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[Recorded music playing]: [Music] Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody, this is the Poetry Show and I'm your host, Mort Marcus. And I'm happy to be back. I haven't been around Santa Cruz and as I hope you've

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noticed, I haven't been on the show for quite some while. But I'm here tonight and tonight and next week, I'm going to bring you some very special shows. But before we begin, KUSP thanks Nicholas Van Angle for providing a grant to help make the Poetry

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Show possible. Nicholas Van Angle is a real estate agent in Carmel. Thank you very much Nicholas Van Angle, we certainly appreciate it. And as we pop down the music, I would like to welcome to the show a person who I've known for years off and on,

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one of the great printmakers in Santa Cruz and that is Tom Killion. Tom, welcome to the Poetry Show. Tom Killion: Thanks, Morton. Morton Marcus: What I thought we would start with doing -- a lot

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of people know you out there, especially the people in the Printers Chapel, and things like that -- what I would like you to do is to let the listeners out there, who may not know your work, hear where you come from and how you started into

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printmaking and writing poetry. Tom Killion: Well, I grew up in Marin County, up north of here, and I came down to UCSC to go to college in 1971. And I've lived in Santa Cruz on and off ever since then. And it was going to

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UCSC that really enabled me to learn how to print books and get into combining poetry and printing woodcut prints, which is probably what I'm best known for around here, in one sort of holistic medium, which is what I think of the illustrated book as

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being where the prints and the text work together. Morton Marcus: What I'm interested in is, why don't you tell us some of the books that you have done. If you have ever seen a Tom Kilian print, one of the things that is most

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noticeable about it, and tell me if I'm wrong, is the beautiful use of blues, especially indigos and different shades of indigos. And it's usually coastlines, beautiful, almost Japanese, but very much your own kind of landscapes, which usually have

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to do with water and rocks. Tom Killion: Yeah. I've done a lot of pictures of the California coast, that's where I grew up and that's what inspired me as an artist for many years. I've sort of branched out in

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more recent years and used a lot more color and scenes of other things besides the coast, other places I've been like in Africa and around the western United States. Morton Marcus: Could you name some of the books that you've

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done, not just your own but works that you've illustrated? Tom Killion: Well, I first printed a book called, "Twenty-Eight Views of Mount Tamalpais," it was sort of after Hokusai, the famous Japanese kiyo e printmakers, "Thirty-Six

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iews of Mount Fuji," and I never quite got up to thirty-six and I had to stop at twenty-eight. And I printed that on the Cow Morton Marcus: Is that where you started? And that's where I really started, I started by taking

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some classes with Jacques Stauffacher, who taught there at one time, and Bill Everson, who helped me with some independent studies. Now, didn't you do something on an Everson book?

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Tom Killion: Oh, I've illustrated three books of Everson's poetry. One was a new poem of his, pretty recently, that Adrian Wilson who recently passed away, printed. And then a few years before that at 1980, I illustrated a collection of

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poems that he had written during the Second World War when he was a conscientious objector up in Waldport, Oregon in a CO camp. And a friend of mine, Richard Bigus printed that, who also went to UCSC and has become quite a well-known book

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designer. Morton Marcus: Where is he now? Tom Killion: He works in- he's a professor at the University of Iowa now, I mean, no, in the University of Nebraska. He keeps

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moving around. Morton Marcus: Now, do you remember the names of those books that you did for Everson because we have a lot of Everson fans out there?

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Tom Killion: Yeah. Morton Marcus: They may even own one of them. Tom Killion: Yeah, well, between what- it was not, "Between Two Wars," "Eastward the Armies," was the name of the one of the

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anti-war poems from his CO days. "In Medias Res," the first canto of his autobiographical narrative, he's gotten two more cantos done recently, was the one that Adrian Wilson printed that came out I think in '85, '86. And then, most recently,

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Peter Thomas, who is a printer here in town, Peter and Donna Thomas, printed and bound on their own handmade paper a poem that Everson feels it might be one of his best, maybe his best poem, called, "The Poet is Dead," a memorial to Robinson

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Jeffers who was his poetic mentor, although he only met him once. And maybe he never- Morton Marcus: I don't think he ever met him. He was really his spiritual father-son.

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Tom Killion: Yeah. Morton Marcus: What Bill has become to all of us. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And well, I have to say Robinson Jeffers is my spiritual father a little bit too, in terms of

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poetry. Certainly, his imagery of the coast is one of the things that really has inspired me over the years, maybe not quite his inhumanist philosophy but I think, as we all get further down the road of time and see what's happening to this

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coast, we begin to realize that some of the things that people thought were quite harsh that he was saying in the 1920s and 30s really probably are true about how we've woven this net of technology around ourselves that we are now enmeshed in and we

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can't escape from, he had a great poem called, "The Purse Seine." Yeah, it certainly is interesting to drive down to Carmel, and know where his house is, and do it on the lower road.

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Tom Killion: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And just see how this once almost, you know, a hand facing out to the Pacific, this stone- Tom Killion: That Tor House.

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Morton Marcus: Stone by stone Tor House is just surrounded now- Tom Killion: I actually, while we're at it, why don't I just read the poem I have in this, "Coast of California Book."

