Michael Parker
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MICHAEL PARKER. Born 1944. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1482V This interview was recorded on October 15, 2007, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Pat Cypher. The interview also is available at the Carnegie Library for Local History, in video format, filmed by Ann Gillis. The interview was transcribed by Cyns Nelson. NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. ABSTRACT: Poet Mike Parker, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Ward Public Library and as Grants Review Panelist for the Boulder County Arts Alliance, discusses the creation of the Ward Public Library in the early 1970s, the Ward Artist-in- Residence Program, and the art and poetry scene in Ward, Colorado, from the 1970s until 2007. In this interview, he reads several of his poems about Ward, discusses Poetry/Literacy workshops at the Boulder County Jail, and also talks about Hazel Schmoll and her relationship to the young hippies who moved to Ward in the 1970s. [A]. 00:00 (Today is October 15, 2006 [2007], and my name is Pat Cypher. Today I’m interviewing Mike Parker of Ward, Colorado, who is a published poet and has been very active, involved in the Ward poetry scene and also the [Ward Public Library] Artist-in- Residence program. This interview is being recorded for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program, at the Boulder Carnegie Library, and today the interview is being filmed by Ann Gillis.) (Okay, Mike. First question: Can you tell me when and where you were born?) I was born April 17, 1944, in Waterbury, Connecticut. Factory town, which produced a lot of brass. (Okay. Tell us a little bit about your early education, your family.) Well, I grew up in a very working-class family among an entire population of working- class folks. Left my hometown when I was about 17, went to college—went to a community college, University of New Haven. It was called New Haven College, then. It was kind of the beginning of my poetry career. I met some—a few—really outstanding poets and teachers that turned me onto a lot of stuff, and so began my life as a poet. (Was there any one particular person who was a major influence in your life?) Yeah, there was a guy named Bertrand Mathew, Bert Mathew, and he was a literature professor. I met him my freshman year—I didn’t actually study with him for a couple of years, but we became great friends. We were both interested in a lot of the same poetry, specifically Beat literature, which was still quite alive and happening in the Village [Greenwich Village], which was only a couple of hours away by train. He really befriended me and turned me onto a lot of poets. He was a great guy. He had a great influence on me. And he was just a great person. (So you traveled frequently into the Village to kind of hear the Beat poets?) Yeah. I started going there when I was a kid, because you could take the train from my home town—it was two hours by train down to Manhattan. When I was younger, and I used to go to the Village, I couldn’t really get in anywhere, because I wasn’t old enough, and I had a real baby face. So I would just walk the streets. You know, jazz was happening then, so you could hear jazz everywhere. The scene was really interesting; I was just a kid. And later, in college, when I went down there as much as I could, mostly I went there to buy books. Because there were a lot of great bookstores happening in the West and the East Village then, and there were a lot of small presses, and the Beat scene was hot. During that period was the first time I met the poet Allen Ginsberg, in New York. I was in a bookstore really early in the morning, like nine o’clock in the morning—I had taken the train there—and I was buying a book by Ray Bremser, who was a friend of Allen Ginsberg’s. Bremser had spent a lot of time in prison, and he had this first book out called Madness, and I was buying that. Somehow Allen Ginsberg was in the bookstore at the same time and saw me buy that book and asked me why I bought it. And that began a—you know, a friendship. Allen was one of the most well-known and influential poets in the world, and also a very nice person. It was just the beginning of a—it’s hard to use the word friendship, but a relationship with Allen over the years. That period was just a period that helped form me; the Beats were definitely a great influence on how I saw things. (Also during that time when you were in college, it was also the time of the Vietnam War?) Yeah. There were big things happening then, historically, because you had a segment of the country who were tripping their brains out and really raising their consciousness. That segment of the population that was expanding their mind was also refusing to go to Vietnam, and it was the beginning of a great anti-war movement. 04:46 The conscientious-objector thing was a huge event in my life, because my politics were forming; my politics were influenced by what was going on. Vietnam was a horror show. It was a class war. If you went to college they couldn’t draft you, so you were exempt, so you had this really, generally, white-skinned privilege. So that was radicalizing a whole segment of the population. Plus, people tripping and being unafraid to deal with authority. It was a very strong period. I applied to become a conscientious objector. I based—the whole premise of my getting that status was based on the poet Kenneth Patchen, some works by Dostoyevski and Gandhi, and mostly being influenced by what was going on and able to take a stand. Basically, we just were not afraid to say “No.” The threats of putting us in jail, or doing anything to us—we could care less. People were strong, it was a strong time. (And, were you granted conscientious-objector—) Yeah. I worked two years—a scene which totally changed my life—I worked—a place called Judson Memorial Church hired me. I was having a hard time getting a job, and I would’ve gone to jail unless I got a job pretty soon. I couldn’t really find a job; they offered me a couple of jobs in, like, psych wards and state mental hospitals, and I wasn’t going to put up with that. So, I was kind of getting into trouble with them, and I had to get a job right away. And I walk into Judson Memorial Church, which is in the middle of Greenwich Village—very radical, political scene there, much more than a religious scene there. It had a famous theater that was happening there, famous art gallery. So they hired me. First they hired me as a printer, and then I moved to working—they ran the first runaway house, for runaway kids in the United States. Totally against the law, funded by a man name Stewart Vogt; had like a 30-room house that was a Civil War hospital, right in the middle of Greenwich Village at Washington Square Park. So it was in the heart of this great cultural melting pot. The park was a wild place: a lot of stuff, a lot of history, a lot of literature, a lot of radical things. A lot of cops, fighting with people those days, in the anti-war movement. So the church had a very strong leftist political stand, and took me in. So I worked in the runaway house for a couple of years. Very radical experience. It was a psychedelic era. Great musical, cultural era in New York City. Things like the [Human] Be-ins were happening one day, and then monstrous anti-war marches at the United Nations the next day. So it was a very live time. And I worked with runaway kids for a couple of years, some of which I have maintained friendships with to this day. That’s where I met Ronnie Sayer. He used to visit the runaway house when he was a 15-year-old kid from New Jersey. So I still have ties with that period. It was a formative period in my life. (And Ron Sayer was mayor of Ward.) Yeah. He was one of the recent mayors of Ward. A phenomenal martial artist and a great human being. Him being mayor of Ward lent a really nice touch to a very difficult period we were going through. It was nice. (Speaking of Ward, when did you first come to Ward?) It might have been 1973. I came here to visit Sandy Cruz with a friend of mine that I was traveling with, and just stayed for a few days. It was very windy—I believe it was in October—it was windy and cold, it hadn’t snowed a lot yet, and then I returned and went back to my cabin. I had a cabin in the Catskill Mountains in New York where I lived with a group of like-minded folks, kind of in a, somewhat of a communal situation. A very radical, political group of people.