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[Recorded music playing]: "Where a brown-eyed angel waits for me" Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody, welcome to The Poetry Show, and right off the bat I wish to say that KUSP thanks Stapleton is National- Natural Foods Grocery providing support

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that helps to make this program possible. Stapleton‘s Natural Foods Grocery specializes in organic and commercial products at 415 River Street in Santa Cruz. And this is your host Morton Marcus, and we are listening to The Strains of

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Woody Guthrie, in an America in large part gone, in America of dust bowls, in America of Depression, and in America in which the people pulled together and pulled themselves out of a vast economic calamity, because they put their arms around each

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other, and tried. It is something that it is hard for a lot of young people today to imagine. And the poet who we will be listening to tonight represents that time, though he is a much younger man who represents that spirit and the

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people he comes from, the Finnish Americans of Idaho, which make up two wonderful volumes of a seven volume output, I hope he will read to you from tonight. I'm talking about Vern Rutsala who is here from Oregon, doing a series of

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readings at Cabrillo, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and at San Jose State where he'll be reading Thursday, and is with us tonight. Vern is an old friend, a poet whose work I have admired for years, and a man who has

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been honored in various ways. Not only has he published in every publication on both sides of the ocean that are in English, and some in different languages, but he is also the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and twice he has been

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honoured with National Endowment of the Arts Awards. Also, Vern, welcome to Santa Cruz again. Vern Rutsala: Thanks, Mort. Happy to be here. Morton Marcus: Great. Vern. You are a poet of everyday life. And

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your imagery is of everyday life. And I would just like people to hear a Vern Rutsala poem. So why don't we start off by having you read one. Vern Rutsala: Right. What I'll read is a poem called the

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PARKED CAR, It's from my book called "Backtracking," And it's dedicated to my mother. It's the steady quest, compass spinning, no direction but the pulse of obsession. Beginning and ending in this room as rain

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falls. No direction but the swirling intestine quest for the old Labyrinth, the place we carry, gleaming like a golden vertebra, like the shining coin in reflection pools that finally winks a beer can's dark triangle eye. Identity stretches far, a

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dim pulse traveling dead wires from this room in that reach to nurture dead time with the only tools at hand, words, tracking down the page. Now I hear the hum of tires as I travel back, counting each RPM, all the way to a parked car's stillness,

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with a woman sitting there through long gray afternoons day after day. Now I'll never know how far that still car traveled as she sat alone at 26 dreaming her long thoughts. We move from wilderness to wilderness, a parked car in 42. This cross

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hatched winter light, this swirled oak table I read with my fingers, and the rain tonight becomes that rain, and my street becomes her street. But the years will not collapse. I'll never know where she traveled, or how far, or why. The only way

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out of this wilderness of time is invention. The only way to cheat this hunger is to fix that car beside the curb with the young woman sitting there through the afternoon, day after day, as you might sit dreaming a city into being around you, this

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first and last city of your life. Morton Marcus: And right off the bat, you've taken us on a quest, on a movement, and so much of the poetry of your last three books is doing that. Why don't you tell us where you're from

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and how you came to write poetry? Vern Rutsala: Well, I'm from the North- Pacific Northwest; I've spent most of my life there. And how and why I came to write poetry, who- who can say, I mean, it's- it's something that-

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that happens to certain people, afflicts certain people, perhaps. I began writing as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do, and a lot of teenagers then quit. I kept it up, it meant something to me. It's- I teach at Lewis & Clark College, I

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teach a lot of writing students. And one of the things I tell them, if you get something out of it, if you enjoy the process, keep at it. If you don't enjoy the process of writing, if you don't enjoy that- that particular exquisite pain of

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trying to push a poem through to completion, then- then forget about it, do something else. But I haven't, happened to enjoy that, so I stuck with it, and it It's important to me, I don't feel right if I don't, if I'm not working on- on something, or

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if I'm not thinking about writing, and it's just an important part of my- my experience, my life. Morton Marcus: These questions- you know what some of our listeners are interested in hearing: How long does it take

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you to write a poem? You've written seven volumes, you have probably, what, two or three volumes that are still unpublished. Vern Rutsala: Probably. Yeah. Right, two anyway

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Morton Marcus: Um, how long does it take you, let's say to write Vern Rutsala: Well, I- I was just asked that question the a poem? other day. And one of the things is, there's no- no way of

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determining. I've had the luck to have a few poems finished in an hour, or finished in a draft; that happens very rarely. So what I need is usually is an extended period of time, it may be a week, it may be a month, and I've- I've had poems that

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have lingered on for a couple of years before I felt that they were- were completed. So it's part of my sense of writing is that I like to have a number of things to work on at any given point. So that if something isn't going, if something isn't

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working out, I can move on to something else so that there's always something in the hopper to- to worry about or tinker with or fret- fret about and there's no definite length of time it takes. I wish each one would be completed in a first

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draft. But as anybody who writes knows, first drafts are usually just the beginning, a bare beginning. Morton Marcus: Vern, I know and you know that imagery- and your imagery is original all the time. Your imagery and metaphors

