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Joseph Stroud: Good evening, you are tuned to KUSP, listener supported radio for Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Salinas at 89.9 on your FM dial. Stay tuned for the Poetry Show which is coming right up with host Mort Marcus and Joe Stroud tonight. And

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tonight's program is going to be a very special program, an anniversary, birthday anniversary celebration of the local master poet, William Everson. And before we get into that program, we'll start with a little bit of music.

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Well, good evening once again, this is the Poetry Show here on KUSP, listener supported radio. And we would like to thank Stapleton's Natural Foods Grocery, emphasizing organic and commercial produce at 415 River Street in Santa Cruz for

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providing funds that will help make the following hour programming possible. I'm Joe Stroud and with me in the studio tonight is the usual co-host for the show, Morton Marcus, and tonight's a very special program for both Mort and myself because

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we'll be celebrating tonight and also next Tuesday, the birthday of a fantastic, what can I say, master poet who lives in Santa Cruz, lives north of Santa Cruz in Davenport, really one of the truly fine American poets that we have writing today. And

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Morton, you want to say something there? Morton Marcus: Yeah. Without being corny, let me say that if we do have a national treasure living in Santa Cruz in poetry, it has to be Bill Everson. There is so much we can learn from him

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and so much he has given to us in his struggle to find meaning in his life, to find godhead, to find beauty, and to express it in some of the most poetic lyric poems that have been written in this country and in this century, that this is a very

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special occasion and we are very lucky to have Bill here. This is not only his birthday, you listeners out there, this is Bill's 75th birthday, September 10th of this year, it's just two days from now.

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Joseph Stroud: Mort, why don't you say a few words about the the first time you encountered Everson's poetry and I'll say something about my experience along those lines before we get into the actual interview itself.

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Morton Marcus: Well, I encountered Everson when he was Brother Antoninus, and he got up and read. There were several readers that night, and he got up and read, I don't even remember where it was in San Francisco. And I mean, he just

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blew me off my chair, I couldn't believe what was going on on stage. The raw passion, the real concern and commitment just was cutting through all the superficial art, which has been - and I know you agree with this - has been around us in one

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media after another, and you were in the presence of a man who was committed to finding answers, a man who was committed to the whole life process, and who would not compromise in any way, whether it be his art, whether it be the reaching of

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his theme, it was extremely inspiring. And every time I've been with him and found him not to be this some angry, prophetic poet, but to be a very gentle, wonderful man, very, very giving-

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Joseph Stroud: Especially giving to younger poets, he's always lent a hand in help and advice and counsel. And- Morton Marcus: Yeah, what about you, Joe? When was the first time you encountered Bill?

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Joseph Stroud: Well, I first encountered Bill's poetry in 1962 in the library at the Los Angeles State University. And as a young poet at the time, I didn't know much about poetry, and I was just wandering through the stacks and I came across a

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book called, "The Residual Years," and I picked up the book and started paging through the poems and I was immediately struck by a voice that I'd never heard in American poetry before: confessional, direct, h rd-edged, clean imagery, and a v

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ice that I'll never forget. A m n talking in personal, s raightforward language about hi life, about his interior li e, about the relationship he wa having at the time with his wife, his troubles, his yearning for some deeper meaning in the

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world. And I'd never encountered poetry like that before. And then about five years later, I had a chance to hear Bill read as Brother Antoninus. He was giving a reading at the seminary in San Anselmo; he read that night with John Logan and some

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other poet who I forget. And ohn read first, and then Bill got up and he read in front of a huge window, and behind the window, you could see Mounta n Tamalpais rising up into t e sky. And halfway through h s reading, he stopped, put h

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s book down, and then begin on t e spot to make up a poem, rig t then in front of an audienc . And it was just an amazing po m about the shadows climbing do n the rocks of Mount Tamalpais, nd about time and the turn ng seasons, and it was just

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an incredible moment for me to see someone just open themselves up so cleanly like that in front of an audience. Morton Marcus: And this is one thing he could do, whether at readings or in the classes that he taught at UCSC, he could take

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some outside sounds, some view through a window, and he could just start on that and move to sort of like the center of the meaning, or ask questions that one would never expect to hear asked, and then go on to answer them in an amazingly imaginative

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ways. And that, of course, is one of his great arts as a performer. Joseph Stroud: Right. Morton Marcus: And I've got a lot of numerous anecdotes to

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tell about him as a performer. I'll never forget I had him into a class I was teaching at Extension years ago and we read his poems in the morning, and then I went out to lunch with Bill, and when we were out there he used to come into the class

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that afternoon. And he said, "Well, Mort," he said, he says, "Well, what- what am I expected to do? What did you tell him about me today?" And I said, "Well, Bill, I told them to be ready for anything. That you might come in there like the

