00:00:00.000 - 00:01:30.440

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Good evening, everybody. This is Morton Marcus.

00:01:30.440 - 00:01:42.320

This is the poetry show, June 9, 2002. And my guest tonight is Phyllis Koestenbaum, who has been on this program before. In fact, her last book, Criminal Sonnets,

00:01:42.320 - 00:01:53.480

was a very, very lively show. And we are here to celebrate, as well as talk with Phyllis, but celebrate her eighth book of poetry, Doris Day and Kitschy Melodies.

00:01:53.480 - 00:02:05.920

And though this deals with many subjects which Phyllis has dealt with before, in a very, very personal voice, has the other books. Also, this is a book of prose poems.

00:02:05.920 - 00:02:14.680

And as many of you know out there, this is very close to my heart, therefore. So we will be talking to Phyllis tonight about the new book, about prose poems, and about her life,

00:02:14.680 - 00:02:20.920

which maybe with Criminal Sonnets, we should have talked about more of anyway. Welcome to the show once more, Phyllis. Thank you, Morton.

00:02:20.920 - 00:02:30.040

I'm very glad to be here. We're happy to have you here. Nice, lovely Santa Cruz Day. Phyllis, why don't you, your poems deal so much

00:02:30.040 - 00:02:40.320

with your personal life, and actually your autobiography in many ways. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your life? All right, well, I was born in Brooklyn,

00:02:40.320 - 00:02:53.200

and that's an important, that enters into the poems quite a lot. And my first venture away from Brooklyn was to go to college at Radcliffe, now Harvard.

00:02:54.120 - 00:03:09.040

And I was a very ardent young woman, ardent about poetry, studied there originally in my first year with John Ciardi, and then took other courses with Theodore Morrison,

00:03:09.040 - 00:03:22.640

and that was actually a daunting experience, and it was in Theodore Morrison's class that I stopped writing for many years, for maybe 25. The only other woman in that class, interestingly enough,

00:03:22.640 - 00:03:34.840

was Adrienne Rich, and she of course went on at the end of that year to win the Yale Younger Poets Award. And then I studied with Richard Wilbur as well,

00:03:34.840 - 00:03:51.040

that was basically a poetry study class, but the sort of pivotal events in some way of my life, perhaps, was that year with Morrison, in which I was led to believe that the subject matter

00:03:51.040 - 00:04:05.720

of my work, which was, as it is now, my life, was not appropriate if I was to go forward into the world of art, and that's where I wanted to go. - And that was the reason that you stopped writing?

00:04:05.720 - 00:04:16.480

- That really-- - You was so emphatic about that? - He was very emphatic, he was highly critical. It's almost hard to recreate that climate,

00:04:16.480 - 00:04:33.000

but it was a climate of strictness, of unbelievable strictness, rule upon rule upon rule. And of course I didn't exactly know what I was doing and wanted very much to be taught.

00:04:33.000 - 00:04:42.600

- So this was around 1952? - It was 1949, actually. - And this was really, a lot of these people had returned from World War II.

00:04:42.600 - 00:04:51.720

- That's correct. - And they had gone through the GI Bill, they were the old teachers before the war, and because right before the war there had been a depression,

00:04:51.720 - 00:05:05.660

I have evolved, the theory, long stated, that this sense of conservatism, this sense of wanting to go back to a totally secure, non-personal way of addressing the arts,

00:05:05.660 - 00:05:17.320

became what we now know as the academics. And it was the people who I went, even 10 years later, the people who I were involved with at the University of Iowa,

00:05:17.320 - 00:05:23.960

and they never wrote about themselves. That was taboo. - That's right. - And the world has changed enormously.

00:05:23.960 - 00:05:31.800

You use the word climate, it's a perfect word. It was a totally different climate that people cannot imagine. The same thing with the McCarthy area.

00:05:31.800 - 00:05:40.040

It was a different climate, and when you talk to classes about this, they just don't understand. - I like your theory very much.

00:05:40.040 - 00:05:51.040

I like the point that you're bringing up, and I recall that in Ciarti's class, the poets we were reading, Carl Shapiro, and there's a picture of Carl Shapiro

00:05:51.040 - 00:05:59.960

in the little Oscar Williams anthology that I brought with me, he's wearing a uniform, basically, an army uniform.

00:05:59.960 - 00:06:15.520

And in Ciarti's class, we also read Delmore Schwartz, who would suffer, have a very grievous, aggrievous, and we read T.S. Eliot. I was very smitten with T.S. Eliot,

00:06:15.520 - 00:06:27.520

but the personal was absolutely verboten. And what's interesting, of course, is that Adrienne Rich went on, and she wrote not very personal poems,

00:06:27.520 - 00:06:42.560

but she, exactly, but she went on to, not necessarily to disclaim the earlier work, but to start anew, and she started anew with writing about her life.

00:06:42.560 - 00:06:57.800

So it was a very difficult period for me, and I decided that I, for whatever the reason, whether I didn't have the strength, in some way, I think, was a very courageous decision

00:06:57.800 - 00:07:09.720

to put it aside, to put it aside, and of course, I returned much later, and of course, I regret the long period in which I didn't write, not only because

00:07:09.720 - 00:07:25.960

those years would have been filled with my life, but also because I had to start old, or older. I think it's hard, I think, you know, Robert Bly said this, and I didn't like it when he said it,

00:07:25.960 - 00:07:38.120

but he was right, that you need 30 years to develop your craft, and you do, you need a long time, and I've learned that now. I didn't have that time.

00:07:38.120 - 00:07:49.360

- Well, I don't necessarily agree with Robert. I think that, you know, a lot of people have died at 37 to 39 years of age, and it is amazing what they have accomplished

00:07:49.360 - 00:07:56.360

up to that time. It's as though the body and the psyche know they've got a limited amount of time to do it, and people who live long lives,

00:07:56.360 - 00:08:09.920

therefore, you're developing in other ways. You're getting ready to do that, and certainly your use of language was there all the time. So, no, I would not have thought,

00:08:09.920 - 00:08:20.760

when I read your earlier work, that you had not written until you were 44 years old, which is the age, actually, which I don't know. So, I don't necessarily agree with that.