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Morton Marcus: Okay now, what we're talking about, we should say, and this is really, the main reason why Tom is here, he has come out with a book called, "The Coast of California." All I can say is it is one of the most exquisite books that has touched

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my hand around the last ten years. It is put out by David Godine and it is on sale at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. However, it is not on sale at the poetry section, it is in the art section and well it should be, though maybe we should have a

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few pages pointing to it or something at the poetry section. It is every poet's dream of the book that they would want to have out and God bless David Godine for bringing it out. So this is from the book, which we'll be reading much more of

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and it's called, "The Coast of California." And please do read Tom Killion: Yeah, this is just a little piece that goes with a the poem, Tom. big print of Point Lobos, the view- close to the view that

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Robinson Jeffers might have had from Tor House. And next to the print I have a short piece that says: In the last sage below Tor House, ringed with suburban death, we gaze across the bay to a timeless world of sea-worn

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granite and dark pines, Punto de Los Lobos, fog-shrouded fortress, surrounded by sighing kelp beds, and guarded by sea wolves, who still voice their music to the rhythm of the waves.

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Morton Marcus: Beautiful Tom Killion: I might as well say something about this book, huh? Since we're getting on that- Morton Marcus: Yeah, well, can we maybe read some things from,

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"Twenty-Eight Views of Mount Tamalpais," and sort of weave our way into this. It's the only copy I have; I don't want to let it go. Tom Killion: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: Let me say folks that I've enjoyed doing the show the last three years, but tonight, I wish it was television and color television at that and just have the camera zoom into these unbelievable prints. They are just so

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exquisite that all I can say is, even if you don't want to buy the book, go down and look at the book, "The Coast of California," or other Tom Killion work, which is probably- you'll see downstairs at the Bookshop Santa Cruz in the glass

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cases. "In Medias Res," I believe is in that case to this day, but it's just absolutely exquisite work and I just urge you to see it. And I'm really sorry that I can't hold the microphone up to the prints.

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Tom Killion: But talking about this, "Twenty-Eight Views of Mount Tamalpais," my philosophy of the book, the kind of book that I'm making, and the illustrated book is the book as a total experience where the text and the pictures really go

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together. And as I read through it, I haven't even looked at this for years. This book is really an example where it's very hard to read the poetry without having the image before you. What I've done is I've written very short haiku poems

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that go along with these images of Mount Tamalpais, and they're arranged in little sets -- there's one, two, three -- down the page. The top one is about even with the sky in the prints, and the middle one is about even with the landforms, and

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generally there's water below on the last one. So the first set of three- Morton Marcus: Why don't you briefly describe what the prints are, that'll be great.

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Tom Killion: Well, the prints are blue and white, linoleum-cut, wood-cut prints of Mountain Tamalpais in this, which is a mountain up in Marin County where I grew up. So the first one says:

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SKY WALL, EARTH SHOULDER, SEA TURTLE ISLAND, and this is how the poetry goes. The top line tries to have something to do with sky ideas, the middle line has something to do with earth, the bottom line has something to do with water. So we just keep

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going along. High above on roads and trails, gravel crunches underfoot, the bay below forms still silver patterns. And really the words are describing the picture as much

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as the picture's describing the words. This is more than an illustrated book, it's sort of a back and forth thing that's going on in relationship. And this is the first book I did. I was, I think, twenty when I did it, and so it's a little- well,

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I won't say immature but it's something that's working together in a way that I can't really have the poetry read standing on its own. Morton Marcus: Okay, I understand that. Well, why don't

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we then talk about, "The Coast of California," and the work that you did in here. And as you told me before the show, it's not new work? Well, no, this book is a reproduction in a lot of ways of

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a book that I printed here in Santa Cruz in 1979. I was living in a little shack, a garage, behind Juanita Wolff's house, who some people might know in the art community. And it was right near a lagoon and I had my printing press in there. And

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this is very much a Santa Cruz book, more than anything else on the whole California coast, this book is about Santa Cruz, and a lot of the poems are either actually about Santa Cruz, or they have been- the imagery is coming from Santa Cruz, specific

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or not. Let me ask you, you lived in Mount Tamalpais, you know, Point Reyes, Point Lobos also down here, and you know, the whole Carmel-Monterey area, and you feel that much for Jeffers, and

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yet you chose to come to Santa Cruz. Why was that? Because you just went to school here and stayed, or-? Yeah, you know how people are in their lives, you make friends, and you have places and that's where you stay.

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Okay, that was pretty simple. I mean, it's hard to just pick up and move somewhere out of a pure poetic urge to be there. And sometimes, places are more magical and mystical when they're kept a little bit at

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arm's length, and you go and visit them in sort of a pilgrimage, and it's not the same as living there all the time. Who are some of the people you met, let's say, when you were

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doing printing and learning it up there at UCSC and you made friends with, let's say. Were there people at UCSC you made Well, there's plenty of people I made friends with at UCSC. But friends with?

