[Music ending]
The late poet Kenneth Frost said he was chasing words in orbit. We're going to be talking with his widow Carolyn Gelland about their life together as poets  
and that's next on 
What Are You Reading?
Welcome to What Are You Reading? We are the celebrity talk show where the books
are the celebrities and with me for this program
is Carolyn Gelland; a poet
from Wilton, Maine. Welcome to What
Are You Reading?
Carolyn: Thank you Bill. 
Bill: And tell us a little about about how you and Kenneth
came to Maine. It's a great story.
Carolyn: Kenneth and I
loved living in New York City. We were lifetime
New York city dwellers. Kenneth had taught at Columbia University and The New School.
My sister and I were running a small art
gallery on west sixty-seventh street.
uh... and we were so very happy there,
but at a certain point
when our books started piling up and the
apartment got too small for all our
books and
we thought of a solitude in which we
could read and write, we thought of
Maine
and
after reading an article about blueberry pickers in western Maine.
Bill: that's right you said
it was a newspaper article. 
Carolyn: Yes 
Bill: about blueberry picking in Maine and that was the turning point.
Carolyn: It was the turning point.
Bill: that's what got you here.
Carolyn: I came up on the plane and looked at two houses.
We selected one. We moved up
and after six months of living uh... in
that house, the ice storm of
1998 occurred
and we had a house fire
and two thousand books burned, all our
city clothes,
and um...
we had to move to another house
in Wilton and we're so happy there.
And it turned out to be the best move we had
ever made.
It was very productive to uh...
read and write in
uh...
the solitude that Maine provides.
Bill: Well I think that's why a lot of artists
come to Maine. You have a chance to focus. It's a quieter
place. Although I guess you can be
inspired anywhere even in you know
midtown Manhattan
Carolyn: Oh, yes.
Bill: but let's back up a little bit and talk a little about your life as a poet.
What uh... attracted you to poetry
Carolyn: I always loved poetry. I always loved
words. I always loved to read
um
I wrote some poems in school and I won
the first prize in the New York city
high school poetry contest
and um
kept on reading and writing and then
when I met Kenneth,
who was
teaching
and very brilliant.
um
He focused
me on
um...
my work and
how to develop it
in a very
gentle uh...
fun way. He made it very pleasant
for me to
learn all that he had to teach me
uh
and so uh...
I learned how to uh... read
and critique his poems and he
read mine and so we worked together.
Bill: So you had a life together of poetry.
Carolyn: Yes, we did. 
Bil: And particularly when you moved to Maine.
Carolyn: Oh, yes.
Bill: What would be the difference between
Kenneth's writing
and your writing? Did you have similar interests?
Did you have
uh... diverse uh...
uh... interest?
Carolyn: We had very similar interests.
We um...
We had
a deep interest in
literature in general,
in uh...
religion,
philosophy, history,
painting, music.
We had a very wide
uh... spectrum of interests.
And then
when you sit down to write a poem
you kind of
put them... you forget them... you forget
all the craft that you've learned
and
you focus on something very deep
that wants to be said
that turns out to be a surprise
to you as well. um... uh...
It can be triggered by
a word uh...
or
a phrase
Kenneth would sit at his desk and perhaps
look at the chickadee
and that would be something
but then it could be something
much more mysterious too.
Bill: Now when you're
creating a poem uh... how do you know
when you have the finished
product? You say you're looking for the
something that's very deep, that's going to
come out.
When do you know that it's finally arrived
in its final form?
Carolyn: That's a very wonderful question
because
uh...
when Kenneth and I were writing
uh... I would be upstairs and he would be
at his desk downstairs and I would come down at
four o'clock feeling that perhaps
I had exceeded myself, that I was really uh...
uh...
taking a giant step forward
and uh... it didn't always work out that
way. We were
very honest with each other, but
kind.
and uh...
you let a poem sit for a while.
You might try it out on a few friends.
and
uh... over time
you learn whether it has,
whether it's clicked together like a Chinese box
uh... and if it has it's life in it
uh...
and uh
you may see that revision is called for
uh...
or that you want discarded it
or that you really
believe in it.
Bill: Now uh... Kenneth's book of poems, one of his books, is Time On Its Own. 
Carolyn: Yes that
one just came out; end of October. 
Bill: ok, uh... Tell me a little bit about
if I'm going to sit down and
and look through that. What
kind of poems am I going to run into?
Carolyn: Well this is a book that I put together
for Kenneth.
I knew exactly which poems he believed in.
uh...
and so um...
I put this together.
uh... there are poems in here
We start off
with A Ferry In The Sunset
and then we go on to A Narwhal
a poem about a
figure skater, which I'll read to you later
Two Tarantulas
uh...
Dreamer, which was about a turkey vulture that he was looking at.
Bill: So he pretty much...
you would both draw upon what was around you?
Carolyn: Yes, we did
and also what we had spoken about, what we were reading
uh... When we were in New York we went to the museums a lot and the paintings.
