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Morton Marcus: Good evening, it's March 17th, and that, of course, means St. Patrick's Day. And one would just have to on The Poetry Show, do a program on Irish poetry. And we're going to throw in a little history here. This is Morton Marcus. My guest

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is Tim Fitzmaurice, the former mayor of Santa Cruz, poet and lover of poetry, and they don't necessarily go together all the time. Tim, welcome. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Well, thank you very much for having me,

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Morton. It's really wonderful to be here. Morton Marcus: It's- It's my pleasure. And we're going to [crosstalk] I haven't said that but- there should be. And in Timothy Fitzmaurice: That's required of you.

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fact, I should warn people out there that reading a lot of this poetry, my voice suddenly changes and I start to read it in an Irish brogue because it just sounds right on the tongue and it sounds delightful on the tongue.

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Morton Marcus: Good! I'm glad to know that. So you people who are celebrating out there or who just may be curious about Irish poetry, just listen in, you may be learning some interesting things here. First of all, a little history about the Irish,

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they are a Celtic group. And actually, at around 350 BC, the had poured down in the las several hundred years from th north and Germany. And the poured down to the Iberia Peninsula, this particula language group, and they foun

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their way to Ireland. And as th Celts in around 350 BC the actually came ashore and invade the land that was there and too over the land from the Danes And I'm trying to find what should have found before, whi h is the first poem we know fr

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m anyone Irish, and it w s supposedly the first words th t were ever said when the Cel s set foot on Irish soil and I m not going to find i But anyway, they came ashore. And when they did that, they-

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they displaced the Danes and they spread throughout the island. And they led a very, very heroic-age life. They were cattle thieves, they were people who would raid and steal other people as slaves. And this life sort of continued on from 350 BC

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to roughly 450 BC. And those are, of course, very important ates because the last is the irtual fall of the Roman mpire. What should be said at this point is, as they wande through the landscape of wha would be Ireland, they foun

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huge ruins, barrows and mounds And they realized that a grea people had preceded them eve before the people they knew a the Danes, and so they call the e people the Danes. And they beg n to feel that these areas we e haunted areas. They were haunt

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d by the ghosts of the people w o had built these huge barrow , preternatural beings, they fel , and they began to call them t e little people, although th y picture them as very tall. A d these are the beginnings of t e fairies, the gnomes and

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f course, the leprechauns. Th y come directly from that Iri h history and I'm getting a lot f this from "How the Irish Sav d Civilization." Delightful bo k by Thomas Cahill. For rough y 900 to 1000 years life continu d in this way, a very roug

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, brawling life, but full f roistering and tremendo s vitality. When the Roman Empi e was about to fall, and the Rom n soldiers had been removed fr m Britain, the Irish raidi g parties grew very bold n England, and at one point,

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a little before 400 AD, or a little after, a 15 year old b y by the name of Patricius w s stolen, kidnapped from h s parents and from a very, ve y comfortable romanized life. e was brought to Ireland and the e became a shepherd, you want

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o pick up the story from ther , Ti Timothy Fitzmaurice: I don't think I can pick up the story, not to the detail you can, but he essentially I think was- I thought he was a, a slave to a Roman officer or to someone.

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Anyway, I think he had a certain position and then he was- how he was captured and put into- Morton Marcus: He was then made- Timothy Fitzmaurice: -servitude

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Morton Marcus: Yeah. And he was made a shepherd and he had to live outside. For six, six years, he just lived on the outside. He didn't have very much food, it was of course very wet. A lot of times in fact he

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was naked, and lived a terrible life as the slaves lived very terrible lives. But he did the one thing that shepherds have done from time immemorial, says Mr. Cahill, which is he began to meditate, he began to pray. And he began to have an unbending

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belief in the Christian God and Christianity, by that time, of course, was all over the Roman Empire, had been the official religion of the state, and he became a visionary. And one night as he dreamt, he had a dream that a voice said to him,

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"Your time has come, get up and go forth. And a ship is waiting." And when he woke up, he had no idea what that meant. But his time has come as far as he was concerned was just to set off and he set off across Ireland, he was inland, and he

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set off across Ireland all the way to the sea, on the Irish Sea, and he was stopped by no one, which was amazing. And he got to the shore. And there was a ship that happened to be leaving at that time, which was very, very odd. There were no

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large cities or anything, just settlements throughout Ireland. And he went down to the ship, and I won't go into the different details, but he finally became a sailor on that ship, went over to the continent, and made his way from

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the continent after a very, very long time, back to Britain and his family, and told them that what he wanted to do was to become a monk. And did and his name has of course changed from Patricius to St. Patrick. And at the age of 47, he had another

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vision and the call was to go back to Ireland, where he had been so terribly treated, and to convert the Irish to Catholicism. What Cahill says about him is really amazing. He seems like an enormously incredible human being the first

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real missionary of the Catholic Church, and literally converted three quarters of Ireland before he died. And he felt very, very personal about the Irish people. It wasn't just the people, he loved them and he wanted their life to be much easier. Anyway-

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Timothy Fitzmaurice: Was it much easier as a result? That's the question. Morton Marcus: No thanks- The Golden Age which was the age of the raiders and the age of the fights between clans really is

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looked back upon by most Irish Americans and Irish as the age of Ireland when it was great. They have made these heroes, who were super human, hey sound very much like the heroes and the people from the Icelandic sagas, they have made them immortal.

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Cuhullin; Óengus Fergus; Maeve, Queen Maeve, an amazingly amazonic, earthy woman. And these are the people who are really recognized by a country that now is the only Irish Gaelic speaking country in the

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world. And as the only Gaelic Republic where- actually, you know, nation in the world except for the Scots, and they look back with that language and their history from a very troubled future from that point on as being their great age.

