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Morton Marcus: This Tuesday at eight o'clock at Kresge College, the poet Shirley Kaufman will read from her own work, as well as her new translations from an anthology she has just put together called the ‘‘Defiant Muse.‘‘ I had the opportunity to

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interview Shirley Kaufman by telephone three weeks ago and we're going to go to that interview for this show. I think you'll find it very interesting. Shirley Kaufman is the author of seven books and several volumes of translations from the Hebrew.

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A collection of her Selected Poems, not only was translated by Copper Canyon Press entitled "Roots in the Air," but also was translated into Hebrew, and was published in Israel in 1995. Among her recent honors is the Shelley Memorial Award of the

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Poetry Society of America and many other awards. Shirley grew up in Seattle, lived in San Francisco for many years, and as made her home in Jerusalem since 1973. I will be repeating the reading again, her reading will be this Tuesday, that's October

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20, at 8pm in classroom 327 in Kresge College, but I want to get as much of this interview in as possible, and so let us go to the interview now. This is Shirley Kaufman and yours truly: Shirley Kaufman: Hello.

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Morton Marcus: Hi Shirley, how are you doing? This is Mort, Mort Marcus. Shirley Kaufman: Oh, good to hear from you Mort. Morton Marcus: Well, same here, and welcome back to the United

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States, and this is a long overdue program. You have of course been a friend for years and years and years, actually two lives of yours, two lives of mine. And we go back to the San Francisco days, but every time you come down to Santa Cruz,

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either I didn't have enough warning, or you know, we just were unable to do the- the show. So here we are now and we're going to do the show on two things, not only your new poems, and we'll talk about the whole body of your work, but on a very

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exciting project you've been working on for years called the ‘‘Defiant Muse‘‘ or Israeli feminist poetry, so Shirley again, welcome. And I would like to - talking about two lives - to first ask you about the title of your Selected Poems, which

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really has a lot of different layers of meaning and it's called ‘‘Roots in the Air,‘‘ can you tell us about that? Shirley Kaufman: Yes, it's- it- it furnished itself as a- it's a single poem in a book called ‘‘Claims‘‘ that is in my

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Selected but I- I picked it to use for the title of my Selected Poems because it seemed to me, as I thought about my life going back and forth between Israel and the United States, something I've been doing since 1973 when I moved to Jerusalem, that while

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I know my- my Jewish roots and my past, and feel very connected to so much that's happening in Israel, and feel very connected to my American life when I'm back in the United States, my roots are definitely not rooted anymore there. Or maybe they

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weren't ever really rooted, but they're in the air. And the image for that was a ficus tree that I saw on a kibbutz in Israel settled mainly by Holocaust survivors. And this tree was transplanted from- from India, actually from Bangor, and

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the tree propagates itself by- by roots growing from the branches into the ground. But this ficus tree in Israel has dented roots, there are little white tubers that dangle in the air and don't reach the ground. And that seemed to me a perfect

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metaphor for the life I've been leading. Would you like me to read the poem? It's short. Morton Marcus: I‘d love you to Shirley Kaufman: Here it is:

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ROOTS IN THE AIR Over my head, the Bengal Ficus dangles its roots like seaweed out of the sea, licking the ashes from the air. Sure of which way is down, but unable to get there. One Tree makes 100

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out of the steaming soil it comes from, replanting itself. Not here. The roots are shaggy with trying in this land, no earth, no water. What are they doing in the light? Morton Marcus: And you know Shirley, in so many ways that

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poem as well as the- the title for the Selected Poems really defines for me, and I hope maybe for the listeners out there, what's going on in your poetry, because all of these poems are searching for place. To me, they are- they're searching for your

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place in Israel, your place in America starting in Seattle, but also they're looking for a place in history. And I certainly see this in the sense that we get this continuum of generations of women, going back into your family, all aspects of your

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family. But I would like to approach now this idea of you really seem rooted in women, and notice I don't say feminism, because I've never really pictured you as a feminist writer. To me, you are always a woman talking about the mental

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and emotional life of women and women of different generations. Shirley Kaufman: Well, that's lovely what you're saying Mort, I mean about both places and about myself as a woman poet. I've been asked a lot lately whether I'm a feminist poet, and

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I don't like labels and I suppose, according to whatever definitions you might give today, I am because I'm very concerned about women's role in society. And as I've moved out of myself more because I've had to be involved with what's

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happening around me and witnessing it in my poetry as well as this inner life that I've always lived since I've been living in Israel, I really am concerned about- about what's happening to women in the world and especially in Israel with a

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very male dominated society, by the ultra orthodox religious and by the army. But my concerns about place and about family relationships and my family past, I think are our womanly concerns which aren't necessarily about feminist

