WGBH Journal; Christmas Eve Special

Yeah. Yeah. Good evening and welcome to a GBH Journal special for tonight Christmas Eve. Well that interview was in poetry from Louis Lyons and big boy and a Christmas montage with you from our Christmas maiden mags. Lol it's been a Christmas tradition here at WGBH for our commentator Louie Lyons and poet David McCord to get together to talk to read poetry to entertain our audience during the Christmas season. This year will be no exception. Well Dave another Christmas we come to the end of the international year the child but every year the child with the oh your verses day within the world of the child. Let's say your collected poems were printed last year 400 of them and that book

400 and a book called One at a time in us what what pointer you find children like that. Well they like different kinds of things they like a very early before the big events but I read that before with you. Well it might skip it. No rights not to give it all right. All things I have to tell people that it took me a half an hour to write this and it took 22 years to sell it to the Internet for $6 an hour. The last four words had one word to the line so that was $6 or where I was every page we get for free. And here it is that they can just read them. The picket fence the picket the fans give it to picket the fans GIVE IT A LIKE IT'S A click the fans give it the fans give it a lick give it a lick give it a lick with a regular stick. They get a piggy piggy pic and I say $96 that's what I got for that part I'm still pays me fifty or a hundred a year

sometimes. Well there's some other things that the children see yeah I did one of the ones that I'm fond of if I can find it here. Right put a marker is called Marty's party. Now this is written in very and for four beats to the Lon Marty's part a Martini party you see and and it runs along that way and here it is and it's just foolishness. Marty's party well that smartie Jamie came he seemed to do the dreadful road builders gravy squeezed a melon seed in hell and gave a poke so it is Coke so fresh and fizzy Sherrod lezzie just old Franco dropped a hank of juicy candy in trouble. He stumbled bumbled and Jesse very messy very sticky. That's a quickie not so ludicrous Judy watching Jamie jailing Amy wielding Mamie finding Vicky white a tricky lad where's

Marty I don't know she just gave the party. Well besides reading to children classes all over the place. You tell them how to write poems explained told them the techniques of it and as they respond to that. Yes they do. They respond first of all by having 15 10 or 15 of their poems done on transparencies and we throw that on the screen at the end of my talk and then the child gets up and reads the poem usually to fast and then if I can see anything specially wrong that always something wrong then every now and then there's a very good line to get something wrong and I try to point out that you know in rhyme for singular you rhyme cat with a rat you know cat with the rats and things like that. They don't seem to understand they have a very primitive way of looking at various But of course every now and then there's a genius among them. A little girl sent me a poem awhile ago from Cambridge and it said I have a horse eats hay of course I have a

cow that's all for now. I rather like the end you know that Faulkner is quoted as saying. You write prose if you can't write poetry well he never could write poetry. Well he I don't remember when he contributed to the same they long back long ago but because he y has a chapter in his collected essays on that he mentions foreigners contributing he may have done various and ever looked at. Sometimes I do them a tricky rhyme but this is harder for them to understand. One cog run over I now run over a rhyme is different than playing right I mean you go down your first line and you come to your anchor where your rhyme are administered and having the next line or the third line rhyme of that the first word of the next line rhymes with it and this is how it goes it's rather musical I was very pleased that Phyllis McGinley wrote me about this poem when it appeared about the last stanza. Maybe that's. Some reason for it I was just lucky in the last stanza you'll hear it

run over or I'm down by the pool. Still fishing. Wishing for a fish I fail praying for birds not present pheasant or grouse or quail up in the woods his hammers stammering I can see the woodpecker find the kind of things running off and tree over the fields such rockers talk as the crows talk on nothing around me slumbers numbers of birds or even the leaves hanging listless lasting through days we lose empty of what is wanted. Haunted by what we choose. That's a little too much for most children to get I think but I put it in the book just the same. I might read. I might read a Christmas poem no one have to hear I'd like to read these low if I am a want is about the little girl takes a lot of trouble doing our part Christmas packages and nobody appreciates them. How many good packages we get when we rip