00:08:20.760 - 00:08:30.560

I think we do things when we have to do them, and I think that art, a big part of any art, is just doing it, and if you're not gonna do it, there's a reason that you don't do it,

00:08:30.560 - 00:08:35.500

because art becomes a necessity now, and it's a necessity for you, right? - Yes, that's correct. - Okay, anyway, you got married,

00:08:35.500 - 00:08:44.060

so I'm gonna get on the post. - Oh, yes, oh, yes, yes, I got married. I did the thing that women, young women did in the early 50s.

00:08:44.060 - 00:08:58.580

I got married, and I had a large family, four children. One of my children is a musician, a cellist. One of them is a writer of considerable fame, at least as far as I'm concerned,

00:08:58.580 - 00:09:15.200

perhaps the world doesn't see it that way. And I led a very routine, sheltered, boring life. It was a boring life. I read a lot, and I was very--

00:09:15.200 - 00:09:24.480

- Did you know it was boring, or were you just sort of in a conversation? - I did, I did know, I knew it was boring. I knew it was boring, but I didn't see a way out,

00:09:24.480 - 00:09:33.400

and I didn't-- - Your husband was a professor? - That's right, philosophy professor, at San Jose State. - San Jose State. - That's correct, but I had these four children,

00:09:33.400 - 00:09:50.820

and the domestic responsibilities of doing, raising them adequately, and they're really, I can't imagine how I could have done anything, but what I did having made that choice

00:09:50.820 - 00:10:06.120

to have those four children. And then when they got older, I began to write, with pleasure, but with surprise, I must say as well, because I had so completely repressed the idea

00:10:06.120 - 00:10:13.360

that I indeed had wanted to be a writer from the time I was quite young. - Let me ask you a personal question. - Sure.

00:10:13.360 - 00:10:24.680

- Did you start writing after the breakup with your husband? - No, no. I started writing, I would say, about five to 10 years before the marriage actually ended,

00:10:27.200 - 00:10:41.660

maybe five, 10 is a little bit too many years. And sometimes I think that the change in me, change always leads to more change, that that might have occasioned,

00:10:41.660 - 00:10:55.460

certainly a significant readjustment of that relationship, and eventually it was a divorce, it was a bad divorce, but I was already writing, and that was already, had become the center of my life.

00:10:55.460 - 00:11:04.200

And it has remained so. - And you narrate poetry, but in the position you hold at Stanford though? - I don't hold it, it's a position,

00:11:04.200 - 00:11:16.020

but it's not a teaching position, I'm a scholar, I'm a senior scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. And that's a group of mostly women,

00:11:16.020 - 00:11:34.200

there have been men, but most of us have been women. Women in all disciplines who share their work, and learn and profit from each other's considerable research, I'm one of the few creative artists who is there.

00:11:34.200 - 00:11:45.300

- The reason I ask all these questions are they're gonna figure so much in these poems, and since we're gonna be talking about what you're doing, the method that you're using in this,

00:11:45.300 - 00:11:54.780

which seems to me to be so much more important than it was in the other books, that I wanted the people out there to know, I want them to know about your mother,

00:11:54.780 - 00:12:02.300

tell us a little bit about your mother and your relationship with her. - Because certainly she's a major character in these poems.

00:12:02.300 - 00:12:14.860

Well, my mother had no education, you know, two years of high school, which is essentially no education. My father, however, had a PhD in English literature,

00:12:14.860 - 00:12:27.780

one of the, probably the first one in our family, in both sides of the family, to have any sort of academic training, and he became a high school English teacher,

00:12:27.780 - 00:12:41.180

and my mother was a housewife. And the expectation for me, of course, was that I would follow in her footsteps, so to speak, although from an early age,

00:12:41.180 - 00:12:54.260

I clearly had an aptitude for writing and was encouraged by my father. Yes, my mother figures very heavily in these poems, and she perhaps, perhaps I, you know,

00:12:54.260 - 00:13:13.820

paint a far darker picture than I ought to, because I think there was nothing enormously outwardly destructive in terms of our relationship. I was fed, clothed, and nourished in some ways,

00:13:13.820 - 00:13:31.180

but I have a lot of anger because I felt that I wasn't nourished in the deeper sense. My mother was very cold and did not take my aspiration seriously.

00:13:31.180 - 00:13:44.100

And in many ways, she is sort of the shadow of what you were expected to become, and to lead the life that women had led up through her, and which Morrison would have loved

00:13:44.100 - 00:13:56.420

to have steered you on, right? Well, no, I don't necessarily think he would have wanted that. I think that he just couldn't see me becoming

00:13:56.420 - 00:14:12.180

a real writer if I was to continue as I was, and that was a real double bind, because on the one hand, he accepted me into this class, which was composed largely of Neyman Fellows,

00:14:12.180 - 00:14:25.500

who were journalists who were admitted to Harvard on fellowship, they'd leave their newspaper for a year. But he admitted me into this class and praised me quite happily early on,

00:14:25.500 - 00:14:40.780

and then as I became, I think, more myself in terms of my writing, he became really quite angry at what I was doing, or so I perceived him. I've written an essay actually this year,

00:14:40.780 - 00:14:55.700

which is called The Secret Climate, the year I stopped writing, which delves into all of this rather extensively. It's a very long essay, and I have some theories as to what was going on that year.

00:14:55.700 - 00:15:05.140

Well, we've got the cast. Okay. And we've also got, which I also wanted to bring out to the listeners out there, we've got the fact

00:15:05.140 - 00:15:19.660

that there are many moods and attitudes, yours that come out of here, there's anger, there's bitterness, there's envy, that comes out, I think, very slightly.

00:15:19.660 - 00:15:37.140

And as well as this unrelenting desire to understand what all of these different elements mean. And what I would like you to do before you go any farther is to read a poem, and then we're gonna discuss

00:15:37.140 - 00:15:44.940

what you're doing in the poem. Okay, that's-- So you people out there, if you seem to be confused at first, we're gonna have all the answers for you.