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empowerment. And I'm glad you picked up on that, I think place has always been important in my poetry even before I moved to Israel. And I've been most influenced by other poets who write about place, even before I moved to Israel, especially the

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Greek poets. Morton Marcus: Why don't you give us the names of some of those Greek poets? I know who they are, and one of them happens to be an enormous influence on my work, too, in

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fact two of them do. Shirley Kaufman: Well, I think Seferis was the first poet that I read and that probably- that had the greatest influence on me, but later of course, I discovered Ritsos and Elytis

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who- who I've also read, always with tremendous pleasure. Morton Marcus: The listeners out there- Shirley Kaufman: I think what was so important Seferis, especially after I moved to Israel, was the sense of- of

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history, and myths, and the creation of myth out of history, and the ancient ruins, and- and the landscape, which are so similar to Greece, the olive trees, the Mediterranean, the- and the ruins wherever you go, and I identify with that ancient

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history very strongly now that I live in Israel. Morton Marcus: Let me just mention for the readers out there because these are books that you and I know very well, but the years have gone by and a lot of people are not speaking

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Seferis's name anymore. This is Giorgos Seferis, S-e-f-e-r-i-s, excellently translated in the Princeton translating series by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, and I would suggest everyone out there get this amazing book. Elytis also by

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Keeley- not Elytis, Ritsos, Yiannis Ritsos, R-i-t-s-o-s, wonderfully translated by Keeley and all of his translations have been brought together in a sort of a Collected Ritsos. Yeah, I agree with you, these are marvelous poets who I live by,

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and of course, I ferried back and forth to Greece and met Elytis once, and so it's really amazing. But yes, the influence is there and it is strong, and that is wonderful. Why don't you read some of these poems? Because you magically can bring

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landscapes to life in one or two perfectly chosen words. Shirley Kaufman: Well, what were you thinking about? Morton Marcus: I will let you choose; there- there are so many of them.

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Shirley Kaufman: Well, maybe I'll read a new poem that I've just written, really new, which I think- I think I use the word ‘‘light‘‘ in a lot of my poems. It's in that ‘‘Roots in the Air‘‘ poem, "what are they doing in the light," which is- is the

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primary source of poetry I think for the Greek, that special Greek light, and maybe it's very special in Israel, too. But I've recently written a poem about an ongoing pain of a young woman, a friend who was killed in a terrorist attack on a bus in

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Israel, now almost four years ago, but I'm still writing about it. And there's an amazing outdoors sculpture, really a construction by the American artist, James Turrell in the Sculpture Garden of the Israel Museum to which I go very often.

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One has a kind of Zen experience in it, you enter into this space and- totally enclosed except for a square on the ceiling, which lets in the sky, it's called- the title of the construction by Turrell is called "Space That Sees," and he's built these all

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over the world. He's- also has an installation in New York at the Guggenheim Museum. He's done other constructions in Israel, but this one in the Sculpture Garden is a place that I go to and sit and meditate and this is a very short poem that I

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recently wrote in that place. It is called: MISSING Out through a blue square I am letting her go, light having washed her body. The sky is a flat sheet of water reflecting

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itself. Absence won't let me follow. And when I focus on its measurable underside, there is no writing on it. Only her missing face. Morton Marcus: Beautiful. Can I suggest some poems just for

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people to get a sense of what I was saying before you asked me to give you some poems? Shirley Kaufman: You‘re fading out, Mort. Morton Marcus: Oh, okay, thank you. There we go. Can I suggest

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some poems to read and you can say, No, I don't feel like reading that. Shirley Kaufman: I'll be glad to. Morton Marcus: Here is your evocation, so much a sense of

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place in this, a poem, believe it or not, we've never talked about this, that I really love. It's from your second book and that is ‘‘Gold Country‘‘ and it's called ‘‘The Burning of The Birds.‘‘ And it literally, for me, evokes Moctezuma and the

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whole Aztec empire in the same way that William Carlos Williams does in- in prose when he talks about Tenochtitlan. It's on page 50 of your- Shirley Kaufman: I‘ve got it in front of me.

