Orson Welles/Joe Green

Orson Welles/Joe Green

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ANNOUNCER
Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theatre and star of
these broadcasts, Orson Welles.

ORSON WELLES: Hello, the Jeunesse Doree and all the ships at sea and
in the maelstromed starry welkin!

This is ORSON WELLES.

Our interview tonight is with Joe Green, poet and Shakespearean
scholar. On this particular evening the Crosley service estimates that
thirty-seven billion creatures, mortal and immortal, are listening to
us on their Zenith Trans-Cosmic radios. Ratings are up, I see.

Before we begin the interview
Here’s a word from our sponsor: the Jeunesse Doree!

THE LONLIEST RANGER: Hello, this is the Lonliest Ranger and welcometo the fourth in the series of blithe interviews conducted by Orson Welles– discarnate spirit, creator of Citizen Kane, the best movie even made, reader for "The March of Time" news series, and the famed first voice
of "The Shadow" in the celebrated crime series, and of course, Harry
Lyme, The Third Man.

ORSON WELLES: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The
Shadow knows!” But, as always, no one else cares. Alas.

The LONLIEST RANGER: Thank you Mr. Welles. Tonight we have a show I think you will enjoy. Poet and great actor/artist sit before the fire in the reconstructed redwood cabin nestled deep in the Carmel Valley
hills under the famous Owl Oak, orgiastic abode of the muse. Outside
an ill wind is blowing nobody good, but herein, where warmth an
camaraderie hold sway along with John Powers and Johnny Walker, we are
blessed with anticipatory frissions and make no bones about it. So
make yourself comfortable with your favorite psychic aid and be
prepared to be amazed.


While we are waiting. Let me ask you this. Is the same old horse
shit getting you down? Are the nattering nabobs of the internet eroding
your finely tuned senses and turning your ear to tin? Are you ready to
rediscover the joy and pathos of the ethereal riff, to pluck the bon
mot from the hands of the goddess herself? If so, you owe it to
yourself to join us here, at this hallowed sad but merry museoreum, the
Juenesse Doree of the Forbidden Story.

I, the Lonliest Ranger, Black Irish Catholic Jew, resplendent in my
buckskins and silver, stand like Lady Liberty herself, my six shooter
held high and say to you as she would, "Welcome!" Here, we eats cold
eels and think distant thoughts. Perhaps you could too. Complimentary
champagne for our new members!

And now… Mr. Orson Welles!

ORSON: Thank, you Lonliest. Mr. Green, or should I refer to you by
another of your many monikers? Joe?

JG: Joe. Just Joe.

ORSON: Kevin Killian wrote: "Joe Green’s poetry has a savage wit anda plaintive, enchanting innocence, like some of Joe Brainard’s drawings."

Who is Joe Brainard?

JG: See here www.joebrainard.org/

Some nut.

ORSON: You've had an interesting life haven't you? I wonder if you could tell us a bit about those experiences that
most shaped your weltanschauung? Who were your formative influences and
why?

JG: I went to Catholic schools in a doomed mill town that was haunted and at the same time I had access through books and, heartbreakingly, mostly through insights arrived at too late into supernal beauty. At six, my first day at St. Cecilia's I asked "Who signed me up for this?" We were mostly doomed and had no idea what to do about it but there were moments of grace and immortal spirits in the "wanting them to be immortal spirits sense" who now exist in my memory. I want them to be remembered in my poesy but mostly can't even get close to what I would like to do. Only a few somehow exist as more than markers for a certain sense of rage and bafflement that my poesy now and then is lucky enough to express. I got out of there -- the US Army took me away. Man.

I was reading Spinoza at ten. Absolutely true. Of course, I didn't understand a damn thing but the point was something else. Somehow -- please tell me if I am wrong here Orson -- I got the idea there was a class system here in the good old USA and that the place was run mostly by madmen who contrived to also be very boring. Also I got the idea that they owned me. But I had nary an inkling that I could in fact ever know just how they got me or what I could do about it. The bigotry of low expectations. I also somehow developed a complete indifference to and a lack of interest in getting along -- although I got along in the sense that I am still here. Most anyone I knew from there who had anything like an inkling to escape were ruined in all the usual ways. Escaped to the Army and death, drugs...blah blah. I knew a man -- a boy ok -- for example who was a good artist. But -- just incidentally believed he just might be John Lennon who went to NYC to become a junkie and then while finding refuge on various street corners stayed awake nights as much as he could drawing miniature street scenes on cardboard (scenes oh you have never seen) and somehow recovered enough to bring it all back home. Where arrested and taken to the local prison promised he would escape -- beaten still made that promise, beaten more (and I have this account from others there -- others whom I met ten years ago and almost passed in the street since who knew that the bums with no teeth were my old friends) just laughed. "You assholes, " he said. "Can't you tell I'm kidding?"

