Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show, you may not
Speaker 1: realize that we have years of incredible episodes in our archive.
Speaker 1: We've had so many wonderful guests that we decided to
Speaker 1: hand pick one of our favorites that may be new
Speaker 1: to you, but if not, it's definitely worth another listen.
Speaker 1: We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Marylyn Nelson. Our
Speaker 1: lives are so filled up with noise now we have
Speaker 1: to take a real effort to find a place that's quiet,
Speaker 1: welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Marilyn Nelson, an American poet, translator,
Speaker 1: and children's book author. Marylyn is a professor emeritus at
Speaker 1: the University of Connecticut and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut.
Speaker 1: On this episode, Marylyn and Eric discussed several poems he
Speaker 1: has written, as well as the meaning behind them. Hi, Marylyn,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks. I'm so happy to have
Speaker 1: you on. You and I have just fought a long
Speaker 1: and grueling audio battle, but hopefully we are past that
Speaker 1: and things go well from here. So again, thank you
Speaker 1: for your patients with that. And I thought we'd start
Speaker 1: off by just talking about the parable for a minute
Speaker 1: and then get right to your poetry because it's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: So there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and
Speaker 1: she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and
Speaker 1: thanks for a second looks up at her grandmother and
Speaker 1: she says, well, grandmother, which one wins, And the grandmother says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. But
Speaker 1: it means to me, I suppose hoping that the choices
Speaker 1: I'm making our choices which feed the good wolf. I
Speaker 1: don't particularly think of it in those terms when I
Speaker 1: make choices, but I think that probably in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind is the question of whether this is goodwill,
Speaker 1: whether I'm willing the right thing, whether I'm making a
Speaker 1: contribution toward a better future. And I suppose those are
Speaker 1: decisions that have to do with choosing to feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf. Wonderful, Well, I'd like to get you to
Speaker 1: do a reading from your most recent book called How
Speaker 1: I Discovered Poetry. And one of the things about this
Speaker 1: book I found so great is you so wonderfully capture
Speaker 1: what it's like to be a child. I remember being
Speaker 1: a child, and I would hear these things in the
Speaker 1: adult world. You know, when I was younger, it was
Speaker 1: Watergate and you know, the end of Vietnam and different things.
Speaker 1: So I would hear these things happening in the world,
Speaker 1: and hear them on the news, I hear my parents
Speaker 1: talk about them, and they kind of filtered into my consciousness,
Speaker 1: but I still was mostly a child. And I found
Speaker 1: your book so fascinating because it chronicles you from I
Speaker 1: think the age of seven to you know, mid teens,
Speaker 1: and from four to four four to fourteen to fourteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so early on these things are just barely filtering into
Speaker 1: your consciousness, but they're there, and then as you grow
Speaker 1: in age, these outside world things filter in more and more.
Speaker 1: And I just thought it was so wonderful the way
Speaker 1: you did that, because it was so much my experience
Speaker 1: of being a child. I'm glad it spoke to you.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that it will help other grown ups remember
Speaker 1: the time when they're understanding was deepening. Well, what is
Speaker 1: it now? We see through glass darkly? Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: poem that you and I talked about having you read
Speaker 1: is called Mississippi. A little bit of background. My father
Speaker 1: was in the Air Force, so we moved around a lot.