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Morton Marcus: I mean, it's just so- Shirley Kaufman: I‘m glad you picked it because it's still one of my favorites. Morton Marcus: Oh, great. It's- so many are but this is- this

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will give the sense to the listeners out there of the richness of your language and yet its amazing precision. Shirley Kaufman: Well, thank you for what you've said. THE BURNING OF THE BIRDS

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Flight songs the way they bui d their nests – all were miracul Plumes of the quetzal, god-filled iridescence and the us. human blood shriek in the air over and over, bright birds

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falling scorched in the oven of their wings, as dead is any Well, the signs, the gorgeous images and- dream of paradise. It‘s interesting that in Israel everybody reads that is a

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holocaust poem. Morton Marcus: You- well that's what I was going to say. I mean, it is not just this horrendous act of Cortes, but it is an act that has been repeated down through history, or even the

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outrage of history repeated, and though that's the line I‘m quoting right from the poem and it really you know, it just brings this- Shirley Kaufman: It‘s amazing to me because in the- in the act of

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writing it, which I still recall, I read an account of this in an article in a magazine, and I was so overwhelmed with just the- the horror of what Cortes had done to those birds. I didn't even associate to anything else, I

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was strictly focused on the birds, Montezuma, and the Spanish conquest. And- and it wasn't until it all poured out for me, and I looked at what I'd written on the page that I saw how all those images, the ashes, and the smoke, and the bodies

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being fried, and all that related to the massacre of Jews in Nazi Europe. Morton Marcus: And any group, even Kosovo, Bosnia. Shirley Kaufman: Yes.

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Morton Marcus: It's- it's East Timor, and it just goes on. But this is also about poetry and it's also about what you do, because ‘‘to hear the air scream, their panic turned into outrage into words repeated like birds or seasons or the outrage

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of history repeated.‘‘ And so there is the poet once more as witness, the poet once more as a chronicler. It really is - it's a marvelous poem and it's effortless, the way you just combined them in there.

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Shirley Kaufman: Well thank you, but the consciousness of myself as a poet writing these things creeps in a lot into the poems, and- and I let that happen because that's part of it, too. Morton Marcus: Well, and I think you know, it's gotten to be a

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dirty word in poetry these days, but you're a meditative poet. More and more you've become a meditative poet. You're meditating on the places you've traveled to, you're meditating on what has happened in the past and how it's moved into the

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present, and cycles become very apparent to you. Can I ask you to read just one section of a poem, you can read the whole poem, but this- I always am talking about how the poet can bring an experience to the reader or listener with such

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acuteness because of observation and the use of language that it makes the- the listening and the reading of poetry one of the great joyous act of being alive. And what I'm particularly thinking about is that small first section of a poem called

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the ‘‘Temples of Khajuraho" How do you like that for mispronunciation? Shirley Kaufman: Khajuraho Morton Marcus: Khajuraho. On page 165, in which you talk

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about the Chinese man at the airport. I- that is just so- such- such perfect controlled the language, which every word is just moving to evoke this experience. Shirley Kaufman: Oh fine, but may I read the whole poem?

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Morton Marcus: Absolutely. Shirley Kaufman: Well, this was- this poem came along with many others, and I'm still writing them, from a trip to India. My husband was invited to teach at Delhi University for a month,

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and while we stayed in Delhi, most of the time, we made a lot of side trips and going to see the Hindu Temples with the erotic figures carved and the sides of them as high as you could see. And we got pretty close to seeing them all; it was

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one of the major experiences of the trip along with going to the Ganges River, and- and many fantastic visual experiences that I had in India. So there's a lot of exquisite beauty and sensuality combined with the pain, and starvation, and

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suffering that goes on there, and it's very difficult to sort out. And I think most of the poems that I've written about India try to- try to give both of- both ends of this tremendous range of feeling one has visiting India.

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THE TEMPLES OF KHAJURAHO At the airport waiting for our plane, we sat next to a Chinese man. He took off his shoe and sock and massaged to his foot, working his thumb and fingers over the sole and delicate arch

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of his instep. Then he held his whole foot between his palms and forgave it, rocking it gently back and forth. His hands seem to know what his foot wanted. This woman pulls a thorn from her heel and this woman wrings

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water from her shampooed hair and this woman paints her eyelids in front of the mirror and this one fastens bells around her ankle, and this one slips off her transparent chemise and this one smiles at her dexterous lover guiding him

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in. An inexhaustible cheerfulness. And sweetly convivial, so many figures touching and stroking the length of their bodies, stone warming into flesh. They repeat and repeat each other, pleasure runs through his

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fingers to her breasts and back again, a circular comfort, the curl at the ends of their mouths like the tenderness after, even their toes curl. Touts, crippled, blind children who pluck at our sleeves, all

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the dark versions of desire are locked out behind the fence. Twice a day we walked to the temples while they run after us, past a small lake, more like a pool of muddy water, three battered rowboats tied up in the reeds. And a large sign printed

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in English: ‘‘FLOAT on the beauty of twilight and twinkling of stars.‘‘ If we imagine hunger sometimes, it's not in our guts, it's art we've come for, art and the witty gods in the temples,

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promising bliss. We study their postures of unresisting grace. Your hand slides over my shoulder. In the half-light as in anything unseen, the body remembers what it wants to. I like thinking about India and those experiences still.

