Pantechnicon; Poets; League Of Women Voters

Hello and welcome to Pantechnicon, the nightly magazine on entertainment, the arts, and ideas, made possible in part through a grant from the ?Currier? Corporation of Lowell Massachusetts. I'm Eleanor Stout and I'm Frank Fitzmaurice. Coming up on tonight's program, regular contributor Louis Lyons will be along with some thoughts on tomorrow's Massachusetts presidential preference primary. And we'll also hear from a member of the League of Women Voters telling us exactly what the primary means for all of us here in the Bay State. That's all coming up on tonight's edition of Pantechnicon. James Schevill is our guest poet tonight, a man who has been constantly drawn to the theater. He's a professor of English at Brown University and among the many awards he has received are a William Carlos Williams Award and the Governor's Award in the Arts. My guest poet James Schevill [James speaks]: Since this is the bicentennial year I thought I would read several poems from my long work in progress, "The American Fantasies." I might begin by reading a poem about the painter and the inventor Charles Wilson Peale, which shows some of the conflicts

between the early days of the revolutionary times and contemporary days. The poem is called "In Nervous Motion: Charles Wilson Peale." He began as a Maryland saddler, a hummingbird of nervous motion who taught himself how to make everything from carriages to chairs, a fusser at trades and the first home handyman, even dabbling in portraiture. Failing in every craft and caught in the laws of debt, he fled to freedom, hot-footing it from the debtors jail with his brushes. Patron sent him to London to study the genteel painters, the posed velvets of tradition. Back for the revolution, he painted propaganda pictures for the street, patriotic canvases of freedom-shouting

marchers. Then seeing they were crude deceitful art, he threw them away like junk. Peace could not pacify, he carved and painted a rage of puppet shows, promoting them with pride as moving pictures. His puppets bounced through naval battles, storms, and Milton's pandemonium. Restlessly, he built a world in miniature, a museum of natural history with stuffed animals before prim painted backdrops, searching driven nature to a stop for frontier men to catch their shadows. ?Rushing? America required new gadgets, new sets of equipment for unknown ends. He turned to the force of invention: eyeglasses, stoves. And one day when words failed in his decayed mouth, a

jaw of false teeth. In his late 70s, wisps of white hair, wild false plaits jiggling. He exhilarated savagely down slanting hills on one of the first bicycles built in America, Self-designed for speed. He died at 86, searching with sexual pulse for a fourth wife. Having produced for an artless frontier society, many solid material sons whom we named Rembrandt, Raphael, Reubens, and Titian. Eleanor: You must have [?] writing things like that. James: Yes, and I do hope it brings out some of the dramatic conflict in voices that I feel very strongly throughout our history. That's one of the purpose of these fantasies I've been working on for many years

now, to bring out the conflict between the historical voices and the influence they've had on contemporary voices. How much of - how much research do you have to do in order to create poetry like this? A good deal. You have to read a good deal. I've always been interested in unusual historical facts, I think that must come from the fact that my uncle was a historian too. He had a great influence on me but he always told me that history is now, today you know history is not in the past. So in my poems, in my plays too, I've tried to create that kind of historical conflict often. I understand that many of your plays deal with injustices in America, Does this show up in your poetry also? I think so, yes. I might read this poem "At Plymouth Rock," which is another historical poem, but

it hits into a current situation too, as you'll hear. "At Plymouth Rock." Liberty, teach me again. No one taught me that a cage under an imitation Greek temple hides Plymouth Rock, anybody's old worn stone. Standing here, it's a trick of light, a trick of mysterious American blood. Always we sail off in the Mayflower to discover a new land of freedom while our ancestors wear away invisible in old stones beneath artificial monuments. In winter wind amidst hundreds of spectators, I listen in the stare of silent meditative eyes, hear the plea of violent voices, Indian ghosts calling

