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Morton Marcus: This is Mort Marcus again and we're sitting in my dining room once more. While I was interviewing Michael Meade and actually while we were taking a break, Michael gave the sad news that on August 28th, the great American poet William

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Stafford died. And Michael, and I certainly should just speak for myself, I've been having such an interesting time talking with each other, that we've decided to do another show and certainly to start out anyway, with it being a commemoration

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and a celebration of a real life force in America and that is William Stafford. And, Michael, why don't you say a few words about how you heard about the death, and what William Stafford has meant to you.

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Michael Meade: Strangely enough, I was in Portland on August 28th, you know, not 20 miles from Bill's house. I've been doing some readings from the new book and I had opened- in order to honor him, I had opened each event with a Stafford poem,

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closed it with a Stafford poem. And so it's likely that I was reading a poem when he died, a poem of his. And then I heard from Robert Bly a few days later, because Robert had been talking to Dorothy Stafford, that he had gotten up as he

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usually had done for many, many years and written a poem, so there was a poem from the last day of his life. And then he had written some things to Dorothy as well, and then gone into the kitchen where she was cooking something and he began to help

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cooking and he fell over, heart attack, died later in the day. Dorothy said that she thought, in fact, he not only knew that the end was coming, that he had completed his work, but that she thought he even willed it to some degree, that he was ready

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to go, so that seems very possible with Bill, as you know, a quiet man but quite certain of what he was doing most of the time. I had the good fortune of reading poems with him and with Robert Bly, I remember a particular evening with Robert

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Bly, William Stafford, Robert Bly, and Li-Young Lee, as if almost three generations or three very, very different age-wise and approach-wise poets. And the beauty of the evening, besides the poems that were being passed out, which

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were incredible were each one trying to make more room to the other. Robert would always say, "Well Bill, come on, you do another one." Bill said, "Well, I'll do another only if you do two more." And then they would both create room for Li-Young

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Lee, a young poet who's very, very beautiful and Bill always brought a tremendous grace and a tremendous sincerity to everything he did. He's just a fine man and a wonderful poet, so I already miss him. I would love to be able to hear him read

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again. You don't realize how wonderful it is when you get to hear someone who is living the life of poetry, you don't realize that they're gonna be gone, at least I didn't think of Bill that way, somehow I thought it would be there, you know,

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like one of the great animals in the forest, just constantly making more poems, so- Morton Marcus: You know, you say something there that really sort of hits the nail on the head. I mean, many of us write poetry

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with poets, you know, known as poets and things like that. But Bill Stafford really did live the life of poetry, poetry was part of every single day of his life. He wrote a lot of very bad poetry, but it was part of living the daily life. And he

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told me once the story of how he started to write at five in the morning, and it was the kids, right? It was the the morning when everyone would get up and rattle the dishes and, you know, yell around the stairwell in Oswego and he just decided he

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had to get up early before everyone else. And he had to write his poems then and he also had to go off to work at Lewis and Clark College. And is this even so, it was started before Lewis and Clark boys in there. And it was his quiet time, and I

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once said to him, "Bill, it was your prayer time, it was your welcoming the dawn, as the Navajos, welcome the dawn." And that's why the amazing part of Bill Stafford, oh there's so much amazing about him, is the absolute simplicity and

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authenticity of voice that comes through in those poems. Michael Meade: Absolutely, absolutely. Morton Marcus: And it just takes your breath away, your poetry, it's not supposed to sound like that.

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Michael Meade: Yeah, like it was just leaf falling from the tree as that the strength of the tree and the sweetness of the leaf dropping. And I remember the story too, when he was telling students about writing every morning and someone said, "God,

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how could you possibly write a poem every morning, I can be able to get one out in a month?" And he answered, "Lower your standards." And that was Bill, always close to the ground. Morton Marcus: The humility and I mean, great lower your

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standards. Certainly I picked that up from his book on the essays on how to write, which is, don't write poetry with a capital P, make it as natural as breathing. What Bill had done, though, and what young poets who are always out there listening,

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do not realize is that he had gotten to the place where he could speak from that inner place where the stream, let me put your book in here, "The Water of Life," where the stream is flowing, and you always try to get back there from which

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authentic speech flows. And he was there, I mean, it was amazing how that man was there. I have seen him with audiences. I've seen some very unsuccessful readings he's given because people would force their students to come into the

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readings since he had such a big reputation. And I'll get back to you in one second. I just want to tell one of the many anecdotes about Bill Stafford. He gave a reading up in San Francisco and that was a

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situation where you know the teachers were there with their students from high school and all the other anthologies he was in and he read around three or four poems. And you could tell that most of the people in that audience did not know a poem

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from a cheesecake. And they did not want to be there and they were being forced to be there, and Bill could sense, he was very sensitive on stage, I mean ensitive that he would start cr ing. I mean, he just really em athizes with what other pe