That's poetry by the way.

They all laughed about it and then went into a long riff about how there aren't any cops around like the old cops and how much they missed them. So, Kevin got out and somehow stopped shooting heroin (is that phrase antiquated?) and kept drawing and who knows if he finally stopped but died. Not before someone noticed those drawings and in time for a "show" at a shippier town and another friend a few years ago called up and told me "We lost Kevin" and this struck me as such an odd want to be genteel and lost way to put it and this phrase came back to me as I in a half hour and just about this time last year wrote a poem on my father's dying.

Last Night

Last night I was watching 'Panic in Needle Park"
1971 with Al Pacino playing a junkie
And what’s her name Kitty Winn playing his girlfriend
A sweet girl but then, inevitably, a junkie and then a whore.
He betrays her and then she turns him in when she gets in trouble.
Nothing personal really and when he gets out of jail
And sees her... a perfect ending. He says "You comin?"
Junkies in New York. I knew this one and that one.
All dead now and I remember John calling me
"I have bad news we lost Kevin." "Lost?"
This one and that one and I would remember if I could.
But instead I feel desperate for 1971 to see what's left
What will be left which is a certain slur of colors
There out on the streets and this is what will be left:
The movie. Need a dime to make a call. Yes.
The VW the narcs drive now looking so strange.
But at the end a slur of color. And I am grateful even for this.

Today my father is dying. Went in won't come out.
"Failure to thrive" Which means he won't eat. Doesn't want to eat.
Just two weeks ago not all there then he still
Asked me if I could go home and get his razor.
The good one. And pointed at the tree outside his window.
And said something. But now my brother says even
That whatever is gone him gone except for the part
That worries about how he's going to pay for all this.
Which I am grateful for. I remember the old lady
in the Williams' poem on her last ride seeing trees
A blur asking "What are those?" "Trees"
"I'm tired of them too." So much is left behind.

Which is the easy thing to say but not right.
Or at least you know that this one and that one
Is gone and there was a certain look.
Tired then I remember of the bullshit of, for example, war
And then tired of the bullshit about the bullshit of war
And then not even tired or now so what but
I would remember if I could. I'd remember my father if I could.
2AM stomach pains. He called my brother to take him.
Chinese doctor in the emergency room and my father asks
"Are you Jewish?" The doctor laughs. And my father says.
"Why are you laughing? It's not funny. I need a professional here."


That particular poem is invulnerable. (and later on we can discuss how annoying claims like this made by me are) and the wanting that is there and the bitterness and the joking is, for example, illustrated in the prison anecdote before it.

But my way out(although I never got out) was books. Contrast me, Orson, with Samson who at the age of 17 heard a neighbor playing a flamenco record said yes and was on his way to Spain in an instant to learn to do just that. What a moron I was. I remember riding on a train to Philly seeing some cadets from Valley Forge Military Academy (exactly where Holden Caulfield escaped from) and longing to, at least, even be there. But -- books and so years of bellycrawling through stacks in libraries and somehow still back in Warrensville that was enough since I was cursed with an imagination that monstered everything there with significance and a sense of the transcendent.
In other words early on I stopped looking at the usual reality and made up my own movie. Is this a bad thing? You would know.


