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Susan Keith: Look, leaping the gap still seeming to touch both sides, exciting the charged, busy in most of air or space to yield something like light. We think we see love shine, spread, radiant we say, but it is not. Going each time between one and

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one other, an ache when not emotion and a yearning where it moves, nothing changes place, no distance closes, yet one metallic solitude might melt into another. Morton Marcus: That was Susan Keith reading the poems of her

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late husband, Greg Keith, and Greg will be the subject of tonight's program on the Poetry Show, a truly unique poet and individual and we will be reminiscing about him. And we'll be reading some of the marvelous poems in his just released book,

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"Life Near 310 Kelvin," so stay tuned. He is a local poet though he has international and I would think even interstellar reach. And I think if you've not heard of Greg Keith, you will be running to the bookstore after the show. Welcome to the show,

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Susan. Susan Keith: Thank you, Morton. Morton Marcus: And thanks so much for coming, I really appreciate it.

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Susan Keith: It's an honor to be here. I just wish Greg could be here to enjoy all this. Morton Marcus: Well, I do, too and as you know, Greg has been on the show in the past and it was a delight. Could you tell us

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some things about Greg Keith's life and- Susan Keith: I'd be happy to. Well, the book, "Life Near 310 Kelvin," is the outcome of more than 35 years of Greg's writing poetry. And as you know, it had earlier incarnations. At one

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time, his manuscript was called, "At the Inkworks," and many of the poems in that manuscript are in, "Life Near 310 Kelvin," but there are poems that Greg wrote in this book, when he was in his 20s, his mid 20s and 30s. Then, poems from the 80s and more

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recently, when Greg discovered he had cancer, he wrote many poems about the cancer experience. And then the last section of the book is some prose pieces. There are five short prose pieces as well. He was exploring writing prose, but

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started doing that about three or four years before his death and was was just getting into that when he discovered he had cancer. And actually the last year of his life, he wrote on a website, he wrote very starkly and honestly about the cancer

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surgeries and treatments, so he did that on a website. But the book is published by SLG Books, publishers actually, an old friend of Greg's from the army and we worked on it very closely together. I only met Greg two years ago. And I'm actually an

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editor and I worked in publishing and so was familiar with the process. And as he became more ill, I took over more responsibility for the final publishing. I checked the blue lines and did some of the proofreading and helped engage a

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type designer to do the book design. And we're on just- I was sort of the gopher when Greg became too weak to do that at the end himself, so that helped us get through the agony of the last few months having the book to focus on, it was a bright

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spot in all of this really. Morton Marcus: Well, this book is magnificent. It should have been out years ago, and it should have really brought Greg national prominence and I know that. For years I have said that

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Greg, you know, should be much better known. I've introduced his work to editors and things like that. But now the book is here, it is a gorgeous book. It really is beautiful, the feel of it is beautiful but I mean just the whole production of the

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cover and everything. It is not just a book really of the Selected Poems of Greg Keith, though, it also has what in the back? Susan Keith: Well, we were very excited about the fact that this

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book includes a CD ROM, it actually has two CD ROMs. One is an audio CD, which you can play on a standard CD player and at home or in your car for that matter and it also has a multimedia CD, which actually has animations on it, of Greg,

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so you can actually watch Greg reading his work and play it on a Macintosh or PC format. So, and that part of the project we are indebted to Steven Ghuli, right here in Santa Cruz, a close family friend who had the vision to recognize, about two

00:06:03.880 - 00:06:21.790

years ago that Greg really should think about providing multimedia readings of his poetry. And at that time we didn't know Greg had cancer and he was immediately excited about the idea. Greg was in high tech, he was a computer programmer and

00:06:21.970 - 00:06:40.300

very conversant in computer technology, and excited about the potential of multimedia and was immediately taken by the idea of doing this. And so he and Steven were planning to do it, but then when we found out that Greg had cancer in April of

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1997, he became more determined that this had to be done soon. And so, before he went in for his first surgery we organized a reading here in Santa Cruz at Louden Nelson, and that was videotaped and some of the cuts on this CD are from that Louden

00:06:58.750 - 00:07:14.890

Nelson reading in April '97. Then Greg went into a recording studio. And so, some of the poems were done in a studio setting, and you can hear the difference. It's interesting to hear some of the readings were live and have that immediacy,

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and then others were in the studio so you get better quality in terms of Greg's voice. Morton Marcus: He was a wonderful reader and I know now it's because it's right on the CD. And I, the first First

00:07:34.830 - 00:07:53.550

Night, when I was asked to do a poetry reading on First Night Santa Cruz, I said that one of the readings has to be a Greg Keith and he brought down the house that night. Let me read a biography for the audience out there, just a brief sense of who

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he was and where he came from. He was born in San Francisco in 1945, and he spent his childhood in rural Oklahoma and Oregon on dairy farms where his father worked. At different times, he's been a truck driver, carpenter, a gardener, in intervals,

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feeding himself as a musician, singing and playing guitar in bars and coffee houses through the 60s and 70s. He worked as a computer programmer in Silicon Valley for, I guess, the last 20 years of his life. And more and more, I know that as I was

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telling you, when I would try to get in touch with him, it would be a few days because he was over there, working so much. My first contact with Greg actually was in the 70s in Southern Oregon, when I went up there to do a reading and his teacher was

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a good friend of mine, a marvelous poet, the name of Lawson Inada and after I gave the reading, I'm just being introduced to everyone Lawson said, "And this is Greg Keith, who is a really rare poet." And I did not read any of Greg's

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poetry at that time, but since then, I certainly, when he moved down here or so later, that certainly has been my impression. What about Greg Keith's poetry? Let me define it for the audience out there, maybe we ought to read one or

