WEBVTT - Ben Palpant Talks to Poets 0:00:02.570 --> 0:00:08.389 Whether they're regrets or failures or inadequacies or those limitations 0:00:08.390 --> 0:00:12.110 that I wish weren't there. They're still there, right? But 0:00:12.110 --> 0:00:15.470 there is a truer thing, which is that the Holy 0:00:15.470 --> 0:00:19.520 Spirit is at work doing marvelous things through a guy 0:00:19.550 --> 0:00:23.060 even like me. And what can I do but say, Lord, 0:00:23.060 --> 0:00:25.460 thank you for that. Show me the next thing. 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:32.479 Welcome to the Habit podcast conversations with writers about writing. 0:00:32.510 --> 0:00:37.819 I'm Jonathan Rogers, your host, and a midsummer Night's Dream. Theseus, 0:00:37.820 --> 0:00:41.270 that paragon of left brain thinking, remarks that the seething 0:00:41.270 --> 0:00:45.260 brains of poets like those of lovers and lunatics, apprehend 0:00:45.260 --> 0:00:48.830 more than cool reason ever comprehends. He means it as 0:00:48.830 --> 0:00:51.890 a criticism. But the poets I know would agree with him. 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.620 They spend their days reaching out toward things that cool 0:00:54.620 --> 0:00:58.430 reason will never comprehend. As hamlet told Horatio, there are 0:00:58.430 --> 0:01:00.610 more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of 0:01:00.610 --> 0:01:04.330 in your philosophy. The poet Robert Cording says that we 0:01:04.330 --> 0:01:07.870 live in a world that is untranslatable and unexplainable, but 0:01:07.870 --> 0:01:11.320 still intelligible. I don't know any better reason to write 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.760 or to read poetry. Ben Halpern is a lover of poetry, 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:18.550 for reasons that will become apparent in the following discussion. 0:01:18.819 --> 0:01:21.190 On assignment from the Rabbit room, Ben sat down to 0:01:21.220 --> 0:01:24.459 interview a few poets to pick their seething brains, as 0:01:24.459 --> 0:01:27.400 Theseus would have it. He liked it so much he 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.700 interviewed a few more, then a few more, and when 0:01:30.700 --> 0:01:33.880 he had interviewed 17 poets, he collected those interviews into 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.330 a book called An Axe for the Frozen Sea. Conversations 0:01:37.330 --> 0:01:41.140 with poets about what matters most. It's a fascinating look 0:01:41.170 --> 0:01:43.210 into the minds and hearts of poets who work out 0:01:43.209 --> 0:01:47.320 of gratitude, out of abundance, sometimes out of grief, never 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.380 out of grievance. I always love talking to Ben Philpott, 0:01:50.380 --> 0:01:52.150 and I think you're going to enjoy listening in on 0:01:52.150 --> 0:01:57.430 our conversation. Ben, I'm so happy to have you on 0:01:57.430 --> 0:02:00.870 the Habit podcast again to talk about an axe for 0:02:00.870 --> 0:02:01.950 the frozen sea. 0:02:02.130 --> 0:02:04.290 I'm so glad to be back, Jonathan. I am a 0:02:04.290 --> 0:02:08.190 huge fan of everything, the habit and everything. Jonathan Rogers. 0:02:08.310 --> 0:02:09.720 You're doing great work. 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:15.690 Well. Thank you. Uh, I really love that. An axe 0:02:15.690 --> 0:02:19.109 for the frozen sea. These interviews are so good. Um, 0:02:19.139 --> 0:02:22.410 how about you talk about, uh, where this book came from? 0:02:22.410 --> 0:02:25.020 What it is. What's this book about? And why did 0:02:25.020 --> 0:02:26.130 you put it together? 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:30.330 Yeah, well, I'm glad you really like it. Um, to 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.720 tell the truth, Jonathan, I'm the most unlikeliest candidate to 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:37.050 write this book ever. Uh, when I was growing up, 0:02:37.050 --> 0:02:41.010 I thought poetry was something for teachers to prank kids 0:02:41.010 --> 0:02:44.760 with so I could fail every quiz. And I thought 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:49.140 poets were just trying to sound obscure and out of 0:02:49.169 --> 0:02:52.680 touch with reality. They just never really crossed the bridge 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:56.730 for me. So as a teenage boy, I if you 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.149 told me, look, someday you're going to spend your 40s 0:02:59.180 --> 0:03:02.330 talking to poets and even writing poetry. I would have 0:03:02.330 --> 0:03:04.850 just run for The Hills Called you a liar and 0:03:04.850 --> 0:03:09.380 other filthy names. But, um, here I am. And so 0:03:09.380 --> 0:03:13.070 the journey to that is its own story. But really, 0:03:13.070 --> 0:03:15.620 I give full credit to the rabbit room. You know, 0:03:15.650 --> 0:03:19.220 they had this idea. What if. What if someone interviewed 0:03:19.220 --> 0:03:22.730 poets for the Substack and asked me if I would 0:03:22.730 --> 0:03:25.579 be interested, and I said, sure, I'd love to do that. 0:03:25.580 --> 0:03:32.239 And then found three poets in my area. So Scott Cairns, 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.290 Misha Willette and Lucy Shaw over in Seattle and drove 0:03:36.290 --> 0:03:38.900 over there and said, well, let's just take a crack 0:03:38.900 --> 0:03:45.740 at this thing. And I was probably in the second interview. 0:03:46.610 --> 0:03:50.390 So moved by the first one and so deeply enriched 0:03:50.390 --> 0:03:54.050 by it and then having it happen, the second interview 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.800 that I thought, these are really, really special and it's 0:03:57.820 --> 0:04:00.640 not really because of me. Honestly, I feel like I'm 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:05.170 swept up in something much bigger than me. It's really 0:04:05.170 --> 0:04:11.740 the gift of being in the presence of really thoughtful, um, 0:04:12.010 --> 0:04:17.320 perceptive and gifted people and then just asking the right 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:20.800 question at the right time. So this book, I think 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.560 we were probably halfway through. There are 17 poets, and 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:28.029 we were halfway through it when Rabbit Room and I 0:04:28.029 --> 0:04:32.680 agreed that this this was a really worth putting into 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:37.960 a book at some point. And I'm just absolutely gobsmacked 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:39.940 that I'm the one with the name on the front, 0:04:39.940 --> 0:04:44.980 because this isn't really my book. It's it's all these really, 0:04:44.980 --> 0:04:48.940 really incredible people, and I'm just lucky to have been 0:04:48.940 --> 0:04:50.529 in their presence, honestly. 