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that- where that comes from heaven only knows. But what I would like to talk about in this connection in some way is something that you have that a lot of poets don't even think about, and that is amazingly tight phrasing, amazingly

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clicking phrases that just alert the reader to listen to every moment of what you're reading. And is that one of the things that- that you work on a lot when you are revising? Vern Rutsala: Oh, indeed, of course, of course. I mean, the

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fundamentals of writing are fairly simple. It's- it's the execution that's- that's tough. You want to take out what doesn't- doesn't fit, you want to murder your darlings, as they say, those- those little bits of self-indulgence that don't

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really work. And you want to get the poem moving and sounding like human speech, not as a demonstration of writing skill, but as a human statement, human document. Therefore, you've got to keep paring, keep cutting, keep getting the language to- to

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move in that direction, or that's the way I feel. One of the ways that I described this recently as well, which is fanciful, but I cited the statement that Michelangelo made about statues, he said he would like to carve a statue that

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would roll down a hill without breaking. Well, by extension, and figuratively, I would like to write a poem that is so tightly constructed, so well put together that, as I say figuratively, you could roll down a hill it wouldn't,

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wouldn't come apart. And that's- that's the goal, that's the ideal that I'm, that I'm working- working toward, I want all the elements to work together, fit together, and still be a human statement, not simply a demonstration of some

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kind of technical skill. Morton Marcus: Great, well, that's the exact answer I was pitting you in a corner to give me because I was there when you made that statement last night and I figured that would be

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something the listeners would really be interested in hearing. And let that be a great introduction then to a poem that you think is particularly tight and works in that way. And so he's sitting here saying ‘‘you dirty-‘‘ because it's totally

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unexpected, so you will hear the ruffling of pages and he will decide which poem he'll read. Now, what you're really lucky about is that he is looking through a manuscript of totally new poems that I do not think he has read many of these before.

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So he's got it. Vern? Vern Rutsala: Okay, well, I don't know if this, this is a- this is a poem called ‘‘Tom Pete.‘‘ And I think that the poem reveals itself as it goes along. And I'm not sure that it

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meets that standard that- that was set for poems, but try rolling it down a hill later we'll see. Morton Marcus: Okay Vern Rutsala: TOM PETE

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He lived in the town, a lonely old man, I suppose. But that was only the real Tom Pete. My grandmother invented the other one, the fierce, dirty prowler, burning-eyed drinker t windows, scratching fingers o the screen. She made him a st

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ingy-haired Hollywood Indian, with unbelievably silent mocca ins. He followed us home from very movie, Tanto‘s evil brother She said children went into a hack and never came out, he ate hem like beans. We were hau ted, speechless by his great h

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nger for peeping, by eyes ab e to draw everything out th ough through the window like a lown egg, like a seashell, all your meat gone. We understood no hing and everything. He was a ways there whispering, rattlin the outhouse door, crouching i

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the fruit cellar. We bel eved nothing and everything. We ever saw him, but we sa him everyw And that's- that kind of- also that kind of mythmaking that occurs in one's childhood, especially if you have a

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grandmother who is particularly inventive and has a little bit of a malicious streak perhaps. Morton Marcus: Now it seems as though from that poem that you've not finished writing the poems that were in "Walking Past

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the Ice House." Vern Rutsala: No, I'm still working on- on- on poems out of that experience, out of the- my early days in Idaho. Yeah, yeah. Morton Marcus: That's great. Do you think you're going to have

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another manuscript or- Vern Rutsala: No, they're going to be mixed in, they're gonna be meshed in, filtered in with- with other poems. I'm working on a number of poems through- kind of family poems which relate to

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that. And that's- that last one is one that probably should have been in "Walking Home from the Icehouse," but didn't make, it wasn't finished in time. Morton Marcus: Okay, how about reading us another one.

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Vern Rutsala: Okay. Well, this is a- this is a kind of a family poem, and it's also a poem that has to do with one's background. As you mentioned, on my father's side, Finnish-American, on my mother's side, Irish-American. This is called:

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AMERICAN NAMES and the title has inverted commas around it and it's a- it's a quiet and maybe even private reference to that Stephen Vincent Rosemary [sic] Benet poem called ‘‘I'm in love with American names‘‘ or whatever- however it goes. But

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this takes a different look at that idea. There were those relations who changed their names, lost forever in phone books, under the disguises that- of that anonymous Anglo-Saxon. Cut loose from the stigma of all those

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Finnish vowels. They just disappeared into the books' gray columns, disappeared from our memories too, fading into the protective coloring. Like Jimmy Gatz fading into Gatsby with all those beautiful shirts. One uncle in fact was a bit like old

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Jay, calling himself Russell and making a splash with fro- frozen foods in Seattle, Though we saw him there once or twice he always met us in restaurants with menus we were uneasy with and never took us home to meet his wife. We knew it was because

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we embarrassed him, as simple as that, but struggled through the menu anyway, admiring the fancy cut of his suit. We guessed he had invented a past we could be no part of, which seemed fair enough. But after the second visit, we never went again.