00:09:08.460 - 00:09:24.960

two poems after that. Greg Keith is not only a person who was into high tech, but who has lived and thought science since his early years. And one of the first poems I'd like to read is the seventh grade science poem-

00:09:25.140 - 00:09:38.750

Susan Keith: That's a great choice. Morton Marcus: Which really sort of shows where Greg is coming from. He is one of the few poets I know, maybe the only one, who would fit the following definition that he used the

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language of hard science, in poetry, but he used it not with any pretension at all, but as a natural choice of the vocabulary he thought in, as well as used, and it is a marvelous amalgam of the human condition and hard science. And let's just go to

00:10:02.690 - 00:10:13.160

this what I consider to be the seminal poem, which- if I can ind it- is SEVENTH GRADE SCIENCE Susan Keith: It's on page 32. It's one of my favorites too.

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Morton Marcus: And here's- here's what he says: Shades drawn, crystalline grid on the movie screen flared in the projector beam, the hydrogen atom rampant, schematic, a B-B orbiting a basketball in the void. All that space leaped into

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the foreground, the very formica a shimmer under elbow, the shell of the body vast and there in an intimate dark, loomed and distant, spacious bodies of the girls. Space was roar-extent and plenty, mattered nothing much but quick. Particles pass

00:10:53.690 - 00:11:15.410

through and space remained untouched even by their fields. The vacuum finally stood lonesome and hypothetically everywhere the same, except for particles and fields and gravity. By high school, space curved, yes. The sun sat heavy

00:11:15.410 - 00:11:40.250

and its well and pulled the fabric taught, a hard finger on a drum head, an image that won't blossom in 4D, won't map up. In college, the black hole wrapped space around it like a blanket, no, a tissue twist around hard candy. No, not how, space too

00:11:40.250 - 00:12:04.040

warped for anything to be in, or get out of, not the same as empty. Now, the quantum vacuum virtually teeming propagates particles more busily than any old ether, such as flesh went to space. Minutely-sustained and constantly reissued, the body

00:12:04.040 - 00:12:26.060

erupts out of nowhere, all aware, mass and energy one, time and space one, mass energy and time space, some other kind of one. I walk to the mailbox, drive to the store, someone with the rest.

00:12:28.190 - 00:12:46.310

Susan Keith: When I first met Greg actually, the way I met Greg was through email. We were introduced by a friend but my first contact with Greg was email messages. And he sent me a couple of his poems, and I was just amazed by the originality

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of his voice. And just very impressed. I didn't know how I was going to feel about the person or the man but I knew that I wanted to meet this person. I was just tremendously curious to meet the person who was the author of this

00:13:01.580 - 00:13:19.340

incredible poetry, and we had a little bit of email, chat back and forth that first week, and he sent me a personal ad that he'd written, which is a poem in the book called, "S.W.M." and in it he mentioned neurophysiology something that I had not

00:13:19.340 - 00:13:35.420

considered at all, I'm a humanities type person. I like the arts and sort of veered away from the sciences and so he intimidated me when he mentioned neurophysiology and I didn't quite know what did he mean by that? What was that all about?

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And the poem, "Selvedges," in here, which is a long poem, I don't think I want to read the whole poem, but it just absolutely knocked me out. I thought it was a tour de force and just exemplified to me how you could bring neurophysiology

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into poetry. Just- and the poem still delights me. It's called, "Selvedges: Notes for Connectionist Manifesto," and it begins with an epigram from the poet, Cesar Vallejo: "porque, al centro, estoy yo, y a la derecha, tambien, y, a la

00:14:15.740 - 00:14:29.780

izquierda, de igual modo," "because, at center, I am, and to the right also, and, to the left, in like manner." And it's in several sections, the first section is: A SPECTRE HAUNTS THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

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Thumb and index tweak a steel knob as the century grinds to a start. The synaptic cleft gapes on the microscopic stage. Sweeping theories full of subtle fluids drain away into this gap whereby each neuron stands alone, tending its own fire.

00:14:48.710 - 00:15:05.990

Mind appears to halt at this abyss. Where can it go? Where can it have come from? Zoom in. Cell wall cliffs recede and grow tall. Crossing between, fleet one-way birds, the neurotransmitters flock at intervals to roost in the far

00:15:05.990 - 00:15:23.030

receptors. Zoom out. Later, farther on, muscles cannot choose but twitch, driving volition deeper into hiding. Pan to brain. Song, love and all of physics thrive in such thickets. WHAT THE NEURON KNOWS

00:15:23.540 - 00:15:38.000

How to listen, to mull the rumors in its thousand ears and what size grain of salt to take with each. How to speak its one word or keep mum. Given time, how to change its little mind about the weight it gives it sources.

00:15:38.570 - 00:15:57.860

What the net is is gangs of such neurons and weighted connections. What the net knows it salts away in blind trust at the nodes, its wealth spread out in unnumbered accounts. I read that poem, we went down to LA for the weekend, a June

00:15:57.860 - 00:16:12.980

weekend in '96, this was shortly after I met Greg and he had his manuscript with him at that time and hadn't decided what the title was going to be. And we were having coffee and I said, well, can I take a look at the manuscript? And I was- I read

00:16:12.980 - 00:16:30.140

through it, and I came to this poem and I was just speechless. I hadn't realized what the breadth of his talent was and I was quite intimidated. I just had no idea that this man was capable of writing something like this. And I didn't know

00:16:30.140 - 00:16:46.010

much about poetry at the time, I hadn't exposed myself much to it. And so, he asked me, well, do you have any ideas for a title for the book? And I spent several days and thought, well, I'd really like to impress this man, maybe if I could come up