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wrath of God. And as Nathan coming off the desert, you would just fix them with your stare, and then launch into a hail of fire and brimstone reading." He says, "Oh." So, he walked into the class that day, and he was a lamb, right? He never raised his

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voice, he never said anything. And I just caught his eye at one point, and he just gave me the subtlest smile in the world. Just a great performer in that part of his poetic, you know, making of things as well as a fantastic poet who didn't need

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performance at all, but who really- to see him on the stage at one time was just a revelatory experience. Joseph Stroud: It still is even today. Well, why don't we listen to, I've got a special treat here, a couple of poems that-

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recorded a number of years ago by Bill, and why don't we listen to these and then we'll come back to maybe the tape. So this is William Everson, reading a couple of poems. William Everson: THE SOUTH COAST

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Salt creek mouths unflushed by the sea and the long day shuts down. Whose hand stacks rock, cairn-posted, churched to the folded sole of this hill, and Whose mind conceives? Three herons gig their necks in the tule break and the prying mud

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hen plies. Long down, far south to Sur, the wind lags, slosh-washes his slow heel, lays off our coast, rump of the domed mountain, woman-backed, bedded under his lee. Salt grasses here, fringes, tweaking the crevice slips, and the gagging

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cypress wracked away from the sea. God makes. On earth, in us, most instantly, on the very now, his own means conceives. How many strings break out unchoked where He, Whom all declares, delight to make be!

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OUT OF THE ASH Solstice of the dark, the absolute zero of the year. Praise God who comes for us again, our lives pulled to their fisted knot, cinched tight with cold, drawn to the heart's

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constriction. Our faces seamed like clinkers in the grate, hands like tongs, praise God that Christ, phoenix immortal, springs up again from solstice ash, drives his equatorial ray into our cloud, emblazons our stiff brow, fries our chill

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tears. Come Christ, most gentle in throat-pulsing Bird! Oh come, sweet Child! Be gladness in our church! Waken with anthems our bare rafters! Oh, phoenix forever! Virgin-wombed and burning in the dark, be born! Be born!

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Joseph Stroud: Well, that was William Everson. At the time of that poem in that reading, he was known as Brother Antoninus. And as we mentioned earlier tonight, we are celebrating William Everson's 75th birthday, which is actually in two days.

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And we'll be doing it tonight and also next week. Mort, do you want to say anything else before we get to the tape itself? Morton Marcus: Yeah, maybe we should tell the plan of both evenings. We went out to Davenport and interviewed Bill

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at his home there and that is on Swanton Road. And what the questions led to, in one way or another, was sort of a biographical reminiscence. And we're going to hear the first half of that tonight and the second half next week. What is

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so interesting about the ones tonight is these are poems, mostly poems based in the book, "The Residual Years," which Joe was talking about before, before Bill had his conversion to Catholicism. So, this is Bill in the 30s but as is always

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wonderful with Bill, it's not just a biography. The things he's saying are so clear and so perfect, that every young poet, old poet, middle-aged poet out there will be enriched by them, think. If there are long pause in here, I think we should tel

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everyone out there also tha Bill is suffering fro Parkinson's disease. And as h answered these questions, h wrestled with himself to get th words out. His mind tremendousl clear, but still it is ve y difficult for him to speak no

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, and so you've got words he e that a man really wants to giv , and really, it's his gift to s on his birthda Joseph Stroud: Right, he'll be talking about the, as Mort said, the 30s and also the period in the 40s where he was a

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conscientious objector during World War II, and his experiences there, which then led him afterwards to San Francisco, and to Kenneth Rexroth, and to his second wife and his conversion to Catholicism, and his decision to

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enter the monastery. So we'll just let Bill himself tell his own story. This is a tape that was made last week with William Everson. Morton Marcus: I would like immediately to start talking

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about something that has been very important to me in a very big part of your work, which is commitment, and especially commitment to art, which I have always taken as commitment to life itself. And you call this the calling of the poet. And I

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wonder if you wouldn't say some words to us about what the calling of the poet has meant to you. William Everson: Well, I stretch the calling of the poet because unless there is a true calling, the rigors of trying to write

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poetry in a nation that has little use for it, there's going to be so great that the liabilities begin, the backlash starts, and the psychic burnout, exhaustion, despair, and it takes almost a heroic consciousness to sustain a

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charismatic vocation. And of course, it's always a problem, that is, what constitutes the calling of the poet, and how do you know that you're truly called. In the career world, success is the criteria and then the calling of a poet or any

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serious artists, success is not the criterion. The criterion is a sense of peace and a sense of fulfillment, a sense of, Morton used the word commitment. It has to do with motivation, not with skills. Any college professor can tell you that some of their