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Years later, we learned Daisy divorced him anyway, after his sharp partners dumped him, and he died of a businessman's disease at 53, with only the shirt on his back, and a secondhand Cadillac they auctioned off to pay the funeral

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bills. Morton Marcus: Can I- and I've got it right here, suggest a poem that sort of really gives us some world. There's so many of them and there's- they're so terrific. But it's a poem here

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that you wrote in "Walking Home from the Icehouse," called ‘‘Words.‘‘ Vern Rutsala: Alright. Morton Marcus: And I really love this because of the very nature

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of the language used, the whole culture is defined and it's- it's funny, it's witty, it's tragic, and it's, again, another thing with Vern‘s poems that really got me there. There's so much insight in so many of them into the American experience, as

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well as our personal and psychological experiences that I think it makes some of Vern‘s poems different from a lot of American poetry- poetry being written today. Vern Rutsala: Right. A couple of comments about this, I mean, it

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it's about the sense of being poor in this country and the idea that, as the poem will tell you, that if you have- there are things that you- you just hear about, things that you don't see if you're poor. I'll let the poem speak for itself, really:

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WORDS We had more than we could use. They embarrassed us. Our talk fuller than our rooms. They named nothing we could see, dining room, study, mantlepiece, lobster thermidor. They named

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things you only saw in movies, the thin flicker Friday nights that made us feel empty in the cold as we walked home through our only great abundance, snow. This is why we said "ain't," and he "don't." We wanted words to fit our cold linoleum, our oil

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lamps, our outhouse. We knew better, but it was wrong to use a language that named ghosts, nothing you could touch. We left such words at school locked in books where they belong. It was the vocabulary of our lives that was so thin. We knew this and

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grew to hate all the words that named the vacancy of our rooms. Looking here we said, ‘‘studio couch‘‘ and saw cot, looking there we said, ‘‘venetian blinds‘‘ and saw only the yard. "Brick" meant tarpaper, "fireplace" meant wood stove,

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and this is why we came to love the double negative. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I mean, that to me is a poem that has so much. I mean, there's not a word in there I would change. And it seems so easy, but there are just so many things- I'm trying

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to find one now, ‘‘it was the vocabulary of our lives that was so thin.‘‘ I mean, it seems so simple, it's not an image, but it's- it's the phrasing of it that is just so perfect. The description of the movies and coming out of the movies, which

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I teach so many of my students that what poetry is, is condensing. And the way you describe the movies and coming out of the movies, how much more can you condense that whole experience and the feeling of it is ‘‘the thin flicker Friday

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nights that made us feel empty in the cold as we walked home through our only great abundance, snow.‘‘ I mean, the phrasing of it is just so perfect. It is that delight that one hears and takes in the language as a reader, probably

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as a writer when you wrote it, too. But as a reader, that just makes me come back to poetry again, and again. And again, it seems so simple, but maybe I as a fellow practitioner know just how hard it is to write things like that. And you know, we have

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an- another master of that kind of phrasing right here in town, that's Bob Peterson, who we were visiting with before tonight, who is a master of this thing, and it just seems so easy when both of you do it. And I think it's the most difficult thing IN

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poetry, and it really is where poetry lives. Vern Rutsala: Yeah, well, what can I do but agree Morton Marcus: And furthermore. Why don't you read some more new poems Vern?

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Vern Rutsala: Okay. Well recently, in fact, last night, I talked about the difficulty in writing poems about my mother, My mother died in 1961, which is a long time ago and it was a long time before I was able to write poems about her. She lived

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in my thoughts and- and it's very difficult to say quite why this was. It was- My father died two years later than that and it was difficult to write about him as well. I mean, the- the closeness, the intimacy, however we may feel about our parents

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while they're alive, they still have a profound influence on us. And it's very, very difficult to- after they have died to come to terms with that. And one of the ways that a poet of course tries to come to terms with anything in his life or her life

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is by writing about it. And with my mother, it was just- just very difficult. And I think, as I have said on other occasions, part of the thing is the deeply intimate connection that exists between a mother and a child. And there I'm talking about the

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physical connection, as well as the emotional connection. Well, anyway, here's a poem that may not seem to be about a mother and child, a longish poem called: FIELD BURNING Also, I'll say that it's got references to or

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at least one reference to an exotic place, Corvallis, which is a town in Oregon, in fact, that's where Oregon State University is. It's in three parts. Driving down the valley we see smoke rising thick, so thick, it

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has the sculptured look of something solid, like a kind of twisting clay rising, black richly marbled with gray. For a change, the wind is right and the smoke doesn't cross the highway but we taste it and feel that atmosphere off to one side,

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something dense and menacing as it swirls up from the fields. They say such burning is good for the crops, they say it's the only thing to do. And much noise is made about it here. Many gray committee faces worry their faces grayer are still over the

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issue. But it is dramatic, that smoke roiling up as high as we can see, smothering the sun where it can. Some signal fire to the stars, like something totally out of control that strangely isn't. Some desperate message that means nothing, but

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seeing it we know the American love of cutting and burning, like the people up the street that just moved in and immediately cut down that old growth beside their driveway, cut, then burned it. That side of their house is naked now, but