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amongst the printers, I would have to say there's three people that taught me the most, more than any of my teachers taught me, and who I really have carried on a wonderful relationship at some period in my life and still continue it

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pretty much with them. The first is Richard Bigus, who I mentioned before, and he is a great printer, he's one of the finest letterpress, hand-press printers in the United States today and a very fine book and type designer too. Felicia Rice

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is another one and she is really- Moving Parts Press, folks. Morton Marcus: Right, in case there are people out there who Tom Killion: Yeah, Moving Parts Press. And she teaches printing

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and she's teaching some at the university and does beautiful books. And she's a very fine type designer and we've had a wonderful working relationship over the years. And another person is a woman named Mauree Carey, who works at the library

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at UCSC and has done some beautiful little books, hasn't are wondering what we're talking about, Santa Cruz has a been doing too much printing lately, but she really probabl taught me more about th technical art of printing tha

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anybody else, because she wa around when I was learning ho to operate the press an everything. And there were quit a few more people, I could go o , and the whole Printers Chapel f Santa Cruz pretty much went o UCS

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community of fine printers, the likes of which I don't know where anywhere else in the United States- Tom Killion: I don't think it really exists, and the interesting thing is quite a few of them are poets as well.

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Morton Marcus: Right. Gary Young is another one. Tom Killion: And pretty good, I mean, Gary Young is a pretty good poet and we're really fortunate to have people like him around.

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Morton Marcus: Yeah, I was- I'll give you a name out of there. I'm just coming back, as you know, from Washington, and I spent an entire eight hour night, a joyously rollicking night with Clifford Burke.

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Tom Killion: Oh, yeah. Morton Marcus: Who is a legend, as Tom's smile says, and he has sort of left the San Francisco area thirteen years ago, and he went up to hide out in Anacortes in Washington. And we spent the

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evening together and he can't wait to make his trip down to Santa Cruz and see all the people he knows down here and see what's going on down here. And Clifford Burke, for the people out there, is a legendary printer who gave up Cranium

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Press and you know what he's doing now, Tom? Tom Killion: No. Morton Marcus: He is perfecting computer tabletop printing to become fine printing. And I should have brought the sample

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he gave me. It really is amazing. The only problem he doesn't have so far is the print just floats on the page instead of having any kind of an impression. Tom Killion: Well, that's the thing you're always going to

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have to deal with, and I hope they never fix it. Morton Marcus: He's sold almost all his equipment. Tom Killion: Oh really? Morton Marcus: One press left.

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Tom Killion: Yeah, well, there are a lot of people that are starting to experiment with computer graphics as a fine art form, I mean in printing, and everything else too. But the thing is, it doesn't have this feel of the metal type.

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Morton Marcus: Right. Tom Killion: To feel that type between your hands as you set each word. As you said, each word, this this book, "The Coast of California," getting back to it, I set it by hand, in Centaur

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Type, a beautiful typeface, and I really composed it in the stick. A lot of the poetry, I had it scribbled down as notes on- where a lot of it came to me, I would write it on the backs of scraps of paper I happen to have with me or found

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on the ground when I was walking around in Ano Nuevo or something, sort of inspirational poetry, quite a bit of it. But to work a poem into some presentable form, usually, you spend a few drafts on a typewriter, and this was really

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done in the stick. I print it, and I go, no, that's wrong, and I changed the metal type right there. Morton Marcus: Well, that is the printer as poet. Yeah, that's great, that's a great story. Let's read some of, "The Coast

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of California," tell us about it, you know, and- Tom Killion: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And we'll get into it now and probably after the break, which comes, I should tell you, in half hour, so-

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Tom Killion: Yeah. I think what I'd like to talk about first is that, that this poem, this poetry, this whole conception of, "The Coast of California," is about a coast that is extremely beautiful. It's really moving, it's a place, and places

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have a way of becoming a part of a human being's soul. I'm sure, certainly we can look through history and see how attached people are to their land. And this coast is a place where most people have only come in recent years. You know, I'm one of them

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too, although I'm proud to say that my great grandparents were pioneers in Eureka. But we all have come here pretty recently, we're not very in touch with what the people who lived here before thought about things. It's a big separation

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culturally, in terms of language, and we build a whole new culture here, which seems to be destroying a lot of the things that we love so much about this place. And this poem is sort of a eulogy for what we love about the place, and the

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pictures or illustrations of what we love about the place, and it's also a memorial for a part of the coast, part of this world that we are living in, which is dying and going away. And probably coming from both those themes, it's sort of a

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protest and a call to do something about it and resist this destruction of the environment we live in. And everybody's saying that, it's not a new message. It's just my own personal way of putting across that message. And I think

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that if I read some of the introduction, which is also sort of a prose poem, I might give people a sense of what I was trying to do with this. This is how the introduction starts: The coast of California unfolds its long poem, wrapped around

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the points and coves, river mouths, and shifting sandbars, fingers slipping between the hills, written on the float- floating world of wind and sea. The poet is tossed on the waves in his vain attempt to express this infinite poem. He is washed

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ashore, a tiny figure crawling up the beach, soaking in the sun, feeling the joy of returning to land, so forgiving like the scoters driven in by the storm, bobbing in the surf along the margin between two worlds. The artist struggles to

