The One You Feed - Maggie Smith on Poetry and Life Lessons

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Maggie Smith is a poet and author of the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, as well as Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Lamp of the Body. Maggie’s poems and essays are widely published and anthologized, appearing in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere.In this episode, Maggie Smith joins Eric and Ginny for a conversation about her poetry and learning about ourselves through life’s experiencesBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Maggie Smith and Ginny and I Discuss Poetry and Life Lessons and…Allowing feelings to come and waiting them outHer black and white thinking and working with her judgmentAsking what’s really at stake and what is the cost of saying yes instead of noKeeping our inner critic in checkHow we can learn to parent ourselvesThe suffering that comes from judging our feelings that come upHer Keep Moving Journal with many writing promptsThe lessons we can only learn from living through the tough timesHer poem, GoldenrodHer desire to capture what she’s observing by writing it downHow she processes and gets at things on paperHer poem, The HumThe importance of turning up the self-compassion and turning down the self-criticism Her poem, WildMaggie Smith links:Maggie’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramExplore the science behind weight loss and partner with your healthcare provider for a healthy approach to your weight management, visit truthaboutweight.comWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Maggie Smith, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Writing for Healing with Maggie Smith (2021)Finding Your Creativity with Julia CameronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're making the world. It's not separate from us. The world we live in is not something that's being done to us, right? It's something we're making every day. So how do we make it? Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together our mission on the really no really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is poet Maggie Smith, and it's her second time on the One You Feed podcast. She's the author of national bestsellers, Goldenrod and Keep Moving, Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, as well as

Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Lamp of the Body. Maggie's poems and essays are widely published and anthologized, appearing in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere. We're also proud to say that Maggie is from our hometown of Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Maggie. Welcome to the show. Oh, thanks for having me back. Yeah. I'm excited that you are back and we have Ginny joining us again. Yes, I'm excited to be here. Yes.

Hi, Ginny. Hi, Maggie. We had such a great time talking with Maggie last time and so many of our listeners loved it so much. We thought, let's do it again and let's do it with Ginny because we thought it would be fun. Absolutely. Here we are. Here we are. You want to take it away?

Yes, I will. Here we go. I'm going to lay the parable on you, Maggie. Let's see what comes up. So there's a grandmother talking with her granddaughter. And she says, in life, there are two wolves at battle within us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks for

a second and looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to ask you what that parable means to you today in your life and in the work that you do. I was dropping my kids back off at school today from lunch and explaining to them what I was doing today and telling them about the parable. And my daughter was like, oh, I get it, right? Like wherever you give attention, that's the thing that grows, right?

That's the thing that thrives. And I said, yes. And then I drove home and I thought a little bit about it. And I thought, you know, what I'm really trying to do more now than probably the last time I answered this question is let feelings come and pass and not even sort of call them negative or positive or bad or good. It's sort of that, you know, the Rilke, no feeling is final. And so right now, I think I'm, I don't know what I said the first time I answered this question, but I think right now what I'm trying to think about is how not to sort of

judge myself for what I'm feeling in the moment or even worse, like sort of pathologize what I'm feeling in the moment or, or even worse, like sort of pathologize what I'm feeling in the moment and letting myself just, okay, I'm feeling a little envious right now, or I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling lonely or whatever the feeling is and just waiting it out because so much of, I think, I don't know, progressing through anything is having some patience with it and knowing that it's not going to last forever. So I'm rethinking it a little bit now. No, I love that. You know, you and I are kind of walking along parallel streets here because I too have really

been, even in the last couple of years, my focus and a sense of wonder has been revolving around how my feelings can just come and go, and that they go, they don't stay. And that I don't have to act on them for them to go anywhere, that they can just move through me. And that is something that I wish I had really experientially discovered much earlier in life than I did. You know, wouldn't that have been nice? I was thinking that, you know, I grew up sort of a black and white thinker. So you know, my personality, my Myers Briggs is INFJ. And the only letter on that continuum that I need to keep in check is the J. It's the judgment side of things. Everything else, I'm like, yeah, that's cool. I'm pretty happy about being intuitive and feeling and all this. But the J happy, but I also grew up with a very strong sense of right and wrong. This is the way you do things. And this is the way you don't do things.