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they seem to like it. Much in us would like a continent of stumps. Every forest cut off at the knees. As we drive toward Corvallis, I think of marching through Georgia, scorched earth policies and other tags and how that will to cut and burn burns

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deep in us. That appetite for waste space gnaws within us with a tapeworm hunger, as if the first of us here needed to gouge and burn away his fear of wilderness. And now we carry on, now with asphalt and concrete wanting finally, it seems, to

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close every breathing pore of the earth. But as we drive I remember another field on fire. It was an August, 30 years ago, and the whole field bordering our grim street move toward us with that speed you never think a fire can have. And I remember

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my mother, five months pregnant with my sister, fighting that fire, getting me and the panicky neighbors organized with all the decisiveness generals are supposed to have, but never do. She whipped hoses in place, got rugs wetted down and even

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gathered the streets, dole shovels together in case a trench was needed. The fire added in August to that August, and it's roar rose like a semi climbing a grade as it poured across that field toward us as if emptied from a thousand

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buckets. But with hose, and wet rugs and some dented buckets of our own we turned it back and watched it chew itself alive, eating its own hot thistles. We were astonished with what we'd done. Suddenly it was only a black field. All that threat of

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homelessness gone up in smoke. I remember my mother's speed as she ran from place to place smoothing or swearing panic into action. It was amazing to see. But I remember my first embarrassment too as I watched her carry that belly into action

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while neighbor women honked of miscarriage or worse, their eyes rolling in fear of fire. She knew they had given up as they always did on such streets, knew that without her, the whole numb street would burn, committing its own docile suicide, the men

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come home to dinners of ash. Her soft voice grew fierce and the women's house coats flew behind them as they moved fast, following orders. Following orders, I worked too, all teenage embarrassment gone, throwing hoses and drenching

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rugs, steering children toward the rusty buckets. We won that one together, forcing that street to survive against its own mealy will. Driving toward Corvallis I remember that August and chalk one up against fire. It doesn't always win nor are

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all of us eaten with the need to cut and burn. Some of us simply want a place to live and we'll turn fire inside out to keep it so. Morton Marcus: You also write poems about living in suburbia

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and the American life that goes on in suburbia and I thought that maybe you could read some of those. I'm particularly thinking of ‘‘Little Night Music,‘‘ ‘‘Cousins,‘‘ things like that. But since you've already got a poem, what we're

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gonna read next? Vern Rutsala: Well, here's a relatively new poem called ‘‘Reclaiming the House.‘‘ And it's the idea of coming back to your house after having been away for a while.

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Morton Marcus: Okay. And is- is this an experience you've had recently? Um, let's say when you returned from England? Vern Rutsala: Right. It came out of that experience Morton Marcus: Let‘s hear it

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Vern Rutsala: Okay. RECLAIMING THE HOUSE It confirms our dreams, all year it's circled there, waiting, harbouring so much of us we travel light with thanks. Now

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that life floods back with a steady throb all night and we learn at all again slowly. The way we work through all the accumulated mail, the stacks of magazines that give lost time a shape. We are the creatures of this place. When it worries over

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high winds we worry too. Unlike last year in someone else's house, where we didn't really have to worry when something went on the fritz. Here, we wait for fritz, and know how he plans his small betrayals, the disposal, choking on a bone, the

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refrigerator running a high fever, the cellar letting in rain through all its pores. We know we're home when an odd sound makes us wince and we resent the small torture of a dripping faucet. It is our faucet. It should know better

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but it doesn't any more than a broken table does are the dishes gone to the reward in our absence do. The relationship runs deep, nearly metaphysical, and when something is on the blink we know- I'm sorry- we look for someone else to blame.

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But no, we are simply back in our own particular cave where we are to blame for everything that goes wrong, but the house takes us in and proffers no ghosts we don't know by their first names. Morton Marcus: Okay, we're going to take a break in around two

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minutes. So why don't we have one real powerhouse to send us off into the blue. And we are talking here tonight, if you just tuned in, with the Northwest poet, poet from Portland, Oregon, Vern Rutsala, who is giving a series of

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readings in the area. He'll be reading at UCSC tomorrow night. And do you know what room you're reading in tomorrow night, Vern? Vern Rutsala: No, I don't. Morton Marcus: Because we have no announcement here about the

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reading which doesn't surprise us with UCSC. But if there is anyone out there, and the people who are putting on the reading tomorrow night who can tell us what room the reading is going to be in, will they please call the station at 476-2800,

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476-2800 if you're listening out there so we can give an advertisement for Vern‘s reading. Thank you. Vern, how about one poem to take us out? Vern Rutsala: Okay, this is called

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SHAME This is the shame of the woman whose hand hides her smile because her teeth are bad. Not the grand self hate that leads some to razors or pills, or swan-dives off beautiful

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bridges, however tragic that is. This is the shame of being yourself. Being ashamed of where you live and what your father's paycheck lets you eat and wear. This is the shame of the fat and the old. The unbearable blush of acne, the shame of having no

