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
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, What you are about to hear is a
Speaker 2: special episode featuring Mary Oliver's poems. Now, Mary Oliver is
Speaker 2: my favorite poet of all time and probably the person
Speaker 2: most responsible for me actually getting into and enjoying poetry.
Speaker 2: And she was on my list of top people I
Speaker 2: wanted to interview. However it never came to be. Mary
Speaker 2: Oliver passed just over four years ago. Now, boy, it
Speaker 2: seems like it was more recent than that. But it's
Speaker 2: been four years. As I look at this. I also
Speaker 2: see that she was born in Ohio, so no wonder
Speaker 2: I love her anyway. I wanted to interview Mary Oliver.
Speaker 2: It never happened, so this is the next best thing.
Speaker 2: I was talking to a bunch of poets for National
Speaker 2: Poetry Month, and I thought it might be enjoyable to
Speaker 2: ask them to each read their favorite Mary Oliver poem
Speaker 2: and say a few words about it, and then we
Speaker 2: would stitch it together into an episode, which would be
Speaker 2: the closest thing to Mary Oliver interview I would ever
Speaker 2: get to. So that is what you are about to hear.
Speaker 2: You are about to hear some extraordinarily gifted poets who
Speaker 2: have been interviewed for the one you feed in their
Speaker 2: own right, read their favorite Mary Oliver poem and talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about it. In addition, our very own
Speaker 2: Ginny will be reading her favorite poem and talking about it.
Speaker 2: So I hope that you enjoy this episode. I hope
Speaker 2: that you find some poems that you've never heard that
Speaker 2: you love, or if you're not familiar with Mary Oliver,
Speaker 2: I hope this introduces you to a whole new world
Speaker 2: of beautiful poetry. So enjoy and thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: First up, we have poet James Cruz.
Speaker 2: James welcome, Thank you, thanks again for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do you want to start with the poem you picked
Speaker 2: or you would just want to start talking about Mary
Speaker 2: Oliver first?
Speaker 3: Which feels better to you? Right now?
Speaker 4: I'll start with the poem I chose, all right, and
Speaker 4: this one is called Invitation Again by Mary Oliver. Oh,
Speaker 4: do you have time to linger for just a little
Speaker 4: while out of your busy and very important day? For
Speaker 4: the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles
Speaker 4: for a musical battle to see who can sing the
Speaker 4: highest note or the lowest, or the most expressive of mirth,
Speaker 4: or the most tender. Their strong, blunt beaks drink the
Speaker 4: air as they strive melodiously. Not for your sake, and
Speaker 4: not for mine, and not for the sake of winning,
Speaker 4: but for sheer delight and gratitude. Believe us, they say,
Speaker 4: it is a serious thing, just to be alive on
Speaker 4: this fresh morning, in this broken world. I beg of you.
Speaker 4: Do not walk by without pausing to attend to this
Speaker 4: rather ridiculous performance. It could mean something, It could mean
Speaker 4: every thing. It could be what real Coad meant when
Speaker 4: he wrote you must change your life.
Speaker 2: That's such a good one. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: knew that one. I think I knew the last part
Speaker 2: of it, but Roco gets thrown around all over the way,
Speaker 2: so I could be confusing. But that is a beautiful poem.
Speaker 2: And I love goldfinches too. Yeah, we have some that
Speaker 2: come to our bird feeder and they are exquisite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's such magical birds. And as folks know, you know,
Speaker 4: Mary Oliver was so good at drawing us into consideration
Speaker 4: of the natural world and really paying attention to those
Speaker 4: just those elements that we might be tempted to just
Speaker 4: walk past or not think are very important in the
Speaker 4: midst of busyness and distraction. And I think I love
Speaker 4: this poem. You know, I almost get emotional every time
Speaker 4: I read it when I get to that ending part
Speaker 4: about you know, it could mean something, it could mean everything.
