Speaker 1: I just love humor and tragedy real close together. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like
Speaker 1: 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 Ellen Bass, a chancellor
Speaker 1: of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book,
Speaker 1: Like a Beggar, was a finalist for the Patterson Poetry Prize,
Speaker 1: the Publisher's Triangle Award, the Milt Kessler Poetry Award, the
Speaker 1: Lambda Literary Award, and the Northern California Book Award. Ellen
Speaker 1: founded poetry workshops at Salina's Valley State Prison and the
Speaker 1: Santa Cruz, California Jails. She currently teaches in the Low
Speaker 1: Residency m f A writing program at Pacific University. Hi Friends,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of other ways to feed your good
Speaker 1: wolf in addition to just listening to this show. One
Speaker 1: is that you can support us on Patreon and that
Speaker 1: will allow you to get additional bonus content at as
Speaker 1: well as a mini episode for me each month. You
Speaker 1: can do that by going to one you Feed dot
Speaker 1: Net Slash Support. And the other thing that you can
Speaker 1: do is join our Facebook group where we have discussions
Speaker 1: about the episodes and other ways that people feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf and deal with challenges in life. And that
Speaker 1: is it One you Feed dot Net Slash Facebook. And
Speaker 1: here's the interview with Ellen Bass. Hi Ellen, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Oh thanks so much for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: delighted to be here. I'm thrilled to have you on.
Speaker 1: You are a poet of some renown and I first
Speaker 1: think I heard one of your poems from Jack Cornfield
Speaker 1: and I thought it was lovely. And i've sense, you know,
Speaker 1: read a bunch of your stuff and continue to think
Speaker 1: it's lovely is maybe not the right word, but it's
Speaker 1: it's very powerful, and so we're going to have you
Speaker 1: do a little reading of some of that poetry, so
Speaker 1: listeners can here in a moment. But let's start like
Speaker 1: we normally do, with the parable. There's grandmother's talking with
Speaker 1: her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful parable, and um certainly in my life
Speaker 1: to be feeding that good wolf. But I was thinking
Speaker 1: about it in the days leading up to this interview,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking how in poetry we really invite
Speaker 1: in both wolves, and there isn't a an exclusion of
Speaker 1: one part of our experience. I was thinking about la
Speaker 1: who was writing a letter to his wife. This is
Speaker 1: back in seven talking about the debt that writers owed
Speaker 1: to Boude Laire and Rilka wrote, even something horrible, something
Speaker 1: that seems no more than disgusting, truly exists and shares
Speaker 1: the truth of its being with everything else that exists.
Speaker 1: Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose,
Speaker 1: neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything.
Speaker 1: A single refusal and he has cast out of the
Speaker 1: state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through. Well,
Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't go quite as far as la I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that a single refusal will cast us out,
Speaker 1: that's all. There's a little bit more wiggle room. But
Speaker 1: I do think out that a lot. How in poetry
Speaker 1: we really want to invite in all aspects of human experience,
Speaker 1: not of course, so that we become immoral. People are
Speaker 1: thinking about it last night in terms of the way
Speaker 1: that a lot of Buddhist meditation teachers teach us that
Speaker 1: rather than trying to transcend are lesser impulse feelings or
Speaker 1: deny them or push them away. Instead we try and
Speaker 1: look at them with curiosity, and we don't just say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's great, that I'm a greedy person
Speaker 1: I'll just go along and be that way. But we
Speaker 1: also don't try and deny those feelings, and instead we
Speaker 1: we have a kind of curiosity towards them. And that's
Speaker 1: what poetry does, I think, is speak curious towards all
Speaker 1: aspects of the human experience and to try and really
Speaker 1: investigate them. Yep, I agree, and I think it's such
Speaker 1: a I mean, the parable is one of those things
Speaker 1: that commonly people mention, you know, we don't want to