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capture this ever-changing poem, to impress it in his memory with carved blocks and ink. But it is part of the living world whose only reality is in the moment of its experience. This is the tragedy of the artist, the impossibility of reproducing the

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joy of the living world in the abstract forms of language and imagery. It seems that in 20th century America this tragedy is intensified by our objectification of both art and nature. Our technology has severed us from conscious

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dependence on the natural world, and our art reflects the separation, for art has become an object of human abstraction rather than a celebration of our place in the living world. This alienation from nature has cost us our vision of the truth

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contained in the infinite variation of the living world, even as our own store of abstract knowledge and dead objects has multiplied. The price we have paid for our illusory independence from the natural world can perhaps best

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be understood when we contrast our view of the world with that of the people who inhabited this continent before the European invasions. In his book, "Language and Art in the Navajo Universe," Gary Witherspoon, this is an anthropologist,

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reflects that in this Western world where mind has been separated from body, where man has been extracted from nature, where effect has been divorced from fact, where the quest for and focus upon the manipulation and accumulation of things has

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led man to exploit rather than respect and admire the earth in our web of life, it is not surprising that art would be divorced from the more practical affairs of business and government, and the more serious matters of science, philosophy

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and theology. In the Navajo world, however, art is not divorced from everyday life for the creation of beauty, and the incorporation of oneself in beauty represent the highest attainment and ultimate destiny of man. I believe -- this is me

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speaking -- I believe the true role of art should be that of synthesis, the creation of a bridge of consciousness between our inner worlds and the outer world which we experience. This synthesis comes naturally when we are in the living world of

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trees and rock, of crashing waves and wet canyons, but surrounded by the dead world of human creations we forget so easily the living world from which we sprang. Synthesis becomes increasingly difficult as our world is divided between

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the living and the dead, and the dead consumes ever more of the living. Already, the taxes of the dead world have been levied against this coast. Oil drilling platforms line the shore, nuclear reactors vomit death into the sea and soil, the

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cancer of the sprawling cities consumes the rich bottom land. This consumption will not cease until we value the living world above our dead creations, but this realization comes hard to those who are addicted to technology. It comes not at all

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to corporations and oligarchs addicted to constant growth in the place of social responsibility. So we can await the future with but the cold comfort of Robinson Jeffers' vision that the towered-up cities will be stains of rust on

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mounds of plaster, and all these people but a thighbone or so, a poem stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass in the rubbish dumps, a concrete damn far off in the mountain, or we can struggle to breathe life into our dead world.

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Well, what this poem is trying to do is breathe some life into the world of the pictures that make up a lot of the body of this book. Pictures are just flat images of places, frozen for a moment in time, and with words, you can make time move.

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You can talk about people, you can talk about events, you can go backwards and forward in the past, and I think that that element of time is something that probably poetry and prose can express a lot better than visual images. So the poem

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itself is a long, long poem. It's called, "Glacial Mist," and it's dealing with some of the images of the coast over a period in which I was living there, and it's also dealing with this universal image of the fog, which really makes the

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landscape of our part of the coast around here, from Monterey up north to Cape Mendocino. It's really the overriding image of that world and I play a lot with that image, that's what this, "Glacial Mist," thing is all about.

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Morton Marcus: Shall we take a break and come back and then have you read, "Glacial Mist," so that we won't have to interrupt it? Tom Killion: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: The people out there then, we're going to be hearing a long poem, which is the centerpiece of this absolutely exquisite book of prints, poetry, and prose that is the reason for our guest's being here tonight. And our

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guest is Tom Killion, printer and poet who makes this home here in Santa Cruz. We're talking about a book called, "The Coast of California," which can be gotten at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, but look in the art section in front of the store to

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find it. It is really a magnificent book. Anyway, we will be back after a break. We'll have a few announcements and then we'll get right to, "Glacial Mist," and talk to Tom about some other things. One of them will be the song we hope

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you're going to hear now, we don't know whether it's the one that we queued up, but it was made by Tom when he was in Africa, is that correct? Tom Killion: It's a song about the Eritrean people's struggle

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for liberation of their country, which is part of Northern Ethiopia, which they want to be a separate country. Morton Marcus: Okay. And after Tom finishes reading the poem, he will tell us about his trip in Africa and what he is working

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on now. So let us take our break now at twenty-nine after the hour, and listen to some of this music from [unintelligible]- Tom Killion: Eritrea. Morton Marcus: Thank you.

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Tom Killion: Northern Ethiopia. [Recorded music playing]: [Music] Morton Marcus: We have a poetry reading and you will hear at 7pm on January 27th, this Friday, people who have been on the

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program, Linda Fox, Paul Callendrino who was just here in December, and Carol Locke. So that's Linda Fox, Paul Callendrino, and Carol Locke at the Louden Nelson Center, 301 Center Street, Santa Cruz, seven o'clock this Friday and

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afterwards, there is open readings and open mic readings, so please come and sign up for that. And last but not least, I would like to plug something that I'm doing and that is, anyone who is interested in studying the roles of women as

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seen in American film are invited to sign up at Cabrillo for the English language, a film course, which is called Women in American Film, which will be taught every Wednesday evening from seven to ten starting tomorrow in the forum, room 450.

