Speaker 1: I really do believe if one wants to be an
Speaker 1: artist of any kind, certainly a writer, and maybe just
Speaker 1: like a human being who's self aware and aware of
Speaker 1: the world around them, attention is our best offense and defense.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the skill that we need to
Speaker 1: most cultivate. It seems to me, welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think, ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is poet Kathy Fagan, whose work has appeared in
Speaker 1: venues such as The New York Times, Sunday Magazine, Poetry
Speaker 1: the Nation, the New Republic, the Academy of American Poets,
Speaker 1: Poem a Day, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Poetry.
Speaker 1: Kathy co founded the MFA Program and Creative Writing at
Speaker 1: the Ohio State University, where she teaches poetry and co
Speaker 1: edits the Journal OSU Press Wheeler Poetry Prize Series. Her
Speaker 1: most recent and sixth book is Bad Hobby. Her previous book, Sickamore,
Speaker 1: a finalist for the twenty eighteen Kingsley Tufts Award. Kathy
Speaker 1: has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Hi, Kathy,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks Eric for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to have you on. A co friend of ours,
Speaker 1: Maggie Smith, who's been a guest on the show, recommended you.
Speaker 1: And you are a poet here in Ohio, in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: you teach it Ohio State University. So I always love
Speaker 1: having people locally on, and I love your poetry. And
Speaker 1: we're going to be discussing primarily things from your latest book,
Speaker 1: which is called Bad Hobby. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and
Speaker 1: they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops think about
Speaker 1: it for a second and they look up at their
Speaker 1: grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandparent 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. Yeah. Thanks, Eric,
Speaker 1: That's such a great opening gambit. And I was both
Speaker 1: really attracted to bit parable when I saw it and
Speaker 1: also extremely uncomfortable with it. And I was sort of
Speaker 1: thinking about those dual responses. And then I was teaching
Speaker 1: one of my poetry classes a week ago and I
Speaker 1: mentioned John Keats's notion about negative capability. John Keats the
Speaker 1: romantic nineteenth century English poet, and in a letter to
Speaker 1: his brother he talks about this notion he has about
Speaker 1: negative capability and defines it as someone being capable of
Speaker 1: being in uncertainties and mysteries, the ability to hold in
Speaker 1: one's mind two opposing elements at once good wolf and
Speaker 1: bad wolf made me think of that spectrum in between
Speaker 1: and sort of being able somehow to balance the two
Speaker 1: right in that most creatures, it seems to me sort
Speaker 1: of dwell on a spectrum between the two right, and
Speaker 1: maybe even thresholds before and beyond that spectrum, a kind
Speaker 1: of liminality at either side. So not just a binary then,
Speaker 1: but a sort of plurality and multiplicity which feels to
Speaker 1: me perhaps maybe truer to my experience. And so that's
Speaker 1: what that wonderful parable made me think about, all the
Speaker 1: spaces in between and on either side. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that idea of negative capability that Keats had. And it's
Speaker 1: funny that you bring it up in that way because
Speaker 1: we are talking about our logo right now, and our
Speaker 1: logo originally was similar to what it looks like now.
Speaker 1: It's a wolf head that you know, sort of two
Speaker 1: facing one wolf was very delineated in dark colors. One
Speaker 1: was delineated and what colors, and there was a line
Speaker 1: right down the middle. It was very binary, and overtime
Speaker 1: time it became clear that for many people it gave
Speaker 1: the idea that dark is bad, Light is good, right,
Speaker 1: and so in today's sculture, we'd want to be no
Speaker 1: part of perpetuating that idea. So then our logo moved
Speaker 1: to blue. We thought, let's just kind of like, okay,
Speaker 1: blue is going to be sort of neutral in that way,
Speaker 1: And the gradient between the wolves went from a binary
Speaker 1: line to very much a gradient, a shading, a sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And so we're now looking at the logo
Speaker 1: again for a variety of reasons. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we'll change it or not. Listeners, if you have an opinion,
Speaker 1: way in but what we've thought about recently is a
Speaker 1: wolf of all colors, you know, a wolf that has
Speaker 1: all the different colors in it, because that's really a
Speaker 1: closer approximation of what's going on inside of us, right.
Speaker 1: There's not just a good and a bad inside of us,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, there's all these different desires and goals
Speaker 1: and wants and competing priorities, and it's just this morg
Speaker 1: is Borg of things exactly inside of us. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I think the parable is useful in its core idea
Speaker 1: of we have a choice and our choices matter, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's the key part. But I really
Speaker 1: resonate with everything you just said they're around that multiplicity.
Speaker 1: So I thought maybe we could start by getting you
Speaker 1: to read one of your poems from your new book.
Speaker 1: And I thought we could start with the poem Mourning. Yeah. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I will read that poem Mourning. I walk out each morning,
Speaker 1: the sun on my back. It is not the hand
Speaker 1: of my mother, she is dead now. It is not
Speaker 1: the hand of my father. He is needy as a
Speaker 1: child and cannot think to comfort me. I won't say God,
Speaker 1: but you might. Often in poems you means I, and
Speaker 1: I means you, and with our common griefs, confusions and
Speaker 1: best efforts unacknowledged. That may be true outside poems too.
Speaker 1: The sun feels good, it feels warm on my back.
Speaker 1: The heat between my shoulders reminds me of something like
Speaker 1: the riddle beginning, what and ending Everything that would love
Speaker 1: you and kill you but doesn't. There's so many things
Speaker 1: in there that I love, But I really love this
Speaker 1: idea of common griefs, confusions and best efforts. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful idea. You know, there's a lot of grief in
Speaker 1: this latest book. I think Sycamore is your book before this,
Speaker 1: and there's grief there too, and different kind of loss
Speaker 1: in that a totally different kind of loss, that was
Speaker 1: the loss of a relationship. This is parental, but that
Speaker 1: common grief idea. So I thought, maybe we could start
Speaker 1: by talking about your father and his dementia. Listeners will
Speaker 1: know Jinny and I have gone through this with her
Speaker 1: mother for the last six years. Her mother passed October,
Speaker 1: so a topic that's near and dear to our heart,
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of listening too, as well
Speaker 1: as just this idea of people of a certain age
Speaker 1: having to start caring for their parents. Absolutely, yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems so common among the being of common grief, so
Speaker 1: common among my age group, in fact, so much so
Speaker 1: that when I was recently at Penn State Baron giving
Speaker 1: a reading, young people even came up to me to
Speaker 1: talk about their parents experience with their grandparents, their own
Speaker 1: experience with their grandparents. At first, I thought, oh, this
Speaker 1: is definitely going to make clear what age I am
Speaker 1: by talking about these kinds of issues in my poems.