Speaker 1: starve the bad wolf. And that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I kind of like about the parable is it doesn't
Speaker 1: mention doing anything to the bad wolf, you know, it
Speaker 1: just talks about like, let's give a little bit more
Speaker 1: attention to the good wolf. And I do think also
Speaker 1: that art is a little bit you know, the creative
Speaker 1: process is a little bit different maybe than how we
Speaker 1: treat the people around us or you know, so there's
Speaker 1: I think the parable only goes so far. I would say, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that, um. You know, certainly, if I think
Speaker 1: about the process of writing, you know, the willingness to
Speaker 1: dedicate oneself and stay with it even when it's not
Speaker 1: going as well as you'd like, and you know, kind
Speaker 1: of feed your faith and continuing sitting down. I call
Speaker 1: it the tush and share method of poetry writing. You
Speaker 1: know there, we certainly in terms of practice, have to
Speaker 1: feed that good wolf, because the not so good wolf
Speaker 1: is often whispering things into our ear that are discouraging,
Speaker 1: saying this is never going to be a good poem,
Speaker 1: so you might as well just give up right now,
Speaker 1: all those kinds of things. Yes, the bad wolf is
Speaker 1: not a very hard worker. Usually he shows up that
Speaker 1: way for an awful lot of people, I think. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting you were talking about that because another thing
Speaker 1: I've heard you say is that for you, a poem
Speaker 1: is as much about discovery of yourself and what you're
Speaker 1: talking about and your issues as it is um you
Speaker 1: getting down on paper what you think. I mean you
Speaker 1: talk about, you say, a good poem is one that
Speaker 1: you discover a lot of things about yourself as you
Speaker 1: go through it, and poem is one that the reader
Speaker 1: does also. Absolutely, if you already know what you're going
Speaker 1: to say for the most part, you could write an
Speaker 1: essay and that might be a really good thing to do.
Speaker 1: We need those essays in which people uh talk about
Speaker 1: their convictions and their understandings. Um, they educate us, and
Speaker 1: they challenge us, they delight us. But in a poem,
Speaker 1: if you are too knowing, if you already know what
Speaker 1: you're going to say, then you don't have a chance
Speaker 1: to discover anything. And pretty much every writer who's talked
Speaker 1: about writing has talked about this concept um of surprise
Speaker 1: or discovery. And that's the real thrill of the writing,
Speaker 1: is finding out something that you didn't know when you began.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what makes poetry interesting to the reader.
Speaker 1: And if you, if you read a lot of poetry,
Speaker 1: as I do of developing writers who aren't that far
Speaker 1: along in the process, very often the poem begins with
Speaker 1: a thought and it ends in some way with the
Speaker 1: same thought. So even if it's expressed very beautifully, it
Speaker 1: hasn't traveled anywhere. It hasn't taken the writer or the
Speaker 1: reader someplace that they didn't expect to go. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're always hoping for. Very interesting. So why don't
Speaker 1: we start by having you read a poem. I've I've
Speaker 1: asked you to read a poem called Relax. I'd be
Speaker 1: glad to relax. Bad things are going to happen. Your
Speaker 1: tomatoes will grow a fungus, and your cat will get
Speaker 1: run over. Someone will leave the bag with the ice
Speaker 1: cream melting in the car and throw your blue Chasmere
Speaker 1: sweater in the dryer. Your husband will sleep with a
Speaker 1: girl your daughter's age, her breath filling out of her blouse,
Speaker 1: where wife will remember she's a lesbian and leave you
Speaker 1: for the woman next door. The other cat, the one
Speaker 1: you never really liked, will contract a disease that requires
Speaker 1: you to pry open its feverish mouth every four hours.
Speaker 1: Your parents will die. No matter how many vitamins you take,
Speaker 1: how much pilates, you'll lose your keys, your hair, and
Speaker 1: your memory. If your daughter doesn't plug her heart into
Speaker 1: every live stocket she passes, you'll come home to find
Speaker 1: your son has emptied the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
Speaker 1: and called the used appliance store for a pickup drug money.
