Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 52

that 013 Spotlight Santa Cruz Sentinel Friday, May 1, 1992 11 A city boy in the land of redwoods Morton Marcus's 'Santa Cruz Mountain Poems' is reborn By JULIA CHIAPELLA Sentinel correspondent CUS HEN doesn't doesn't feel MORTON good. write, MAR- The he result is that Marcus does a lot of writing. The rewards of some of that writing should also make him feel good when he signs copies of the 20th anniversary edition of "The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems" Sunday at the Capitola Book Cafe from 3-5 p.m. Out of print for 15 years, "The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems," written by Marcus and illustrated by Gary H. Brown, attained almost legendary status during the early '70s as the quintessential Santa Cruz gift book.

It sold over 1,000 copies and could be found on the coffee tables of just about every doctor's and dentist's office in Santa Cruz County. Fifteen years later, Marcus is hoping that the latest edition will find a whole new generation of readers who have never seen this book. "I started writing poetry because I wanted beautiful women to love Marcus says with a laugh. That was in his youth; the art form Continuing to write when he was in the Air Force, Marcus also had big basketball dreams. He laughs when he talks about basketball and boxing, both of which he enjoys, because he says people are generally surprised by such interests in a poet.

Marcus clearly relishes the opportunity to destroy a stereotype. When he realized his dream of attaining NBA glory was unlikely to happen, he turned to poetry in earnest. After the Air Force, Marcus attended the Iowa Writers Workshop and subsequently received a Woodrow Wilson scholarship to Stanford where he earned his master's degree. Marcus then moved to Santa Cruz where a position for an English instructor at Cabrillo College was available. He got the job and he's been teaching for almost 25 years.

Marcus has published six books of poetry and a novel. More than 250 of his poems have been included in more than 70 magazines. He's been included in more than 50 anthologies and has also written a theater piece, "The Eight Ecstasies of Yaeko Iwasaki." He hosts a weekly radio show on KUSP radio and was recently named to the per- Best sellersNational bestsellers reported by The House, $23.) New York Times for the week: 1. THE PELICAN BRIEF, by John Grisham. (Doubleday, $22.50.) 2.

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LOVE, MEDICINE AND MIRACLES, by Bernie S. Siegel. (Perennial, $8.95.) BOOKS Cabrillo's Morton Marcus manent staff of the Foothill Writers Conference. "The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems" were written during a time when Marcus took daily walks in the woods near Empire Grade. "There were old logging trails all over, up and down mountains," said Marcus.

"And second growth redwood. No matter how deep you got in that forest it had been logged off maybe 70, 80 years before." As Marcus walked the mountains he began to experience the subtle pull of the forest. "Mysterious things began to happen in the woods," he says. "I'm a city boy and this book is like none of my other poetry. This is a mythical book and it really smacks of mysticism." At that time he was working on getting two other books published and wasn't concentrating on the mountain poems.

But when he started accumulating a stack of poetry that was the product of his treks through the trees, he figured His there was a book in the making. challenge then became the presentation. The majority of the poems are short and Marcus wanted the reader to linger over each poem, evoking the spirit that allowed him to mesh with what he saw. Having previously worked with Brown on another book, Marcus him about illustrating the mounapproached tain poems. Brown liked what he read and the book was born.

With one poem and one illustration per page, the book invites slow passage. It is a calm, sensual account of a forest wanderer who seduces the reader into following Marcus' Dionysian romp with poems like "The Earth." This dry ocean pours through my fingers. When I lift it to my mouth, a brown mist clings to my lipsa cellar full of damp bones, a hidden spice-box. On all fours, nose in the dirt, teeth bared, I lap at the earth, tasting my life. 'Turtle Moon' chronicles small town's upheavals als TURTLE MOON By Alice Hoffman (255 pages.

G.P. Putnam's Sons. Reviewed by Michiko Kakutani The New York Times The ingredients of Alice Hoffman's latest novel, "Turtle are similar to those used in her last novel, "Seventh Heaven" (1990): a single mother with a troubled adolescent son, who arrives in a new town to try to begin a new life; a small, gossipy community where people keep tabs on their high school sweethearts and remember childhood grudges; a terrible car accident that leaves one person dead and another permanently traumatized; a sprinkling of vaguely magical events including a ghost (or angel) who appears several times. This time, however, Hoffman does not attempt to turn her characters' stories into a metaphor for societal change. Whereas "Seventh Heaven" became a heavy-handed allegory about the wrenching transition America made from the seemingly quiescent '50s to the confusions of the '60s, "Turtle Moon" aspires to be little more than a straightforward story, a murder mystery combined with a domestic drama about parents and children, estranged husbands and wives.

The story opens in a small town named Verity, where "nothing ever happened." "The last major crime in the town of Verity," Hoffman writes, "was in 1958, when one of the Platts shot his brother in an argument over a Chevy Nomad they had bought together on time." Once a year, Verity shrugs off its placid demeanor; the month of May there is regarded as a dangerous, unstable month, a time when migrating sea turtles crowd the streets, when the sweltering heat and humidity make babies cry all night and cause the ficus hedges to explode into flame. This May, their worst fears are fulfilled: early one morning the police receive an anonymous phone call and discover the body of a woman, dead in her apartment. Her name is Karen Wright; and her year-old daughter is missing. True to form, Hoffman relates these events with such easy fluency that the reader is quickly enveloped in her story; it's like sinking into a rocking chair and being gently seduced by the movement and rhythm. These developments combined with a series of cute, supernatural events that are never organically integrated into the overall narrative eventually undermine the novel's emotional power: the reader finishes the book feeling vaguely manipulated, and hence detached from the characters' fates.

The result is a book that's entertaining enough to read, but lacking in significant emotional afterlife. Salesian Sisters School and Youth Center SPRING FESTIVAL featuring: THE JOE SHARINO BAND Sunday, May 3rd, 1992, 1-3 p.m. 2400 East Lake Watsonville Admission: $5.00 15 yrs and up seniors and children 14 and under free Sponsored by: Granite Const. Ledyard O.S.H. New West Foods Driscoll Strawberry Granite Rock GATES OPEN 11 a.m to 6 p.m.

Chicken BBQ 1-5 p.m. Raffle Drawings 5:30 p.m. Dinner Tickets: $7.50 Adults $6.50 Seniors, $5.00 Children 14 and under All proceeds benefit Salesian Sisters School.