These are the grades you get. And these are the grades you don't get. This is how you act. This is how you don't act. This is appropriate dress. And this is not appropriate dress. And thinking about that as a parent now and having to sort of like loosen my grip a little bit on the sort of the black and white, right and wrong, bad and good dichotomy of things and trying to let go of that kind of binary thinking a little bit, not having total anarchy in my home, but letting go of it enough that, you know, we can have conversations about like, well, maybe it's not bad to dye your hair when you're 12. Like what's a little blue hair in the grand scheme of things, you know, or maybe it's not bad to use like a mild four letter word now

and again in context. It's, you know, maybe it doesn't deserve to be grounded for a month when doing these sorts of things. So I'm, I'm having to like, both as a parent and in my own life, just sort of like dial it back a little bit and stop and think like, okay, what's really at stake here? Like what's really going on and what's really at stake and what would it cost me to like say yes instead of no in this situation or to like take a beat and not be reactive and like instead of shooting that email or that text right back sit with it for an hour or two or sleep on it and come back to it the next day and see if I'm like maybe slightly operating at a lower vibration in that moment. Oh my gosh. Yes. I feel like everything you're saying, I want to jump in and say me too. And I'm wondering if maybe I'm not the only one that

feels that way. I mean, your writing speaks to so many people. So maybe you have a gift of being able to like allow others to see themselves or identify with what you're saying. But I even think that's my Myers-Briggs personality type. I mean, I may be off by a letter, but I'm pretty sure that I'm the same way. You know, and the black and white thinking I can relate to, I'm not sure if maybe I'm just dressing the words right and wrong up in different costumes when I say this, but like the Buddhist idea of skillful and unskillful has been helpful for me to sort of shift a little bit out of right and wrong, you know, because I'm realizing that like, there's not so much a rule book to life and there's a section that's like, here's the right way to live and here's the wrong way to

live. That's not really how it works. There's sort of just what you're doing right now. And for me, I found that if I can orient around what's the direction I'm hoping to head in, and then are there things that are skillful for that end? And then are there things that are maybe less skillful? It helps me loosen my grip a little bit on this like idea of right and wrong, you know? Right. And everything's contextual, right? That's the thing is that the problem is like what's right or wrong or skillful or unskillful totally is contextual. You know, even for children, what might have been a thing that was, you know, okay for my son 15 years ago might be very different for your kids today. So we might even say like, look, we can't even just carry that forward.

And when you were talking, it made me think of something, Jenny, that you were talking about recently. You were talking about the inner critic. I know. Yes. And you were saying that some people often think the inner critic gets formed at a young age, you know, around eight or whatever. And that's why it's black and white thinking. And so, Maggie, as you were sort of saying, you're carrying some of these things forward from

being young. You know, that black and white thinking is where we're carrying it forward from. Yeah. Yeah. And like the inner critic, if it's like essentially an eight-year-old inside of us bossing us around, you know what I mean? When I sort of had that framework, all of a sudden I realized like, oh, yeah, I would tell it. First of all, you know, yeah, you're operating at your capacity. And would I let an eight-year-old necessarily judge my life right now? No, they don't have the capacity. No, I have a nine-year-old who well-actualize me every once in a while. And I'm like, did you just well-actually me?