Speaker 1: So a lot of my strongest childhood memories take place
Speaker 1: in the car, and this poem is the family in
Speaker 1: the car driving to Omahaw from Kansas from an Air
Speaker 1: Force base in Kansas to my aunt's house in Nebraska
Speaker 1: for Thanksgiving. So it's the Thanksgiving drive in its nine
Speaker 1: and I should say that, um, the Emmett here is
Speaker 1: Emmett Till, Mississippi. Over the river and through the woods
Speaker 1: for mys of four lane highways slowed by blowing snow,
Speaker 1: through towns named for long vanquished Indians, to Aunt Charlie's
Speaker 1: house in Omaha. We go, hypnotized by the rhythm of
Speaker 1: tire chains. I eat a sandwich passed from the front
Speaker 1: seat where Mama and Daddy are talking about a boy
Speaker 1: named Emmett. Jennifer whispering to her doll crosses the line
Speaker 1: between her side and mine. And when I poker just
Speaker 1: a little bit, she howls as if it hurts out
Speaker 1: of sheer spite. Behave lost again in the inwardness of
Speaker 1: thought and my five senses I add to my list,
Speaker 1: thank you for not stationing us in Mississippi. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's such a great poem, and it really leads to
Speaker 1: the next play I'd like to go. And one of
Speaker 1: your books is called A Wreath for Emmett Till, and
Speaker 1: it's a series of poems about the lynching of Emmett Till,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you could, before we get
Speaker 1: into the poems, tell me about how you wrote the book,
Speaker 1: the structure of the book, because it's so unique, and
Speaker 1: I'd like you to just share that with the listeners
Speaker 1: before we get to the poems themselves. I had agreed
Speaker 1: with the publisher to write a poem for young adults,
Speaker 1: and I wanted a poem that would move them both
Speaker 1: not only with the story with the horrible story, but
Speaker 1: also um with poetry that I created as a tribute
Speaker 1: to Emmett Till. And the form I used is called
Speaker 1: a heroic crown of sonnets. A crown of sonnets is
Speaker 1: a sequel. It's of poems and of sonnets in which
Speaker 1: the last line of each sonnet becomes the first line
Speaker 1: in the next one, so they're kind of braided. And
Speaker 1: the heroic crown of sonnets uses that same kind of
Speaker 1: braided form, but it's a sequence of fifteen sonnets. A
Speaker 1: sonnet is a fourteen line poem, and the heroic crown
Speaker 1: of sonnets is a sequence of fifteen sonnets in which
Speaker 1: the last sonnet is made up of the first lines
Speaker 1: of the previous fourteen sonnets. So it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very tight form and mine because I really wanted to
Speaker 1: offer young people a poem that kind of blew off
Speaker 1: the top of their conscious nest um. And so mind
Speaker 1: does another trick by um making the last one um.
Speaker 1: I think it's called an across stick, in which the
Speaker 1: first letters of each line spell out something if you
Speaker 1: read them vertically. In my poem, that's across stick spells
Speaker 1: out the name emmett l till. Wow. I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize that last bit. Yeah, it's so impressive the way
Speaker 1: it's all strung together. And I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: to do some readings from it. And the readings I've
Speaker 1: asked you to do are going to sort of butcher
Speaker 1: your form in that we're not going to do them
Speaker 1: in order, but I think they give a good cross
Speaker 1: section of different emotions that came to me from the poem.
Speaker 1: So let's start with Rosemary for remembrance. Please let me
Speaker 1: ask you, Eric Rosner for Remembrance is the first one,
Speaker 1: so I can just read it as it is, but
Speaker 1: maybe in the next one I could read the last
Speaker 1: line of the previous one so that listeners can understand
Speaker 1: the interwoven nous. Okay ah, this is rosemary for remembrance.
Speaker 1: Rosemary for remembrance. Shakespeare wrote a speech for poor Ophelia,
Speaker 1: who went mad when her love killed her father. Flowers
Speaker 1: had a language, then rose petals in a note said
Speaker 1: I love you. A sheaf of bearded oat said your
Speaker 1: music and chants me golden rod, be careful, weeping willow twigs.
Speaker 1: I'm sad. What should my wreath for emmett till denote?
Speaker 1: First heliotrope for justice shall be done, daisies and white
Speaker 1: lilacs for innocence, then man drake horror wearing a white
Speaker 1: hood or bare faced laughing for grief more than one
Speaker 1: for one is not enough, rue you cypress forget me not,
Speaker 1: though if I could, I would wonderful. And now let's
Speaker 1: go on to the next one that you would like
Speaker 1: to read from that book I should read, Let me
Speaker 1: gather spring flowers for a wreath. That would be great.
Speaker 1: I won't read the last line of the previous one
Speaker 1: because it's just the same as this line. Okay, let
Speaker 1: me gather spring flowers for a wreath. Not lilacs from
Speaker 1: the dooryard, but wild flowers I'd search for in the
Speaker 1: greening woods for hours of solitude, meditating on death. Let
Speaker 1: me wander through pathless woods, beneath the choirs of small birds,
Speaker 1: trumpeting their powers at the intruder trampling through their bowers,
Speaker 1: disturbing their peace. I cling to the faith that innocence
Speaker 1: lives on, that a blind soul can see again, that
Speaker 1: miracles do exist in my house. There is still something
Speaker 1: called grace, which melts ice shards of hate and makes
Speaker 1: hearts whole. I bear armloads of flowers home to twist
Speaker 1: into a circle trillium Queen Anne's lace. That's beautiful. And
Speaker 1: then maybe let's do like his gouged eye as our
Speaker 1: last one from this book, Like his gouged eye which
Speaker 1: watched boots kick his face. We must bear witness to atrocity,
Speaker 1: but we our whole. We can speak what we see.