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And the instructors are yours truly, and Linda Kitz, a wonderful teacher and routine teaching the class. So please sign up if you are so interested. Next week, and I will announce us again at the end of the show, John and Elaine

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Gil will be our guests and they will be reminiscing about the Sixties and the Seventies when they ran one of the most influential small presses in the United States, the Crossing Press, so that's next week. But right now, we are going back to

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Tom Killion, who is going to read us some the poem, "Glacial Mist," from his beautiful new book, "The Coast of California." Tom? Tom Killion: Actually, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to

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read some sections out of it. I think it's a little long to read the whole thing, particularly some sections that deal with Santa Cruz and the opening and closing part. So this is the beginning:

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GLACIAL MIST On this continents edge, this culture's last coast, the water and air emerge as one living being, thick with salt and distilled sea fragrance, sunset tinged from above, blue lit from

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below, an underwater world, starless, moonless, dripping through dark forests, rising in the night, ghostly cloak, veil of tears, surrounding us in the dark, soft and cool of a lover's embrace, wrapped around the loins of brushy mountains,

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clinging to their steep sides, as if it would never let us go. For three days I waited for you on the snowy pass and each evening climbed the granite wall from lake to cliff and sat beneath the lone fur, weathered and twisted to human

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strangeness, and heard only the rock crack in the wind on the falling plane of frozen whiteness, and the sky turned slowly green and the sun sank behind the jagged mountains and the moon rose silver and jeweled the frozen slopes with a billion

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reflected moons, and the emptiness that is truth, the cold stillness that is reality fell from the stars to lie about my frozen face. High in another pass, the last light stained sky and sea where the silence of snow and ice still ring in my

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ears and the fog floating out of the Pacific leaves my eyes to wonder where the black hills fall to coastal towns flickering on the shores of the night. Silver and immense, the fog towers at the edge of town, hanging out just beyond the

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shore, awaiting the night. The land lies hot and tempting, filled with the sounds of summer evening. The soft folds of hills stretch into darkness, spreading ridges and secret valleys open on the sea. The sun sets, the water turns salmon and then

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silver gray. The mist rushes in quenching the hot earth, spilling in a silent wave breaking over the town and rearing up, plunges across the river valley to scale the ridges beyond. Deep in the summer night sea mist climbs the coastal

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mountains, ghost-like it appears among the madrones across the meadow, drips from redwoods and falling canyons, stretches pale fingers over a last bare ridge to hover in blind omniscience above the great inland valley greeted with pulsing light where

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polished cars gleam behind small sounds in the hills, a distant word of machines, cars and canneries, a night-long festival of harvested fruit and working humans, bathed in electric low reflected off crouching mountains where the ghosts of

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the hills are enveloped still by the ancient night. And the sea's moist breath drifts through dry grass to mix with crickets, serenading slow grazing cattle beneath the eye of the western moon. For us, the conquerors, there are no ghosts in these

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hills above the sea. Even on some haunted moonlit road, no shadow stalks among the madrone trunks, smooth and red as human limbs, they are vanished and the fog hangs empty along their trails. The shell mounds all are leveled, and the names have

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changed. Only the lady Tamalpais remains, heels lapped by the cool Pacific, floating in manzanita blossoms above the sea. Yet I believe Pomponio himself once stood here, engaged across the empty channel, or tonight, above your head the

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perfect moon hangs in pale yellow, drifting down a silver path to the last glow reflected from city walls beyond where we lie among early flowers, behind a winner that never came, watching the tide rush through the gate, from across the still

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Pacific to the cleft between two dark hills, flat-topped, giant-clipped, broken image of perfection, except in the sky spread so far above, and later, the white lanterns of madrone blossoms softly burning around the tree deck perched thirty

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fathoms above the redwood canyon in sleep. That's a very Marin County beginning there, and I'm going to skip through the San Francisco part and get to the part that begins to move down the coast towards Santa Cruz.

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The coast road stretches south, the Buddhists crawl north, fifty thousand prayers per mile, Mexico to Canada on hands and knees, foreheads pressed beside the road in penitence for our sins. Along the road they squat, half hidden by the grass, like

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the farmworkers' shanties in the arroyos, walled in by road fill, no opening on the shining sea. The [unidentified] rip the air above, sixty miles per hour, the speed of oblivion. Bird, deer, rabbit, snake, death cuts the land from the sea. The whales

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head south, then north again, water spouts rise off the receding shoreline where centuries of waves have risen, humping up offshore, crashing into coves and cliffs, terracing their progress on the slow lifting mountains.