Don't you even think you know more about the way this world works? I am not a genius, but I have a few years on you. So let's just dial it back. See, that's what we should be saying to our inner critics, you know? Well, yeah, and they're loud. That's the thing about the inner critic. They're loud. And the inner critic, I think, is maybe the cousin of like, whatever the inner thing is that tells us we're frauds. That sort of like imposter syndrome that we carry with us is sort of related to the inner critic. And I don't know if that dates back to eight or if maybe that's more of like a 16 to

18 year old. Well, yeah. Bad, bad seed inside of us. But yeah, keeping those things in check is hard. I mean, it is. It's hard. And also then, you know, those of us who are parents, like sort of reparenting ourselves in a way in order to parent maybe in different ways that seem either more conducive to who we are as people or more conducive to who our individual kids are. You know, I have two kids and they're not the same. So I don't approach them the same on bad days. Like if one of them's having kind of a rotten day, I can use humor to diffuse the situation. The other one would get so angry if I tried to like lighten things up. Like I need to recognize how bad it is and be with you in the well of badness. Like that's what that other child needs. And so I think, you know, part of getting older is also getting to know ourselves and knowing if we are feeling that way ourselves, like how do we get ourselves out of it? Knowing yourself really well, I think is important and sort of in order to parent yourself through hard times.

And sort of in order to parent yourself through hard times. Yeah. And that is so fluid, right? Like who we are is always changing. So revisiting that, I think, is useful. And the last thing I wanted to sort of touch on that you said as you were responding to the parable that really struck a chord deep within me, because I find myself really noticing this a lot and hoping that I can maybe shift away from it is really judging myself for how I'm feeling. Like I so often, right, have this inner voice going like, you shouldn't feel this

way. You should feel some other way than you're feeling or you shouldn't feel the way you are feeling. And my, so much suffering comes from that. Oh my gosh. So much suffering. The sort of guilt and shame you feel about having some other negative feeling that just then compounds it. You know, like you feel angry and you're like, no, I should be more dignified about this. I shouldn't let this get to me. Or you have people in your life who tell you, you shouldn't let this get to you. You should let this roll off your back. And you think, oh, am I a lesser person because I'm taking this hard because I'm really absorbing this? Am I, you know, capital S sensitive, and I should be handling this differently? That's, that's the worst, because not only are you feeling

that sort of bad wolf feeling, then you're shaming yourself for feeling that feeling. And it's like, well, why don't we just make it even bigger? I hate that. Yeah. I mean, that's really the sort of no feeling is final, letting it pass thing is so important, I think, because that comes without judgment. Has that gotten harder for you, Maggie, as you've published a book that lots of people look up to and see you as this person who, I mean, even though the book is all about not having it together, right? People tend to elevate and go, oh, she's figured it out. She's got it. And you're seen in that sort of position. Has that made it harder for you to have negative feelings without judging them? It is a little harder to share them because we change, right? I mean, you were just saying

we change. So I'm not exactly the same as I was last year. And I'm not actually exactly the same as I was when I wrote Keep Moving. And I'm not exactly the same as I was when I was writing the posts and sharing them on social media before it was a book. And frankly, a lot has happened in the past three years that have made things harder, not easier. So if you pick up a book, especially if it's nonfiction, what you're reading is a time capsule of that writer's life at a certain time. And whether the book has a happy ending or a sad ending, or an ambiguous ending, you aren't really privy unless you know the person or you internet stalk them to what happened next, right? And so in any given time, whatever I'm writing and sharing is

just slice of life quite literally. And what happens tomorrow or the next day might end up in a later book, or it might just be something for me and my close circle to know about. But it can make things challenging if you write a book that's a lot about optimism, and then your life gets harder. But I will say the perk of writing a book about sort of facing things with hope and optimism, and then your life getting unexpectedly harder, is that you have something to draw from, which is, I wrote all of those things and felt all of those things. And now I'm actually returning to those things. So it's kind of a weird thing. Past me sort of made this thing and put this little message in a bottle in the water.