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ple are feeling. And he lo ked up after the fourth poem, I otta stop this one second. Bi l Stafford would never read fr m a book, Bill Stafford would re d from three by five cards an if you ever saw those three by five cards, how he ever got th

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ough a reading with any kind of articulate sense about it, it wa amazing because he was re ising those poems constantly. An in all different colored in , he had lines looping here an lines looping there, and it wa just an amazing thing. So he lo

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ked up from his three by five ca ds, and at this very un omfortable audience and just so t of smiled in his very ge tle way. Never any irony, oh, th re was irony in the poems, bu never with the man. And he sa d, "All I can give you, and all

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will give you is the best I ave." And, boy, the tears just popped right out of my eyes, what respect for other people! He was not gonna perform to them as let's say, I've got to admit on the air and as many people out there know, I do. He was

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only going to give them what was the best, that was all that was worth giving to them, worth their time being there. You know, every single time I was in his presence, every reading I ever went by him, you'll learn something. We're talking about

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elders and the wisdom they have to give us and all that, he was the great shining example of that. Yeah, I completely agree. Well, let's keep swapping these stories, read poems go, your turn.

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Michael Meade: Yeah, in talking about the book that I recently A STORY THAT COULD BE TRUE wrote, in the beginning I'm talking about how each person is an orphan. Now, how we all one point realized that no one knows

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who we are, I call it you know, times in exile. And Stafford knew it really well and some of his respect, I think for people, came from the fact that he knew there was an orphan in each person. And so I couldn't get through that section of the book

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without including his poem or story that could be true, because he talks about the royalness that's inside a person that we only find when we find ourselves as orphans, as left out, as abandoned, so this is that poem. In honor of Bill, and

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you'll hear at the end, he says he brings the king in and certainly Bill had that kingly quality on stage. He had on a ot of different occasions whe I saw him. If you were exchanged in the cradle and your real mother died

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without ever telling the story, then no one knows your name. And somewhere in the world, your father is lost and need you but you are far away. You can never find how true you are and how ready, and when the great wind comes and the robberies of the

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rain, you stand in a corner shivering. And the people who go by, you wonder at their calm, and they miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, "Who are you really, wanderer?" And the answer you have to give, no matter how dark and cold the

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world around you is, "Maybe I'm a king, maybe I'm a queen." Morton Marcus: And great for the beginning of the book too. Michael Meade: Yeah, all stories are about those royal people inside and whether we can get in touch with them or not.

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Morton Marcus: He would have poems about calling farmhouses from back in his life or maybe even another life, no one answering. The great loss of the American heartland, the great loss of the agrarian life for, again, you know, how we talked

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about before, moving to the cities and finding the- and this is true in all third world countries that have been to and others: when you move off the land and move into the city, you lose the connection with family, clan, and with the mythic self,

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you know, and you see this happening in Athens, in Greece, where I've gone a number of times, and I've written about. When you're in the villages, you can lose $1,000 in the street, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they will go to the

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ends of the earth to get back to you, in Athens though, that could still possibly happen. The connection, the communal, the sense of community is gone. And in Stafford, you get the sense of the old community, he's bringing that picture of that

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old America. It's many ways William Jennings Brian's America, to the ears of the people who will hear because he is a bridge, he's a bridge in that way in his poems, some marvelously funny pieces. But I'm going to tell in a little

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while, the reading, the famous reading I was at, where he read with Charles Bukowski. What a combination and it was, well, I'll talk about that later. So, you people out there, you have to keep listening to us.

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Michael Meade: And you have to keep reading Stafford. Morton Marcus: You have to keep reading Stafford why don't why don't you read another one? Michael Meade: Okay, I got another one about this idea of

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bringing people together and how he was a bridge, a very quiet, sincere bridge. This is, I love this poem of his, and it also speaks to contemporary times. A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER. And actually, it's an amazing

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idea, he sees reading as a ritual. He always saw the story as a ritual, but I wouldn't have thought of reading as a ritual. If you don't know the kind of person I am, and I don't know the kind of person you are, then a pattern that others have made

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may prevail in this world. And following the wrong God home, we may both miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break, sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out

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through the broken dike. And just as elephants parade, each holding the tail of the other, so that if one wanders, the whole circus won't find the park. I call it cruel, and maybe the root of all cruelty, to know what occurs and not recognize

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the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk. Though we could fool each others, we should consider lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark, for it is important that awake

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people remain awake or breaking line may discourage us all back to sleep. The signal we give each other -- yes, no or maybe -- should be clear for the darkness around us is deep. Morton Marcus: I could see Rumi, that being a Rumi, some works.