00:16:46.010 - 00:17:03.050

with a title for the book, and I actually did finally suggest, "Life Near 310 Kelvin," it happened to be, I thought it was important that the title of the book be one of the names of the poems. He looked at several different phrases, catchy

00:17:03.050 - 00:17:20.000

phrases within some of the poems and to me it did- just didn't quite feel right. And I was very pleased when he actually liked my choice of the title and that became the title of the book. Morton Marcus: What I think, it's a great title and if I may

00:17:20.000 - 00:17:41.600

extemporize on it, what's so great about it is it sounds like an address on a suburban street. But in reality, it is a temperature measure on the Kelvin scale, so it immediately incorporates both the language of science with a suggestion of

00:17:41.840 - 00:18:02.090

our everyday life and this is what he would do again and again and again. He's really is talking about being human, about being in love, about wondering about the big questions of life. And the way he does it, to me, what art does and what a poet

00:18:02.090 - 00:18:21.890

does, is that he must surprise us, he must make us look at our world, or she, in a unique way. And poem after poem, he does that. And I'd like to now go to him reading a poem, if we could, from this CD. It's going to be the 15th cut, and it's called

00:18:21.920 - 00:18:37.170

the, but before we do it, I just want to talk about a little bit. It's called, "The Ethnological View of the Love Song." Susan Keith: It's one of my favorites. Morton Marcus: And what it is about, is about this speaker,

00:18:37.200 - 00:18:50.730

who can be Greg or can just be a speaker, and you don't quite know what he's getting at, which is what happens in so many of these poems. And then suddenly, everything straightens out, you're following the way someone's mind works, a very

00:18:50.730 - 00:19:07.140

well educated person. And he is talking- really starting to tal about animal behavior becaus this is what ethology is. An animal behavior is also ou behavior and the way we fee about each other and the ver simple emotions we have. And h

00:19:07.140 - 00:19:22.470

weaves this together into a poe about writing and using thos technological aspects o writing, whether it be compute or typewriter, and they all mel together in the end to be th sorrowful song of the lover wh is gone, in this case1 to En

00:19:22.470 - 00:19:37.740

land, I think it's 12 time re ions away. So with that, we ar going to go to Greg Keith re ding, well, he'll announce th title himself. Greg Keith: CARE AND FEEDING

00:19:38.590 - 00:19:57.340

As a girl she fed mice minus two their pet California Boa, love and death pinched together in delicate fingers. She sits up naked on the bed and recalls the mice and mice plus also available at the San Diego Zoo, recalls the huge bread loaves

00:19:57.520 - 00:20:16.420

they gave the display mice to eat and live in. She gazes with a long focus through the little room, I guess tiny snouts and shiny eyes poke out of brown crust. The little girl slips in and wears her face a moment, lamplight glistens on her

00:20:16.420 - 00:20:36.310

nipples, velvet and grown dark from babies. She is prettier than any picture but this one, the one I can't describe, continuous, distinct, she happens so all at once. Now, my little boa, unlike a snake gets fat when hungry, smiles softly

00:20:36.310 - 00:20:52.630

with tiny lips, spits out a boneless lump when finally satisfied, and stays as warm as the blood he's gorged with. Even the squeeze is inside out, constriction stretches this fellow out straight, all backwards, yet she handles his

00:20:52.630 - 00:21:10.220

blind appetite lovingly, taking his hunger into her own mouth. My tongue delves the silence of her other throat, words fail. We are so all at once. Susan Keith: Well, that was actually the poem, "Care and

00:21:10.220 - 00:21:20.150

Feeding," which Greg read as a very young man. I think he was probably around 30 when he wrote that poem, it's one of the oldest poems in the book, and also one of the sexiest ones as Morton pointed out.

00:21:20.510 - 00:21:31.170

Morton Marcus: If you were- if you got suggestions about the boa, you were right. Susan Keith: I really think that's a wonderful poem, especially when you consider how young he was when he wrote it.

00:21:31.950 - 00:21:50.090

Morton Marcus: Let's go to the poem we're talking about now. And here is the "Ethological View of a Love Song." Greg Keith: AN ETHOLOGICAL VIEW OF A LOVE SONG A species of chimp, something like a wolf, inclined to form

00:21:50.090 - 00:22:08.960

pairs, their skins wide open, interpret the least touch. A little breath hits triggers lurking all along the bare neck. The smell of this one and no other, her markings, her eyes, each breast and both together, her cheekbones, her lips compel

00:22:08.960 - 00:22:29.690

him. He mentions her eyes again, her small moles, her smell. She's taught him what love looks like, like her and no other. Now, she's away. Women navigate cafe aisles as prettily as last year but so what? At the table, his pen grazes the paper,

00:22:29.960 - 00:22:51.470

passing over the sheet again and again, as though he stroked her distance skin. Her clear gaze pierces him, he remembers the feel of that suction between his palm and her breastbone, so exactly hers, nine timezones, eight hours, six weeks. He comes

00:22:51.470 - 00:23:09.380

naked to the keyboard at two in the morning, ten in England, how loosely his fingertips fit into the cups of the keys, graceful splines dancing at the corners of her mouth spring to mind. Brushing the cursor lightly across the screen, he recalls

00:23:09.380 - 00:23:29.720

her other lovely calm assures, her flavors. Of course, the brain begins as a fold in the epithelium, such an ape would think a digital caress of the cortex high. Swans form pairs and wolves, now he feels it. The page opens it's great throat,

00:23:30.140 - 00:23:44.460

and he sings to no one but her, the length of the night. Susan Keith: I think that's such a beautiful poem. Morton Marcus: It's marvelous. It's a very, very simple poem about missing this woman who has gone but the way he has done it

00:23:44.460 - 00:24:04.140

is just astonishing. And this whole sense of going back to the way animals behave, and then suddenly having him, as a human being, come into this whole animal behavioral process and yet at the same time, it's a love poem. It is the kind of

00:24:04.140 - 00:24:17.430

fusion that he uses in his poems again and again. So, this is a simple way that we can talk about it or in other poems, he gets very complex. That really makes his work unique and his mind unique.