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most able students, the ones he thought were going to be the most talented and those that come under his hands, when they leave school and turn out to be something quite different than that. Vocational guidance be [unintelligible] always look for

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talent because there isn't very many ways to look for motivation. Joseph Stroud: Yeah, along those lines about the relationship of the work to the poet, a year or so ago at the Pound conference

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held at the San Jose Poetry Center, one of the panels discussed commitment to art, the idea that Pound spent nearly his entire adult life working on one long poem, "The Cantos," and Bill Everson's name, along with Robert Duncan's, were raised as

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examples of poets with incredible commitment. Jack Gilbert, a member of the panel, said that when he thinks of Duncan or Everson, he thinks of scale, people for whom poetry comes first and last. And this interests me because it leads to

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questions about the relationship between the work and the life. Yeats said the artist has to choose one or the other, does the poet serve the work or does the poem serve the poet? And I wonder if you have any ideas along those lines?

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William Everson: I hadn't heard that remark of Yeats's. I've heard that he said- that he talked about the difference between the mystic and the poet. The mystic is a contemplative who serves God, and the poet is more of an activist who sort of

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serves himself in the much deeper sense of that word, trying to get the idea that the contemplative receives but the poet produces. And it is this production that is- this isn't Yeats but my own reflection on it. It's this production that

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puts the poet more in league with the prophet and with the mystic or the contemplative. The prophet is one wanders up to the mountain, receives a vision and then he must come down and tell it, they didn't speak it. Whereas for the mystic, to

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slough off everything and stand purely naked is sufficient, stand naked before God is sufficient. It was in the religious order that I found myself emerging as a poet rather than the contemplative or the mystic.

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Morton Marcus: Bill, in relation to that, if you finished over that, what do you feel the different phases of your career have been? And, you know, what is sort of the spiritual journey or the physical journey and how they joined together?

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William Everson: Yeah, none of it emerged from across my life, not by plan. I started out as a poet of the San Joaquin, I discovered my calling, my vocation, at Fresno State College in the fall of 1934 when I pulled the volume of Robinson

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Jeffers poetry off of the shelf and knew that I had met my master. And I think that's the first way that, the fundamental way that a vocation to me, a poet is, or an artist in the Western world, I don't know anything about the Orient, but

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in the West, is to find your master. There's something about this finding of the master, which precipitates a polarization in the psyche, [unintelligible] images established there, this is an archetype of the master.

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Sometimes you'll find that you'll have more than one master in the course of a career but generally, there's one main master that introduces you to the craft. And new work is not really, not really a method of imitation, although it's

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generally considered that, but the reason it isn't truly imitation is because there's so much of yourself. Let me explain that. I began to write under the aegis of Jeffers but when my book was published, there's enough of myself that came

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through to those early poems that they did not seem imitative. And this is the important thing to recognize: modernist artists' anti-imitation. With the great emphasis on originality, originality, and every reviewer

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who reviews you, his first thing he does is name your influences because that puts his credentials before the public. If you can spot your influences as human error of objectivity, but you can't let that stop you. If you start for pure

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originality, you will end up febrile. Your early Mozart sounds like the late Haydn and the early Beethoven sounds like the late Mozart, but they're each their own man, I think is one of the most vicious, the most limiting of all modernist

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precepts is this insistence on originality. Harold Bloom, he had written a book called, "The Anxiety of Influence," and he says it has to do with the modern world, he starts it was Descartes, remember that change in psychic attitude came as

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Descartes. He said that Ben Johnson was the last to adhere to the master, the doctrine of the master. I've been calling an [unidentified] if I am, it is proved by the fact that I have gone back to that model, rejecting the modernist model of

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the blazing invent(?) to read original that springs full-blown from the- and it means that what you have coming out of the writing courses is a strain for originality. It took me five years to overcome my influence of Jeffers. So what happens is

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you've entered in your master's jetstream and you follow back in there and you're paddling your own canoe, but my first poems that I wrote under the influence of Jeffers are not Jeffers, they are solely my own, they're pure mood.

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But then I didn't,- after the poems of the mood were worked out, and it took me about a year to do that. The first volume was pamphlet publishes, these are the ravens and these are ones- but after that, I began to have to go forward. And I didn't have

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any ideas of my own, it was my ideas that I got from Jeffers rather than my expression. My voice was my home but my ideas were Jeffers'. And this is where the Jeffersian influence comes. It took me five years to work through that until life brought

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to me instead of a master, a set of circumstances that Jeffers didn't have to face, and that's when the problem of your master is solved, is when you have to go forward beyond what he has led you to. And you have by that time, have perfected your craft,

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developed your ear so that you have the music, you have your personal music. And then out of this person, life usually begins to bring you perspectives that are original and you begin- you have at last truly found your own voice.