Washington, our first president, the burner of villages. It can't be true. I was taught in school that Washington, the old Indian fighter, is called the father of our country. Standing here, the spirits of white settlers clash with the Indians, cry in anguish, "Liberty, teach us again." How can the world be true if memory is always new? Think a little bit of dramatic impact there. Do you find when you write that you write hearing an actor's voice perhaps? Often since I've worked so much recently in the theater with the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence and with my own group Wastepaper Theatre in Providence. I didn't know you had your own group. Yes, we have a kind of rough knockabout theatre for short

pieces. No, no, many of the writers in Providence, you know, many of the other writers in Providence like Edwin Honig and others work in it too. Keith Waldrup. How much of a link, if any, Jim, do you feel there is between theatre and poetry. Do you find them completely separate? No, I don't but I've always been interested in the revival of dramatic voices in poetry. I think our poetry has become too short, too confined to the short lyrical poem and it's lost the quality of human voices, the impact of dramatic situation. So I've been interested in trying to bring a variety of dramatic voices back to poetry. Do you then take this whole idea and put it on stage? Do you write in poetic form? Well, I I hope I do. I don't write actually in verse anymore. I've written

several verse plays but I write in prose now, but I'm, I attempt to create a kind of total poetic theater, frankly, with an emphasis on the relationship between the theatricality of the images, the whole visual musical situation as connected with the voices. Do you feel restricted in any way in creating poetry versus prose for stage? No, I don't feel any difference between poetry and prose that way. I don't think any playwrights today really do, you know. The old idea of verse drama has vanished somehow but the idea of poetry of the theatre is extremely powerful today. Last year you put on a play at Trinity Square Repertory Company. Cathedral on Ice? "Cathedral of Ice." What was that about? Well, the basic image is Hitler and his

attempt to continue his fantasies of power in time today. The play actually takes place today and it deals with all of our various fantasies, from sexual fantasies to racial fantasies. So the play is more about the impact of those fantasies on our lives than it is actually about Hitler. When you think of the numbers of people who go to the theater in relation to the number of people who read poetry, do you feel that if you have a certain message that you want to get across, that it's far better to get it across through the theatrical medium rather than the poetic one? Well, I know there certainly is a bigger audience for theatre. Therefore I, you know, that's why I like the dramatic side, but on the other hand you know there are certain poems that don't fit into that kind of dramatic framework so you need to develop that kind of audience too.

That's a wonderful combination you have, to be able to write for the theater and also to create poetry. But I understand that you've worked with radio plays also. I've done some. I did a radio play about the death of Anton Weber and that's been done on the BBC in London and in Europe and I've done a couple of others but I've turned more and more to the theater. Working with students a great deal, Do you find that there is more and more interest in poetry now? Oh yes, I think without a doubt--just a tremendous number of people writing poetry. That's very heartening. There's a great amount of talent around. What's your next project.?Are you working on this bicentennial? I'm, I'm finishing my long work, "The American Fantasies" and also a group of Mayan poems, poems that I started writing in Mexico two years ago. ?Are they [??]? They're about the whole Mayan civilization, actually.

I'll read one more poem from the cycle of "The American Fantasies." This is, this is again a, "A Modern Voice: A Screamer Discusses Methods of Screaming" [reads poem]: We all scream. Most of us inside. Outside is another world. A neighbor fills her television dinner with too much pepper and screams. One woman stabs her door with a sword. Another, overweight, steps in the shower and screams "Fat, fat fat!" A man who takes flying lessons soars high in the clouds to scream. Another dives to the bottom of his pool where he screams underwater. A friend cleans his gun, screaming, "Assassin"! I like an

interior smiling scream. When you walk past me on the street I nod my head to you and, smiling, scream. You never hear me through the smile. The inside scream has no echo. [end of poem] We've been listening to poet James Schevill in our ongoing Monday night series celebrating the art of poetry. And of course tomorrow is March 2nd. That means it's the Massachusetts presidential preference primary day if you're a registered Democrat or Republican or Independent in the state. And now here's regular contributor Louis Lyons with his view of the primary. The Massachusetts primary tomorrow will count much more than New Hampshire's. But few are rash enough to guess what it will show. On the Democratic side, Jimmy Carter's momentum will be tested by two more conservative candidates, Wallace and

Jackson, who are not in New Hampshire. Besides, his four more liberal competitors whose combined vote in New Hampshire was twice Carter's. They have since concentrated their fire on him. The Massachusetts ballot has a space for no preference as New Hampshire's did not. This will offer the equivalent of New Hampshire's write-in vote which gave Humphrey six percent of all. If Carter's liberal opposition remains as fragmented here as in New Hampshire, a movement to involve the receptive Humphrey may be expected, indeed may have got under way. Further news today from both South Carolina and Oklahoma caucuses is that the party leaders in each state held nearly half the vote uncommitted. In South Carolina this is taken as an anti-Wallace vote. In Oklahoma Carter topped Harris for the other half in Harris's home state. President Ford is expected to do better here than in New Hampshire. Reagan is not bothered to organize a campaign in Massachusetts, concentrating on Florida's primary a week