But I had all those books and let's be honest here. By the time I was 17 I had read -- with a bit of the right sort of attention -- most of the deathless poesy in English and there was bliss and I always had that and withal always had an unfortunate but needed distance from this our vale of tears. And then -- being asked to leave a certain Jesuit university -- I was lucky enough to be enrolled in Lincoln University where I was taught English Lit the good old way and loved it. All professors there being odd fellows and exiles. And then -- lets pass years and years -- I was damn lucky to do a doctoral program at the place where Berryman jumped -- professors my friends equally in love with all that is there. The tales I could tell. And in any case -- although practical success doomed – there was a sense of the sacredness and absolute importance of scholarship (as in getting off your lazy ass and discovering something other than yourself and wanting truth) that was deepened which, along with a contempt for the pretense that kills that I got from growing up peculiar in a doomed mill town and a healthy hatred of systems of oppression embodied by the trivial and designed to protect them has brought me to your attention -- perhaps the greatest artistic failure of the 20th century though you be imaginary and tra la la to that. As you understand.




ORSON: Of course. We'll skip over the rest I guess. The railroads, the Asian nights, the semi-furnished rooms, the carnival. What would you say your primary motivators are now at nearly 57 years of age?

JG:I don't know. I have always been desperate and confused and expect to continue being desperate and confused. No doubt and if I am lucky all will be revealed a moment or two before death. I am not a knower of myself or, perhaps, don't want to know. Of course I am desperate to stop time or, if that concession can't be made, to have enough time. Really, it's all in "The Tempest" although I would like my wife along with my daughter on that island along with a few boon companions. My wife and daughter would have no problems with Caliban -- both know much more than I ever will. So, no problem there...and I could fiddle about as I do and everyone would be safe.

But that won't happen.

I'll probably muddle along pretending it has. Anent poetry -- it would be nice to have it occur as it once occurred.

And I would like a cabin in a bee loud glade -- a great advantage there in Innisfree is that one can at times escape from the constant knowledge that one has to go through all these things twice. Samson is also a fellow of a certain age and knows what I mean.

No place for bad art in any case.


ORSON: Now I know you've been recently translated into Russian and
that the prestigious if impecunious poet's at Fulcrum magazine admire
your work. But lets begin with something from your past, The Insect
Clerks of Neiman Marcus. Here is a recording from your original
Parapark Tapes with Samson Shillitoe, whom we hope to have visit us
here one day.

The Insect Clerks of Neiman Marcus

Lo! The Gods and Goddesses of the new mythology.
The Godesses are crocodiles in communion dresses!
They wear Adolf of Dachau designer jeans!
They wear necklaces of bird skeletons!
The Gods wear shrouds of petroleum jelly!
They brilliantine their hair.
They turn their mild, Belsen eyes on you
"May I help you sir?" O do not stare!
At secret luncheons they devour lark's hearts.
They devour the intestines of mummys.
They prefer larks three to one.
Three to one.
They have never murdered a baby
Who didn't deserve it.

Listen O listen!
Hear the twitching of their delicate attennae!
Haie! They come! They come!
Dragging their long
and swelling abdomens!

The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!
The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!
The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!

Beware their dread ovipositors!
Beware their dread ovipositors!
Beware their dread ovipositors!

The insect clerks have come.

There are trapdoors in Cosmetics!
There are trapdoors in Lingerie!
There are trapdoors in Men's Accessories!
There is a secret button in the elevator.

Nightly they descend into vast catacombs.
Buffy! Meagan! Tom! Wesley!
They hang upside down!
They copulate like bats!
They whisper to each others in the languages
Of prehistoric fungi!
And, like Gods everywhere,
They are always hungry.

O Holy Mother!
The store is closing!
They know who you are!
Run! O RUN!

There is a trapdoor in Customer Service.

Down you go
down
down
down
They carry you effortlessly through the tunnels.

They carry you past rooms.
Rooms where small blue clouds weep!
Rooms full of angel guts!
Rooms full of bearded foetuses in bronze caskets.
Rooms where your wife makes love to eels!
(Your wife has a certain eel sex appeal)
Rooms where sores run naked on chandeliers!
Rooms where sewage rats read poetry
In pink peignoirs!

O what is this big room?
It is the Mad Queen's chamber.
It is the throneroom of hearts.
It looks. It looks.
The inside of your brain.

The indifferent mandibles let you drop
To the marble floor.


They quietly suck out your eyes.
And then
Ah! Then!
The Mad Queen comes.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

The dread ovipositer.

You lay paralyzed.

You look out into the "Crevices of Night."

After 80,000 years
your tears
turn to pearls.