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lunch money and pretending you're not hungry, this is the shame of concealed sickness. Disease is too expensive to afford that only offer their cold one way ticket out. This is the shame of being ashamed. The self-disgust of the cheap wine

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drunk, the lassitude that makes junk accumulate, the shame that tells you there is another way to live, but you're too dumb to find it. This is the real shame, the damn shame the crying shame, the shame that's criminal, the shame of knowing words like

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"glory" are not in your vocabulary, though they litter the Bibles you're still paying for. This is the shame of not knowing how to read and pretending you do. This is a shame that makes you afraid to leave your house, the shame of

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food stamps at the supermarket when the clerk shows impatience as you fumble with the change. [Recorded music playing]: [Woody Guthrie Song] Morton Marcus: Hello again this is Morton Marcus. And this is

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the time in The Poetry Show when we make several announcements. First, "Bill Evans, an Audio Portrait,." "Bill Evans, an Audio Portrait." When Bill Evans died, jazz lost one of its true masters. He was inarguably one of the most influential pianists

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of the last quarter century. And KUSP is pleased to present the definitive documentary of the man and his music tonight at 10pm during "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" with Tim Folger. That, folks, in case you wondered, is the next show. The

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program follows Bill Evans career chronologically from his early years with Miles Davis through his succession of legendary trios with such outstanding players as Scott Lafaro, Paul Motian, Eddie Gomez, and Mark Johnson. In

00:34:16.210 - 00:34:30.400

addition to archival interviews with Bill Evans himself, "An Audio Portrait" includes conversations with Eddie Gomez, his bassist for 11 years; his manager of 18 years, Helen King; George Shearing, and others. The life and music of an

00:34:30.400 - 00:34:49.660

extraordinary artist, Bill Evans tonight at 10pm exclusively on KUSP FM, National Public Radio for the Central Coast. And as I said, that's coming up on the "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" show with Tim Folger in approximately 22 minutes. UCSC

00:34:49.660 - 00:35:02.500

presents Mark Graham in concert Thursday February 11 at 8pm. Mark Graham is a unique and exciting performer of traditional American music. His amazing virtuosity on the harmonica, strong and dynamic singing and brilliant

00:35:02.500 - 00:35:18.940

songwriting have made him a favorite of audiences across the land. For over a decade Mark has delighted his listeners with rip-roaring dance tunes, eerie mountain ballads, and hilarious old time songs. And on Tuesday, February 16, and that's a week

00:35:18.940 - 00:35:34.000

from tonight at 8pm at the Kresge Town Hall, University of California, U-Zulu Dance Theatre of South Africa. Traditional South African dance and song, warrior dances of the Zulu tribe. Singing and music are a basic part of life for many

00:35:34.000 - 00:35:50.440

South Africans, who say, "We sing when we are working, when we are happy, and even when we are sad." It's Tuesday February 16, at 8pm Kresge Town Hall. And as we take down the music behind us of Woody Guthrie, that

00:35:50.440 - 00:36:07.450

brings us back to tonight's guest, Verna Rutsala, who will tomorrow night be reading poetry at the University of California in Santa Cruz at Porter College, the Fireside Lounge at 8pm. And I urge everyone who is listening tonight, or who has friends up

00:36:07.450 - 00:36:20.770

there, or who- people who will be interested in poetry, to go up and listen to him. And we will continue talking to him and hearing some poems from his seven volumes of poetry, and he's been reading to us a lot of new poems. And I wonder, Vern,

00:36:21.100 - 00:36:42.790

if you could read some of these wonderful poems that you read last night, for example, I was thinking of the poem about the back row, which really got a lot of the students at Cabrillo. And Vern is now going from one book to another, and this is from his

00:36:42.790 - 00:37:00.070

new book, "The Ruined Cities," which is coming out from Carnegie Mellon. And it says it all if you've ever sat in the back row as a student- and this is the kind of insight into Americana and just into individual psychology that makes

00:37:00.070 - 00:37:15.100

his poems at times so delightful so shockingly personal. He can really read us, as though of course he is reading himself on what it is like to be in any one of these many Americans situations. Vern.

00:37:15.610 - 00:37:29.390

Vern Rutsala: Right. This is called: HELLO TO THE BACK ROW I sat silent in the back row too, feeling sleep and the rooms buzz settle their nets. Even now I drift there over the scrape of

00:37:29.390 - 00:37:50.030

chairs, shedding lectern and notes traveling back to an old self. Sleepy with rage in the last row. Save me a place as far back as possible where faces haze anonymous, a place beyond questions, where all answers curdle and turn inside out.

00:37:50.630 - 00:38:11.960

Where we stay alive by mockery, and the need only to be present. But scarcely counted, scarcely known. Save me a place, I sit there too, as nearly erased as possible. Sleeping with both eyes open, champion of the doodle, master of the concealed

00:38:11.990 - 00:38:34.190

aeon, silent assassin. Save me a place beyond charm and winks, too far away to polish anyone's apple. I understand, understand how to snort contempt with silence, how to be and not be, how time is a stone that never moves.