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:55.450 I understand that right. I feel like in this capacity 0:04:55.450 --> 0:04:59.880 as a podcaster. Interviewer. You're just teeing people up to 0:04:59.910 --> 0:05:03.810 to do great things. And so, um, I feel the 0:05:03.810 --> 0:05:08.070 same way about my name being on the podcast because 0:05:08.100 --> 0:05:10.650 it's the it's the the guests who do all the work. 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.830 So yeah, but it's it's such a beautifully humble place 0:05:13.830 --> 0:05:16.560 to stay. Um, there were times in the interviews, you'll, 0:05:16.589 --> 0:05:21.240 you'll you'll appreciate this when the interview with Li-young Lee 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.920 was so multiple ones like like this, where I just 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.790 felt so small in the best way possible. I just 0:05:29.790 --> 0:05:33.390 couldn't believe that I was that God had orchestrated things 0:05:33.390 --> 0:05:36.600 such that little old me happened to be the one. 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.570 When all of these things are happening to these poets 0:05:39.570 --> 0:05:44.580 and and deep, deep conversations that I just couldn't believe it. 0:05:44.580 --> 0:05:48.750 I felt so small that I wanted to stay that 0:05:48.750 --> 0:05:50.670 small the rest of my life. It was that kind 0:05:50.670 --> 0:05:53.640 of small. Not like a deprecation where you're like, well, 0:05:53.670 --> 0:05:57.380 who am I? I have that Up funny, but it's 0:05:57.380 --> 0:06:00.500 really the kind of small that makes you feel like, okay, Lord, 0:06:00.500 --> 0:06:03.560 do this as much as possible. Use. If you're going 0:06:03.589 --> 0:06:06.650 to use me in this way, it's the the loaves 0:06:06.650 --> 0:06:09.440 and fish kind of moment where, you know, we don't 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:10.970 know that kid's name. 0:06:10.970 --> 0:06:12.020 But yeah. 0:06:12.170 --> 0:06:15.320 I can imagine being that kid and saying, well, it's 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.270 what I got. I don't know what you can do 0:06:17.300 --> 0:06:21.350 with this. And then to watch that unfold. Yeah. My goodness, 0:06:21.350 --> 0:06:24.770 that little boy had to have just been amazed, right? 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:25.640 It took a certain. 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:31.010 Amount of, um, naivete to hand over those fish, you know, 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.500 and it took a certain amount of, uh, being out 0:06:33.500 --> 0:06:35.090 of touch with the status quo. 0:06:36.980 --> 0:06:40.159 That's right. Well, and just the willingness to say, this 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.250 is what I got, it's it's, um, you know, we 0:06:43.250 --> 0:06:46.430 want to be more than we actually are. So there's 0:06:46.430 --> 0:06:49.250 this temptation to grandstand a little bit and say, well, 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:51.589 you know, I've got this thing. It's pretty great. But 0:06:51.589 --> 0:06:54.169 when you've got just this little lunch pail and you go, 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.760 that's all I God, man. Jonathan. That's how I feel 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.070 a lot. And I just feel blessed that God would 0:07:00.100 --> 0:07:03.309 multiply those loaves and fish. It's incredible. 0:07:03.339 --> 0:07:06.940 Yeah. One thing I think about sometimes is the idea of, 0:07:06.970 --> 0:07:09.790 you know, one definition of the habit of a habit 0:07:09.790 --> 0:07:13.570 is the way a, a plant is inclined to grow. 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:15.370 You know, a vine habit or a bush habit or 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.280 a I can't remember. The other habits are. But anyway, 0:07:18.310 --> 0:07:21.640 you know, that habit is a limitation, but it's also 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:26.350 a form into which it can grow into itself. And um, 0:07:26.380 --> 0:07:29.830 and so as you're talking about feeling small and, and, 0:07:29.860 --> 0:07:33.790 and offering what you have to offer, that kind of 0:07:33.820 --> 0:07:37.660 feels like, you know, you acknowledging that, that whatever limits 0:07:37.660 --> 0:07:41.620 you have are not failures, they're just your limits. And 0:07:41.620 --> 0:07:44.110 and thank goodness for limits that give you an idea of, 0:07:44.110 --> 0:07:45.490 of what you have to contribute. 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.520 Yeah. No. Amen to that. I, I don't remember who 0:07:48.550 --> 0:07:52.210 the French writer was, but they say he's the French 0:07:52.240 --> 0:08:00.000 equivalent of, Um, one of your favorites? Flannery O'Connor. Mauriac. Mauriac. 0:08:00.030 --> 0:08:04.200 He said, I don't I never picked my my color palette. 