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Morton Marcus: What were those things that you've had to face that you said put you beyond- William Everson: World War II. Morton Marcus: Okay.

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William Everson: Jeffers opposed World War II, but he was not a pacifist. I had to become a pacifist. And it was becoming a pacifist, which Jeffers was not, it was- his ethos was important to me in World War II because he stood against it, but he was

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not- When I became a pacifist, I began to write a different kind of poetries and- Now about the other working [unintelligible] that constitutes the first phase of my work. World War II was a great axe stroke that chopped my life apart, dissevered it, and

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it's going to be the poet of the San Joaquin Valley. I grew up in little town of Selma in Fresno County and went to Fresno State, found my master there, dropped out, went back to the land, got married, planted a vineyard, wrote my books. I wrote probably

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three books before I was drafted for World War II, and then was this great tearing apart. I began a confessional phase that became one of the fundamental modes around which I evolved my own career. This was a personal matter, it had to do with my

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marriage, and I ended up the war without a marriage. But I had evolved a style, the confessional sequence, the confessional movement as it's come as a movement, came on later after the war, and it's associated with Robert Lowell,

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1959, the emergence of the confessional movement. And now Rosenthal has a book on the confessional sequence. The confessional sequences became the vehicle through which I worked the crisis of my life. And I found that all I was doing

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when they compared my work the Jeffers was that he was speaking objectively, he was a prophet addressing the world. But I was proceeding subjectively, I was writing out the drama of my own evolution, psychic evolution, through the vicissitudes of the

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world. And his book points the fact that this, it has become the vehicle of almost all modern art one way or another, painting itself follows this subjective- intense subjectivity. Well, the war and its aftermath left me with no place to go. I

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couldn't go back to the valley, the associations there with my marriage were too painful for me to try to take up. Instead of going back to Fresno County, I went to the Bay Area and joined the movement around Kenneth Rexroth. And here's where I

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joined Robert Duncan, and I found a new relationship with a woman. And this brings in the second factor is that the great pivotal moments of my life of men and women out of love- [cut-off]

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Yes, I spoke about finding your master in the beginning. I'd like to read the poem that I wrote first after I found Jeffers. I was at Fresno State College, I went into the library one afternoon and I pulled out this book, and I read it, I

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began to read more and more, must have read in there for an hour or so. I went back to the house where I stayed with some- I was renting a small bungalow with some other students and I went in and no one was there. And I had the stillness of the

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house to myself and as I sat down, I began to weep. I didn't know how it was moving me. I felt this profound- and the poem began to come out in great [unintelligible] or- it's called, "October Tragedy," and it has no ideas, no frame at

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all, it's pure mood. But I've been writing poetry for maybe five years before that, I didn't mention that it was five years that went in before the five years I put it under Jeffers' work. Poems written to the models of teachers in high

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school and giving you other things like that, but you found in your own browsing, there's again an entirely different level and I begin that- I consider it to be the first response to my true calling called:

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OCTOBER TRAGEDY Do not sing those old songs here tonight. Outside, the buckeye lifts nude limbs against the moon. Outside, the heavy-winged herons are scaling down into the misty reaches of the marsh.

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Bitter is the wind, and a mud dog howls among the withered elderberry on the ridge. Bitter is the quiet singing of the cricket, and the silent pools lie black beneath still reeds. Go away: follow the spoor of a wounded buck, over the marsh and

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deep into the desolate hills. You must never sing those old songs here again. WINTER PLOUGHI Before my feet, the ploughshare rolls the earth up and over,

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splitting the loam with a soft tearing sound. Between the horses I can see the red glow of a far peach orchard, half-obscured in drifting sheets of morning fog. A score of blackbirds circles around me on shining wings, they alight

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beside me and scramble almost under my feet in search of upturned grubs. The fragrance of the earth rises like tule-pond mist, shrouding me in impalpable folds of sweet cool smell, lulling my senses to the rhythm of the running plough, the

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jingle of the harness, and the thin cries of the gleaming, bent-winged bird. MUSCAT PRUNING All these dormant fields are held beneath the fog. The

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scraggy vines, the broken weeds, the cold moist ground have known it now for days. My fingers are half-numbed on the handles of the shears but I have other thoughts. There is a flicker swooping from the grove on scalloped wings, his harsh cry

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widening through the fog. After his calling the silence holds the drip-sound of the trees, muffling the hushed beat under the mist. Over the field the noise of other pruners moves me to my work. I have a hundred vines to cut before the dark.

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LET IT BE TOLD in the driving dark of some far night, when the pine trees stagger upon the ridge, and the crying killdeer rise through the rifts of the broken sky. Let it be told the single breath, torn from the throat and thrown to the wind to

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shake on the shoulder over the streaming hills. We who watched in the stagnant dusk of this still room heard neither breath nor word, but only the plaintive bats talking faintly under the eaves, and the crowing of one far cock, dimly down the wind.