Speaker 1: The Booty tells the story of a woman chased by
Speaker 1: a tiger. When she comes to a cliff, she sees
Speaker 1: a sturdy vine and climbs halfway down, But there's also
Speaker 1: a tiger below and two my one white, one black,
Speaker 1: carry out and begin to gnaw at the vine. At
Speaker 1: this point she notices a wild strawberry growing from a credit.
Speaker 1: She looks up down at the nice then she eats
Speaker 1: the strawberry. So here's the view. The breeze, the pulse
Speaker 1: in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat,
Speaker 1: flip on the bathroom tiles in a foreign hotel, and
Speaker 1: crack your hips. You'll be a lonely Oh taste, how
Speaker 1: sweet and tart the red juice is, how the tiny
Speaker 1: seeds crunched between your teeth. I just love that poem.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many things about it. I
Speaker 1: love the fact that I think it normalizes human experience.
Speaker 1: We talk on this show so often about how, particularly
Speaker 1: the West, we have this expectation of things going well,
Speaker 1: of being happy, of everything being good, and then when
Speaker 1: they don't, we think there's something wrong with us. And
Speaker 1: I love that that poem sort of normalizes, like it's
Speaker 1: going to happen to all of you. And then I
Speaker 1: also love the part about the strawberry and the idea
Speaker 1: that in the midst of whatever is happening to us,
Speaker 1: there can be a place of peace or joy or appreciation,
Speaker 1: or that life is right there with us. We don't
Speaker 1: have to wait until the bad things are gone to
Speaker 1: be alive. Yeah, and we better not because there's just
Speaker 1: so many of them. My oldest friend, UM, we're friends
Speaker 1: since when I was four and he was five. Um
Speaker 1: is a psychologist in Philadelphia and also has been quadriplegic
Speaker 1: for over thirty years. And uh so he's a pretty
Speaker 1: wise guy. And UM and a wise guy as well.
Speaker 1: And when I talked to him during periods when things
Speaker 1: are very hard in my life or I'm in pain, UM,
Speaker 1: he'll always say a how are you right now, right
Speaker 1: this minute, and usually right that moment, especially talking to
Speaker 1: him and feeling all that love that that he can send,
Speaker 1: even through the telephone line, I'm not so bad and
Speaker 1: maybe even okay, and he says, well, okay, this is
Speaker 1: you know, right now, right now. It's pretty good, isn't it,
Speaker 1: you know? And so yes that moment. This is a
Speaker 1: poem really that I don't know if it's my good wolf,
Speaker 1: but it's my smartest wolf wrote and my wife wolf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my sort of every day wolf needs to be
Speaker 1: reminded of this all the time. Um. Sometimes I can
Speaker 1: hardly believe I even had a long enough period of
Speaker 1: wisdom to write this period this poem. I think we're
Speaker 1: all that way to a to a certain extent, certainly,
Speaker 1: that's a big part of why I do what I
Speaker 1: do with this show is is exactly that is to
Speaker 1: remind myself of these deeper, greater truths that tend to
Speaker 1: slide out of sight in day to day life if
Speaker 1: we're not careful. That's wonderful. Yes, exactly. There's another thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about as far a little bit
Speaker 1: about the craft of poetry, but sort of takes us
Speaker 1: somewhere deeper than that. And you talk about metaphor. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that you're really good at his metaphor.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the things that people praise
Speaker 1: in your poetry is meta for But you said something
Speaker 1: I thought was was fascinating. You said, metaphor is an
Speaker 1: aspect of poetry that is spiritual. Our society has become
Speaker 1: very sophisticated in its ability to discriminate. We can discern
Speaker 1: differences more and more finely. In metaphor, you are doing
Speaker 1: what might be the opposite. You're looking for what is
Speaker 1: similar in disparate things. Yes, I came to that realization
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line, thinking a lot about metaphors. Successful
Speaker 1: metaphors don't necessarily come to me easily, but thinking in
Speaker 1: metaphor does. And even if I'm just in a discussion
Speaker 1: with somebody, I'm often saying, well, it's like and and or,
Speaker 1: or if I'm in an argument, well it's like and.