00:24:17.480 - 00:24:31.070

Susan Keith: The theme of the body and the delight of the body, the curiosity of the body, it comes up over and over in Greg's work and in fact, the title of the book, 310 Calvin, refers to body temperature on the Kelvin scale. And if you go

00:24:31.070 - 00:24:46.340

through the book, almost every poem touches on the body or the physical. Morton Marcus: Is it the poem to you in which he talks about finally, well, no, that's that's the one that ends that he's got

00:24:46.340 - 00:25:00.650

a real winner here. But there's one and I may have even read it in the beginning here, in which he says, you know what, it's all about his being here and now. After all the talk, after all the philosophizing and all the science, what really is

00:25:00.650 - 00:25:21.290

happening is this moment between two people, or three people or whatever the case may be. Okay, that was, by the way, Greg reading and he has a CD of 34 poems, and in the back of "Life Near 310 Kelvin," the book that we are going over tonight here

00:25:21.290 - 00:25:36.860

on KUSP on the Poetry Show, and we are talking with Susan Keith, and we're talking about the production of the book and we're talking about Greg's poetry and reading from it. The book, which is really been pre-released is only at the Bookshop Santa Cruz

00:25:36.860 - 00:25:51.330

and can be gotten there. You can get it with the CD ROM and the audio CD or without, and you ca send, if you then want the C later on, you can send to th publisher and Susan Keith: That's correct. Actually, the book can be

00:25:51.330 - 00:26:08.550

ordered from the publisher and that's SLG Books and if you'd like we can give that address, people can contact SLG Books in Berkeley and order the book. But it will be formally released in September and will be more widely available and in

00:26:08.550 - 00:26:27.660

bookstores at that time. And unfortunately, Greg died on June 8th, and our vision last year was that we were hoping that he would survive and be able to promote the book himself in the fall, but he didn't make it that long so I am doing the best I

00:26:27.660 - 00:26:45.450

can to try to get the word out about the book. But unfortunately, people don't have the opportunity to see him in person. He was a very expressive person. He started out as a young man, considered a career in acting because he grew up in

00:26:45.600 - 00:27:03.000

Medford area and he was part of the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in the early 70s. He played bit parts and then realized th t poetry was his first love. B t he was a very expressive reade , he used his hands and faci l expressions marvelously. And

00:27:03.000 - 00:27:23.160

t was a wonderful experience ju t to see Greg read his wor Morton Marcus: I don't have a poem to read, but there's something else he did, which was really marvelous. He was doing a lot for a time and that was his playing with string. And he uses

00:27:23.160 - 00:27:39.600

that in a metaphor for a different kind of poem, but a poem that is absolutely absolutely brilliant and which is escaping my brain right now. But it is the one for his mother and the weaving wares.

00:27:39.600 - 00:27:51.940

Susan Keith: Oh, I think you're talking about the one aftermath of the '92 election. Morton Marcus: Yes, yeah. Again making these very, very amazing connections and as I remember, we do not have him reading this.

00:27:52.450 - 00:28:13.210

And it's on 73. It shows his great sensitivity and his amazing sensitivity to women. He is, as far as I'm concerned, a love poet, a good part of his things turn out to be loved poems. And we do have him reading "The Aftermath of the '9

00:28:11.500 - 00:28:28.330

Greg Keith: THE AFTERMATH OF THE '92 ELECTIONS Election." So, let's go now o Greg Keit thanks to Pa l Couture, the man who makes th s show technically flowing. A d let's hear Greg read th s wonderful poem in his sense

00:28:28.330 - 00:28:53.140

f the generations in the afterma h of the '92 election Do the arithmetic, she was born in '65. This was late '72, early '73, so seven and some. I sat reading in the kitchen, she came up, took my hand and led me down. She had done the prettiest

00:28:53.140 - 00:29:15.370

thing. A friend had given us yarns, fat spindles from Janssen, discards from a change in the yearly colors. She had woven around the white painted posts of her basement bedroom, a 12 foot, orange and blue rest web. All in one plane, three

00:29:15.370 - 00:29:35.650

feet off the floor, chest high for her, dense in places, but with gaps she could stand in. She showed me how when you put one hand above, one below, and moved each slowly toward the other, it looked like water. She had me try, I waited in thigh

00:29:35.650 - 00:29:54.700

deep. She had found a candle stub stuck to a plate. She set it on the web and asked for matches. She took such care to light it. I turned off the lamp and close the stairwell door. She stood in the middle, the candle burning by her shoulder,

00:29:55.000 - 00:30:14.350

just looking a long time. She bent down to make it eye level. She came to my side, leaned her head against my waist, and we both watched it shine. Now, this woman stands at a certain distance and calls me dad. A woman stands beside her, faces

00:30:14.350 - 00:30:34.540

her, turns through that set of angles called lover. Last month, they said they'd move into my guest room the day after the election if Oregon's homophobes passed measure nine. I said fine. That measure lost but one like it, one in Colorado. Look,

00:30:35.290 - 00:30:56.850

these women are weaving their prettiest thing, who ever dared vote to tear that, to cut it? Come talk to me. Let me show you. We stand heart deep in this web, below, it's like water. Susan Keith: Yeah, I think you're right Morton, Greg did