Speaker 4: And this idea that just pausing to look at a
Speaker 4: bunch of goldfinches being kind of ridiculous, just showing off
Speaker 4: for each other, caught in their delight and gratitude. The
Speaker 4: idea that that could change your life, you know, might
Speaker 4: feel kind of grandiose to some people, but I think
Speaker 4: that that just feels very true to me that the
Speaker 4: practice of pausing, you know, whether it's related to mindfulness
Speaker 4: and meditation practice or the writing practice that I do
Speaker 4: each day, has allowed me to change my life, to
Speaker 4: become a different person, and just to be available to
Speaker 4: some of those moments that come out.
Speaker 2: As you're saying that, I was thinking about this idea
Speaker 2: of change your life and how we often think that
Speaker 2: that is a thing that just happens all at once,
Speaker 2: like I'm going to stop and see the goldfinch, and
Speaker 2: according to Mary Oliver, it's going to change my life.
Speaker 2: And I just sat and watched the goldfinches, and yes,
Speaker 2: it was nice, but it didn't change my life. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to discount the experience versus recognizing that way
Speaker 2: change really works is we may have an insight, we
Speaker 2: have a moment that may be very impactful or insightful,
Speaker 2: but then usually it's thousands of small moments after that that,
Speaker 2: as you and I've talked about in other places, incrementally
Speaker 2: add up. That's right, and I think that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe you have an enlightenment experience and you
Speaker 2: see the goldfinches, and you know, like a zen master
Speaker 2: of the past. You know, time and space falls away,
Speaker 2: but that's not necessarily what it means to change your
Speaker 2: life is that little moment does change your trajectory just
Speaker 2: a hair.
Speaker 4: That's right, And that's all we're looking for.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 4: I think at this point maybe some people are looking
Speaker 4: for enlightenment, you know, and that's great, but I'm just
Speaker 4: looking for some moments of relief, you know, some invitations
Speaker 4: to slow down and pause, which I think is what
Speaker 4: that poem is. But doing that, and I think doing
Speaker 4: that regularly canon will change our lives because it just
Speaker 4: builds that muscle. I always think like just a little
Speaker 4: space in the day just makes me feel so much better.
Speaker 4: Like when I go to bed at night, I can
Speaker 4: feel like, okay, you know, not everything has been just
Speaker 4: chocol block, one thing right after another, that I've had
Speaker 4: some breathing room, you know, some space in between that.
Speaker 4: And the book that I read it from is the
Speaker 4: Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. It's called Devotions. So you know,
Speaker 4: devotion doesn't happen just showing up once. It happens when
Speaker 4: you show up over and over again. And I think
Speaker 4: that's what she was getting at. And I think I
Speaker 4: relate to this poem and to Mary Oliver so much
Speaker 4: because I believe that she was often writing to herself.
Speaker 4: She may sound like this joyful, connected, enlightened being, but
Speaker 4: my impression, and I may be wrong, but my impression
Speaker 4: is that she was someone who was given to a
Speaker 4: lot of depression, that she had trauma in her past
Speaker 4: that came up often, so she was writing these poems
Speaker 4: to lift herself out of that and directing them at
Speaker 4: herself and then sharing them with the world and the
Speaker 4: hopes that they would help others too.
Speaker 2: That feels right to me. Yeah, I don't know her
Speaker 2: history that well, the knowing that is in so many
Speaker 2: of her poems. You know, it's never preachy, right, It's
Speaker 2: always like, it's always here, I am doing my best,
Speaker 2: And I think that's maybe why she's so relatable to
Speaker 2: so many people.
Speaker 4: That's right. Yeah, And there are certain people we meet
Speaker 4: out in the world who seem so kind and so present,
Speaker 4: and you get that same sense that they've been through
Speaker 4: the ringer, so to speak. You know, they have had
Speaker 4: their sorrows and their difficulties and they've come out the
Speaker 4: other side having fed that good wolf that you often
Speaker 4: talk about much more than they've fed the bad wolf.
Speaker 4: They've made that choice consciously over and over again, and
Speaker 4: you get that impression in her work.
Speaker 2: Well, James, thank you for coming on and sharing that
Speaker 2: wonderful poem and talking a little bit about Mary Oliver this.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much. Eric.
Speaker 3: Coming up next is Dinusha lamarras Hi.
Speaker 2: Dinusha, thank you for coming on and sharing some of
Speaker 2: your love of Mary Oliver with us.