00:15:44.940 - 00:15:58.500

I'll read, I'll start by reading, well, I'll start with this one. I was gonna say, I was going to start reading a very short one, but this one discusses

00:15:58.500 - 00:16:11.660

or goes into some of the issues. I'm going to read Maria Callis on Broadway. And for our audience, I think you're not gonna believe this, but every reference you make, you have to back up.

00:16:11.660 - 00:16:30.180

So I will ask you, who is Maria Callis? Maria Callis was a very famous opera diva who died maybe 20 or 30 years ago. She was a tempestuous star who, at some point in her life,

00:16:32.380 - 00:16:45.420

lost her voice or diminished considerably. She was married to, I guess it's Aristotle Onassis who married Jacqueline Kennedy. Well, many people felt that he left her for die-

00:16:45.420 - 00:16:51.700

That may very well have been. And it was the turning point in Callis's life. It may very well have been. She never, ever forgot this.

00:16:51.700 - 00:17:00.300

She was enraged. Their relationship is very tempestuous anyways. Yes, and she was, of course, brilliant. Yeah, great voice.

00:17:00.300 - 00:17:10.980

Great voice. Maria Callis on Broadway. Eventually, the marriage of Daniel Berenboim and Jacqueline Dupre, ill with multiple sclerosis,

00:17:10.980 - 00:17:23.540

puffed up for medication, fell apart. I'm not saying it could or should have been otherwise. We sat in the front row at her concert. My husband, not yet traveling to Europe

00:17:23.540 - 00:17:34.660

with his young mistress, my teenage son, already a serious cellist. And I, before I'd started writing poems while my youngest child was at school,

00:17:34.660 - 00:17:48.180

from 10 until two in the master bedroom at a small desk, the first I'd owned. Brutal Bettelheim's suicide, barely coterminous with my reawakened passion for poetry.

00:17:48.180 - 00:18:03.460

I read Bruno Bettelheim and Isaac Bashivist Singer. When some fact about Singer's personal life disturbed me, sullied his image, I still read each new novel in hard cover, but less enthusiastically, although, of course,

00:18:03.460 - 00:18:14.740

the work could have weakened. How bothered was I by Eliot's anti-Semitism? It never came up in Chardi's class, although Sacco and Vanzetti did.

00:18:14.740 - 00:18:28.020

I also read Georges Siminone novel, novel after novel, and novels I'd read reviews of, man child in the Promised Land. I felt hopeful because of the talent of my children,

00:18:28.020 - 00:18:40.140

their flowering destinies. Arturo Toscanini was conducting the NBC Symphony in Beethoven's ninth, when or after which, I left to babysit Martha and her little brother

00:18:40.140 - 00:18:52.060

across the hall. Click, click went the heels of dolled mothers as they walked to the elevator on Saturday nights. If my mother cried when my brother at 16 left for Harvard,

00:18:52.060 - 00:19:03.740

she did it behind her closed door. The apartment seemed even darker under the shroud of her exclusive loss. Patti Lupone played Maria Callis on Broadway.

00:19:03.740 - 00:19:17.020

From nowhere comes Patti Lupone. Joan, a philosophy major, outwitted all of us gathered in the dorm living room after dates to talk and argue in consequential points and subjects

00:19:17.020 - 00:19:26.900

with passion. I'd suddenly leave the fray, peel off clothes like the past, like petals, as I rushed to my room ready for bed the minute I got there.

00:19:26.900 - 00:19:42.420

OK, now, that is a prose poem. All of the poems in this book are made up of solid paragraphs. They're usually around a page long. That's correct.

00:19:42.420 - 00:19:49.980

And one-- so we'll get this out of the way-- Sure. We could hear when you read, and we will hear when you read, an intense rhythm, all right?

00:19:49.980 - 00:20:09.140

So that the rhythm of poetry is still there. Now, that said, let us talk about the methodology, which I would call collage, but you can call crossword or association. So go, take it from there.

00:20:09.140 - 00:20:21.700

Collage, of course. Association, absolutely. Crossword, I don't know. I take that from one of your poems, but just wonder--

00:20:21.700 - 00:20:24.660

Oh, yes. Up down the side. Yeah, I want to get my life-- I want to get my life--

00:20:24.660 - 00:20:40.260

I'm doing crosswords to get my life off the dime. Methodology, I will try to be clear, at least, to give you some hints as to my process. And I looked at some of these poems this morning,

00:20:40.260 - 00:20:53.980

and I thought about it. And I realized, I've long realized, that in many of the poems, I talk about writing, why I'm writing, why I didn't write, what I expect from the reader,

00:20:53.980 - 00:21:11.220

or worry about the reader receiving, the difficulty of the writing, and so forth. And I began to see, and I don't know if I'm correct, that what happens in the poems is that the events of my life

00:21:11.220 - 00:21:27.980

are almost inextricably involved or connected to that actual process of writing, so that when I talk about the difficulty of writing, I'm also talking about the difficulty of my life,

00:21:27.980 - 00:21:40.340

if that makes any sense. In terms of how it's done, in terms of the methodology, I almost don't know. You know, what I did with all of these--

00:21:40.340 - 00:21:53.140

and they were written over a period of maybe 10 years. Most of them, I would say, more feverishly in the last two or three-- I would sit down and start to write,

00:21:53.140 - 00:22:13.980

not never having a subject matter, just starting to write. And indeed, in terms of association, association would lead to association, but without some sort of rhythmic control, without some management of the material that

00:22:13.980 - 00:22:31.980

arose, so that everything I felt needed to connect to everything else, so that much was eliminated, some added. But without that intense reworking, the poems wouldn't have come into being.

00:22:31.980 - 00:22:47.220

But that coming into being, although it involved a good deal of revision, much of it was really intuitive. They're really-- they're almost bodily. Well, let me take over that for two seconds

00:22:47.220 - 00:23:01.420

and just say the last line of the first poem in the book, which talks about many things, but specifically, talks about a dinner you had when you realized someone is at the next table with one arm,

00:23:01.420 - 00:23:09.860

and suddenly you'd want to exchange his life, which talks about maybe the boredom you felt for your own. Well, why don't you read us that one?