00:30:56.850 - 00:31:13.290

have a great deal of sensitivity towards women and that came up a lot in his work. He had two daughters and this poem was written for his stepdaughter, actually Kim, she's now 32 and considered Greg her own father. Although he never formally

00:31:13.290 - 00:33:01.580

adopted her, for all intents and purposes, she felt that he was her father. Morton Marcus: And our music that Greg was quite fond of, country western music, that is Alison Krauss and she is singing

00:33:01.580 - 00:33:21.020

"Sleep On" and that is what we will go in and out on besides our theme. And this is KUSP community sponsored radio at 88.9 on your FM dial serving Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay, Monterey, Big Sur and Salinas and tonight we are talking with

00:33:21.020 - 00:33:35.960

Susan Keith about the poetry of her husband, Greg Keith, whose book "Life near 310 Kelvin" has just been pre-released and can be gotten at the Bookshop, Santa Cruz only at this point, come September it will be released to all different bookstores and

00:33:35.960 - 00:33:54.320

bookstores can order it. We come to the uncomfortable part of the last two years of his life which we referred to which is the part of the cancer. And we have not said this Greg is a very young man. He would be 48 when he passed away.

00:33:54.320 - 00:34:02.550

Susan Keith: Actually, he was 52. Morton Marcus: 52. Susan Keith: His birthday would have been in October. Yeah, he was very young, a very vigorous person. He actually looked years

00:34:02.760 - 00:34:20.190

younger than he was and acted- a ted younger than he was and it w s a shock to us to be told, you now that he had this life thre tening cancer. At first it seem d- We were told by the surg ons at Stanford hospital that he had a pretty good chance of s

00:34:20.190 - 00:34:40.650

rviving. He was told that he n eded- needed surgery, he had a t mor in his maxillary sinus, and they wanted to operate and rem ve his entire sinus, part of hi cheekbone. Part of the eye ti sue underneath his right ey ball, and most devastating pa

00:34:40.650 - 00:34:58.260

t of it was a good portion of th roof of his mouth, which te rified me because Greg's vo ce was so wonderful in his wa of speaking and I was afraid he would be disfigured to the po nt that he wouldn't be able to speak. So. In April of 97, he h

00:34:58.260 - 00:35:14.910

d this very major surgery, but h pulled through remarkably w ll. He had very good r cuperative powers and he had a wonderful spirit and was very u beat about the whole thing v ry courageous, and actually d d quite well after that first s

00:35:14.910 - 00:35:34.380

rgery. But unfortunately, the c ncer recurred twice. And by N vember of 97, we were feeling m ch less optimistic. He'd been th ough two courses of radiation by the end of 97. And then, this ye r, we learned that the cancer ha metastasized and spread into hi

00:35:34.380 - 00:35:54.330

lungs. But he began writing ab ut the cancer right away when wh n he had his first CAT scan in April of 97. And there was so e hint of cancer but it wa n't clearly tumor. He wrote th poem, "Radiology." And I hought we could play that one.

00:35:54.330 - 00:36:11.550

t's It's a wonderful, very trong poem. Greg Keith: It's called RADIOLOGY "Hello out there in the vast audio radiance." Phil Lesh. Belly-down on the x-ray bed, chin on a towel in the little

00:36:11.550 - 00:36:32.550

trough, head strapped into the hub of a great wheel. Hold still. Thirty-two slices of info about a two-inch slab inside my face. Lying there,. Willing the sensors to read bright, uninvaded bone, willing bone to resist invasion. As if that

00:36:32.550 - 00:36:56.250

helped. Who doesn't know I love them? Are we not one flesh? Can't you feel me loving you now? Yeah, the signal breaks up here too. But love survives silence, music erupts again from the speakers. Will and Testament. The daughters get

00:36:56.310 - 00:37:16.770

almost everything. Everyone gets something. Some things get lost. We know that. No other place to go, no other thing to be. The stark films are ambiguous. Something to cut out but not clearly cancer. And the top of consciousness, keep spinning,

00:37:16.980 - 00:37:35.240

the tiny point of spin and the great terrain it traverses. I just want to say, Feel me loving you here. Morton Marcus: And that is the poem I was talking about, before about, though, there are others that in this way feel me loving

00:37:35.240 - 00:37:56.810

you here. I don't know what the future is going to bring. This is- the films are unsure, though he has premonitions of death in here. The spirit is here, the irony, the humor even at his own life and here is a man who lived with science and lived with

00:37:57.020 - 00:38:12.410

meditation. Some of my favorite poems in here are his meditations on just being, you know, how do we get from one point to another? How do we get to me touching you or you touching me? And here now he is in the hands of science, he is

00:38:12.410 - 00:38:31.910

in the hands of his being and he is as comfortable talking about that and as alive and joyous. And the message is clear, it is here, no matter what those pictures have. And this whole poem becomes a metaphor, which is much more than radiology. And

00:38:31.910 - 00:38:45.500

it is one of those poems and I'll say it now we'll be looking at others, in which he resembles John Donne, a 20th century, John Donne, I said that in the introduction to the book, because he makes these what would seem to be outlandish

00:38:45.500 - 00:39:01.670

comparisons between things, but they are so intellectually and emotionally stimulating and right, that it makes you look at your life and life in general in a totally new way. And in doing that, and with his language, being as perfect as it is, he

00:39:01.670 - 00:39:12.150

fulfills the highest order of what poetry is supposed to do. And this is what has excited me about his work for years and years. Susan Keith: Yeah, I think it's kind of an irony that Greg was