0:08:04.230 --> 0:08:06.930 It it's just who I am. Yeah. And I couldn't 0:08:06.930 --> 0:08:11.940 write something else. Even tried. Yeah. So those limitations, accepting 0:08:11.940 --> 0:08:16.620 the fact that I'm not Tolkien, uh, growing up in 0:08:16.650 --> 0:08:20.820 with such an adoration for Tolkien and Lewis and all 0:08:20.820 --> 0:08:24.330 these others and then, you know, working in the classical 0:08:24.330 --> 0:08:28.350 Christian school movement for the last 25 years, it's easy 0:08:28.350 --> 0:08:32.220 to start thinking, well, all the great works are, you know, 0:08:32.580 --> 0:08:35.309 long gone, all the great artists are long gone. And 0:08:35.309 --> 0:08:37.020 one of my hopes for this book is for people 0:08:37.020 --> 0:08:41.220 to realize, know that there's great work happening right now, really, 0:08:41.220 --> 0:08:45.870 really incredible work. And all you have to do is, um, 0:08:45.870 --> 0:08:51.119 recognize and this does take maybe a lifetime, but gradually 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:55.190 accept those limitations. This is who I am and this 0:08:55.190 --> 0:08:57.349 is the these are the stories God has given me 0:08:57.350 --> 0:09:01.880 to steward. But this is less about the writing. Life 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:05.990 is less about putting your name on the book, um, 0:09:06.020 --> 0:09:09.920 or getting some kind of recognition. And it's more about 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:15.500 stewarding the stories and the gifts that God has given 0:09:15.500 --> 0:09:18.260 to you. I would even say there's a great pressure 0:09:18.260 --> 0:09:20.300 to find your voice, which I think is a bit 0:09:20.300 --> 0:09:23.240 of a it's misleading. It takes people down, I think, 0:09:23.270 --> 0:09:25.579 a wrong road, because then they try to find some 0:09:25.580 --> 0:09:28.310 great voice. Well, your voice just comes when you've written 0:09:28.309 --> 0:09:32.270 1000 hours worth of writing, right? And often it starts 0:09:32.270 --> 0:09:36.170 by simply imitating the people you go, I wish I 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:39.890 sounded more like so Lucy Shaw, for example. I remember 0:09:39.890 --> 0:09:43.730 reading her 20 years ago and thinking, my goodness, she's 0:09:43.730 --> 0:09:48.110 so she's so good and so thoughtful. But her prose 0:09:48.110 --> 0:09:53.520 was so inviting, so hospitable that I remember back then 0:09:53.550 --> 0:09:56.730 having no seed of an idea that I would ever 0:09:56.730 --> 0:10:00.270 write someday, thinking if I ever wrote someday, I want 0:10:00.300 --> 0:10:04.740 to sound like Lucy Shaw. Yeah. And that's all it is, right? 0:10:04.770 --> 0:10:07.500 So I imitated her in some of my early work 0:10:07.530 --> 0:10:11.610 and thought, how would Lucy say this? Yeah. Now she's 0:10:11.610 --> 0:10:14.160 in this beautiful book, and I got to talk to 0:10:14.190 --> 0:10:16.319 Lucy Shaw. How did that happen? 0:10:17.309 --> 0:10:20.310 What are the characteristics of prose? Or for that matter, 0:10:20.309 --> 0:10:23.280 poetry that you find hospitable? 0:10:23.700 --> 0:10:27.179 Well, I wish I had some great definition for that. 0:10:27.300 --> 0:10:29.520 A hospitable place to me is a place where I 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.670 want to stay. What I don't mean by a hospitable, 0:10:32.670 --> 0:10:35.880 by a hospitable place, is a place that's simply safe 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:40.950 or beautiful or easy. Because you put me in a 0:10:40.950 --> 0:10:45.390 hospitable place with people who I love. And they can 0:10:45.420 --> 0:10:48.570 they can tell me where I'm wrong. They can. They 0:10:48.570 --> 0:10:51.900 can point my flaws, and I'll accept them much easier 0:10:51.900 --> 0:10:56.569 because it's a hospitable place. So I think some of 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:00.890 that is the art of world making some of that. 0:11:00.890 --> 0:11:04.250 But I think the majority of that is a heart posture. 0:11:04.250 --> 0:11:08.360 It starts with the poet or the author having a 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.120 posture of hospitality and saying, I want to make this 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:15.740 place welcoming, you know, the Italian word for stanza. This 0:11:15.740 --> 0:11:20.540 came up in Angelo Donald's, um, interview. In the book 0:11:20.540 --> 0:11:24.590 we talk about the Italian word for stanza means little room. 0:11:24.830 --> 0:11:25.580 Really? 0:11:25.610 --> 0:11:29.540 Yeah. I didn't know that until I'd read an article 0:11:29.540 --> 0:11:33.890 right before our interview. And I thought, well, Angela's work is, 0:11:34.460 --> 0:11:37.910 you know, these all these poets write very different styles. 0:11:37.910 --> 0:11:40.939 Some of them are very sonnet focused. Some of them 0:11:40.940 --> 0:11:44.089 are a little more loose, but but they're all very, 0:11:44.090 --> 0:11:49.940 very intentional about their work. And for each one of them, 0:11:49.940 --> 0:11:53.140 I can say I picked them because I found their 0:11:53.140 --> 0:11:56.500 work to be hospitable in some form. I wanted to 0:11:56.500 --> 0:11:59.890 stay in the poem as long as possible. And this 0:11:59.890 --> 0:12:02.949 is true of fiction too. The works I love the most, 0:12:02.950 --> 0:12:04.990 even if they're not a place I would like to 0:12:04.990 --> 0:12:09.370 go because there's so much heartache. Yeah, there's still a 0:12:09.370 --> 0:12:13.060 tone about it that makes me want to stay. And 0:12:13.059 --> 0:12:15.730 I think that begins with the author and the poet. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:17.800 I don't think it starts with saying, how do I 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:22.809 make this place beautiful? First, it's a hard posture. Yeah. 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.770 So there's a book. When I went to Kentucky two 0:12:26.770 --> 0:12:32.260 years ago called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara Jonathan in 0:12:32.260 --> 0:12:35.500 that book, I read that on one flight back. I 0:12:35.500 --> 0:12:37.929 picked it up at a bookstore there in Kentucky and 0:12:37.929 --> 0:12:41.829 read it all the way home. And I was not, 0:12:41.860 --> 0:12:46.209 you know, he's talking about, um, the story of how 0:12:46.210 --> 0:12:49.569 he went from wanting to build a restaurant to making 0:12:49.570 --> 0:12:53.340 one of the best restaurants in the world, which I 0:12:53.340 --> 0:12:57.270 would think means, you know, here are expensive, expensive plates 0:12:57.270 --> 0:13:00.540 and you've got everything's high end, right? Everything's got to 0:13:00.540 --> 0:13:04.590 be elegant. And the end result of this is he 0:13:04.590 --> 0:13:07.140 learned that you just have to love people and actually 0:13:07.140 --> 0:13:10.530 genuinely love them. And his restaurant is known for the 0:13:10.530 --> 0:13:16.140 way that they anticipate your need, love you and make 0:13:16.140 --> 0:13:18.449 you walk away going, gosh, I wish this night would 0:13:18.450 --> 0:13:21.720 never end. So if I I'm not going to ever, 0:13:21.750 --> 0:13:25.770 you know, make a restaurant like that. But in my 0:13:25.770 --> 0:13:28.290 own home, I want to have a tone where people 0:13:28.290 --> 0:13:30.900 want to stay, right? They just want to be there 0:13:30.900 --> 0:13:34.260 and they feel as comfortable as possible. And some of 0:13:34.290 --> 0:13:39.660 that requires really a real attention to the details. So yes. 0:13:39.690 --> 0:13:44.190 Should I have laundry on the on the kitchen island? 