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Flatbed fish truck in the empty night, moonless sky, hanging over the void of black sea, limitless vision, dark forever, passed out across starry fields where Orion hovers, somewhere above the edge, and we descend the cold valley where creek

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meets sea. Some black fall, some sound rustling, some moon-dead night, it will all appear as empty as no sea ever swept the shores. No shores ever stood before these crouching waves, no cliffs ever rose echoing the waves dull of thunder. This land

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slumbers beneath a hasty mantle of crust, rock, and tar. Its slow movements unperceived, waiting. Out on the coast, the white cliffs rise, feet in the wave-cut sea. To their backs the steps of ancient sea beds climb into hills and mountains, rock

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and trees. And here, hidden in the redwood canyons beneath the mud of reed-banked lagoons, lies the long scar, the deep flaw, fissured earth, two worlds slowly passing, one headed north for the Aleutian trench, the other perched on the edge, the

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ancient continent, now sadly pillaged by some wayward band, swollen beyond all expectation to a ravenous hoard, the world of nations at its feet, and here we wait. The earth murmurs, the mud bubbles from the lagoon, egrets rise circling the ageless

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fear unknown. Dogs howl on the edge of town, the great redwoods creak and sway, waiting. Deep in the earth of the city lie the rotting hulls of wooden ships, long stemmed pipes dropped overboard by some unlucky sailor, high above the

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building's wave and heliotropic splendor, their roots sunk in shifting mud. Along the sidewalks people rush, plunging through revolving doors, the cycle of morning, noon and night. The weeks pass, the calm of Sunday in concrete canyons, a

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lone saxophone wailing down eyeless walls. The years pass waiting, the fire gutted ruins of fading sepia memory. The rubble cleared and reformed, new configurations waiting for the earth. The sullen mother, whose children have left her, moving

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quickly, in howling machines, laughing, drinking, crying their pain to the neon dawn beneath the hotel Mars, staring into space. Slowly the magma oozes from the depths, the unfrozen cold of the abyss, pushing up through the thin crust to

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explode above the sea. One day the vast Pacific erupted in flame, and on its edge the thunder shook the very mountains down, then it moved. Then it shook free, the boulders and mud, the grasses and trees, the accumulation of ages, scabs on

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the festering wound, and wrenching sideways it slipped once more towards its doom, the yawning chasm of the North. Then we fell screaming, and raised our eyes to the toppling towers, the earth filled skies, closing over our heads the mouth of a

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grave, the Pacific no longer serene, but that wave lurking in our memories, crouching under the black cliff, the wall of water looming, and its shadow paralyzes. We open our mouths, but cannot speak, and no sound was ever heard. But that roar

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and the terrible thunder of water pouring like ice, a final glacier descended from eternity, appearing in the instant, down and [unidentified]. When the tule- when the earth shakes, do not be afraid, it will not hurt you. [Comment: This is the

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ghost- that dance doctrine of the Sioux Indians in 1896 saying this] Tule houses tremble and shell mounds beside the bay. Clouds of waterfall rise along thunderclap of wings and cries. Falling rocks block a creek, the trout swim in circles along the

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shore, the earth swallows a man whose son runs in terror back to the houses where the people are gathering. In the hills above, coyote is laughing. Ghosts dance silent across moonlit sand, thirty holes climb

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the cliff to Pomponio's Cave, dark eye in soft white rock, tide washing its feet, overhung, to fall backwards as we reach the lip, overpowered. On the sand, backs broken, crab-like, moving sideways, away, away.

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This next part of the poem is about a walk out to UCSC beach, before they built the Marine Lab out there, maybe ten or fifteen years ago on a night when there was a eclipse of the moon. We crossed the old field in the night, beneath new earth mounds,

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shoulder-deep in wild flowers. And passed along the beach, soft dune line between estuary and pounding waves, hidden between chalked cliffs, climbing to the next terrace, the cormorants' heads appeared like the stalks of some twisted plant,

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silhouetted against the glint of moonlight on the sea. The birds were aware of us as we reached the cliff edge, and there were many more than we first had seen, hundreds passing the night on white ledgers above the waves. They turned uneasily and

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the first one panicked, dropping over the edge, wings spread, neck stretched, black wedge hurtled towards the marching swells below. The others followed, tearing the night in a rush of wings, dark triangle of triangles, pushing out and down

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to lose itself in the depths of seafoam mist and nightwave thunder. We continued along the moonlit cliffs to a wild northern beach. Silver sandbar spread across the confluence of rain-swollen creeks, shining wet along the midnight tide line

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where Medusa shrieked beyond hearing and curlews cried back frightened, for an apparition walked the beach, stalking the full moon grown cancerous, swallowed by the heavens, black as cormorants' wings, light blooded from the sky to return

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the color of blood, touching the coiled kelp with a red sheen, long snakes slithering in from the sea, twisted among the driftwood and seabirds, tokens of winter. The moon set beyond far cliffs, as the sun rose behind eastern mountains, and

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around the near cliff's corner the Santa Lucias floated across the bay, their last steep slopes plunging into the depths of the West. Morton Marcus: We are listening to Tom Killion, reading from his

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book, the long poem, "The Coast of California," a beautiful book of prints and poetry and prose. Tom, continue. Tom Killion: Now, I'm going on to winter time in Santa Cruz. Winter runs into spring a hundred times along the coast,

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acacia blossoms and green grass glow. The air swept across ten thousand miles of empty ocean. Cranes working after the storm, piling rocks, houses perched on cliffs, cliffs shored with riprap but the sea comes around behind, exposing the land's

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bones, flooded margins that can't be paved, recalling wild rivers and sandbars channeled for a moment before the uneasy sea, violent waves, psychotic energy. Santa Cruz, a town of painful beauty. Winter storms bring the flotsam of the