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It's very interesting because what we're going to do with the poetry tonight is really start off with this- the rediscovery of this world, which really happens starting in the 19th century, and is really spearheaded by their first great

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modern poet, and that is W.B. Yeats, who writes a lot of the stories down with his own touches to them. And his first poems, which I will read, really tried to recapture some of th s Lost World, this very idealiz d Golden Age world. But before

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e get on that, let us see what y u have, because we're going to m x times here. We're going to m x contemporary times, contempora y Irish poetry with Yeats and so e other peopl Timothy Fitzmaurice: Well, I want to make a comment about

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Yeats. Morton Marcus: Sure. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Yeats came along in 1890, along with Lady Gregory and a variety of other people, and revived Irish poetry

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in an important way. But what they were doing was not the sort of- the first step of, of that revival, really their first steps were in, I think- I think the real turning point in Irish history and will always be the turning point was the famine in

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1840s. And at that point, all of a sudden it sort of awoke the Irish people in an important way. And there at that point, poets started to develop, people started to develop, who were reflecting upon the earlier cultural moment and trying to

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express a current, a current thought, a thought about where they were as a people, what their relationship was to their own- their own country and their own power, trying to discover who they were. That's when the Young Ireland Movement started.

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That's when there was a growing sense of what- what came to be called nationalism. There was a growing sense of translation of, you know, there was a- there was a growing translation movement by Anglo-Irish from the Irish poets and Irish stories. And all

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of that, sort of, I think, was propelled by Yeats and Lady Gregory and others in the 1890s. And in fact, they were in something of a reaction to that. They didn't believe in the politics of the earlier 1840s and 1850s poets, people like

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Thomas Moore and a guy named Callanan, who walked all over Cork in the West and- and wrote- he wrote Irish poetry but also tried to- He only published six poems, I think in his, while he was alive. But after that, he was published in other ways,

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people who are really trying to, I think, reawaken the culture, but then I think Yeats, in some sense, as an Anglo-Irish, came along and wanted to fix it in a different way. And he was very much moved by the English Romantic movement, as you know.

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And that's what really made the difference for him. And of course, he was one of the most brilliant writers of all time, not just Irish writers, so therefore had a tremendous impact on Irish writing at the time and ever since. And so when

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you think of modern Irish poetry you're still in a sense playing out the same- the same issues. Incidentally, Yeats, for instance, there was a Gaelic league at the time, and a Irish language league at the time. I think Douglas Hyde, I think was

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the name of the major poet and- and sort of publisher of that- of that Irish language poetry in the 1880s and 90s. He was in direct conflict with William Butler Yeats. And Yeats was in an important way saying, we don't want to go in that

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direction. We want to go in a different direction toward a more elite poetry, really, a poetry that was much more acceptable that made, you know, that I think really reached out to- to the English speaking aspect-

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Morton Marcus: As is obvious from what you're saying also, Yeats's, of course, his big decision was to write in English. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Oh, yes.

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Morton Marcus: And [crosstalk] why we consider him a great Irish poet is his writing in English. Timothy Fitzmaurice: That's the big decision in Irish poetry ever since and it's still going on in some of the modern poets.

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One of the modern poets I'm going to be reading, a woman, I think really reflects that decision is still being made almost on a daily basis by Irish poets. Seamus Heaney or, or other well known English poets actually still have a

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relationship to what that- that choice, that language choice and Heaney is more in the line of, of Yeats in some ways, but still picks up on the political tradition as well. Morton Marcus: And we should say one thing to people who maybe do

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not know this, I can't imagine they don't. What really happened from the time of Elizabeth the First was a ruthless persecution of the Irish and a takeover by the British, which got really worse around 70 years later, when Cromwell came in, and has

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been going on ever since. When English aristocracy really took over the land and created a tremendously miserable situation for the Irish people, because they, not only were not in control of their own- their own future politically, but they

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were not in control economically either. And the persecution also because they were Catholic, and the English had under Henry the Eighth gone in the direction of an independent state or a Protestantism, which of course, was the Church of England. This

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was disastrous to the Irish. And it would result in the end- because these new landlords and their absenteeism in the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s that you were talking about, which has such a direct relationship to us, because it was one of the

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things that brought over the huge amount of Irish immigrants at that time that have had such an important part in the building of America in so many ways. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Can I read a paragraph from Edna O'Brien?

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Who's, incidentally, Jenny, my wife suggested this paragraph and I want to say hello to her and all the folks at home and- and of course, and to our friend Sarah Walsh and others. But Jenny suggested I read this about the potato famine is a

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great paragraph from Edna O'Brien. She says, "According to the annals, it happened on Our Lady's Eve. The blight came in the night and wandered over the fields, so that by morning the upright stalks were black ribbons of rot. Slow death for

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man and beast. A putrid pall over the landscape, hungry marching people meek and mindless, believing it had not struck elsewhere. Except that it had. Death at every turn. The dead faces yellow as parchment, the lips a liquorice black from

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having gorged on the sweet poisonous stuff, the apples of death." And it's a great little start for O'Brien's book, "Wild December". You know, I think that so much of what has propelled- In fact, it's still- the word famine still occurs in

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very modern Irish poems, poems that are written the last 10 years, you still see that it's it's an ongoing thought. It's almost like a great betrayal. I mean, Irish poetry is about- [crosstalk]

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Morton Marcus: The best book I've ever read on the potato famine is by Cecil William Smith called the "Great Betrayal." Timothy Fitzmaurice: Yeah, I think that's- maybe that's where I'm picking it up, right from the atmosphere.