00:39:12.150 - 00:39:30.360

really at the peak of his powers when he wrote this series of poems about the cancer, and he managed. I thought, I also thought it was interesting that he comes back to that theme of love, it's what makes his work so appealing for me. There's

00:39:30.360 - 00:39:49.500

another poem called, "Midnight in the Pretty Little House," which talks about his mortality. I think is that one on this- on the CD? Possibly not, I can read that one, page 61. In this he's referring to pretty little houses actually the house that

00:39:49.950 - 00:40:07.110

we live in here in Santa Cruz. And this one was written later, when things were getting a little more dire, he had another lump that we had discovered in the fall of '97. MIDNIGHT IN THE PRETTY LITTLE HOUSE

00:40:07.750 - 00:40:25.660

The radiation oncologist won't call back now until tomorrow, the lump in my cheek feels the same size as this morning, time passes no faster. Mortal fear opens a space in the body, an empty center near the belly, but larger than a belly, a section

00:40:25.660 - 00:40:44.500

filled in arms and legs grown somehow hollow. I am that and not that. Neither the feeling nor the thing felt I seem, mere ideas churn the seeming. If this is cancer back so soon, so smack dab in the middle of the radiated field, then it's time

00:40:44.500 - 00:41:04.360

to put my goodbye practice to good use now. I carry the newspaper bundle to the curb for pre-dawn pick-up, a few board feet they won't have to cut again. Jupiter bright toward the ecliptic. Ongoing. In the driveway, the idea cannot be

00:41:04.360 - 00:41:21.940

resisted. The sky and the house will survive me, certainly the plumbing, the ginger and the flower bed, the brass hinges, perhaps the light bulbs. Inside my fingers, sometimes called my extremities, the open feeling goes on quivering slightly while

00:41:21.940 - 00:41:36.110

they hover over the keyboard. And this yet is another poem that mentions the keyboard It was such a such a part of his life and at least in the last 10 or 15 years, Greg's spot was in that front room in front of the

00:41:36.110 - 00:41:48.550

window with the flower, you could see the flower beds from where he sat, but he was very much glued to that spot in front of the computer where he wrote. Morton Marcus: Right and it is so many things at once. It is

00:41:48.700 - 00:42:06.280

the science and the technology and it is the poetry. It is putting it down on paper, getting the voice to be there forever and to really speak to those he loved around him, as well as to himself and to future generations and he has just done

00:42:06.280 - 00:42:22.720

it marvelously. More poems you'd like us to talk about or to read? Susan Keith: Well, another fairly dark poem called, RADICAL EQUALITY, and that one again is about the cancer and about

00:42:22.720 - 00:42:46.590

looking at- about death and I ca go ahead and read that one One person, one death allocated at birth. The black dog seems to go play with the other dogs ignoring me, but returns to heal, silent, weightless, patient, loyal. Not a shadow,

00:42:46.620 - 00:43:05.370

not a dog. I call a death sudden, another slow or untimely, say death is at hand, as if it went sometimes elsewhere, as if the dog were held at bay. Near in neither space nor time, never far, a constant, whatever I think.

00:43:06.270 - 00:43:25.230

Death is not real, not a rock, not a river, just a line drawn athwart flowing passions, still I have to care. Death is not proud and will roll in me when I stink. I don't know how often I think of death because like sex, many such thoughts dress in

00:43:25.230 - 00:43:43.100

other topics, it puts its black nose where it likes and sniffs. Yes, I am its. One thing that struck me was, I spent so much time with Greg during this whole process and at the end of his life, and I feel

00:43:43.100 - 00:44:00.800

like I was the closest witness to how he chose to comport himself during this experience and he was incredibly courageous and unflinching. His particular cancer was very visible, very outward. At the end, he had a large tumor on his eye and it

00:44:01.280 - 00:44:18.470

completely obstructed his right eye and you couldn't ignore it, it was very disfiguring and yet he would get up in the morning and he'd go in the mirror and he would just look and examine very carefully. He was, in a way, almost dispassionate about the

00:44:18.470 - 00:44:32.840

way he observed it. It was fascinating to him and he was curious about everything that was happening to his body, even though it was painful at the end very, very difficult. But I think his writing also has this unflinching quality and his

00:44:33.200 - 00:44:50.540

closeness and attention to detail that I found, very moving. He was never maudlin about what was happening. But I found the attention and the interest almost more moving than if he had been more sentimental in his writing.

00:44:51.050 - 00:45:08.660

Morton Marcus: You know, that's it, the dispassionate examination of the scientist, is what one half of the work is about. And then the other half that comes to meld with it is these intensely feeling and loving individual. So, that I

00:45:08.660 - 00:45:26.060

mean that's a very interesting revelation about what you find going on in these poems again and again. The fact that you dispassionately look at things, try to get rid of his passion, but his passion then comes in always in the end of the poem,

00:45:26.720 - 00:45:39.980

and becomes the dominant point of it. Very, very interesting. Do you have more of these poems? Susan Keith: Well, there's one thing I wanted to say. I think in Greg's early days, he was sometimes criticized for being

00:45:39.980 - 00:46:01.070

too much in the head, and that maybe his poems were afraid to feel or he would. He was restrained about how he felt and I think as they became more mature, he became more comfortable with expressing his vulnerability and his emotions.