Speaker 1: I realized that it comes out trying to convince people
Speaker 1: of something or trying to be understood. I think it's
Speaker 1: a deep need to be understood. But yes, I think
Speaker 1: that as I thought about metaphor more and more, I
Speaker 1: began to really see it in the way that I
Speaker 1: described there, that it is a kind of um miniature
Speaker 1: version of looking at the oneness of the world, that
Speaker 1: everything this concept that we're understanding from many angles. More
Speaker 1: and more I think, um that everything is connected is
Speaker 1: something that we do in a in a small version,
Speaker 1: in each metaphor. Interestingly, I came across something not long
Speaker 1: ago where Aristotle said that to make good metaphor is
Speaker 1: holy labor. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah? That is that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I don't know that I'm that good at metaphor,
Speaker 1: but I certainly appreciate it. The other thing I saw
Speaker 1: you you say briefly was that, Um, your approach to
Speaker 1: finding the right metaphor is just to write as many
Speaker 1: of them as you can think about and hope that
Speaker 1: you know the good one comes out of it. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely a like you said, even though you may
Speaker 1: have a natural affinity to it, you're still really working
Speaker 1: through finding the right one. That it's not like the
Speaker 1: perfect one comes immediately. And I think that's just back
Speaker 1: to the working hard in the chair to be a poet.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's always good to remind people that
Speaker 1: the creative process like that, it isn't like you know,
Speaker 1: these things come out fully formed, that brilliantly like you're
Speaker 1: you're working on them and you're you're labor in a
Speaker 1: way to make the poems as good as they can be. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes because we all have language, and we
Speaker 1: all speak, and we all uh, you know, most people
Speaker 1: who are reading, well, everyone who's reading poetry is literate
Speaker 1: or else they couldn't read it. So we can read,
Speaker 1: we can write. There's sometimes an idea that you just
Speaker 1: get inspired and write your poem. And although I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's been known to happen, and I've gotten a couple
Speaker 1: of those along the way. We wouldn't think that about
Speaker 1: the saxophone. For example, No one would expect to pick
Speaker 1: up the saxophone and be able to control their breath
Speaker 1: and the sounds that the saxophone makes immediately. But because
Speaker 1: we're so familiar with words, sometimes people think that it's
Speaker 1: going to come more easily than it does. And I
Speaker 1: teach a lot, and one of the indicators that a
Speaker 1: student is really progressing to me is when they come
Speaker 1: into class somewhat distraught and say something along the lines
Speaker 1: of this is really hard, and they're scuraged by how
Speaker 1: hard it is. And I always then say, oh, this
Speaker 1: is great, you're really getting it now, You're really now
Speaker 1: now you have an understanding of what it is a
Speaker 1: beginning to have an understanding of what it is that
Speaker 1: you're trying to learn how to do. And then they
Speaker 1: always have a lot more progress after that. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about a poem of yours. Maybe just
Speaker 1: read a couple lines of it, and then um, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have you do some more reading a little bit.
Speaker 1: But there's a poem of yours um called asking Directions
Speaker 1: in Paris, And I love this because most of the
Speaker 1: poem you're describing that you're in Paris and you're asking
Speaker 1: a woman for directions and she is giving you them
Speaker 1: in French very quickly, and you don't really have any
Speaker 1: idea what she's saying. You know, you think you know French,
Speaker 1: and you get there and you're not, and so she's
Speaker 1: giving you these directions and you don't really know anything
Speaker 1: about them. And then you say, I'll just read the
Speaker 1: last part of the poem and we can talk about it,
Speaker 1: you say, and as you thank her profusely and set
Speaker 1: off full of groundless hope, you think this must be
Speaker 1: how it is with destiny, God explaining and explaining what
Speaker 1: you must do. And all you can make out is
Speaker 1: a few unconnected phrases, a word or two, a wave
Speaker 1: in what you pray is the right direction. And I
Speaker 1: think that's just a beautiful way of describing what a
Speaker 1: lot of us, particularly with spirituality, are are doing. We're
Speaker 1: if we're not certain, you know, if we don't have
Speaker 1: a faith of of which we're incredibly certain, but we are,
Speaker 1: let's say, interested, or involved, or you know, we need something.