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Morton Marcus: I recommend to anyone out there, in fact again, let me say that if you're interested in the subject, "How the Irish Saved Civilization," by Thomas Cahill, take that name down. Edna O' Brien, wonderful poet, fiction writer. What's the

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name of her book? Timothy Fitzmaurice: This is "Wild Decembers." She has several wonderful books. I don't have the list here, but I could get I- She's a person who- she lives in England now. This is

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not unusual for Irish writers to be elsewhere. But she has some great books like "Johnny, I Hardly Knew You" and "A Fanatic Heart." I remember reading that book, some great short stories, just gorgeous short stories that ought to be read by everyone,

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but- Morton Marcus: Right in fact, several of her films during the 60s- several of her books during the 50s, 60s, and 70s were made into films.

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Timothy Fitzmaurice: Yeah, I think that's- I think it's really important to sort of understand that there's this- that Irish poetry has been a dynamic part of the culture from- for a 1000 years, that it's been sometimes misread and

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certainly by us and, you know, American Irish, we- we tend to get really focused down on what- on a certain reading of it, certain way of reading it, but it's a very complicated, very complicated world of dynamic poets who are still much in

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connection with each other and with their- with the- with their culture. Morton Marcus: The- One of the things that Cahill does say in this is when the Celts came over, they loved - and we could

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tell from "The Tain," which is a collection of documents of these old stories that have been preserved by the monks and the priests later on, centuries and centuries later on - that they loved language and that they were always involved with words

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as these stories which are so modern and realistic in so many ways, in their details. But at the same time, they- the Celts who came over here in 350 BC had their own poets. They had the poets who would talk about the clans and would keep the history

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and were also magical in many ways, they were Druidic figures. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Yeah, I think the Celts, you know, are certainly the sort of the source of this whole thing. Just looking at your Eavan Boland book. I mean, there's just so

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much dynamic quality in the language. Obviously, somebody suggested- they mentioned when I walked in here tonight that we might be reading a little Joyce. I'm sorry, I didn't bring any of Joyce along-

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Morton Marcus: Yes, I've got some here- Timothy Fitzmaurice: But you know, obviously the great, the great Irish writers have had a tremendous impact on- on- on World Literature. I mean, you think of Oscar Wilde or Oliver

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Goldsmith or James Joyce or Jonathan Swift- Morton Marcus: Jonathan Swift, who many people do not identify as Irish but whose- who that- who do not know and whose anger and sweat and satire all comes from the fact that he was Irish

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and non-English. In fact, we, you know, we can say that maybe the greatest prose writer in English of the 20th century was Irish, James Joyce, writing about Ireland, Timothy Fitzmaurice: Living far away-

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Morton Marcus: -And living- living far away from it in self exile. And the man who has been claimed to be, by a number of critics, the greatest English poet of the 20th century is again, W.B. Yeats. So what an amazing and ironic honor for

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two- two Irishmen in this very, very small island. Timothy Fitzmaurice: I guess it's the intensity of living in a culture that's under such stress that creates great art like that. I- You see it certainly in Latin American

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literature, and you see it in Eastern European literature, Things that you know, we commonly- we're suddenly surprised as American readers by the vitality of literatures that are in these small locations, but then we realize they're

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living in an environment where everything's- everything's at risk, everything's at stake. And language itself becomes a way of, I think, in viv- revivifying your own- your own living every day. And it's just it, you know, it's you see it in the division

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that's in- inherent in the, in the poetry itself. And- Morton Marcus: Yeah, I think, you know, Cahill talks about the Roman Empire in its last days. I think this is really, really true, there is a sense of comfort, and a sense of the

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refusal to take chances because one doesn't have to, and life is not lived as a crisis, or a real sense of being on the edge that you get in the other cultures we've just mentioned. And I think, you know, this can be applied even to the United

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States today. I see a real weakening of American literature, a refusal to really- to even talk about life and get quickened by the sense of life that's around one- one chooses to write, you know, confessional poetry, and go over the same

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subjects that people have gone over hundreds upon hundreds of times. And I think to this day, American poetry is really sort of in a rut right now and even American fiction, but- Timothy Fitzmaurice: Maybe we're- maybe since we've decided

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to were every place that we've become no place somehow we- there's a certain place-lessness to it. And in Irish poetry, when you read it, and I've been reading a lot in the last few weeks, especially, getting sort of- getting ready for this and

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thinking, wow, every poem seems to reflect, everything seems to be just saturated with the issues that you are- in some sense expect there. Why don't they have the poetry of- of just sort of modest confessionalism? I don't know, sometimes I look

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at it, I go, I read a poem and it seems so confessional so much- you think Eavan Boland, person that you, that you've chosen, she was very much influenced by Sylvia Plath and by the confessional poets to a point where she was almost

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rejected as a poet in Ireland at the time when she made that shift in her poetry. But that- it just showed the strength of her, the- and the strength of all this poetry that somehow she integrated into her- into her work, and still managed to keep-

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she's one of the great, great poets. Morton Marcus: But the issues that she's talking about, even in her talk about her husband, talk about her daughters and everything, are speculations about women in Ireland, women as

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symbols, or women as flesh and blood. People talking about her family and the different epics that have gone on and eras that have gone on that she has just experienced and the ones before that. It always comes back to Ireland. And in her latest book,

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I mean, she has just, which is a book called "The Lost Land." The title of the book just tells you itself. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Right. Morton Marcus: In fact, it's so interesting at the very, very

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first poem in there is about Ireland going dark, because of the death of Yeats. And that's her starting point for talking about these- these issues, which go all the way back to the Celts. She retells stories in which she is a figure in a

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Celtic story of a princess being kidnapped, running away with a lover. And yet, there's- there are all of these layers and layerings and these- these meanings that are resonances that move way beyond just confessional poetry: there's

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history, there's myth, there's gender, there's just so many different things going on- there's politics. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Right. There's the- for Ireland, there's- everything is politics, politics of food, or the

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politics of famine, the politics of sex, sexuality itself, as well as the the politics of gender and religion and family and everything. Its- and it's just wonderful the way that that poetry is really rich because of that, because of the way that it