0:13:44.220 --> 0:13:47.880 Probably not. Right. But um, so if I were to 0:13:47.910 --> 0:13:52.700 take this for your Listeners, the writing that we do, 0:13:52.700 --> 0:13:56.210 all of the little details that we tend to forget 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:03.350 matter like commas, grammar, the cover, the even the font size, 0:14:03.350 --> 0:14:06.650 all of those details that a publisher should care about. 0:14:06.650 --> 0:14:10.310 Those things are they matter. They you know, I love 0:14:10.309 --> 0:14:13.070 what rabbit room does the the work they put out 0:14:13.070 --> 0:14:16.760 an axe for the frozen sea feels. Yeah. Hospitable. Before 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.150 you even open it. Yeah. And all of the attention 0:14:20.150 --> 0:14:24.080 to detail matters. But really, it's a hard posture, I think. 0:14:24.110 --> 0:14:28.790 Yeah, I love it. Well, okay. A theme that kept 0:14:28.790 --> 0:14:30.530 coming up in your interviews that I thought might be 0:14:30.530 --> 0:14:35.360 fun to talk about is the idea of Abundance Overflow. 0:14:35.630 --> 0:14:37.790 Scott Cairns. Yeah. Yeah. 0:14:37.850 --> 0:14:40.100 Talking about the little boy at the end on the 0:14:40.100 --> 0:14:43.280 front porch. Yeah. One of my. I have so many 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:47.630 favorite moments in this. Um, every interview had its own 0:14:47.630 --> 0:14:50.530 surprise for me that I thought, oh, this is just 0:14:50.530 --> 0:14:53.860 I don't want to ever forget it. Scott was at 0:14:53.860 --> 0:14:58.120 the very end when he, um, we were talking about 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:03.040 his poem idiot Psalm two. Um, let me turn to 0:15:03.070 --> 0:15:06.430 it here. Okay, so this is the last stanza of 0:15:06.430 --> 0:15:11.920 idiot Psalm two. He says, make me to awaken daily 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:16.960 with a willingness to roll out readily, accompanied by grateful smirk, 0:15:17.020 --> 0:15:23.650 a giddy joy, the idiot's undying expectation. Despite the evidence. 0:15:23.650 --> 0:15:26.230 I wrote that down years ago in my journal. I 0:15:26.230 --> 0:15:28.270 told Scott that has been in my journal, and I 0:15:28.270 --> 0:15:33.280 look to it pretty regularly because the evidence, the evidence 0:15:33.310 --> 0:15:39.790 is abundant, that life is hard and the world is broken, 0:15:39.790 --> 0:15:42.940 and there's so much loss and so much to grieve. 0:15:42.940 --> 0:15:45.520 But if I spend all my time on that side 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.540 of the ledger, then I won't actually fill up the 0:15:48.540 --> 0:15:54.479 other side, which is God's abundant blessings which smoke, smoke 0:15:54.510 --> 0:15:57.240 the other side of the ledger. And if I practice 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:01.440 the gratitude on this side, then it puts perspective on 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:03.900 the other side of the ledger. So I brought that 0:16:03.900 --> 0:16:06.330 up to him and he said, look, Ben, I'm just 0:16:06.330 --> 0:16:09.300 I wrote that poem for me, which is a common 0:16:09.300 --> 0:16:11.640 theme with all these poets. They're not really writing for 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:16.200 an audience. They're writing for themselves. Yeah. Uh, he said, 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.020 I remember being a little boy and we were. It 0:16:19.020 --> 0:16:23.520 was winter night, snow on the ground, and the family 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.970 had to pack up. It was dark out, but being little, 0:16:26.970 --> 0:16:29.640 there's not much to pack. Yeah, he said. I went 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.670 out on the front step and he said, I remember 0:16:32.670 --> 0:16:36.540 the crunch of the snow beneath my feet and he 0:16:36.540 --> 0:16:40.290 looked up in the sky was crystalline winter, you know, 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.290 stars are so close you can almost touch them. And 0:16:43.290 --> 0:16:47.900 he can see his breath in the air. He said 0:16:47.930 --> 0:16:54.680 out loud, I love life. And, uh, he said, I 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:57.920 just want to hold on to that. The older I get, 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.530 the harder it gets to hold on to that. Well, 0:17:00.530 --> 0:17:03.590 that's so true, right? The older we get, it's easier 0:17:03.590 --> 0:17:07.190 to get bitter and remember all the hard things. But 0:17:07.220 --> 0:17:10.460 hanging on to that little boy inside of us. That 0:17:10.460 --> 0:17:13.970 little girl that just loved life. Boy, that's a full 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:18.169 time job. Yeah, but that's part of the abundance. That's 0:17:18.170 --> 0:17:21.440 the overflow of the heart. And that little boy was 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:25.220 standing in the overflow of God's abundant blessing. Right. And 0:17:25.220 --> 0:17:27.859 just acknowledging I love life. 0:17:27.859 --> 0:17:30.560 Just that phrase. Despite the evidence. I think all writers 0:17:30.590 --> 0:17:31.639 need to have that. 0:17:31.670 --> 0:17:32.540 Amen. 0:17:32.570 --> 0:17:33.470 Written. 