later. To counter that major threat, President Ford campaigned in Florida rather than here, on our primary eve, with an attack on Castro as an international outlaw, calculated to appeal to the large Cuban exile community there, as well to conservatives generally, in a state that's a mecca for the retired. So national correspondents are reporting Massachusetts political currents and cross currents complex and confusing. One element that baffles them is the Wallace role. In Boston he's made anti-busing his issue and taken it over to the probable exclusion of any other candidate. One wonders why Jackson has tried to involve himself in this issue which can gain him nothing ,but can lose him those who support integration or are not exclusively occupied with that issue. Wallace's strength outside Boston puzzles the forecasters as to how many in the big crowds he attracts are voters, how many attend out of curiosity.

Jackson, strongly organized in Labor ranks, believes he can outbid Wallace for all but the utterly negative fringe of blue collar workers. Jackson has been directing his campaign against Carter for the party center. Another question is how much harrass(?) appeals against privilege will cut into either the Wallace or the Jackson vote. Udall and Bayh appeal more generally to the liberal Democratic voter. Supporter of Democratic principles across the board, Udall seems to have pulled ahead of the others and has made a strenuous final drive here. One short difference they all have with Jackson is in his attacks on detente. Jackson is capitalizing on Pat Moynahan's recent prominence by taking full page ads today on his endorsement by Moynahan. But Carter, without identifying himself especially with issues, is seen as holding the middle ground. Carter Carter too has turned already from Massachusetts to Florida where he's saying he'll beat Wallace next week. It's Carter, Wallace, and Jackson there. Carter is trying to persuade the Jackson

voters they'd only divide the anti-Wallace vote. If Carter can stand off Wallace in Florida as well as Massachusetts he'd seem to be well on his way. And so far as anyone can tell Senator Kennedy has kept clear of the primary fights, despite his relationship with Sargent Shriver. There's no evidence of a ? with Sargent ? who needs one here. Kennedy's bringing Senator Humphrey here to speak at his fund-raising affair the other day looked to many like a move to remind Democrats their party has more potential leadership than the candidated, candidate list shows. Otherwise no one has detected evidence of the Senator's trying to influence the vote in his own state. In the background of the Massachusetts primary is the lonely record of Massachusetts former gov- McGovern, who is now supporting Udall over Carter as quote clearly the better man. But McGovern's issue faded with Vietnam and the question now is whether his 1972 supporters are still a potent force. Massachusetts

unemployment of 12 percent is half again as great as the national average. The numbers of registered Democrats and of independents are both more than double the shrinking ranks of Republicans. Democrats 1,226,000, Independents 1,124,000, Republicans only 476,000. And our primary law lets Independents vote in either party primaries without losing their independence. President Ford's weekend foray into Florida brought that important contest back onto the front page. Ford said my administration will have nothing to do with Castro's Cuba. Reagan, going all out in Florida, let the deadline passed for entering Pennsylvania's big primary which is April 27. They will choose more Republican delegates than New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Florida together, their commitment to Ford now uncontested. Uncontested too, other Republican delegates of Vermont that holds its primary tomorrow. For Reagan didn't enter there and Carter has only

Harris and Schreiber as competition. Vermont's primary is its first in 59 years. It's being held almost in privacy, its voters so little pestered by candidates or press. That's about the equivalent of what New Hampshire's primary would have been without the extraneous element of coming first, that orbited it into a so-called media event. Vermont primary is limited to presidential preference. The delegates, still chosen in caucus. Reagan skipping Pennsylvania and Vermont to select those states where he feels he has the most strength suggest a primary problem for Reagan or anyone else. The number of states with primaries, now 31, is about double what it was in 1964 when Goldwater had to work only with caucuses in most states. The newer primaries are mostly in big states where generally the more moderate Republicans control their party and support of an incumbent president is normal for them. In fact no party has ever won an election, I think, after abandoning an incumbent President. Reagan's course is

to spot a few conspicuous primaries and hope for starting a trend, the domino theory domestically applied. His or again anyone's primary problem is partly personal stamina. Now that the government is relieving the financial burden, Humphrey observed that the day after his write-in vote in New Hampshire that not only the cost in money but in energy and time kept him off the primary route. It was not the only path to nomination. He would wait for the convention if the primaries fail to produce an adequate nominee. The fragmented ballot offers little chance of showing how Massachusetts voters feel about any issue. A New York Times-CBS recent poll reports more than half those questioned distrusted the government. More than half the primary candidates are anti-government in their appeal. One may wonder if the color of primaries with they're subsidized scramble of candidates won't prove the end of this kind of campaigning. Senator Mansfield is urging a national primary--that has its problems too. Others suggest regional