Speaker 1: But it is a larger concern even than I was aware,
Speaker 1: was lots of folks sort of caring for the ill
Speaker 1: and the elderly, and in fact, in the memory care
Speaker 1: facility that my father last month actually passed in There
Speaker 1: are many younger people as well there as a result
Speaker 1: of stroke, Parkinson's and other kinds of issues, So it's
Speaker 1: not just dementia, although that was what robbed my dad
Speaker 1: of his life for the past several years. Certainly, we
Speaker 1: hadn't lived together since I was a child when he
Speaker 1: moved in with us in twenty thirteen, and his conservative
Speaker 1: faith and politics had always been a challenge for me
Speaker 1: as a queer agnostic, liberal feminist. And though I'd long
Speaker 1: been aware of his physical disability, I wasn't aware of
Speaker 1: the extent of where his dementia and other kind of
Speaker 1: physical ailments had gotten him into. He likely had lifelong
Speaker 1: cognitive disabilities that I wasn't aware of. As a child.
Speaker 1: We were poor, My parents didn't go to college. We
Speaker 1: were very much working class, and this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: If there were issues they weren't addressed, or they couldn't
Speaker 1: afford to be addressed, or folks didn't know what exactly
Speaker 1: they were dealing with with these kinds of issues. And
Speaker 1: so he passed because he was mostly pretty charming. So
Speaker 1: when he came to live with me, we vigated these
Speaker 1: systems of public healthcare and social services that I in
Speaker 1: my privilege as a well educated, tenured professor, hadn't had
Speaker 1: to deal with since I was young myself, and so
Speaker 1: that was a real education for me. At around that time,
Speaker 1: I had been dealing with writing with sort of oblique
Speaker 1: poems about my own childlessness, and when I was in
Speaker 1: charge suddenly of my father's care, I had to think
Speaker 1: really long and hard about a lot of reverse caregiving, right,
Speaker 1: the child becoming the parent to the parent. That's what
Speaker 1: resulted in bad hobby. Yeah, I don't know about you.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I was taken aback when this
Speaker 1: all started happening to us. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: just thought it was going to be further into the future.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is just not realizing, like, hey, you're the
Speaker 1: age you are, and I watched my mother do it
Speaker 1: with my grandmother, But somehow I just didn't see it coming. Now.
Speaker 1: That may be because I was focused on getting a
Speaker 1: son into college and getting myself out of a bad marriage.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, it was like, all right, he's
Speaker 1: off to college, I'm out of this marriage. You know.
Speaker 1: Now it's me time freedom. Freedom. Yeah, how little I
Speaker 1: knew right about what was about to appear on the horizon.
Speaker 1: So I just I remember just being a little bit
Speaker 1: taken back by it. But it is so common these days,
Speaker 1: and so many of my friends are going through it.
Speaker 1: You mentioned sort of your dad and his conservative politics
Speaker 1: and you being you know, liberal and queer, and you know,
Speaker 1: one of my best friends lives with his parents, both
Speaker 1: of them. I mean, he's got a double dose of it.
Speaker 1: They're both struggling mightily, and he's gay, and Fox News
Speaker 1: just blares through that house all day every day, and
Speaker 1: I just think, wow, I feel that pain. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a short period of time when I just
Speaker 1: couldn't even share a meal with my dad. It was
Speaker 1: actually twenty sixteen. I don't have to tell you what
Speaker 1: was happening in twenty sixteen, and it was impossible to
Speaker 1: have a civil conversation and made worse. Of course, I
Speaker 1: wish I had understood this at the time, but it
Speaker 1: was of course much more fraught because of my father's
Speaker 1: advancing dementia, right of course. Yeah, I mean, because I mean,
Speaker 1: at least my experience with people and dementia is that
Speaker 1: the filters start to come off exactly the executive control.
Speaker 1: That's like, well, maybe that wouldn't be the right thing
Speaker 1: to say starts to vanish and you're just like, oh, whoa, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I can't think of the word for it.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say fabrication, but that's not quite the
Speaker 1: right word I'm looking for. There's an actual word for
Speaker 1: people in dementia where they start combining real memories and
Speaker 1: real events with things that didn't happen. I think fabrication
Speaker 1: is the word that I've heard used before. Yeah, fabricating
Speaker 1: all sorts of details. Yeah, that was very much a
Speaker 1: part of my experience with my dad. And again because
Speaker 1: I hadn't dealt with someone struggling with demi bunch before.
Speaker 1: I did not know what was happening, and I certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't able to learn how to deal with it. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the saddest things about this journey that my
Speaker 1: dad and I went on together was, and this is later,
Speaker 1: when he was in memory care, medicated with antipsychotics and
Speaker 1: antidepressants and was losing virtually all of his memory except
Speaker 1: my name and maybe one or two other details about
Speaker 1: his previous life. He was sweeter, He was kinder. He
Speaker 1: was the dad that I remembered looking up to and
Speaker 1: feeling so, you know, snuggly with as a little girl.
Speaker 1: But all that period before that, when we were you know,
Speaker 1: going toe to toe. Yeah, you know, I regret it,
Speaker 1: but it happens that impulse control and dementia patient just vanishes.