sort of made this thing and put this little message in a bottle in the water. And now 2022 me can pick it up and open the book and read something that I wrote in 2018 or 2019 and think, okay, I may not feel that in this moment, but things were hard then and they got better. And then now they're kind of complicated in other ways. I know this to be true. Even if I'm not feeling it in the moment, I know it to be real and true. And so I'm going to lean on this now. And so I kind of, I weirdly built myself this sort of portable shelter that I've carried into the present moment. And I'm leaning on it in ways that I think other readers are leaning on it, even though I wrote it, which is strange. That's so interesting. You bring that up and to think of you experiencing your work in that way. It's really cool because in the journal that you published called Keep Moving, it's the journal, it's got 52 prompts, writing prompts in

it that people can work their way through really difficult times reflecting on these writing prompts to sort of draw on some inner resilience and ways to move through difficulty so that there's some transformation and some resilience. And I just love so many of the prompts. But one of the prompts is to write a letter to your future self. And you've essentially kind of done that in some of your books, right? Like your past self, at least it's a time capsule. So you can go back and look, if nothing else, for proof that you'll make it that you can get through whatever you're going through. It's reassuring. I mean, I find in some ways that the perk of going through a difficult time when you've already been through a particular difficult time is being like, well, I did that so I can do this. Right. I feel like it's like the first time you get your heart broken,

you're like, well, what is this? Like, I want to curl into a ball. I'm never going to feel this bad. Nothing's ever going to hurt this much. And then you move through it. And then it happens to you 30 more times in your life. And every time it still hurts, but you know that you predate that pain and that you will survive it. You're going to come through that and be on the other side of it. And I find that really useful. And I think, you know, with the journal, the idea was that people were kind of using Keep Moving as writing prompts already. And so I thought, well, let's just make this easy and we'll make it all sort of one-stop shop. And you can use the journal instead of maybe writing in the margins of the book itself, though no judgment if you do that, because I do that in my books.

But it really is, I think, therapeutic to have to write some of these things down. I personally, and this is back to the inner critic, it is really easy for me to move through my day thinking about what's wrong. This person hasn't responded to my email. This person is being difficult. This isn't working out the way I'd thought. I have a deadline coming up. What's going on? I mean, I have to pick up my kids from school for lunch because now COVID is booming at their schools. It's easy to sort of keep a running mental inventory of what's wrong. And I find myself not doing that with what's right. But if I force myself to write it down, I see how long the list is. And so as an exercise, I find that really useful, like to spend time,

instead of just spending time sort of venting the negative, to spend time to be like, okay, yes, not to diminish any of that. That's all happening and it's real. And let's take a beat with that. I thought it might be interesting for us to consider one of the prompts. This is one that struck me in particular as something that I wanted to pause and kind of think about because a couple of things came to mind. So anyway, I was interested in what you guys would say. So when it comes to resilience, one of the, I think, ingredients to make resilience is hope, right? Or hope that things will either get better, feel better, they will pass, that there will be something that can come from this. To me, that cultivates some resilience to bear the difficult things. You know, you write in the journal, you say, know that fear develops your courage. Without the former, you would not need the latter.

So the writing prompt that really struck me was what precious things might be made from this difficult time? What might be possible now that wasn't possible before? And finally, what have you learned that you could not have known before? That last piece especially struck me, but I'd love to know maybe, can you connect back to when you wrote these prompts and when that prompt went from your fingers on the keyboard to the screen or the pen to the paper,

what kind of came up for you or what comes up for you now when you hear that? You know, it's interesting. I think there are some lessons you can't learn from someone telling you, you know, I mean, even, even someone telling you it's going to be okay. You, you don't know it until you make it okay. And I find that the, the making it okay, usually doesn't look the way that we think. Like making it okay doesn't mean sort of like getting back the things that you lost or sort of perfectly recreating it in some way, but a little bit differently. what was lost or what you had before. It just, for me, I mean, the book is called Keep Moving and the journal is called Keep Moving. It just, it meant like, keep going. And actually, that's part of the Rilke quote. It's let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going.

