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Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody, this is Mort Marcus and I'm speaking to you from KUSP. This is the Poetry Show. If my voice sounds a little strange, it's because I've got one of the bugs that's going around. But I want to welcome

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you to another special Poetry Show. We've got a wonderful guests tonight, a young poet by the name of Paul Calandrino, who is going to read some of his poetry to you. And I've also asked him to read some prose because he is both a short story

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writer and a poet. And to tell you a little bit about him, he has published in the Porter Gulch Review and Read Magazine. And on top of that, he has won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for creative writing at San Jose State, not just one prize, but

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he won ten prizes in one year. And he wanted it for all sorts of poetry, and finally was presented with a grand prize as well, a rather amazing thing to achieve. And we're going to meet Paul Calandrino right now, and we're gonna be talking to him

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for the next hour. And you may hear strange noises, which I can pick up right now, and the reason for that is that we are not in our usual place, we are in the very small production studio while they put in our carpet. Yes, and here comes our

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friend from the last show who's going to close the door, and we are going to get some quiet. But if things don't go quite smoothly tonight it is because this is a totally different place than we're normally in, and Paul, who is nervous enough

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to begin with, doesn't know what's gonna happen now. Paul, welcome to the Poetry Show. It's been a long time- Paul Calandrino: Thank you, Mort. Morton Marcus: And you sound very loud to me, so why don't

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you say thank you Mort again? Paul Calandrino: Thank you, Mort. Morton Marcus: Yes, indeed. Okay. Paul Calandrino: How's that sound?

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Morton Marcus: Well, why don't you tell us where you're from, and first of all, where you're from because I think that's going to be very interesting to the people out there. Paul Calandrino: Well, I'm a Santa Cruz native, born in Santa

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Cruz and raised between San Jose and Santa Cruz, and I'm also a third generation Californian. Morton Marcus: Now what- originally your parents, your parents or parents' parents were from San Francisco.?

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Paul Calandrino: From San Francisco, yeah. Morton Marcus: And you are Italian? Paul Calandrino: Sicilian. Morton Marcus: And therefore your family is known for what

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profession? Paul Calandrino: Well, fishing, of course. Morton Marcus: Yeah, and then actually did any of the Calandrinos fish down here in Santa Cruz?

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Paul Calandrino: Yes, my grandfather fished in this area for a number of years. Morton Marcus: Amazing. You know a lot of the young writers now who actually are around this area, you were classmates, for

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example, with Jeff Tagami, right? Paul Calandrino: Jeff Tagami. Morton Marcus: And Jeff Dunn? Morton Marcus: Any other fellows named Jeff?

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Paul Calandrino: Jeff Dunn, right. Paul Calandrino: They're all named Jeff. [Laughter] Morton Marcus: They're all Jeffs! [Laughter] Two Jeffs and one Paul so far. The question that I've been

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asking a lot of people who've been on the show maybe for the last four or five months is how did you come to write poetry? What was the thing that first moved you, or even since you would write so much prose as well, what actually brought you

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to the writing of literature? Paul Calandrino: Well, I guess what brought me to it was I found an old box of old knickknacks in the garage one time a collection of poetry. And I can't remember the name of the

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collection but the collection ranged from, you know, Old English ballads up to modern poetry and I just started reading that on my own in my room one day, and that's really what started me getting interested in poetry. And in

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particular, it was Walt Whitman's, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," and that really sparked my interest. And then I started trying my own hand at it at that time, it was about fifteen years ago.

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Morton Marcus: How do you feel about Whitman these days? Paul Calandrino: Oh, I love him. I think Whitman is great even though he's criticized for numerous infractions, he's still a wonderful poet.

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Morton Marcus: You know, it seems to me that I didn't know that Whitman was the first influence but you know, knowing your poems and hearing them, there is an expansiveness in them - even though they don't have the same long line thrust -

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that is very, very similar to Whitman's. The minute you said, "Lilacs" [unintelligible] Gosh, yes. They're certainly- they are similar, it's very interesting. What I'd like you to do right now is just give us a sample of the work and tell us anything

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you want about it, anything you think might be relevant to the people out- on radio land. Paul Calandrino: In the listening audience. Well, okay, I'll start off with a rather short poem just to give you the

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flavor of it, and there are- I won't say too much about the poem, but there are elements in this poem that, perhaps thematic elements that we might talk about later on, but it'll be just a short introduction to these. It's called:

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DANCE, and it's dedicated to Teresa. There is a woman above the place I was born who takes me into her hands and sings to me about the salvation of flesh in her warm room where the sun sets. When I go away from her, I listen for

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the song. In my bed, while others sleep, I think I hear it. And I imagine my father and mother and brothers and sister leaping over my head, happy as sheep. There is no silence in this dance, no burden of oceans and nets and tons of fish,

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drowning in ooze. No secret forgiveness, no joy hidden in the dark, no sickening swimming pools of lard, no birth defects swept under the rug, no pain between the legs. In this dance, we all have our own eyes, and we all see a rudimentary fire

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burning in a small circle of stones in the center of each of our hearts. Morton Marcus: Wow, this is one of the new poems that- Paul Calandrino: Yes.

