even those people who aren't darn good by what we call high standards, whatever they are, are in many cases genuine, their writing affects them. The only

00:33:28.930 - 00:33:46.780

kind of poet I wish would find something else to do is the poet of careers and networks and all that stuff. But that probably, as I say, has become pervasive in every aspect of the American life. I understand why people would affect that

00:33:46.810 - 00:34:01.990

professionalism nowadays because it's no longer good enough. It's no longer enough to be good at something in this country, you have to be incredible. And if you're not incredible, you have to have connections. Maybe you have to have both, I don't know.

00:34:02.680 - 00:34:09.890

I think you and I are very lucky that we started writing when we did. Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah and in fact, I'm lucky that I was in one of the anthologies, which is the "Young American Poets"

00:34:09.890 - 00:34:21.100

anthology. Marvin Bell: Great anthology, still. Morton Marcus: And an anthology that really launched a lot of people who have become the [unintelligible] view of

00:34:21.100 - 00:34:31.220

American poetry. And- Marvin Bell: Paul Carroll should be remembered, he is very much alive and he should be remembered now and later because he's one of those names no one knows who he was anymore. He was

00:34:31.610 - 00:34:45.110

a wonderful poet, a fantastic critic, entrepreneur at times in favor of young poets, and that anthology, the "Young American Poets," well, if anyone sees it in a bookstore, an old bookstore, there is an old books bookstore, they should grab it.

00:34:45.520 - 00:34:57.930

Morton Marcus: Also, he was the one who had the big argument with- Big Table about the big G nsberg publication, and things ike that. Marvin Bell: The first issue of Big Table is, in fact, the

00:34:57.930 - 00:35:12.480

censored issue that was to be in the Chicago Review. You se , you and I started writing wh n the Beats had just come into prominence, and it affected me, it affected you. Not eve the way of writing. Have I ver written anything like Alan G

00:35:12.480 - 00:35:24.450

nsberg? No, I don't think so. Ha e I written anythi g like Gregory Corso? Probabl not. But the freedom and the light thumbing of their nose th t the Beats indulged was q ite liberating to those of us who came from places where

00:35:24.450 - 00:35:39.100

oetry was not in Morton Marcus: Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. So he is to be devoutly remembered. And this brings up sort of, we're going off the topic now, but certainly the memory of someone else I

00:35:39.100 - 00:35:57.580

always associate with you, and you actually introduced me to by saying, you probably remember this, "Why don't you send John Logan some of your poems, to 'Choice'? He's just started this magazine." And I did and this started a lifelong friendship

00:35:57.580 - 00:36:11.290

with John. This is how I got to know Joe, who was a protege of John's and so many other people. And a few words about John, I mean, a man who should not be forgotten, whose poems mean more and more as each day passes.

00:36:11.840 - 00:36:25.340

Marvin Bell: He was one of the one of the wonderful, wonderful, great poets of our time, insufficiently appreciated by the critics but very much appreciated by, you know, readers and poets, a wonderful poet and also a wonderful

00:36:25.340 - 00:36:33.530

teacher. He read our poems, you know. I took a class with him at the Downtown Center of the University of Chicago, he would come- Morton Marcus: I always wondered whether this was a real turning

00:36:33.530 - 00:36:41.720

point in your career. And this is why I asked about influences before. Marvin Bell: Well, I didn't- [coughs] Excuse me. I didn't kno who he was. I had to take a lass. I was getting a master'

00:36:41.720 - 00:36:58.340

at the University Chicago, very slowly. I was working in the law library of the University of Chi ago and half my friends were c iminals and the other half were not, and I didn't even know who John Logan was, except th t he was offering this course

00:36:58.340 - 00:37:11.750

nd I had to enroll in somet ing so I could take my [unidenti ied]. So I went down and took t is class with John, and he turn d out to be, of course, a wonde ful poet and a sensational t acher in those days. When he w uld read our poems, he was