Speaker 1: That's a lot what it feels like to me making
Speaker 1: out a few words order to hear hoping you're going
Speaker 1: the right direction, etcetera, etcetera. Yes, yes, indeed, indeed, and um,
Speaker 1: this isn't really exactly what you're asking, but it does
Speaker 1: have to do with this section, so I'll just share it. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't have a I don't have a belief in
Speaker 1: any kind of conventional or even somewhat unconventional God, except
Speaker 1: you know, for know, the amazement of the universe and
Speaker 1: in all its many aspects, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: experience of awe for sure. But you know, I don't
Speaker 1: really believe that God talks to me or that I
Speaker 1: can talk to God. But I felt at a certain
Speaker 1: point in my writing that why shouldn't I be able
Speaker 1: to use the word God? Because it's such a familiar
Speaker 1: concept to us, and it means so many many things
Speaker 1: to us. And I thought to myself, well, I don't
Speaker 1: have to have a belief in God in order to
Speaker 1: claim that word as part of my vocabulary. And it
Speaker 1: was incredibly liberating. I started to be able to say
Speaker 1: all kinds of things that I wouldn't have known how
Speaker 1: to say otherwise. Yeah, I agree, I was trying to
Speaker 1: find a quote. I must not have it right, But
Speaker 1: I feel like Joseph Campbell said something like, you know,
Speaker 1: God is a metaphor for that which you know transcends everything,
Speaker 1: or you know that which we can't talk about. And
Speaker 1: I really like that because I think that really widens
Speaker 1: it up to a place that is workable for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you mentioned in an interview I saw somewhere that you're
Speaker 1: a student of, you know, Pemachodren's work. You mentioned, Um,
Speaker 1: you know one of my favorite books of all time,
Speaker 1: which is When Things Fall Apart. Yes, I'm adapt the
Speaker 1: worst meditator maybe in the Western hemisphere. I'm seventy years old,
Speaker 1: and I started trying to metaphor when I was trying
Speaker 1: a metaphor that's really good. I started trying to meditate
Speaker 1: when I was in my early twenties, and um, I
Speaker 1: probably can't name the number of times I said, this
Speaker 1: time is really it? This time, I'm really gonna stick
Speaker 1: with it. And so far I have never been able
Speaker 1: to sustain a practice in which I sit on a
Speaker 1: cushion or a chair. But I do read a lot,
Speaker 1: and I've come to accept that. Um My trying to
Speaker 1: practice just through the day and my reading and taking
Speaker 1: what I read seriously and really trying to put it
Speaker 1: into into my day is another kind of practice, and
Speaker 1: that's evidently the kind I'm going to have. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I am, I am. I appreciate Kim of children so
Speaker 1: much and and I also have come very belatedly to
Speaker 1: Tick knack Han and Uh, I just love them. They
Speaker 1: feel like two sides of the same coin to me. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that this is a kind of unfair characteristic characterization,
Speaker 1: but you know, children is always saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to when when something card, you lean into it
Speaker 1: and you examine it and you flore it and you
Speaker 1: don't try to, you know, run away from it in
Speaker 1: any way. And Tick not hotness. It seems to always
Speaker 1: be saying, um, you have all the conditions for happiness,
Speaker 1: you know, just breathing and smile. It's like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: could I use the dose of that. So um, they're
Speaker 1: they're a wonderful pair. I don't know if you've seen it.