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reflects on- Morton Marcus: Well, let's read some poems. Timothy Fitzmaurice: I think that would be a good idea. And I was just to start with an Anglo Irish- I really wanted to talk

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about Irish women poets to some extent in their relationship to Irish poetry, because to some extent, they- people have suggested that they've been, in some ways, removed from the discussion too often. There- there's- it's obvious that Ire-

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that women poets have been strong in Ireland for many centuries, really, but when they talk about the overall look at Irish poetry, they often neglect them. But Oscar Wilde's mother was a great poet. And there's a great Anglo-Irish poet named

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Lady Dufferin, Helen Sheridan, who was the granddaughter of the playwright Sheridan. And she wrote, this is just a piece from a poem she wrote called, "The Irish Emigrant." And you can hear the music, she's borrowing the language of the- of the

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ballad and trying to talk about the- what what the potato famine has done to the people. Here she is, an Anglo-Irish person in the ascendancy, really: I'm sitting on the stile, Mary, where we sat side by side, that

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bright May morning long ago, when first you were my bride. The corn was springing fresh and green. The lark sang loud and high. The red was on your lip, Mary, the love-light in your eye. 'Tis but a step down yonder lane, the little church stands

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near, the church where we were wed, Mary. I see a spire from here, but the graveyard lies between, Mary, my step might break your rest, where you my darling lie asleep with baby on your breast.

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And so the point is, here's this guy, he's, he's walking to the ship basically ready to leave because his family has been destroyed by this. And it was women who were able to pick up on this threat first, I think, and really start to reflect it.

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This is not an angry poem by any means, but it's a poem about the condition and that poem, just flips over in the next 10 years to become very angry at the situation people have found themselves in.

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Morton Marcus: Read another one, please. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Well, she wrote another one called " The Emigrant Ship" EMIGRANT SHIP

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And here's four lines from that poem: But the poor turf-fire is out at last, and our hearths are black and chill. There is no life. There is no sound. The old man sits no more. Within the shadow of the thatch beside the cottage

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door, no kindly smoke is climbing up the grey and empty sky. Sort of- she's walking across Ireland and seeing the devastation of this land where people are, you know, where 2

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million people left and well, 2 million people died overall that's 50% of the population was affected in that specific way about- by these, you know, by this multiple famines really from the 1840s on. There's a- I'll read one little poem from

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Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde's mother, who's a total shock to me when I started reading her stuff, I thought, you know, you always think of Oscar as the the person of letters, but really his mother was a tremendous nationalist poet in Ireland.

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She- Anyway, here's- here's one called: TO IRELAND My country wounded to the heart, could I but flash along thy soul electric power to rive apart the thunder-clouds that round thee

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roll, and by my burning words uplift thy life out death's icy drift, till the full splendours of our age shone round thee for thy heritage. Incredible, you know, angry, revolutionary, really, poems.

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The blood is dead within our veins, we care not now for life. Let us die hid in the ditches, far from children and from wife. We cannot stay and listen to their raving, famished cries. Bread! bread! bread! and none to still their agonies. We left our

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infants playing with their dead mother's hand. We left our maidens maddened by the fever's scorching brand. Just these long, you know, poems that she would write about the total devastation of the country.

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Morton Marcus: And to change that mood drastically, to show you how Yeats was not in touch with this really in the beginning. Yeats was very, very dreamy, he was very much pre-Raphaelite and he looked into a dream world, and it was

00:29:42.940 - 00:30:05.650

the world that he was writing about in the age of the Celts, and this is the "Song of The Wandering Aengus," a young Apollo-like god of love from the old Celtic. And here he comes upon a shapeshifting being who lures him to wanting immortality

00:30:05.650 - 00:30:20.440

and wanting what he can never have. But again, listen to the music. It's extremely ornate, and it's extremely beautiful, but the early Yeats is nothing like the middle and later Yeats, and I hope to show how this changes in this program. So here

00:30:20.440 - 00:30:32.290

is: THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS I went out to the hazel wood because a fire was in my head, and cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread.

00:30:33.040 - 00:30:49.030

And when white moths were on the wing, and moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream and caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor, I went to blow the fire a-flame, but something rustled on the floor,

00:30:49.180 - 00:31:07.510

and someone called me by my name. It had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair, who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will

00:31:07.510 - 00:31:23.050

find out where she has gone. And kiss her lips and take her hands and walk among the long dappled grass and pluck till time and times are done. The silver apples of the moon, and the golden apples of the sun.

00:31:24.590 - 00:31:39.740

Again, a lot of the early poems you have to know a lot about the characters he's writing about. which is unfortunate, but you can just hear the beauty of both the imagery and the language there, that he is in such control of. And again, that is

00:31:39.740 - 00:32:00.560

about a person who is lured by, if you want to call her a fairy it's certainly a shapeshifting fairy, from fish to beautiful woman to- only had this nostalgic memory of this little island with a hut on top of it that rose above this lake, and

00:32:00.560 - 00:32:12.200

it's The Isle- THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE And I'm sure everyone out there knows it. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin

00:32:12.200 - 00:32:31.670

build there, of clay and wattles made. Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, and live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow. Dropping from the veils of the morning to where

00:32:31.670 - 00:32:52.640

the cricket sings. There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, and evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. While I stand on the

00:32:52.640 - 00:33:13.470

roadway or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Great Yeats poem. One of my favorites, of course, I was going to read a poem by Paul Muldoon. Paul

00:33:13.470 - 00:33:33.090

Muldoon is a modern poet, I assume is still living, who is an important figure in current Irish poetry, the editor of books and a commentator constantly compared with others, a friend of Heaney and, you know, they created this whole

00:33:33.090 - 00:33:54.540

little group coterie of poets. Longley, Muldoon, Heaney and people like that. He wrote a poem, I'm gonna take off in a somewhat different direction, called "Cuba," that I wanted to read and it's a poem about being in his family during the Cuban

00:33:54.540 - 00:34:09.060

Missile Crisis, and what's going on on the radio sort of affecting the life of the family. And so it's about his- his sister having bad dreams and his parents telling his sister to go to confession.