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Morton Marcus: Wow. Yeah, that- I mean I love the stuff and what you sent me, but that is an enormous leap forward. That's great. I was talking to Paul tonight and since we originally started to put the show together, which was quite some

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time ago, he felt that he was suddenly coming into a real control of his voice in some new things and that certainly is, and that's a marvelous poem. Paul Calandrino: Thank you.

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Morton Marcus: You want to talk about the theme of it now or you want to go into some more poems, maybe? Paul Calandrino: Well, sure. Maybe I'll just say a little bit about it.

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One of the lines in here is, "there is no silence in this dance," and in preparing for the show tonight, I started looking at my newer works and what I noticed is that there was this silence creeping up and I started thinking about that.

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What occurred to me is that silence can be a very destructive non-use of language. In my particular case, in my upbringing, I was raised in an environment where there were prolonged periods of enforced silence-

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Morton Marcus: Enforced silence? Paul Calandrino: Enforced, yeah. Where the head of the household in periods of rage would just refuse to speak and would refuse to permit speaking to occur in the house. And that's kind of a

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severe example, but I think that this sort of thing does happen in families, where we all get our linguistic start, you know, kids are told to not say anything unless they have something nice to say or, you know, various things. And, you

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know, parents sort of close down on their kids' freedom of speech, as it were. And it seems to me that that's very damaging. And so consequently for me, what happens in poetry is a kind of healing of that injury. And it's healing in two ways: in one way,

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it's an interior dialogue with the poet himself or herself, and then externally it's a communication with the audience, you know, a sharing of experience, and I think that's healing as well.

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Morton Marcus: I was going to say something like that when you had said, you know, enforced silence, that really is fascinating and that you chose literature which is really almost the demand to be heard, you know, the real compulsion to

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be heard. Paul Calandrino: Right. Morton Marcus: I think that's really fascinating. Let's hear another one.

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Paul Calandrino: Okay. This poem is called, "The Kitchen," and it more or less directly deals with that situation. THE KITCHEN I have been accused of rudeness for walking away from the table

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and the after-dinner conversations. But I tell you it is not rudeness. Follow me to the living room and I will tell you about the kitchen where the husband and wife shout openly in front of their small children who cannot find a safe edge

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around the round kitchen table. It is the room of ants spray, of preserved foods, of wounds, and words, where year after year faces appear distorted in spotless platters. It is where the boys learn to deny what they see. There are no tiles chipped

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and stained with greasy tears. Strangers and families do not leave oppressed from this room. The birds caged in the corner do not want their freedom. The room of lies. God's room where God's silence puts its stranglehold on the defenseless, who stagger

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from the house and wander through the streets of the neighborhood like stray dogs, diseased, with gaping sores and large patches of raw skin horribly exposed. Please come with me to the living room where we are free to talk. I cannot

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stay in the kitchen, room of shattered- room of laughter and shattered Wisteria, where the meals of love are cooked in the same pots and served with the same spoons as the meals of shame.

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Morton Marcus: Well, I see what you're getting into now and it's much more personal stuff. I mean, the voice here is definitely you, whereas the voices in the earlier poems really, sometimes were masks, they were other characters.

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Paul Calandrino: Well, I have some of those in here too. But yeah- Morton Marcus: But that one, obviously from what you told us before, is all we really have to know about that when- I mean,

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that really explains the situation. Paul Calandrino: Right. So let me get into another one here right away and I think you'll see that this is perhaps more expansive but still personal. It's called, "Green Dresser,"

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and this will be appearing in the Porter Gulch Review that's coming out. GREEN DRESSER In my green dresser drawer, I kept dried tomatoes and sulfur.

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And a postwoman in a pith helmet walking on a day when the sun runs from cloud to cloud and the asphalt is fragrant with new rain. I kept a birthday cake waiting under fluorescent lights and cars waiting behind stop signs and boys and girls walking

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inside yellow lines. I kept an assortment of rodents and basil leaves, foreign coins alongside domestic pennies, postcards from lovers who became other people. I kept a child who smelled of cotton lint, who is pink and dry on the tongue. In my green

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dresser drawer, I showed movies at night of men and women, of straining and repetition, of a teenager living in a closet reeking of old socks. And I kept finches with the smallest voices and brittle twigs for legs. I kept a window and two brothers

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who wanted to get out and walk in their underwear under the moon and eat yellow plums, who wanted women to rub their skin forever without responsibility, who could not get away soon enough, who could- who could not get away, period. I kept a dead

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black cat with tractor tracks in its stomach and a paper diamond on a telephone wire, its rag tail whipping. And I kept a place in the forest where touching felt different than in the bathroom or bedroom, where you could find the skulls of

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small animals in the forks of trees, where an owl perched all day, and where crayfish lived with sandstone in cold water. And I kept a blue cave, where two dark triangles moved at night, and I kept a boy dripping with shower water, waiting for a

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woman to bring him a towel, and a dry boy being spanked by a woman for being naked. And the corpses of statesmen, and a man crying, and fingers sewn together with fishing line, and an imaginary boat good enough for God with a name like "Clear

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Sky" or "Strong Hands." When I gave my green dresser to my wife, she emptied its drawers and filled them with lingerie and thermal underwear with pink and purple flowers. Morton Marcus: Okay, now, I have another copy of that poem.

