The Poetry Magazine Podcast + other hype

Babes and bots, 

I have three words for you: podcast podcast podcast. Get it going on those podcasts because DAMN the content is spicy hot. Went for a 4 mile run this week and would have been struggling without my podcast. Drove for 7 hours while listening to a podcast. Went to bed listening to a podcast. Drove to work listening to a podcast. Everything that is hard can be done with a podcast. Everything that is easy can be done with a podcast. Let's get stoked for podcasts, am I right?

the best podcast on spotify

...is The Poetry Magazine Podcast. And if you aren't a fan of poetry, this podcast still might be for you. On my run yesterday, I listened to an episode with a sick husband-wife poet duo couple talk about feeding tubes instead of their poems. It was awesome. The time before that I heard Sonia Sanchez scream. Also awesome. And some of it is "poetry," and some of it isn't "poetry," and none of that matters because everything is poetry just as much as everything is not poetry. That's what makes poetry awesome. You following?

more poetry

Kimberly Johnson and her husband, Jay Hopler, were on the podcast, discussing catheters and cancer & the way writers take ownership over stories that are theirs and someone else's & all the reasons why their spouses/partners/SOs/family aren't allowed to hate them for it (more on this later), when Kimberly read an epic poem titled "Foley Catheter." 

I clean its latex length three times a day
With kindliest touch,
Swipe an alcohol swatch

From the tender skin at the tip of him
Down the lumen
To the drainage bag I change

Each day and flush with vinegar.
When I vowed for worse
Unwitting did I wed this

Something-other-than-a-husband, jumble
Of exposed plumbing
And euphemism. Fumble

I through my nurse’s functions, upended
From the spare bed
By his every midnight sound.

Unsought inside our grand romantic
Intimacy
Another intimacy

Opens—ruthless and indecent, consuming
All our hiddenmosts.
In a body, immodest

Such hunger we sometimes call tumor;
In a marriage
It’s cherish. From the Latin for cost.

My fascination with this poem goes far beyond my personal obsession with grief, the study and the experience of which strangely, darkly motivates me. It is the idea of ownership, something I struggle to understand and reflect on personally. It is my belief that an ethical, loving, forgiving approach to life strives, in every way, to be more anti-capitalist. Anti-capitalism loathes the very concept of ownership. I am reminded now of the Texas priest, Father Pigeon, who said so emphatically in his sermon, "nobody owes you anything." I reject the idea that one can own land, though I believe land is owed to some. I do not wish to sell myself through stories, though I want to publish books and scholarship. I hate the idea that one person can call another "theirs" or that the heart shaped "be mine" exists every February, yet I coo when my mother says "my baby." Perhaps these dichotomies are not so much contradictions as they are nuances, perhaps the act of having, experiencing, taking, and owning are opposing forces not to be confused with buying and selling, or capitalism. More than likely, this is one of those circumstances in which language's broadness fails us, and art moves to meet the gap between what is meant and what is said. More than likely, my understanding of the inner workings of humanity and our social constructs is introductory at best. 

What struck me most about the podcast was this exchange: 

KJ: to what degree it seems appropriate to talk about somebody else's physical decline...it feels a little bit invasive to presume to own that experience and language...

JH: When Kim brought that poem to me, my questions were simple. Number one, is it accurate?...Number two: does the poem require it?...would that poem be the same or different without it?...because love is love and poetry is poetry. You gotta put the love over here for a second, and you gotta serve the art...I would never have asked for an inferior poem. That should be in the marriage vows; you will never require of your partner an inferior poem so that the ego could be soothed. 

I always felt that my work would upset or distress my family, and refused to share it with them for that very reason. My dad was the reason I started writing poetry & the reason I never shared it with him. What would my perceptions bring out of him? Would he hate me for being honest, or for being wrong? Would he cry? Would it hurt him? 

I remember a time years ago when I won my first writing award for an essay about my dad's cancer, and how infuriating my experience of his cancer turned out to be. I was 15, and I wanted to be included in the painful inner workings of my dad's disease. I wanted a slice of his feelings, and I felt deprived, shut out, excluded from a monumental experience. This, in turn, created a monumental experience of my own marred by misunderstanding and rage. Years later, I was entrenched in his experience, his death now my greatest trauma. And to look at that trauma in the face, to say it is my trauma, to wish it on no one, and to change it for nothing, is impossible. I am required, in some ways, to bear the best and worst of his life as well as my own--I think, perhaps, this is what they mean when they say the dead never leave you. I am asked to talk about him, remember him, remind people of him, and none of that is undesirable to me. What I struggle to do is to consume his story, and I struggle because it is so easy for me, and I wonder if it is wrong, or unethical, or out-of-bounds. 

Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts was a bit controversial for a similar reason: she wrote about her partner's transition, telling the experience in a way that was not authentically hers, nor her partner's. Perhaps that was the point, although the book always irked me a bit. I wonder if I would feel the same way reading it now as I did in college...or worse...

Cancer and gender are different. As are the inner workings of a 70 year old man and his 15 year old daughter, as are the inner workings of a 92 year old woman and her 23 year old granddaughter. The tumors exist in one of their body's, though some aspects of the experience are shared. To write about one may very well be to write about the other, in which case this entire debate is void. But, for now, let's focus on what is.

Wangechi Mutu, The History of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors, 2006

Thanks for taking a bite out of this sandwich with me. 

xoxo BLT