them up. Oh I think you know. Well here is this one about the little girl. Here's that little girl who wraps each gift with the same artistry and care she uses. Dressing for a party. The same left of spirit. Pondering and she chooses color of paper a kind of ribbon or string striving to angle of the red to look professional as anything. Finding the made for a box to send it off by a mail all in plenty of time for a Christmas knowing alas to the recipient will commit the crime of tearing it open as one cracks the shell of a peanut or rips the fancy cover of say a candy bar. Nor will this child in all her life discover where the true appreciators or the other one is about to hang a stocking up this is about. I said in a few words as a man can do it. My stockings where he will

see it there one half a pear tree is sprayed my prayers are prayed My wants are WAY. I've made a list of what I missed last year I've guessed by their mothers sister brother. I've done those things I should and would and could. So far so good. I like to take Scott and for one thing one of the lines in it you say would take and one by one have poems as they stand and your verses illustrate that. That's pervy. Yes and that's not only true but I took that out of Emerson who said every word was once a poem and you can imagine the first person to read it the equivalent of star moan. Most of thought that he or she was probably he was saying oh I don't know why it would have been a woman though they're better at poetry than men are. And the forward you have to that begins blessid lord what did you hear young man.

And hands me the singer of the song and the song and that's a limerick the only serious Limerick not only that I ever wrote but that I ever read. This is it. It's in memory of my every classmate Frederick whens or who wrote the space Charles Mother Goose which is a delightful book still in paperback I think. Well this is the way it goes. But I said large what it is to be two of the four. The enchanted be the color of the car of the singer the song and the sun. Well one day you're going to I think oh speak up a poem out of the new book which we have many. Oh I did and that is the new book that's coming out next September that's the title of the book. Yeah it's a title it's a title of a poem to it was published the book I was in the house recently. I wonder are you going to do rapid reading I want to do a rapid reading as I like to do that because I

heard once on the street as I passed by two little girls maybe five and seven. And I looked down because one of them said the little one said that her mother had just signed up for a course and rapid rating only she thought it was a course in rabbit rating and they said this is the conversation as I imagined it might have worked out. The older girl being rather scornful rapid reading. A course in rabbit breeding that's what she said and something else like adult education. Rabbits they can breed you know they can Juan and Alex could. At least he had a watch and told the time and on the front door of his little house remember there was a bright brass plate with a rabbit on it I guess you could read that. Perhaps he couldn't spell out white but shows us is a book. Look rabbits just don't breed they breed she must of said Of course in rabbit breeding. She didn't. She said A Course in rabbit reading.

We have many rabbits that I know of. You should have asked her if she was on the phone with Mrs. Marples. She's still there on the phone. MRS MARCH. I also heard her say well let us by all means watch adult anyway just not you not but let us know. Gee that's funny yesterday. I still think that's the only funny really funny book I ever wrote and a New York Times reviewer of it too thought my book was pretty good. She said there's one poem one poem in the book that doesn't rhyme that's the only comment she made. I want to read one that was dedicated to you years ago and it's called a bag of gold we want to remember are yours and neither of us can remember very well. Trinity Place and I think you lost the place I lost all I had lost that I didn't have it. Well you've got lots more in there. Yes but can I find this one. Yeah I think I don't know where it is. You've got a

compass. It's right. Compass is what I need in this new index because it's funny that like like most index. Yeah I always get lost in the index of Robert Frost poems. Tell me what you think they know and and the long time as and here it is for our own. I didn't Nash told me once before he died that he was beginning to plagiarize him so he didn't remember everything. You need write something and then find it some years before. Well here's the place and this says in the title right under a Christmas card. All these All these readings over the years we've done together 15 or so. Here it is Trinity Place with light and fun clean fresh tracks managed with a good way to say hello. I looked at 3 before I