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Paul Calandrino: Ah, yes. Morton Marcus: All right. And it's interesting because I wanted to ask you a question about this. But in the version that I have-

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Paul Calandrino: Yes. Morton Marcus: It is speaking in the future at the end, and it says, "When I give my green dresser to my wife, she will empty its drawers."

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Paul Calandrino: Yes. Morton Marcus: Pardon me and I wanted to ask you, first of all, that is now in the past, what that meant- I mean, it seemed to me what it said was that what was being taken from you was all

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of this past life, was all of your history, and that was being taken from you from your wife, by your wife. And it seemed to me that that was pretty negative. Is that what you meant?

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Paul Calandrino: I was kind of confused in the earlier version of the- Morton Marcus: But now you're saying that it's happened, you see, that it has happened. So is it negative?

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Paul Calandrino: Well, I guess it's not really negative. I wouldn't want to say that it's negative. I think it's probably something that happens in marriages. Morton Marcus: And you are saying what's being taken away

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from you is your whole past though? Paul Calandrino: Well, maybe it's being put in a box and put in the other room, you know? [Laughter] Morton Marcus: If you don't want to pursue this, I won't pursue

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it. But it was, I mean, after coming from what is, yes, a very expansive poem and this is certainly where I was hearing the Whitman, [unidentified] also- Paul Calandrino: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: -to come upon that ending, you know, it really meant that all of this wonderful, rich life, which was, yes, sad and of the past also, but was life full of images and originality and the imagination and really into making up who

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the poet or at least the speaker was, you know, to then just very simply have the wife take it away certainly meant that you were really losing a lot of yourself. I mean, metaphorically speaking, not even metaphorically speaking, I mean,

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just, you know, literally speaking, shall we not pursue that? Paul Calandrino: Well, no, that's a fine analysis. Morton Marcus: Okay, we won't persue it. [Laughter] Yeah,

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okay- because I was very- when I read that I just said, "Wait a minute, I've really missed something here," and I went back and I read the whole thing over again, I said no indeed. Well, okay, let's go on.

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Paul Calandrino: Okay, this next poem is one that's been a favorite of mine for a number of years. It's called, "Relative Clauses." And you'll see very rapidly that it does deal with language, relative clauses, and basically how a child perceives

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his experience. So, without further ado: RELATIVE CLAUSES Kittens should be nice inside, which Mary's kittens by her older son John, who we called grunch because his meow was a

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cross between a grunt and a munch, lived in the old couch in the yellow grass in the backyard, which also, Herman, our tortoise lived out in the weeds, who we didn't see much. And we had a plant named Herman too which he dried up. And we

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had a rat named Norman, all white, who became Norma when she had babies, which she had to eat, which I told Banjo when she came to visit us from LA, that they were pink like fat candles, like chewed up wax lips. Which Banjo's has been dyed once with

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this friend in his old, old MG, red like unchewed lips, which I saw it once red in LA, when we went where they lived near the oil pumps that go dark by the cemetery, which I wouldn't go into at night, which they called me rat fink for. But so they

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lived in the old couch and on the other side of the fence, they had German shepherds who we hated because they growled and tried to bite through the wood, which when they put their snot noses through the knotholes, we'd spit on them. And I felt

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bad but I didn't like the kittens, which were wild, running, and orange tails, and hid in the gray stuff in the brown couch. And you couldn't hold them because of all the burs and foxtails in their fur. Then one morning before school,

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and before dad went to work, our neighbor with the dogs came over with Mary in a paper bag from Safeway because she got caught in his fan belt in his blue car, blue like mourning, and mom and Banjo felt bad. And Banjo gave herself a shot with her needle,

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which she did every morning to keep living, which I couldn't do. Morton Marcus: Okay would you like to tell us something about that poem?

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Paul Calandrino: Well, I just came upon that kind of construction, the relative clause, and it seems to me that kids do string all sorts of wild images together, you know, and this is really a kind of a kid's contemplation on the human

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condition, you know, things dying all over the place, rats eating their young, and coming into contact with a woman who needs to give herself insulin every day to keep living, which this kid ultimately says, I couldn't do that, through I

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guess the pain that he experienced. Morton Marcus: Because what he's really talking about is, are all of these things which is just very hard for him to live in a world like this, actually.

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Paul Calandrino: Trying to. Morton Marcus: That really comes over well, and the use of the relative- Paul Calandrino: Clause.

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Morton Marcus: Clause, thank you, really works very, very well here. And I really take language apart and take sentences apart, just the sense of transitions here, you know, you're making them yourself, there are really no transitional

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words. So very, very interesting, very interesting poem. Paul, you know, what we should tell the people out there also is that you actually work in writing now, after you graduated from San Jose State, but what happened to you?