Speaker 5: I am happy to be here doing just that. And
Speaker 5: this is a poem from her book House of Light,
Speaker 5: and it's actually the first poem in the book, and
Speaker 5: it's called some Questions You Might Ask. And we've been
Speaker 5: talking a lot lately, and I have in my life
Speaker 5: about asking questions and asking the right questions, or just
Speaker 5: more questions and sitting in the questions. And so I
Speaker 5: like that this poem, in a whimsical way, does just that.
Speaker 5: Some questions you might ask? Is the soul solid like iron?
Speaker 5: Or is it tender and breakable like the wings of
Speaker 5: a moth and the beak of an owl? Who has it?
Speaker 5: And who doesn't? I keep looking around me. The face
Speaker 5: of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.
Speaker 5: The swan opens her white wings slowly in the fall
Speaker 5: the black bear carries leaves into the darkness. One question
Speaker 5: leads to another. Does it have a shape like an iceberg?
Speaker 5: Like the eye of a hummingbird? Does it have one
Speaker 5: lung like the snake and the scallop? Why should I
Speaker 5: have it and not the ant eater who loves her children?
Speaker 5: Why should I have it and not the camel? Come
Speaker 5: to think of it, what about the maple trees? What
Speaker 5: about the blue iris? What about all the little stones
Speaker 5: sitting alone in the moonlight? What about roses and lemons
Speaker 5: and their shining leaves? What about the grass? I love
Speaker 5: how that loops back to Walt Whitman there asking questions
Speaker 5: of the grass to get to the bottom of all
Speaker 5: the questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great one. It's been interesting to hear
Speaker 2: different people select Mary Oliver poems because A there are
Speaker 2: so many of them that I don't know a lot
Speaker 2: of them, and so it's been great to hear ones
Speaker 2: that I didn't know. And I don't think i've ever
Speaker 2: heard that one so well.
Speaker 5: It doesn't have wild geese in it, but it has
Speaker 5: these swans slowly swan of slowly opening her wings. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and it said that someone told me just the other
Speaker 5: day that Mary Oliver would hide pencils for herself in
Speaker 5: the woods that she knew, in which little crevice of
Speaker 5: a tree or wherever it was that she would have
Speaker 5: her pencils, and she would go out there with her notebook,
Speaker 5: and if she forgot a pencil, no problem, hidden in
Speaker 5: a tree somewhere or under a leaf, and she would
Speaker 5: pick up her writing. And I just love that not
Speaker 5: only did she attend to the craft of writing, but
Speaker 5: she attended to very carefully. She's a teacher and was
Speaker 5: a strong student of rhythm and meet her and all
Speaker 5: of those things. But she really attended to the world
Speaker 5: as if it were a classroom in which she wanted
Speaker 5: to take notes. And so why not just hide pencils
Speaker 5: everywhere out in the world, knowing that your job was
Speaker 5: to go out there and just take notes. On the
Speaker 5: face of a moose, the eye of a hummingbird. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I love that about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love the image of the bear carrying leaves too.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on sharing that with us,
Speaker 2: Thank you for asking.
Speaker 3: And now we hear from Rosemary Traumer.
Speaker 2: Hi, Rosemary, Hi Eric, I'm so happy that you are
Speaker 2: able to join us for this special Mary Oliver episode.
Speaker 2: And you could either talk about the poem before you
Speaker 2: read it, or you could read it and talk about it,
Speaker 2: or you could just read it and hang up the phone.
Speaker 2: Whatever works for you.
Speaker 6: Well, I'll say maybe just one or two things about
Speaker 6: it before, and then we could talk about it together after.
Speaker 6: But the Buddha's Last Instruction feels a little bit different
Speaker 6: than a lot of her poems to me, because it
Speaker 6: is telling a story, and it's a little more narrative
Speaker 6: than a lot of her poems. And I also like
Speaker 6: very much how she weaves two stories together, one the
Speaker 6: story of the Buddha in his last day and the
Speaker 6: other of her waking up to begin a day. So
Speaker 6: we'll hear those two pieces weave in and out of
Speaker 6: each other. The Buddha's last instruction, make yourself a light,
Speaker 6: said the Buddha before he died. I think of this
Speaker 6: every morning, as the east begins to tear off its
Speaker 6: many clouds of darkness to send up the first signal,
Speaker 6: a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green.