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YEAR'S END The year dies fiercely: out of the north of the beating storms, and wind at the roof's edge, lightning swording the low sky: this year dying like some traitored Norse stumbling under

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the deep wounds, the furious steel, smashing and swinging. From the northern room I watch the dusk, being unsocial regard the coming year coldly, suspicious of strangers, distrustful of innovations, reluctant to chance one way or

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another the unknown. Leave this year as a man leaves wine, remembering the summer, bountiful, the good fall, the months mellow and full. I sit in the northern room, in the dusk, the death of a year, and watch it go down in thunder.

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THE RAIN THAT MORNING We on that morning working face south of east where the sun was in winter at rising. And looking up from the earth perceive the sky closing, sky that was a sled from behind us out rimmed and

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sank to the sun and drew on it darkly. And my, that was moving. I'll begin that poem again. THE RAIN ON THAT MORNING We on that morning, working, faced south and east where the

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sun was in winter at rising. And looking up from the earth perceived the sky moving, the sky that slid from behind without wind and sank to the sun and drew on it darkly an eye that was closing. The rain on that morning came like a woman

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with love and touched us gently, and the earth gently, and closed down delicately in the morning, so that all around were the subtle and intricate touchings. The earth took them, the vines and winter weeds. But we fled them and gaining the roof looked

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back a time where the rain without wind came slowly, and love in her touches. OUTSIDE THIS MUSIC These verses are lies. Who bends the hard hand over the lines,

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shaping the words, feeling the gust of an ancient mood blow through the room, the weight of the night and the broken hills, hammers no truth. He feels up through the floor the strength that is cramped in

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the stone of the earth push at his flesh; the lips stammer on darkness. Into the delicate substance of the blood flows the long wind, the deep drives the night. The eyes will be blind, the throat shattered and mute in the wave of thunder of the

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fallen sky. What lies outside the closed and hollow music of this verse runs in the earth, in the plunge of the sun on the summer sky. There is wind on the walls, and the feeling of tough wild weeds

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straining all outdoors, and the bruised mouth, forming the shape of a word, turning toward night. MARCH The lovers, fast in their longing, lay high on their hill

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and looked out into March: fields all flooded and the rutty lanes, three farms, two teams, kites set to the wind, and the kiter's cry. Lay high on their hill and looked out into spring, the

00:42:23.100 - 00:42:37.940

sensitive season, their throats so throbbing, and their thieving thighs, lax on the hill in the thoughtless weather, their listless love. Looked out into spring and the open air, the lying lovers,

00:42:38.600 - 00:42:56.900

beholding through their unseeing eyes new form for old fancy, dawdling their languor, nursing the slow and crowning mood for the push past gingham to the sprawling hug where each tries each, and the shy recessive sex, grown bold and brutal, meets his

00:42:56.900 - 00:43:13.240

own coarse kind. THE MASTER The furious cripple, who raged in the circle of his wounded pride and so governed an age; the painter, powerful in this

00:43:13.240 - 00:43:31.330

premonition, knowing year upon year the patient encroachment inch of up his flesh; the leper, outcast on his Island; the cancerous king; and my mother who bore in her breast the pus-pouring lung, these, these in their bondage, these in the

00:43:31.330 - 00:43:47.590

durance of imperfection, these hover my mind. Each stoops in his shackle, the indigenous monitor perched forever in the faulty flesh; each watches, beyond his earnest endeavor, his extravagant hope and his pitiful yearning, the great chastening

00:43:47.590 - 00:44:05.290

presence obtrude its dominion across his life. And each, even in this, has his restitution: the primal volitions live side by side in the burning body, forbidding excess. We others, reckless with health, engrossed in the rapture of the

00:44:05.290 - 00:44:20.800

ringing nerve, thrust through existence, ignore the dour master, shunt him off to the dusty closets of mind to mumble and sulk, pronounce his blunt warnings, brood all the eighty years of a life, and rage through the rooms in the end.

00:44:22.460 - 00:44:39.050

DO YOU NOT DOUBT, being lonely of heart and bleakly alive on the wrinkling world, the fate that so forces? Men doubling on death deny with their eyes the joy that drew them; and the cursing girl, twisting about her central hurt, breathes oath on

00:44:39.050 - 00:44:56.180

black oath before she fails. These turn at the crux. But one whole of mind and firm of flesh, flinch as he does his aching eyes, may yet bear brunt, unholy and harsh though it beat against him, may yet bear brunt.