Speaker 1: People may disappear, leaving no trace unless we stand before
Speaker 1: the populace orators denouncing the slavery to fear. For the
Speaker 1: lynchers feared the lynch e what he might do, being
Speaker 1: of another race, a great unknown. They feared because they
Speaker 1: saw their own inner shadows, their vicious dreams. The far
Speaker 1: are the horizons of their own thought, their jungles, immune
Speaker 1: to the rule of law. We can speak now or
Speaker 1: bear unforgettable shame, Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespeare wrote. All three
Speaker 1: of those are so powerful. The book is so powerful,
Speaker 1: And what I didn't mention is it is illustrated in
Speaker 1: a beautiful, beautiful way, so I highly encourage listeners to
Speaker 1: pick it up. It is such a powerful piece of work.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, and thanks for mentioning the illustrations.
Speaker 1: I will give out a shout to the illustrator, Philippe Larabie,
Speaker 1: who is a French illustrator and who had never heard
Speaker 1: of the lynching of Emmett till before he was asked
Speaker 1: to do this book, and his illustrations are really wrenching. Yes,
Speaker 1: and as amazing as this is to say, it's my
Speaker 1: second favorite illustrated book of yours. We'll get to my
Speaker 1: favorite here in a little bit, but it is so
Speaker 1: well done. I want to ask you for a second
Speaker 1: about poetry, because I've heard you say that poetry is
Speaker 1: out of silence and leads us back to silence. Talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about from your perspective, how
Speaker 1: that works and what the value is you think of
Speaker 1: silence and a life well lived? Oh wow, those big questions.
Speaker 1: I think poetry comes out of silence because it comes
Speaker 1: from at least capital P poetry, let's put it that way,
Speaker 1: comes out of the deepest struggles of the poet too
Speaker 1: come to terms with some basic realities, difficult realities of
Speaker 1: our existence on the planet. And that confrontation with those
Speaker 1: realities is I think confrontation that has to occur in silence.
Speaker 1: You can't just knock off capital P poems when you're
Speaker 1: sitting I don't know Starbucks, And I don't have a
Speaker 1: better answer to that, and and and I I realized
Speaker 1: that there is poets in the country now who have
Speaker 1: very different definitions of the sources of poetry. So I
Speaker 1: can only say that this one is mine. This is
Speaker 1: a personal definition. And you asked three questions. I I
Speaker 1: think I was responding to the first one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think The other one was, just what role you think
Speaker 1: silence plays in a life well lived? I think a
Speaker 1: life well lived requires some kind of contemplation and self knowledge,
Speaker 1: and that the only ways one arrives at both the
Speaker 1: gifts of contemplation and the gifts of self knowledge is
Speaker 1: by reaching towards the quiet center. And there are many
Speaker 1: ways of doing that, and all of them I think
Speaker 1: are good, and I think that we need to learn them.
Speaker 1: I think our lives are so filled up with noise
Speaker 1: now we have to take a real effort to find
Speaker 1: a place that's quiet other than I don't know the
Speaker 1: last time you you listened to crickets for an hour
Speaker 1: in the evening, nothing but crickets, not talking to anybody,
Speaker 1: not with the radio on, not watching television, not listen
Speaker 1: in to the news, not reading, but just listening to
Speaker 1: the silence of it's not exactly silence, but listening to
Speaker 1: the quiet of the natural world. Uh. And I feel
Speaker 1: that sitting and just listening is a way of connecting
Speaker 1: with something central in our humanity and our existence. What
Speaker 1: you just said there makes me think of another poem
Speaker 1: that you and I talked about reading, and it's from
Speaker 1: a book called Carver, and it's basically a biography, I
Speaker 1: guess of George Washington. Carver told in poems, and there
Speaker 1: is one called Professor Carver's Bible Class. And I think
Speaker 1: it's a good to go there now because it references
Speaker 1: the value of nature. And you just were talking about
Speaker 1: nature so it may we think of this poem, So
Speaker 1: why don't we do this one next? I learned so
Speaker 1: much about the important things of life by writing this
Speaker 1: book about Carver. I set out to write a spiritual
Speaker 1: biography of Carver. Carver was in I think he was
Speaker 1: a saint, and I learned so much from him as
Speaker 1: his attitudes toward quiet and towards solitude and towards service. Um,
Speaker 1: he was an extraordinarily wise man, great teacher. So he
Speaker 1: taught for most of his adult life as as a
Speaker 1: professor of science, uh agricultural science at Tuskegee Institute. And
Speaker 1: when he first started there, I don't remember when he
Speaker 1: started teaching there. It must have been about must have
Speaker 1: been nine, at oh five, something like that. When he
Speaker 1: first started teaching at Tuskegee, he offered a brief Bible
Speaker 1: study class in a small classroom, just an informal Bible
Speaker 1: study class one. I think it was maybe one half
Speaker 1: hour a week. UM. Doctor Carver would just read a
Speaker 1: passage from the Bible and discuss it. And this class
Speaker 1: became so popular that as he became older, it had
Speaker 1: to be held in a largest lecture hall on campus.