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Morton Marcus: It's- It is interesting that this- this sense of absolute poverty and suffering on one hand, and the exquisiteness of what the imagination has built there, and continues to impress everyone who goes to the country.

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Shirley Kaufman: The problem of suffering and the Western tourists, or in this case, we weren't really tourists, at least my husband was teaching, who witness it, or us reading newspapers and watching television about Kosovo, or

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earthquakes in Turkey, or everything that we see everyday is something that- that troubles me very much. One can‘t write about these things as a voyeur or somebody outside of them and yet, what can you do about them when they're constantly with you

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and part of your consciousness every minute that you're living or writing. I love being in Berkeley where everybody's running to restaurants every night and having a wonderful time, but I've never been fed so much news about pain in the

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world and- I don't know, what do you do with all this input? What do any of us do with all this input? Morton Marcus: Well, you know, this is something that even Sharon, not even, but Sharon Olds has addressed. I think it

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was in her second book- Shirley Kaufman: Can you talk louder? Morton Marcus: Um, thank you. This is a what even Sharon Olds has addressed in her second book when she says, you know, I look

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at these photographs, it is the only way I can relate to the suffering that has gone on in other places. It is a real problem. I've got to say that, you know, I'm a movie critic, and I'm a film historian, and last week, I saw two pictures in

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the same day and one of them was an American teenage coming-of-age, sex piece of nothing, and then I went to see a film called ‘‘Cabaret Balkan,‘‘ which was the most brutal picture of a whole society and what it has wrought

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over the years. It's a night in Belgrade with males and their inner rage, and I mean, these are two different universes. And that's the thing that gets you, this is really, to use a Camusian phrase, this is an absurd world. I mean-

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Shirley Kaufman: I tried to write a poem actually about it when- when we were at the Bellagio, this paradise that the Rockefeller Center provides to people who are invited, their fellows, to spend a month doing their work in- in the most

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perfect setting you can imagine, on Lake Como, and [crosstalk] by the luxury of it, of the living and the wonderful facilities afforded to everybody to do his or her work and to write and- and or just to- to walk and think and dream. And then the

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fact that every day at noon before lunch, we were given copies of the International Herald Tribune to read and there was a headline one day when I was there, on the front page of the Herald Tribune, a feature article called, titled ‘‘The

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West is Suffering from Compassion Fatigue‘‘ which I read with great interest and produced this poem I'd lik to read. Morton Marcus: Absolutely. Perfect introduction.

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Shirley Kaufman: It‘s one of the new poems in my Selected and New. "THE WEST IS SUFFERING FROM COMPASSION FATIGUE" Mornings they rake the pads at the villa, trim the boxwood,

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clear the dead pansies. The mountains are blue all day, a cool unflappable hush over the lake. Before lunch we take turns with the Herald Tribune and over the

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pasta we talk about change. Evenings we gather in the grand salon sipping Campari or the clear licorice of Sambuca, coffee beans floating

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on top. How courteous we are, musical voices and phrase books Italian, and optional lectures, Afghanistan or fish. Slides of the swamp eel in India

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slithering. Ancient air-breathing mutants that drown in water. I think of them gasping in the mud when the rivers dried, glassy fish eyes exploding out of

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their sockets, the ones who made it, lungs unfolding, spongy one lobe bit of time. Some days I stroll in circles in a thin rain, connecting dots in a child's puzzle, tiny blisters of light on the wet

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topiary, unnatural forms that crouch there blinking. Some days I write poems in the classic arbors, eased by the symmetry of terraced

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gardens, the slow diligence of natural selection. Click of the shears as they whittle the hedges into peacocks. –Well, you said you were a Bellagio so you get the pict

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re. Morton Marcus: Oh yeah. Well, even if I wasn't in Bellagio I certainly would get the pictu e. For you listeners out there we are talking with Shirley Kauf an and if you are interested

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n the poems that she has be n reading, except for one of t e new ones which have been- cut off] I would like to go back to the Shirley Kaufman interview now. We'll pick it up where we just left off. Shirley is one of the

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really important poets and one of the joys to read, which is they don't necessarily go hand in hand, of the current American scene. And I still, of course, regard you as an absolutely American poet, even though I'm sure your identification with

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Israel is much, much stronger than you're considering yourself just American. You're- You're hyphenated. Well tell us about that, you call yourself hyphenated. Shirley Kaufman: And when you- when you said you still regard

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me as an American poet I- I sat back and was waiting to see whether you were going to come to the hyphen. I guess I've been introduced since I've been living in Israel, that's 27 years now, as an American hyphen Israeli poet. It's interesting

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because in Israel, I'm really still considered an American poet because I don't write in Hebrew, even though I've had a elected published in Hebrew and ave been invited to participate n an all Israeli poetry estival recently, where a few