00:44:57.830 - 00:45:19.790

For the scope, the sweep, the balancings and continuations of our lives extend beyond us. However, we spaniel to wedging fate, the inherent choices of human attempt are opening yet. What has to be taken take with mind wide, dragging wholesale

00:45:19.790 - 00:45:38.060

armies into its maw, sorting the masses of heaped confusion, dealing with doubt and that lonely fear. And though the spectacular agitation of pain quench you at last, be yet prepared to use as you can the augmentation and heritage of the

00:45:38.060 - 00:45:55.610

race, the continuity of mind beyond mind grappling with truth, as if all you have hammered against the dark beat from your brow, then hard-handed force, the exactitude of that final fate, such even as that may be faced.

00:45:56.540 - 00:46:13.800

LAVA BED Fisted, bitten by blizzards, flattened by wind and chewed by all weather, the lava bed lay. Deer fashioned trails there but no man, ever; and the fugitive cougars whelped in that lair.

00:46:15.780 - 00:46:34.020

Deep in its waste the buzzards went down to some innominate kill. The sun fell in it, and took the whole west down as it died. Dense as the sea, entrenched in its years of unyielding rebuff, it held to its own. We looked in against

00:46:34.020 - 00:46:55.750

anger, beholding that which are cunning had never subdued, our power indented, and only our eyes had traversed. Joseph Stroud: You've been listening to William Everson recite some of his poems. This was recorded last week out of

00:46:55.750 - 00:47:09.460

his house off Swanton Road north of Devonport. Mort Marcus was there and I was there, Joe Stroud, and I would also like to thank Michael Beatty from KUSP, who was there to do the recording for us. Well, we're coming down to the end of the

00:47:09.460 - 00:47:20.590

hour. This is the KUSP Poetry Show; it comes to you every Tuesday night from nine until ten. We have a little bit of time left, Mort, how do you want to- what do you want to do? Do you want to read some of Bill's poems?

00:47:20.830 - 00:47:29.320

Morton Marcus: I'd love- am I on? Joseph Stroud: You're on. Morton Marcus: I'd love to read some- of one or two poems from, "The Residual Years," even go beyond the book. What we have

00:47:29.320 - 00:47:42.070

been doing is listening to Bill talk about his life up to the time of conversion. And that takes us really to the middle of World War, just about the outbreak of World War I and into World War Iand he'll speak now much-

00:47:42.280 - 00:47:51.190

Joseph Stroud: World War II. Morton Marcus: Thank you very much. The World War II is what I meant. Keep me honest, Joe. And I- Joseph Stroud: I can keep you factual, at least. I don't know

00:47:51.190 - 00:48:02.830

if I can ever keep you honest. Morton Marcus: [Laughs] A d I just thought I'll read som of these other poems, one or wo, and I know that you have a p em or two there that you mig t like to read. So people who

00:48:02.830 - 00:48:09.130

ant, "The Canticle for the Wa erbirds," and things like that we'll do that next week. So would yo Joseph Stroud: You start off. Go ahead, Mort, you've got the book.

00:48:09.120 - 00:48:22.800

Morton Marcus: Okay. What's interesting about, "The Residual Years," is how Bill really sees history. There's a wonderful poem in here, which I probably don't have time to read called, "Attila," in which he thinks about what Attila the Hun

00:48:23.040 - 00:48:37.650

accomplished, which wasn't much. He also thinks about the history of the Central Valley, but he thinks about himself as part Nordic, part Celtic, both Anglo-Saxon and Viking. And he thinks about the blood in his veins, and this is called the:

00:48:37.650 - 00:48:52.940

FISH EATERS This blood has beat in a thousand veins, and mingled redly in too many limbs to remember the source, the single spring, the fountain lost in the mist of the years. Nordic and

00:48:52.940 - 00:49:07.610

Celtic is all I know: pale-haired giants roaring their mirth on a Norway coast; somber Celts in the Irish fog, under the edge of the weedy dunes, huddling the meager blaze, and no singing.

00:49:09.350 - 00:49:23.930

I think of the men behind the centuries, groping down to the sea, fish-eaters, pickers of flesh from the salty shells, snuffling the wind of the water's edge, the black waves beating. I think of the withered women left in the stinking huts

00:49:23.930 - 00:49:39.660

of the hills, no glimmer nor a hope, and knowing no strength but the lips held mutely over the teeth. Oh you folk of the farther dark, this bone and this blood are nothing of mine, but wrung from your flesh and fiercely born in

00:49:39.660 - 00:49:56.070

the dimmest days, when to live was to lust, to reach for the axe and rise to the fury, wade to the roaring thick of it, shoulders hunched and the long arms hacking. Yet, trying my heart I find no hunger for the sword, this blood

00:49:56.070 - 00:50:17.790

drowsy and slow, wanting no war, glad for the piece of the hawkless hills, glad for the sleep in the sun. Joe, how about you picking up, "Residual Years," and finding yourself a poem?

00:50:19.140 - 00:50:36.690

Joseph Stroud: Okay. This is titled: THE DANCER I have in my mind the dark expanse of the northern sea, and the storms across it, moving down from the arctic coasts,

00:50:37.050 - 00:50:54.270

gray whirlers, the knees of the wind. I have in my mind the stone block and the splendid thighs, turning in on themselves in a beautiful dance, moving to some incantation sung from the run of the changing sea, dancing the

00:50:54.270 - 00:51:11.040

wind up out of the waves, poised and turning, dancing the music awake and the depth. The mood of the stone is alive in my vision, the mood of the sea, the mood of my own inclement blood. The wind of the

00:51:11.040 - 00:51:26.730

rain is awake in the granite; the clouds are alive; the tides are alive. Low drumming of thunder in the murky north, gray dancer, gray thighs of the storm, gather us up in the folds of darkness;

00:51:27.360 - 00:51:48.610

come over us, solemn and beautiful music, mindless, the pivoting thighs, the song of the thighs, and the dance. We have a guest poet here who just dropped in. I'm sure he was out on the streets and heard Bill Everson's voice and his

00:51:48.610 - 00:52:08.410

name is Robert Lundquist. And in fact, Bill Everson did an introduction to Robert's book, and I think we might be able to persuade Robert to read a poem of Bill's if he can quickly find one. And while he's looking, let me say a few words about some

00:52:08.410 - 00:52:29.500

upcoming events. As part of the San Jose Poetry Center, you can expect to hear or see or listen to on this station in the coming months, a reading by Gwendolyn Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, that'll be October 20th. Also Isabel Allende, the

00:52:29.500 - 00:52:44.380

Chilean novelist living in exile in Venezuela, and the niece of the murdered Chilean president Salvador Allende, will be reading October 30th. She'll be reading, I hope, from her her amazing novel which I have yet to read. I've heard all kinds of

00:52:44.380 - 00:52:59.830

words about it, it's supposed to be a wonderful book, so she'll be coming. W.S. Merwin will be coming in November, and in January, Robert Bly will also be here. Everson has talked a lot this evening about the impression that the poetry of

00:52:59.830 - 00:53:12.790

Robinson Jeffers made on him, on his life as a poet and so forth, and how he took him as a master. And I should mention that coming up is the Robinson Jeffers' Centennial Colloquium Celebration, Jeffers in California. This event will

00:53:12.790 - 00:53:25.420

bring to the public's attention the life and work of one of the 20th century's most prominent poets. We've planned the Jeffers Centennial to pique public interest in Jeffers and to be the most significant public celebration of the poet's work

00:53:25.540 - 00:53:41.560

held in the United States. And there'll be two events: one will be at San Jose State University, and the other will be in the Tor House, in the house that Jeffers built with his own hands with stones that he brought up from the sea in Carmel. And some of

00:53:41.560 - 00:53:53.110

the participants will include Carolyn Kizer, Gary Snyder, Czeslaw Milosz, and of course, William Everson himself will be there, and dozens of other international and national scholars and poets. So that's coming up, if you want further

00:53:53.110 - 00:54:15.040

information, you can call this number at the San Jose Poetry Center 277-2834. And if you want further information about what will be happening in Carmel, call this number 624-1813. I do know that on Friday evening, Gary Snyder, October 2nd, Gary

00:54:15.040 - 00:54:27.580

Snyder, the national poet will read his own poetry at 8pm at the Santa Catalina School Performing Arts Center. And on Saturday afternoon, Jason Miller, actor, playwright, and popular reader of Jeffers poetry will perform at the Hacienda

00:54:27.580 - 00:54:42.910

Carmel at 1:30pm. And also on Sunday, the fourth there will be a poetry walk and a picnic at the beach near the Tor House where Jeffers spent most of his life. Few other announcements to make: poets and lovers of poetry are invited to the fifth annual

00:54:42.910 - 00:54:58.960

poetry reading and awards program at the Santa Cruz County Fair. Award winning poems will be read by selected readers and awards will be presented at 3pm on Wednesday, September 9th, that's tomorrow in Paddy Smith Park at the Fair. Okay, and I

00:54:58.960 - 00:55:13.210

think we have mentioned also that next week we will be continuing the program on William Everson. Mort Marcus will be here, and I will be here, Joe Stroud. And the following week, in two weeks, we'll be having some of the

00:55:13.210 - 00:55:26.200

readers from the women writers reading, In Celebration of the Muse. Patrice Vecchione will be here, and she'll have with her some of the poets who will be participating in this series of readings. There's now going to be six different readings, and

00:55:26.230 - 00:55:41.170

we'll be talking more about that next week. I should also mention, before Robert reads a poem of William Everson's, that this week we're also celebrating the birthday of another well-known Santa Cruz poet, modesty forbids me to go into

00:55:41.170 - 00:55:53.260

too much detail about this man, but his name is Morton Marcus and he is the co-host on the Poetry Show here tonight, so happy birthday, Mort. Morton Marcus: Thank you. The interesting thing about it is

00:55:53.260 - 00:56:03.730

that Bill Everson's birthday is the same birthday as mine, so I'm partaking in this. This is a birthday- Joseph Stroud: We know you'll say there's gonna be one great poet born in one single day, Mort, so-

00:56:04.240 - 00:56:15.860

Morton Marcus: We know who that is and it's not me. Joseph Stroud: Now, I'm just fooling. Okay, this is Robert Lundquist. Rob, you have a poem of Bill's that you want to read? Robert Lundquist: Yeah, the poem I'd like to read is called:

00:56:16.430 - 00:56:35.480

IN ALL THESE ACTS Dawn cried out. The brutal voice of a bird flattened the sea glaze. Treading that surf, hunch-headed fishers towed small agates, their delicate legs, iridescent stilting the ripples.

00:56:35.690 - 00:56:54.620

Suddenly the cloud closed. They heard big wind boom back on the cliff, crunch timber over along the ridge. They shook up their wings crying, terror flustered their pinions. Then hemlock, tall, torn by the roots went crazily down, the staggering

00:56:54.620 - 00:57:12.770

gyrations of splintered kindling. Flung out of bracken, fleet mule deer bolted; but the great elk caught midway between two scissoring logs, arched belly-up and died, the snapped spine half-torn out of his peeled back, his hind legs

00:57:12.800 - 00:57:31.310

jerking that gasped convulsion, the kick of spasmed life, paunch plowed open, purple entrails disgorged from the basketwork ribs, erupting out, splashed sideways, wrapping him, gouted in blood, flecked with the brittle sliver of bone.

00:57:32.660 - 00:57:52.190

Frenzied, the terrible head thrashed off its antlered fuzz in that rubble and then fell silent, the great tongue that had bugled in in rut, calling the cow elk up from the glades, thrust agonized out, the maimed member bloodedly stiff in the

00:57:52.970 - 00:58:08.040

stone-smashed teeth. Far down below, the mountain torrent that once having started, could never be stopped, scooped up that avalanchial wrack and strung it along, a riddle of bubble and littered

00:58:08.070 - 00:58:28.500

duff spun down its thread. At the gorged river mouth, the sea plunged violently in, gasping its potholes, sucked and panted, answering itself in its spume. The river, spent at last, beating driftwood up and down in a frenzy of capitulation, pumped

00:58:28.500 - 00:58:47.070

out its life, destroying itself in the mother sea, there, where the mammoth sea grown salmon lurk immemorial, roe in their hulls about to begin. They will beat that barbarous beauty out on those high-stacked shallows, those headwater claims, back

00:58:47.340 - 00:59:07.350

where they were born. Along that upward racing trek, time springs through all its loops and flanges, the many faced splendor and the music of the leaf, the copulation of beasts and the watery laughter of drakes, too few the grave witnesses, the

00:59:07.350 - 00:59:26.310

wakeful, vengeful beauty, devolving itself of its whole constraint, erupting as it goes. In all these acts, Christ crouches and seethes, pitched forward on the crucifying stroke juvescent, that will spring Him

00:59:26.340 - 00:59:43.290

out to the germ, out of the belly of the dying buck, out to the farther-phallos and the torn up root. These are the modes of His fourth-showing, His serene agonization. In the clicking teeth of otters, over and over He dies and is born, shaping the

00:59:43.470 - 01:00:00.180

weasel's jaw in His leap, and the staggering rush of the bass. Joseph Stroud: Well done, Robert. Well, as a final way to end the program, I'd like to say happy birthday to Bill. Morton Marcus: Happy birthday, Bill!

01:00:00.630 - 01:00:12.030

Joseph Stroud: Happy Birthday, Bill. We'd like to thank Stapleton's Natural Foods Grocery, emphasizing organic and commercial produce at 415 River Street in Santa Cruz, for providing us with a grant of funds that help make the

01:00:12.030 - 01:00:24.750

preceding hour programming possible. Please stay tuned for "Things Ain't What They Used To Be," a jazz program with your host, Tim Folger. I'd like to go out with a little music of Guillaume Du Fay, who I think is interesting because he bridges

01:00:24.750 - 01:01:18.630

the world between the secular and the religious in his music. Thank you for listening, stay tuned next week, and we'll be back with another program on William Everson. Unknown: [Music]