Speaker 1: Students thronged to hear Carver talk about the Bible as
Speaker 1: people do for Jimmy Carter and some of Carver's um
Speaker 1: students took a little sketches of outlines of what Carver
Speaker 1: talk about, and there's a collection of these published. And uh,
Speaker 1: my poem is based on a recollection written by a
Speaker 1: man named Alvin Smith who was a student at Tuskegee.
Speaker 1: So that's a long introduction to the class Professor Carver's
Speaker 1: Bible class. I'd always pictured God as a big, old,
Speaker 1: long bearded white man throned up in the sky, watching
Speaker 1: and keeping score. I had been told we get harps
Speaker 1: or pitchfork brimstone when we die. Superstitiously, I watched for signs,
Speaker 1: living in fear of a great master's wrath. Professor Carver's
Speaker 1: class gave me the means to liberation from that slavish faith.
Speaker 1: He taught us that our creator lives within, yearning to
Speaker 1: speak to us through silent prayer. That all of nature,
Speaker 1: if we'll just tune in, is a vast broadcasting system
Speaker 1: that the air carries a current we can plug into.
Speaker 1: Your Creator, he said, is itching to contact you. I
Speaker 1: love that one, and I love the whole book. I
Speaker 1: agree with you, and that I had no idea what
Speaker 1: George Washington Carver was all about and how profound he
Speaker 1: was in so many different ways, in so many different fields.
Speaker 1: And so this book was a real eye opener for me.
Speaker 1: For sure. I'm glad. I'm glad it's a real saints life.
Speaker 1: And the more deeply I studied his life, the more
Speaker 1: clearly I I'm convinced if he had been born in
Speaker 1: a different religious tradition, he would have been canonized. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean, there's no question in my mind
Speaker 1: about this. We have been on the subject of nature
Speaker 1: and prayer, and that's going to lead us to the
Speaker 1: next book. And my girlfriend is tired of hearing about
Speaker 1: this little dog named Snook. The book is called Snook Alone.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a reading from it here in
Speaker 1: a minute. But when you and I were talking last
Speaker 1: you said something that we didn't get to explore, and
Speaker 1: so I want to explore. You said that this book
Speaker 1: it's a parable for contemplative prayer, and that in this book,
Speaker 1: Snook is learning to pray. So maybe share a little
Speaker 1: bit about that before we go into the reading. I'll
Speaker 1: stay within the context of the book. There's a larger
Speaker 1: context in my life, which would take forever to describe.
Speaker 1: But yes, uh, Snook is a dog who belongs to
Speaker 1: hermit monk, and the book begins with the dogs place
Speaker 1: in the life of this hermit monk. The hermit's job
Speaker 1: is to ray and work all day, and Snook lives
Speaker 1: with this man. In the life of the hermit monk,
Speaker 1: we we get an image of what it's like to
Speaker 1: live a life of prayer. And then Snook is is
Speaker 1: um shipwrecked on this island, and essentially his life while
Speaker 1: he's alone on the island, Um comes more and more
Speaker 1: to imitate the life of the hermit monk, and the
Speaker 1: climax of his life alone is that he discovers two empathize,
Speaker 1: feel compassion for other creatures and for the for the world,
Speaker 1: which is the goal of contemplative prayer, should be the
Speaker 1: goal of all prayer. So yes, it's a kind of
Speaker 1: a parable of that. And at the beginning, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at it right now. In the um across from the
Speaker 1: title page there is a quote I came across from
Speaker 1: the great film director Ingmar Bergmann Um in which Bergmann
Speaker 1: says faith is like loving someone who is out there
Speaker 1: in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly
Speaker 1: you call faith. It's like loving someone, a God, a creator,
Speaker 1: a returning love that's out there in the darkness and
Speaker 1: that you never see, but you don't stop loving because
Speaker 1: of that, you continue anyway. That's what it is to
Speaker 1: have faith. And um, that's what the the shipwrecked period
Speaker 1: of snooks life is about. He's on this island and
Speaker 1: he spends his whole time yearning for his master. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that that's true. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that struck me about the book. First, I just am
Speaker 1: crazy about dogs and this book is so well illustrated
Speaker 1: in every way, and Snook is so dogue. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: just it. I can hardly take it. And Um, the
Speaker 1: thing that I love about this and it's similar to
Speaker 1: what we talked about with your earlier book where we
Speaker 1: talked about how what it's like to be a child.