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Paul Calandrino: Well, what happened to me was, a friend and fellow poet, Ron Patton, told me that there was a position at the company that he worked for as a technical writer, and it was a small software company, and I applied for the job and I was a

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shoo-in. And so I started in the computer industry as a technical writer. Morton Marcus: And that's what you're doing now? Paul Calandrino: That's right.

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Morton Marcus: And how long has it been around, five years? Paul Calandrino: It's been more like eight years. Morton Marcus: Time goes. Really, because I'm trying to put back the time but I remember, you know, seeing you

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in San Jose, and all- Paul Calandrino: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Just starting this. Okay, do you find that writing the very, very clear text that you have to write to

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really explain how all of these programs are working and everything, has that helped your writing, or has it hindered it? Paul Calandrino: Well, I would say that it has definitely helped my writing. Of cours, I'm not the best judge of what my-

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Morton Marcus: Well, how do you think it's helped your writing? Paul Calandrino: Well, to write, technically, you need to be very, very clear, very precise. It's kind of a, in many ways, adult type of language, but it's very precise. And so

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consequently, that sort of translates well to poetry. The- even though the subject matter is worlds different, you're dealing with metaphors and images rather than tape drives and procedures, still, you strive for clarity in those

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things, in metaphors, images, and all those other things. Morton Marcus: And if I may say so, that certainly is the clarity we're hearing tonight in your work. I mean, your work is very clear no matter how experimental it gets. But then

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again, it always was, as I remember. I mean, this has not been one of your- the lack of clarity has not been one of your problems. Paul Calandrino: Well, I suppose the poetry helped my technical

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writing too. Yes, indeed. Morton Marcus: So this is the second person I have interviewed now in the last two shows that I've done, there's been a hiatus around three weeks, in which both of the poets actually are

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software- Well, he is actually a computer engineer, I'm thinking- Paul Calandrino: Software engineer. Right. Morton Marcus: But you are actually a technical writer. Paul Calandrino: Technical writer, right. I haven't got the

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technical knowledge that he had. Morton Marcus: If you're hearing strange things out there, I think someone is knocking the studio down. We have got everything closed and here we are baking. There is no air in

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the studio whatsoever. But meanwhile, they're banging on a new carpet in the other room and we are very thankful of that because anything that's new around here is welcome. I'm going to ask you to read one more poem, and then we're going

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to take our half hour break. We'll be back with some announcements, and we'll be back with the person who we are talking with right now, the poet Paul Calandrino, poet and short story writer, and we will hear a little bit of his prose after

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the break and we will hear more poetry, but right now Paul is going to read us the last poem of the set. Paul Calandrino: Okay. This is called: A PERSONAL ALBUM

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This is me in a cemetery of spears and teeth. And this is me articulating my needs clearly, sitting in a borrowed office with a woman who doesn't want to talk to me anymore. Here I am, in a forest with mushrooms and deer spore. Here's the disaster

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that came to me once with a happy life and eyes dark as beads. In this one, I am sitting with fat men who think they know everything. And in the next one, these same men carry me like new-cut foliage full of alcohol to a bonfire by the ocean, a

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gust of wind shakes leaves. Here, I am the third child from the left, around me are children, and beside us are the pink lips of a young woman. This is the one of my politics balanced on a fence post with a woman closing her eyes on one

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side and me closing my eyes on the other. Here I am with a goat, a chicken, and a vulture on a hill far away from water. And here I am, collapsed beneath a painting that has all the elements of fine art but color.

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Morton Marcus: Well hello again, this is Mort Marcus, and this is the Poetry Show. And it is the half hour break and I'd like to make some announcements, actually very few of them. The San Jose Center for Poetry and Literature hosts an evening

00:29:43.000 - 00:30:03.640

featuring classical love poetry by Japanese and Chinese women poets, read by poet translators Marilyn Chen and Jane Hirschfeld on Tuesday, November 22nd at 8pm. That's tonight folks, you missed it. Okay on we go, next week. Oh, this is really gonna

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be a show, I can see that right now. Susan Griffin, one of the nation's most influential women poets and essayist, will read from her latest works on Wednesday, November 30th, at 8pm at Memorial Chapel on the San

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Jose State University campus. Appearing with her will be Jane Miller, an extraordinary young poet from Tucson, Arizona, whose work reaches all the way from Sappho to the oral cultures of North America. Tickets will be sold at the door but this will

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be, as they said, on the Memorial Chapel on the San Jose State University campus, Susan Griffin next week, next Tuesday at 8pm. And on November 29th, famed Berkeley author Susan Griffin, one of the nation's most highly acclaimed women

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poets and essayists will teach a mentor course on the topic gender meaning and determinacy, on Tuesday evening, November 29th, I guess, the 30th reading then is on a Wednesday. Okay, her reading is on a Wednesday at the Chapel. On Tuesday evening,

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November 29th, from 7 to 10pm, she will give this mentor class at San Jose State University Club located at 408 South Eighth Street. That is a special mentor course given by Susan Griffin on gender meaning and indeterminacy from 7 to 10pm at the San Jose

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State University Club located at 408 South Eighth Street. Okay, anyone interested in that, give me a buzz after the show and I'll repeat some of those addresses. We are talking tonight with the poet Paul Calandrino and he has been

