THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

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Cyrus Cassells  00:00

I’m haunted by my acting stuff because I still have a passion or a feeling for it, and I still get ramblings from other people that I could still do more so I did. I worked as an actor in Rome in the 90s. I woke up in my having my midlife crisis, and the little voice was saying, Oh, you can have your acting career now.

Achim Nowak  00:23

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. I’m your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am so delighted to welcome Cyrus Cassells to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. Cyrus is a poet, a translator, a cultural critic, an actor and a professor. His profound works explore identity, history and our human experience. Cyrus is best known for his nine poetry books. Most recently, is there room for another horse on your horse ranch? His books have earned numerous accolades, including the William Carlos Williams award from the Poetry Society of America, a Lambda Literary Award and two Pulitzer Prize nominations. Additionally, Cyrus has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA and the Rockefeller Foundation. He’s a regents professor and University Distinguished Professor of English at Texas State University. And from 2021 to 2022 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the state of Texas. Hello, Cyrus. How are you today? I’m well, it’s a pleasure to I get to see you. There was so many reasons why I wanted to speak with you, but let me just go back to the roots, and then we’ll play around a little bit. I just read the list of all the different professional roles or identities you have inhabited, and do inhabit. I’m wondering when you were a young boy or teenager growing up, were all of these in your consciousness? Were you thinking that, Oh gosh, I want to be these things

Cyrus Cassells  02:34

very much. So from about age eight, I got this idea in my head that I wanted to be a writer, and I was sort of waiting for someone to give me permission. So my first opportunity was the class prophecy. In fourth grade, I was asked to write the class prophecy. So I don’t know where this idea that I wanted to be a writer came from. I do know that my mother was very literary and love to read all the time. My father was in graduate school for engineering when I was very small. I’m pretty sure I got the message that reading and books were cool and wonderful things to be engaged in and involved with. So I didn’t really get started until, I guess, high school, I started writing poetry. But as a child, I believed I was going to be a novelist, so I used to go to the the end encyclopedia and look up the history of novels with the idea that I would be contributing to the history of novels, which I’m only getting to now. One of the big chunks of my life is that, oh, I didn’t become a novelist till almost 70. You know, I’ve written one book and a novel, and I’m almost done with another. So always there unchanging. Only two things have I ever wanted to do was be an actor and a writer. Nothing is ever married from that translation is a surprise that I had a lot of recognition as a translator, but it makes sense as a corollary of being a writer, unswerving literary ambition and theatrical ambition.

Achim Nowak  04:15

Let’s start with the acting I’m interested in that because I was an actor for a while, I know enough about your past to know that you’ve had some interesting experiences in the acting world. When you were younger, were you encouraged to be an actor? What did mom and dad about you acting? They were super supportive. So I started working with a group called the Antelope Valley Youth Theater, and for amateur young people’s group, they were quite advanced. Yeah. So my first ever role was playing Jose Rodriguez in up the Down Staircase. I played a lonely Puerto Rican student, and I was so effective that I got a. Nominations for Best Supporting Actor

Cyrus Cassells  05:03

for that first stroll. And then I went on to do like arsenic and always. And then I played Tom Robinson and To Kill a Mockingbird when I was a freshman in high school, which I thought, Wow. I mean, I can’t believe I did that. And I did win an award for that. I also won an award for playing a character in a theatrical version of 1984 so I got a reputation pretty early as being an effective actor. My parents are quite supportive. So everyone knew that this was more public, obvious talent there. So yeah, they were surprisingly supportive, mysterious beyond having this incredible training as a teenager, I studied acting all four years at Stanford, but decided I wanted to get a film degree, and when, just like the last month of school, my acting coach came to me and said, Oh, darling, I’m so worried about you. I’m worried you’ll actually try to become an actor. I think you’re actually a writer and a teacher. And she said, I know I gave you an A plus in acting from Stanford. I mean, an A plus at Sarah. So that’s why she was like, I said, Well, you’re supporting this other person, and he’s not as good at actors. This is all well, darling, acting is the only thing he can do. But you the sort of, the proof of that, the affirmation with a year later, I won the National Poetry series when I was 23 years old. I’m haunted by my acting stuff, because I still have a passion or a feeling for it, and I still get rumblings from other people that I could still do more. So I did. I worked as an actor in Rome in the 90s. I woke up in my having my midlife crisis, and a little voice was saying, Oh, you can have your acting career now. Let’s get a little granular like, how does one suddenly end up in Rome in the 90s and start doing some acting? Because you did some acting. Well, okay, all right, all right, we’ll wind it back. I had been living in Massachusetts, in province Center in Boston for a long time without traveling much. I decided I wanted to learn Italian, so I was taking private classes with a tutor in Boston, and she suggested I try this school in Florence, cento, Firenza, which turns out, is one of the top five schools in Italy. It’s an incredible reputation. So I went there for a couple months and just fell in love with the country. I went back to school again in center fire and so the following summer, and during that summer, I won a Latin Literary Award,

