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Morton Marcus: Evening everybody, welcome to the Poetry Show. This is Mort Marcus and with KUSP, I'd like to thank Stapleton's Grocery for providing a grant to help make this portion of programming possible. Stapleton's organic

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produce, bulk foods and more, in the Farmers Exchange in Santa Cruz. Tonight, we are very happy to welcome the fine Santa Cruz poet and teacher, Nils Peterson. Nils, as I pop down this wonderful dance music which you have not been able to hear,

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welcome to the Poetry Show. It's been a long time coming. Nils Peterson: I'm most pleased to be here. I will have to say that I would love to be a Santa Cruz poet, but I'm only a San Jose one at the moment.

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Morton Marcus: Aha, okay, did I say that you're from Santa Cruz? Okay, that's what happens from doing two things at once. But Nils is from San Jose and not only from San Jose, but he is a San Jose State teacher and poet. And in fact as an introduction,

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why don't you tell us where you're from and any relevant facts that you think the audience out there would like to hear? Nils Peterson: Oh god, relevant facts. Well, I've been teaching

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at San Jose State for- I'm starting my 26th year, though I cannot believe that fact is true. It feels as if I came over the country over the mountains about three or four summers ago. I've been coordinator of creative writing there for

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twenty years and more. And I was born in New Jersey, came out to California to see what it was like here for a year or two before I went back to where the real world was, but I've never rejoined the real world if it's there, so maybe that's it.

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Morton Marcus: And you are a poet. What are the names of your book? Nils Peterson: Well, I have a book called, "Here Is No Ordinary Rejoicing," which is sort of a strange combination of

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things, which I don't altogether admit to having written anymore, though part of it I also love, so- Strange, but that's it. I'm working on one now and have been for a long time, called, "The Heart Wants What It Wants." It's from a title- the title is from

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a wonderful, wonderful letter of Emily Dickinson. I'm very fond of her letters and maybe I can find- I can't quite quote it off the top of my head, but maybe I can, a little quick shuffling here, give the whole quotation but maybe that just says what

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it's- no, here it is: "when the best is gone, I know that other things are not of consequence. The heart wants what it wants, or else it does not care." Morton Marcus: That's great.

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Nils Peterson: I love that line. Her poems, her letters are filled with wonderful little sentences like that. One can hardly believe that they're in little notes, right, that she wrote to her friends, next door neighbors, brothers. Incredible.

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Morton Marcus: Well, it certainly gives credence to the fact that maybe this is how the poems were written, too. Nils Peterson: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Wonderful facility, but right now, Nils, I

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would love to hear one of Nils Peterson's poems. Nils Peterson: Oh, I'd love to read it, read a few. And I'd like to start if I could, perhaps as an introduction, with some quotations from other people.

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Morton Marcus: Wonderful, sure. Nils Peterson: Yeah, the reason I do that is because I was asked to give a talk and reading this summer to a group of artists, and I found myself, as thinking about doing that, found myself

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during my reading writing down some things that struck me as being important and sort of trying to center in what I tried to do as a poet, what I tried to do as a writer. And so let me just read a few sentences, one by Hermann Hesse from this book

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called, "Wandering," there's a line that goes into the heart of many of us in this area who work in this way and he says, "I even wanted to be a poet and a middle class person at the same time." Morton Marcus: Great.

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Nils Peterson: That's painful, isn't it? True conflict there, surely. This is from my favorite, perhaps my favorite living poet, Tomas Tranströmer, the Swedish poet. I'm also- my mother and father were Swedish, so I feel a kinship there. But

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he said, "Conventional languages and outlooks are necessary when it is a question of handling the world, of reaching clearly defined and concrete goals. But we know from experience that these fall short in the most important moments of life." Some

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sort of thing about the kind of language one uses ordinarily that conceals rather than reveals. I was talking to someone the other day trying to explain what it was that I liked about poetry. And as I was talking, I said a phrase which

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has stuck with me since, and said, "I like poetry because i has the fire of fact." An that's what I find the poet poems of Tranströmer and othe poets that I like, the fire of fact An ordinary language, I thi k, conceals the fire of fac

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. And a quotation from James Hil man, whom I also like a gre t deal, and he's trying to wor with some of the ideas that he as. And he says, "I'm trying to ork out how hermeneutics cre te -- an awful word -- ho hermeneutics creates

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n intelligibility at the expen e of the presented intelligibili y of phenomena. And we beco e deluded by our understanding." I think in a way that is- th t perhaps sums up sometimes a distinction that happens betwe n one kind of way of teaching a

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d another kind of way of teachin , that there is a kind of teachi g that gets diluted by its o n understanding, and that what s lost is the present d intelligibility of phenomen . It's not my favorite phra e, mind, but I enjoy what it s

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ys there. Then finally, one l st thing to think about that I w nt to sort of have in my mind, as I'm reading and talking with ou about my poems, is a phrase rom Joseph Campbell. And thi is what he said when he was tr ing to define the virgin birth

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he says, "When I am lectur ng, there is a flow of energ of stories and insights and th ngs needing to be said coming rom my heart that has neither fa her nor mother." And I feel n a good poem, in a good lect re, and in good talk, and th

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t's what happens that there is his flow of energy, these th ngs which come from the heart, w ich have neither father nor mot er. I'm sure you've had the ame experience that I've had ome times when I'm lectur ng, teaching, I listen to what