00:23:09.860 - 00:23:17.060

And then we'll get back to the other one, and listen out there for the last lines. OK. All right.

00:23:17.060 - 00:23:31.140

And this one, incidentally, was one of the first-- the first poem in the book and one of the very first prose poems I ever wrote. And originally, actually, it was in lines,

00:23:31.140 - 00:23:41.820

"Young armless man in the barbecue restaurant." "The hostess seats a girl and a young man in a short-sleeve sports shirt with one arm missing below the shoulder.

00:23:41.820 - 00:23:58.220

I'm at the next table with my husband and son, Andy's barbecue restaurant, an early evening in July, chewing a boneless rib eye, gulping a dark beer ordered from the cocktail waitress, a nervous woman almost over

00:23:58.220 - 00:24:11.580

the hill, whose high heel sandals click back and forth from the bar to the dining room joined to the bar by an open arch. A tall, heavy cook in white hat is brushing sauce

00:24:11.580 - 00:24:23.540

on the chicken and spare ribs, rotating slowly on a squeaking spit, baked potatoes heat on the oven floor. The young man is eating salad with his one hand.

00:24:23.540 - 00:24:33.340

He and his girl are on a date. He has a '40s movie face. Early Van Johnson, before the motorcycle accident, scarred his forehead.

00:24:33.340 - 00:24:46.300

He lost the arm recently, hard as it is. It could be worse. I would even exchange places with him if I could. I want to exchange places with the young, armless man

00:24:46.300 - 00:24:58.700

in the barbecue restaurant. He would sit at my table, and I would sit at his. After dinner, I would go in his car, and he would go in mine. I would live in his house and work at his job,

00:24:58.700 - 00:25:10.340

and he would live in my house and do what I do. I would be him, dressing and undressing, and he would be me, dressing and undressing. Our bill comes.

00:25:10.340 - 00:25:24.500

My husband leaves the tip on the tray. We take toothpicks and mints and walk through the dark working man's bar out to the parking lot, still lit by the sky, though the street lights have come on

00:25:24.500 - 00:25:39.860

as they do automatically at the same time each night. We drive our son, home for the summer, back to his job at the bookstore. As old Italians and Jews say of sons from 5 to 50,

00:25:39.860 - 00:25:50.100

he's a good boy. I have worked on this paragraph for more than two years. So there's your revision idea, which is one of the things I wanted to get to.

00:25:50.100 - 00:26:03.740

But this poem is also very different from the other one. That's right. And almost different from every one in the book, because it is totally located in one place, the speaker

00:26:03.740 - 00:26:17.540

observer, which I never like to call being you, because I am a product of that conservative plan. That's right. Just looks at this scene, paints the scene,

00:26:17.540 - 00:26:28.860

and is immersed in the scene, and isn't leaping back and forth from association. So this is very much understandable. Now we go back to Maria Collis on Broadway,

00:26:28.860 - 00:26:40.700

and you are working with association. And for the people out there who don't know what we mean by association, we're talking about association of ideas. One idea clicks off the other.

00:26:40.700 - 00:26:55.100

You do not have a transition from one idea to another. And if I may go back to your love of T.S. Eliot, this is what T.S. Eliot brings in, and what Robert Bly would later call imaginative leaps.

00:26:55.100 - 00:27:06.220

And the reader has to try to fill in those leaps or make connections throughout the poems. So I don't know if you want to take us through Maria Collis on Broadway, but let's do it.

00:27:06.220 - 00:27:10.860

I think it would be great. Let's do it. And then we'll take a break and come in and come back and just do a whole poem.

00:27:10.860 - 00:27:22.740

OK. Well, it starts out, of course, with my thinking about the famous cellist Jacqueline Dupre, who had been married to the conductor of Daniel Barenbois,

00:27:22.740 - 00:27:34.540

a pianist who was her husband. She got multiple sclerosis, and the marriage fell apart, and she died. And I'm not saying it could or should have been otherwise.

00:27:34.540 - 00:27:52.220

I'm actually not making a critical comment. But then I move into my own marriage and remember, indeed, that my husband had a mistress. And so we could argue that, though I'm not

00:27:52.220 - 00:28:01.580

making a critical comment about Barenbois' behavior-- You are about your husband. I certainly am. And then, of course, in a sense, though,

00:28:01.580 - 00:28:20.460

I'm moving on to what's more important, because I'm saying sort of forget that. Because I started to write poems, and that really is what's central in this poem is the desire

00:28:20.460 - 00:28:35.660

to fulfill the desire to be a mature artist. And I talk about writers who I read rather intensively at one point in my life, Bruna Bettelheim. I read a lot of Isaac Bashif as singer.

00:28:35.660 - 00:28:51.540

And then I read about, again, going back into the connection between singer's personal life. Is there a personal life that matters other than the life in the book?

00:28:51.540 - 00:29:12.060

When I read some facts about singer's personal life that I didn't really like, nonetheless, again, I put that information behind, sort of trying to pierce through art in some way.

00:29:12.060 - 00:29:28.300

Having learned the lesson that Morrison was so eager to teach me that the personal life matters, but art in some way can use the life that I believe. But that isn't really all there is.

00:29:28.300 - 00:29:42.700

And I'm, in a sense, reminiscing, because while I bring up T.S. Eliot's noted anti-Semitism, I read T.S. Eliot in John Chardi's class, Anti-Semitism Never Came Up.

00:29:42.700 - 00:29:56.660

What came up was Sacco and Vanzetti, who were falsely accused in a very famous case that Chardi was very moved by. It was very important to him.

00:29:56.660 - 00:30:08.780

And I talk about, you would say, sort of a minor novelist, in some sense, or a minor artist, although some may differ with me, Georges Simonon. I realize now that maybe that was important.

00:30:08.780 - 00:30:21.500

He was a writer of mystery novels. And I think, therefore, that it's not an accident that Georges Simonon appears here. And I also read Manchild and the Promised Land.