Speaker 1: And he would sort of say and do anything, and
Speaker 1: I responded, because I'm a human being. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I fought back. It's on the job training, for sure, yes,
Speaker 1: you know. And we went through a similar thing with
Speaker 1: Jenny's mom. There was a period where she became extraordinarily briskly,
Speaker 1: to put it kindly, you know, yeah, they can become
Speaker 1: really aggressive. Yeah, yeah, that kind of aggression is so common. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we had caregivers getting shoved, you know, And
Speaker 1: so we had to start to medicate her a little
Speaker 1: more heavily because I mean she was running out the
Speaker 1: front door, banging on the neighbor's door, screaming, they're trying
Speaker 1: to kill me. I mean, it was just so we
Speaker 1: had no choice but to medicate her. And then she
Speaker 1: became more docile at that point, and that's its own
Speaker 1: heartbreaking thing. So, yeah, it's a tough journey. You said
Speaker 1: somewhere that caregiving in writing poems moved hand in hand
Speaker 1: during those years, and I felt like I was failing
Speaker 1: at both. Yes, because, on the one hand, as I
Speaker 1: just explained, I did not know how to kill for
Speaker 1: my father in his condition. I was working full time,
Speaker 1: caregiving full time, thank goodness, the pandemic hadn't quite yet arrived.
Speaker 1: I was directing. I was serving as director of our
Speaker 1: creative writing program, and I felt pulled in a million directions.
Speaker 1: When I look back now, I'm not even sure how
Speaker 1: I managed to write this book, except I needed to
Speaker 1: process somehow, and I've always gone to writing for that.
Speaker 1: The challenge that I faced in making the poems was
Speaker 1: I wrote poems. I didn't write autobiography. I'm not a
Speaker 1: prose writer. I don't write memoir, and these poems appeared
Speaker 1: as very autobiographical poems, and so how to shape that
Speaker 1: into what I recognized as a poem, which is an
Speaker 1: art form, not journal keeping or even reportage, right was
Speaker 1: a whole other kind of challenge. And so yes, I
Speaker 1: felt absolutely as if I was failing on both counts.
Speaker 1: And it took a lot of work to feel as
Speaker 1: if I had an actual publishable manuscript, and certainly my
Speaker 1: editors and some early readers helped with that, and also
Speaker 1: to find a way to sort of continue to have
Speaker 1: my own life while caring for my father. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that took years, many years to figure out. Did you
Speaker 1: say that your father just passed recently? He did, and
Speaker 1: the end of December a month ago. Okay. For some reason,
Speaker 1: reading the book, I had the sense that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew it was recent, but I thought it had
Speaker 1: happened sooner than that. Yeah. I think so many people
Speaker 1: these days will relate with that. I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: not doing good at either of them, right if We've
Speaker 1: got a demanding full time job and children, many mothers
Speaker 1: or fathers. I mean I felt that as a father
Speaker 1: all the time, like I'm not doing enough there and
Speaker 1: I'm not doing enough here, and yet I've given everything
Speaker 1: I've got. You get into caregiving for an adult, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing, you know, and then how do you
Speaker 1: stay saying and take care of yourself? And you know,
Speaker 1: we had a guy on the show once and it
Speaker 1: was really helpful for me. I think it was the
Speaker 1: interview with a guy named Ken Druck and he had
Speaker 1: a book about raising an aging parent, and there was
Speaker 1: a line in it that stuck with me. Then and
Speaker 1: was really important to me through that whole process and
Speaker 1: has continued to be my mother with my father. And
Speaker 1: he basically said, what we all want is somebody to
Speaker 1: come along and tell us what enough is? Am I
Speaker 1: doing enough? And he basically said that doesn't exist. That
Speaker 1: idea of enough simply does not exist. There is no
Speaker 1: right answer to that question. There is simply the life
Speaker 1: you have, the circumstances you're presented with the best that
Speaker 1: you can do, what your values are. But no one's
Speaker 1: going to come along and say that was enough, because
Speaker 1: all of us can feel like we're not doing enough,
Speaker 1: which is not a very good feeling. And as I
Speaker 1: said to you earlier, I'm an over preparer, Like I
Speaker 1: want to know how to fix problem. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to sort off, you know, get it taken care of.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, and I'm going to have to look
Speaker 1: up Ken Druck. It seems to me to be absolutely true.
Speaker 1: If there is no template, we're just doing it by
Speaker 1: the seat of our pants, and we're lucky if it
Speaker 1: mostly works out, we know how it ends, yeah, But
Speaker 1: otherwise we don't know what the path is going to
Speaker 1: look like. Coming up against dementia and her mother and
Speaker 1: my father was a challenge for obviously a thousand reasons,
Speaker 1: but one of them was I'm very similar to you
Speaker 1: in that I'm like, all right, give me a problem,
Speaker 1: let me go solve it. I will fix it. I
Speaker 1: will work on myself. I will do what I need
Speaker 1: to do. And I have a general belief this is
Speaker 1: not in all circumstances, in all cases, but a general
Speaker 1: belief that wherever we are, there are some positive things
Speaker 1: that we can do in our lives that are going
Speaker 1: to move us in a better direction. Yeah. But with
Speaker 1: her mother and my father, you're staring right at very clearly, like, no,
Speaker 1: there's not. I mean, maybe you can make them more comfortable,
Speaker 1: maybe you can make their care a little bit better,
Speaker 1: maybe you can make their day better by playing guitar
Speaker 1: to them. Yes, but this is not fixable. This is
Speaker 1: going one direction and one direction only, and there is
Speaker 1: nothing that you're going to do to intervene at the
Speaker 1: core issue make it any better. Yeah, and that's absolutely heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: It's also, I think, oddly, maybe one of the elements
Speaker 1: that gave me some strength to keep going because there
Speaker 1: is no payoff. I mean, you know, we're doing it
Speaker 1: just because we love them. And I mean even with kids.
Speaker 1: I don't have children, so I can't say this is
Speaker 1: true definitively. You would know better than I. But you know,
Speaker 1: you just kind of expect them to get on with
Speaker 1: their lives and you know, make something of themselves right,
Speaker 1: and maybe even be better than you have ever been.
Speaker 1: But with an aging parent, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: There is no down the line result. It's losing them
Speaker 1: and then being on the front line of mortality yourself.
Speaker 1: And that's not cheerful, but it's true. It's honest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're absolutely right. It's very different. I often
Speaker 1: felt like still feel like, you know, I still have
Speaker 1: my mother, and you know, Jenny's dad will eventually get old.
Speaker 1: But it felt so clearly with her mother in this case,
Speaker 1: because we were closest to that, we were living here
Speaker 1: to a fair extent of the time. It really felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you pour energy into a child or
Speaker 1: a project or a volunteer thing, it feels like you're
Speaker 1: pouring energy into life. This felt a little bit like
Speaker 1: pouring energy right into the grave. I mean, to be
Speaker 1: really morbid about it, It just felt like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that's a ton of energy. It's going to have no
Speaker 1: ripple effect in the world, is I mean? Now, it's
Speaker 1: changing us absolutely in powerful ways, right, It's changing us
Speaker 1: in powerful ways, and hopefully that change makes us more
Speaker 1: compassionate and kind and better able to help and serve
Speaker 1: in the world and all that. So I don't mean
Speaker 1: to say that it's not with value, but it's very
Speaker 1: different than most things we approach in life. As you said,
Speaker 1: there simply isn't a payoff. The payoff is simply I
Speaker 1: can live with myself later knowing that I did the
Speaker 1: best I could according to what my values are, which
Speaker 1: to me is a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: very different. You know when I went to the memory
Speaker 1: care unit. When I've gone there to see my father,
Speaker 1: Jenny's mom, we were able to keep at home for
Speaker 1: a variety of different reasons. But when I went to
Speaker 1: the memory care unit, it was one of the most
Speaker 1: heartbreaking places I have ever been. And I just remember
Speaker 1: looking around and just thinking a little bit of that, Wow,
Speaker 1: look at all the resource and energy and misery here.
Speaker 1: That's basically just propping up people who we wouldn't And
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a right to die advocate for those reasons.
Speaker 1: You know, like we did not need the last four
Speaker 1: years of what we went through the first few years
Speaker 1: while she had dementia, we still had a quality of
Speaker 1: life he still had. It was okay, it was difficult,
Speaker 1: but it was worth it. It felt like she was
Speaker 1: here in some way and we were engaging with her,
Speaker 1: and it was difficult. But after a certain point, whether
Speaker 1: we were in the room or not in the room
Speaker 1: made zero difference to her world as near as we
Speaker 1: could tell, and so it was just this kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: what are we all doing here? You know? So for
Speaker 1: those reasons, I've become much more or in my later years,
Speaker 1: sort of advocate for the right to die. Idea. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm keeping my fingers crossed at Ohio we'll see the
Speaker 1: light as Vermont and other states have. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've always had dogs and cats all my life, and
Speaker 1: when they get to a certain point where they're so
Speaker 1: ill that they have no quality of life, I can
Speaker 1: have them put down. Yep. That seems to me to
Speaker 1: be a merciful act. And as much as I love
Speaker 1: them and miss them, I know that we had a
Speaker 1: great time together and we've come to the end of
Speaker 1: that time. I would like to think that that kind
Speaker 1: of mercy could be shown to our parents, and our
Speaker 1: partners and ourselves as we get to that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom has had a long battle the last number
Speaker 1: of years with chronic pain, and I don't think she
Speaker 1: would make the choice to check out yet, but she
Speaker 1: says all the time. You know about a couple of
Speaker 1: times where I put a dog to sleep. Everybody came
Speaker 1: over and we laid around. You know, the dog was
Speaker 1: there in the center of us, and we all petit
Speaker 1: her and gave her love, and she was as happy
Speaker 1: as could be, right, and she just went off like that.
Speaker 1: And you know that's not what happens to most people.
Speaker 1: My mom just says all the time, like, I wish
Speaker 1: you could do that for me, And it's heartbreaking. And
Speaker 1: again I don't think she's ready to do it, but
Speaker 1: I also think knowing there's an off ramp sometimes in
Speaker 1: that way would be a psychic relief in and of itself.
Speaker 1: I completely agree, like, if this pain is at this
Speaker 1: level and nobody can fix it, and we've been trying
Speaker 1: a lot of things, you know, I would like to
Speaker 1: have that option for her. Well, they call that right
Speaker 1: to die, death with dignity. Yes, and that's another way
Speaker 1: of thinking about this very same issue. And certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: my father did say to me five years ago, I
Speaker 1: want to check out, can you help me? And this
Speaker 1: from a you know, a devout Catholic who understood that,
Speaker 1: you know, suicide, taking one's own life was a mortal
Speaker 1: thin but he was finished, you know, he was done
Speaker 1: at that point, and there was nothing that we could
Speaker 1: do for him and nothing that he could do for himself.
Speaker 1: So all of that is very painful. And these are
Speaker 1: huge questions that so many people are whether they're terminally
Speaker 1: ill or dementing, or you know, dealing with you know,
Speaker 1: aging parents or terminally ill parents and spouses. This is rough.
Speaker 1: This is a rough one, the roughest. Yep, yep. All right,
Speaker 1: let's change directions a little bit here so that this
Speaker 1: entire conversation doesn't isn't about death death, death, isn't about
Speaker 1: death and dementia. The new podcast from the One Feet
Speaker 1: called Death and Dementiat Listeners. Yeah, so I did want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about something you said a
Speaker 1: minute ago. Though you've always turned to writing as a
Speaker 1: way of processing things, you also have talked about in
Speaker 1: different interviews. I've read about going to talk therapy and
Speaker 1: talking about things, and there's something you're that I would
Speaker 1: like to read, and then ask you to explore a
Speaker 1: little bit further. You wrote what happened though, in the
Speaker 1: process of making poems out of the raw autobiography was
Speaker 1: what always happens when I write, as opposed to what
Speaker 1: happens and talk therapy. As I search for ways to
Speaker 1: pressurize my language and shape my poem, I become, in
Speaker 1: addition to myself, the speaker or persona of the poem.
Speaker 1: Then I can find some distance from the subject. Talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, because that's a really fascinating idea,
Speaker 1: finding a way to process that gives us distance, which
Speaker 1: many psychologists talk a lot about cognitive diffusion, acceptance of
Speaker 1: commitment therapy calls it. Of course, I came to this
Speaker 1: understanding through poems, not through therapy. Sadly, I came to
Speaker 1: therapy somewhat late in life. But the best way that
Speaker 1: I can describe it is by working through the raw
Speaker 1: material on the page, perhaps like an actor, to stand
Speaker 1: behind the material and think about ways to deliver that material.
Speaker 1: So while it might be and certainly was the case
Speaker 1: in Bad Hobby, extraordinarily personal. It has to be shaped,
Speaker 1: and I have to think about it in terms of
Speaker 1: the audience, the imagined audience or readership that I have
Speaker 1: in mind, and what is it that they understand, what
Speaker 1: is it that they don't understand yet? What do I
Speaker 1: need to explain? What can I possibly withhold? What kind
Speaker 1: of arc of understanding am I shaping when I'm making
Speaker 1: this poem? What is it that I most want to
Speaker 1: focus on as I'm writing? And what is it that
Speaker 1: I don't know I need to focus on yet? Right?
Speaker 1: In what way am I allowing for discovery both as
Speaker 1: I work through the poem and invite a reader in
Speaker 1: to the poem. All of that sort of comes into play,
Speaker 1: and certainly did come into play when I was making
Speaker 1: these poems, And it felt very different from the kind
Speaker 1: of processing that I was doing in talk therapy, where
Speaker 1: it was sort of all out there, you know, on
Speaker 1: the table in a very repertorial and extraordinarily emotional right
Speaker 1: kind of way. In the poems, I really did have
Speaker 1: to take one step back, and maybe even you know,
Speaker 1: a second and a third step back in order to
Speaker 1: honor the shaping process that art needs. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's not to say that one is a better
Speaker 1: way than the other. I mean, actually, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: the fact that you write poems and go to therapy
Speaker 1: means there's value in both of them. But I was
Speaker 1: really struck by that line allows me to get a
Speaker 1: little distance from them, because, as I said, except into commitment,
Speaker 1: therapy talks very much about this idea of cognitive fusion
Speaker 1: and cognitive diffusion and psychological flexibility. Right. You know, they've
Speaker 1: got all sorts of different tools to get a little
Speaker 1: bit of distance, and art is one. And as you
Speaker 1: were talking, it hadn't occurred to me when I read
Speaker 1: this before. You made me start thinking about song right,
Speaker 1: And in songwriting, I don't write many of them anymore.
Speaker 1: I write little bits of music which are scattered throughout
Speaker 1: all these episodes. But in a songwriting there's a similar thing.
Speaker 1: There's an emotional theme that's there. It means something. But
Speaker 1: then it's like, well, melody and chord structure and harmony
Speaker 1: and rhythm and what other instruments, and there's all these
Speaker 1: things that then come into play the craft of it
Speaker 1: that as you're saying that, I now realize, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: does provide a way of looking at the situation from
Speaker 1: a different angle or a slight bit of distance. And
Speaker 1: distance is certainly not always a bad thing, right. We
Speaker 1: all have ways of distancing ourselves from our emotions which
Speaker 1: may not be healthy or useful. For me, art has
Speaker 1: always been a helpful one. It's been a way of
Speaker 1: both processing and getting distance sort of at the same time.
Speaker 1: In a sense. We hear the term composing oneself, right,
Speaker 1: and there's composing oneself, which might not be the greatest
Speaker 1: thing in the world for talk therapy. And then there's
Speaker 1: composing your art, you know, composing a song or you know,
Speaker 1: composing another work of our visual art, for example of
Speaker 1: painting or what have you. And that takes a certain
Speaker 1: amount of critical distance. And I think that that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that I'm talking about when I talk
Speaker 1: about the distance that I managed to get from my
Speaker 1: subject matter as I was making the poems. Yep. I
Speaker 1: want to ask a question about a line from a
Speaker 1: poem that struck me. And the poem is called School.
Speaker 1: It's in the new book. You're describing you sort of
Speaker 1: talking your way out of having to go to school.
Speaker 1: You know, you didn't want to go to school. You've
Speaker 1: got a great line in there about you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't want to be seen and you didn't want to
Speaker 1: be not seen right at school, and that I resonated
Speaker 1: with that so much. It's like, yeah, both like everybody's
Speaker 1: ignoring me, but artis don't pay any attention to me
Speaker 1: because it's not good. But the line that caught my
Speaker 1: interest that I wanted to ask about was you were
Speaker 1: saying about your mother, she must have trusted me or
Speaker 1: not much cared, which maybe trust's results say more about
Speaker 1: that line. That pivot there sort of caught me a
Speaker 1: little bit off guard and made me really start thinking
Speaker 1: about caring and trust and so from your perspective, what
Speaker 1: did that mean? Yeah, that's a great question, and I
Speaker 1: had to think about that a lot when I surprised
Speaker 1: myself with that line, specifically with relationship to my mother
Speaker 1: and the relationship that she and I shared. I think
Speaker 1: that it has something to do with an established kind
Speaker 1: of relationship between two people that feels so intimate and
Speaker 1: so complete that the boundaries between one person and the
Speaker 1: other hardly exist or barely exist. I'm not saying that's
Speaker 1: a healthy relationship, but I do think often and certainly
Speaker 1: this was the case with my mother and me. I
Speaker 1: do think those boundaries were blurry enough so that it
Speaker 1: didn't occur to her that I would be up to
Speaker 1: no good while I was hum alone. Right, what it
Speaker 1: means in the context of the poem and certainly in
Speaker 1: other poems in the book in which I talk about
Speaker 1: my mother, I have to sort of think really hard
Speaker 1: about that difference between trust and care and what those
Speaker 1: sort of gradations are between those two those two verbs. Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great question. Well, it struck me because it
Speaker 1: made me think about my relationship with my son and
Speaker 1: how I have generally trusted him and that in a
Speaker 1: way that has allowed me to not care. And by
Speaker 1: not care, I mean I care deeply, deeply about him,
Speaker 1: but I don't spend a ton of mental energy worrying
Speaker 1: about what he's doing or is he making the right
Speaker 1: choices because I have some underlying trust. So it does
Speaker 1: allow me to not have to care in the sense
Speaker 1: of pay a ton of attention to that part of
Speaker 1: the relationship. And so, like many great lines, it certainly
Speaker 1: leaves me with more questions and rumination in the positive
Speaker 1: sense then answers with it and so but it just
Speaker 1: really jumped off the page at me, and it caused
Speaker 1: me to really kind of reflect on that nature. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that it did. I think so much
Speaker 1: of this is exponential. As I was listening to you
Speaker 1: talking about your son, I mean, you must have reason
Speaker 1: to trust him, and because you do, you don't have
Speaker 1: to pay as close attention as you might do a
Speaker 1: problem child. And I certainly think that was the case
Speaker 1: with my mom and me. Sometimes though in my experience,
Speaker 1: what that can lead to. And I know I felt
Speaker 1: this was friends. I felt this was young people that
Speaker 1: I've been responsible for, students that I've had who seem
Speaker 1: especially high achieving, right, and then something happens and you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: I need to pay a little bit more attention. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And that could absolutely occur. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: definitely watching with him, and I have this not just
Speaker 1: in him, but particularly in him. But I also have
Speaker 1: a belief, like I know, difficulty is inevitable. He's going
Speaker 1: to go through tough times, He's going to make bad decisions,
Speaker 1: it is inevitable. I mean, we've been joking recently he's
Speaker 1: going to be a wildland firefighter out west, And you're
Speaker 1: just joking recently about you know, when he got arrested
Speaker 1: for lighting a fire in a park in up Arlington.
Speaker 1: Him and his friends were hanging out and they thought
Speaker 1: it'd be nice to have a camp fire, and so
Speaker 1: not the best decision, but also one that caused me
Speaker 1: to be like, well, you know who cares like you know,
Speaker 1: not a big deal, right, you know. I just find
Speaker 1: trust a concept that is always sort of on my
Speaker 1: mind in what can I trust in? When we say
Speaker 1: we trust someone else, what do we trust them to
Speaker 1: do or not do? You know? And I think to
Speaker 1: a certain extent for me, when the expectations are a
Speaker 1: little bit more realistic with people, I can trust them
Speaker 1: sort of within certain bounds, you know, But to trust
Speaker 1: that they're never going to do something that hurts me,
Speaker 1: or they're never going to do something wrong or stupid
Speaker 1: or thoughtless, that kind of trust just gets ruptured again
Speaker 1: and again and again because we're all fallible. Yeah, absolutely
Speaker 1: deeply humans. Man, what are you going to do with them?
Speaker 1: What are you going to do with them? Yep? Yep.
Speaker 1: So there's another line from a poem called Keelson. This
Speaker 1: is very near the end of the poem, and this
Speaker 1: feels like this line I felt echoed in lots of
Speaker 1: different parts of the book, and it was which is
Speaker 1: why I stopped speaking in the first place, and would
Speaker 1: sooner go hungry than ask to be understood. Talk about
Speaker 1: your surprising lines. I surprised myself with that one. This
Speaker 1: is to provide some context in the poem. The speaker
Speaker 1: is fortunate enough to be living in Switzerland surrounded by
Speaker 1: French speaking people. I do not speak but just barely
Speaker 1: passable French. And I wondered a lot about that experience,
Speaker 1: my experience with language English versus French, and how deeply,
Speaker 1: profoundly uncomfortable I was trying to ask for what I needed,
Speaker 1: even at market, for example, in a language that wasn't
Speaker 1: my own. And it occurred to me that as a poet,
Speaker 1: I have so fully invested myself in the English language
Speaker 1: that to not speak a language perfectly is sort of
Speaker 1: my idea of hell, right, I cannot bear to speak
Speaker 1: a language badly, to fumble, you know, as a child
Speaker 1: would I mean, this is a grown up discovery I made.
Speaker 1: This was not something that I knew about myself before
Speaker 1: this trip, but it had resonances for me in terms
Speaker 1: of my own family and ways that I stopped asking
Speaker 1: for things that I needed because I couldn't find the
Speaker 1: language for it. The language either wasn't modeled for me
Speaker 1: by either of my parents, or I simply wasn't sort
Speaker 1: of yet emotionally mature enough to be able to put
Speaker 1: words to what it was that I was feeling, and
Speaker 1: so I couldn't ask for those things. You know we
Speaker 1: were talking about, you know, your son and my dad,
Speaker 1: and the things that we need from each other as humans,
Speaker 1: We so often, in my experience, can't quite articulate to
Speaker 1: each other, to the people who love us the most
Speaker 1: and who would most want to give those things to
Speaker 1: us if they knew what they were. You know, we
Speaker 1: feel these shortcomings not only in our relationships with our
Speaker 1: parents and children, but I think you know, certainly with
Speaker 1: our friends and our partners as well. That's I think
Speaker 1: where that moment in the poem comes from is thinking
Speaker 1: about all those issues. The residence it had for me
Speaker 1: was on your childhood. You've talked in different places about
Speaker 1: being a very sensitive child and a working class family,
Speaker 1: and as you mentioned, your gift with language is profound,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it was there to some degree early on,
Speaker 1: at least that fascination with it and yet how difficult
Speaker 1: as a sensitive person. One of the hardest things is
Speaker 1: to be not understood exactly. It feels very often to
Speaker 1: not say what we need or what's happening or what
Speaker 1: we're feeling, then to actually get the courage up to
Speaker 1: do it and have it go poorly. Absolutely, And that's
Speaker 1: what that line just brought up in me, was that, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'd rather just sit here mute than
Speaker 1: try and articulate something that you're not going to understand
Speaker 1: or that you're not going to give me. I'm going
Speaker 1: to feel more alone after this than I did before
Speaker 1: I spoke. I think you're understanding that absolutely correctly, and
Speaker 1: it's not the most mature response in the world, but
Speaker 1: we are, you know, talking about being being children, right,
Speaker 1: and and you know, we respond as children to those
Speaker 1: kinds of what we consider to be slights or misunderstandings.
Speaker 1: I have been thinking a lot about why it is,
Speaker 1: given what we've just discussed, poetry is my chosen genre
Speaker 1: given those facts, right, And poetry is probably the least
Speaker 1: direct and the most circuitous, and the least popular and
Speaker 1: most widely unread of all the genres. And I do
Speaker 1: think that there's a reason that I chose that because
Speaker 1: it felt like the safest place to put my words.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other poets, some of which
Speaker 1: I like, some of which I don't like. Who we're
Speaker 1: far more direct in what they are saying. Your poetry.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of craft in it. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of imagery and symbolism, and to me, it's not immediately
Speaker 1: obvious in all cases, like what are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: You know? There are times I would go back and
Speaker 1: read a section three or four times and finally it
Speaker 1: would sort of dawn on me and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's beautiful. But the first time through
Speaker 1: didn't fully resonate. So I wonder if maybe we could
Speaker 1: ask you to read another poem now? Sure that poem
Speaker 1: would be called Acueather Real Feel, accu Weather Real Feel.
Speaker 1: As I made out first wing, then fur, I half
Speaker 1: hoped for a kitten kind of squee at worst the
Speaker 1: sci fi seahorse kind. But what I stopped for in
Speaker 1: the road was a squirrels lost battle with a redtail.
Speaker 1: Talk both looked at me in the then diagram. We
Speaker 1: made our intersection, being nothing to be done, we were
Speaker 1: warned it's a jungle out there in here too, though
Speaker 1: more often a petting zoo with its matted coats and molars,
Speaker 1: A few dry pellets stuck to your mittens after Some
Speaker 1: do better than to weather it. Some are known to
Speaker 1: feather a nest with it. My people were never good
Speaker 1: at reaping benefit euphemism. They understood when rain chokes the air,
Speaker 1: they call the day a soft one. I'm here by
Speaker 1: sheer luck. No one is coming after. We'll feel soft
Speaker 1: dawn in the meadow, the pups unseen by the passer,
Speaker 1: by the bitch gone days ago. I particularly love this
Speaker 1: image of a squirrel's lost battle with a redtail hawk
Speaker 1: and both of them looking up and the ven diagram,
Speaker 1: the intersection being nothing to be done. That is so great.
Speaker 1: What that brings up in me is this idea. And
Speaker 1: actually it's somewhere else in another poem of yours, and
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it was in this book or
Speaker 1: another one, but you talk about nature being read in
Speaker 1: Tooth and Claw, meaning there's a lot of blood. And
Speaker 1: as you've gotten older, you've gotten a little more comfortable
Speaker 1: with that idea. Right, That was kind of the feeling
Speaker 1: I got there, is that moment of it just is.
Speaker 1: You know, the squirrel lost the battle with the hawk,
Speaker 1: but if the squirrel had won the battle with the hawk,
Speaker 1: then the hawk would be trouble. I mean it just is.
Speaker 1: As a Zen practitioner, we're looking for those moments of
Speaker 1: ultimate clarity where everything drops away and truly nothing to
Speaker 1: be done. Here's what is That little part really resonated
Speaker 1: strongly with me. I'm so glad. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we've been sort of talking about this very thing.
Speaker 1: Certainly we were talking about, you know, parents and parents
Speaker 1: in law was with dementia and our own aging and mortality.
Speaker 1: There is nothing to be done about that except what
Speaker 1: we do on a daily basis. Right, that Ven diagram
Speaker 1: to I think I was reading a book called Thin
Speaker 1: Places by Kelly Nidaherty, an Irish writer, and my grandparents
Speaker 1: were Irish immigrants, and I had conveniently forgotten how much
Speaker 1: those liminal spaces, or those in between spaces. We were
Speaker 1: talking about this when we were talking about the wolf
Speaker 1: parable too, how they're considered sacred to the Irish, and
Speaker 1: that Van diagram has always seemed to me to be
Speaker 1: a kind of a perfect place for those liminal spaces,
Speaker 1: those in betweennesses, right, and perhaps there, as much as anywhere,
Speaker 1: is that space where there's nothing to be done. It
Speaker 1: just exists. It's where a life and death happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think what I'd like to turn towards
Speaker 1: now is an idea that I've seen you talk about
Speaker 1: a few different places. It's the critical role of attention
Speaker 1: in being a poet. I actually think attention is a
Speaker 1: critical part of being a human learning to work with
Speaker 1: our attention in certain ways, and my spiritual habits program,
Speaker 1: that's one of the principles we spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on. But talk to me about attention from your perspective.
Speaker 1: It is my special thing when people ask me, well,
Speaker 1: what advice would you give a young poet, and my
Speaker 1: best advices pay attention. I really do believe if one
Speaker 1: wants to be an artist of any kind, I'm certainly
Speaker 1: a writer, and maybe just like a human being who
Speaker 1: who's self aware and aware of the world around them,
Speaker 1: attention is, you know, our best offense and defense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is the skill that we need to most cultivate.
Speaker 1: It seems to me, you know, certainly we pay attention
Speaker 1: with all of our senses, and there are other ways
Speaker 1: to pay attention, like you know, reading and going to
Speaker 1: films and listening to music, and looking at paintings and
Speaker 1: walking out in the world and smelling the smells and
Speaker 1: looking at the trees. I mean, these are all ways
Speaker 1: of paying attention. I think some people would think of
Speaker 1: those as modes of prayer, that kind of paying attention.
Speaker 1: I do think that it's a form of praise, it's
Speaker 1: a form of joy, it's a form of being our
Speaker 1: most human selves, being attentive and the best way. Also,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that I have found to love others,
Speaker 1: you to not scrutinize necessarily, but to just simply pay attention,
Speaker 1: you know, listen when someone speaks, not even to you,
Speaker 1: but just sort of out there in the world, to
Speaker 1: sort of pay attention. Yeah. Another poet, Mary Oliver said
Speaker 1: attention is the beginning of devotion. And that's a phrase
Speaker 1: that has always meant a lot to me. And it's
Speaker 1: part of the reason that I like trying to think
Speaker 1: like an artist or a poet, even though I don't
Speaker 1: have the craft of it. But I find poetry and
Speaker 1: photograph graphy for me, are two things that, again I
Speaker 1: haven't invested the time in either to really make the
Speaker 1: craft good. So I don't think that what I create
Speaker 1: is good for that reason, and it is completely beside
Speaker 1: the point, almost entirely, which is the way it makes
Speaker 1: me look at the world is totally different. They are
Speaker 1: modes of looking at the world. I've set myself projects
Speaker 1: at different points to take one beautiful picture a day,
Speaker 1: and the beauty I'm looking for is not in my
Speaker 1: ability to create a photograph. I'm looking for the beauty
Speaker 1: in the world. But when I can really keep that
Speaker 1: idea in the front of my mind, like I'm actually
Speaker 1: looking all day long, totally changes my experience of life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. It makes me think actually about my dad, who,
Speaker 1: until he couldn't keep his iPhone any longer, which we'd
Speaker 1: given him to sort of stay in touch with us,
Speaker 1: both while he was living with us and walking around
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and also when he was in memory care,
Speaker 1: he would use it to take multiple and in fact,
Speaker 1: I have on my cloud thousands of photos of clouds,
Speaker 1: And there came a point when he was taking pictures
Speaker 1: of clouds in the sky when he didn't any longer
Speaker 1: know the word for cloud or sky, but he loved
Speaker 1: them so much and he felt this need to record
Speaker 1: the changing light in the sky, the changing clouds, and when,
Speaker 1: of course we would walk outside together, there was always
Speaker 1: that moment when he would stop and look up and
Speaker 1: when he had his phone take many, many bursts of
Speaker 1: photos of the clouds. So yeah, I mean, I totally
Speaker 1: get this idea of capturing and recording and keeping close
Speaker 1: to you these moments in photography. And I do think
Speaker 1: that that's really closely related to what poetry does with image,
Speaker 1: right and sound. I mean, it's a very temporal art
Speaker 1: in that way. One of the reasons I love poetry
Speaker 1: is that it teaches me a little bit to look
Speaker 1: and see like a poet might. You know, what's in
Speaker 1: a good poem is a fascinating level of attention. You know,
Speaker 1: in a good poem there is attention like Holy mackerel,
Speaker 1: that was all sitting right there in front of me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even see it in that way. I
Speaker 1: didn't even think of it in that way. Oh now
Speaker 1: I know, I know another way to look or view
Speaker 1: the world. And that's why I think art both from
Speaker 1: a creation and I don't want to use the word consuming,
Speaker 1: but you know, taking in art is so valuable to
Speaker 1: me and in so many other people's lives. It's like
Speaker 1: making art just to make it for me has been
Speaker 1: really good. When I was younger, it was so much
Speaker 1: about I'm going to make this art and then people
Speaker 1: will like me. Yeah. Right, it was an ego gratification project.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily mean that entirely negatively, because I think
Speaker 1: everything we do has some element of that in it,
Speaker 1: you know, where we don't get pure motivation. But with
Speaker 1: me and art, for the most part, I have no illusions.
Speaker 1: I love to play guitar, I love to record little
Speaker 1: musical bits for the show, but I don't have any
Speaker 1: aspirations beyond that and actually getting to that point with
Speaker 1: it for me, Right, you're a professional poet, so you're
Speaker 1: an eyes are going to be different in this way.
Speaker 1: But for me, it was that total like I'm doing
Speaker 1: this just because I do it. I completely understand what
Speaker 1: you're saying. I think it's about giving attention as opposed
Speaker 1: to getting attention. Right, Oh yeah, that's a beautiful way
Speaker 1: of saying that. And certainly I'm at the point in
Speaker 1: my career as a poet that I don't expect to
Speaker 1: win huge awards, So why do I keep doing it.
Speaker 1: I was reading a wonderful essay the other day by
Speaker 1: Carl Phillips on endurance in poetry and what keeps us
Speaker 1: going as poets when there are so little to be gained,
Speaker 1: certainly financially and otherwise. And really it seems to me
Speaker 1: to be about the surprise of it, right, the ways
Speaker 1: in which we please ourselves, maybe reach someone else, you know,
Speaker 1: a reader, and just continue to be surprised by what
Speaker 1: we notice. Yeah, yep. So we're going to end with
Speaker 1: when someone asked you what advice would you give a poet,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read it because we've talked about
Speaker 1: part of it, the be attentive part, but the rest
Speaker 1: of it. To me I was reading, I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great advice for a poet, but it's just kind
Speaker 1: of all around, like, here's good human advice. It feels
Speaker 1: like one of those things that should be printed on
Speaker 1: like you know one of those posters, you know where
Speaker 1: they have a poster. Yeah, yeah, but not a motivational poster,
Speaker 1: but you know, like here's the things I knew in
Speaker 1: kindergarten or whatever, you know, kind of idea. But read
Speaker 1: a lot of poetry, read a lot of everything, have
Speaker 1: a life, be interested in stuff, stay open and curious
Speaker 1: and engaged. Play, don't be afraid of sorrow. And it's
Speaker 1: mostly just this. Be attentive. I still believe it. I
Speaker 1: try to live my life that way, and it's not
Speaker 1: always easy with you know, competing demands, right, but I
Speaker 1: do try to be that person wonderful. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that is a great place for us to wrap up, Kathy,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. We'll have links
Speaker 1: in the show notes to where people can get all
Speaker 1: of your books. We did not get to talk about, sadly,
Speaker 1: your collection of poems before this one, which is called
Speaker 1: Sycamore and I love sycamore trees. I'm crazy about sycamore
Speaker 1: trees so an entire well, the whole book is not
Speaker 1: about sycamore trees, but they show up a lot and
Speaker 1: they are spectacular and the poems about them are also
Speaker 1: so Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed myself. Thank you. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly
Speaker 1: donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you
Speaker 1: join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get
Speaker 1: lots of exclusive members only been offits. It's our way
Speaker 1: of saying thank you for your support now. We are
Speaker 1: so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do what we do without their support,
Speaker 1: and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To
Speaker 1: learn more, make a donation at any level and become
Speaker 1: a member of the one you Feed community, go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash join the one you
Speaker 1: Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.