We have a lot of art books also.
And so
everything feeds the sensibility.
Bill: MmmHmm...
and I love the title of your book Four Alarm House. What does that mean?
Carolyn: Well, that was
uh...
that was how
our house fire
Bill interrupting: So your first house? Carolyn: Yes.
...was described by the fire department.
It was a four alarm fire and
our house
suffered the consequences.
So I wrote a poem about
that fire and it informed other poems
that I wrote
um...
and um yeah uh...
and
I have poems in here um...
from new york uh...
uh... and from Alaska
and uh...
when I was in new york I was hit by a
taxi on
east fifty-ninth street
and uh... my pelvis was
crushed and sprang open and I have a couple poems that
referred to that in an elliptical way.
um...
and then a poem from Peru; The Nazca Lines.
or a pet shop in New York City. Like that.
Bill: Do you have a quota?
Do you try to do
a poem a day? a poem a week? Just when you're
moved to create?
Carolyn: I work every day in one way or another.
Bill: How long do you write?
oh
That can vary.
I usually take longer than Kenneth did.
When it came to him
he worked...
he got right in it and worked fast.
uh... although he might revise later on.
uh... it takes me longer
and
last monday
I worked compulsively until one
thirty in the morning
and then
I didn't have it all in place but then the next morning I
thought I solved it.
Now we'll see. I'll let that
sit for awhile. I showed it to a
couple of friends.
One person loved it. Another person
wasn't sure. So we'll see and I'm reading it
every day to see how it goes.
I look over
old drafts.
I keep copious notebook and um...
read a lot of books
and um...
I try to write
as often as I can.
Bill: Before we go to break I just also want to mention Kenneth's other book
Night Flight.
Carolyn: This is the first book that we put
together
and Kenneth did
see this book before he passed away.
um...
Some people said that
a New Yorker had come to Maine to render
the loneliness of Maine.
I'm very fond of his book as
when Kenneth passed away I wanted to be sure it had it's chance.
And so I went around
the state here. I went down and visited
my sister in New York and read it there.
went down to North Carolina where our
publisher
Main Street Rag is located
and read down there.
So I'm not only
reading and writing, but I'm out there reading them too and
both of Kenneth's and mine.
Bill: And keeping the relationship going
by the fact you're doing this.
Carolyn: Oh, yes
Bill: That's great.
Carolyn: I have two more volumes planned for
Kenneth
at least,  but I have them set.
And um... my new work. So it's a busy life.
Bill: You're watching What Are You Reading? We
are the celebrity talk show where the
books are the celebrities and this time
we're talking
a lot about poetry with our guest Carolyn
Gelland who's reading poems, or will be
reading poems from both her own and her
husband, her late husband Kenneth Frost.
So what do you have for us first? 
Carolyn: I'm going to read Kenneth's poems first.
This one is from his book Night Flight
which was published in 2010.
Coring The Moon
The full moon has a hole in it,
right in the center.
If you look closely,
You can see a long tunnel
and dark creatures
traveling through it.
Then they drop out of sight.
Do they fall into a trap,
a black hole, or nothing?
Coyotes run in circles,
mad for the nothing of the moon.
They try on their ghosts,
in the moon's dressing room.
Owls become raucous
and tear their spirits limb from limb.
The hole passes
with a
long howl,
and men and racoons
and deer
come out of the woods,
moonstruck.
Bill: Share with us a little bit of what you feel
from that poem.
Carolyn: Well,
this is how we
felt about
a night in Maine
under the full moon.
And I love the sounds in this poem.
Coyotes, moon, owls, hole, howl.
[emphasis on O vowel]
and I love
the mystery
in this poem.
Bill: It's a great poem.
Please share a couple more with me from that book or whatever you'd like to do next.
Carolyn: I though I'd go to
Time On Its Own... 
Bill: Okay 
Carolyn: which was just published in October 2012.
and uh... I might return to Night Flight.
um...
This is Kenneth
reading
uh...
This is Kenneth listening to jazz.
um...
he had an uncanny way of
rendering
um...
the nuances of
an experience like listening to say...
Sydney Bechet or Charlie Parker.
I could almost hear say...
Lady Day
in this poem.
He Floats Out
in the hollow notes
of the wind 
instrument
till the rooms 
around him
wander
and a strange tree
of dreams
takes root
on every 
windowsill.
Bill: Very nice.
Carolyn: I love it too.
Bill: Kenneth's poems... many are very brief
Carolyn: Yes they are.
I'll read one that's a little longer, The Figure-Skater.
But uh... yes, he liked
to get to the
pith of it
and not to have any extra words at all.
This one's about me.
Suddenly,
there you are
in the 
electric 
eternity 
of a dream.
Who shall I
tell them 
you are
with your 
long hair,
embodied 
light?