00:30:21.500 - 00:30:35.980

That's not an accident, because what I started out talking about in some way was my son, who had become a cellist. And I was intent at that time in the flowering

00:30:35.980 - 00:30:45.140

of my children's destinies, and not my own. And everyone mentioned so far as male also. That's right, indeed. And then as is Arturo Toscanini.

00:30:45.140 - 00:30:59.740

And then I moved from Arturo Toscanini, who's-- I remember his-- those broadcasts when I was in school back in Brooklyn. I think they were on Saturday nights, the NBC Symphony.

00:30:59.740 - 00:31:09.340

And then I went across the hall. I was a babysitter. I wasn't an artist. And that's a very, very sort of personal scene

00:31:09.340 - 00:31:22.460

with these women dressed on Saturday night, their venture out into the world. My mother became-- who ventured on such Saturday night,

00:31:22.460 - 00:31:32.940

enters the poem. I don't have a reason to put her there. Except that your mother is crying behind a closed door for a prince who has left her.

00:31:32.940 - 00:31:46.540

That's right. But I didn't consciously understand that. I think that when one works, as I do, or did on these poems, the material is there, the emotions.

00:31:46.540 - 00:32:04.220

And one-- they rise if you're practiced at it, and if you allow them to. But where it ends is a very critical scene. And that's the scene in my college dormitory,

00:32:04.220 - 00:32:18.500

at a time when I really didn't know what was ahead for me, or perhaps didn't know and regretted the direction I knew that my life would turn. So what I do is I peel off clothes like the past,

00:32:18.500 - 00:32:31.700

like petals, and I rush to my room, ready for bed the minute I got there, ready for, I guess, for dream in some sense. There's a sense also.

00:32:31.700 - 00:32:44.020

And I noted that this morning and wrote myself a note. See if I can decipher my handwriting here. That at the same time that I yearn for the past, I write about the past.

00:32:44.020 - 00:32:58.420

There's a good deal of nostalgia. There's a constant desire to throw it away, to realize myself in the present. And that's what's happening here with hopefully not

00:32:58.420 - 00:33:08.100

a jumble, or even a patchwork. But hopefully it comes off as an artistic-- Well, because there is so much reference to writing. I am doing this.

00:33:08.100 - 00:33:17.900

I am trying to take memory. We haven't used that word yet. I'm trying to take these flashes of memory and make something from my past about the present.

00:33:17.900 - 00:33:30.420

Because I feel you can only do that by using the past. But you cannot always be in the present. Or it's just-- it's got no beginning and end. So I just can't do it.

00:33:30.420 - 00:33:39.260

But anyway, we are talking with Phyllis Kastenbaum about her new book, Doris Day and Kitchy Melodies. We will be back in a very short time. I'll have some PSAs.

00:33:39.260 - 00:33:48.820

And then we will go on talking with Phyllis about the book and have her read much more poetry. I promise you're out there. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:33:59.260 - 00:34:32.340

Well, this is Mort Marcus again. And we have some announcements as we always do at this time in the show. On Saturday, June 15, that is next Saturday,

00:34:32.340 - 00:34:43.260

at the Allen Chadwick Garden, the farm and garden at UCSE. From 12 to 2 PM, there will be the annual poetry reading at the farm. Go up there.

00:34:43.260 - 00:34:54.580

Take a look at that wonderful enterprise that's been going on Chadwick, who is long gone, but left as one of his legacies. The wonderful garden up there and this class

00:34:54.580 - 00:35:05.020

that goes on from one year to the next. Anyway, the poetry reading from 12 to 2 on Saturday, June 15 will feature a wonderful array of five poets, Stephen Meadows, who's been on this show,

00:35:05.020 - 00:35:16.860

Patrice Facchione, who's not only been on the show, but has actually been a host of the show for a year or more. Michael Hanne and the terrific poet from San Luis Obispo, Jay Salter, and of course, Gary

00:35:16.860 - 00:35:33.060

Young, who was on the show around three or four weeks ago and whose new book is just absolutely stunning. And of course, there's another book of prose poems. Melitza Bagnales has won the People Before Prophets Poetry

00:35:33.060 - 00:35:50.580

Prize, put out by Burning Bush Publications. And this is an announcement. The three honorable mentions for the 2002 are Avocia for Oaktown Blue, Marilyn Buck for Wild Poppies,

00:35:50.580 - 00:36:02.220

and Barber Leon for Poem for the High Holy Days. Our contest dedicated to works that inspire appreciation for human life, the natural world, community-centered democratic processes,

00:36:02.220 - 00:36:14.060

and underrepresented voices, historical knowledge, receive many quality poems. And we announce that all the time, if you're interested in getting in touch with Burning Bush,

00:36:14.060 - 00:36:30.020

which Abby Boglamouli is the executive director of, just get in touch with on your web, www.bbbooks.com. So that's where you can find them out. And one more announcement.

00:36:30.020 - 00:36:42.180

KOSP thanks our community of contributing listeners for supporting our 30 Years of Service to the Central Coast. This and every program on KOSP is supported by you, our contributing listeners.

00:36:42.180 - 00:36:54.620

And stay tuned immediately after the show for From the Bookshelf, hosted by Billy Harris. This week, she welcomed Susan Stewart to read from D.H. Lawrence's The Virgin and the Gypsies.

00:36:54.620 - 00:37:03.740

Your listening pleasure is guaranteed this Sunday. That's at 9 o'clock on KOSP From the Bookshelf. So stay tuned. We, meanwhile, on the poetry show,

00:37:03.740 - 00:37:15.620

are talking to Phyllis Constanbaum. And we are talking about her new and wonderful book, D'Ariste and Kitchy Melodies. And I'm going to have Phyllis go and start

00:37:15.620 - 00:37:25.260

to read from the book now. Well, again, what she's doing in these prose poems is she is, if you want to call it, imaginative leaping, or you can call it subconscious leaping,

00:37:25.260 - 00:37:33.060

whatever you want to do. She is going on one idea which kicks off another idea, which kicks off another idea. This is association.