00:38:36.230 - 00:38:50.030

Morton Marcus: I was thinking if you could read a few more of those, I was thinking of ‘‘Cousins,‘‘ just to sort of show this- this kind of range that you have. ‘‘Cousins‘‘ and ‘‘A Little Night Music‘‘ is also another wonderful picture of

00:38:50.720 - 00:39:00.830

life in an American household. Vern Rutsala: Right, Why not ‘‘A Little Night Music‘‘ first? Morton Marcus: Great. Vern Rutsala: Good, just as a change of pace. And I'm up late

00:39:00.830 - 00:39:15.270

at night, I do a lot of work at night, and if you're up at night you hear things. And this is: A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC With relief I hear my neighbor's fight. One sign of life on a

00:39:15.270 - 00:39:36.300

dark night. Listen, they slam every door they have, whine and scream, throw dishes. I love the way they dig- dig deep in their throats for new voices, growl, and caterwaul. Digging under words to find their passions true sound. Now, we have a

00:39:36.300 - 00:39:57.870

secret bond, We belong to the same hard club, true users of the night filling lank hours with the horse music of love. And COUSINS Which simply comes out of the experience of having a lot of cousins., I suppose.

00:40:00.840 - 00:40:18.450

In time, they fade away into a kind of suburban haze on the outskirts of your life. You know they're there, you just never see them now. The result though is that they always seem to be children and you're sure those cards you sometimes get showing

00:40:18.450 - 00:40:35.670

them with children of their own are clever fabrications. Actually, they're just dressing up again in their parents clothes, playing house the way they did at seven. In fact, the more you think about them, the younger they get, while you

00:40:35.790 - 00:40:55.920

unfairly keep getting older by the minute. As you study those age spots on your hands, they seem all freckles and pigtails. Clearly, it is unfair how your memory peels their years away and pulls your aging body back to all that vague intensity you

00:40:55.920 - 00:41:15.090

felt on visits so close, so intimate. Yet strangers too, with lives that went on nicely without you when the visit ended. If you called one now, you know a child would answer. Morton Marcus: You hear a poem like that and you say, "God,

00:41:15.090 - 00:41:27.480

it's just so perfect." Every single line is a new insight. And then, "Is he going to be able to end it? Or is he going to goof up?" I think you just have the perfect ending. Anyway, let's hear some more of the new poems and then I'm going to

00:41:27.480 - 00:41:32.370

throw you a curve. Vern Rutsala: Okay. Okay. Morton Marcus: He says, "That's all you've been doing tonight" [Laughter]

00:41:33.360 - 00:41:46.170

Vern Rutsala: Okay, this is a short poem and a kind of, in its way, a light form, but it's got a few hooks in it as well. And it's another "Returning" poem. It's called: THE WINDOWSILL OVER THE SINK

00:41:47.980 - 00:42:05.560

You're back from a long trip, and promise yourself that it will never be cluttered again. You see how- you see it grow, its inhabitants almost by stealth, a horse chestnut, votive candles, paper clips and safety pins, the accumulation

00:42:05.560 - 00:42:26.380

gathering around the aspirin bottle. Then the cup with the broken handle, the bird's nest found on a walk, pine cones, matchbooks, coupons offering 10 cents off on a Mercedes. The old life is re-entered this way and begins to crowd around you with

00:42:26.380 - 00:42:39.760

its clutter, showing again that you can keep everything but promises. And here's another one called: FRET

00:42:44.730 - 00:43:03.690

From a thousand miles away, we could feel her worry. It worked something like radio we decided, and seemed to hug the invisible lines of latitude to swarm around us on sunny days and make us jumpy for no reason. And it brought clouds and gloom and

00:43:03.690 - 00:43:22.650

sleeplessness and made us snap at each other like hungry dogs. She had been our teacher, the way she worried us back in the car when we're halfway to a picnic to see if she had put out her Lucky Strike, or left the iron on. She was good at

00:43:22.650 - 00:43:42.450

anything, fire, flood, the natural disaster of a blowout on the highway, but electricity was her specialty. How all those wires coiled in the walls could turn quite hot in the middle of the night, and burn us all to ashes in our beds. Though she

00:43:42.450 - 00:44:04.980

died quietly over 20 years ago, her worry still travels far to nudge inside our walls. And we still lie awake, gritting our teeth to keep those wires cool all night. Morton Marcus: Okay, here's the curve. You're ready?

00:44:05.040 - 00:44:15.300

Vern Rutsala: Okay. Morton Marcus: Last night before a packed house, you said you did not write in forms. And one of the real jobs- Vern Rutsala: Yes. [Laughs]

00:44:15.330 - 00:44:27.330

Morton Marcus: And one of the real joys about reading Vern Rutsala is to think that what you've got here is a poet who is just using free verse and it's just so natural. He's one of these people. You heard about Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio,

00:44:27.510 - 00:44:39.330

they make it look easy. Well in one of my favorite books, because- if not the favorite book "Walking Home From the Icehouse," though I can't say that because I like so many poems in the other books. You've got a poem called ‘‘Gravel,