Achim Nowak  07:46

and so I had funds. I didn’t have to teach English at first, and then I woke up one day was like, Oh, you can have your acting career now. And right from that moment, I went in to have what I thought was in an interview, and I had a screen test, and I got a role in a movie, playing Sylvester stalls assistant, this disaster movie called daylight that Rob Cohen, who did Fast and Furious series, directed right? So I got that role. I got a role in The English Patient, and in both cases, my scenes kept getting delayed, and I had some teaching obligations in the United States, so I didn’t get to those girls, which was frustrating, because The English Patient won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. But I did get a chance to meet and talk with Ray fines when I was about to audition, I was sitting in the hallway when I went to meet the producers, and he was very kind, very thoughtful. I remember thinking, where’s Juliet? Panosh? Yeah, eventually, when? Eventually, when the Oscar and, yeah, I like to meet her. Where is she? But I ran into Rafe a couple times outside of the China she taught. So anyway, I’m a huge rape flyings fan, and I can’t believe I ever got a chance to meet him. So I did some smaller moves. I did a box telefilm called code named Wolverine, where I worked with some pretty strong character actors, one of them I just saw on television in this new chaos series. What was he playing? He was playing the chair and the person who drives people across the river, Styx person. So, yeah, I had this kind of funky, sort of almost happening, kind of career there. I did some smaller things, and I had a really excellent agent, my agent, Fernanda Piazza, got me into a lot of cool things, and then I stopped for a long time and did a little bit of theater in Rome. And then I started doing theater at my university, and then in Austin community, we had some wonderful roles. I played a one man show of Frederick Douglass. I played a mentally challenged man and the boys, some boys next to her, I think that’s what it’s called. And some other wonderful roles. I played Poseidon in a Sartre version of Trojan Women. That’s that opened the day.

Cyrus Cassells  10:00

Before the Iraq War began, and it was all set in Iraq. So that was very airy. And then I played a serial killer in the movie a few years ago, and so I’ve had this kind of accompanying career. That series. I also was part of the Austin Shakespeare Company, and I played Othello. I understood it. Othello first played Othello, Leiden King, Lear. I just woke up one day and decided, since I’m a poet, I should do more classical theater and stuff like that. That would be more satisfying for me. It was trying out for Idiocracy that maybe were about the future where everyone’s super stupid to maybe decide that I wanted to do checkup or something that wasn’t super stupid. I mean, it was a parody, but that was I should be doing, like, literature, you’ve run the gamut. Yeah, yeah, very just thinking today, all the various celebrity people that I used to meet, I’ve met such a wide range of people. If I I told if I put it in a book, no one would actually believe I met all these people and had some interaction, including Rafe and other people. I want to get to the writing, but I one thing that struck me, it’s what I’m hearing as we’re talking is that whatever they the yearning is to be on stage that’s still there and or not. Well, how do you explain that desire is still there within you.