0:17:33.500 --> 0:17:37.250 Yeah, it's not actually the you know, we tend to think, well, 0:17:37.250 --> 0:17:42.170 the reality is the world's broken. Well, that's true on 0:17:42.170 --> 0:17:44.780 the one hand. Right. There's a lot of things that, 0:17:44.810 --> 0:17:47.080 you know, Flannery O'Connor going back to one of our 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:51.220 mutual favorites. She she shines a full on blast light 0:17:51.250 --> 0:17:54.460 on the reality of the brokenness of the human spirit, 0:17:54.490 --> 0:17:57.790 of the human being. But there is a break with 0:17:57.790 --> 0:18:02.560 reality when we forget what God's actually at work doing. 0:18:02.590 --> 0:18:05.500 Yeah, that's true. And there's something a lot truer than 0:18:05.500 --> 0:18:06.580 the brokenness. 0:18:06.609 --> 0:18:07.300 That's right. 0:18:07.330 --> 0:18:10.810 I appreciate so many of these poets talked about. A 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:12.580 lot of times it was in terms of gratitude, but 0:18:12.580 --> 0:18:16.840 getting in touch with what was truer than this evidence 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.020 that we detect with our senses that things are pretty 0:18:20.050 --> 0:18:21.340 jacked up around here. 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:28.150 That's right. Yeah. You know, I think of Marilyn Nelson's 0:18:28.150 --> 0:18:31.330 interview at the very end of her interview, and this 0:18:31.330 --> 0:18:36.340 is a woman who's gone through so much sorrow, right? And, um, 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:42.760 not just personal sorrow, but cultural, societal upheaval. Um, and 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.979 at the end of her interview, she shared a story 0:18:46.980 --> 0:18:50.369 about crossing the street when she was a teenage girl. 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.129 This little black teenage girl walking across the street and 0:18:53.130 --> 0:18:56.100 here comes this white man across the way. So this 0:18:56.100 --> 0:19:01.950 is in a time of a lot of societal upheaval, race, upheaval. And, um, 0:19:02.369 --> 0:19:06.359 the man's walking straight. They're going to pretty much bump 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:10.050 into each other. And right when he gets to her, 0:19:10.050 --> 0:19:13.050 he looks her right in the eye and says, you 0:19:13.050 --> 0:19:17.880 are beautiful. And then he just kept walking. Well, Marilyn's 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:21.419 never forgotten that moment, right? And which of us? None 0:19:21.420 --> 0:19:24.869 of us would. How many of us need that even 0:19:24.869 --> 0:19:29.280 to this day? The affirmation that you are a great 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:33.000 idea that God had. And I'm lucky to just pass 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:37.620 you on the street. Right? All these shining faces. I 0:19:37.619 --> 0:19:40.470 just wish I could hold on to that more often. Um, 0:19:40.500 --> 0:19:43.350 those are those little moments that God gives us if 0:19:43.350 --> 0:19:45.950 we have eyes to see them. and we need to 0:19:45.980 --> 0:19:49.070 actually cultivate those eyes that help us to see the 0:19:49.070 --> 0:19:51.860 truer thing. Right? Because I wake up and I look 0:19:51.859 --> 0:19:55.130 in the mirror and I go, wow, you're still here. 0:19:55.130 --> 0:19:58.520 And all of the things that, you know, whether they're 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:03.950 regrets or failures or inadequacies or those limitations that I 0:20:03.950 --> 0:20:07.699 wish weren't there, they're still there, right? But there is 0:20:07.700 --> 0:20:11.240 a truer thing, which is that the Holy Spirit is 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.379 at work doing marvelous things through a guy even like 0:20:15.380 --> 0:20:19.460 me and I. What can I do but say, Lord, 0:20:19.460 --> 0:20:22.250 thank you for that, but show me the next thing. 0:20:22.609 --> 0:20:26.150 Mhm. Yeah. The poets you talk to are people who 0:20:26.150 --> 0:20:31.159 have practiced paying attention to those things. Yeah. Your subtitle 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:34.010 is conversations with poets about what matters most. It's not 0:20:34.010 --> 0:20:40.460 just conversations about technique or or craft. These are conversations 0:20:40.460 --> 0:20:43.160 that reveal that the craft and the technique is a 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:47.500 means toward abundant life. Toward. Toward a fuller, fuller life. 0:20:47.530 --> 0:20:51.490 Anything happen in these conversations to to change the way 0:20:51.490 --> 0:20:53.140 you think about everything. 0:20:54.580 --> 0:20:58.270 That's every single one of the conversations. Yeah. I'm finding 0:20:58.270 --> 0:21:01.240 in interviews that it's really hard to actually answer that 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.080 question because I want I feel like I'm cheating when 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:07.750 I say, well, every single one. So I do need 0:21:07.750 --> 0:21:10.780 to pick, but it's hard to pick. And people who 0:21:10.780 --> 0:21:14.020 read the book are already acknowledging that each one has 0:21:14.020 --> 0:21:17.169 its unique thing that meant the most to them. But 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:21.520 you know, on one level there is only one important. 0:21:21.550 --> 0:21:23.470 You know, if we were to take the subtitle and say, 0:21:23.470 --> 0:21:26.439 conversations with poets about what matters most, what matters most 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:30.430 is Jesus Christ. But what I love about these, these 0:21:30.430 --> 0:21:36.850 conversations is that Jesus Christ went into every corner of 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:41.080 of their experience and of their thought and of their craft. 