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Michael Meade: Yeah. Morton Marcus: The connections are so great. There, there were many kinds of Stafford's and here's here's another Stafford. He knew the world in which he lived. He was very much alive

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not just to those deep meanings of the human soul, but even socially to the kookiness of America. And one poem that he would read over and over again that I liked is called "A Star in the Hills" and it goes like this. Oh, and the way I read

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Stafford is I've always thought of him as the West Coast version of Robert Frost, because he has sort of a, you know, an abstract accent, sort of chews it over and- Michael Meade: Oh, that's good, that's good.

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Morton Marcus: So this is: A STAR IN THE HILLS A star hitting the hills behind our house up where the grass turns brown touching the sky. Meteors have hit the world before, but this was near and since TV. Few saw it, but many

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felt the shock. The State of California owns that land and out from shore three miles and any stars that come will be roped off and viewed on weekdays, eight to five. A guard who took the oath of loyalty and denied any police record told me

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this, "If you don't have a police record yet, you could take the oath and get a job if California should be hit by another star." "I'd promise to be loyal to California and to guard any stars that hit it," I said, "or any place three miles

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out from shore, unless the star was bigger than the state, in which case I'd be loyal to it." But he said no exceptions were allowed, and he leaned against the state-owned meteor, so calm and puffed the cork-tip cigarette, that I looked down

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and traced with my foot in the dust and thought again and said, "Okay, any star." Michael Meade: That's great. Morton Marcus: What poets love about him also is his fantastic

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control of language, rhythm and voice and what he does with syntax. Now, the way sentences are constructed, it's amazing and it's all so simple-seeming, you know, it just it takes your breath away.

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Michael Meade: Yeah, a lot of people miss how complex he is and how he has made that into a simple statement and a rhythm and he catches you and he's always going after the small and find- taking huge images and kind of winding them into small

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things as you're making me think of another one. Bill was a small man and he kept close to the ground, he kept close to the ground of sincerity in the ground of the forest and the ground of truth.

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Morton Marcus: He was a grounded individual. I mean, yeah, we're not just doing this to be clever. I mean, these words really do refer to him. It seemed to me I'm almost [unidentified].

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Michael Meade: Yeah, it's like a ground animal picking up the nuts that have fallen from the trees and slowly cracking each one open and then showing the richness of the meat inside. And one of his poems that I love, he talks about, in a sense, I guess

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he's saying, if you're looking for God, nowadays, you have to look down. And I don't know if you know this one, but he says, "In the Aztec design, God is in the little pea that is rolling out of the picture and all of the rest extends bleaker because

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God has gone away. In the white man's design, though, God is everywhere and hard to see, the Aztecs frown upon this. How do you know he's everywhere? How did he get out of that pea?" The wit, and you know, attacking the whole, really the fantasy of

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Western civilization with God up there in the sky, he attacks it with such wit. Morton Marcus: Yeah, yeah. And wonder it's the wit of the farmer sitting on the porch whittling, as the city slicker

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says, "How do I get to Des Moines?" And the farmer just keeps sitting there and the guy as he gives them directions, keeps coming back and coming back, you know the old joke. And, and finally, the guy in the car says, "Why do I keep winding

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up here? You know, when are you going to give me the correct directions? See, you're really stupid." And the farmer said, "That may be, but I ain't lost." That old joke and that was Bill, he's sitting up there, he knows exactly where he is.

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Michael Meade: Yes, yes, he did. Yeah, I agree, beautiful. I'm thinking of his courage too because he had a quiet courage. I mean, taking on these issues of what the direction of things is, and what God is and he did it in that quiet way in this in

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his poem to his daughter "With Kit, Age Seven, At the Beach," as always, just affected me real strongly. It's this incredible situation of a father and a child. And the child really asking, I think, what size is your heart, dad? What's the

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nature of the human being in this universe, and he winds it all into this little moment. We would climb the highest dune, from there the guys- excuse me- we would climb the highest dune from there to gaze and then come

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down. The ocean was performing and we contributed our climb. Waves leapfrogged and came straight out of the storm. What should our gaze mean? Kit waited for me to decide. Standing on such a hill, what would you tell your child? It was an absolute

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vista and those waves raced far and cold. Then the daughter speaks, "How far could you swim, daddy, in such a storm?" "As far as was needed," I said, and as I talked, I swam. Morton Marcus: So he's the only guy that can pull that off. He's

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the only guy who would dare make that last statement. You know, all the others would say, oh, I'm too sophisticated for this. And he'd even just do it, beautiful. It's that kind of wisdomt hat certainly is in all his poems.

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The one I'd like to read, and I'm sure it was probably on your list is the poem that, alas, you know, made him so famous and has been anthologized so many times, but really speaks of our time so much, and that is, "Traveling Through the Dark," the title

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poem for the book that won him the National Book Award. And then he was- after that, he was a Librarian of Congress. I mean, his honors were endless and he'd been living now for 10 or 15 years, probably 10, in retirement and writing strong

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poems every day and just enjoying his life, as he had throughout his years again, just an example to us all. But this is this is a great story, this is a narrative poem again, told with his simplicity but he sees the metaphorical significance in

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every single event here. And when he turns red, yeah, he's turning red because the light is on him. And it's a red light, but it's the redness of shame. And it is about everything you, Michael, have been talking about, which is this world about

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to shed its skin. And this is a good 30 years before we're talking. And it is something that is very, very common. What kind of choices do you make, what do you- what are you being backed into making? And we see here the natural world and the

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mechanical world and the freeways, the roads and the poem just that is meant so much to so many Americans is called: TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead at the edge of

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the Wilson River Road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon. That road is narrow, to swerve might make nor dead. By the glow of the taillight, I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing. She had

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stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off, she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason, her side was warm, her form lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road, I hesitated.

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A car aimed to hit its lowered parking lights. Under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red. Around our group, I could hear the wilderness, listen. I thought hard for us all. My only

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swerving, then pushed her over the edge into the river. That is a really tough poem. And the thing that we would say reading Stafford to each other, when poets get together late at night, you know, and just start to drag stuff off the shelves

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which I would do much more as a younger man than I do as an older man, I'll ask is that there was a real toughness in the [unidentified], no simple answers from Stafford and that's another thing you learn from him, don't take those answers

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that people want to hear. And I was just thinking of him, I've been writing parables, and I wrote a parable about two guys who are going to be executed in a jail that is obviously in Sarajevo, one of them is guilty, the other is not guilty. And the

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guilty one starts talking about what he thinks the great wonders of the world are. And they're not the seven we hear about, they're human anger and different things like this. And finally, the other fellow who's the innocent one says, "Well,

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you know, I can't help forgive- thinking that even though I'm going to be executed for a crime I didn't do, you know, somewhere along the line someone will forgive those people for executing me and I think that's the great wonder of the world."

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And thinking of Bill Stafford, I said, if I ended it there, it wouldn't be honest, and I let the negative spy and terrorists come back to have the last words, you know, and for me, that was an act which I totally got from Bill Stafford. I didn't

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end it where I wanted to end it, I end it where it should have ended. Michael Meade: I think that's true. I think that one of the- poetry requires incredible courage. And in Ireland, the job

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of the poets was to tell the truth. And as a result, no one could condemn or restrict the poet, including the king or the judges or anybody and posted and pay taxes, because they were paying the tax of telling the truth. And Bill had that tough

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quality I agree and he inspires in others, he acted as an elder in that sense of keeping clear that the poet's job was to tell the truth. He was one of the conscientious objectors to World War 2. I mean, he lived his truth in a very hard way and yet

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he did it quietly with that kind of sincerity and respect. I mean, I don't know, if people haven't seen him, it's hard to- his image is in my mind so clearly, I'm afraid of people haven't seen him and hadn't heard that quality come out of

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his mouth as you tell him poems, that simplicity and sincerity and the hardness of the suffering behind it, his willingness to face the truth to the poem he was writing. Just incredible.

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Morton Marcus: I mean, he's the person, people out there if you've never seen him, you come into a crowded room and he is the last person who would notice, except he was the one with a camera around his neck all the time and endlessly

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taking pictures of people. And I had been in many parties where people would say, who the hell is that? You know, like, how did he get in here? And then you'd just have the great pleasure of turning around and very offhandedly saying oh, that's

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William Stafford and hearing them go gulp, a faux pas. Why don't you read us some more, Michael? Oh, no, let me just say something here we are talking with Michael Meade. The storyteller, folklorist and obviously, though he would never

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think so, a poet at heart, which is where poets really are. And we will continue this in a moment. We're here with Michael Mead, the folklorist, drummer, storyteller, and having met him, and I don't say this is though

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it's exclusive in any way, but real long poet to the heart, which is actually all poets are. But we are talking about the passing of Bill Stafford and remembering Bill as a person and as a poet who had a great deal of influence on many, many

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poets, but I think maybe one of the few poets who really touched the American public of all different tastes and education. Michael, you were going to say some words and read also. Michael Meade: A couple of- the thing about Bill seeing him as

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he was getting older and how he continued to carry that respect for life and the small things of life, but also this quiet courage that he apparently had had from early on. This is his little poem called:

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GROWING UP One of my wings beat faster, I couldn't help it. The one away from the light, it hurt to be told all the time how I loved that terrible flame.