Achim Nowak  11:22

I think it’s still there because it’s my greatest talent, beside my writing. And every now and then people who’ve actually seen me act or seen me on stage say, well, we love you as an actor. So I also feel like I’ve lived through so much more than an even stronger actor. So it’s my passion for real. And I think it was recognized early by everyone who knew me that this was one of the but I always understood that writing was my greater, more developed talent, but because I have this other talent that I know, someone said to me, you know, you really like in the top 10% of the actors in the whole world in terms of your talent, I was just like, don’t tell me things like that. Again, I think at my age now, doing the film work is so demanding. Physically, when I played a serial killer, I had to scream for like seven hours and then do a nightmare sex scene. And I thought, I think I’m too old for this, but in terms of theater, I think, well, what’s developing now is I’m getting ready to go back to Rome for three months, and my best friend is a very, very talented actor in Rome, and we’re kind of concocting this English language theater company as a possibility, not something that’s ever been successful in Rome, as my mentor and other people reminded me, but I think I’m going to get involved with that and see what can happen. Sounds wonderful. You know, I live outside of Lisbon now in Portugal, and just discovered that there is a English speaking Theater Company in Lisbon, and they had just done Edward Albee’s, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, wow. Four very juicy roles, right in a very juicy play, and they have their own theater. That’s great. I need to hear more about that. I want to go back to that acting teacher mentor who said, you know, you’re a writer and you’re a professor, and you mentioned so very casually, a year later, you won a poetry award and and you got recognized young for the poetry you’re writing. But how do you go walk us through because this podcast is about people owning their dreams, yeah, switching into stuff. How do you go from, you know, I’m studying acting at Stanford, and then a year or two later, you’re acknowledged for your poetry. How did that happen? Magically?

Cyrus Cassells  13:46

Could you be a little more specific? It’s a real story. It’s highly freakish. It’s a cinder fella story, okay, you know, the first year or two out of college or flailing because actually got turned down by UCL. I tried to get into the theater department, and turned me down after a history of straight A’s, whatever, no one had ever turned me down. I’m so glad that they did. So I had to come up with, you know what? Instead of going on to graduate school, I started living in the Bay Area. So I started this manuscript, which happened to have actor in the titles, called the mud actor. And somehow this little voice came to me when I was a teenager. The title of your first book of poems is the mud actor. I go, Oh, well, what could that be? That actually happened to me before I ever went to college. So I was writing this manuscript, and I got a call one day from Al Young, who was one of the judges for the National Poetry series. So this was only the third year the National Poetry series, and there wasn’t like an open submission. The judges were tasked to find a book. So el young called me, I think it was November, 1980s I hear you’re working in a manuscript. And I said, Well, it’s not really done. He said, Do you think you can get it done by january 1981 I said, Yeah, sure, I did, and I gave it to him, and guess it was the end of February. I was in a concert. I didn’t know him at all. He wasn’t my teacher at Stanford. I really didn’t know him at all, which is the beauty of it. There was no nepotism for real, right? I was at a concert a friend of ours, some friends of our musicians who pretty one of jazz musicians, tuck and Patty said, well, by the way, I’ve chosen your book for the National Poetry series you. He said, You don’t know what you’re you know what what you’re getting into, but you’ll find out, right? So that’s how it happened. I had the I would touch on the shoulder and told that you were a poet. But there was a lot of there was a big delay in terms of me accepting myself as a writer, as a poet, at the point I didn’t consider myself either. Is the person who wrote this manuscript, then Holt shows it,

Achim Nowak  16:00

and then I decided I wanted to add this stuff about reincarnation, which, at the time was like, it wasn’t exactly verboten, but this was pre Shirley McLane, out of the limb you inspired Shirley. This is the year before told her that I wanted to write about my memories world war two that came to me when I was an exchange student, an American exchange student, and they were like, Oh, wow. Then she had to present it to the board New York City. I’m sure that was a wild well afternoon. I had to push myself as much as I could, as a writer, as a person, to write this poem called the memory of Hiroshima. I wasn’t sure how, Al, what? Al, because the poem wasn’t in there. When he chose the book, he was very supportive. He was a very spiritual man there, and he was very