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:46.109 So he's not simply The Savior, Jesus Christ. He's the 0:21:46.109 --> 0:21:51.389 one who's changing everything, right? So what I tried to 0:21:51.390 --> 0:21:56.189 do with each of these conversations is read and watch 0:21:56.430 --> 0:21:59.040 all of their interviews, which with some of them is 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:04.980 staggering because they've they've got 100 plus, um, so that 0:22:04.980 --> 0:22:09.150 I could ask them a question, at least a handful 0:22:09.150 --> 0:22:12.180 of questions they hadn't been asked before. And that's how 0:22:12.180 --> 0:22:15.629 I felt like I could honour them best. Yeah. And 0:22:15.630 --> 0:22:18.690 then try to figure out by reading their work and 0:22:18.690 --> 0:22:20.760 listening to the interviews, what are the things that matter 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:25.380 most to them? So by example, you know, Robert courting 0:22:25.380 --> 0:22:29.159 lost his son and he wrote an entire book of 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:33.600 poetry about that. I don't know many. Yeah, it's not 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:36.689 like I know everything out there. But for somebody to 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.990 be willing to sit in that space of grief long 0:22:39.990 --> 0:22:43.790 enough to write that many poems This takes an incredible 0:22:43.790 --> 0:22:50.000 amount of courage and strength of heart to stay there. 0:22:50.210 --> 0:22:53.090 Most of us would rather talk about anything else. Yeah, 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:55.609 so I knew that that's the topic I wanted to 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:58.370 talk about, but I wasn't sure he wanted to talk about. 0:22:58.369 --> 0:23:04.220 And what a heartfelt joy to sit with him in 0:23:04.250 --> 0:23:07.879 that space together and remember his son, and talk about 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:13.790 the way grief shapes us and how he worked the craft, 0:23:13.790 --> 0:23:18.680 how the craft and his experience overlapped. Um, Dana Gioia 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:24.710 for as another example, Dana Gioia is every every interview 0:23:24.740 --> 0:23:28.280 is going to talk about his cultural analysis or the 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:33.470 essays he's written about poetry and his work in the 0:23:33.470 --> 0:23:36.290 white House. And, you know, all of those things are 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:39.200 are an incredible gift to the rest of us. But 0:23:39.350 --> 0:23:43.869 I noticed that in all of his interviews, very rarely 0:23:43.869 --> 0:23:48.340 did a did his property come up his his acreage, 0:23:48.340 --> 0:23:51.280 and whenever it did, it was for basically a sentence 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:56.290 or two. And I heard or read a, a different 0:23:56.290 --> 0:24:00.160 kind of Dana Gioia. And it seemed to me that 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:04.150 this was a missed opportunity for these interviewers. They were 0:24:04.150 --> 0:24:06.639 so dead set on their own questions that they weren't 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:10.629 actually listening to the thing that moved him most. So 0:24:10.660 --> 0:24:13.149 it was a little risky for me to say, I 0:24:13.150 --> 0:24:16.300 know that what I should be asking you about is 0:24:16.300 --> 0:24:19.870 all of this great, all these great accomplishments and your 0:24:19.869 --> 0:24:24.460 thoughts on the current state of poetry and but are 0:24:24.460 --> 0:24:28.270 you okay if we talk about your acreage? And he 0:24:28.270 --> 0:24:32.620 was so lit up by that that it confirmed this 0:24:32.619 --> 0:24:36.340 really did shape him. He said his acreage has had 0:24:36.340 --> 0:24:40.360 an outsized influence on his life, and nobody really knows 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:43.530 that because they think it's all this other stuff? But 0:24:43.530 --> 0:24:47.070 what really moves Dana Gioia is that acreage. And I 0:24:47.070 --> 0:24:52.050 think each of these interviews has that kind of humanizing 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.859 deep spot where we were able to touch on something 0:24:55.859 --> 0:24:58.740 that really mattered to them most. And that's why I 0:24:58.740 --> 0:25:02.670 chose that subtitle. It just felt like it covered the 0:25:02.670 --> 0:25:05.040 heart of each of these conversations. 0:25:05.070 --> 0:25:08.460 Yeah. To return to Robert Korting for a minute, I 0:25:08.460 --> 0:25:10.890 didn't know Robert Korting until I read his interview here, 0:25:10.890 --> 0:25:14.850 and it was just amazing to know that a man 0:25:14.850 --> 0:25:17.879 who lost his son, you know, can say something like, 0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:19.919 like this at the heart of life is the choice 0:25:19.920 --> 0:25:23.400 to embrace God's work, even at great personal cost. My 0:25:23.400 --> 0:25:26.520 work as a poet, my relationships, my daily decisions depend 0:25:26.520 --> 0:25:29.610 upon embracing the God who makes and will always make 0:25:29.730 --> 0:25:31.649 as an overflow of love. 0:25:32.609 --> 0:25:37.230 And yeah, Jonathan, that that was both convicting and motivating 0:25:37.230 --> 0:25:41.570 at the same time, because We live in a world 0:25:41.570 --> 0:25:46.250 that is so rife with conflict that it's almost our 0:25:46.250 --> 0:25:48.800 only mode of operation, and we don't know how to 0:25:48.830 --> 0:25:51.649 actually create out of an overload or out of an 0:25:51.650 --> 0:25:57.230 overflow of love. But yes, God made all of this 0:25:57.230 --> 0:26:00.619 out of an overflow of love. We're sitting in the 0:26:00.650 --> 0:26:06.530 in the overflow of that. Yeah, great. Great blessing. And 0:26:06.530 --> 0:26:10.250 if that's true, then what am I doing? It was 0:26:10.280 --> 0:26:14.870 Li-young Lee who said that many poets, and especially American poets, 0:26:14.869 --> 0:26:21.470 he feels, start from a place of grievance rather than grief. Robert. 