00:37:11.750 - 00:37:28.550

the best reader in the country there's no question about it. He was a darn good reader drun , and he was a fantastic read r sober. And he, when he would read our poems in class, they s unded so beautiful in his mout , and we thought we were pretty

00:37:28.550 - 00:37:42.920

ood. And he would take our poem seriously, even to talk ng about the psychology that might be behind them, so w took it seriously. And then J hn asked me if I wanted to becom part of a thing called t e Poetry Seminar. It was not a

00:37:42.920 - 00:37:56.990

lass, it met in the downtown o fices of the Midwest Clipping As ociation run by Jordan Miller. And Bill [unidentified] was part of that, Dennis Schmitz was pa t of the Charlie Simic passe through, Naomi Lazard, Bar

00:37:56.000 - 00:38:07.420

Morton Marcus: What about Roger Aplon? Marvin Bell: Roger Aplon was very much a part of it. And a woman named Jessie [unidentified] who always wore big broad-brimmed black hats and wrote a poem in which a spider

00:38:07.420 - 00:38:22.840

in her bathtub was writing in spider Gothic. She used to turn my poems on their sides and say, "Oh look, the skyline of Chicago!" [Laughter] And a woman named Irene Keller, Naomi Lazard, of course, who was the Naomi of books that Bill Knott

00:38:22.840 - 00:38:33.580

would publish thereafter called "The Naomi Poems." Morton Marcus: A beautiful, very, very beautiful lady. Marvin Bell: There were several very beautiful people in the class, and then there was me. [Laughs]

00:38:34.510 - 00:38:42.020

Morton Marcus: [Cross talk] We J wish men have our own beauty, ou know. [ Marvin Bell: Well, you know, it is true. Morton Marcus: Even though Joe described me out there on the

00:38:42.060 - 00:38:58.590

air as a "potato with hair." [Laughs] Marvin Bell: Well, everyone's a version of Mr. Potato Head, if you think about it. Well, you know. Anyway, John was a wonderful poet and a wonderful friend and his poems are

00:38:59.010 - 00:39:06.280

sensational and they're in the mouth. These poems are in the mouth as the years went on, his poems were more and more in the mouth. He began as a formalist. Morton Marcus: Right.

00:39:06.000 - 00:39:22.290

Marvin Bell: He began as a very Catholic Catholic formalist, church formalist, really, with a book called, "Cycle for Mother Cabrini," and then on to some gorgeous verse with some spiritual religious underpinnings in a book called,

00:39:22.320 - 00:39:36.720

"Ghost of the Heart." And I'll come back to, "Spring of the Thief," a great, great book, and then on, and on, and on, all the books one after another, a wonderful, wonderful poet. And a poem like James Wright, in the sense that poets always knew how

00:39:36.720 - 00:39:49.320

good he was. The critics mostly didn't give a damn. Morton Marcus: Well, it's great to see Bly's selected essays out over the last thirty odd years called American Poetry. And one of the essays that's included in there is an excellent essay on

00:39:49.320 - 00:40:02.200

John Logan, which was one of the few, James Dickey was another one who recognized John. Marvin Bell: You know, I once heard that, as you probably know James Wright, the late James Wright had a prodigious memory,

00:40:02.200 - 00:40:18.850

even a curse of a memory, he remembered everything. And he was a great admirer of John's poetry. And I went saw him at Paul Carroll's apartment in Chicago, give an impromptu reading of about thirty minutes of the poems of John Logan, in

00:40:18.850 - 00:40:31.910

front of Logan, from memory. Morton Marcus: Wow, amazing, yeah. Well, I have certainly taken to imitating Logan. I can read the way Logan would imitate- would read a poem, you know: "Three moves-

00:40:32.260 - 00:40:48.010

Marvin Bell: -in six months, and I remain the same. Two homes made two friends, the third leaves me with myself again, we hardly speak." It's an interesting poem because it's a poem about giving up the Catholic Church, but not some of

00:40:48.010 - 00:41:02.860

the principles, especially the sense of guilt that leads to change. It's a terrific poem. He wrote I think, I forget, he wrote either, "Three Moves," or, "Susanna," at my place in Iowa City.