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Morton Marcus: Well- nglish writing and Russian riting poets were invited along ith the Hebrew. I'm still an merican poet there, but this yphen is something that' troubled me for years becaus

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it seems to be a symbol f my dislocation, coming bac and forth as I do, sometimes even twice a year. There are imes that I've come to teach, or my husband's been on sabbati al, or I come for poetry read ngs. But the most important thi

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g for me is being able to visit my three daughters and grandchi dren who live- two of them in- i the Bay Area and one near Sant Fe. And so what to do with thi hyphen, and the more I anguis ed about my dislocation and the act that it's particularly h

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rd every time I return to Israel to get back into my world there again. And- and the feeling th t when I'm there, I'm thinking o much of the time about eve ything going on here in the United States, or when I'm in the United States, I'm look

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Shirley Kaufman: Looking for the positive side of it. ng for news about Israel all th time. How to get over this pro lem of dislocation? Well, I don' think I'll ever really get o er the problem. But I gue s I've mellowed with age and

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ime to the point where I think f that hyphen now as- as alm st an asset, that it's the k nd of bridge that I live on w th my roots in the air and it ma es it possible for me to- to eally enjoy the- the- and be in olved in the life in two plac

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s, and feel connected in some wa s with two places which can only enrich m Morton Marcus: Well, I think it certainly provides the tention in your work. But, you know, I hate to tell you this Shirley,

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but to me, you have always been an American poet for several- for two reasons: your language is- is definitely American ease, it follows the dictates of a William Carlos Williams, the rhythms, the diction, everything is American. And what it is

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reflecting with all of the background and, you know, immigrant American Judaism and everything like that, it still is reflecting a very American consciousness, sometimes even questioning that consciousness.

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Shirley Kaufman: Well, I think it's been very important for me to come back as often as I do and have the American language in my ears. And I mean American. The language used by English speaking people in Israel is very heavily influenced by the

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British and I discovered very early that- that they are separate language with even different definitions of words. But I do try to keep up with the latest [unintelligible] the colloquial, and I'm able to do this with my daughters and my

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grandchildren very well. But yeah, I suppose after all, I started writing so deeply influenced by Williams, and George Oppen was a major figure in my life in San Francisco, and through him, I read the objectivist poetry. And this was

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really very important in the early days of my writing, and the early days of my writing, were already when I was close to 40, and went back to San Francisco State to get my MA. So I had a long development that's come out of Williams and Oppen,

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and- and that kind of compression and that kind of attention to the- to the noun as the image. So, I don't suppose that I'll ever get away from that. I have another brand new poem that I think tells a lot about my life, but also is

00:38:31.040 - 00:38:49.550

written very much in that style that is- it has been so honed over these years. It's called: JUMP Sundays. Sun-narrowed eyes. My father in the leaky rowboat

00:38:49.730 - 00:39:11.000

unties the frayed rope from its peg, raises his arm from the ore he steadies, and holds out his hand. My job is to bail out the water when the dingey leaks. One foot in the boat, one foot on the dock. The lake quickly widens under my crotch. When he

00:39:11.000 - 00:39:30.440

cries "Jump," I jump and fall in. I've narrowed the distance, reach for him now in his vagueness, honey on his tongue, and the songs of Zion. What did he know about this hot wind breathing down my neck, like the

00:39:30.440 - 00:39:53.450

future – stripping the sand from the desert? A bright face blown off. Out there in the light as far as my eyes can see, there is only what's happened. If I could scoop out the water with my small can. I am filled

00:39:53.450 - 00:40:09.970

with intentions. My father says "Jump." When I get to one side, what I want most is on the other. Morton Marcus: Yeah Shirley Kaufman: That's in a nutshell- is what my life is

00:40:09.970 - 00:40:23.740

like. Morton Marcus: Yeah, it's- it sounds that- that reminded me of another wonderful poem. Your father, when he appears in the poems, the poems are enormously powerful, and dealing with him,

00:40:23.740 - 00:40:36.940

trying to get around this outward sense that you don't- you can't really pierce inside him, and you're always looking at him from the outside. And I'm thinking about "Honey" in particular, where we first hear about this idea of putting

00:40:36.940 - 00:40:51.370

honey- his mother putting honey on his tongue. But let me just say one more word and then I want to take this some interview in a different direction. I think that you have, and I say this on the air for what it's worth, I think that you have

00:40:51.400 - 00:41:08.620

another book and that is a book of memoirs about the San Francisco literary scene, the people you knew and who you- whose classes you were in. Very important American poets and teachers at a very important time in American poetry, I'm

00:41:08.620 - 00:41:25.120

talking about Logan, I'm talking about Jack Gilbert, Oppen, Duncan, all of these people and I just want to leave it at the- maybe germinate in your mind that you really have some very interesting things to say about how they went about things and

00:41:25.960 - 00:41:43.810

stuff like that. Anyway, what I do want to get into now, though, is- Okay, you're off from that world into Israel, and suddenly you're speaking Hebrew or you're trying to learn Hebrew, and we get into another big aspect of this disjunctiveness which is

00:41:44.020 - 00:41:53.470

learning Hebrew and then starting to translate from Hebrew, and let us concentrate for the rest of the show on that. Shirley Kaufman: Okay.