Oh, those were pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him but doth suffer…

Just remarkable, Mr. Green. I invited C.G. Jung to join us to discuss
this seminal work, but he was unable, being called away to answer
Freud's claim that he was a mere occultist. Please sir, what is this
'new mythology' of which you speak and how does the poem embody it?


JG: I have no idea, Orson. A vile paraphrase ( and there's no avoiding that) would say this and that but really what happens is that everything happens at once and that phrase allows or creates or whatever the "small, blue clouds" weeping or the "indifferent mandibles" and the rest and there is nothing like it. Really. I know. It has a certain comic sense that is unique, its a hell of a lot of fun to read aloud and I had a hell of a lot of fun doing so while Samson does just what is right with the bongos and we are back in that cabin at Owl Oak having a lot of fun. It's a kind of instance, a flash of merriment with withal sadness and wanting. It is just the sort of poem that unintelligent fellows who have no sense of poetry abhor as they drone on about surrealism or abhor the Beat Poets or natter on about nothing at all and so voila it is all about them. Damn Insect Clerks.

I noticed that when I said "I know" there was flash of merriment on your own immortal features. I suppose this is one of my many irritating qualities. That is, I know what a good poem is. It doesn't matter at all to me whether I write it or someone else just because it seems very odd in the most important way to even talk about an "I." Anyone who has ever written a good poem is completely unable to tell you how the poem was made. How could they -- they have no damn idea. Too bad. So, occasionally, damn you, someone comes along who gets lucky once in a while a writes a good poem (not a great one) and can tell when a poem works and when it doesn't and is, yes, right.

Doesn't happen that often and it is a curse. The poor fellow cursed this way is doomed to exile. Exactly because he also sees how damn dull most "poetry" is. That, for example, there is somehow nothing worthwhile in the Best American Poetry 2004. At the same time this fellow reads here and there and is sent now and then poems that are real poems. And so the maddening fact that the Awful thrives always is, perhaps, in a merry way also a point of this poem.


ORSON: Jung told me that this was one of his favorite poems—that it accomplished what he was attempting to do with his ideas of 'active imagination', that is, the manifesting of archetypal images and their
energies by allowing one's psyche to emerge from behind the super-ego's
judgments. He was particularly fond of your choice of names for the
psychopomps— Buffy, Meghan et. al. Can you say a bit about why those
names were chosen and what you hoped to accomplish there? Is Jung
right that this what you intended?


JG: I wrote this in the eighties but I continually renew my acquaintance with these psychpomps.

ORSON: Let’s turn to a more recent work. Of Bell, Book and Candle,
one reviewer wrote: "He has one poem about Kim Novak and James Stewart in
Bell, Book and Candle that perfectly expressed the Technicolor genius
of Richard Quine, that film’s unsung genius director." Now, as a
cinematic soul myself, I can see this. But, and of course you may
disagree, what does this have to do with your particular genius? How
does the cinematic image affect what you do as an artist? And what of
the little colophon?

Here is the poem:

I always liked Kim Novak
In “Bell Book and Candle”
Curled up on that couch
Which you would describe as
Immensely red but you are wrong
For the colors that show best by candlelight
Are (she tells you) white, carnation and
And a kind of sea water green
And Pyewacket that lucky cat
Curled up next to you green eyes
And a sardonic glance
And you reach for the silver cigarette lighter
Man, you are as shaky as Jimmy Stewart
And it is Christmas! Christmas!
And you know she is a witch and
You want to ask her
Why she well.. has a tree…Let the room
Abound in light especially
Colored and varied
Or something like that. Witch? Christmas?
And she gets up and is on
Tiptoes placing the ornament just so
(“oes and spangs as they are of no great cost”)
On the tree and she knows what you are
Looking at. She knows.

Christmas? But if you ask she’ll say
Something like“The best art is general”
Which, really, you haven’t heard before
And she turns and the doors to the balcony
Open and snow swirls you out and you
Are both on the balcony. Manhattan!
And you know that Gene Kelly is
There somewhere feeling just a bit blue
But will anyway dance his way into
Someone’s heart tonight and snow is
Steepling on the Chrysler Building and
There is giant impossible yellow moon
And she is there and you

Know this poem ain’t going to end the way
You want it to.