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I'm saying ,and I'm amazed at hat I'm saying because, you k ow, and there's another very eal way in which I'm not saying it, being said. So, some of t ose things for those who mind I'll abandon my lecture and-

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Morton Marcus: While there is an- in all of them, there is a steady theme of the difference between the ordinary and the sublime, if you will. Nils Peterson: Yes, I think so. I think there is and I think

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that certainly they're- incredibly commingle and- and wonderfully reflective of each other. I'm going to read a poem; I'm going to start by reading two poems, which I think finally are about the creative process, though I didn't altogether know

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that when I wrote them, they came they came to be written from other energies. But as I looked, thought about them, and listened to them after I wrote them, it seemed to me to be about that. The first one- well, one of them has a divine origin,

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one has a secular origin, and maybe we can talk about the two of those things afterwards. And so I'll start off. The first one's called: FAMILY TREE

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I picture her, my great-great-great-grandmother, say, in the long Arctic summer dusk where the light refusing to give over keeps on to midnight and beyond. This woman, bored with husband, farmers, farmer's wives, bored with gleaming

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copper and bright aprons, irritated with the neat parlor, freed only for the prison of the pastor's visit. This woman longs for darkness. Tonight, she's done her chores, swept the kitchen, prepared the dole, milked the cows, fed the

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chickens, hauled the water, and still the light will not be quiet. So she says to herself, "Jag tror att jag går in i skogen," I think I'll go into the woods. "Kan hände jag möter ett troll," perhaps I'll meet a troll. She had heard of women

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carried off for troll wives. Even that would be better, to be one of the queer ones whose eyes never rest on things but look just beyond, whose hearts settle at last into real stone instead of just the pain of stone. So she takes off her apron, fixes

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her hair, and sets off down a road that dwindles to a trail that sneaks into a wood. For a while she whistles because boys can whistle, but girls must sing. But as the trees close over and in, the only sound she makes is the little catch of

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breath that happens at the base of the throat when the heart beats too quickly. She shivers in her thin summer dress as the cold lingering close to the ground from the winter before reaches up to her and at her. At last, the trail runs out of

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itself and she stands, irresolute, weight thrusting on one foot then the other. Should she press forward where no one has been before, maybe it was [unintelligible], maybe she should turn around, maybe there are no trolls. She stands there,

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deep in wish as will can carry, until a low rumble and she turns to an upswelling of blackness that rears and spreads its paws so wide, the rank blanket of underfur sings a door she can enter, a dark door which closes fiercely around as an immensity

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gathers her in against itself. At last, it drops back to its four paws and lumbers off impervious to thorn or thicket, or the soft sobbing of my grandmother now just another hurt girl sitting amidst the ruining of her clothing, able to

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think of nothing else to do but go back home and wait for the year to fall about her. All winter, she thickened sleepily in the warm cave of her husband's pride in having fathered. When the lambs dropped in spring, she bore a lump all

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suet and hair, which she licked into a human shape. In her after sleep, she called out "bear." And her husband said, "Björn, yes, we'll call him Björn." Björn, of course, is a Swedish word for bear, the other phrases

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in there were Swedish as I'm Swedish myself, my parents Swedish. So these are, of course, are psychic figures, it's internal figures, in a way. That it seems to me that- well, let me read the other poem and then maybe talk about the pair

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of them a little bit. Morton Marcus: Okay, let me ask one question. Are there more of those family tree poems? Nils Peterson: No, that's the only one, though I have others-

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well, I have actually, I've written a number of poems about my family, my real family, this is an imaginary one. Morton Marcus: That's just marvelous, marvelously evocative, I know that, you know, Robert Bly, as some of

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you, like quite a bit. And again, telling the stories that he's been telling, this certainly smacks of all of the mythical tales that he's told. Nils Peterson: Yeah. Well, it is a poem, essentially about, as I

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think all great creative stories are about, a meeting of the human and the divine, and usually it's a divine male coming together with a human female. And out of that comes some sort of miraculous birth, who somehow has come into my

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family. It has something to do with the creative process, has something to do with- I even wanted to be a poet and a middle class person at the same time, sort of the conflict that you feel there in her dis-ease with her surroundings, which makes

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her go out into the woods. Morton Marcus: Which is quite an act. Yeah. Nils Peterson: And dare. And dare, and sort of the dis-ease with one's ordinary circumstances what drives one

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out into the whatever woods that the creative place comes from. Morton Marcus: Lovely poem and that black shape that rears up. Beautifully done, beautifully done. Let's hear the second poem.

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Nils Peterson: Okay. This has a little different tone and- but it's about something similar I think in a very different kind of- which is called, "A Latin Class." I was not a good Latin student but that will become clear enough from the context of

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the poem. A LATIN CLASS There were five of us: Dr. Vaughn at his desk, the three other students right in front of him, and me at the back of the

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room huddled against the wall, hoping I wouldn't be called on. It was like Johnson's remark about a man who got married a second time, a triumph of hope over experience. Once, I was asked to translate one of the poems of Horace, the famous one

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with carpe diem in it, seize the day. I was seizing the day with the aid of a 19th century pony, accurate except for an occasional flourish. I was also practicing my dramatic presentation, hemming and hawing. When I came to the

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famous phrase, I read with gestures straight out of my translation, pluck the flowers of the day. My college record has Ds that I earned, Dr. Vaughn's was a gift. But I found myself this fall studying Virgil for the first time in thirty