let them go. One was a child as a boy or girl whose name was nothing but two footprints not the same one clear one fater meant the child was lame. The second tracks were dog and plainly said I am lost the lease by which he had been led was dragging like one runner on a sled. The other tracks were bird where I wanted fluff his feathers and sat still for the bread but sun glare in the chill of the little shop with the tracks. The dog perhaps would find the friend. At last the Hungry Bird would search the wires. But such is Christmas in the snow. You spoke of the critics saying that the rabbit reading rabbit rabbit Rick. Ron I think of it when you're dead in Boston when it snows at night

they clean it off by candlelight in Cambridge quite the other way it snows and then they leave it lay. You told me once that a woman wrote in and told you leavin Ole is not right Greg. Yeah. Also I got in trouble with the city because that was reprinted years later in a blizzard when the city had just produced some new machinery that I had written for that one. Have you got a. I never won. We might have time. I think I might do it. Chant. And I'm sort of fun and children seem to like it. It goes like this has no title. The cow has a turtle has the rabbit has but I haven't much the Ark says the frog has a crow toad has a wart so it's not mice or the mouse has a hole the hole the goose has a has and it goes like this. The bird has been there and has a check but I feel sick. The horse says

Hey The dog has his day the bee has a sting and a queen not a king. The pig has a panda bear has a den and the trout has a poor school the Crow has a nest as a quest the owl has a mate. Well David thank you and Merry Christmas. Yeah sure happy Christmas to you. Louis Lyons with poet David McCord. And now the man with that special Christmas street savvy Max the Christmas

maven street corner Sanna's and twinkling lights electronic mistletoe and elves in red tights Rudolph the reindeer in styrofoam snow bright neon stars light up the show Frosty the Snowman is a computer who talks get a motorized angel who flies sings and walks or an old Christmas Carol by a synthesizer band modern day Christmas is something so grand. Plastic spruce trees with aluminum ice sell your lawyer Holly reeds look very nice. A dozen seven white candles if you have money to spare with some dynamite sleigh bells to show how you care. Oh I know it's too much how we carry on what we do to Christmas with the glare in the gongs but the spirit is there with the friends that are mine. So I hope everyone's Christmas is joyous and fine before we go on with Max. Cliff hon Alex Eldridge and Susan Lewis of the spider's web staff stopped by to share some of their thoughts on Christmas.

I like the smell I like the smell of Christmas I think a pine like the pine DML Susan are there any special symbols of the holiday season that are particularly important or meaningful to you. Like this. Like the Christmas carols and I like the sounds that go by and streets used to walk you know see people selling chestnuts or just hear everybody all excited over seeing a real pretty tree. Alex Are there any other special scenes that you remember or recall or have come across that stimulated a strong response from you. Well the response well there's always a lot of food. I like that a lot of cooking and usually on Christmas morning you know we would all just sort of sit around in our pajamas and people would go and what we have what would you have what was the menu on your average all the scrambled eggs. We always had scrambled eggs. Anything else and toast and coffee. It just it was just babble the eggs and tell us it's pretty ordinary but it but also there's a lot of feeling of you know taste in particular good on Christmas morning and you know everybody was just sort

of lazing around you know bathrobes or whatever. Yeah. Susan are there any other symbols sights sounds music. Ice day it is everything slows down on that day. Everybody just stops Nothing's open. I can't do anything you have to be you know you with people. You know I have a personal memory like that that's one of my strongest probably years ago I was working in the Boston V.A. hospital and on Christmas Day and I thought that there was going to be the grimmest day of my life and I can remember getting up on that morning in pretty much downtown Boston and walking to work. And it was the only day that I can ever remember that near the intersections of two major roads. It was perfectly silent. There was no sound at all. And it turned out to be a really lovely day. The people were doing a lot of extra things for each other in the hospital and I saw a lot more of kind of love and generosity then I experienced perhaps even in my own home where there certainly was lots of love and generosity but I think maybe under the adverse circumstances that it was even more