Speaker 6: An old man, he lay down between two solid trees,
Speaker 6: and he might have said anything, knowing it was his
Speaker 6: final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles
Speaker 6: over the fields around him. The villagers gathered and stretched
Speaker 6: forward to listen. Even before the sun itself hangs disattached
Speaker 6: in the blue air, I am touched everywhere by its
Speaker 6: ocean of yellow waves. No doubt, he thought of everything
Speaker 6: that had happened in his difficult life. And then I
Speaker 6: feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills
Speaker 6: like a million flowers on fire. Clearly I'm not needed.
Speaker 6: Yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.
Speaker 6: Slowly beneath the branches, he raised his head. He looked
Speaker 6: into the faces of that frightened crowd. It strikes me
Speaker 6: that it's a poem about death, about the Buddha meeting
Speaker 6: is death, and yet it's very much a poem about
Speaker 6: meeting life. And when she says clearly I'm not needed,
Speaker 6: I love this line so as much, the humility of
Speaker 6: that line, the truth of that line, just to see
Speaker 6: the self in terms of the big picture and how
Speaker 6: insignificant we are, and to follow it with the paradox
Speaker 6: of this, Yet I feel myself turning into something of
Speaker 6: inexplicable value. Yes, and here she is radiant. Right, she's radiant,
Speaker 6: and I just inexplicably lit up. And so here it
Speaker 6: is that we are both absolutely not needed and so worthy,
Speaker 6: so full of light at the same time. And that
Speaker 6: gorgeous instruction, make of yourself a light? How often, you know,
Speaker 6: like the Buddhist followers at the end, he looked into
Speaker 6: the faces of that frightened crowd, and so what he
Speaker 6: tells them? They're so afraid he's going to die? What
Speaker 6: are we going to do next? What happens when he's gone?
Speaker 6: And he gives them the most beautiful teaching, make of
Speaker 6: yourself a light? I love this poem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 2: I was just reflecting today on that very idea of
Speaker 2: being absolutely unnecessary, and I was reflecting on I was
Speaker 2: listening to this history thing. They were talking about Charlemagne,
Speaker 2: the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne and how he became the
Speaker 2: Holy Roman Emperor, and you know, there's a ten see
Speaker 2: to think like or I used to think this a
Speaker 2: lot when I was younger, which was I wanted to
Speaker 2: be someone significant, I wanted to matter, you know, and
Speaker 2: on a certain timescale, none of us do, even Charlemagne,
Speaker 2: for crying out loud like who thinks about Charlemagne? Very
Speaker 2: few people, not very often, so what like who cares?
Speaker 2: And yet? It is that insistence on I have to
Speaker 2: be special and necessary, needed and important that I do
Speaker 2: think does block us from making ourselves a light. At
Speaker 2: least for me it does. I'll say that for me
Speaker 2: that when I get into that, I am all in
Speaker 2: my ego.
Speaker 6: What an important difference? Exactly? Yeah, clearly I'm not needed
Speaker 6: yet that little yet?
Speaker 7: How that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is that paradox.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I often think about like, you know, you could look
Speaker 2: at the magnitude of the universe. It's it's we can't
Speaker 2: even understand it, you know, And from that frame of reference,
Speaker 2: we are absolutely nothing. You know, the insignificance is hard
Speaker 2: to imagine. But if you go down to the atomic scale,
Speaker 2: I am enormous by that scale. I am an absolute
Speaker 2: goliath by that scale, right, like unimagined, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're an atom I mean, you can't understand how big
Speaker 2: I am. You know, again, same level of mind boggling.
Speaker 2: And I just love doing that reflection. And I think
Speaker 2: that's kind of this, you know, I am not needed
Speaker 2: and yet and you.
Speaker 6: Know, I think about Mary Oliver herself, what a light.
Speaker 6: What a light she was, Slash is you know how
Speaker 6: her poems continue to illuminate so many hearts and lives,
Speaker 6: How she continues to inspire this relationship with the natural
Speaker 6: world and with each other.