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years. I loved it, read now in English, though the image of Aeneas fleeing the burning towers, leading his son and carrying his aged father who clutched their household gods caught me in my middle age. I felt the weight of my father's

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ghost and the urgent forward toll of my children, and my muse had abandoned me to my own devices, and I felt the sacked city behind but had no sense of a kingdom to come. Despairing, I gave up on the spirit, took to jogging, and found my body could

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carry me farther than ever I imagined when young. I thought of my real self as a voice rattling around in the skull. I lifted, strained, and pushed against strange machines, I stretched and twisted, there was a woman I would watch play

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tennis, loving that moment after the first few games when she would break out into a beautiful sweat, her competent body oiling itself. From that moment, she'd start to move better, getting to ball she could not reach before. How I long for such a moment of

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grace, to move as easily in and with myself as breath and not to have my longing scattered among small, untranslated desires. So, graceful Virgil rose each morning and wrote a hundred lines, then cancelled them one by one, until maybe half a

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phrase stood. And I see his intelligent, wry mouth caught between smile and sigh as he scrapes the parchment almost clean and I hear the steady bonk of shot after shot as a woman practices her backhand against the wall.

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Morton Marcus: Lovely. Nils Peterson: So, that's perhaps another part of the creative process. I mean, not only the divine moment when the sudden taking happens but that other part where you practice

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your backhand against the wall, or you write your hundred lines and throw out ninety-nine and a half, you know, that sort of work. I mean, that's the kind of grace, as well as that kind of grace that comes from the divine moment, the inspired moment

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would be the word that most poets would use. But the inspired moment, there's also that preparation for the moment which comes in the woman from her dis-ease with her surroundings, but from the tennis player from practicing or

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backhand, from Virgil from trying to write and throwing out what doesn't work. And so, that's another way of dealing without thinking about it. Morton Marcus: I don't know about you, but a lot of creative

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writing classes in the past ten, fifteen years or so, people are willing in the classes get in touch with the divine. But when it comes time to practicing your backhand against the wall, they do not think that is part of poetry.

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Nils Peterson: Well, I think that's so, though my own sense would be in most cases -- it's not universally true, but in most cases -- the divine doesn't come until you're a little prepared for it, and you know, until you practice your

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backhand. Or if it does come, I mean, and I think that, you know, sometimes very early in a very astonishing way a very real revelation occurs, but one is not a sufficient vessel for it. And one can't contain it, can't deal with it, can't write about

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it. Morton Marcus: When someone wants to touch it with his fingers and the fingers burn immediately and he drops it and it's gone.

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Nils Peterson: Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. Morton Marcus: Well, it's nice two sets of poems to begin with and great commentary. Go on. Nils Peterson: Okay.

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Morton Marcus: I'm sure everyone out there is listening intently. Nils Peterson: Well, I hope so. I certainly hope so. Mort, I think when you called me to ask me to read, interrupted me and- when I was working on a poem. And Mort said, "Are you busy,

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Nils?" I said, "No, no, I'm not busy. This is just a poem I've been working on for twenty-five years." Morton Marcus: Which is a great line you'll never be able to use again.

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Nils Peterson: I think I have it done now and I'd like to have a shot at reading it. Morton Marcus: Great. Nils Peterson: And maybe the reading of it will help me

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decide whether I have it done or not. Morton Marcus: Okay. Nils Peterson: This is called, "The Snow Queen," a great face(?), of course, on Hans Christian Andersen's myth of the

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Snow Queen, or fairy tale, more accurately stated. THE SNOW QUEEN Late one night, stupid with beer, things not well with me, leaden-eyed before the TV, an old Danny Kaye movie, a

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crumbling moment came and I floated through the dark glass to join my soul to the soul of that singing and dancing man, our song foolish, our dance without grace. Why are we doing this? I asked, though a smile from the red lips of the leading

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lady made it all seem right. Suddenly, she dropped her mask, and I saw her again, my oldest enemy, the Snow Queen. I met her at my first play. I, big eyed in my Sunday best, caught in her story so that when she bent to kiss Kaye, the boy whose heart

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she froze, I felt the snow, white snow, snow on snow, drift up the warm summer aisle, and when her lips touched his cheek, my cheek burned with cold fire, and something in me turned to ice. I was given a book of Anderson's tales, illustrated in

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masses of dark and white lines that seemed to reach so far I could not comprehend how the page could contain them. I read her story again and again, staring each time at her picture and profile seated on a throne, her body long, thin and elegant

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in the black swirlings of her robe. She burned like a black and white flame before the gray of the cold castle walls. Years later, the book came to me again and I looked for the picture; it was not there, it had never been there. All those years it had

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lived in my heart, not in my book. So I tried to write about her, casually and wittily in the rhymes of that time. And in my dreams I lived as Kaye, my heart a frozen glacier that slowly grows as every day recedes and hardens into night. I cannot

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believe it, but I did not know what I was writing. It was as if I thought the heart a casual organ, not needed, in the way you can get along without a gall bladder or a spleen, or with a kidney gone still piss your life away. Now I know the Snow Queen

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lives where there is a longing for love so deep it terrifies, for what if it will not come? What if we are unlucky or unworthy? Out of that dread, the Snow Queen steps. She is the doomsday defense of the heart. The shadow sister of desire, the

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heart's fear of its own wanting. She is the guardian of our dearest wish. From her, we must seek the fire of our lives. Morton Marcus: Hmm. Nils Peterson: Yeah, as I said, I've not tried to read this one