00:41:54.970 - 00:42:08.720

Morton Marcus: Tell us about your first- Shirley Kaufman: Well, I actually began to translate Hewbrew when I didn't know any Hebrew, and still lived in San Francisco, that was a an amazing experience, a young- I had made

00:42:08.720 - 00:42:31.490

three trips to, to Israel. I was always very interested in my roots and in the history of the Jewish people and my connection to it through my grandparents, who had immigrated from Eastern Europe and were Orthodox Jews in Seattle. And so I was interested

00:42:31.490 - 00:42:52.520

in Israeli poetry and poetry written in Hebrew. I didn't know any at the time and I began to study Hebrew at classes at the University of California, went over to Berkeley to take it. And at the same time a young woman arrived from a kibbutz in Israel

00:42:52.520 - 00:43:14.390

where one of the great poets of Israel, a survivor of the Holocaust and leader of the partisans in the Vilna Ghetto, Abba Kovner, lived. And he had won, did win before his death the Israel Prize and many awards for his work he's written, he

00:43:14.390 - 00:43:38.750

wrote novels as well as memoirs and critical articles and over 12 books of poetry. And that particular book that won a big prize was a narrative, which jumped back and forth in time and place, of the Holocaust about a young girl, "My Little

00:43:38.750 - 00:44:00.560

Sister," hidden in a Dominican convent while her city burned and was destroyed by the Nazis. And I began to translate this book with this Israeli who said she'd helped me with my Hebrew if I helped her with her English. And I realized

00:44:00.560 - 00:44:22.820

immediately how I didn't know anything and we had lots of help from various Hebrew scholars, and from Kovner himself who didn't know English, but who went to an English poet in Israel, an English speaking poet in Israel. And the book was

00:44:22.820 - 00:44:39.710

published immediately by Penguin with Nelly Sachs and an introduction by Stephen Spender and all of a sudden I became a translator when I really hardly knew Hebrew. So when I moved to Israel, I continued translating Kovner and I thought it would

00:44:39.710 - 00:44:58.550

help me, I stu- studied Hebrew very intensely when I went. It didn't help me speaking much, so I can read now, but I would never attempt to translate poetry without help from native speakers or lately I've worked with the poets themselves. And

00:44:59.000 - 00:45:10.340

it's been a very, very rewarding experience, but it sometimes takes over my life and doesn't leave me much time for my own writing. Morton Marcus: Well, Shirley, do you find though that translating

00:45:10.490 - 00:45:32.390

- I certainly do - translating really in many ways keeps your own writing very sharp? And for young writers, would you suggest that they try to translate from another language? Shirley Kaufman: I can't hear you.

00:45:24.230 - 00:45:40.280

Morton Marcus: Okay. What I said was can- do you find that translating keeps your own writing sharp? And would you suggest for young writers, young poets, that they try to translat from a language they may know little because

00:45:40.000 - 00:45:55.060

Shirley Kaufman: Yes, I think that- I think it's a ver demanding and very challengin thing to find the correct word My theory of translation, if have any, is that one must e first of all faithful a d accurate to the original tex

00:45:55.510 - 00:46:15.910

. And then you have to find wa s to make it sing in English. It s impossible to imitate the rhyt m and the sound of the langua e from which you're translatin , though some people think o e should. But it has to have a sound and a rhythm of poetry

00:46:15.910 - 00:46:42.340

n English and to keep the meani g exact, and do- and make t e poetry work is a very difficu t task. And it's something that I demand of others when I re d their translations, as well s of myself. It takes me as lo g to do a translation of a poem

00:46:42.340 - 00:46:59.350

s to write a poem of my own, nd then it's not my own. So ne wonders about, especially now as I grew older, about spendin so much time doing it, but t's been very rewarding and I've met some marvelous Israeli poet in the process of doing

00:47:00.260 - 00:47:14.600

Morton Marcus: So, and I agree, but I think that it does, certainly for young poets, it's fine. I translated because I never liked the translations of the poets who I really wanted to get to know. So that's what made me go into what I really call

00:47:14.600 - 00:47:31.160

versions. But you would go meaning first, coming into poetry in English second, and then if there are any forms or anything that really is a third because it would destroy the the first two of your criteria. Would you agree with that?