00:34:11.000 - 00:34:23.630

CUBA My eldest sister arrived home that morning in her white muslin evening dress. "Who the hell do you think you are running out to dances in next to nothing? As though we hadn't enough bother

00:34:23.630 - 00:34:40.340

with the world at war, if not at an end." My father was pounding the breakfast table. "Those Yankees were touch and go as it was, if you'd heard Patton in Armagh– but this Kennedy's nearly an Irishman so he's not much better than ourselves and

00:34:40.340 - 00:34:56.900

him with only to say the word. If you've got anything on your mind, maybe you should go make your peace with God." I could hear May from beyond the curtain. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I told a lie. I was disobedient once. And,

00:34:56.900 - 00:35:15.680

Father, a boy touched me once." "Tell me child was this touch immodest? Did he touch your breast, for example?" "He brushed against me father, very gently." I think in some ways, I don't know. There's no current Irish

00:35:15.680 - 00:35:27.500

poet that isn't dealing with Yeats, isn't dealing with, you know, I think you can almost hear this girl with the yellow hair, almost. There's no- there's nobody that's not dealing with Yeats, and not dealing with the conflicts in

00:35:27.500 - 00:35:37.130

their- sort of everyday. Morton Marcus: We are going to take, unfortunately, a break really quick, and unfortunately break this but we're going to have a short musical interlude.

00:36:51.820 - 00:37:08.110

This program is supported in part by contributions from the community of KUSP listeners and we thank you for your support, for 29 years of support. And just one announcement, as we keep our Irish feel in the background here, "From the

00:37:08.110 - 00:37:27.280

Bookshelf," will be here at 9pm. Hosted by Billy Harris. Tonight Billy will bring us local writer Linden McNeely, reading her story "Death by Dessert" at nine o'clock tonight immediately following the Poetry Show. And now, we are going to continue

00:37:27.280 - 00:37:46.690

with our St. Patrick's Day show. Oh, one more thing. Yours truly, Morton Marcus, will be on Eric Shakes' "Radiogram" at 12 noon on April 8. And that night I will be reading from my new book, which has just come out called "Moments Without Names.

00:37:46.690 - 00:38:00.130

New and Selected Prose Poems." And I hope every one of you can make it, that will be at the Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7:30 on Monday, April 8, which is the beginning of National Poetry Month. So try to be down there, and I hope you'll hear more

00:38:00.130 - 00:38:16.660

about that and Eric will be talking to me about it at twelve noon that day. Let us continue with our reading from two different time periods. I'm going to be reading Yeats, and my guest tonight, Finn fit- Tim Fitzmaurice will, of course, be

00:38:16.660 - 00:38:30.110

reading contemporary poetry, as he has been. Tim, let's start with you. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Okay, I think then I'll read something from Ciaran- Ciaran Carson, who's a sort of Northern poet,

00:38:30.590 - 00:38:48.380

and he's- A lot of things happened in 1969 in poetry in Ireland, so the Troubles began. And those Troubles have sort of moved through the Irish poetry ever since. Heaney is of course famous for his contributions to that, but to some extent, Ciaran

00:38:48.380 - 00:38:59.930

Carson is almost a response to Heaney not, not vigorous political poetry. And so he wrote a piece that I kind of like called: BELFAST CONFETTI

00:39:01.310 - 00:39:18.100

It's about being in Belfast during the Troubles, and this was actually published 20 years- 15 years later. Suddenly, as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks, nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount- a

00:39:18.100 - 00:39:38.470

fount of broken type. And the explosion itself– an asterisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire... I was trying to complete a sentence in my head but it kept stuttering. All the alleyways and side-streets blocked with stops

00:39:38.470 - 00:39:57.010

and colons. I know this labyrinth so well– Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street– Why can't I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street. Dead end again. A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-talkies.

00:39:57.280 - 00:40:14.250

What is my name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question marks. That's a- that poem is, as I said, is called "Belfast Confetti," which became the name of a whole book for him. It was

00:40:14.250 - 00:40:21.450

published in an earlier book and then became a book of poems that were similar. And here's a similar one, I'll just throw it in, called: CAMPAIGN

00:40:22.980 - 00:40:38.400

They had questioned him for hours. Who exactly was he? And when he told them, they questioned him again. When they accepted who he was, as someone not involved, they pulled out his fingernails. Then they took him to a waste ground somewhere

00:40:38.400 - 00:40:56.040

near the Horseshoe Bend and told him what he was. They shot him nine times. A dark umbilicus of smoke was rising from a heap of burning tyres. The bad smell he smelt was the smell of himself. Broken glass and knotted Durex. The knuckles of a face in a

00:40:56.040 - 00:41:10.170

nylon stocking. I used to see him in the Gladstone Bar. Drawing pints for strangers, his almost perfect fingers flecked with scum. Morton Marcus: Very different concerns here.