Speaker 1: There's a movie out very recently about him called I
Speaker 1: think it's called Walk with Me, and it's like a
Speaker 1: feature film that is done. It's just filmed gorgeously. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. And there is a scene in there
Speaker 1: that I'll just for you and the listeners where you know,
Speaker 1: he talks with a little girl about her dog who
Speaker 1: passed away, and it is one of the sweetest, most
Speaker 1: touching things I've ever seen. Like if I need like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you talk about like um loving kindness practice
Speaker 1: where you're ideas to sort of warm your heart up
Speaker 1: and then directed it lots of different people, that one
Speaker 1: always works for me when I think of it, just
Speaker 1: the way he does it. So that movie is great.
Speaker 1: It's it's very I would say it's slow paced, it's
Speaker 1: very meditative, but it's filmed beautifully, and there's lots of
Speaker 1: you know, lots of him and it's really good. Oh
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. That's just wonderful. Yeah. I love how slowly
Speaker 1: he talks to Yes, Yes, let's have you do another
Speaker 1: poem for us. If you would um called, if you you,
Speaker 1: if you knew what, if you knew, you'd be the
Speaker 1: last to touch someone. If you were taking tickets, for example,
Speaker 1: at the theater, tearing them, giving back the ragged stubbs,
Speaker 1: you might take care to touch that palm fresh your
Speaker 1: fingertips along the lifeline's crease. When a man pulls his
Speaker 1: wheeled suitcase too slowly through the airport, When the car
Speaker 1: in front of me doesn't signal, When the clerk at
Speaker 1: the pharmacy won't say thank you, I don't remember. They're
Speaker 1: going to die. A friend told me she'd been with
Speaker 1: her aunt. They just had lunch, and the waiter, a
Speaker 1: young gay man with plumb black eyes, joked as he
Speaker 1: served the coffee, dis her aunt's peldered cheek. When they left.
Speaker 1: Then they walked half a block and her aunt dropped
Speaker 1: dead on the sidewalk. How close does the dragons fume
Speaker 1: have to come? How why just the crack in heaven
Speaker 1: have to split? What would people look like if we
Speaker 1: could see them as they are in honey, stung and swollen,
Speaker 1: reckless and against time? That is so beautiful. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I don't even have any anything to add to it.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just so beautiful. I appreciate that. And
Speaker 1: now I'm not sure where to go next. That's difficult
Speaker 1: to uh, that's difficult to follow up with anything. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it reminds me of that phrase, you know,
Speaker 1: be kind to everyone because we don't know what they're
Speaker 1: going through. Um, but it takes it even to like
Speaker 1: this further level, Like I don't even have to know
Speaker 1: what they're going for through, right, I just have to
Speaker 1: know like they could you know, they could be gone
Speaker 1: at any point. You have another poem related to um,
Speaker 1: this sense of appreciating what's in front of us um,
Speaker 1: although it's kind of inverse to that, and it's called
Speaker 1: lost Dog and it's a it's a poem about your
Speaker 1: dog who went lost for um a period of time,
Speaker 1: and you know, then you come home and you find
Speaker 1: the dog. And I'll just read this a little bit.
Speaker 1: You say, every time I look at him, the wide
Speaker 1: head resting on my outstretched pause, joy does another lap
Speaker 1: around the racetrack of my heart. Even in sleep, when
Speaker 1: I turn over to ease my bad hip, I'm suffused
Speaker 1: with contentment. If I could lose in like this every day,
Speaker 1: I'd be the happiest woman alive. That's so great. I
Speaker 1: mean it because it's so true of us that, you know,
Speaker 1: we you suddenly think you might lose something, and you
Speaker 1: you realize how much it matters to you. But it
Speaker 1: is so hard, even knowing that, it is so hard
Speaker 1: to do that day to day, to get that sense
Speaker 1: of urgency. Yes, for most of us, it's just about impossible.