Speaker 1: Because what I found so fascinating was Snook is missing
Speaker 1: his master, he wants him, and yet he's also just
Speaker 1: being a dog like he's still doing his thing, like
Speaker 1: he misses him, but he's not curled up in a ball.
Speaker 1: He's out doing dog things. He's exploring his work is
Speaker 1: his work is being a dog. Yeah, And I just
Speaker 1: loved that. It was like it gave this you know.
Speaker 1: Of course it's sad, you're like, oh, Snook, when's your
Speaker 1: you know, when's your master coming back? But at the
Speaker 1: same time he's just he's just out there doing his thing.
Speaker 1: So the one I thought you could read was the
Speaker 1: page that starts with the butt Avocare Island. I'm probably
Speaker 1: not even saying that right. How do you say if
Speaker 1: you want to take us through, maybe just that page.
Speaker 1: But Abacare Island was the center of a vast circle
Speaker 1: of longing, and from one unknown direction, snooks longing came
Speaker 1: back to him, mirrored in a fractal of moving sealight,
Speaker 1: one flicker of which was Abba Jacob's prayer. Wind, breathing,
Speaker 1: breath waves, good dog love went in Snook now, from
Speaker 1: one end of Avacare to the other, from east to west,
Speaker 1: south to north, Whether the noon sun blazed overhead or
Speaker 1: the southern cross blinked down at night, whether he was
Speaker 1: working or eating or dozing, Snook was always waiting now
Speaker 1: in his friend's silence. Aba Jakob's silence was the wind,
Speaker 1: It was the sea, It was the love in Snook
Speaker 1: compassionate and wise as the turtles. I I just love that.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I loved the whole book. And
Speaker 1: for those of you who like happy endings, there's a
Speaker 1: happy ending too. So I don't need to be worried
Speaker 1: that Snoop dies alone. No, really hurt that it went
Speaker 1: out of print. It really is out of print. Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness. Well I got my copy from a library.
Speaker 1: So listeners, there's your shot. This is going to go
Speaker 1: in the monthly newsletter, perhaps from my book month because
Speaker 1: it's just I'm crazy about. May I shout out to
Speaker 1: the illustrator of this one, please do because it's stunning.
Speaker 1: Timothy Basil Airing E R I n G. Very talented illustrator.
Speaker 1: He's done a lot of picture books and I loved
Speaker 1: the pictures he did of this. Couldn't help. But as
Speaker 1: I was reading, think where is Snooks Master? He got
Speaker 1: he got stranded there. But the weather seems like it's
Speaker 1: been fine for days. Well it's something like a hurricane
Speaker 1: came up and they were outgoing they were doing a
Speaker 1: survey that we're doing a survey of the fauna on
Speaker 1: these small uninhabited islands, and big storm came up and
Speaker 1: they and the they had to get to a safe
Speaker 1: harbor until the storm passed. And then no, it's not
Speaker 1: easy to go from island to island. Um, so the
Speaker 1: master had to wait until until you could catch another
Speaker 1: another boat. That's what happens. That's why he's left on
Speaker 1: the island for some time. That makes me feel better. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of time, but you and
Speaker 1: I in the post show conversation are going to have
Speaker 1: you read yet another poem of yours to share with listeners. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to hear the post show conversations, get
Speaker 1: ad free episodes and a free weekly mini episode, go
Speaker 1: to one you feed, dot net slash support. You can
Speaker 1: listen to all of those right in your podcast player. Well,
Speaker 1: Mary Llan, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to come on and share your poetry with us. And again,
Speaker 1: I apologize for the difficulty with our audio, but we
Speaker 1: got through it. We got through it, We got through it.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much. Eric. I appreciate you're having me and
Speaker 1: I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to read my bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you, and I will be in touch
Speaker 1: when we release the episode. Okay, all right, thanks so much, Okay, thanks,
Speaker 1: bye bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful
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