primaries, one in each of the 12 Federal Reserve districts. A movement for a single New England primary seemed well launched last spring but the dog in the manger threat of New York's politicians to keep their primary with its commercial profits ahead of any regional date [?]. But like one man-one vote, 18 year voting, and the Equal Rights Amendment, a sane way of nominating a president is a reform whose time has come. Birch Bayh boasts of steering three constitutional reforms to passage. When he picks himself out of the debris of this campaign, Bayh may see a new issue inviting him to shape a sensible nominating process. WGBH radio's Louie Lyons will return on Wednesday's "Pantechnicon" with some further thoughts on this week's news. Coming up next on "Pantechnicon" we'll talk with Pat Bennett. She's a member of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts. And we asked Ms. Bennett to outline in brief form exactly what the presidential preference primary means for the Bay State.

[new speaker] People who have studied elections and watched them feel that the, the voting in the final election really is dependent in part on who's chosen as candidates. Sometimes people wind up not voting in the final election because they feel there is no choice between the candidates or that the choice is so wide that they, they are somewhere in the middle and they feel they have no candidate. Anyone who has ever, in an election, felt they couldn't go to the polls and vote for a person who would represent them adequately, I hope had been voting in the primary to try and find one of these people who they feel should carry through and be running for that office. Now this year in Massachusetts we really have a choice in that in the Republican primary there will be two candidates, President Ford and Ronald Reagan. And in the Democratic primary there are going to be 12 candidates. That's really quite a wide choice. It's interesting too, I think, to notice that the American Party will be on the ballot for the first time

this year in the presidential primary. They have not submitted the name of a presidential candidate but they will be running people as will the other parties for state and local political party committees. Well, now back to the whole method of the actual function of a primary election. How does that work? Let's start with the Democratic side. When a person goes in and votes for one of these 12 candidates on the, the massive Democratic laundry list this year. What does that commit the party to? What does their vote actually line up in the Democratic machine? Well, we have a brand new law this year regulating the ways in which the delegates to conventions, party conventions are chosen. And then at the primary in that district there will of course be perhaps 30 percent vote for one candidate, 20 percent vote for another and so forth. What will happen is that they will take the lists of the delegates that had been chosen at these caucuses and and they will

give the final slots 30 percent of those final slots to the top delegates elected at the caucus for that particular candidate. And similarly 20 percent for the second candidate and so forth down the line, so that there will be proportional representation from that district in the delegate selection. Now the Republicans are not going to be having their caucuses until May and the internal Republican Party structure on the national level does not require exactly this sort of proportional selection which the Democrats are required to have by their national rules. In the Republican Party, they will be, they, if most of the states come to the convention with winner take all policy, Massachusetts will also do that. If most of the states decide to go with a percentage policy, a

proportional policy, according to a portion of the votes, then Massachusetts will do that and they will select their delegates in that way at their May caucuses. And delegates [will be banned?] until released or the candidate succeeds or fails in the process at the conventions. Well, that, that all gets a little bit complicated so let me see if I can back up and see what happens, for instance, on the Democratic side. Each of the candidates who get a certain percentage of the vote during the Massachusetts March 2nd primary will get that proportion of people who actually go to the convention in New York--is that how that works? Yes. And how long is their vote bound at the convention in New York to their assigned candidate? Yes they're bound for at least the first ballot and they, the plan, if anyone is really interested

in the details of this plan, their plan is filed with the Secretary of State. And you could read through the entire thing and pick out that sort of information by calling Secretary of State's office the Division of Elections. (music playing) Pat Bennett of The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and just in case you haven't gotten the message yet, tomorrow is March 2nd and it's Massachusetts presidential preference primary day all across the state. [new host] Thank you for joining us tonight. Join us every weeknight at 6:30 and weekends at 5:30 p.m. with "Pantechnicon," this is Eleanor Stout and I'm Frank Fitzmaurice. "Pantechnicon" is heard on GBH radio seven nights a week and the program is made possible in part by a grant from the Currier Corporation of Lowell Massachusetts. (music) x