0:26:21.470 --> 0:26:26.450 Courting started with grief. Yeah. Grief actually is a is 0:26:26.450 --> 0:26:29.690 a in some respects a gift, I think, from the Lord. 0:26:29.720 --> 0:26:32.960 A way to handle the brokenness that is just part 0:26:32.960 --> 0:26:39.230 of reality. But grievance stifles creativity and grievance warps the 0:26:39.230 --> 0:26:43.030 end product. I think that what Robert has done has 0:26:43.030 --> 0:26:47.500 given us a great gift, which is himself in grief 0:26:47.710 --> 0:26:53.859 and grievance. Yeah, he is not coming to God. And, uh, 0:26:53.890 --> 0:26:59.740 saying this is a break from who you are as God. 0:26:59.740 --> 0:27:03.460 He's saying even the loss of my son as broken 0:27:03.460 --> 0:27:07.810 and heart wrenching as that is, even that is making 0:27:07.810 --> 0:27:11.500 something new. God is always in the act of of 0:27:11.500 --> 0:27:16.540 renewing and making something more life, not less life, and 0:27:16.540 --> 0:27:19.960 even loss like that. When we stand in, it feels 0:27:19.960 --> 0:27:24.010 like the floor has gone out from under us. God's 0:27:24.040 --> 0:27:28.960 actually doing something beautiful. Years ago, somebody told me, um, 0:27:28.960 --> 0:27:34.119 when I was going through my own health crisis, he said, Ben, 0:27:34.119 --> 0:27:37.119 I think you might be despising the chrysalis. 0:27:37.570 --> 0:27:37.990 Huh? 0:27:38.020 --> 0:27:42.169 That has stuck with me all these years. Don't despise 0:27:42.170 --> 0:27:47.420 the chrysalis. If you open the chrysalis where transformation is happening, 0:27:47.690 --> 0:27:52.820 you'll just find goo. There's nothing admirable about it. And 0:27:52.820 --> 0:27:56.060 in fact, if you try to let the butterfly out early, 0:27:56.060 --> 0:27:59.090 it's not strong enough to actually become this beautiful thing 0:27:59.090 --> 0:28:03.830 that we go, wow, isn't that lovely? So even the chrysalis, 0:28:04.490 --> 0:28:09.290 even that is God doing something out of an overflow 0:28:09.290 --> 0:28:12.889 of love? Yeah, I wish, I hope to hang on 0:28:12.920 --> 0:28:15.230 to that as a as a writer. And I think 0:28:15.230 --> 0:28:18.770 that most artists really need to fight for that. It's 0:28:18.770 --> 0:28:22.609 not something that will come naturally, because every single moment 0:28:22.609 --> 0:28:25.520 of every single day, we're barraged with the opposite. 0:28:25.550 --> 0:28:30.709 Yeah. Something else that that Robert Cording said, um, that 0:28:30.710 --> 0:28:33.500 I'm still chewing on. And I'd love to hear you. 0:28:33.500 --> 0:28:36.980 You comment on it. Um. He says we live in 0:28:36.980 --> 0:28:42.590 a world that is untranslatable, unexplainable, but intelligible. When he. 0:28:42.620 --> 0:28:45.590 When I read that, I thought, that's where poets live, 0:28:45.590 --> 0:28:52.130 where the world is unexplainable, untranslatable. And yet they go 0:28:52.130 --> 0:28:54.830 in there anyway, and they give us something that's intelligible. 0:28:54.830 --> 0:28:58.520 And that's also why I feel like my resistance to 0:28:58.550 --> 0:29:01.610 that makes me feel like the writing of poetry feels 0:29:01.610 --> 0:29:04.940 to me like something beyond what I can do. And 0:29:04.940 --> 0:29:09.290 I think maybe it's because I want a clarity and 0:29:09.290 --> 0:29:13.370 a clarification that says, I'll translate something for you, and 0:29:13.370 --> 0:29:16.160 if I can't translate it, I'll do something else. You know, 0:29:16.550 --> 0:29:17.690 I'll watch TV. 0:29:17.720 --> 0:29:20.480 Yeah, yeah. No, I totally get that. I mean, you're 0:29:20.480 --> 0:29:24.020 appealing to the little the teenage boy in me there especially. But, 0:29:24.050 --> 0:29:26.660 you know, one of the things I asked Robert about 0:29:26.660 --> 0:29:33.470 was regarding that specific line. He's not actually saying that 0:29:33.470 --> 0:29:37.860 there's no place for science or mathematics or all of 0:29:37.860 --> 0:29:42.810 the things that make this world measurable and understandable and predictable. 0:29:42.810 --> 0:29:47.100 All of those things are very, very beautiful to him. 0:29:47.130 --> 0:29:51.600 But but they have their their limiting threshold. They won't 0:29:51.600 --> 0:29:55.800 be able to actually take us over the lip into 0:29:55.890 --> 0:29:59.730 the spiritual realm. They help us understand what God God's 0:29:59.730 --> 0:30:03.900 fingerprint here, but there are limits to those things. And 0:30:03.900 --> 0:30:06.450 I agree, poets sit in that spot. It's a very 0:30:06.450 --> 0:30:10.740 uncomfortable spot to sit in where things are unintelligible. And 0:30:10.740 --> 0:30:13.350 I would say grief of all things, is probably, at 0:30:13.380 --> 0:30:17.340 least for Ben Pulpit, one of the least intelligible things 0:30:17.340 --> 0:30:17.760 for me. 0:30:17.850 --> 0:30:20.580 Sorry to be technical, but they said it is intelligible. 0:30:20.580 --> 0:30:24.180 It's not translatable and not explainable, but it is intelligible. 0:30:24.180 --> 0:30:27.030 That's right. But what I'm saying is what it feels 0:30:27.030 --> 0:30:30.540 like to me, and I sit in that space. He's 0:30:30.540 --> 0:30:34.680 confirming that it is intelligible, and poets create a kind 0:30:34.680 --> 0:30:39.980 of intelligibility to it. But even what I feel does 0:30:39.980 --> 0:30:42.890 not feel intelligible. When I'm in that space of grief. 0:30:42.890 --> 0:30:46.280 I don't know how to articulate that. So when Li-young Lee, 0:30:46.310 --> 0:30:48.710 one of my favorite of his lines, when he says 0:30:48.710 --> 0:30:52.580 that a poet. People who read poetry have read about 0:30:52.580 --> 0:30:55.790 the burning bush, but poets have to sit in the 0:30:56.060 --> 0:30:58.610 burning bush and tell us about it. You know, on 0:30:58.610 --> 0:31:03.830 one level, what a heavy calling, right? And Lee young 0:31:03.830 --> 0:31:06.680 will say this. You know, if he's sitting here with me, 0:31:06.710 --> 0:31:09.050 he'll say what he said in the interview, which is 0:31:09.050 --> 0:31:12.410 it's a very lonely place to be out here. He said, 0:31:12.410 --> 0:31:15.140 it's very lonely out here. Well, where is out here? 0:31:15.170 --> 0:31:19.160 Lee Young. Out here. Where I have to write this work. 0:31:19.190 --> 0:31:23.120 I'm sitting alone with God. And that's sitting alone in 0:31:23.120 --> 0:31:25.310 the boat with God. Even the disciples, when the waves 0:31:25.310 --> 0:31:31.010 are tossing. Even when Jesus calms the waves. It's actually 0:31:31.010 --> 0:31:33.860 scarier when you're sitting alone and you know you're sitting 0:31:33.860 --> 0:31:35.740 in