And I'll read The Figure-Skater
Like the headlight 
on a freight train
stirring its witches' 
broth of wheels
down double-barreled rails,
faster, faster, 
looming on, 
homing on, 
the heroine,
bound in her straight-
jacket of ropes,
the figure-skater, 
wound in her
star-spangled spin 
flashing a spool
of zodiacs,
dances how many angels
on the steel-tipped 
infinity
of her skate-blades 
while her esprit woos
the fortune 
a dust bowl 
remembers 
in whirlwinds 
till a star leaps 
out of the coils
of gravity.
Escapading on 
the mirror's altar,
she swings 
into exploding mercury
that bends and scatters 
apparitions
just holding on 
to godspeed 
with the rich glaze of her smile.
Bill: There certainly is a lot of energy,
a lot of kinetic energy in that
poem.
Carolyn: And
the form and the pace of that poem rendered
the speed and the star-spangled spin of
the
figure-skater and the words
her esprit
and that she's escapading on the
mirror's alter holding onto
godspeed.
Another thing to point at about
a poem like this, and really all of them, but this is a complex poem to read.
um...
Kenneth's poems are dense,
but they're easy to read because his metrics are very secure, and so I can be carried along on his
metrics even as
I have to concentrate hard on all the words.
Bill: But it make the ride enjoyable.
Carolyn: Yes.
Bill: So it's a good...
poetry is such a work of wordsmith...
of wordsmithing. 
Carolyn: Yes it is.
Bill: Well, let's hear some of yours.
I have a poem here
called Duet With Gabriel
for Louis Armstrong
Bill: Well that's a good follow-up to the
jazz one just a little while ago.
Carolyn: Well, Kenneth told me these two stories about Louis Armstrong.
That when he was playing at a command performance for the king of
England he gestured up to the royal box, this one's for you Rex.
And later on touchingly when he got old and sick
and um...
the doctor told him that he shouldn't
play his horn anymore, he said
"I gotta play my horn Doc.
When I die,
I'm going to play a duet with Gabriel.
He loves his horn the way I do.
A man has got to have something he can
die for." And so I wrote
a poem about that.
He finds the rhythm,
a grapeseed dancing 
in a glass of
champagne..
He plays a duet with Gabriel.
"This one's for you, Rex."
Exaltation 
of the air,
sunshine 
ransacks 
shining ground.
Each note gets rich
on the next.
Bill: Very nice.
Carolyn: And I have another one here.
Forgotten
the bones
of the dead
sparkle 
deeper and deeper 
into darkness.
sometimes 
a sleeper rises,
bones
clothed 
in a sort
of lantern,
and stands
at the edge
of
life.
Bill: Very nice delicate poetry.
Carolyn: Thank You
Bill: And again this is from your book Four-Alarm House. 
Carolyn: Yes
which came out uh... in February of 2012.
One of my favorite poets is the
German poet
Friedrich Hölderlin, whose dates were 1770 to 1843.
He said he was struck by Apollo and I
believe him.
I think of him
as
the modern-day Pindar because he's a poet of
praise.
He sees the world as blazing with
the presence of God
or
he can render
um...
a very
painful
um...
experience of the withdrawal of God from the world.
He had mental troubles and he lived in
the care of a carpenter and his wife and
family in the small village in Germany
for most of his life.
Hölderlin
I have thoughts whose witnesses
are ready to be put to death.
There must be no sleeping 
during that time.
My lamp.
a fakir, 
drones 
hollow 
music 
to my
black
radiant 
skull.
I am interested in desperation.
I float and fly in it.
The clouds are casual coffins.
The Boatman rips 
their bellies open
and drinks tears.
He cannot enter my house.
There is no outside to it 
as my left hand 
cannot cover my right 
without moving
out of space.
I am inside listening.
The song in the wind 
changes its tone
in every tree.
White ravens
sink through the stars,
dress and undress
the silence.
I sit
in the open spaces of my heart,
crumble
a handful of words.
Bill: Very nice.
Very nice and very delicate.
and uh...
it really seems like you and Kenneth benefited
from the move...
from Manhattan to Maine
Carolyn: We certainly did, yes.
We carried New York with us to Maine,
but Maine had a tremendous impact on our
inner landscape. It certainly did.
Bill: Perhaps as we move
towards the close of the program
you could share one more?
Carolyn: I would love to do that
uh... perhaps
I will
read to you um...
uh... a poem that Kenneth wrote
very late
um...
in life.
The end of day
is the title of the poem.
And the end of day
came to Kenneth and
I thought he had
written
in a very profound way about that.
upside down spiders weave
evening air ave ave
I fall into light that slips out of the room
furniture and books secrete the end of
day
exiling themselves in my silence
the shining
outlasts its day
till I cannot remember.
Bill: Shining outlasts its day. 
Thanks so much for sharing such wonderful imagery with us.
It's always a delight when we do a program on poetry.
You have been listening to Carolyn Gelland and her late husband Kenneth Frost and their poetry.
Thanks so much again
for being on the program.
Carolyn: Thank you Bill.
Bill: And you have been watching What Are You Reading?
[Music]