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Amazing image, you see this quiet man as you said that, the last person you would recognize would pick out in the room and in him was burning that flame. Morton Marcus: Why don't you read that again? It's so small,

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so beautiful. I find that you know, metaphors that are so subtly done, have to be repeated for the [unintelligible]. Michael Meade: One of my wings beat faster. I couldn't help it, the one away from the light and it hurt to be told all the time

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how I loved that terrible flame. He had a voice inside him that reminded him how he loved that flame of life burning in him. Morton Marcus: Yeah, this reminds me of another poem I

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don't know the title of. We've got some other people sitting around here. I'll turn to one Anthony, who seems to know a lot of these. Do you know the short poem about him loving blonde women and his wife turning to him and saying, you know but I'm

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a brunette? But it's very, very similar to that but again in a very much lighter vein, and do you know what it is? I would hate to paraphrase it, not just be able to read it. Well, anyway, what he says is, I like women from the mountains, who

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are blonde and tall and striving. And my wife turns to me and said, but I'm from the plains and I'm a brunette. The last line is, there are some things admirable people will never understand, it's just marvelous stuff. You know,

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there's this little bit of kernel of wisdom, it just comes out. You know, it's one of those early morning poems that he was just penning. Michael Meade: This is one of his about wisdom. And you cannot

00:28:55.070 - 00:29:05.450

talk about Stafford without talking about small things, he himself used at all the time in his titles and in his lines, this is: LITTLE WAYS THAT ENCOURAGE GOOD FORTUNE

00:29:09.140 - 00:29:27.740

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why. If you do not have things right in your life, you will be overwhelmed. You may be heroic, but you will not be wise. On the other hand, if you have things right in your life but do not

00:29:27.740 - 00:29:48.290

know why, you are just lucky and you will not move in the little ways that encourage good fortune. The saddest are those not right in their lives who are acting to make things right for others. They act only from the self and that self will never be

00:29:48.290 - 00:30:00.760

right. No luck, no help, no wisdom. Morton Marcus: You do choose those absolute gems. Michael Meade: I love it. Morton Marcus: What was the title of that one again?

00:30:00.030 - 00:30:10.470

Michael Meade: "Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune." Morton Marcus: "Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune," now that, you see that there's so much writing, even though we're looking at the same book of things that you just don't know

00:30:10.470 - 00:30:25.800

from him, you know. And another wonderful thing that he would do was any editor, young student, or when he went on these endless tours that he went on, they would request poems from him. And maybe it's because he had so many poems, since he was writing

00:30:25.800 - 00:30:40.890

virtually every morning, he would be able to give them poems, and he would be willing to give them poems. And so new magazines would start up that would sell because they had poems by William Stafford. And it was just one of the wonderful

00:30:40.890 - 00:30:58.830

wonderful things that he did. I'll put in that little story about Bukowski now. Oh, I forget the the name of the poet, Kathy Fraser. Kathy Fraser, who was directing the Poetry Center at San Francisco State at that time decided she would get a reading

00:30:58.830 - 00:31:17.580

together of Bill Stafford and Charles Bukowski and I mean it really is the light and dark of the moon. And Bill came up and read first and he said in his very, very monotone, genuine voice, "I'm so excited to be here tonight," there were around

00:31:17.580 - 00:31:35.850

300 to 500 people. It was in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. And he said, "I'm so delighted to be here. I'm so excited to be reading with Charles Bukowski whose work I have enjoyed all these years," which of course a revelation in

00:31:35.850 - 00:31:50.640

itself. But knowing Bill, I mean, he wasn't making that up. He obviously did and he had very Catholic taste. And he went and read. Well, the audience wa composed of those people wh there are in the literar community as well as a literar

00:31:50.640 - 00:32:12.300

audience who just like th scruffy, the ugly, and reall the irreverent and outrageous They were there for Bukowski an Bukowski's performance, and the just started to talk while Bil was reading. And they started t get very, very restless. An

00:32:12.300 - 00:32:32.790

Bill was Bill and after hi reading was over, he went an sat down in the first row. An Bukowski came on and refused t acknowledge Bill except wit what was some obvious asides that didn't make any sense, bu were really nasty shots at Bil

00:32:33.240 - 00:32:51.090

and proceeded to take out hi huge gin bottle and drink i sometimes in the middle of poem and all that and Bill wa forgotten. And I remember Kath came up to me and she said, wha have I done? Have I made a hug mistake? And I said, no. I said

00:32:52.020 - 00:33:08.340

you can look at this in so man different ways. But you know there's no reason for these tw not to read together. But wha reminded me of this was the wor generosity that you talked abou before, Michael, that yeah, could see Bly, Li-Young Lee an

00:33:09.000 - 00:33:23.100

Stafford together, generousl wanting to give time to th others, I've seen Bly do that number of times early in hi career. I was also at a Bl reading 23 years ago where h included another poet to d that, and the other poet too

00:33:23.160 - 00:33:39.330

over. And I mean, Bly had jus written, "The Teeth Mother Nake At Last," and he was so excite about that poem, Vietnam wa raging, and he said, we're goin to read five minutes each, th n ten minutes each, and then I m going to come back and read th