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mountains down creeks to the shore where waves destroy beaches, tearing at rock roots and crumbling cliffs, caught between sea and river, tide and storm. The rock piles up, a woven pattern of sticks and kelp interspersed with white and

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orange plastic jewels. Mist from crashing waves hangs over the town. The sea roar permeates everything with a thick silence, far into the frog-croak night, where we sit listening to refrigerators hum in wooden boxes on dead fields, never to

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bloom yellow gold beneath dark cypresses. The somber cover of high fog cleared off at even tide, and from the south, the helicopter gunship came in staccato growing sound up the coast, exploding the fading evening sky. Red

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lights flashing on all of drab, malevolent dragon form, grim reminder of distant wars, the machine death which builds the low slung howling cars, the glittering road separating the coast from our lives. Once traveled by frightened children,

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long lines of cars through artichoke fields to jump on the Sunday tourist filled highway, before the gates soldiers and gas masks, riot police charging, maced, beaten, marching back down the empty freeway to Seaside, how many wars ago? Out

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in the water, a few surfers bob, solid waves, kelp in the pulsing earth sea curving and spilling in the twilight behind the sad remnants of the lagoon, pickleweed and sage above its still waters, a few ducks ducking, dunes hiding the sea, a

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last piece of reality amid spreading confusion. Night falls, a cool breeze off the sea. Orion hangs in blue stillness above the trees, surf echoes up the creek from the shallow lagoon, dogs bark across the shadows, disembodied

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paranoias of creatures hiding behind flimsy walls, trying to block out the vast star-filled wave sound at night, trying to pretend the teeming shores of this once quiet land are populated in peace or some semblance of love and

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understanding. But the electric currents scream, the words and sounds and images are repeated of our own feeble dying consciousness, of what reality is at all. VICENTE CANYON IN EARLY JUNE

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Jodi, and Felipe, wild flowers along the trail, red paintbrush, silvery delphinium, irises and lupins. Night hiking brings Felipe memories of a few months before, hiding from helicopters in the arroyos of El Salvador, a thousand people imprisoned by

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terror. Under volcanoes in canyon bottoms at noon, night running down trails, fearing the moon, sudden fire and steel are wrapped around them, mother's hands on babies' mouths, children pierced by shrapnel. Felipe caresses a redwood, so

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immense, it could shield one from the helicopter's guns, moving around the trunk to escape the bullets. We camped in the meadows above Vicente Flats, yucca blossoms luminous in the night, drinking whiskey and talking from our sleeping bags,

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not of Rexrothian fantasies but of our own cruel wars. In the morning we lay naked in the creek and hiked back above the turquoise sea, through the flowers, where the world seemed to fall away, until Felipe heard helicopters in the distance,

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coming over the mountains to remind us that we live in a haunted paradise in the belly of the beast. Sunset on the western sea, a moment of divine contemplation. The ocean turns to glass around the kelp beds, whale-backed

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waves rise, schools of surfers before them. Bands of people line the shore transfixed by the moment, a premonition of infinity in the last orange gold rays of light. Pelicans skim the surf, the moon rises behind the Gabilans. A sudden green light

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streaks the sky from south to north, tearing a jagged seam across the heavens. As salmon fades to indigo, the rocket stages fall, burning stars quenched in the cold sea. Now I'm going to move to the very last part of the poem

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which- this was all written ten years ago, and this part is about Diablo Canyon. Unfortunately, there's a lot of pictures between the two parts of this poem. We came back up the coast from Diablo Canyon, where the devil

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digs deep in the seaward mountains, where thousands lined the beach at the canyon's mouth, cheering the brave families who climbed the fence, pitting their warm bodies against the machines. We left as the sea drew its veil across the scene,

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flattening the land beneath the glacial sunset. We drove north in silence, considering the world in its changes, how storms rise out of the calm of the sea, and the sea roars against the land. How the flatlands cry out in anguish, flayed and pared to

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uniformity, how lost mountains whimper in tiny folds, and forgotten rivers rail helplessly beneath dry creek beds. How all is cut down, dissipated in the search for equilibrium, yet the forces of resistance rise again and again, pushing up, bringing

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down the wrath of the clouds and spilling off into the great flat sea. So we came to where the mountains dropped straight to the waves, where oak, bay and madrone cling to the canyons, and sequoias rise like topless towers, where the trail is a

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straight line across falling hillsides, toothed in serpentine and cloaked with yellow grass. And in a dry ravine we found a flat place for sleep perched on granite boulders beneath the redwoods, where night is colored with the smell of sage and

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laurel, where darkness vibrates with crickets singing their desire to stars laced in trees, to the pulsing night sky, to the walls of rising mountains, to the black warmth all around this wooded window suspended above the misty sea.

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And that's, "Glacial Mist." Morton Marcus: Well, that certainly is a wonderful concept poem and book here. Tell me, have you gotten any reviews yet that you know of?

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Tom Killion: Of the book? Morton Marcus: Yeah. Tom Killion: The reviews that I've seen have talked about it as a total book and the pictures and poetry and yeah, they've

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liked it. Morton Marcus: Right, they've liked it, that's great, yeah. Well, I certainly, again, urge everyone, we still have a minute or two. What are you doing now, Tom?