00:41:11.860 - 00:41:25.960

This is, again, an early poem. It's a real transitional poem, which I have sort of taken in my poetry as a real direction. Very important, and people can read it for themselves. I'm only gonna read the first stanza of this poem, which is called

00:41:25.960 - 00:41:44.980

"Adam's Curse." And it is actually Yeats sitting with the great love of his life, Maud Gonne and her sister. And it is a dialogue, but he is the one who speaks first, and he speaks about poetry and how he writes poetry. And I'll only read the

00:41:45.040 - 00:41:58.210

first stanza of this and then I want to go on to one of his great poems, and this is "Adam's Curse." We- Oh, and one of the changes that goes on here and I only have read really two of his very ornate poems, but to me, what I

00:41:58.210 - 00:42:13.420

love in Yeats's later poems, it's not the ornate, beautiful sounding poems. It's the poems that are conversational, and what he really brings into English literature is the move away from song and into speech. Dunn had done this years before,

00:42:13.420 - 00:42:28.180

and others, but he really brings this idea of conversation into poetry, a very meditative kind of conversation at times. And that is because at this point in his career after 1900 he is working on plays and drama and is one of the founders of what

00:42:28.180 - 00:42:35.260

will become the Abbey Theatre. So here is just the first part of "Adam's Curse" and then I'll read another one which is later yet so- ADAM'S CURSE

00:42:37.550 - 00:42:56.300

We sat together one summer's end, that beautiful mild woman, your close friend, and you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, 'A line will make us- will- A line will take us hours maybe, yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching

00:42:56.300 - 00:43:14.120

and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones and scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones like an old pauper in all kinds of weather, for to articulate sweet sounds together is to work harder than all these and yet be

00:43:14.120 - 00:43:31.220

thought an idler by the noisy set of bankers, school masters and clergymen. The martyrs call the world.' So there is the concern with language and just getting the perfect words and the perfect sounds down. And the fact is, no

00:43:31.220 - 00:43:49.970

matter how hard you work, and how many workshops have I said this in, it must seem a moment's thought. And now to go on to one of his great poems, a poem about aging, and a poem about the eternal in the whole changing world or the changelessness in

00:43:49.970 - 00:44:06.390

the changing world, one of his great poems, THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry, under the October twilight, the water mirrors a still sky.

00:44:07.140 - 00:44:25.980

Upon the brimming water among the stones are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me since I first made my count. I saw, before I had well finished, all suddenly mount and scatter wheeling in great broken rings upon their

00:44:25.980 - 00:44:46.590

clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, and now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, the first time on this shore, the bell-beat of their wings above my head, trod with a lighter trend. Unwearied still,

00:44:46.920 - 00:45:10.200

lover by lover, they paddle in the cold companionable streams, or climb the air, their hearts have not grown old. Passion or conquest wander where they will attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water, mysterious, beautiful. Among

00:45:10.200 - 00:45:32.130

what rushes will they build by what lakes edge or pond delight men's eyes when I awake someday to find they have flown away? And that is a poem about one of his favorite subjects, which is aging. And he sees in the same count of the swans a

00:45:32.130 - 00:45:47.700

changelessness that he- so the tone of it says he has changed so much in those 19 years. And yet he realizes, of course, the changelessness is, the swans have died, but others have come and taken their place. And there is a pattern in the world where

00:45:47.700 - 00:46:02.600

the young come and fill in, but still at this point, he's not willing to accept this dichotomy. And he feels very, very sad and sore that he is growing older. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Yeah, I think he has a poem, doesn't he

00:46:02.600 - 00:46:14.470

call himself "a tattered coat upon a stick," or something. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I was gonna read part of that- Timothy Fitzmaurice: Great, great image of an old person. Yes, I would, because you read "Adam's Curse," which is that

00:46:14.680 - 00:46:28.210

poets work harder than people who really work for a living or something. I don't know what it's about. But it's a great poem. It's a great poem because the Adam's curse, of course, was that he would have to earn his his early survival by the sweat

00:46:28.210 - 00:46:39.960

of his brow, that was the curse allowed him in the Bible. Morton Marcus: Let's say something right here. You see, you've alluded to it before. Yeats was a great poet. He was also very, very full of himself and was almost too romantic. But

00:46:39.960 - 00:46:52.950

politically speaking, Yeats was a monarchist, who really was concerned with an aristocracy and really looked down with the people who had to earn their living really looked down on the masses, so that poem-

00:46:53.220 - 00:47:06.360

Timothy Fitzmaurice: Not unusual, not unusual [crosstalk] So Seamus Heaney has a poem called "Digging," which is the first- Yeah, the first poem of his first- but whatever I mean, it's really right at the start. So I'll read "Digging." And it's

00:47:06.360 - 00:47:20.820

about being a poet and looking at your father who digs in the ground, in the bogs, of course, and peat bogs are an important aspect of Irish life. Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests, snug as a

00:47:20.820 - 00:47:39.810

gun. Under my window a clean rasping sound, when the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging, I look down till his straining rump among the flowerbeds bends low, comes up twenty years away, stooping in rhythm through potato drills

00:47:40.230 - 00:47:57.330

where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep to scatter new potatoes that we picked, loving their cool hardness in our

00:47:57.330 - 00:48:14.280

hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade, just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle, corked sloppily with paper, he straightened up to drink it,

00:48:14.460 - 00:48:33.360

then fell to right away, nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods over his shoulder, going down and down for the good turf, digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge through living

00:48:33.360 - 00:48:48.040

roots awaken in my head, but I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. Morton Marcus: And even in his latest books, he's writing about

00:48:48.040 - 00:49:03.880

his father working. There's a poem called "Pitchfork," another one called "Markings," where he and his buddies would mark off a soccer field. But his-0 his father would mark off the land and get great satisfaction in working in- He's trying to get

00:49:03.880 - 00:49:21.340

this dichotomy and this tension straight and he never does and by the time he writes this in a book called "Seeing Things," his, his latest book, that well actually, it's his second to latest book, his father has died. Let me just read you a

00:49:21.340 - 00:49:42.400

haiku by- by him, in which he really sort of resolves this for me. And the Haiku is "1.1.87" or "New Year's Day, 1987." And it's very quick three lines, but it says so much about his relationship to his father, which in many ways he couldn't

00:49:42.400 - 00:49:56.590

stand. And yet, here he is in 1987. A good 30 years after "Diggings" was written, and he says: Dangerous pavements. But I face the ice this year with my father's stick.