Cyrus Cassells  16:50

hands off. See, my whole career, I’ve had these sort of hands off mentors, which have been great for me. My mentors have all been very like, oh, Cyrus, we believe in you go out and deliver the book poems or whatever, which is great, because I’m that freak Professor United States. I do not have terminal degrees. I just had my books. And that has to be constantly explained to administrations over and over. I mean, I couldn’t even get a lecturing job when I moved to Boston because I didn’t have a master’s degree, right? It’s amazing how inflexible they can be, right? So that’s how it happened. You know, Al young chose me something in the manuscript. I’m sure he wanted to the fact that it was African American, and he wanted to encourage another African American poet and writer at the time. He’s a little bit more famous for his fiction there. So that’s how that happened. I decided if people were being serious. You know, my my book came out in May of of 1982 like a week before my 25th birthday. I decided if other people were taking me serious as a poet. That’s when I decided to apply for the finance work center in Provincetown, where I could work for seven months, right? And I had a project in mind that was connected to New England and all to Concord and Emerson. It’s the one project that I never completed. But I thought, Oh, that’s a great thing. I can go to Concord. I can go to Boston. I can delve into that history. It was a book where of letters to Emerson by all these famous people in his SEER Margaret Fuller, talking to him about his philosophy and his poetry and whatever. I was fortunate that one of my mentors was Galway canal, so I gave him some of the poems. They kind of let me know that they weren’t quite happening, and I wasn’t quite sophisticated enough yet as a writer and a thinker to pull it off rather than just doing this sort of ventriloquism. You know, I’m really acting skill, right? I got about four months into my fellowship there, and then I couldn’t write for maybe, like two years nothing. Couldn’t write, that’s when I started translating, at least I could get the machinery going. So there was actually 12 years between my first book and my second book, while I figured out, am I actually really a poet have my a longer, deeper apprenticeship, I also felt like a bit of a fraud, because I was going to colleges, and I was only, like, a year or two older than them, and they were asking me for advice, and even romantic advice. It was kind of crazy, I felt like. So I stopped that process, and I did more residencies and things. I went to the Malay colony, I went to Yaddo, I went to the Wiltshire foundation into house. I kept working, and slowly, you know, evolving my own esthetic, really and sensing myself as a poet. It was a long process, and it was excruciating, the sense that it was the opposite of my Cinderella experience. Hulk had no interest in publishing poetry.

Achim Nowak  20:00

Be at that point mine or or anyone else’s. And even though I had a contract that said they had to see my work, they just sort of laughed and said, Oh, whatever, right the usual Cavalier treatment. I must have sent my second book, Soul makopathy, shouting out to about 30 different people until I was a finalist for the AWP poetry prize, one by my dear friend Susan Gardner. When I was the runner up, the judge was Lucille Clifton. He’s still my heart. And at the time, AWP provided they worked as your agent. So I sent them a list of publishers I was interested in, and I put Copper Canyon like somewhere in the middle, because I sent to them in a two different versions, and they rejected both of them. So when they told me, Oh, since we know Sam have we’re sending it, we’re sending a manager table, first, I thought, oh, bleep, he’s already rejected it twice. But third time was I, I appreciate this stream of consciousness glimpse at the stuff that’s involved in being a working writer and all the different just because I’m currently in the middle of a residency as we’re speaking. And you mentioned some places that are really well known. They’re beautiful. I’ve been to some of the ones you’ve mentioned. But for somebody who is listening, who goes like, what’s a residency? What happens there? And whether you as a writer, get out of it. Give us a snapshot of what it’s like for you to show up as a residency do your work. Like, what happens there? For me, I think when I look back at it, whether it’s the finance work center or, more recently, it was at the wheelchair foundation and child’s right before the pandemic, is that sense of camaraderie and meeting other artists, other peers, to me, that’s just really the strongest experience they had. For instance, when I got to promise that I stepped out of the cab and Dennis Johnson said, Oh, Hi, are you Cyrus? And we became friends, a little bit of weird backstory. The only time that I’m aware of that People Magazine ever reviewed poetry was Spring 1982

Cyrus Cassells  22:10

so my book, The mud actor, was reviewed. Dennis Johnson’s book was also in the National Poetry series incognito launch was reviewed, but they got our pictures confused. So there are two pictures of Dennis and no picture of me. And my father was very ticked off about it, so I had to write to People Magazine, and they had to put my picture in the letter section. So this thing like, I’m not Dennis Johnson, for me to step out of the car, the first person I made is Dennis Johnson. Felt very fated and wonderful, right? We had a wonderful he’s like my older brother, just, and I miss him terribly, actually, things like that, and just making friends. You know, I met, who did I meet? My best friend at the work center with Lucy Brock, broido. She became a legendary poet and teacher, and I got to see her first manuscript. I got to be her cheerleader before anybody else. And things like that that are incredible. Just powerful, right? Just like also other visual artists and people over the years that, to me, was the most powerful. You know, I learned my lesson here the first time I couldn’t I demanded my manuscript. You never know, but one thing I can share. Last summer, I went to chibitella, Ranieri and Umbria, and I started a manuscript that I didn’t plan to write, and I’m on the last two poems, and I’m going back there at Thanksgiving to see if I can complete it. So you never know. You know. You get different weathers and timing and stuff. I try and control you can’t really control your creativity. I try and guide and say, I want to get this done. And I find that doesn’t work so often for me. I mean, I’m here, I’m here in Hawaii, working in my novel, but mostly I’m working in the Italian book, I just finished two or three major poems I’ve been working on for a few years. You know, I thought about these new poems are very narrative and complex and demand some stamina, right? They’re sequential and they’re complicated, so but I’ve, to my shock, I finished a couple poems here. I just have my big centerpiece sequence about Pasolini, and then the book is done. Okay, all right. I have so many different directions we could go on right now. The conversation because you mentioned Hawaii, we talked about Rome a bunch of times. I know over the summer I spoke with you. You were in Montreal. I know you’ve spent a bunch of time in Mexico, Mexico City in Texas. So you’re this international creature. What draws you to all these international places? Someone said to me, it’s a wonder you were ever born in America. I’m a very you.