00:37:33.060 - 00:37:45.620

But there aren't transitions for you to follow. You've got to make the leaps and then see how all of these things came together. Almost all the subjects are from her life, her early life,

00:37:45.620 - 00:37:57.820

memories of family, of usually going to college, maybe, her mother, her husband. There's every conceivable emotional attitude and feeling in these poems.

00:37:57.820 - 00:38:06.540

So let's have Phyllis read several of them, or one at a time, and make comments on them. Phyllis, it's all yours. Thank you, Morton.

00:38:06.540 - 00:38:16.780

Thank you very much. I'm going to read Tall Diana Durbin. And I do want to say that Diana Durbin was sort of a child movie star.

00:38:16.780 - 00:38:28.620

When I was a child, she was slightly older, and she was one of the movie stars in movies. I loved going to movies. Tall Diana Durbin.

00:38:28.620 - 00:38:41.540

The family that bought the partially built house next to our summer place in Cahonksan came from the south. My father called them poor white trash. The boy and girl went barefoot.

00:38:41.540 - 00:38:54.140

On our way home to Brooklyn from a spring or full weekend in Cahonksan, we dropped the father at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for his war job. During the war, my father would pick up hitchhiking servicemen

00:38:54.140 - 00:39:05.740

in our blue Plymouth. Our first car bought at Artwin Motors on Ocean Avenue from a salesman like a detective, never without a hat. My father used Sonoko gas.

00:39:05.740 - 00:39:19.460

There was a Sonoko station on Ocean and Avenue O. Sometimes he sang Old Black Joe, "Swanee River, flow gently, sweet Afton. Believe me if all those endearing young charms."

00:39:19.460 - 00:39:30.220

I sang with him. In the prison movie, I worry that the lines about the pencil box I got for my 10th birthday were accidentally dropped from my published poem,

00:39:30.220 - 00:39:39.980

but they weren't. I cut them deliberately. Its two drawers contained an eraser, a ruler, small colored pencils sharpened to a point,

00:39:39.980 - 00:39:51.340

a useless protractor, a compass, a pencil sharpener that didn't sharpen. The man spent more than three years in solitary and couldn't stand straight.

00:39:51.340 - 00:40:02.100

His cheeks caved in like someone in a Walker Evans photo. The southern girl and I played once or twice. She was younger. We had little in common.

00:40:02.100 - 00:40:14.900

When I don't have dolls anymore, even tall Deanna Durbin, I kept in her box on the shelf. I asked for a doll carriage from the Brooklyn Sears to take to Cahungson for the summer.

00:40:14.900 - 00:40:25.700

One summer, I imagined hitting the ball on a rubber string with a whitewood paddle it was attached to, would be easy, and it wasn't. I wheeled the flimsy doll carriage

00:40:25.700 - 00:40:40.740

without a doll on the shale driveway and the strip of cement at the back of the Cahungson house, wishing not for a doll, but to facilitate imagination along cement street like the easy Brooklyn sidewalks,

00:40:40.740 - 00:41:00.420

mother's wheel, real babies on. Do you want to make any statements about that? No, I'm always interested in re-regarding the poems. I know that often when connections might have been

00:41:00.420 - 00:41:17.460

felicitous, certainly readers would have benefited from them. Sometimes I would deliberately remove the connections, hoping that there would be connections that would be more interesting that could be found if the ones that

00:41:17.460 - 00:41:32.180

were there were not there. And I realized that there are difficulties with that method or with that process. I know that it's interesting that last line in which I say,

00:41:32.180 - 00:41:51.380

but to facilitate imagination, which is very wordy and very sort of out of the voice of this young girl at that point. But that's a very important phrase, because I think that even at the point in time

00:41:51.380 - 00:42:05.380

that I'm referring to, I was beginning to view the world in terms of real world and the construction of the world. And the real world was not satisfying,

00:42:05.380 - 00:42:16.240

and the world, the interior world, from which I hopefully would one day write what was far more vivid and happy. OK.

00:42:16.240 - 00:42:27.980

OK, I think a lot of people can see at least some of the movements. I think that these are poems really that have to be read by the reader, and not just,

00:42:27.980 - 00:42:36.220

let's say, heard in a poetry reading. Sure. You can make certain of the connections, but it really is worth picking up the book and buying it

00:42:36.220 - 00:42:46.740

and sitting home and reading these poems over and over again. So before you go any farther, where is the book on sale? All right. The book, hopefully Bookshop Santa Cruz has it in the local stores.

00:42:46.740 - 00:42:57.660

I've been in touch with them, and I think that they may, at this point, have it. It also is available on amazon.com for those who want to do it that way.

00:42:57.660 - 00:43:12.500

Also, it's being distributed by small press distribution, and it's always available from my publisher, La Questa Press in Woodside, California. OK, now, small press distribution is in--

00:43:12.500 - 00:43:15.940

SPD is in Berkeley. It's in Berkeley. So-- And you can look it up there.

00:43:15.940 - 00:43:27.260

But try Bookshop Santa Cruz first. And if these poems intrigue you, especially writers out there and how they're done, and the women out there who may have been reading too much

00:43:27.260 - 00:43:36.780

and getting bored, certainly-- or who have been in that situation and have left it and grown out of it, I think this would have certainly-- all of those people

00:43:36.780 - 00:43:48.140

would be a boon, as they say. People may wonder why you have the title, Doris Day and Kitchy Melodies. I would certainly like you to talk about that.

00:43:48.140 - 00:43:57.820

But one thing we haven't mentioned that is all over these poems is, of course, movies. And the many said to Anna Durbin, I said, oh, we haven't talked about movies.

00:43:57.820 - 00:44:11.100

So many of these poems touch on the memories of movies that were so important to us in the '40s and in the '50s. And of course, I own that same pencil box. I don't know how you got it.

00:44:11.100 - 00:44:19.380

And everyone I know is saying, what is this protracted for? What does the word even mean? It was absolutely useless for everything. Yes.

00:44:19.380 - 00:44:26.340

Yes, yes. But I loved that pencil box. It had so many nice little compartments in it and little drawers.