00:33:39.330 - 00:33:56.280

s entire poem, which is a lo g poem, took more than half n hour, thirthy-five minutes. A d knowing that, the other poet w o will go nameless, I'd love o name him, waited till that la t time, and read for over an hou . And Bly got up there wit

00:33:56.280 - 00:34:14.010

such dignity. He didn' even acknowledge the time, h just said, I will only read on part of, "Teeth Mother Na ed At Last," and he read fo five minutes and left. That as an act of non-generosity hich unfortunately, a lot of

00:34:14.010 - 00:34:30.120

oets getting involved with their egos, happened. But this is a other thing I just wanted to br ng up about Stafford, he was very generous man. He also many people don't know about this, wrote a whole book analy is of William Everson and a poe

00:34:30.120 - 00:34:44.280

he's completely different from. Everson is this great comm nding prophet of the wildernes , you know? And Stafford coul just completely appreciate h m and what he was doing. He was gem, we will not find his like, again, as the cliche

00:34:44.370 - 00:34:58.380

Michael Meade: I think you're right. And I'm thinking, you know, watching Bill and Robert read together. I mean, Bill was a mentor to Robert in many, many ways, and I've recently spoken to Robert and he's feeling a huge loss of Bill not being

00:34:58.380 - 00:35:12.540

there. As a matter of fact, the way I found out Robert called up to tell me that he had just found out. And I think artists are the most competitive people you can ever find, people think that athletes are competitive. But they only think that until

00:35:12.540 - 00:35:24.780

they encounter artists at work, because the word compete actually the old meaning is to petition the god together. So, each artist wants to get the attention of the gods and I think in that sense, it's legitimate that-

00:35:25.050 - 00:35:36.960

Morton Marcus: At the National Endowment of the Arts in Olympus. Michael Meade: But Bill and Robert would bring out this incredible gentleness and generosity in each other. And I

00:35:36.990 - 00:35:47.370

would spend half the time arguing about who was going to read the most poems, trying to give the space to the other person. And that evening I was talking about with Li-Young Lee, they both so much one of the honor the young poet, he was

00:35:48.090 - 00:35:59.310

really overwhelmed by being on the same stage and he said that and so he kept trying to pass it to Robert who would pass it to Bill and it was like it was a beautiful generosity that they all got into.

00:35:59.750 - 00:36:11.000

Morton Marcus: And I'm sure he was affected but he also hates t read, Li-Young Lee. I'm sure y u know being asked and I'm sure e was overwhelmed being in the r presenc Michael Meade: And he said that and you get to see this whole

00:36:11.000 - 00:36:27.140

business of how mentors work through the arts and I love this idea that if you can find an artist that can act as a mentor, I mean I say throw a rope around them hold on tight. On the other hand, strangely enough, you can also throw a rope to a dead

00:36:27.140 - 00:36:43.790

artist and I think Bill Stafford will continue to inspire and work as a kind of a mentoring figure, you know, even after his passing. I have two books in my hand: one is Stafford's, and just found in "The Rag and Bon Shop of the Heart" a Bukowski

00:36:44.210 - 00:37:02.480

poem, so I thought I'd at leas do a piece of the Bukowski an then follow it with the Sta ford. Bukowski, he has his p sition there too and his posi ion is very much the loner a d very much against the mentor. Can we survive pretending t

00:37:02.480 - 00:37:23.270

at we don't love someone else, t at we don't need the guiding li ht of someone else and this is t e end of his poem called, "A Se ret," where he's basically t lling young people that don't isten to what they tell you. n the beginning, he has said ea

00:37:23.270 - 00:37:39.860

h act is just another act to fo l the fools again, and then w en he ended, he says, "There re no strong men, there re no beautiful women. At lea t you can die knowing this a d you will have the only po sible victory." That's a pretty

00:37:39.890 - 00:37:54.210

itter line and I'm sure it migh have been echoing in his head w en he came on stage afte Bill Sta Morton Marcus: You know, before you go on, we were talking way before the first interview being New Yorkers about people

00:37:54.330 - 00:38:11.910

protecting our backs, and how we would enter a restaurant or any public place. And you also said at the age of thirty-five, all those survival mechanisms have got to go. The sadness of Charles Bukowski to me is he's not let go of them. And he's not

00:38:11.910 - 00:38:26.400

realized that he really can't let go, that here are people out there who want to love him, he won't let them. And it's, to me, he's a very sad life and he is not a mentor anymore. I can appreciate what he can do in many ways, but he has no answers

00:38:26.400 - 00:38:34.520

for me anymore. His answers are flames not water. Michael Meade: Yeah, and it works for the first half of life like I was saying- Morton Marcus: The young and rebellious.

00:38:34.500 - 00:38:46.350

Michael Meade: Yeah, he can, he can feed that fire of rebelliousness. And yet, and it may be necessary for a lot of ASK ME people, certainly has been for us in the first half of life.