Speaker 5: With God.
Speaker 6: She's yeah, she's so remarkable what she did do with
Speaker 6: her one, wild and precious life, right, she.
Speaker 3: Is very well.
Speaker 2: Thank you Rosemary for coming on and sharing that poem
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Eric, so happy to celebrate Mary Oliver my goodness.
Speaker 3: Before ending with our final poet, we have resident poetry
Speaker 3: fan Jenny gay Well. Hello Jenny Well, Hello.
Speaker 7: Eric, so nice to be here with you and with
Speaker 7: our dear listeners once again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've asked you, along with some of the
Speaker 2: other poets that we've interviewed, to share a Mary Oliver
Speaker 2: poem that you love and say a little bit about it.
Speaker 2: So you can say a little bit about it and
Speaker 2: then read the poem, or read the poem and say
Speaker 2: a little bit about it, whatever you.
Speaker 8: Want, all right, but first let's clarify I'm not a poet, Well,
Speaker 8: you said some of the other poets we've interviewed. I'm
Speaker 8: not a poet, although I have kind of a deep
Speaker 8: longing to like explore that in myself one day, but
Speaker 8: we'll see. I mean, Mary Oliver, who can choose, right,
Speaker 8: I mean, she is just incredible. But when forced to choose,
Speaker 8: I first selected a book that's really special to me,
Speaker 8: and it's her book, Songs Poems by Mary Oliver. The
Speaker 8: book is special to me because when it was published
Speaker 8: back in twenty thirteen, that year, at Thanksgiving, my family
Speaker 8: gathered with my sister's husband and his family, her in laws,
Speaker 8: who happened to be already before my sister was married,
Speaker 8: best friends with my parents, so it was kind of
Speaker 8: the largest family gathering that our very small, non extended
Speaker 8: family tended to have. But anyway, so this was a
Speaker 8: year that I wasn't doing great personally. I was sort
Speaker 8: of in my years of deep burnout and addiction and
Speaker 8: just really struggling, feeling very lost. However, this was before
Speaker 8: my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, This was before my
Speaker 8: mom and dad divorced, this was before my sister divorced
Speaker 8: her husband. So it's kind of my last memory of
Speaker 8: my family as I had always known it. And then
Speaker 8: my sister's new family kind of all together right, and
Speaker 8: my mom was well and she was still who she
Speaker 8: was that I had always known her to be. And
Speaker 8: she gave this book Dog Songs to me, to my
Speaker 8: sister and to my sister's mother in law at Thanksgiving dinner,
Speaker 8: just as a little gift with a sweet note to
Speaker 8: each of us. And so it feels like a connection
Speaker 8: point to my mom this book. And then on top
Speaker 8: of that, I mean, you and I share just this
Speaker 8: love love of dogs as pets. So it captures a
Speaker 8: lot of the aspects of what it's like to have
Speaker 8: a dog and to love a dog and have a
Speaker 8: dog love you. And there's so many of these poems
Speaker 8: that captured just the pure, uncomplicated joy and love that
Speaker 8: exists in that relationship and watching dogs be playful and
Speaker 8: all the things that they are. So anyway, within this book,
Speaker 8: it was even hard to choose a poem, but I
Speaker 8: chose one, and I chose a poem called Percy Wakes Me.
Speaker 8: Percy wakes Me and I'm not ready. He has slept
Speaker 8: all night under the covers, and now he's eager for action,
Speaker 8: a walk than breakfast. So I hate he is sitting
Speaker 8: on the kitchen counter where he is not supposed to be.
Speaker 8: How wonderful you are I say, how clever if you
Speaker 8: needed me to wake me, he thought he would hear
Speaker 8: a lecture, and deeply his eyes begin to shine. He
Speaker 8: tumbles on to the couch for more compliments. He squirms
Speaker 8: and squeals. He has done something that he needed, and now.
Speaker 7: He hears that it's okay. I scratch his ears, I
Speaker 7: turn him over and touch him everywhere. He is wild
Speaker 7: with the okiness of it. Then we walk, Then he
Speaker 7: has breakfast, and he is happy. This is a poem
Speaker 7: about Percy. This is a poem about more than Percy.