Speaker 1: And I think I think that A big motivation for
Speaker 1: me in writing poems is too in some way, in
Speaker 1: many ways, help me to pay attention. You know, many
Speaker 1: people have talked about attention as being a form of prayer,
Speaker 1: and in writing a poem, it's a it's an opportunity
Speaker 1: to try to really pay attention. And in that paying attention,
Speaker 1: there's an inevitable appreciation for people, animals, you know, everything
Speaker 1: that is dear to us, I mean not you know,
Speaker 1: even even the stone. Anything that we're looking at, we're remembering,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about um. And the older I get, the
Speaker 1: more I feel mortality and so you know, eventually, of
Speaker 1: course we're gonna lose as individuals, we're gonna lose everything um.
Speaker 1: And I think poetry for me is a way to
Speaker 1: stop and appreciate, appreciate it each thing. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's what poetry, as a reader of poetry helps me
Speaker 1: to do, is it. It helps me to appreciate things more.
Speaker 1: It helps me adjust my lenses, so to speak, so
Speaker 1: that they're a little bit more attuned to the beauty
Speaker 1: of life that's right in front of us in the ordinary.
Speaker 1: It just as I as I read, you know, good
Speaker 1: poems do that they take something that looks very ordinary
Speaker 1: at first, and and bring it up in a way
Speaker 1: and then that sort of mindset or ability, then I
Speaker 1: find I can pivot it to other things. I don't
Speaker 1: have to have the words. It's just that it's a
Speaker 1: way of looking, a way of thinking. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's going deeply into what's right in front of us,
Speaker 1: which is again another word as you use kind of
Speaker 1: for attention, um, but it's almost a particular kind of attention.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's in a for me, it's an appreciative attention. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: even even if it's a painful thing um or you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about the wolves. You know, even if it's a
Speaker 1: painful thing or a place where uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: feel that we've failed or let ourselves or somebody else down,
Speaker 1: still there is that paying attention to it and giving it.
Speaker 1: It's do um, not learning it, just you know, just
Speaker 1: not learning it slip away. Ye. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of that. And I'm glad that you talk
Speaker 1: about the reading of poetry as well, because I think
Speaker 1: that it is the other aspect. And I'm sure for
Speaker 1: every poet what brings you to poetry is the reading
Speaker 1: of poetry. You know you love poetry, and so you
Speaker 1: want to you want to make your own. UM. And
Speaker 1: I have the same experience in in reading as I
Speaker 1: do in writing. I heard you mentioned before that gift
Speaker 1: people can give each other is to introduce them to
Speaker 1: poetry that they would love. You talk about how easy
Speaker 1: it is to find novels and books that we might write,
Speaker 1: but how hard it is with poetry. Do you have
Speaker 1: a couple of contemporary poets you might recommend? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: surely do, UM more than the couple. I know. I'm
Speaker 1: putting you on the spot there for a quick answer,
Speaker 1: but this isn't meant to be exhaustive, but just you know,
Speaker 1: find just at the moment, UM, Marie how um poetry. UM.
Speaker 1: She's just come out within a new book called Magdalene
Speaker 1: that is extraordinary UM, looking at the experience of contemporary women,
Speaker 1: but somewhat through the lens of Mary Magdalen. And if
Speaker 1: she's an extraordinary poet, I think one of our most
Speaker 1: extraordinary contemporary poets her. Her book What the Living Do
Speaker 1: is her best known book, and it's a just UM.
Speaker 1: I can't say enough good about it. So maybe listeners,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not familiar, you might really want
Speaker 1: to look at her poetry. I love Jericho Brown's poetry. Um,
Speaker 1: he has a couple of those stout that are excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1: I love more new poet new Ish, who only has
Speaker 1: one book out so far, but I think there's another
Speaker 1: one coming out really soon. Is that Natalie Diaz Um
Speaker 1: who um is uh mojave Native American and her book
Speaker 1: is UM When My Brother was an as tech and
Speaker 1: deals with many things, but one of them her brother's
Speaker 1: mental illness. And um, oh gosh, so many poets I
Speaker 1: could name. Well, that's a that's a good start for us.
