Here’s a letter by Archibald McLeish,
former Poet Laureate of the United States (1939-43.) The letter was
sent to James Angleton, who was co-editor with Reed Whittemore on
Furioso, one of the first literary magazines in the country:
“To make a
new magazine of poetry is to do this only if the new magazine
of poetry is made a part of a new way of coming to the minds and
thoughts of men who now have no mind and no thought for poetry.
One such way is radio. The situation of radio is the situation
of poetry backwards. If poetry is an art without an audience, radio
is an audience without an art. A great many people of the kind
a writer must reach if he is to feel himself alive among other men
are parts of this audience. They are waiters and watchers and
listener, but nothing is given them to see or hear – nothing or very
little. If means might be found to bring together in a magazine
or in some other form of common publication a group of poets, and if
this group of poets might be brought to study radio as they might
once have studied the stage, it is not impossible that an audience
might be found. It has already been proved that a certain
audience for verse on the air exists. No one has yet discovered
the limits of that audience because no one has yet explored the
limits of verse on the air. I think it was in this way we came
to talk of radio, having begun by talking of your new magazine for
poetry. Perhaps you will consider whether you agree and whether
any such possibility is open to us.”
It would be dishonest to ignore my
favorite subject and the passion that has fulfilled my life for 32
years — poetry on the radio. “The Poet and the Poem” was begun
because I was able to work with a core staff putting a new FM station
on the air in Washington DC in 1977. We went on air with Sterling
Brown’s poetry and Duke Ellington’s “A Train.” I don’t know
how people can get poetry on the air unless they start a station! At
least not then. Now audio is everywhere; thanks to computer
downloads. At WPFW. for 20 years I had the great pleasure of
listening to all kinds of poets, every week “live” on
air…drunks, taxi drivers, grandmothers, prizefighters and
laureates. Everybody had a poem. I also hosted “Dial-A-Poem” that
took poems as call-ins, no delay bleeps, and that was scary for me
as well as the FCC. “The Poet and the Poem” prevailed, and in
1997 moved to the Library of Congress where it’s still thriving
there, recorded for national distribution. Someday I will write a
book but until then, everyone asks me “who was the most difficult”
etc. Allen Ginsberg growled at everything I said. Finally I
stopped the tape, “Allen, I don’t know why anybody would want to
stay in a room with you for an hour.” He started
cooperating. We became friends. Joseph Brodsky began every sentence
with “NO! Nyet!” I edited out all the ‘NO’s” and the tape
was a great interview (with a separate reel of “NO’s.) A.R.Ammons
arrived empty-handed for a one hour poetry reading. He was my idol
from the time of , Tape for the Turn of the Year,
(1968)”…when you are nothing/you can say/ and du/anything. “
Not long after, WS Merlin came in the same way. Booknaked . Fast
thinking Henry Taylor tackled a disastrous moment with virtuosity and
improvisation. We were” live” on- air buried deep into poetry.
There was a phone on the table between us used for programs with
call-in shows. Somehow while Henry was reading, some wires got
crossed in the engineer’s booth and all the messages from people
buzzing open the front door of the station came on air.”Hey,let me
in.” “Do you have a cigarette.” Hey it’s cold out here.”
Henry stopped everything and took the calls and braided them into his
poem. It was a high moment for language, with poetry by a great
narrative voice mixing in with people on the street . So many rich
memories.
Holocaust
Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah, is Tuesday, April 21. This
month premieres an important documentary on “The Poet and the
Poem,” April 15. Our documentary features
Poems by a Holocaust survivor, Hilda Stern Cohen (1924-1997)
(WORDS BURNING WITHIN ME, Dryad Press, 2008.)
Hilde” Stern survived the Łódź Ghetto and Auschwitz.
After liberation, in Austria, waiting for her visa to the USA, she
wrote poetry and her remembrances of the camp. The faded notebooks
were first discovered by her husband, Dr. Werner V. Cohen, after
Hilda’s death in Baltimore in 1997. After her death! Precious
accounts of her life in Auschwitz, before and beyond, never seen
before!
This is one of Hilda’s poems that
will be heard on public radio this month. This poem was written in
the safety of her Baltimore home in 1949. This, as well as other
poems on the show, has been set to music by William Gilcher.
Spring
A gauze of dust, borne on the warm
fresh wind,
curtains a window raised from memory;
dry grass stalks whisper, where the
cattails bend,
of winter rooms that long imprisoned
me.
I must get out! Blow all the dust away,
let wind sweep in to freshen every
room.
may what was shallow find new depths,
and may
what long stood empty fill now to the
brim.
— (Translated by Lane Jennings.)
I am told that radio waves go on forever.
A few photos now, another gift from my friend Dan Murano:
These photos are from the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation in Paris. It is dedicated to the memory of those deported from France to Nazi concentration camps during WWII.