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Tom Killion: Right now I'm working on a book that's a travel book. It's called, "Walls," and the concept of it is the walls that we have built between ourselves -- walls of language, walls of the various states that we have, and all the

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things that you sort of go through, and the walls you break through as a traveler. It's mainly centered around a trip I took in 1976-77, hitchhiking through Europe, and down across the Sahara to West Africa. And then it goes on into some more

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recent experiences I've had in Africa where I worked over the last few years doing history research, and then working in a refugee camp for people fleeing the war in Eritrea in the northern part of Ethiopia. And some experiences I had recently

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there, with the guerrillas inside the liberated zone of Eritrea, are also going to be in the book, and it's profusely illustrated, of course. Morton Marcus: Okay, so there are-

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Tom Killion: Multicolored wood cuts of scenes in Europe and Africa. Morton Marcus: Sounds great. Is Godine interested in that, or-? Tom Killion: I don't know, I find- first I print these books

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in the fine-print edition. And then people come in and want to reproduce them. Morton Marcus: Well, I should tell you that this book, "The Coast of California," when Godine saw some of these pieces,

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he said he had to do the book. Tom Killion: Yeah, well, when he saw the book- Morton Marcus: Yeah. Tom Killion: The original version of the book, which was

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mainly blue and white, I've added a lot of color to it. Morton Marcus: Which is something we should say, there's a lot of color in here and beautiful oranges and even reds, greens. It's just really a beautiful piece of work, Tom.

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And I have to say that poetry that I was reading, without the pictures going with it, a lot of its illustrating places and the pictures are there, and it sort of bounces off each other in a way that you don't quite get the sense of when I'm just reading

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the poetry. That's true, but I don't think you need the pictures. I mean, I think it's great, you know, and that's the way it should be, but I think the poetry came through. Anyway, it is now a minute to

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ten. We have been talking with Tom Killion, printmaker/poet, who is out to make the total book, and if you want to see what he does, and I would urge you to do it, the book out is called, "The Coast of California," and it is at the

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Bookshop Santa Cruz in the art section. Now, this is not an inexpensive book, but if you're looking to get someone an exquisite present, this is the book to do it. It is $40. Tom Killion: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: But I have to say it is worth every cent. Tom Killion: And you might want to know, so you think you're getting a bargain, is that the original book which when I first printed it, I sold for around three hundred dollars, this is

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the hand-printed version, a limited edition. Well, now I find it in in bookstores in the secondary market, of course I'm not participating in this giant increase in its price, going for thirteen hundred dollars.

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Morton Marcus: It doesn't surprise me. Are you happy with the job they've done? Tom Killion: Godine did a wonderful job. It's exquisite. It was printed in Italy by Martino Mardersteig who runs the

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Stamperia Valdonega which is considered one of the very finest presses in the world today. Morton Marcus: Well, Tom Killion, thank you for coming in and certainly I hope you'll come again soon. This has been a

00:53:23.740 - 00:53:34.620

wonderful evening just very, very [crosstalk] Well, thank you very much, Morton, and thanks to KUSP. Well, we're happy. You and other poets like you and printers are what make the program go. I would like to say that Plaza

00:53:34.620 - 00:53:43.370

Books has provided a grant that helped make the last half hour programming possible. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz. Tom Killion: And Plaza Books also has "The Coast of

00:53:43.370 - 00:53:50.480

California." Morton Marcus: Oh it does? Oh, I better definitely say that. Anyone else? Any other bookshop in the area? Tom Killion: Stores all over the place have it; I've seen it

00:53:50.480 - 00:53:57.060

everywhere- Morton Marcus: But not in Santa Cruz? Tom Killion: I don't know who else in Santa Cruz. Morton Marcus: Okay, so Plaza Books definitely has it. You

00:53:57.060 - 00:54:10.950

people who are going down to Bookshop Santa Cruz, turn around. We appreciate Plaza Book's support, very, very definitely as an old friend and t's really wonderful. Again, oetry-prose reading series, inda Fox, Paul Callendrino,

00:54:11.430 - 00:54:29.010

arol Locke, this Friday, anuary 27th, starting at 7pm at ouden Nelson Center, and then here'll be an open mic fterwards. And the NPR layhouse, Babbit Episode 15, ill air this Thursday at 9pm, adio drama from National Public

00:54:29.010 - 00:54:44.400

adio on KUSP. And fame and ratory has not yet brought ocial advancement to Georgia abbit and so the saga ontinues. This is Mort Marcus aying, please tune in next week hen we have, again, a special how as this one was. It will be

00:54:44.400 - 00:55:01.740

laine and John Gill, who ran he- who ran The Crossing Press in the Sixties and Seventies And they will be here and th y will be reading from the ooks they publish, the poets the published as well as the pro e writers, and we'll talk abou

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the time when The Crossing P ess was one of the most f rmidable small presses in the United States. Until then, this is Mort Marcus saying stay tune to Tim Folger and "Things Ain' What They Used To Be" and we ill s