00:46:01.640 - 00:46:24.470

And I'd love to be able to play "12th July 49th Year." I think it's track number 25. This is a poem where Greg talks about loneliness and a loss and living with with pain and I found a great deal of comfort actually in this poem. My loss is

00:46:24.470 - 00:46:43.340

different than- than when he was speaking of in the poem, but then yet I- I have gained some strength from just his example of how you live with pain and go on living and finding meaning in life. So, I think "12th July 49th Year" is a good example of

00:46:43.340 - 00:46:57.710

that. Greg Keith: 12 JULY 49TH YEAR And then one afternoon, the robin lands in the mimosa and turns first one bright eye then the other, the worm droops from

00:46:57.710 - 00:47:18.260

her beak. Turn your own head, your forward predatory eyes away. You must mean her no harm. Beyond her in the plum, nestlings fidget and simmer, she will trust you then and hop down the branch and fly to them. Some sounds you know you're not

00:47:18.260 - 00:47:36.590

hearing half of. And then nothing is fixed and bills lie unpaid in the pile. But a postcard from November slides out, more places we didn't go than places we did go. It's a very large country. And tears spring, so glad of the daughter,

00:47:37.280 - 00:47:56.930

but summer, but sweet wind, but the woman who serves coffee lets you look in her eye, straight as you need to, talks easy, smiles, glances back. And then nothing will happen, but a dove has descended. And then divorce is still final, your mother just as

00:47:56.930 - 00:48:15.080

dead. One week you finally pay the state and that very day, the Feds asked for theirs. But the solution which arrived at work while you bent to pick up the pen flitted away, came back in the hall, turns out correct. But a woman who left and a woman who

00:48:15.080 - 00:48:34.070

said go, and a third, who made it impossible to stay, all call the same day and each makes a gift of it. But be suddenly right enough and hair will stand up on your arms. And then the letter will come with the forgotten money but the woman

00:48:34.070 - 00:48:57.110

fled, who won't call, hurts just as much, but robins believe you, but the egg knows where it lives now and no longer circles. You must nod to the pain, a kind of neighbor, and you must mean it. Morton Marcus: His last lines are really marvelous. And there,

00:48:57.110 - 00:49:11.930

that is also an example of a poem that does not use scientistific language and there are scattered throughout the books very, very moving personal lyrics that do that. One that I would like to read in this connection is a poem called, "A

00:49:11.930 - 00:49:29.620

Pathetic Fallacy." And all I've got to do is find it. Susan Keith: See, that's on page 44. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Okay, again, this is a program on the poetry of Greg Keith and I'm being joined by Susan Keith and

00:49:29.620 - 00:49:43.630

we're reading from his pre-released book actually "Life Near 310 Kelvin," which is on sale at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. This is the ROOTS OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY by Greg, and this is how moving he can be without using any scientific

00:49:43.630 - 00:50:01.890

language at all: Yesterday morning on the freeway, a woman slid past in the adjacent lane, weeping, her grip high on the wheel. For miles, she drifted ahead slow and slipped back fast. One time

00:50:01.890 - 00:50:22.770

visibly sobbing, but head up, still in total control of our car. Downtown, a man stood facing a display window full of children's clothes, waiting for tears to pass. Perhaps the tiny shoes, the small striped overalls. This afternoon, this

00:50:22.770 - 00:50:40.980

girl in her dark raincoat crosses the parking lot ignoring weather and everyone. Every few steps, muscles in her face clench up. Her hands always about to reach or touch or explain. As when a woman learning of her own pregnancy

00:50:41.610 - 00:51:00.810

begins to see pregnant women lean back against the belly's low slung weight in every market aisle, sees women lugging newborns down every street. These days, people grieve everywhere. They tug at the breath like a garment that won't

00:51:00.810 - 00:51:27.470

stay put, their shoulders hunched forward to protect the precious agony carried in their chest, even the sky contorts, turbulent and wet. He has other poems in which he is sitting in a bar, and he will

00:51:27.470 - 00:51:44.300

see something, and it is- no one else is paying attention to it. It can be in the case something of an old woman coming in and in her sadness and aloneness doing an act of kindness, which she does not want anyone to find out. She is obviously an

00:51:44.300 - 00:52:01.040

alcoholic. But to Greg there is a sweetness and a love in her that he sees in her that just makes the world around us blossom, it seems to me. Susan Keith: Yeah, Greg had a lot of compassion and a lot of

00:52:01.040 - 00:52:17.420

generosity for the down and out. He came to Santa Cruz without much himself and supported himself by doing street performances. He played the guitar and did string figures and he never lost that feeling for people in need. And you

00:52:17.420 - 00:52:38.690

know, he was very free with handing out change to people on the street. Very kind, always supported the street performers. He had lived in Santa Cruz for about 22 years having come here in the late 70s. And he was very grateful for the fact that he

00:52:38.990 - 00:52:55.880

eventually did do quite well in computers, but he certainly had a lot of compassion for people who are struggling. Morton Marcus: We are up to around the last seven minutes of the show. What more would you like to say about Greg, and

00:52:55.910 - 00:53:10.650

read, or have Greg read? Susan Keith: Well, I- I would like to include the poem "Maude" before we close. "Maude," the poem "Maude" was written for Maude Meehan, who many people around here know her work quite

00:53:10.650 - 00:53:25.140

well. She's a well known poet and a very close friend of both Greg and mine, someone who was very important to him. And so, I wanted to make sure that we included that poem. Greg Keith: MAUDE.