00:47:32.020 - 00:47:43.510

Shirley Kaufman: I didn't get the question. Morton Marcus: Okay. And what I'm saying is you're saying meaning comes first, then making it into a poem in English. And then I'm saying, then if it's in a strict rhymed form, or any of

00:47:43.510 - 00:47:59.890

those ornate forms from, let's say, the Arabic the Israeli, the Hebrew or whatever it may be, that you would say that really would be third, and if you try to translate it might not- might destroy the first two criteria of meaning and bringing it to

00:47:59.890 - 00:48:10.620

English. Shirley Kaufman: Well, you're talking about keeping the form? Morton Marcus: Well, what I'm saying is that would be third so that- and therefore it would not be important to bring the form

00:48:10.920 - 00:48:23.220

into English as it would be to get the meaning. Shirley Kaufman: This a complex question because I've just done this book for the Feminist Press, in which I've translated a lot of poems, but- so have others, in which- which is a

00:48:23.220 - 00:48:40.650

bilingual book, and when you've got the Hebrew on the opposite page, it's almost essential that the form be the same, that we end up with the same number of lines. Now we didn't always. Sometimes- because English is necessarily much longer, Hebrew

00:48:40.650 - 00:49:02.850

has the- the subject and the verb tense as part of the verb. And in- in- you don't have to write out ‘‘they said,‘‘ it's in the verb in one short word, and in English you have to say two words, use two words. Or if you're using more complicated

00:49:02.850 - 00:49:22.290

verb forms, like ‘‘they used to say,‘‘ I mean, that's all in one word in Israel, in Hebrew. So the lines are longer, but we tried to keep them the same. Like they can't end with the same word because the word order's different, the adjective

00:49:22.290 - 00:49:40.860

comes after the noun mostly in Hebrew. And the verb also precedes frequently. So there's inversions that you have to deal with. And then the words- the lines don't end the same way but we try to come out with the same number of lines.

00:49:41.620 - 00:49:54.760

Morton Marcus: Well, we've got around 10 minutes more to go in the interview. And since we're right here, let's talk about the "Defiant Muse" and maybe read one or two poems from it and tell us what- what you were trying to do and how the the

00:49:54.760 - 00:50:06.640

anthology came about. Shirley Kaufman: Well, Florence Howe, who is the director of the Feminist Press, and who has edited a marvelous anthology of women's poetry and recently brought out a second edition "No

00:50:06.640 - 00:50:29.590

More Masks, American Women's Poetry" met with me in New York and asked whether I'd be interested in doing a poem in a series that the Feminist Press at the City College of New York Graduate Center had been publishing of feminist poems

00:50:29.590 - 00:50:47.050

from medieval times to the present. And they had already done French, Italian, Spanish, German, and just brought out the Dutch, and she wanted one in Hebrew. This isn't Israeli feminist poems, or Hebrew poems, because I said to her, "We'll

00:50:47.080 - 00:51:04.810

start not with medieval times, but with antiquity, with the Bible." After all, the language has been in continuous use, although it was only used for prayer and scholarship until the end of the 19th century; from the dispersion to the end of the

00:51:04.810 - 00:51:36.160

19th century it was not used for anything but prayer and study. So the interesting thing was that the locale has returned from ancient Israel to the modern state of Israel. And- but we wanted to find women's voices in antiquity. We can't prove

00:51:36.880 - 00:51:57.940

that the Song of Deborah or the Song of Miriam or the Song or Songs for that matter were written by women, but it's very clear that they were spoken by women at some point. And we found incredible voices in the fifth and sixth century, in the

00:51:57.970 - 00:52:19.420

Midrash and Talmud, the rabbinic texts, which were written in Babylonia and in Palestine as commentaries on the Bible. And we have women's voices and- in those, although they were all conversations with rabbis; the rabbis would say, ‘‘my mother

00:52:19.420 - 00:52:40.750

told me‘‘ or ‘‘the women of [unidentified] said,‘‘ and we picked up on those. I'll read you one short- I had a great joy of translating some of these very old texts with one of my co-editors. When I responded to Florence Howe and said I would

00:52:40.750 - 00:52:58.840

do this book I said only on condition, that I would find some wonderful Israeli editors who know Hebrew and, and I did, they both teach in the Hebrew literature department, the Hebrew University. And here's one for instance from the

00:52:58.840 - 00:53:22.900

Babylonian Talmud that we titled ‘‘A Lore for Healing‘‘ because it seems that women were the midwives and the physicians and the healers in those days, and the rabbis always quote women when they describe things to do for your health. And here's a