Achim Nowak  25:00

Mediterranean person, that’s where I feel most at home, and Greece and Italy. And

Cyrus Cassells  25:07

I’m a person who has a lot of feeling for ancient history and modern but not much in between. But I’m surrounded by middle medievalists, and people are fascinating with that period. I mean, I love renaissance and Shakespeare, but I don’t have much interest in, you know, in nights and all that kind of stuff. I’m very clear about what places draw me. Since I’m interested in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, I tend to want to be or, if not literally, there, like reading literature that’s connected to those areas. I’m also been of a Francophile person ever since I was a child. I was obsessed with speaking French, and didn’t actually learn until I was in my 40s on sabbatical Paris. So I just have always been international person. And my father was in the military, and he traveled all over the world. Every time I thought I’d gone to a new place, I mentioned it to my Father, and of course, he’d been there in like, some place like Udine in northern Italy. Oh, yeah, it’s been a week the family, I’m like, okay, dad, you know, been to Greenland, been to the Congo. So I think from the beginning I was allowed to

Achim Nowak  26:20

feel like it was okay to be a world citizen and to feel real, deeply connected to history. I feel connected to everyone who’s ever lived on the earth in some way that’s real, and the nationalism stuff doesn’t jibe well with me. No, right? I just I don’t believe in the boundaries much at all, and I try to respect them to whatever degree I need to, but I don’t really believe in right? So I get these sort of projects. All my poems are, I tend to be not an occasional poet. I come up with these sequences, like the new sequence, which is a homage to the great 20th century single film directors and writers, poets and writers, and in a way, it’s a sequel to another book I did, my fourth book called more than peace and Cyprus, says so some of the same writers I’m just going more into depth with. I wrote about Pasolini and basani and people before Bertolucci before, but this time I was like, oh, okay, let’s, let’s deepen that there are only a couple of overlapping poems. I wrote so much new stuff that I ended up taking more things out of what I thought I would include from previous work there. So my original idea was to put together all of my Italian poems in one volume, and then instead, I challenged myself at the residency inspired by other people that I around me, like Eisen Hutchinson and Valina Moore at the great Belarusian part. Okay, let’s all right, challenge yourself, right? Omni poetry. That’s how that happened. I decided during the Trump administration that I wanted to make a gesture to Mexican culture and literature by getting more involved with it. So I became part of something called Magda boguins durate conference under the volcano. So I was there january 2020,

Cyrus Cassells  28:10

and have taught their couple times, and I gave a reading with January with one of their great poets who just won the Griffin poetry prize, Omar. OHS Sure, I’m pronouncing his last name right, but I felt like I was disgusted with the demonization of Mexican culture and people that I grow up. My greatest teacher was my Spanish teacher Concepcion, having a lot of I’m not Latina, but feeling her pride and belief in her culture, I felt like I was kind of a bit of an ambassador for that as well, still involved, and I ended up teaching there, but living directly behind Frida kahlo’s house, by coincidence. So I have say about Frida that I haven’t quite put together completely, but that’s one of the things that I follow. Like, okay, I want to make a commitment. My can read Spanish, my speaking is all mixed up with my Italian now, but I have nine years of Spanish study. What can I do with this there? That’s the sort of thing that I tend to follow. So it’s like detective work in some way for me. I was thinking, since you mentioned Trump, you mentioned politics, and you know you are a tenured professor in Texas. Also chuckled when I heard the announcements that you were the Poet Laureate of the state of Texas as a as an African American man, an out gay man. How did you make sense of all of that? I didn’t.