00:38:46.380 - 00:39:00.510

That same pattern will kill the person or kill the soul of a person in the second half of life that's there's a need to change and remake the life over again in some other pattern. And I'll go to the water, we we' e talking about that fire rebe

00:39:00.570 - 00:39:14.150

lion, this is Stafford and his l ttle poem: Some time when the river is ice, ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. That's a great line all by itself.

00:39:14.180 - 00:39:34.220

Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought and some have tried to help or to hurt. Ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look

00:39:34.220 - 00:39:53.270

at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden, and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say. What the river says, that is what I say.

00:39:55.310 - 00:40:07.070

That's the water of the elder, the calmest. I will listen, I will listen. That's the second half of life for a fiery person is to learn to listen. Bill was a great listener. Morton Marcus: And it's also you know, going back to him, and

00:40:07.070 - 00:40:21.380

that's a line that can come right out of the Tao Te Ching because it's about let water make you that is the direction all things happen, that's the shape all things happen and the line about his life. It's those ways of phrasing things that he

00:40:21.380 - 00:40:37.640

would have you go right by him and then you stop, you know, two lines down and say, what did he say? There's one poem, it's this poem I was looking forward to, I can never remember the name of, in which he says, back of this page, the trail turns north. And

00:40:37.640 - 00:40:52.040

so the whole illusion of one man talking to another, it suddenly is destroyed, turned inside-out. And so how in the world did he do that? Could he even conceive of that? And it was such simplicity and offhandedness, it was really, really amazing.

00:40:52.000 - 00:41:02.770

Michael Meade: Yeah, he left that river come right through him. I mean, it was so clear that he had spent his time moving everything out of the way, so the river of poems could come through, really fantastic.

00:41:03.680 - 00:41:20.420

Morton Marcus: Now, the only way of knowing him is through the poems. And that for you people out there, that is the responsibility, because that's where the mentoring for the poet really is, is in those words. If I am a bad husband and ugly

00:41:20.420 - 00:41:38.000

father, the best of me, I hope has gotten into the poems. I would also hope, by the way, that I would be able to have the character, you see, that would really be the persona I projected in those poems. And I think that that's what you're

00:41:38.000 - 00:41:52.040

trying to bring to people in the events and in the books. It certainly is what Robert has been committed to for years. I mean, Robert was a mentor to me before, way before we ever met, when he was doing the 50s and would introduce me to other ways

00:41:52.040 - 00:42:06.410

of seeing and thinking in that magazine. He was very rebellious back then, and very angry. And that's where I met Bill Stafford because he was one of the poets who was being praised as the poets who would doing something in the country.

00:42:06.600 - 00:42:18.750

Michael Meade: Yeah, that's right. Morton Marcus: So it all works around, it's a line, it's a chain and you say we're all competitive, we may be, I like to think that I'm not. Donald Finkel, another marvelous poet,

00:42:18.810 - 00:42:35.410

did something for me. I love these stories, these stories I just had a chance to see after 30 years I saw I Finkel, and he was one of my heroes when I was young, also in the Air Force. And he told me, I was going to get his apartment when I went to

00:42:35.480 - 00:42:52.480

Iowa City, it was a big moment when I met him. And I still have my GI haircut. And I went up and he said, we just been published in the same magazine, and his wife has, Constance, her name, a wonderful poet, prose writer, and came to the door and he just

00:42:52.550 - 00:43:09.350

had this most beatific smile. He says, "Hi, you know, before we go in, I just want to say, Connie and I really enjoyed that poem you had in the magazine." I blinked. And he said, "I really hope you're going to continue writing." And I just got full of

00:43:09.420 - 00:43:25.750

this false humility and I said, "Well, if I'm good enough, I will." And he blinked back and he said, "What does that have to do with it?" And that solved my problems for the rest of my life. I never got into that competition thing. I tell it to

00:43:25.820 - 00:43:38.130

all my classes the first day: your uniqueness is what your art is about, you know, you're in competition with no one, so you Michael Meade: Okay, I don't know where we're at in time. can't be as good as they are because they are who they are.