JG: Yes, there you are in the dark gazing at a flickering image and somehow your eye must go there and then there, pull back, close up, and so on and before it was done in the movies it was done in poetry but who gets this really? I know you did and -- we can talk about this later -- that you know that Shakespeare invented the movies (oh, along with Marlowe and Cyril Tourneur and the rest). It's all of a piece and I noticed this and wrote about it, half understanding, when I wrote about all those speeches in the Bard's plays that are little narratives within the larger narrative. And somehow this is something I can somehow sometimes do. One of the blisses of this poem about movies (and masques and revels -- the knowing reader will find a way to see this -- allusion again and used in a merry way) is that it works like a movie. Close up to Jimmy's silver cigarette lighter and his shaky hand, the witch hangs an ornament on the tree and she knows she knows what you are looking at, last shot -- snow steepling the Chrysler building and that impossible movie moon all framed just so, music swells and then... Ha!

And ..have you asked about my masterpiece?. I have one even as the most neglected poet as recognized by the great souls of the Russian steppes and wedding cake academies must have one. It's "The Diamond at the End of Time" in all its splendid not anything like it a hell of a lot of fun and worlds there yes glory and it is one hell of a movie. Cuts, fades, swirling images, sailing aways, Fairbanks and Flynn and a damned fine fight scene.

So, yes, it's all about the movies.


ORSON: Cats figure prominently in your work, Joe. From Pyewacket
Tallpockets padding through halls, to the creations of Hitler's Cat,
you've created your own feline fantasies. It's been said that cats are
images of the unity of opposites—loyalty and independence, affection &
aggression, playfulness & dignity, curiosity & indifference, earthy
sensuality and an otherworldliness. Is this search for wholeness or
reunification a theme in your life and work?

JG: Thanks, Orson

Glad you reminded me. I need to pick up some Friskies Hairball Control cat food tonight. I "have" two cats. I've "had"...let me see if I can remember

Puddytat
Joey
Abe
Mean Man
Foo Foo
Iggy
Sarah
Sparkle

Didn't name any of them. Puddy lived to be 20. Joey died young -- about 8. Feline leukemia. Abe too -- died in my arms. Iggy -- killed by a car. Mean Man wandered away. Foo Foo (saved from Texas gypsy palm readers) was doing ok until my ex wife moved to West Texas and he was killed by a rodeo dog. Sarah and Sparkle both still with us.

But you're right about me and cats. As long as the cat come home. And cats have a sense of humor. I think there's a mannerism of solemnity that is pervasive in contemporary poetry that people mistake for gravitas. Somebody said that. Cat's won't put up with that.

Do you find Hitler's cat in a poetry workshop or lecturing at this and that conference by the sea? No -- too much respect for himself and a sense of the absurd that prevents it. You know -- there are a lot of questions contemporary poets should ask themselves and one is "What would Mehitabel do?"

Would Mehitabel reprehend a comic persona as the silly fellows so serious do? No.

And, Jesus, Orson you were a great actor. What do you make of legions of "creative" people who never assume a role, never act, don't know what to do with, for example, the gifts Rin Tin Tin offers just as an example? Or -- this leads to bigger questions. Why the hell is it that almost all contemporary poetry is devoid of humor and manages, at the same time, not to be serious?

Then all the twee poems of the many others that burst into light in the end.

What little joy and what can be done about it? The universe is bursting with giant forms and this is what we get? Or the absurd and unlikely and blissome ridiculous is everywhere offering an escape from the dwimmer of the dreary -- and they can't find it?

A certain sort of "seriousness" is imitated everywhere. Sadly, when a comic poem is attempted the "poem" part is missed. That is, the comic poem lets slip the surly bounds of ordinary comedy also -- there is a move to touch on a higher mirth, an uncommon wit, something free and of itself.

Hell, you know that. You understood Falstaff.

I sense some inkling of the comic and poetic in the lower realm of internet poetry. Some role playing -- with, mostly, nothing of the divine and blushful Hippocrene. The higher one ascends though the spheres of contemporary poetry the less chance there is of any glimmer of comic stardust. A cat won't put up with that.