00:41:03.040 - 00:41:08.440

Morton Marcus: Oh, really? Marvin Bell: Yeah. Morton Marcus: I think it was "Susanna" because "Three Moves" was when he was in Seattle.

00:41:08.890 - 00:41:16.460

Marvin Bell: Of course, yeah. So it was yeah, it was "Susanna," yeah. Which was called- well it was called Susanna. I think it's now called "Suzanne." Morton Marcus: Yeah.

00:41:16.640 - 00:41:31.650

Marvin Bell: He decided to be factual about the name. Morton Marcus: Well, he's an amazing man. And we get together every year and talk about John Logan and read John Logan poems in one of the famous old churches in San Francisco.

00:41:31.680 - 00:41:43.860

However, the person who puts up the money for this never advertises it. So it's Denny Schmidt, God bless him, still a phenomenal poet. Marvin Bell: Wonderful poet, wonderful poet.

00:41:43.810 - 00:42:01.870

Morton Marcus: He was part of this group also in Chicago. Roger Aplon, who usually gets to doing the arranging of it, poor Roger. Joe, and it's just people right here, the first one I'm sre you were invited to, you should have been, and this was

00:42:01.870 - 00:42:10.060

right after the funeral really. And we do it on his birthday in January. Marvin Bell: That's wonderful. Morton Marcus: And it was great the first year but then when

00:42:10.090 - 00:42:22.630

everyone called us together again, and no one did any publicity, so no one came out. I mean, like last year, there were twenty of us there. But what we all did was we just sat around and talked to each other about L gan because some of us don't

00:42:22.630 - 00:42:28.690

now each ot Marvin Bell: Yeah. Morton Marcus: You see, and how do you know John? What's your memories of John? But it's really keeping it alive. His

00:42:28.690 - 00:42:44.110

students' folks a loved him, they never ever forgot him and he would always use them, drive him around, pick him up. We all have Logan stories that are hilarious and pathetic. Marvin Bell: I made a decision. John and I became pretty close,

00:42:44.110 - 00:42:59.440

indeed when he was still a Catholic, I once tracked down for him through the good offices of my wife's grandmother, a first class relic of St. Augustine to give him on his birthday. And we were pretty close friends. In fact, I must

00:42:59.440 - 00:43:17.710

tell you a story about anniversaries. But first, I made a decision shortly after getting to know John, and I applied this to my friendship with some other poets later on too and that is, I was not going to help him drink. I wouldn't go with him to

00:43:17.710 - 00:43:28.120

bars for very long. And I noticed a lot of young poets did, you know, they loved watching poets destroy themselves and they don't even know why they love it, but they love it. And I decided I just wasn't going to help him with

00:43:28.120 - 00:43:36.640

that. Morton Marcus: But you'd be interested to know that Joe, who had seen a lot of this go on, refused it in the years to come. He really gave him a lot of crap, I mean, he just would not

00:43:36.640 - 00:43:45.280

stand for John drinking. Marvin Bell: Well, we all you know, did our best. I'll tell you he must have had the constitution of a horse. Most of us who knew him well and loved him and wanted him to live

00:43:45.280 - 00:43:51.830

forever, nonetheless expected him to die many, many years before he did. Morton Marcus: That's true, it's true. Marvin Bell: The constitution [unidentified], you know, he was

00:43:51.830 - 00:44:05.720

born- There's a wonderful poem of his, "Poem On My Birthday," which begins, "I was born on a street named 'Joy' of which I remember nothing." It's about his mother dying in his birth. He was in fact born on Joy Street in Red Oak, Iowa.

00:44:07.370 - 00:44:18.140

Morton Marcus: He didn't make up a lot. He just knew his metaphors when they were there. Marvin Bell: Let's talk some more about John, this is fun. John was a devout Catholic, he converted to Catholicism, and he

00:44:18.140 - 00:44:30.170

was quite devout. He was teaching at Notre Dame and he didn't drive and he didn't smoke, and he didn't do all kinds of things, and later on, he did a lot. And my wife and I, Dorothy and I, were living together. We had a little child

00:44:30.170 - 00:44:47.990

who I had with my first wife, and in those days, people like us didn't live together, you know, so we were just doing it quietly. And one night- We got to know John pretty well. He came over and ate spaghetti with us and so forth. And he had nine

00:44:47.990 - 00:45:02.600

children at home, he was a devout Catholic. And one night in a bar with John and people who would have become good friends, Bob and Dorothy Jungles(?) who were old, old dear friends of the Logans, John suddenly turned to me in the bar

00:45:02.600 - 00:45:21.110

and he said, "By the way, when's your anniversary?" And I thought, well, I can't tell this man we're not married, I just can't do that to him. And I said, you know, this was thirty years ago, I said, "July 9th." And he said, "That's my

00:45:21.110 - 00:45:34.670

anniversary." And the Jungles who were such old friends of the Logans said, "Yes, it's our anniversary too." So we had to order beers to celebrate our mutual anniversaries. And when Dorothy and I did in fact, get married, we made sure it was

00:45:34.670 - 00:45:45.490

July 9th. Morton Marcus: Oh, God, that's very funny. That's very funny, Marvin. Oh, Lord. Marvin Bell: Well, people I guess- you were asking way back

00:45:45.490 - 00:45:55.600

at the beginning of this interview, you know what gets a person started? Why do you wind up in it? I think one of the things that happens is that you run into one or two or ten people who amaze you, and you want to find out what they know

00:45:55.660 - 00:46:09.460

or what they feel like. That first happened for me as a young boy in a little town in eastern Long Island through amateur radio because amateur radio operators in those days were odd ducks. Then it happened through music, I've been playing cornet

00:46:09.550 - 00:46:21.430

since, jeez, since I was in fourth grade and eventually I played every kind of music you can imagine. I played classical symphonies, I played in combos, what you call them, I played in dance bands, I played in the Traveling Trumpet Trio, I played

00:46:21.430 - 00:46:35.260

in, you know, summer bands, fire department bands, marching bands, I played in a band for a minstrel show in Upstate New York, I played duets with a friend in fundamentalist churches, you name it, I did it. And some of these musicians were

00:46:35.260 - 00:46:48.730

great nighthawks and characters, and especially the jazz people, of course. And then after that, when I went to this little college in western Upstate New York, Alfred University, we used to call it Albert, there were people in the design department

00:46:48.730 - 00:46:55.270

of the college of ceramics that were unlike any people I'd ever seen. Morton Marcus: Dan Rhodes, was Dan Rhodes down there? Marvin Bell: Uh huh, I knew him well.

00:46:55.690 - 00:47:04.480

Morton Marcus: Okay, what a small- did you know that I was poet in residence in Alfred? For two weeks, yes. Marvin Bell: What year? Morton Marcus: This is going back to what was it? Around '76

00:47:04.510 - 00:47:13.550

or so. Marvin Bell: O well! [Laughter] Morton Marcus: But you and I [cross talk] have been there. But Daniel has just passed away. He came out here to live, did

00:47:13.550 - 00:47:19.420

you know that? Marvin Bell: No, I didn't. Morton Marcus: He was living here with the whole potter scene in Swanton, all of my best friends.

00:47:19.420 - 00:47:26.920

Marvin Bell: Great teacher. Morton Marcus: Great teacher, great man. Marvin Bell: And that style of life, that was the Alfred style of life -- from potters, lithographers, painters,

00:47:26.920 - 00:47:37.780

sculptors -- these students, most of them were probably from New York City, these students used to break into the design building, where the design depa tment was, the art building, a night to work. They couldn't eep it locked because the s

00:47:37.780 - 00:47:44.050

udents would break in to wor . I've never seen anything lik that, and these people had better parties than any I knew a out. And they had one finally [c