00:44:39.330 - 00:44:53.910

Roads, Fathers, Idaho, Hobos, Memory,‘‘ which is a wonderful sestina. And I think one of the- and this is- sounds like a big statement, but knowing the sestinas in the English language, I think this can certainly take its place with

00:44:53.910 - 00:45:11.400

one of the best 10 that I've ever been written and it is amazing. And let me tell you, the joke right off the bat that he's done here. “Gravel, Roads, Fathers, Idaho, Hobos, Memory“ are the four words that he must use over and over again at the

00:45:11.400 - 00:45:29.370

ends of lines. Six words, six- six line stanzas, and these words must end in a given order, they must end the lines that they're supposed to in each stanza, and then he comes back with three lines to end the poem, and then he has to use all

00:45:29.370 - 00:45:43.470

six of those words in the last three lines. Now, you must say, wow, that sounds like a crossword puzzle. And it is, and what you get is usually no meaning, no emotion, nothing about a human statement whatsoever. But in the hands of

00:45:43.470 - 00:46:01.060

Vern Rutsla, listen to what happens to this. Vern. Vern Rutsala: Okay, good curve Mort. GRAVEL, ROADS, FATHERS, IDAHO, HOBOS, MEMORY We move slowly now over gravel, the last time hint we've had of

00:46:01.060 - 00:46:21.430

roads in this long search for our fathers. We hope this place is Idaho as we were told by hobos so far back in our memory, it's nearly lost. Or is this memory we touch and only think it's gravel, our path more lost than any hobo‘s? Perhaps we've

00:46:21.430 - 00:46:38.980

followed to many roads as imaginary as the place called Idaho where they said we would discover fathers. But still, we are without fathers, except those fading images in memory who invented this wilderness of Idaho. Soon enough, we'll eat

00:46:38.980 - 00:46:57.880

the gravel. soon enough, we will abandon roads and jungle-up forever with the hobos. Or do we dream the hobos as we dream our lost fathers, night after night along these roads? There is something in our blood, a memory grinding like gears to produce

00:46:57.910 - 00:47:19.180

this gravel we scatter like seeds all over Idaho. Give us a break, we're lost, Idaho! We can't even find those old hobos and quarry as we will there's too little gravel for the single file we need to reach our fathers! We‘re drunk, confused,

00:47:19.360 - 00:47:39.310

our memory bulldozed and gouged by new roads. We travel circles, not roads and have never admitted Idaho to the union, much less our memory. And we carry within us strange hobos who all insist they are our father's in voices harsh as

00:47:39.310 - 00:47:55.620

gravel. So we give up roads and gravel and every memory of dim hobos who lied of Idaho and our fathers. Morton Marcus: I mean, it's just- if I could talk about that for the next two hours, it is so sensational, because it's really

00:47:55.620 - 00:48:06.930

a very witty poem. And even when you talk about circles, the whole thing about the sestinas is of course -- you know, and I'm just talking to the listeners now -- is that a sestinas goes in a circle. And- and yet at the same time it is

00:48:06.930 - 00:48:21.570

making such a deep, profound statement about the lost, wounded fathers of America, who all the males in one way or another become at least psychologically. And then to connect this with the word "gravel" and to have that being

00:48:21.570 - 00:48:34.590

the new roads or the change, which has come into a technologically advanced America, but one that has lost all of its male relationships. I- it's just mind-boggling. Beautiful, beautiful poem, and I don't think one that's really

00:48:34.590 - 00:48:45.360

talked about very much in "Walking Home From the Icehouse." Vern Rutsala: No, I- it hasn't been singled out. Yeah, I don't- I don't think that many people noticed it was a sestina. They

00:48:45.360 - 00:48:49.670

don't expect a sestina from me. Morton Marcus: They don't expect it, right. Vern Rutsala: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Well, I remember when we were in- I- Vern and I

00:48:49.670 - 00:49:03.740

go back years. You were writing, you you told me one day, ‘‘What do you think of the rhyme scheme of that?‘‘ And I said, ‘‘What rhyme scheme?‘‘ And you said, ‘‘Well, don't you realize the syllables before the end of the last syllables rhyme?‘‘ And I

00:49:03.740 - 00:49:10.280

said, "That is the craziest thing and the most impossible thing I have ever heard!" And you said ‘‘No. It's a Russian rhyme and I've just done it in English‘‘ Vern Rutsala: Right.

00:49:10.670 - 00:49:24.710

Morton Marcus: So there are always surprises going on technically in a Vern Rutsala poem. We've got around three or four more, three or four more minutes, I don't believe it. Vern, I'm gonna leave you to read some poems that you would

00:49:24.710 - 00:49:37.850

like to read to wind this up. Vern Rutsala: All right. Okay. All right, here's- here's a poem that harks back to the Sixties. And it's part of a series of memoirs I've been writing it's called:

00:49:37.850 - 00:49:56.010

THE GOODBYE SERIES, A MEMOIR That was the summer you drew the goodbye series, and now those drawings are lost. I remember huge hands, waving from airplanes and trains, long arms with sausage fingers waving from