00:44:26.340 - 00:44:32.860

And the little drawer, it was all cardboard. And it cost nothing. Nothing cost anything. It was amazing in those days.

00:44:32.860 - 00:44:36.700

That's right. Yes. That's funny. Movies.

00:44:36.700 - 00:44:44.620

I love the movies. I still do. I always will. And I started going when I was very young and went all the time.

00:44:44.620 - 00:44:53.220

It was one of the activities, actually, that the activities that we did as a family, we went to movies. We read. We all read.

00:44:53.220 - 00:45:02.860

There, of course, was no TV. There was radio. We did listen to the radio. But we usually sat around my brother and my mother,

00:45:02.860 - 00:45:12.100

my father and myself, and we read. And then during the summer, particularly, we would go to the movies every night. We all just loved the movies.

00:45:12.100 - 00:45:19.580

Now, there are people out there who are saying, how for $8.50 a ticket could you go to a movie? Let them know. $0.10.

00:45:19.580 - 00:45:25.500

$0.10. And that was probably-- and I guess children got in until they were 12. Yeah.

00:45:25.500 - 00:45:34.460

Now, it was a very different world out there, folks. I was just speaking the other night, doing a part you're reading from a new book. And I was talking to people there.

00:45:34.460 - 00:45:43.300

And I was telling them that you could smoke in class when you were in college. And I mean, there were gasps from the younger people all over the room.

00:45:43.300 - 00:45:50.180

Yes. Yes. Life was very different. It's part of the nostalgia, the wanting

00:45:50.180 - 00:46:03.380

to return to the past. Unhappy or not, one's past, one is the beginning. Well, I think that's true. But I think it's even more true for us,

00:46:03.380 - 00:46:17.860

because we have watched this world change so dramatically because of the march of technology. And Alvin Toffler warned us about this 32 years ago. He said, you are the psyches of people who are alive today.

00:46:17.860 - 00:46:26.740

If you do not change with the technology, you are going to be like Stone Age people coming into the modern world, because things will change so much by the year 2000.

00:46:26.740 - 00:46:34.020

And of course, he was absolutely right. Yes. Yes. And that's what I don't think our children realize.

00:46:34.020 - 00:46:41.460

No. That we really are talking from a very different place. Yes. Yeah, that's certainly true.

00:46:41.460 - 00:46:46.360

Not, as you say, not criticizing it or not, just making observations. Yes. Yes.

00:46:46.360 - 00:46:53.660

That world was different. So we're going to the title of the book. OK. The title of the book is "Darstie and Kitchy Melodies."

00:46:53.660 - 00:47:18.700

And it's a phrase from one of the poems. I guess you'd call it the title poem, "Cassandra and Irene." And in that poem, I have a realization that I see a "Darstie" movie in one of the early weeks or months of my marriage,

00:47:18.700 - 00:47:38.580

when I'm still very hopeful. And I'm shockingly aware of the fact that I like "Darstie," that the life that she exudes is a life that even I could have.

00:47:38.580 - 00:47:58.060

I had shortly before graduated from college. I was very anti-academia. And that romantic, kitschy life was very, very appealing. So that seemed like a good title for the book.

00:47:58.060 - 00:48:18.460

The kitschy, which is often used negatively, is used with some irony here. But it's also my wish to include the ordinary everyday things in this book, to stay real, so to speak.

00:48:18.460 - 00:48:33.540

But that's its origin. It's from an actual movie that I saw. And for me, it says something much, much different also. To me, it says the exact opposite of the way this book works.

00:48:33.540 - 00:48:43.380

Because what it is talking about-- and I will read the section, which is-- I'm sure you may have it underlined-- I glimpsed a contentment.

00:48:43.380 - 00:48:51.820

And well, I'll just read it. When you look at the movie, you say, I glimpsed the contentment I hadn't even considered, let alone had access to.

00:48:51.820 - 00:49:06.820

And here's the important lines. How the body could give pleasure without the intercession of, say, something like the mind or even desire. Whereas all of these poems are about mind and desire.

00:49:06.820 - 00:49:15.820

So here is the promise of just being almost Buddhist being. You see? Which, of course, in your later life, you're never going to be able to accept.

00:49:15.820 - 00:49:29.340

I mean, that's the answers you're looking for in this book. And you move from the first poem of the book to the last poem, when you get some contentment. But the way you do it, it's the great irony of--

00:49:29.340 - 00:49:42.060

Dostoevsky saying, you should never follow the intellect when he's the most intellectual of all writers, that you must use mind and you must use desire as the basis to get to where you're going to go.

00:49:42.060 - 00:49:50.580

And it just doesn't work. It's oil and water. It's the wonder of being human, right? We just keep batting our heads against the wall.

00:49:50.580 - 00:49:58.060

If only I could have been Dara's day. It would all have been different, but I could not be Dara's. Can you dance? Can you sing?

00:49:58.060 - 00:50:04.940

Neither. Neither. Go. OK.

00:50:04.940 - 00:50:14.860

I could read that poem, but I think I won't, because it's so long. I think I'm going to read Mussolini. This is, again, the past.

00:50:14.860 - 00:50:25.460

And what's important in this poem, I think the line that's important, and I'll give you a clue in advance, is talking about my desire not to be conventional,

00:50:25.460 - 00:50:33.340

not to be a conventional-- I've got an underline right there. OK. This is the title of the poem, Mussolini, Mary Carr, Michael

00:50:33.340 - 00:50:46.460

Ryan, Margaret Johnson, Ben Aldrich, Heather McHugh, Hitler. We are sitting at the kitchen table playing dominoes. My father is talking about Mussolini.

00:50:46.460 - 00:50:57.020

I don't know how to play dominoes, but I am playing dominoes. And I know my father is angry and worried about war in distant Ethiopia.

00:50:57.020 - 00:51:10.260

Dominoes is the game Mary Carr's father and buddies play in the Liars Club, the book I've barely begun. I like finishing books I've begun, or else I'd start everybody's autobiography.