Speaker 1: That will certainly give us something to do. But yeah, good.
Speaker 1: I'll put links in the show notes for listeners if
Speaker 1: you want to find any of the books by those poets,
Speaker 1: I will definitely make sure they're linked in the show notes. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the last thing Ellen I'd like to do
Speaker 1: is just talk briefly about something that you've said and
Speaker 1: I think it shows up in your work over and over,
Speaker 1: and you talk about, um, the importance of humor. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I often say I think humor is an
Speaker 1: unappreciated virtue. Um. You know, I'd put it up there
Speaker 1: with the virtues. And and you talk about how there's
Speaker 1: room for humor even in the most serious situations, and
Speaker 1: some of your poetry even right in the midst of
Speaker 1: like pretty heavy, intense things, it's funny at the same time.
Speaker 1: And and I always, you know, listener to the show,
Speaker 1: I've probably heard me say this to a few guests.
Speaker 1: When I can laugh and cry within like a very
Speaker 1: short amount of time of each other, like if they're
Speaker 1: both kind of right there on the same page, I
Speaker 1: always think that's sort of a virtuoso act of art. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, I just love humor
Speaker 1: and tragedy real close together. Well that's me too, I mean,
Speaker 1: I uh, I you know, um, I think the kind
Speaker 1: of humor that is in my poem, I don't try
Speaker 1: and be funny. I mean, I love it when it
Speaker 1: is funny, and I there's a great joy and making
Speaker 1: people laugh. I mean, it's nothing you know, so much
Speaker 1: fun in giving a reading as having people just crack
Speaker 1: up and you know, kind of cracking up with them. Um.
Speaker 1: But I don't try and make jokes, you know. I
Speaker 1: don't set out to be funny. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the kind of humor that I really do like is
Speaker 1: that the just in a way being able to be
Speaker 1: the humor in in a situation. And of course I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of dark humor. Um, how could I not be. Um.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I'm getting a new a new book
Speaker 1: of poetry together now and I gave it to my
Speaker 1: wife to look at and she said, wow, Ellen, you know,
Speaker 1: these poems are very serious and um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: just not as much humor in them. And I said, really,
Speaker 1: you know, because it seemed to me that there really
Speaker 1: still was a lot in there, so maybe there's not
Speaker 1: as much as ever. But then I started to say, well,
Speaker 1: how about this one and how about this? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is really funny. People always laugh and uh, and it
Speaker 1: was true. But I think that there that they're also
Speaker 1: there is a lot of um, a lot of pain
Speaker 1: in them, but I think the humor is in there too.
Speaker 1: Maybe the proportions a little bit different, But I have
Speaker 1: a kind of I've come to realize the kind of
Speaker 1: quirky sense of humor, and I think it's an asset
Speaker 1: in in my poem because the way I see things
Speaker 1: is so that, let you know, I do even even
Speaker 1: when it's just a terrible situation. I do see the
Speaker 1: humor in it, and and I love including that in
Speaker 1: the poems when it comes and it and it feels
Speaker 1: natural and right for the poem. Yeah. I think, like
Speaker 1: I said, I think humors of virtue, and I think
Speaker 1: being able to find humor in difficult things is, you know,
Speaker 1: not only a virtue but one of you know, if
Speaker 1: you could pick your coping skills off a list, right,
Speaker 1: it's it should be in the top five I think
Speaker 1: of of the best skills you could have if you
Speaker 1: want to if you want to be a sensitive about
Speaker 1: life and care about life and not walk around petually wounded,
Speaker 1: humor is a pretty good way to help. I love
Speaker 1: you putting it as a virtue. That's quite wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the way I see it anyway. Well, Ellen, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: Loved your poems. I thank you for reading for us,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, it just it was a it was
Speaker 1: a pleasure. Thank you that. Okay, If what you just
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