00:31:40.340 - 00:31:59.510

reading his poetry and talking with us. And I just realized I'm totally out over here. Oh, well, let's just wing it. Paul, you've been reading us new poetry, very interesting poetry. And it certainly is, it seems like poetry of crisis, at least

00:31:59.510 - 00:32:12.410

that's what I'm hearing and that certainly you are entering into a whole new life and into a whole new sense of self in these poems. Do you want to talk about that at all, you know, what you think you're doing in here that relates to that? Or am I totally

00:32:12.410 - 00:32:39.540

off base? Paul Calandrino: Well, without going into any real detail, yeah, basically I am, I think, breaking some new ground here personally, in my own life, and I really think that poetry

00:32:39.540 - 00:33:05.550

should be a reflection of what goes on in life. I think you've been quoted in the Good Times as saying that, you know, life comes first and then poetry is kind of an adjunct to that. And so yeah, I guess you could call it a maturing or whatever, but

00:33:06.000 - 00:33:16.480

that's definitely happening, yeah. Morton Marcus: Well, let's hear some more of these poems. I really thought the last poem, which we went off on, was really extraordinary. And it certainly is taking your imagery now and

00:33:16.480 - 00:33:30.400

just using it in a very personal way. And I hope that everyone out there certainly who has done any type of self-examination, which we will do, really relates to these poems because they certainly are, I think, you know, they're not just for Paul

00:33:30.430 - 00:33:39.790

Calandrino, I mean, they're for everybody. They're not personal, let's say as confessional poetry is just one person talking, but they talk for all of us, I think, the whole human condition.

00:33:41.170 - 00:33:53.500

Paul Calandrino: You used the word, examination, and that's the title of the next poem. Morton Marcus: I did not know that. [Laughter]. Paul Calandrino: And this might be kind of a difficult poem to

00:33:53.530 - 00:34:16.000

listen to for the first time, so let me just say a couple of things about it. In it I use about three disparate elements or images that really have no strong relationship to each other and I talk about each of those individually but

00:34:16.780 - 00:34:34.960

collectively, the poem talks about what we were talking about earlier and that is a personal life in transition and just dealing with that. So: EXAMINATION

00:34:37.300 - 00:34:58.390

Today, clear sailing for pollens, moths, and the shadows of leaves. Yesterday's rain still clings to cracks in pavement, and the crevices of bark but this is to be a drought here. Home is a dream in which rough shapes move awkwardly and

00:34:58.390 - 00:35:19.510

never seem to conform to each other, pieces of different puzzles. There is a bird that with each wing beat squeaks like a wheel in need of oil. It flies at night, and I don't know its shape, but it must be large, it must be flying through my chest,

00:35:20.200 - 00:35:40.090

it must be blind and wounded, flying in search of a nest, or others of its kind, or a place to die. When I am waiting for the nurse to call my name, I mull over the shapes in my mind. I twist them and turn them over, see hollows on this one that

00:35:40.090 - 00:36:00.730

would fit snugly with bumps on that one. A solution seems possible, even likely. When I am bending, placing my nipples on the edge of the table, I think that I must find that solution. What if the finger should find an imperative. Yet when I am

00:36:00.730 - 00:36:21.670

dressed, and it looks as though I will live at least two more weeks, I must begin again. Is it pain that makes the rankled bird squeak? Sitting by the open window, I hear the delicate impact of drops on dry leaves. It's no use, the weather people

00:36:21.670 - 00:36:38.080

say, it's too little too late, the cost of water is rising. Morton Marcus: Well, that certainly uses a lot of images that reflect the outer life, especially around this area, as well as the inner life of the speaker.

00:36:38.230 - 00:36:47.930

Paul Calandrino: Right. Morton Marcus: Very interesting, very interesting how you use that. You know who used something like that and did it very interestingly was Bill Everson in his drought poems. He

00:36:47.930 - 00:36:57.140

called it a summer of drought or something like that, around fourteen, fifteen powerful poems of just living through the drought, and the outer imagery reflects his inner state. Paul Calandrino: Right.

00:36:57.140 - 00:37:10.960

Morton Marcus: Very, very fascinating. Paul Calandrino: Right, yeah, that's what I was getting at with the drought, a wet drought, which is incongruous, and a bird that you can't see, and a physical examination, all these

00:37:10.960 - 00:37:21.550

different elements. Morton Marcus: Fascinating, really great. You know, you do write fiction and- Do you have a short story for us that maybe we can say is a long poem?

00:37:23.500 - 00:37:33.590

Paul Calandrino: Well, let's see. I got one that goes for about, takes about ten minutes to read. That might be a little- Morton Marcus: Let's try it. Let's just get right into it. Paul Calandrino: Okay.

00:37:33.680 - 00:37:38.780

Morton Marcus: And we'll read one or two more poems. It's called, "The Turn." Okay. You want to say anything about your prose, anything about your rough fiction?