Achim Nowak  29:39

I’ve been nominated, I think twice before, and I never, never, never thought I would be chosen, given the politics. So when they called me up, what was beautiful was a former MFA student of mine was on the Texas Commission of the arch call me episode, well, you’ve been named Poet Laureate this year. I thought, well, that’s interesting, because I’m let.

Cyrus Cassells  30:00

In Hawaii right now, temporarily, and it was a lot of it had to do with the pandemic. There I was on leave. I was on my Guggenheim Fellowship. Pandemic started right? I haven’t made sense of it. I think what’s happened? A friend of mine, who’s an astrologer passed away, recently told me that Texas would be really good for me professionally, he did whatever calculation. It’s been true. I have had all this support being Poet Laureate named regions professor, even though I don’t have a terminal degree University Distinguished Professor. All of that despite being obviously very different when I got the idea that my project that I wanted to put for was a Juneteenth poetry contest for junior high and high school students of the state, I thought, Oh, good. Something subversive I can do, because they Juneteenth as a federal holiday had just been established. I thought, oh, under the banner of the Federal holiday. I’m going to give them information about slight history that’s, you know, that they were trying to censor. They’ve been trying to censor all over the country, really

Achim Nowak  31:12

about that history. So I felt good that I didn’t get any overt right wing resistance to my project. In fact, they sort of ignored it. I got even bolder. I had the poetry ceremony at the Neil Cochran House Museum in Austin, which houses the only intact slave quarters in the city. So the kids, I brought them to a slave cabin,

Cyrus Cassells  31:39

and I didn’t get any Flack. Not once did people reference my being queer either. I mean, I was kind of shocked. Maybe it’s because it was a pandemic and everybody was not on their regular news game or something. Yeah. But the thing is, that’s really and it’s disrespectful. I mean, that year, 2122 we didn’t even have an online ceremony. They didn’t have an online ceremony for us. The previous one,

Achim Nowak  32:08

it was sort of a name only. I mean, I got the hear you. Hear You. Cyrus is the poet laureate from a Texas Legislature. No money for a project, no money. Personally, I raised $50,000 to the Academy of American poet Poet Laureate program. I’m thrilled that one of my former colleagues students is who’s currently the poet laureate of Texas. Is biracial woman, wonderful poet is got the funds as well. So I had to go in the funding cycle was slightly off from my regular cycle, so I had to do it last year. I’m about good news, good news. I am about to get the design for my Selected Poems, and they’ve decided to bring it out in January.

Cyrus Cassells  32:55

And it’s Texas Christian University Press. I asked to do just a Selected Poems because I already had eight books, and trying to add more with the new poems is going to be too much, but I wasn’t sure if they were going to try. And I don’t know, said whatever, but now they they got the full on me. I’m quite excited about it, because I’ve never, I’ve never done a Selected Poems before. I’ve always resisted it because my books. I created them as books, but people have been, sort of, say begging, but asking me. So I think the result is good. It’s called Everything in life is resurrection, based on the Hiroshima, yeah, based on the Hiroshima poem. That’s pretty. I felt really good when I landed on because I versed the order I went from the world that the shooter left us from. So it’s 40 years of my work. I didn’t include my newer books, right? 40 years of my working goes back to my first book. Okay, so as I was talking about your poetry, I’m gonna read part of the poem, okay, it’s from your most recent collection. Is there room for another horse at the horse ranch. I’m reading part of it because this is your poem titled, spring comes to the city of Lisbon. I just moved to 40 minutes from Lisbon, so you just read some of the language just the beginning. Then we can talk about a little bit. Okay, sure, here we go. The tiled city was first an autumn Queen then a winter one. City of scattering Sunday vowels and mourning doves morning like to grieve. City of Amethysts and pawnshop gold, her regal abruptly revealed flesh, her light, holding Hills pallid at times, and a lulled babies bunting or a fetching bridal veil. That’s the beginning. It gets into a little bit of sex later. But, uh. As as a lot of this book does,

Achim Nowak  35:05

Lisbon is a one of those golden cities right now that’s on everybody’s radar. I know you’ve been there bunches of times. You chose this language carefully, obviously. So what would you like to say about the beginning this poem and Lisbon, and what Lisbon does to you and your heart and soul. Well, it’s clearly one of my favorite cities. It remains. So I’ve been coming to Lisbon for, I think I came right after my mother died. So it also in 2006

Cyrus Cassells  35:40

so it has a kind of, you know, it’s mourning, and it was a place that gave me solace and beauty when I lost my mother. And, you know, losing your your mother is like the giant earthquake moment of your life, right, when your mother is your window in the world. So it has that kind of beauty. I’ve always been a person attracted to ceramics, so the fact that that Lisbon has buildings with ceramics on the outside, oh yes, like I fell in love with the isolation in the museum. So I’m also before then, San Francisco was my favorite American city, and it has some physical resemblances to there.