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aloud much. Morton Marcus: Now for twenty-five years you worked on this, this obviously has a very, very special meaning to you. Nils Peterson: Well, when I say for twenty-five years, I worked

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on it- actually there's a little bit, that little quatrain that I read in the middle of it. The rhyme piece in the middle of it was an attempt at writing about the Snow Queen when I first came to California twenty-five years ago and it seemed so strange to

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be in this warm climate after having been used to the Eastern climates. So that was there, but the business about the Danny Kaye movie, that came along maybe ten years after that attempt, and trying to write about the Danny Kaye movie, I

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remembered that old thing about the Snow Queen. Danny Kaye was in a movie biography of Hans Christian Anderson, though that wasn't the movie I was watching at the time. It was one of the comedies he was doing with Virginia Mayo in the 40s which I

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saw, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and- Morton Marcus: The battling milkman. Nils Peterson: Yeah, right, right. That's right. He was- Morton Marcus: I think she was in that-

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Nils Peterson: I think- Morton Marcus: They might have teamed them, they might have teamed them together. Nils Peterson: They were together in several in the 40s,

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I do [inaudible] Morton Marcus: Well, how about a short poem? Do you have a short one you're going to read us and then we're going to take a break?

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Nils Peterson: I write long ones, you know- Morton Marcus: I do know that. Nils Peterson: I don't write short ones, but I maybe I can find a short one in here for you.

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Morton Marcus: In case you are listening out there as Nils shuffles with papers, we are talking with Nils Peterson, the poet and teacher from San Jose State tonight. And he is reading poems from all different parts of his writing career. And he

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just read a poem that he'd been working on for twenty-five years. MOUNTAINS DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WOMEN, its main Nils Peterson: Yeah, yeah, not steadily, mind. Here's on

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recommendation is that it's short. The title is pretty good too. entitled about women. They stand or squat or stretch themselves out. And

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if the sun walks on them, or the moon, what's the difference? If the forest uses their flank or the bighorn sheep, so be it, though the great ones seem to reserve a certain loneliness of head and shoulder. If they are aware of a stream carrying

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pebbles away, perhaps it is like me on a summer's day, standing at the edge of a meadow, trying not to think you are not there. Morton Marcus: {Cut off] -again, reading Christopher Gil Ginghoffer, Deborah Spencer, and Lynn Luria-Sukenick. As you

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know, we are always making announcements for the San Jose Poetry Center and this time I would like to read for you the season opener of the downtown reading series sponsored by the San Jose Center for Poetry and Literature is scheduled for 8pm,

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Wednesday, September 14th, that's tomorrow night at the San Jose State Student Union. Featured are novelist John Kenny Crane and Craig Strete. Admission is $6. For more information, call 924-4598. Just dial 1-924-4598. John Kenny

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Crane is the new dean of the college of humanities and the arts at San Jose State and he has written a wonderful thriller. Have you read that book? An intellectual thriller, great, great scope and wonderful style. So I would suggest anyone

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who's interested in new fiction, make it over to the- where did I say it was? It was at the San Jose State Student Union tomorrow night, the first reading of the San Jose Center for Poetry and Literature. Now here's something of interest: on

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the 26th of September, there will be a celebration of T.S. Eliot's birthday at the Episcopal Church at 81 North Second Street in San Jose. Food Pomp Pageantry will accompany readings by San Jose State faculty in the celebration

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sponsored by the San Jose Center for Poetry and Literature. Excerpts from, "Cats," "Murder in the Cathedral," and other Eliot works will be performed by the San Jose State Cordeliers(?) and members of the University Theatre Arts and Dance

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departments. The program begins at 7pm, Monday, September 26th. Admission is $4, I'm not supposed to mention that but I just did. And it just so happens that our guest tonight who is, once more, Nils Peterson, is going to be partaking in that.

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Nils, why don't you tell us something about it? Nils Peterson: Well, it's going to be, I think, a very fun, fun event. There'll be, as the brochure said, music and dancing and food and drink and all kinds of good things like that.

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There'll be excerpts from, "Murder in the Cathedral," and, "The Cocktail Party." I'm going to be reading the two dramatic pieces that Eliot wrote for Sweeney, "Sweeney Agonistes," and, "Fragment of Agon," which are absolutely marvelous things

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which almost nobody has heard, or heard, and what a wonderful thing to read out loud, very powerful, very rhythmic, very exciting. Morton Marcus: That's great. So, again, T.S. Eliot, his birthday

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on the 26th of September. The program begins at 7pm and it will be at the Episcopal Church at 81 North Second Street in downtown San Jose, the Trinity Episcopal Church at 81 North Second Street in downtown San Jose.

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Nils Peterson: A beautiful, beautiful church. It's incredibly- it's one of the San Jose's architectural wonders really, quite astonishing. Morton Marcus: Uh huh. Now, at the same night over here at OT

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Prices, their poetry and music and spoken word show will star Michael McClure, and Ray Manzarek formerly of The Doors. It's poetry, it's music, it's a show. Famed Beat poet Michael McClure is hotter in literary circles now than in the heyday

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of the beatnik days. Nils Peterson: I didn't know that, I didn't know- Morton Marcus: And he's a powerful, dramatic performer, that I do know. "McClure's poetry seems to me among the

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very best, among the most beautiful and joyous being written these days," says Aram Saroyan in the Village Voice. What has happened here is, I happen to know what's going on here, is that Manzarek has put music to several McClure poems,

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in fact a number of McClure poems. McClure has always performed on autoharp and things like that. And so it will be a chance to hear this some commingling of both poetry and music and I certainly would urge people to go over OT Prices

00:30:54.610 - 00:31:02.950

where they have great country music anyway most of the time, and it looks like they're branching out into a new area, very exciting. I may well be there myself if I don't get San Jose.

00:31:02.990 - 00:31:11.570

Nils Peterson: One or the other, sounds like fun, really. It sounds good. Morton Marcus: It's 8:30pm is showtime at OT Prices and it's Monday, September 26th, celebration of poetry, music,

00:31:11.570 - 00:31:25.310

and storytelling at OT Prices with Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek formerly of The Doors when The Doors were around. All this just wonderful information. Let's see if I'm missing anything. Yeah, I don't want to forget that every Sunday from

00:31:25.340 - 00:31:40.070

8am to noon at the Vets Hall Bunker at 842 Front Street there is a community breakfast cooked by the vets from Posts 5888. Small fee includes pancakes, bacon, eggs, potatoes, a variety of beverages and live music, each week the proceeds benefit a

00:31:40.070 - 00:31:58.100

different cause. Alright, so remember that. Amazingly unique veteran's organization here that is filled with veterans who are really concerned with American foreign policy and what happens with that foreign policy. That's all I'm going to announce

00:31:58.100 - 00:32:14.210

tonight. We are talking to Nils Peterson, and Nils, good Lord, look at how long that took. Let's get on to what this program is really about, which is poetry. And we've been listening to your delightful poems and poignant poems, and

00:32:14.840 - 00:32:29.390

they just dance with so many different moods and tones that it's a delight finally to have you on the show. Nils Peterson: I'm pleased to be here, Morton, indeed I am. I'm not sure after I sort of just gi e my own feedback of my own re

00:32:29.390 - 00:32:41.590

ding, it feels as if I really wa not ready to read the Snow Qu en on another twenty-five ye rs, it feels as if I- Morton Marcus: Obviously you continue to work on things. Nils Peterson: Yes.

00:32:42.040 - 00:32:51.520

There happens to be -- and you and I have looked at each Morton Marcus: -which it's just to- the forcing is almost a way other's poetry and commented on it a number of times -- but I find out that the poems that I really work on the hardest were

00:32:51.520 - 00:33:07.060

really the ones that were meant not to be and I, you know, which one of the ones I'm talking about- of telling you, you know, that it's not ready yet and maybe you should just, you know, forget about it and put it on the back

00:33:07.060 - 00:33:19.090

burner. But what, do you just fight them out all the time? Nils Peterson: Oh, I try. I mean, I keep thinking that I will one day make the right turn or I'll enable it to come out- Morton Marcus: No, I say that-

00:33:19.330 - 00:33:32.410

Nils Peterson: Not that I don't throw away a lot, I mean I've abandoned many along the way but some want to be kept. That day to stop- working on the Snow Queen has been very good for me. I have enjoyed it, I mean the work itself was good, whether

00:33:32.410 - 00:33:44.220

the poem comes out right or not, I don't know. It's not that the poem seemed to me not to come out right but that perhaps I'm still too close to it to read it publicly. Okay. Morton Marcus: You know, we were talking on our way down here.

00:33:44.790 - 00:33:55.920

Maybe this is the time to just get this in if you want, about, you know, the act of writing poetry. Are you really writing, you know, to publish? Are you writing for a big reputation? What's the reason that-

00:33:56.280 - 00:34:19.260

Nils Peterson: I like both, but essentially I write for myself. I look on- what I like about poetry, having worked on it in the way that I have for as long as I have, is that it seems to me you get to a place where it helps you not lie that- I mean

00:34:19.260 - 00:34:34.530

you can lie in it, but as it sits around sort of glowering at you on your desk and finally it says, you know, this stuff you wrote here really isn't true. And it's so easy and so comfortable to lie that it's sort of nice to have something

00:34:34.530 - 00:34:51.210

around that won't let you when you, so that's part of what I was talking about poetry I think. I don't think I said this on here. I think I talked to you earlier that one of [unintelligible] talking with someone on Monday about why I

00:34:51.210 - 00:35:00.520

like poetry and I described that I liked poetry because it has about it the fire of fact. Morton Marcus: You did say that, yeah. Nils Peterson: Did I say it?

00:35:00.520 - 00:35:06.610

Morton Marcus: Yes. Nils Peterson: Already, now twice. Morton Marcus: Obviously you really are. Nils Peterson: Still on my mind, still on my mind. Okay, yeah.

00:35:07.320 - 00:35:15.930

Morton Marcus: In fact, you know, I just thought of something, and then I want to go into another poem of yours, but I just read that Deborah Spencer was going to be reading, and Deborah Spencer is a student.

00:35:15.930 - 00:35:25.470

Nils Peterson: Right, Deborah is a student of mine at San Jose State, a very fine student, a very fine poet, and a very good reader of her poems, too. If she's going to be reading anywhere, go hear her.

00:35:25.500 - 00:35:32.160

Morton Marcus: Go hear her, yeah, it's going to be really a terrific reading on September 20th. Anyway, Nils, let's get back to your poetry because I'm sure that's what everyone wants to hear.

00:35:32.250 - 00:35:52.560

Nils Peterson: Okay, I had some things that I wanted to read, and I'm not sure quite that I want to now. Let me read- I've been reading narrative poems, and let me read something which is a narrative poem, but in which I try to leave out the

00:35:52.560 - 00:36:08.130

voice of the narrator and see if something else can happen in that kind of way. I'm not sure this works at all. In fact, I sort of back out by calling the thing sketches, but so, we'll see how it goes. I mean, I'll be interested in your reaction.

00:36:08.670 - 00:36:27.600

SKETCHES Gray blue silver sky above a cascade of summer leaves, a new morning moon keeps backing up like a woman great with child. Down the street, the dwindling plop plop plop of the Sunday

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papers. Kitten sitting in a chair, big black dog goes by like a freight train on a straightaway. Kitten sticks out its paws to catch the caboose swinging along but the train rocks on down the track impervious to the boy on the

00:36:45.600 - 00:37:04.800

railway bridge, wanting to get out of this town. With black William, half lab and half golden retriever at the percolation pond, he is learning that he likes the water and stands in it up to his chest, snaps three times at the midges,

00:37:04.980 - 00:37:30.450

then erupts up the bank in a great larruping horsey gallop surrounded for a moment by a fine thin silvery field of water curved like the battle chariots of the Assyrians. Water where winds meet is all palaver. St. Duck tucks up his wings and

00:37:30.450 - 00:38:01.230

enters the water. He heads for the far shore. All that moves and that moves him is hidden. By the Tigris flowing with ash lies the great faith of my father. All his longing to rise has fallen. He is as human as when he learned to pour his whiskey

00:38:01.260 - 00:38:28.680

in a glass. The living cling to the hill, the dead reach out to the sea. Out far and underneath, the sound of an immense creature, letting itself give over onto grief. Morton Marcus: Very interesting because they follow each other.

00:38:29.220 - 00:38:42.990

I mean, you cannot really understand one of them except where they're coming from, so that we have in the last one for example the sea that you had just talked about now made into a metaphor, that you just talked about the reach- the dead

00:38:42.990 - 00:39:00.960

reaching for. Lovely. And the one about your father, my, it's really, really poignant. Nils Peterson: Yeah, I like that one too, I must say. I think it may be strong enough that it makes me throw out all the rest.

00:39:01.830 - 00:39:12.060

Morton Marcus: Well, and there is obviously the thing that the weakest of them, it seems to me, is the first one. Yeah, it's necessary to go on with, you know, the other ones. But I think the second one, the one with the water image, you know,

00:39:13.410 - 00:39:23.970

as a silver- the writing in that is incredible. In fact, even read that one again, will you, it's just so beautiful, every word of it. Nils Peterson: It is by the way I just throw out things, I also

00:39:23.970 - 00:39:39.480

like to play with technical things. A lot of these things are syllable-count poems or accentual poems. The one about the dog is an accentual poem. There are five accented syllables a line, so the line can have many syllables in it,

00:39:39.510 - 00:39:57.090

so just for the hell of it that's that so. With black William, half lab and half golden retriever at the percolation ponds, he is learning that he likes the water and stands in it up to his chest, snaps three times at the

00:39:57.090 - 00:40:13.470

midges, then he erupts up the bank in a great laropping horsy gallop, surrounded for a moment by a fine, thin silvery shield of water curved like the battle chariots of the Assyrians. Morton Marcus: Marvelous, marvelous.

00:40:14.760 - 00:40:26.570

Nils Peterson: I think it works because of the piled up rhythm because of the strong accented syllables that come- [crosstalk] Morton Marcus: It also works for me because it takes, you know, and this is what we were talking about in the beginning, it takes

00:40:26.600 - 00:40:43.910

a common ordinary experience and through the power of the language it becomes like a photograph. I mean, forever that moment is permanently with us. And it's just delightful. You see these things, you see the light through the water, you see

00:40:43.910 - 00:40:54.930

the water being sprayed, and you just it's a magic moment and then you forget it, it's gone. And it's again, the poet who just makes it happen, you know. Nils Peterson: I do see it like a snapshot; it's in my mind just

00:40:54.930 - 00:41:12.120

like a black and white snapshot. The one before about the kitten sitting in a chair, I really hear- I would- I'd like to do i sometime with a jazz group, you know, I think it'd be fun to do it to do it: "Kitten sitting in chair, kitten sitting a chair,"

00:41:12.120 - 00:41:31.470

and a saxophone wailing behind, "big black dog goes by, like freight train on a straightaway Kitten sticks out his paw t catch the caboose swingin along. But that train rocks o down the track impervious to th boy on the railway bridge

00:41:31.740 - 00:41:51.360

wanting to get out of this town. That's so- it'd be fun to pla with that sometime in a jazz kind of way. I would like t have a shot at reading- I have lot of, what should I say Humorous poems, but I'm no going to get to those tonight

00:41:51.360 - 00:42:13.350

It's obvious enough. I want t try reading a poem for my ow sake because, again, it's on that I have very seldom read. I fact, I think I've read it ou loud only one time and thi version of it- of it never. A d it's a poem about being midd

00:42:13.350 - 00:42:31.830

e-aged and male and all of tho e kinds of things. It's n t altogether a pleasant poem. In one way I'm not altogeth r happy that I wrote it, but t the same time I am glad that wrote it, and I'd like to re d it. We have so many women

00:42:31.830 - 00:42:47.460

s poems, so here's- that are- hat tried to be true to the na ure of being a woman. This is ort of an attempt at a man' poem trying to be true to the ature of being a man, so tha 's not exactly meant as an apo ogy, the even though it may have

00:42:47.460 - 00:43:02.540

come out that way. This i IN VERONA I'm sitting in a street cafe in Verona, watching two old Italian men watch young girls. Across the square, the communists

00:43:02.540 - 00:43:22.910

rally, but only the microphones have any spirit. A soft evening sun makes a pale, thin, golden, watery light. One of the men is tanned and handsome in a high nosed Italian way. He is drinking something the color of the air in a graceful, tall,

00:43:22.910 - 00:43:43.550

thin out-curving glass. The other is short and squat, face scarred and warty, his clothes Catholic, body communist. He drinks beer one after the other out of huge European glasses. I drink Campari and soda. A young woman walks by wearing her

00:43:43.550 - 00:44:02.660

breasts like military honors. This summer there are no braziers in Europe. I watch them shimmer, then enjoy the sway of hips as she goes her way. But watching her, I watch the two men watch her. The tall, languid one is all sighs and sadness,

00:44:03.020 - 00:44:18.500

the squat one's eyes burn in their comfortless sockets. Three Italian women in their forties, sisters maybe, stroll by and stop in the clearing between us and the communists, and though they are elegantly dressed, and though their faces are made up

00:44:18.500 - 00:44:33.830

most carefully, and though their smiles flash like tourist cameras about the square, only a glance do they win from my friends who look hopefully up the street for a young one, then back to the comfort of their drinks. The three women interest

00:44:33.830 - 00:44:49.010

me, though it is true the youngest one the most, and I stare at them hoping to win one of their smiles which though painted have an attractive nervous energy, but three are too many. Besides, they are out for a better game than a scruffy

00:44:49.040 - 00:45:07.190

middle-aged tourist. I've come here to learn something, perhaps it is about getting old. I careen about Europe from monument to monument in a bus filled with young people. Though we stop regularly for diesel oil, it is clear that eros

00:45:07.190 - 00:45:26.990

drives us all. The bodies of the young quiver with it. I've watched their eyes caught up in lust and glaze over and become as blank as the passionate marble we so dutifully seek out each day. In Florence, we saw the David. So last night a swarm

00:45:26.990 - 00:45:44.150

of our men aroused by beer and wine and Grappa and singing and noise and the perpetual presence of the other, took turns at imitating his pose in the corner of the bar lounge. The women helped, poking a knee here, turning slightly a wrist there,

00:45:44.450 - 00:46:05.030

adjusting a thigh to some secret satisfying remembered angle. It is the ideal pose for the young male, all the lines of the body, all the long accelerating passages of energy reach towards the sex hanging in its triple ease. The hands are too large,

00:46:05.150 - 00:46:24.920

capable, but the body is not yet grown to their capacity; they are in league with the head, staring off into the distance thinking what must be done. The message is: the sex is the source of doing. At the museum too, I watched the watchers. The

00:46:24.920 - 00:46:42.350

young women looked at the David as if they could learn something, the older ones as if they knew or long for something, the men with mingled envy and pride. The morning after, sleepless, up early, walking the streets, nothing open, no

00:46:42.350 - 00:46:58.910

coffee, finally an espresso bar with a sleepy-eyed girl turning the key. Inside, I stood at the counter when three small dark Italians walked in and looked at me and started to snigger. I swear I heard Goliath among the nudges and winks. I feel

00:46:58.910 - 00:47:16.190

self-conscious about being outsized and middle-aged among a busload of young Davids. They like me, but when I walk through the streets with one of their young women, I am the enemy, the one they must kill before they can inherit their kingdoms. I

00:47:16.190 - 00:47:36.140

think of another kind of figure, a Posseidon or Zeus, as male and as naked as David. Its arm raised to hurl a thunder bolt or Trident, the statue in Athens, its attribute lost now in the Adriatic. That body is filled out, balanced, mature, muscles

00:47:36.140 - 00:47:54.830

easy and accustomed to such flexing. It is his wheel that makes the world ring. The genitals are there too, but part of a fuller man. We live in a time where that energy is suspect. Our women suspect it, we suspect it in ourselves.

00:47:55.580 - 00:48:13.670

Maybe we are not wrong, yet, why do I feel such loss? I'm supposed to meet some of my young friends by Romeo and Juliet's balcony. Instead, I think I'll have another with my comrades here. It is good to sit in the settling Italian sun

00:48:13.670 - 00:48:34.130

waiting for women to walk by, drinking bittersweet Campari, thinking of David, thinking of how his body grew to his hands. How do we learn to do this? Become our richest selves, poets, kings, and lovers, and not burn with the will's

00:48:34.130 - 00:48:56.900

corruption? My languid friend sighs and slips deeper into melancholy. My angry one becomes more ferocious in the fading light. So, body turns towards the shadow, still clinging to its old desire. When David's blood cooled about his kingly

00:48:56.900 - 00:49:18.140

bones, they brought him Abishag, that young chick to look at. I see him as if on the wall of one of these museums, enthroned, wrapped in a great wool robe holding a glass of wine with both hands, watching her dance, not in sadness or in rage, but

00:49:18.140 - 00:49:39.680

warmed by the quiet presence of his longing. Ciao, my friends. Time to go. Across the square, our young bus driver honks his impatient horn. His girl stayed back at the Pantheon. Morton Marcus: That's lots of stuff in there.

00:49:39.830 - 00:49:52.150

Nils Peterson: Lots of stuff in there. Morton Marcus: No, I mean good, it's really a deep poem, it's really reaching back to, you know, I think something that is the big difference between, you know, the acceptance of old age

00:49:52.150 - 00:50:02.210

and yet the questioning what is it when young? I don't know. Very, very, very interesting meditation. I mean, that to me that to me is a meditative poem. Nils Peterson: Yeah. That would be- I would accept that word for

00:50:02.210 - 00:50:20.330

sure. And the question that I sort of ask in there about, you know, what would it mean to be a full male in the sense that David is a full man to be a poet, the king and lover, and at the same time be those things and not burn with the corruption

00:50:20.330 - 00:50:27.140

that also touches those things. And it's very- Morton Marcus: Because God knows, he was corrupt, I mean, he ruined it all. Nils Peterson: Sure.

00:50:27.170 - 00:50:38.630

Morton Marcus: Every one of those things. Nils Peterson: But that's also so. I mean, but also there was a time when he had it all together too. That's about, no, you're quite right, of course.

00:50:38.000 - 00:50:51.170

Morton Marcus: I mean, whenever I think of David, I think of- an it's the same thing, I think o Nathan, coming in and tellin the story about the use and th two people, a rich neighbor wh lived near the poor neighbor and then tells this what i

00:50:51.170 - 00:51:04.430

really a fable or an analogy And David gets infuriate because he understands poetr being a poet, and he says "Such a man should be destroyed," and Nathan points his staff at him and says "That man is

00:51:04.880 - 00:51:12.870

Nils Peterson: Man, what a story. Morton Marcus: Incredible, man what a beautiful poem, that's very, very powerful. Maybe because I'm a middle-aged man. [Chuckles]

00:51:14.510 - 00:51:22.790

Nils Peterson: Yes, the best of us are. Morton Marcus: And it looks like we are approaching the end of the hour. So what I would like you to do, could you read us another poem?

00:51:23.300 - 00:51:31.010

Nils Peterson: Okay. I'll find- Morton Marcus: And it's obvious that we have to have Nils Peterson back here quite soon because there's too many poems left unread.

00:51:32.230 - 00:51:45.440

Nils Peterson: Got time for two little ones? Two elegies? I'd like to read two elegies to two poets. One is John Logan, one is Abby Niebauer. Here are two elegies. The first one is: JOHN

00:51:45.000 - 00:52:10.620

John, I miss you. Were you at last reconciled to your liver? There seemed little else you were reconciled to. In Berkeley once I heard you read when you were fond of all your poems, and they of you. No one before ever so loved the middles of word

00:52:10.620 - 00:52:29.070

, John. The way you rolled th ir vowels around your tongue ar the middles of sentences, th way you showed their sinews ta t like the bare stomachs of li tle Nureyevs. And then:

00:52:29.070 - 00:52:46.700

TO ABBY I remember your dark brown eyes, and your pale freckled skin, and your frizzly red-brown hair, and the black cotton summer dress with the small white polka dots you wore when we had our long

00:52:46.730 - 00:53:07.220

talk. And I remember how your hands and feet, larger than your body like Humphrey Bogart's, gave you a graceful ernest awkwardness that would not let me speak too easily. And I remember the fragility of that body beneath my hands the one

00:53:07.220 - 00:53:26.110

time we tried to dance. And yes, I remember a small flat place on the end of your lovely nose. Morton Marcus: We have been listening to and talking with Nils Peterson, the poet, and it's been a wonderful evening

00:53:26.110 - 00:53:39.820

for me to hear that wonderful voice of his also, as well as his wonderful way of explaining things and getting us to the heart of things in his own unique way. Again, Nils Peterson, and I'm going to try to find this very quickly, will

00:53:39.820 - 00:54:02.950

be on the 26th at the Trinity Episcopal Church. If I can find this very quickly in celebrating the birthday of T.S. Eliot, and that will be at the Trinity Episcopal Church 81 North Second Street in downtown San Jose on Monday, September 26th, and I

00:54:02.950 - 00:54:15.020

would urge you to go. He will be reading short excerpts from plays by Eliot which have not been read before. Nils Peterson: Which have seldom been read. Morton Marcus: Yes, obviously they've been read before. I

00:54:15.020 - 00:54:30.350

would like to alert you that tomorrow morning on Morning Edition, the National Public Radio's coverage of campaign 88 continues with a report on Michael Dukakis' meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Cookie Roberts

00:54:30.350 - 00:54:45.530

reports on several state congressional primaries. Also a preview of the conspiracy trial of Bess Myerson, former Miss America and New York Cit official, and your letter tomorrow on APR's Mornin Edition, which runs from 5 t

00:54:45.530 - 00:55:02.450

9 am here at KUSP, and Mich el Brady brings you local news at six minutes past six, seven nd 8 am. So tune in tomorrow for Morning Edition. Here, we w uld like to thank Plaza Books w ich has provided a grant that he ped make the last half

00:55:02.450 - 00:55:20.030

our of programming possible Plaza Books is located on the acific Garden Mall in Santa C uz. We appreciate their repo t. And coming up after the half our or the hour itself, stay tu ed for "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" with Tim Folger

00:55:20.180 - 00:55:39.230

This is KUSP, Santa Cruz, onterey, Salinas. Santa Cruz USP is a member supported radio station. We serve the Mont rey Bay, Salinas Valley, West Sa ta Clara Valley, and Big Sur. USP is a national public rad o member station and we are on

00:55:39.230 - 00:55:42.260

88.9 FM. We'll be seeing you in