00:43:38.200 - 00:43:54.260

They're not good or bad. And so I want that that character to come out. I want people to be who they are in their art and not get into these games of hysterical ego, you know, and just try to climb all over each other. To me, a conversation

00:43:54.330 - 00:44:10.800

like this is what makes life worth living, meeting you, talking, you know having Rick [unidentified] does what he does and Anthony does what he does, your son sitting here, these are the moments that life is really all about. And what we've done,

00:44:10.860 - 00:44:27.600

I don't know how much time we have and I'm not gonna have the last word here, take my word for it, is that we have remembered Bill in the way that every poet wants to be remembered. Just say his words or her words and that's all I'll say. Go on, keep

00:44:27.660 - 00:44:39.410

reading. Morton Marcus: Great. Michael Meade: I've got at least two more I want to do and and and I want to underline the word petition within company. Yeah,

00:44:39.440 - 00:44:54.230

because it's a petitioning, it's a plea that the truth could come through someone's voice and that if it came through, it could be heard. And I don't know. I love just thinking about Bill. I love thinking about him when he was alive, but I'm finding I love it

00:44:54.230 - 00:45:08.900

now too. He becomes an ancestor, you know, the old idea was when someone dies, they become an ancestor and they don't do it right away. Most cultures had this, including European cultures, had this idea that when you die or the beginning of

00:45:08.900 - 00:45:24.410

the road of death, and the person who has just died is stunned by this change. And so the living people have to help the person get from the beginning of the road of death to the place of the ancestors, which is that peaceful place

00:45:24.410 - 00:45:39.740

that everybody's always talking about. And it's like a pool, actually, the ancestral pool. And so many cultures say the only way a person can get there is if the living people remember that person, weep for them, sing for them, and pray for them,

00:45:39.740 - 00:45:58.910

that's what helps them along the road. And then if you imagine that Yeats, I think once said, "Poems are prayers," were praying for Bill by reading the poems, so I've got one here. In a sense, he's the wanderer now, on the other side of life, the

00:45:58.910 - 00:46:06.630

Irish used to say death the middle of a long life, so he's wandering that road on the other side and this is his little poem called: A MESSAGE FROM THE WANDERER

00:46:09.450 - 00:46:22.590

Today outside your prison, I stand and rattle my walking stick. Imagine him standing on the other side of life, referring to life as a prison we're always trying to escape from or trapped

00:46:22.590 - 00:46:37.580

ourselves deeper into. Today outside your prison, I stand and rattle my walking stick. Prisoners, listen, you have relatives outside, and there are thousands of ways to escape. Years ago, I bent my

00:46:37.580 - 00:47:00.950

skill to keeping my cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies and shouted my plans to the jailers. But always new plans occurred to me, or the new heavy locks bent hinges off, or some stupid jailer would forget and leave the keys.

00:47:02.780 - 00:47:12.590

I mean, I love his humor. Anyway, it's a long poem. Morton Marcus: Go on keep reading. Michael Meade: Okay. Inside I dreamed of constellations, those feeding

00:47:12.590 - 00:47:28.610

creatures outlined by stars, their skeletons a darkness between jewels, heroes that exists only where they are not. Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought, just as – often in light on the open hills, you can pass an antelope

00:47:28.730 - 00:47:46.820

and not know and look back and then, even before you see – there is something wrong about the grass. And then you see. That's the way everything in the world is waiting. Now, these few more words, and then I'm gone: Tell everyone just to remember

00:47:46.820 - 00:48:04.100

their names and remind others later when we find each other. Tell the little ones to cry and then to go to sleep curled up wherever they can. And if any of us get lost if any of us cannot come all the way remember, there will come a time when all we

00:48:04.100 - 00:48:19.110

have said, and all we have hoped will be all right. And there will be their form in the grass. Morton Marcus: All right, that's an early poem too, isn't it? Michael Meade: Talking about the death when he first glimpses it

00:48:19.110 - 00:48:36.870

way on early. So I'm imagining him now out there rattling his walking stick. Morton Marcus: Yeah, it's great, great choice. But now you got to read another one. You committed yourself to that now.

00:48:37.620 - 00:48:50.370

Michael Meade: So this is then the closing. This is the little closing and you know, it's on the same theme. And it's dealing with this water of the elder that Bill carried and this one is called:

00:48:50.370 - 00:49:08.680

FREEDOM, it's a song. Freedom is not following a river. Freedom is following a river if you want to, it is deciding now by what happens now, it is knowing that luck makes a difference. Listen, no

00:49:08.680 - 00:49:31.000

leader is free, no follower is free. The rest of us can often be free. Most of the world are living by creeds too old, too chancy, too habit-forming to be worth arguing about by reason. If you are oppressed, wake up about four in the morning. Most

00:49:31.000 - 00:49:42.790

places you can usually be free some of the time if you wake up before other people. I'll just do that last part again. If you feel oppressed, wake up about four in the morning. Most

00:49:42.790 - 00:49:53.950

places you can usually be free, some of the time if you wake up before other people. So he's rattling his stick on the other side of the door of life, Bill is saying wake up.

00:49:55.090 - 00:50:10.720

Morton Marcus: Wow. I guess this is my program so I got to sa something at the end. Michael it's a great way to meet sorro spending it with you and meanin the happiness also of a man wh will always be with us an that's Bill Stafford. Thanks s

00:50:10.720 - 00:50:15.690

much for doing this extra show Michael Meade: Thank you, thank you for having me, to give me chance to remember Bill