00:53:26.710 - 00:53:44.140

I've seen the pictures, beautiful, curling and long. Gray now, not watched with longing on the street. She looks at you, her gaze straight as anything Euclid ever drew. Another in a long line of glances met, returned or

00:53:44.140 - 00:54:03.940

spurned. Her house is all textures and items, fabric wood, weathered and stained, books, books, papers. The wall of photos 75 years wide, just one side of the hall you take going out to her back deck. The bathroom wild with brass

00:54:03.940 - 00:54:25.810

figures, Gecko, frog, angel, goddess, goddess brooch, filigree butterfly. Beauty came by chance to the girl. The woman took possession. She stands now in her own gorgeous center, shining, even after so much has fallen. Two hours in a movie

00:54:25.810 - 00:54:41.950

seat and she stiffens now, she suffers the fragile sleep of the aged. But every day, she hauls in the net of her life and finds what she always found: love, grief, love, stone, stone, beauty, beauty, beauty.

00:54:47.690 - 00:55:00.470

Morton Marcus: I do want to mention several different things. One is our different kinds of poems. We're not going to have time to get to them but I want to put on things in your head. There are poems in here, meditations on being that are

00:55:00.470 - 00:55:14.570

absolutely brilliant. One is called, "I Declared." Another is, if I can find it- the meditation on light. Susan Keith: "The Age of Light" Morton Marcus: These are just really incredible poems. They're

00:55:14.570 - 00:55:27.860

long poems, they're marvelous. And then the, "Quantum of Angeles Finite State Diatribe," is another one. But there is another aspect of Greg's work that I do want to mention, not sure we can go into it or not. And that is, he was so alive,

00:55:28.040 - 00:55:45.170

not only to the people he loved who are immediate, and not only to people sitting in bars standing in street corners or driving on freeways, but he was very, very social in his work. And there are poems here to Shintaro Ishihara and the state

00:55:45.170 - 00:56:01.040

of Japan and a marvelous Vietnam War poem, which is called, "Off the Wall in Washington." And if we have time, I'd like to read it, but I want you to get in what you want to talk about. Susan Keith: Well, let's go ahead and one of Greg's favorite

00:56:01.040 - 00:56:14.000

poems was, "The Age of Light," or we could do the, "Off the Wall in Washington, DC." Morton Marcus: I think that's probably as far as time goes. We can do that. I don't think that- is that on the CD? I don't think

00:56:14.000 - 00:56:21.630

so. Susan Keith: Okay, let's see. Morton Marcus: It's on page 29, do you want to read it or? Susan Keith: Sure, I'll go ahead and read that, even though this

00:56:21.630 - 00:56:35.940

is- this is a poem of a guy who nearly missed serving in Vietnam. So, you have to imagine a man's voice but- Morton Marcus: Obviously the wall here is the wall of names of the Vietnam soldier fatalities. And-

00:56:36.670 - 00:56:51.380

Susan Keith: OFF THE WALL IN WASHINGTON, DC We stood outside the hotel in two big clumps waiting for plush buses to take us to the banquet. Three flags rippled and snapped in a steady wind, halyards ringing the hollow poles, the

00:56:51.380 - 00:57:07.820

stars and stripes, the DC flag and the banner of the Hyatt chain. Like any moment, this one falls on the frozen surface of all previous moments whose shapes intrude into the fluid now. The Capitol dome hovers four blocks south, cherry trees

00:57:07.820 - 00:57:23.450

just coming into bloom, almost April '88. The tour guide stood in the stairwell, the mic squealed in no particular sync to her spiel about Congress, the dates and costs of the monuments. I, in my seat, a cheerful cynic ready for dinner.

00:57:23.840 - 00:57:42.380

555 feet tall, the Washington, a stop at the Jefferson, new in the 40s. Lincoln's raised from swamp, yeah fine, plant, column, architraves, envy of antiquity. Then this surprise, my own reflection sharp in the virtual distance beyond the names,

00:57:42.590 - 00:57:58.970

three-piece blue-pinstripe burgundy tie, in fact, superimposed on the near uncarved surface, my own name not there by a 10 day paper accident in '67. The scene blurred and the sudden, long loss old fury and a daughter

00:57:58.970 - 00:58:16.670

alive who needn't be, none of it necessary, all of it true. 100 years on and no one will cry here. Good. Back on the buses and up the hill we dine well in the caucus room and one of the house office buildings, gilt Scotia trimming the high

00:58:16.670 - 00:58:31.670

ceiling. It could have been the wine made me argue geopolitics so loudly with the guy from the Naval Weapons center, but I think it was the wall. Greg served in the army briefly in the 60s and just narrowly

00:58:31.670 - 00:58:45.520

missed being sent to Vietnam with his company, got out before before that happened, but he was opposed to the war as many of us were back then. Morton Marcus: Well, how about a last word or so and I'm afraid

00:58:45.520 - 00:59:00.730

this hour has run by all too quickly. Susan Keith: I really enjoyed being on here and very much appreciate your inviting me to be able to speak about Greg's book, Morton, and also the wonderful introduction. He was

00:59:00.730 - 00:59:15.880

most grateful for that. Morton Marcus: It was my pleasure and I'm really, as I told you, on it to be a part of the book. I have to thank you for coming on what obviously is a very difficult time and thank

00:59:15.880 - 00:59:29.960

you very much for being here say- Susan Keith: Well, I was just gonna say that the book is orderable through SLG Books, it's PO box 9465 Berkeley, California 94709. And the telephone there is area code

00:59:29.960 - 00:59:47.040

(510) 525-113, of course, it's available locally at Bookshop Santa Cruz, but it also is orderable by mail as well. Morton Marcus: And I just want to say that you've been listening to the Poetry Show on KUSP Radio, 88.9 on your FM

00:59:47.040 - 01:00:03.690

dial, serving Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay, Salinas, and Big Sur, but I also want to say that the very difficult and unprepared technical aspect of this show that may have seen very smooth to you was done by Paul Couture who has really

01:00:03.690 - 01:00:07.470

transformed the Poetry Show into being professional. Thanks from me and Paul.