ORSON: We haven't spoken much of your Doctoral project. Its not often
that an academician wanders the road less taken as you have.
How would you characterize your love of The Bard and your academic
interest in his works, and how does that square with your creative
opus?

JG: Orson, you loved Shakespeare above all and above all characters loved Falstaff so you already know that there is more of beauty and terror and wonder and freedom in Shakespeare than anywhere else. Others abide the question etc. He's the most mortal of poets -- simply because his immortal longings make the strongest claim ever but are forever denied. So, attention must be paid. Well of English must be kept undefiled and all that.

It's probably a secret that only a minority in most English departments actually give a rip about poetry. It's been that way since the beginning. There are so many other ways (all the loathsome schools of criticism) to make one's way. And only a remnant in any case anywhere have a feeling for poetry. So, for example Professor Donald Foster 12 or so years ago alleged that his computer study (word frequency etc) revealed that Shakespeare was the author of a certain Funeral Ode.

It was impossible to believe this if you had a sense for poetry. The fact that under the hideous Stephen Greenblatt the ode was admitted to the Norton is a tragicomic tale. But there it is.

Now, of course, Wallace admits a hideous mistake. But back in the beginning I was there with others of the remnant bashing him on the head. We finally got through. Jesus H Christ. And Greenblatt is the author of a best selling "Life" of the Bard. The point is that if Shakespeare needs protection from the barbarians at the gate we are all in danger. And I've met the best guardians in academia -- sneaking a smoke in their office, hiding from the department chairman, worrying if Milton really saw Shakespeare, spending their lives to establish a better text of "King Lear," dying in mysterious fires or -- when the gods are with them -- establishing their own departments in which they are the only member. Regents Professors at last!

Look -- the Lonliest ranger has recently been what is taken to be a little harsh with someone who bloviated about what Keats' "Negative Capability" meant and corrected him simply by pointing the fellow to the actual text. I don't have to guess. I know. This is dismissed as nitpicking -- and so the dreary round of untruth continues and everything is just what serves. Shit. Damn. That is exactly the system that enslaves the spirit -- not a trivial instance at all but another symptom and in a world of intellectual laziness and lies is just what is expected.

More or less this. I've known people who have given their lives over to a real quest for truth and for some flash of real poetry transmitted through them so... And the real mortal stakes are, sadly, elsewhere and lives are crushed every day by this sort of getting along. Poetry is whatever gets said in spite of systems of tyranny that seek to prevent the saying. Real academicians do what they can to speak through these systems and point to what is there.

Besides, they are my best audience for layers of wild and comic allusion. And somebody has to make them, for a second, kind of happy.

ORSON: When I was working on Citizen Kane, I often found myself
staying up late and reading Yeats to settle me down. As a fellow
Irishman, what do you and Yeats have in common?

JG: The colder eye.

ORSON: What is it about Keats' work that moves you so. After all, heseems so, well....dated and, if I may risk alienating you and fans ofhis, prissy. How does such a clearly masculine fellow as you yourself are
find this kind of maudlin treacle satisfying?

JG: No more manly poet, Orson. Perhaps I'll write about this.


ORSON: As we're nearly out of time here, I want to say how grateful I
am to have had this opportunity to chat blithely with you, Joe. You
are, as promised, as they say in the vernacular..a piece of work. What
are you working on now, and when can we expect more from you?

JG: Of course I want to do more to deserve my reputation as America's most neglected poet. However, with this and that offer coming in it will be difficult. But I have managed to screw most everything else up before and I do feel that I can do it again.

ORSON: Ah, I hear the chimes at midnight! I hope we can speak together again. Anything you want to add..or want to ask me before we indulge in these two bubbling glasses of Muscatel?

JG: I hope you enjoy your time with Samson. Ask him to get out his guitar and play some flamenco. And, I think it would be a fine thing to do more of these. Perhaps with two poets at once chatting about what they chat about, glorying in each others work, having a sad and merry time!


ORSON: Thank you, Mr. Green, may your god go with you.


The Lonliest Ranger: And that concludes another exhilarating
confrontation of Mr. Orson Welles and the finest minds of today's poetry.We here at the Jeunesse Doree are pleased to have had you as our guests and look forward to seeing you again.

And please remember to investigate the brilliant, tragi-comic
adventures of the lost souls of the JD. Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow.