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