00:37:39.320 - 00:37:51.890

Paul Calandrino: I think it'll speak for itself, and I chose this story because it deals directly with what I was talking about earlier. And it's a series of narrators. THE TURN

00:37:53.220 - 00:38:07.130

IRIS: "My father," I said, "loved me." My father loved me. Joe, my husband, looked embarrassed and turned to Kathy and Mike, then he turned to me. "Maybe you should go to bed now," Joe said,

00:38:07.310 - 00:38:20.300

"I think you've had too much to drink." "Well, he did," I said. "You missed my point," he said, "all I'm saying is that regardless of the truth of that statement, all you have to go by is the perception you had of your relationship as a young

00:38:20.300 - 00:38:34.220

girl. You've said yourself that he didn't display affection outwardly, he merely provided you with shelter, food, siblings, and piano lessons. Even if your father had survived into your adulthood, you may not have been able to accurately

00:38:34.220 - 00:38:48.560

assess the extent of his affection, but it's a fundamental human problem." He smiled at Kathy and Mike as if he was apologizing for me. "Honey," he called me, "I think you might have trouble understanding this sober, so why

00:38:48.560 - 00:39:05.000

don't you go to bed?" I left the room. Kathy and Mike were my friends; he always took my friends and then he would turn on them and they'd be gone. I went and laid down on the bed in the dark, my head was spinning. The pillow smelled like him. I

00:39:05.000 - 00:39:18.410

could hear them laughing. He could make everyone laugh; that was his great gift, he was funny. I went to the kitchen and turned on the light. I was looking for the corkscrew when Joe came in. By looking at him, I could tell it was happening.

00:39:18.710 - 00:39:34.820

That's the way it was. He just looked at me and went back into the living room. I stopped looking for the corkscrew, I went out the back door. The moon was out. We had a family of screech owls who used our antenna a lot. They were there,

00:39:34.970 - 00:39:50.640

three small owls. I could see them. One of them screeched, the mother, and then the baby screeched. The baby's screech was higher than the mothers. I walked away from the house. JOEY:

00:39:52.460 - 00:40:05.930

I saw my mother outside near the old fountain of the boy and the duck. That fountain was there a long time before we moved to this place. It was old, but it still worked. A single stream of water would loop up into the air and land on the boy and the

00:40:05.930 - 00:40:20.780

bird. It wasn't on at that time of night. I didn't know why mom would be outside except that maybe dad had started to turn again. They had been drinking wine, I knew that. Earlier, they'd all walked down to the winery down the road and come

00:40:20.780 - 00:40:37.160

back with two boxes. I'm not like some kids. Some kids don't like to see their parents drinking, I do. When they drink, they seem to be happier in a slower, quieter way. Until dad thinks mom is drinking too much. I put on my pants and a coat, I

00:40:37.160 - 00:40:53.780

didn't put on any shoes. I went out to the fountain. Mom wasn't there, some owls flew by. You could hardly see them but you could hear their wings. She wasn't in the garden, it looked neat at night. The tall rows of corn and bean poles, the small

00:40:53.780 - 00:41:09.350

rows of lettuce, chard, radishes, carrots, everything was a dark silver. I went around to the other side of the house, I stood by the chimney. The living room windows were open, laughing and yellow light came out of them. Down in the

00:41:09.350 - 00:41:25.460

orchard, I saw mom moving slowly. She was bent over, sort of, she moved like a prehistoric man on a National Geographic special, only slower. She stopped under a dead plum tree, there was a row of dead ones. She put her hand on it, and then

00:41:25.460 - 00:41:43.430

she sat down and then laid down. I was already walking to her by then. I sat next to her. Her eyes were closed. "Mom," I said like I say it when she's asleep, "mom, what are you doing?" She didn't hear me. "What are you doing here, mom?" I brushed the

00:41:43.430 - 00:42:02.240

hair out of her face and rubbed her forehead. "Mom?" She opened her eyes, they were dark. She smiled at me and then closed her eyes. "Do you want to go in, mom?" "I'm just resting," she said. I ran my fingers through her hair. She liked it when me

00:42:02.240 - 00:42:13.760

or Lonnie, my little sister, brushed her hair, but I didn't have a brush. "Do you want to go to my room?" I asked. "In a while," she said. LONNIE:

00:42:15.400 - 00:42:31.720

Joey was outside with mom. I wanted to see what was going on. I was real quiet going out of my room and out of the back door. I sat down next to Joey, "Why are you out here?" I said. "Mom came out here and I followed," he said. "What is she doing?" I

00:42:31.720 - 00:42:47.170

said. "She had to get away from dad. I think he's going to get mad again. I didn't want dad to get mad again." Mom looked at us, she was crying, and then I started to cry. I think Joey was crying too, but he didn't show it.