Achim Nowak  36:24

Right away, I made some important friends that are still my friends there, who are both of them are actually visual artists there.

Cyrus Cassells  36:34

So I just find it magical and appeals to me esthetically. Love the food. I find that Portuguese people are easily going compared to Spaniards, Italians and French people and Greek people. So I always like that, that sense of lesser drama, less drama. There.

Achim Nowak  36:59

I try to do a lot of different things. In terms of poetry about Lisbon, originally, I was trying to do photos for my mother

Cyrus Cassells  37:10

and I, and I wrote some of them, and I never was quite happy with them, so I took some of the imagery from those photos, and I put them into this poem and made it more of a celebration of the city, rather than sadness, a celebration of one of my lovers there, one particular time I was there, and

Achim Nowak  37:34

just more of a sense of adventure and fun and and kind of serendipity. There’s, there was a serendipity, serendipitous quality to the city when I first went there, that was a good foil for my my grief and my shock at losing my mother there, because I didn’t expect to lose her at that point. As as we start to wrap up and I hope those of you are listening get a sense of just, you know, you’ve been everywhere, and you’ve done lots of things with with high admiration, and you’ve acknowledged, you know, being in your late 60s. So you’ve done a lot and seen a lot.

Cyrus Cassells  38:19

What is something you know about life now that you didn’t know or couldn’t have known when you were in your early 20s that you would like to share with us. I think my survival strategy was perfection and being a good boy. And I think there’s so much to be said for making mistakes and messes,

Achim Nowak  38:48

I’ve come to really appreciate more of the messiness of life and kind of irresolution and not knowing what you’re doing a lot more and one of the things, one of our gifts is with poetry, is that it allows for

Cyrus Cassells  39:07

ambivalence, paradox, all of those sort of in between sticks that I think are really juicy and can produce some wonderful insights and experiences. So it’s okay to be messy. It’s okay to be I think that’s a beautiful life lesson and message.

Achim Nowak  39:29

Now for our listeners who want to learn more about you or about your work, where would you like to send them, where they can where can they find out more about you?

Cyrus Cassells  39:43

I do finally have a website that has all about my books and I that was only created a few months ago. I’ve been very I’m not a Luddite, but I resisted it, so I got my former assistant to put it together. That’s a that’s probably the perfect place.

Achim Nowak  40:00

Nice too. Is it under your name? Cyrus cassells.com

Cyrus Cassells  40:03

Yes. Cyrus cassells.com HTTP. Cyrus cassells.com you’ll find it there. There’s a lot of stuff about me on the web. Could just type in my name, and you’ll find all sorts of things, some footage of readings. There’s a lot on there to explore there.

Achim Nowak  40:24

So I’m very grateful for this opportunity to share stuff about my path and where I’ve gone. And

Cyrus Cassells  40:33

I’m excited because even as I contemplate possibly retiring from my university, I am just so busy writing, actually, Greg, I have nine books that have already been published, and then this one coming out in January, and then I’ve completed two other ones. I got a big Lorca project that’s coming out in 26 so I am not going to be resting on any laurels or whatever. I’m just going to be busy, busy, busy, and maybe sneaking some theater in there too, right?

Achim Nowak  41:05

Well, have an amazing fall in Italy. Thank you. I selfishly support you in going that English language theater company, if that’s meant to be that sounds Yeah. Thank you.

Cyrus Cassells  41:19

And maybe I’ll come and come to Lisbon. I may come in January for a little bit if, if I do, let you know. Oh, come by. Thank you for the conversation. Yeah, thank you so much. Take care of it. Good September. Bye.

Achim Nowak  41:33

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my for the ACT podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim nowak.com it’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors. See you there, and bye for now you.