moving. It's also a charge in the air then you know it's the new year coming to feel that. Have you seen anything special in the city of Boston this year. I had one time when I was coming back from Quincy Market with a whole bag full of produce. And I got down there and it seemed as though everywhere I went there were some people that were singing or or playing instruments. And we went into the tea and in the collector's window where the collector is there were two guys playing trumpets and so forth playing some Christmas carols inside there. I just thought that was kind of amazing. You know I love little personal scenes like that I think everybody experiences them sort of little photos you can take out of your own memory that you think they're proving now that even kids need Santa class. That's been there all the time. I had Santa Claus you met him. No you know he was in my living room really when this was Christmas morning. Really. It's what happens when your fireplace says you're going to have a really really was about six o'clock.

I remember I woke up and you know when you're older kid you wake up from Christmas it's like you wake up and you realize you're up and then you've got I mean it's Christmas you know. I jumped out of the aisle and I ran and just as I was like getting to the room I heard like creak in the room. I was scared to say Casa sentiment. And he sees me I probably think I'm a bad boy. How old were you when you knew that when he fucks you. And I think I'm a bad boy and I'm Rice. I've heard that there. And then I finally got up the guts I said I can't go on there and see if it's really Santa Claus. And I went in there and there was nobody there. Gunn touched his nose now. It's just it's just he just made it out. To speak.

You don't have to engage in any heavy research to perceive a need for a festival this time of year. The golden harvest season is behind us and three months of cold and snow lay ahead. It's a time of isolation and loneliness when glowering skies and snow flurries are about Boston looks grim. The streets a cold and forbidding the waterfront is swept by a bleak and angry wind. There's a tendency toward melancholia and depression. It is no wonder that most cultures developed winter festivals and revelries to counteract the oppressive nature of this time of year. The Romans for one culture had a major blowout every year around the time of the winter solstice and they knew how to party in a deft marketing move.

The early church fathers decided to associate the celebration of Christ's birth with the Roman winter festival. Christianity was able to adopt the customs of the festival and assigned to them Christian interpretations. The Roman use of laurel leaves was a symbol of victory and was readily adapted as the sign of Christ's victory over death and evil. The evergreen also being a sign of life everlasting through Jesus. I'm sure that the Roman celebrants like their modern counterparts did not spend a lot of time worrying about the meaning of decorations they put them up because they were attractive and cheery. For example when a department store is decorated with laurel swags Christmas trees in evergreen boughs I'm sure the corporate management is not trying to project an image of eternal anything except capital growth. In fact a good deal of the merchandise is designed to last not particularly long at all. Just try to imagine how many electric toys will break Christmas morning

still. All the evergreen around is Cherry And I think excites a little place in everyone's heart at the holidays. And it's not just business apologies and retailers who roll out Holly cuttings by the ton and electric Christmas lights by the mile. Millions of homes all over America have reads on the front door. Electric candles in every window and colored lights from the roof to the stoop. And it isn't uncommon to see a large electric Santa beaming with two hundred fifty Watts a Christmas cheer from a front door or a chimney top. What sort of a gaudy and righteous way is that they keep Christmas. Some folks might say. And every year there are numerous articles and sermons on the dissolution of the true spirit of Christmas in these slick overlit over merchandise overhyped holiday happening referred to as the Yule tide. I'm sure there's been a tendency to decorate of excess at religious festivals since the first cave artists put green and red brush to wall. For my part that's

OK. In this dark cold time of year with recession atomic war and Iran to worry about we need all the volts we can spare to cheer things up. And what is so different to that approach. Take for example this traditional Christmas Carol. The load. Was. Oh the. Load load the

load. Was the Christmas carols are the special treasure of the holiday season. I hear the message of generosity compassion and joy in them. It'll. Piss. You.

Off. And so we come to the end of our GBH Journal special on Christmas Eve.

The show was produced by Chris out win and Marsha Hertz. The engineer with Stephen Colbert. And from all of us a GBH have a very good holiday. This is FM ninety WGBH Boston.