00:42:49.660 - 00:43:03.500

IRIS: My two lovely children were with me under the tree; the moon made its branches look like a spiderweb. My babies looked like they were trapped, I could see them being afraid. I couldn't

00:43:03.500 - 00:43:17.150

keep myself from crying. I wish I could do something. I imagined what it would be like without him, just me and the children, and I could have my friends and my mother, there would be laughter in the house, children's laughter, not his,

00:43:17.750 - 00:43:33.380

not his condescending laugh, and not the nervous laughter of my friends when he made them feel like idiots, and he wouldn't turn on us. We became robots when he turned on us. I cooked what he ordered, Joey and Lonnie said nothing, Joe said nothing,

00:43:33.800 - 00:43:48.140

the only thing he said was what he wanted for dinner or what shirt he wanted ironed for work. When this happened, you never knew when it would end. It might be a day, two days, a week, three months, more. He would order his food, watch TV, stare

00:43:48.140 - 00:44:01.460

at me and the children as if we were idiots or aliens. Sometimes during the silence he would blow up. "I don't know how to get through to you," he would say, "what's going on in that thick skull of yours?" "what's the point of talking to you if it

00:44:01.460 - 00:44:17.630

goes in one ear and out the other?" I tried not to cry every time and talk logically, but I could not keep, I could not stop from feeling so bad. It made him angry when I cried, he said that it proved how small my brain was. "Why can't you be more like

00:44:17.630 - 00:44:32.750

Bonnie?" He would say, Bonnie was his boss' wife, who was a professor at the State College, "I would have married Bonnie If I'd known her before you." I could understand that. I think he would be a lot happier if he could have had a smarter wife.

00:44:33.290 - 00:44:48.350

It's not that I didn't try, but I wasn't naturally smart like Bonnie. I imagined what it would be like to take a gun into the living room. I saw myself being too drunk to hold the gun steady, but determined enough to do it. Kathy and Mike would be

00:44:48.350 - 00:45:02.390

frightened and Joe too, but he would try to hide it. "You've done this too many times!" I would scream, "who do you think you are? God? You think you can just kick us around like dogs? Did God put us here on the earth just to be objects for you to

00:45:02.390 - 00:45:17.990

get mad at?" Then I imagined him saying something smart like, "I presumed those are rhetorical questions, but if you have finally sprouted an interest in theological matters, I'd be glad to discuss it with you." At that point, I would start shooting. I

00:45:17.990 - 00:45:32.000

might accidentally hit Kathy first in the shoulder, she and Mike would get on the floor and be screaming, Joe would stand and back up against the wall. He would plead for me to stop or to just think, but I would have none of that. I would shoot his

00:45:32.000 - 00:45:49.220

stomach. He would be in terrible pain and fear. I'd shoot again and again and he would die with his eyes wide open in surprise, there would be blood all over his body. I think that's when I got sick to my stomach. I wouldn't shoot him, I promised

00:45:49.220 - 00:45:59.690

myself a long time ago that if I ever had children, I would make sure they always had a daddy, and we didn't have a gun besides. JOEY:

00:46:01.190 - 00:46:17.390

We held mom's head up. When she was done, we got her to sit up. I took my coat off and wiped her mouth. Lonnie got the dirt and leaves out of mom's hair and off her back. A truck went by on the road down the hill. The wind blew and the branches in the

00:46:17.390 - 00:46:35.060

tree started clacking against each other. Mom stood up and she leaned on us into the house. We put her in my bed and she started snoring right away almost. In Lonnie's room, Lonnie was crying. I said, "Let's go tell dad." She stopped crying,

00:46:35.420 - 00:46:51.410

she was afraid. We walked into the living room and they stopped talking. "What are you doing up?" Dad said. "Mom was outside," I said, "and she was crying and she got sick." He had turned all the way by then. Lonnie knew too and she started

00:46:51.410 - 00:47:06.890

crying. "Go to bed," he said. A while later we heard the company leaving and all the lights went out. IRIS: I didn't have a hangover in the morning. I was comfortable. The

00:47:06.890 - 00:47:22.370

pillow smelled like Joey. Joey and Lonnie were outside, I saw them through the window. They were looking at the fountain at the little stream of water that splashed over the head of the angel and the swan. It was so pretty, so pretty that it made

00:47:22.370 - 00:47:34.220

me forget for the longest time that Joe was sitting somewhere in the house. Morton Marcus: Very, very powerful stuff. Is this a new story?

00:47:35.180 - 00:47:44.120

Paul Calandrino: Fairly new, yes. Morton Marcus: Is this in any way a reflection on your own family? Paul Calandrino: Yes, in a way. Actually, it's fairly close.

00:47:44.000 - 00:47:56.540

Morton Marcus: Well, you also talked about a writer who you feel very strongly about and do you think that obviously the subject matter -- I won't say the way it was handled -- this is very, very unique in a short story to have all these

00:47:56.540 - 00:48:08.960

different perspectives, all these different first persons coming at you and certainly you handled it magnificently and with great economy at the same time. Who is that writer and is his influence felt in the story?

00:48:10.130 - 00:48:25.370

Paul Calandrino: Well, that writer is Raymond Carver and I would have to say that his influence is there. And I've been reading a lot of his work recently, and I feel that I've learned a lot from that.

00:48:27.100 - 00:48:37.420

Morton Marcus: I mean when I say influences, I'm not saying this derogatorily or, you know, that it's showing. I mean, it's just that this is subject matter he works with, but stylistically it's nothing like him whatsoever, except that it is

00:48:37.420 - 00:48:52.570

very, very clean and concise. But it was just interesting, you know, that we had talked about that and so this was there. Very, very powerful story. And I love when Iris is sitting out there looking at the two kids and they seem to be trapped, and

00:48:52.570 - 00:49:07.150

in the light and everything like that, and just beautiful, beautiful section. Nice stuff. We're talking, by the way, with Paul Calandrino, the young Santa Cruz poet and short story writer, as you obviously realize if you heard that short story.