00:49:58.240 - 00:50:17.920

So there it is. He has learned that you follow, and your father is part of you and you don't- you don't fight it. There- there is a continuance and very, very, very moving little Haiku, I think especially when you know the rest of his poetry.

00:50:17.950 - 00:50:35.320

Timothy Fitzmaurice: Yeah, he's wonderful- Morton Marcus: [Unintelligible] also Seamus Heaney the latest Nobel Prize winning Irish poet. Yeats had won it before him and he is a very, very interesting poet but he has politically kept

00:50:35.350 - 00:50:41.400

out of the fray- Timothy Fitzmaurice: Somewhat- Morton Marcus: Somewhat- Timothy Fitzmaurice: I think less, less completely, than

00:50:41.400 - 00:50:54.270

sometimes he's accused of. He's more in the line of Yeats, definitely is the person who picked up the torch or whatever that Yeats was carrying, and probably did it better than anyone.

00:50:54.570 - 00:51:09.840

Morton Marcus: Yeats, of course, for a long time is- I mean, we really have to talk about his political poems. We're not going to read any, but he even becomes a senator and writes some scathing poems about the Rising of [19]16 and the Civil War of

00:51:09.870 - 00:51:23.670

1922. And they are really scathing, and then of course, decides that he goes the opposite way of politics. But it was Maud Gonne, the great love of his life, who did not reciprocate. Who really just said, you know, you must become

00:51:23.670 - 00:51:33.920

more of a political man, you must become more of a political poet, and turned him in, in that direction. And I see that those words have made you go back to your notes. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Well, I want to go back to my notes

00:51:33.920 - 00:51:47.450

because the curse in Irish poetry is so strong that what you're talking about is that- I think one of those, one of those poems you're talking about is "O'Leary is Dead and in His Grave," and all of those kinds of poems where he's just ranting

00:51:47.450 - 00:52:01.340

and raving about, you know, the just "changed, changed utterly," you know, "terrible beauty is about to be born" and all of that. I mean, he, he has this kind of almost cursing kind of approach, but Irish poetry the poetry that he was, in a sense

00:52:01.340 - 00:52:15.170

borrowing from and using - and he wrote the introduction to a book that this poem comes from, by Douglas Hyde - the poetry is full of curses. And here, I'll just give you one little curse from an Irish poet. It's called

00:52:15.030 - 00:52:28.960

BRUADAR AND SMITH AND GLINN This is a Hyde poem. Glinn in a shaking ague, cancer on Bruadar's tongue, Amen, O King of the Heavens! and Smith forever stricken dumb, Amen!

00:52:29.140 - 00:52:45.400

Smith without a child or heir and Bruadar bare of store, Amen! O Jesus, hear my voice, let Smith be bent in chains, Amen! Blight skull and ear and skin and hearing and voice and sight, Amen! Before the year be out blight, Son of the Virgin,

00:52:45.400 - 00:52:58.330

blight, Amen! So this is a long tradition of curses, just like in a sense, the male may- the male poets inhabit this sort of tradition of cursing like the, the, the women poets have inhabited a

00:52:58.330 - 00:53:12.370

tradition of laments and keening. You know, sort of that aspect of the culture- It's just there, you can see it. It's just, you know, it fills the poetry and of course crosses over, and you can see the laments in- in Yeats's poems as

00:53:12.370 - 00:53:23.610

well as the cursing that he's willing to do. Morton Marcus: And yet you know, the [unidentified] I like so much, a book I've talked about here before and few people who are putting down some of these books and people wrote them, may

00:53:23.610 - 00:53:40.560

I urge you to read a book called "Object Lessons, the Life of the Women and the Poet in Our Time," by Eavan Boland, the wonderful, wonderful poet, a woman poet, if you want to call her that, to let you know that she is meditating on the position of

00:53:40.560 - 00:53:56.220

women in Irish poetry, both as subjects and as writers. And the "Object Lesson" is just is just stunning in its analysis of this position of women, even as keeners, even as the ones who keep the household, even as the virgin sufferers, and even as

00:53:56.220 - 00:54:05.990

the idealized beings of the males, and she objects to that and has tried to turn that around. Timothy Fitzmaurice: I think so- Morton Marcus: And does it marvelously. I was going to read

00:54:05.990 - 00:54:19.460

from "Object Lessons," but get it yourself, it is a prose work vividly beautiful, personal and yet adds with her poetry at the same time, very, very political, social and even metaphysical in the end.

00:54:20.110 - 00:54:39.280

Timothy Fitzmaurice: I just have to mention one woman poet who I won't have much time to read, Nuala Ni Domhnaill. Let me spell it because it's an Irish name. And N- U- A- L-A N-I "Ni" and then, Domhnaill is D-H-O-M-H-N-A-I-L-L. So it's a

00:54:39.280 - 00:54:50.710

very unusual name. And she writes in Irish and is translated by others. She's not translate- doesn't translate herself which is quite interesting. And she writes I think from that position, she picks up on those that Celtic

00:54:50.710 - 00:55:07.030

and folklore tradition in such a strong way, has a such strong voice. So I'm really- it's just, it's a discovery to start to read her work and to see what she- what she does. Almost every poem is wonderful. And that's not true of everyone. She really

00:55:07.030 - 00:55:24.130

has captured something, I think. And I'm hoping that you know, what I hope is that people will read more and more of these- these great women poets of Ireland and Eavan Boland is certainly I think, the major woman voice now. So if you have

00:55:24.130 - 00:55:37.470

something- Morton Marcus: Well okay with that, why don't I read "Pomegranate," by Eavan Boland, and here's how she can move, I'm talking about her daughter and herself, but also talking about

00:55:37.470 - 00:55:51.780

Greek myth and Irish myth here in the story of the "Pomegranate" and the story of Ceres, who goes down to rescue her daughter Persephone, who has been stolen away to the underworld. And this really moves from this world of myth

00:55:51.780 - 00:56:02.400

and Celtic lore, and even Greek lore obviously, into personal confession and the contemporary world. The POMEGRANATE by Eavan Boland.