00:49:56.010 - 00:50:12.210

porches and doors, ballooning from car windows. Everyone was saying goodbye, like plastic man. Everyone was going somewhere, ‘‘getting the hell out,‘‘ you said ‘‘before the fuse that always got Wile E. Coyote burned all the way

00:50:12.780 - 00:50:29.670

down.‘‘ You drew those pictures waving to young men heading for Toronto and Vancouver, lighting out for Winnipeg and Montreal. But those ham hands wave to more than those men. They fluttered goodbye to everything as it had been, as it would never be

00:50:29.670 - 00:50:50.670

again. ‘‘Get a passport,‘‘ you said ‘‘just in case.‘‘ Goodbye was in the air, evenings cried farewell. A haze of valediction over us all. And waist deep in the big muddy was the song we sang as summer died within us. We knew some who drove fast to

00:50:50.670 - 00:51:07.950

the center of madness waving goodbye, goodbye, confusing teddy bears and bombs, wanting their childhoods to come back and sing them to sleep one more time. Others heard secret messages in radio songs, or saw signs on album covers saying

00:51:07.950 - 00:51:25.410

goodbye to words. And you drew the goodbye series as the civil rights of hair became a passion. I don't know where those drawings are or where you've gone, but I see them clearly. Stovepipe arms and hands like blimps with fingers, we sank

00:51:25.410 - 00:51:43.670

deeper and deeper into the big muddy, waving goodbye to history, goodbye to love, our hands growing huge as we waved and waved. Morton Marcus: Okay. One more poem [inaudible] How do you want

00:51:43.670 - 00:51:53.570

to do this? Just think about- Vern Rutsala: How much time do we have, I suppose? Morton Marcus: Okay. Well, I can either do the sign off afterwards or we can sign off with your words going out on the

00:51:53.570 - 00:52:06.590

waves of space. How would you like that? Vern Rutsala: Well, let me see if I can find a poem here. Morton Marcus: Okay, then I will do the sign offs now. Okay, I just want to say that Plaza Books has provided a grant that

00:52:06.590 - 00:52:21.140

helped make the last hour of programming possible, actually the last half hour. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, and we appreciate their support. May I say that if we are leaving- if it seems to you a little early

00:52:21.140 - 00:52:37.910

tonight, so that Tim Folger can get ready for the "Bill Evans, an Audio Portrait" of the late and wonderful jazz pianist. So I hope you will stay tuned for that, there are a series of interviews and Bill Evans' wonderful music, two solid hours

00:52:37.940 - 00:52:55.940

of this salute to Bill Evans. We have been talking tonight with Vern Rutsala, and Vern's going to read one more poem. If you have been interested in this, Vern is here from Portland and he is going to be reading tomorrow night at UCSC at Porter

00:52:55.940 - 00:53:12.080

College in the Fireside Lounge. And that is tomorrow night, Porter College Fireside Lounge at 8pm. On Thursday night he will be reading in Santa Cruz at Eulipia upstairs with the wonderful Chicano poet Gary Soto. And Eulipia is downtown

00:53:12.800 - 00:53:26.330

San Jose, that's E-u-l-i-p-i-a. And it's at the theater upstairs from the Eulipia restaurant. Here then, our guest for the night, and it's really been exciting to have you here. Vern Rutsala, though he does not know it, is the only "lost poet" I

00:53:26.330 - 00:53:38.780

have done who is still alive. The other "lost poets" are poets who have not received the recognition I thought they should, but who have died. And it is great to have Vern here live, a year and a half after I did that show, and very much

00:53:38.780 - 00:53:49.820

alive and so is the poetry. Vern Rutsala: Okay. Well, this is a poem called THE END OF THE LINE. Seems appropriate. Sometimes the whole story rides in full blast. One glance

00:53:49.820 - 00:54:06.260

telling you far more than you want to know, like today, that old man's face watery through the rainy window before the bus lunged. His face became your luggage then. He was smiling at a cop in that fuzzy halo but the eyes told the true story. The

00:54:06.260 - 00:54:20.630

world had taught them two things, how to plead, how to look down. They said, pay no attention to the mouth's shenanigans we‘ll give you the straight dope if you bothered to look. You looked, and they spilled the beans, giving the

00:54:20.630 - 00:54:37.520

real lowdown on broken veins and wrinkles. How long ago this man died in order to grin this way at a cop, a grin that tried to say I don't take up much room, just let me be. I mean only to harm myself. And it's this helplessness, the cop and the

00:54:37.520 - 00:54:53.600

cop in you yearn to pick on, poking a leather finger again and again into that chicken chest. Poking for the button that gets the rise that lets cops slap that grin off his face. You looked and looked away, but felt your finger

00:54:53.600 - 00:55:11.810

stiffen. The bus lurched and the story with no end sat down beside you and told itself over and over to the end of the line. Morton Marcus: Vern, thanks so much for being here. It's been a great pleasure. Listeners, this is Morton Marcus. I'll see you

00:55:11.810 - 00:55:24.260

in two weeks a special program of five local poets. Joe will be back here next week. I urge you to stay tuned for the Bill Evans special Tim Folger is going to be bringing you on "Things Ain't What They Used To Be." See you in two weeks.