00:49:07.720 - 00:49:16.030

Paul, why don't you read us a few more poems, we've got around five minutes. Paul Calandrino: Okay. This is called: JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS

00:49:18.550 - 00:49:37.390

I am moving forward on a journey through onion fields and grape vines on a road that divides populations of animals walking on earth. It is a protracted escape, a labor of despair and longing, for I am tired of this old pain, the nagging back, the

00:49:37.390 - 00:49:57.370

throbbing hip joint, the deep pain that heat softens and ice numbs for minutes only. I am moving forward but losing hope of finding the spillway that glows with neon colors at night. Was it something I dreamed once on some other journey when the

00:49:57.370 - 00:50:18.340

south wind swept up onion dust, and travelers' litter, and our fear as the car would not start, and the stars left us like oil rags, or hamburger cartons, or the lone left shoe limp in the cold shoulder gravel? And if it was only a dream, then I will

00:50:18.340 - 00:50:38.890

have a new pain, one that is sharp and unbearable, one that I can kiss on the lips and whose ears I can lick, who doesn't know me from Adam tangled in the sheets of the hide-a-bed, who worships me from my bones and dark glass, who despises my

00:50:38.890 - 00:51:01.000

mediocre needs and my lust. Pain will be the price of my journey which I will bring home and sow like dragon's teeth in the soil of my love, where skeletons will sprout and eat popcorn in bed. Morton Marcus: Very interesting. You're using all of that

00:51:01.000 - 00:51:12.910

classical analogy, which anyone who ever saw the motion picture actually would be able to get, too. Especially [cross talk] the wonderful fight with the- with the skeletons. Paul Calandrino: Right. Right.

00:51:13.180 - 00:51:28.780

Morton Marcus: Sounds great. We are coming up to around two minutes. Two short poems or one medium sized poem. Paul Calandrino: Okay, let's try for this short one. This is called:

00:51:28.780 - 00:51:44.610

AT HOME, for Leslie. We lived in a trailer that winter on her mother's property, sharing our quarters with small animals, a bird in the flue, a field mouse in our bed. Coyotes cried and trampled the grass low

00:51:44.610 - 00:52:05.580

on the hill. We were afraid then that we had come to an end. The rain sounded the strength of our shelter. All night we held each other fearing darkness and rain. We were children waiting still to be born. We did not hear then the splendid shivering of

00:52:05.580 - 00:52:22.710

poplars pleading the dawn. Morton Marcus: We have been listening to the poetry and prose of Paul Calandrino, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. And it is wonderful to see a writer continue to grow

00:52:22.710 - 00:52:37.050

and continue to grow. And I hope Paul certainly will be here again, maybe within the next year with all new things. If you want to see, "The Green Dresser," it will be out in the Porter Gulch Review, which will actually be out within two

00:52:37.050 - 00:52:51.270

weeks. And Joe will be with you next week but I will be with you the week after that with six or seven contributors from the Porter Gulch Review, which will be on sale the very very next day. And if you don't know what the Porter Gulch Review is, it

00:52:51.270 - 00:53:05.280

is this wonderful county-wide, Monterey Bay wide, actually nationwide now, literary magazine that is put out by Cabrillo College. About ten thousand copies are put out free of charge in all the bookstores around the county and some of

00:53:05.280 - 00:53:13.470

this literature is just marvelous. How many times have you been in it Paul? Paul Calandrino: In two issues. Morton Marcus: In two issues? Yeah. So we will be hearing some

00:53:12.360 - 00:53:23.880

Paul Calandrino: Well, thank you. It's a pleasure for me to of the new things from Porter Gulch in two weeks. Paul will not be one of the people here since he had his whole hour tonight. But I hope you've enjoyed the show. I want to say

00:53:23.880 - 00:53:36.930

that we thank Stapleton's rocery for providing a grant to elp make the first half of our rogramming possible. tapleton's Grocery specializes n organic produce and nadulterated comestibles in the armers Exchange Building in

00:53:36.930 - 00:53:56.160

anta Cruz. Whoops. And we also ant to thank Plaza Books and Thi gs for providing a grant in supp rt of this past half hour. Plaz Books is on the Pacific Garde Mall and have a wonderful selec ion of books, so those are our ponsors. Joe will be with you

00:53:56.160 - 00:54:08.940

ext week. I urge you to stay uned for "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" with Tim Folger, wh will be next. And again, tha k you so much, Paul Calandrino, ou know, it's been great spen ing an hour with you. I mean, so e of my friends I just didn'

00:54:08.940 - 00:54:17.490

ever get time to see, that's wh we've got to have a radio sh w. So it's been great and it s wonderful hearing the new po ms, they're really terri ic. be here.

00:54:17.520 - 00:54:18.300

Morton Marcus: Great, great.