00:53:22.900 - 00:53:36.980

couple of them: Rabbi Abaye said, "Mother told me, ‘go to the salt pool for a one day fever, weigh a new coin with a measure of salt, wrap it in hair around your throat.‘"

00:53:38.170 - 00:53:53.230

And Abaye said, "Mother told me, 'a baby that cannot suck has a mouth that's cold.' 'How do you treat it?' 'Bring close to its lips a cup of coals.‘‘' And Abaye said, "Mother told me, ‘a baby who does not breathe

00:53:53.680 - 00:54:05.450

should be fanned with [unidentified] ‘‘' And Abaye said, "Mother told me, ‘for a weak heart take meat from the right loin of the stag, take dung from the flocks that graze in April.‘''

00:54:05.450 - 00:54:27.920

And Abaye said, "Mother told me, ‘A growing child needs oil and hot water; a little older, egg with sour milk; older still, dishes to break.‘‘' So this was very, very lively advice that was given in the

00:54:27.920 - 00:54:44.210

fifth century in the Babylonian Talmud about healing and health. How- how many pages does the volume have? It was great fun to discover these and to find the poetry in them and to make- make it poetr when we translated it

00:54:43.700 - 00:54:48.230

How many what? Morton Marcus: Pages. Shirley Kaufman: How many? Morton Marcus: Pages does the volume have?

00:54:48.530 - 00:54:58.400

Shirley Kaufman: I can‘t hear the word. Morton Marcus: Really, I'm right on top of it, and it sounds like I'm getting an echo for myself. How many pages does the volume have "The Defiant"?

00:54:59.060 - 00:55:13.680

Shirley Kaufman: Are you saying pages? Morton Marcus: Yes. Shirley Kaufman: Okay. Well there are 265 pages, but there are actually only about 110 poems by over 50 poets. These-

00:55:14.160 - 00:55:35.490

the first part though, the biblical and the, and then the rabbinic texts, we- are not named poets, they're women's voices. But when we get into the named poets there are over 100 poems and- but the book includes a very extensive and deep

00:55:36.750 - 00:55:56.730

historical introduction describing what happened to women just to write a poem in Hebrew up until the 19th century. And we found some amazing examples too from Spain, and medieval times, and from Kurdistan, and in the 16th

00:55:56.730 - 00:56:18.630

century, and well from all over the world. Just to write a poem in Hebrew was certainly a feminist act because women just were forbidden to- to study or use the sacred language that only men studied and prayed. And so when you find a woman in- in

00:56:19.710 - 00:56:42.960

Andalusia in the 10th century, writing a poem, or in Morocco, even in the 18th century, and there was an outstanding woman, Rachel Morpurgo in Italy, who wrote in- in the early 1800s, who actually published her work. All of these women, of course,

00:56:42.960 - 00:56:52.140

had fathers who were rabbis or brothers who were rabbis and teachers who encouraged and taught them Hebrew. Morton Marcus: Well- Shirley Kaufman: I'd like to-

00:56:53.070 - 00:57:11.460

Morton Marcus: I think we're going to have to actually wrap this up right now. So that we can have enough- [cut off]. And that is in- was an interview done several weeks ago by phone with Shirley Kaufman, the powerful and very intelligent

00:57:11.460 - 00:57:36.270

poet who will be reading at UCSC this Tuesday night at 8pm. That's October 26, 8pm in classroom 327, at Kresge College at UCSC. For more information on that reading, call 459-2566. She will be reading her own new poems and also poems from her

00:57:36.270 - 00:57:52.590

new collection of her translations from Hebrew women poets of antiquity and up to the present called "The Defiant Muse." Let me just remind you that Santa Cruz writer's retreat will be happening at the Happy Valley Conference Center on

00:57:52.590 - 00:58:08.400

Branciforte Road in Santa Cruz, 7pm this Friday. Gary Soto will be giving the keynote address, followed by a reading by Jim Houston, Claire Braz-Valentine and yours truly. The prose and poetry reading "The Four Elements" with Kurt Glaser,

00:58:08.400 - 00:58:24.360

Carolee [unidentified], and Shirley Ancheta and Jeff Tagami will be taking place on that same night at Louden Nelson Center, 301 Center Street in Santa Cruz at 7:30. And right now, after we have our musical break going out, Billy Harris

00:58:24.390 - 00:58:40.290

will be the host of "From The Bookshelf," tonight Bill Shipley will be reading from ‘‘Mountain Lion and His Children‘‘ from his fascinating book entitled "Maidu, Indian Myths and Stories." This is Morton Markus, Dennis- Morton will be with you

00:58:40.290 - 00:58:52.110

next week. I will be with you in two weeks with a live interview with Robin McGowan whose memoir "The Minotaur" will be coming out, and we'll talk to him about that.