Speaker 7: Think about it, and that poem speaks to something that
Speaker 7: feels really deep in me. And maybe, even if I'm
Speaker 7: going to psychoanalyze myself for a second, that makes me
Speaker 7: think back to when I was a little girl with
Speaker 7: my mom, and maybe I did something that I needed
Speaker 7: and she praised me for doing so when I was
Speaker 7: afraid she might scold me, and how I delighted in
Speaker 7: her approval and delighted in doing something to get what
Speaker 7: I needed, and delighted in our love and her affection.
Speaker 7: So it could be that, or it could just be
Speaker 7: the beautifulness of that poem. So I bow with deep
Speaker 7: gratitude to Mary Oliver.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ginny. That's wonderful. And I also love many
Speaker 2: of those dog poems, so thank you for sharing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share.
Speaker 3: And now our final poet of the episode, Ross Gay.
Speaker 2: Hi, Ross, good to talk to you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, how are you good?
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk to you about Mary Oliver. So
Speaker 2: you could either read the poem you chose first and
Speaker 2: then talk about it, or you could talk about her
Speaker 2: and the poem first and then read it. I'm open
Speaker 2: to take this whichever way works for you.
Speaker 9: I think I'll just read the poem and then I'll
Speaker 9: say a few words about it. That's good, perfect. So
Speaker 9: this is a poem by Mary Oliver called the real
Speaker 9: prayers are not the words, but the attention that comes first.
Speaker 9: The little hawk leaned sideways and tilted rowed the wind.
Speaker 9: Its eye at this distance looked like green glass. Its
Speaker 9: feet were the color of butter. Speed obviously was joy,
Speaker 9: but then so was the sudden, slow circle that carved
Speaker 9: into the slightly silvery air, and the squaring of its shoulders,
Speaker 9: and the pulling into itself, the long, sharp edged wings,
Speaker 9: and the fall into the grass where it tussled a
Speaker 9: moment like a bundle of brown leaves, and then again
Speaker 9: lifted itself into the air. That butter color clenched in
Speaker 9: order to hold a small still body, and it flew
Speaker 9: off as my mind saying out, Oh, all that loose
Speaker 9: blue rink of sky, where does it go to? And why?
Speaker 2: Beautiful?
Speaker 9: So beautiful? I was drawn to the poem first of
Speaker 9: all by the title. I love the title. The real
Speaker 9: prayers are not the words, but the attention that comes first. Yes,
Speaker 9: that's a really powerful thing for a poet to articulate,
Speaker 9: because the poet's the one who puts them in words,
Speaker 9: you know. So it's beautiful to say, Actually, the most
Speaker 9: important part of this work is the attention. You know.
Speaker 9: This is an after effect or this is an artifact
Speaker 9: of the attention. I think that's really beautiful. I also,
Speaker 9: obviously the sort of description that Mary Oliver does as
Speaker 9: beautifully as anyone, but that she's able also to witness
Speaker 9: this sort of entanglement of life. And among the things
Speaker 9: that are beautiful is this bird moving around beautifully, but
Speaker 9: also that the bird is living the bird's life, and
Speaker 9: part of the bird's life is taking another creature's life,
Speaker 9: and it's sort of a witness, a witness of what
Speaker 9: is actually and I think Mary Oliver can do that
Speaker 9: really beautifully. It's a witness of what is. She sees
Speaker 9: the bird, she sees the bird probably get a field
Speaker 9: mouse or something, and she sees it take off. And
Speaker 9: that last kind of couplet. I wonder if this is
Speaker 9: a sonic. I don't know, but there's a little bit
Speaker 9: of a rhyme at the end there, beautiful rhyme that
Speaker 9: buttercolor clenched the talents in order to hold a small
Speaker 9: still body and it flew off as my mind saying out, oh,
Speaker 9: all that loose blue rank of sky? Where does it
Speaker 9: go to? And why? There's something magical about the question
Speaker 9: of like where does the blue rank of sky go?