00:51:10.260 - 00:51:24.020

Maybe I should have bought Michael Ryan's red memoir. Margaret Johnson's Pretty Hair is Pale Yellow. We eat mediocre Chinese food. We agree is good in a Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant.

00:51:24.020 - 00:51:36.260

They pay $3 for a babysitter. To eat mediocre Chinese food, we agree is good. We'll cost Margaret Johnson and Ben Aldrich $12, which they can't afford.

00:51:36.260 - 00:51:49.340

Margaret sings in a church choir. Her work is less conventional than mine. I would like my work to be less conventional. My father doesn't call Mussolini tyrant, dictator, bully.

00:51:49.340 - 00:52:02.860

He teases me into a good night kiss, when for the first time years before dominoes and Mussolini, I assert this night I will not kiss him good night. I kiss him quenching my igneous essence.

00:52:02.860 - 00:52:13.540

The book I got igneous from Heather McHugh recommended at a reading. For almost a year when my father's bearded father dies, we do not listen to the radio.

00:52:13.540 - 00:52:27.020

I was expecting not to have the radio turned on for a year, but towards the end of the year, my father turns it on, probably for war news, a later war. Mussolini now a buddy of Hitler, a dictator my father

00:52:27.020 - 00:52:43.300

mentions as a dictator, but not as a dictator, particularly malevolent towards Jews, who we are. My father, my brother, I, who don't know how to play dominoes, that I don't know how makes me uneasy, uneasiness I accept.

00:52:43.300 - 00:52:58.300

My mother is fiddling with food and pots in her room. A movie could reproduce beautifully. Yellow indoor light exposing at the oilcloth covered kitchen table, my father, my brother, me, then from my father,

00:52:58.300 - 00:53:13.540

looking down at his dominoes Mussolini. - Okay, and believe it or not, we are beginning to run out of time, so if you could read shorter ones, - I will.

00:53:13.540 - 00:53:25.700

Okay, I'll read prose poet. - Okay. - While I eat my canned chicken broth, which I swear resembles urine, I look out the window

00:53:25.700 - 00:53:39.780

at my neighbor's blooming roses, one yellow, one red, buds last time I looked. My potted plants seem sloppy by comparison, white flowers that spot the deck like bird droppings.

00:53:39.780 - 00:53:54.220

My friend deprived of her small children without a house or job is concentrating on what she has inside. I also need to concentrate. Four grown children, house with mortgage, two part-time jobs.

00:53:54.220 - 00:54:07.380

One grown child has frayed sleeves, black socks, but clean feet, holes in his sweater, but intact body, though he doesn't think so. He dropped his razor in the tub so he's growing a beard.

00:54:07.380 - 00:54:19.020

When he can afford a new razor, he'll shave it off. I tell him he can love his father and still not trust him. After I say this, he says his chest hurts and he has to leave the table.

00:54:19.020 - 00:54:31.660

Dinner is soft and bland because I have a stomach bug. He eats soft and bland with appetite as much as he wants there is. He takes seconds and thirds and what he can't eat takes home.

00:54:31.660 - 00:54:46.100

I'm doing crosswords to move my life off the dime. If I wrote this in lines, would it be more or less musical? - And do you have an answer to that last question? - It would be no more musical.

00:54:46.100 - 00:54:57.340

- One of the reasons is you, because you've always practiced the conversational style, the talking style, instead of the real musical style. - Yes, that's true.

00:54:57.340 - 00:55:08.100

That's very true, yes. - Okay, we've got time I think for maybe one more. - One more. Do you have maybe one that, how much time?

00:55:08.100 - 00:55:15.980

- Well, there's Dr. J. - Would you like me to read? - Well, anyone actually that would be slightly less than one page or maybe, you know,

00:55:15.980 - 00:55:22.300

almost all of them are one page. - I'll read, shall I read Jewish Shakespeare? - Anything you want. - Okay, that's less than a page.

00:55:22.300 - 00:55:28.900

- Is that what you'd like to sign off with? - Well, I think not. I actually think I'm going to read a really short one to sign off.

00:55:28.900 - 00:55:39.220

And that would be Brooklyn Ballerina, which is very short and seems adequate and appropriate. Brooklyn Ballerina. Despite the weather, the shape of my body

00:55:39.220 - 00:55:47.820

and its pink bathrobe suggests I am beyond the smack of the telephone. It will be my daughter or my son, not likely the man that called once

00:55:47.820 - 00:55:56.540

with his heavy breathing. My friend has never been caught in the snow before, but this time she will be. She will be caught and will love it.

00:55:56.540 - 00:56:07.820

Sweets tempt me less, but memory, which my friend says she doesn't have, but remembers her dead cat is not the problem. I couldn't help naming what I think I no longer want.

00:56:07.820 - 00:56:17.900

The woman who grew up in an orphan asylum remembers, but doesn't talk about it. The nerve of the telephone, data tempts me less, but snow might.

00:56:17.900 - 00:56:28.700

One child resembles another. Remember tripping to the library, hearing dance Ballerina dance from a loud speaker, piped to King's Highway Passersby.

00:56:28.700 - 00:56:39.620

Remember though it pains to be back, imagining you liked that music. In the mood of dance Ballerina dance, imagining you could stay in Brooklyn forever.

00:56:39.620 - 00:56:49.140

- Thank you very much. We have been talking with Phyllis Constantbaum and her eighth book, which if you just tuned in is called "Daraste and Kitchy Melodies."

00:56:49.140 - 00:57:06.420

A book of very, very fascinating prose poems in which Phyllis goes back into various different aspects of her poem in, of her life in one poem in which she builds on associations of ideas.

00:57:06.420 - 00:57:12.060

So I do suggest that to you. Thank you so much for being here. - Thank you Morton. It was a pleasure.

00:57:12.060 - 00:57:23.860

- Great, great pleasure. Everyone out there, stay tuned for Billy Harris. Her guest tonight is going to be Susan Stewart, who is going to be reading from D.H. Lawrence's,

00:57:23.860 - 00:57:34.880

the Virgin and the Gypsy. That is from the bookshelf, immediately following this program. (gentle music)

00:57:34.880 - 00:58:44.900

(gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]