00:56:03.770 - 00:56:20.240

The only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell, and found and rescued there. Love and blackmail the gist of it, Ceres and Persephone the names and the best thing about the legend is I can enter it anywhere, and have,

00:56:21.140 - 00:56:37.820

as a child in exile in a city of fogs and strange consonants. I read it first, and at first I was an exiled child in the crackling dust of the- dusk of the underworld, the stars blighted. Later I walked out in a summer twilight searching for

00:56:37.820 - 00:56:56.120

my daughter at bed-time. When she came running, I was ready to make any bargain to keep her. I carried her back past whitebeams and wasps and honey-scented buddleias, but I was Ceres then and I knew winter was in store for every leaf on every tree on

00:56:56.120 - 00:57:15.590

that road, was inescapable for each one we passed, and for me. It is winter and the stars are hidden. I climb the stairs and stand where I can see my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit. The

00:57:15.590 - 00:57:32.600

pomegranate. How did I forget it? She could have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching, but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate. She put out her hand and pulled down the French sound for apple

00:57:32.690 - 00:57:50.960

and the noise of stone and the proof that even in the place of death, at the heart of legend, in the midst of rocks full of unshed tears ready to be diamonds, by the time the story was told, a child can be hungry. I could warn her. There is still

00:57:50.960 - 00:58:09.860

a chance. The rain is cold. The road is flint-colored. The suburb has cars and cable television. The veiled stars are above ground. It is another world. But what she can a mother- But what else can a mother give her daughter but

00:58:09.860 - 00:58:33.650

such beautiful rifts in time? If I defer the grief, I will diminish the gift. The legend must be hers as well as mine. She will enter it. As I have. She will wake up. She will hold the papery flushed skin in her hand and to her lips. I will say

00:58:34.130 - 00:58:48.640

nothing. And I think that's really an amazing poem, as she realizes that she has both in time and out of time, and is repeating a mother-daughter relationship that goes back into myth, and

00:58:48.640 - 00:59:04.750

that it is her responsibility not to stop this myth from happening or even explain it to her daughter, but a lot- to allow her daughter to discover it herself. And it is, of course, one of the things she's talking about is adulthood, the

00:59:04.750 - 00:59:13.550

loss of innocence and the sorrows of the world. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Are we reaching an end? Morton Marcus: You're going to read another poem. Timothy Fitzmaurice: Do I have time for one Ni Dhomhnaill poem

00:59:13.550 - 00:59:17.190

that has to do with a mother and daughter? Timothy Fitzmaurice: It's called Morton Marcus: Let's do it. THE EBONY ADONIS

00:59:18.330 - 00:59:30.170

And it's about a mother dreaming one dream and her daughter dreams the same dream about an ebony Adonis. At puberty, I had a dream in my all-too-single bunk in the school dorm, of dancing the length of the public room with

00:59:30.170 - 00:59:47.060

the guts of my relatives looking on in the arms of an ebony Adonis. Round and round whirled the waltz till my senses spun with joy. From the fiery fierce glance of his eye. Every achievement in fitness and sport possessed my ebony Adonis. Then

00:59:47.060 - 01:00:03.080

the dormitory door caved in with a bang, lights snapped on and wash-basins rang, a well-fed sister was singing the praises of Christ, and myself left amidst the bedclothes bereft of my ebony Adonis. His face and his touch I will never forget,

01:00:03.200 - 01:00:20.630

that high powered shadow that slept with me slept, that expert lover that spoiled me for dead. My sovereign, imperial, absolute passion, my ebony Adonis. My daughter, in her turn, dreamed aged nine of a door that led to a spellbound inn where various

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chancers were coaxing her in and, like mother like daughter, you know she was mine, nothing would do her but the ebony Adonis. Now, light of my soul, make no bones about it. No-good son-of-a-bitch can't be trusted with his murder record and black

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belt too, this Lord of the Dance is headed where to? Straight through the fires of hell with ebony Adonis. You'll end up closed in an exhibition case, under lock and key or caught as it were in a revolving doorway, unable either to get in or get

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out for the switch back and forth, night and day through the porches of the psyche. If you give an inch to the ebony Adonis. You'll be laid low, as I was in a type of ME at the dregs of a well like a sort of Ophelia, tortured with symptoms

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for 14 years without a creature to speak to, or a sympathetic ear, since I handed my cards to the ebony Adonis. Till I walked out over the golf links to the moonless tide, and summoned up the Goddess in the spirits of my tribe to gather around me and I

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swore with solemn promise to surrender what I loved most to exorcise the sickness- all very well for a joke, except this was my ebony Adonis. Who was all along Sir Death, lurking in ambush in my womb's valleys and in the summer-house and lowlands

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of my heart, forever alert to decoy me into his desert, to destroy me in short, being the ebony Adonis sort. Still my honeychild, since I've been there and done it, you do your own thing and don't give a shit. For Old Death will not get us

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though he'll not let us go, any more than this life will condone us. One kiss from our ebony Adonis. Morton Marcus: And this has been The Poetry Show on the St. Patrick's Day show. That was Tim Fitzmaurice, who has generously

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joined me here to talk about Irish poetry and read it. Stay tuned for "From the Bookshelf," tonight. Billy Harris brings you Linden McNeely, reading her story, "Death by Desert." This is Morton Marcus. I'll see you in three weeks.