Speaker 9: Meaning the contemplation of death, which we all get to do,
Speaker 9: but also the question of like where does the little
Speaker 9: critter go who just got taken? Is beautiful, but it's
Speaker 9: also to me it also holds somehow in that grammar,
Speaker 9: it also holds that bird. Where is the bird or
Speaker 9: the creature that is taking us go off to? And why?
Speaker 9: So it's just like this really intense, beautiful, you know,
Speaker 9: multiple consideration of things in whatever fourteen lines or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's remarkable. I'm glad you broke that down the
Speaker 2: way you did. As you were going through that, I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, this would be an interesting poem from the
Speaker 2: field mouse's perspective, right, like you know, like that's the
Speaker 2: flip side to it.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love the title too, and it made me have
Speaker 2: a question on just I'll ask you real quick, which
Speaker 2: is there's the attention. Yeah, we talked about in our
Speaker 2: other conversation, being like the core thing I get from
Speaker 2: poets is how to pay attention. There's the attention and
Speaker 2: then there's the words. And I'm kind of curious for you.
Speaker 2: Are those things discrete steps? Are they together? Because I
Speaker 2: often find sometimes if I'm experiencing and I have attention
Speaker 2: on something, my brain will start to say, well, let's
Speaker 2: think about how to capture this, and then something shifts,
Speaker 2: and not necessarily in a good way.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah, that's a very hard question. I feel like
Speaker 9: me too, Me too. It's funny. I have a delight
Speaker 9: in this next book of essays coming out where I
Speaker 9: talk about I sort of witness a squirrel is inside
Speaker 9: of a pumpkin. It's around Halloween, and a squirrel's like
Speaker 9: sort of inside of a pumpkin and it's magic, and
Speaker 9: I reach into my notebook to start writing about it,
Speaker 9: and of course the squirrel takes off. Exease me, it
Speaker 9: takes off, you know. So it's kind of the end
Speaker 9: of delight. Yeah, because I'm trying to put it into language.
Speaker 9: But it's such a good question because I, like I said,
Speaker 9: I feel like if I were to be witnessing this
Speaker 9: thing that Mary Oliver is witnessing, or if I'm looking
Speaker 9: at a hummingbird going to the bee bomb, or if
Speaker 9: I'm looking at whatever, trying to describe the kid opening
Speaker 9: his crackers on the airplane or something, I'd also put
Speaker 9: it to language. But then I feel like, as far
Speaker 9: as the crafting of language into a kind of experience
Speaker 9: that maybe can almost approach something like the experience that's
Speaker 9: being described, that then is sort of like to me,
Speaker 9: the crafting of the poem, so that it's not simply
Speaker 9: the language, but it's the sort of real, you know,
Speaker 9: the kind of laboring with language to make the experience
Speaker 9: as both you know, maybe palpable, but also as sort
Speaker 9: of intense. And in a way I kind of want
Speaker 9: to say, I might not quite mean this, but but
Speaker 9: I'll say it anyway, like it's sort of new. Yeah,
Speaker 9: to make the experience unlike another experience, because every experience
Speaker 9: is actually unlike every other experience, you know, And I
Speaker 9: feel like that's part of the labor of like making poems.
Speaker 9: It's like trying to arrange the words in such a
Speaker 9: way that meaning experience, et cetera becomes something different, Yeah,
Speaker 9: something different maybe. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's almost as if there's a moment of knowing that
Speaker 2: is this very beautiful thing, and then there's a this
Speaker 2: is the wrong word, but a collapsing of that into
Speaker 2: concept and thinking, and then if done right, you emerge
Speaker 2: back into knowing or experience. Right, It's almost as if
Speaker 2: you pass through this tunnel where there's you know, it's
Speaker 2: not the best tunnel to be in. Maybe that's not
Speaker 2: even the right word, but you get where I'm going.
Speaker 2: On both sides of it, there's experience the capital E, right,
Speaker 2: and in between you may be thinking about experience with
Speaker 2: a lower case E because you're trying to get back
Speaker 2: to Yeah, it's a beautiful way of thinking of it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's right, Yes, lovely, Yeah, I'm glad to talk
Speaker 9: about that. Phone.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Thank you.
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