the presence of God. Then when the waves are 0:31:35.740 --> 0:31:40.780 really pretty crushing. So I think Robert Cording is touching 0:31:40.780 --> 0:31:43.450 on the fact that that a poet's job is to 0:31:43.480 --> 0:31:50.620 take this space of our experience, which feels beyond our 0:31:50.620 --> 0:31:55.660 ability to put words to them and says, I'm going 0:31:55.660 --> 0:31:58.750 to make an attempt to put words to them. One 0:31:58.750 --> 0:32:01.930 of my favorite moments in that interview is when he says, 0:32:01.930 --> 0:32:08.020 every attempt at writing is actually a guaranteed failure, because 0:32:08.020 --> 0:32:10.360 you just won't actually put it down the way you 0:32:10.360 --> 0:32:13.480 mean to. Rich Mullins, one of his songs, he says, 0:32:13.480 --> 0:32:16.660 I'm hearing this song that I've heard in somewhere in 0:32:16.660 --> 0:32:21.160 my childhood. I've been chasing that my whole life. Right? Yeah. 0:32:21.310 --> 0:32:26.770 So I think that that attempt is such a worthy attempt, 0:32:26.770 --> 0:32:29.020 and one of my hopes with this book is that 0:32:29.020 --> 0:32:38.190 it would maybe remove the austerity called poets and poetry 0:32:38.220 --> 0:32:42.000 and make it what it was meant to be. You know, Shelley, 0:32:42.030 --> 0:32:48.630 Percy Shelley said that, um, that poet poetry is in 0:32:48.630 --> 0:32:54.540 our nature, in our nature. That means that everybody waking 0:32:54.540 --> 0:32:59.370 up into the world is a poet, because God is 0:32:59.400 --> 0:33:03.030 the first poet. So. And if Christ is the word 0:33:03.030 --> 0:33:06.330 made flesh, and we're made in God's image, then all 0:33:06.330 --> 0:33:09.720 of us, even those of us who don't, um, feel 0:33:09.720 --> 0:33:14.370 like we're quite at these poets level. We're all poets. 0:33:14.370 --> 0:33:17.610 So I think I'm hoping that it encourages people to 0:33:17.640 --> 0:33:21.240 just pick up a pen, because there's something wonderful about 0:33:21.240 --> 0:33:23.550 poetry that I don't know is true of any other 0:33:23.550 --> 0:33:28.050 kind of writing. But when you read poetry, there's a 0:33:28.050 --> 0:33:31.290 part of you that's that feels compelled to write a 0:33:31.290 --> 0:33:32.220 line of poetry. 0:33:32.340 --> 0:33:32.820 Yeah. 0:33:32.850 --> 0:33:38.180 And it's a generative art, so I love that about poetry. 0:33:38.180 --> 0:33:41.360 And I want people to feel that absolute freedom to go, 0:33:41.450 --> 0:33:44.510 you know, it's just my attempt, but it's your loaves 0:33:44.510 --> 0:33:48.110 and fish. So let's take what God gives you and 0:33:48.110 --> 0:33:50.330 steward it to the best of your abilities. 0:33:50.510 --> 0:33:53.630 Oh, thanks for that, Ben, I love it. Uh, I 0:33:53.630 --> 0:33:55.700 usually end with the question, who are the poets? Who 0:33:55.730 --> 0:33:57.950 are the writers? Make you want to write? I don't know, 0:33:58.040 --> 0:34:00.350 it seems almost not fair to ask you that question 0:34:00.350 --> 0:34:01.280 at this point. 0:34:01.400 --> 0:34:02.960 I think we've answered that. 0:34:03.770 --> 0:34:07.880 Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. And I don't have an alternative 0:34:07.880 --> 0:34:11.540 question either. Do you have a what's what's an interesting 0:34:11.660 --> 0:34:14.750 alternative to, to that question, Ben, that you would like 0:34:14.750 --> 0:34:15.529 to answer. 0:34:16.280 --> 0:34:20.120 What is the place, Jonathan, that makes you want to write? 0:34:20.570 --> 0:34:24.200 What's the place? One of the themes in this, in 0:34:24.200 --> 0:34:28.520 these interviews is playfulness. And whether it's Kentucky or whether 0:34:28.520 --> 0:34:33.230 it's California, each of these poets is accepting the limitation 0:34:33.230 --> 0:34:36.940 of place and actually embracing it and saying, this is 0:34:36.940 --> 0:34:40.870 where I am, this is where I'm from. And for me, 0:34:40.870 --> 0:34:45.400 I come from rural Africa. Dad was a missionary doctor, 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:48.280 and I'm still that little boy who runs clay paths 0:34:48.280 --> 0:34:51.880 deep down in my heart. And so any place right 0:34:51.880 --> 0:34:56.500 here in the in the beautiful northwest out here that 0:34:56.500 --> 0:35:00.610 is quiet and has a lot of trees. Man, that 0:35:00.610 --> 0:35:04.240 I'm at home right there. But there are people who've 0:35:04.270 --> 0:35:07.899 who have never had that experience, who grew up in 0:35:07.900 --> 0:35:12.279 the city and love the city. Yeah. That's your place, right? 0:35:12.280 --> 0:35:16.330 That's your place. Right from that place. Embrace that place. 0:35:16.330 --> 0:35:20.440 And God loves to just multiply that because it's going 0:35:20.469 --> 0:35:22.840 to sound like you. If I try to sound like 0:35:22.840 --> 0:35:25.180 a guy who grew up in the city, best of luck. 0:35:25.180 --> 0:35:27.580 It's not going to work. But I can sound like 0:35:27.580 --> 0:35:29.710 me and I'm going to embrace it. 0:35:30.400 --> 0:35:33.810 Great. All right, Ben Philpott, thanks so much for being here. 0:35:33.810 --> 0:35:35.640 This has been such a it's always such a pleasure 0:35:35.640 --> 0:35:37.650 to talk to you. And this is no exception. 0:35:37.650 --> 0:35:40.110 I'm glad I love time with you, Jonathan. 0:35:43.530 --> 0:35:46.620 The habit podcast is brought to you by the Rabbit Room, 0:35:46.620 --> 0:35:50.430 where art nourishes community and community nourishes art. You can 0:35:50.430 --> 0:35:53.850 support their work including this podcast, by becoming a member. 0:35:53.880 --> 0:35:59.759 Visit rabbit room.com/membership. Special thanks as well to Taylor Leonard 0:35:59.760 --> 0:36:02.129 for letting us use her song diamonds as the theme 0:36:02.130 --> 0:36:05.100 music for The Habit podcast. You can learn more about 0:36:05.130 --> 0:36:09.899 Taylor and follow her work at Taylor leonard.com. The Habit 0:36:09.930 --> 0:36:13.020 Membership is a library of resources for writers by me, 0:36:13.020 --> 0:36:16.290 Jonathan Rogers. More importantly, the habit is a hub of 0:36:16.290 --> 0:36:19.469 community where like minded writers gather to discuss their work 0:36:19.469 --> 0:36:22.230 and give each other a little more courage. Find out 0:36:22.230 --> 0:36:24.360 more at the habit.co.