No feeling is final. And I just love that just keep going is in a poem. Like, it seems like really basic advice. But I think for me personally, I couldn't have learned that from someone telling me. I couldn't have learned, it will not hurt this bad always. I couldn't have learned, you just need to keep moving and be patient with yourself and you'll find yourself in a new space. And frankly, someone telling me maybe at the time that painful experiences are creative as well as destructive, and that something sort of burns down in your life, that it gives you room to build something else, or maybe reconsider how that thing had been built in the first place. And maybe you wouldn't do it the same way again, you know, but you probably wouldn't have dismantled it by choice either. And so here you are. I mean, that's so much of at least, you know, going through my divorce made me really like,

look hard at what I had sort of co-engineered. And when something like that ends, you have to think, okay, so now what? How did I not build that well? What might I do differently in my 40s than I did in my 20s? The answer is lots of things. I think if we're living right, the answer is lots of things. Also, how do I not beat myself up for not knowing better when I was 22 or 23 or 24 or 25? You know, like I built the best I could with the materials I had and the knowledge I had. And now I know a little better and I get to pick the materials because none of that exists anymore.

And so now, now what? And so those were hard lessons and really ones I wouldn't have chosen to learn. Like if you had told me five years ago, like you can basically burn your life down, but you'll know yourself a lot better and you'll feel really strong or you can keep everything you have, but your life will be a little bit smaller. I probably would have chosen B. Like, let's be real. Most of us do. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I would have chosen B. Like, let's be real. Most of us do.

Yeah, totally. Most of us do. Yeah, I would have chosen B. You know, I'm a firstborn. I like structure. I like to know what's happening next. So I don't know that I would have been like, yeah, let's just tear this whole thing down. I'm sure it'll put my kids through a lot, but I'll know myself so much better.

So I'm sure it's worth it. I wouldn't have chosen it. And yet now, I will say this, looking back, I don't see how it could have been any other way. I would definitely undo some of how it happened, but I wouldn't undo what happening. Absolutely. And that's a lesson I couldn't have learned any other way other than just living it. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello

my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think I've said those exact words about like, really just that there are some lessons that other people can't give you through words, that it has to be a lived experience. And I can even remember in my early 20s, thinking to myself, just wanting everyone to give me all the advice, because if they could give me all the advice, then that would save me my own failure. Like give me the end of the chapter or

the book. And that way, I don't have to read it. But it doesn't work that way. I don't know if that's if I'm a firstborn as well. And so it's kind of like, all right, just tell me the right way to do it. And I'll do it. Oh, yeah, we want the answer. But back to our earlier conversation that life doesn't work that way. Yeah, Right and wrong is not necessarily as prescriptive. Yeah. Give me the CliffsNotes. Yes, the CliffsNotes. Give me the outline, give me the study guide. Exactly. Show me the right way. I want an A plus. That's right. Nothing less will do. I mean, and maybe it's that J in my personality type, but there's like nothing I would change about myself more than that. Like that sort of perfectionistic impulse, you know, it's the thing that made me successful.

I think as a kid, it's the thing that made me like a good daughter in a lot of ways and sort of also brought me more misery than I think any other part of my personality that like drive to do things well and, and just to be ambitious about things and not just professionally, but personally, like to be the best mom and the best partner and the best neighbor and the, I mean, ugh. It's exhausting. It is exhausting. It's exhausting. And it's like, and how best are you being if in the pursuit of that, you're, you know, just completely wringing yourself out in the process. You know, it's like, I never had migraines until my forties. You know, I was not a complete insomniac until really my 30s and 40s. I mean, I think about so many of the things that we put ourselves through as we strive. That's not a headspace I'm comfortable with.

We thought we might pivot for a moment and go to some poetry. There's so many great poems in your latest book, Goldenrod, but I was wondering if you could read the title poem. Of course. Okay. Goldenrod, I'm no botanist. If you're the color of sulfur and growing at the roadside, you're Goldenrod. You don't care what I call you, whatever you were born as, you don't know your own name. But driving near Peoria, the sky pink-orange, the sun bobbing at

the horizon, I see everything, is what it is, exactly, in spite of the words I use. Black cows, in spite of the words I use. Black cows, barns falling in on themselves. You, dear flowers born with a highway view, forgive me if I've mistaken you. Goldenrod, whatever your name is, you are with your own kind. Look, the meadow is a mirror full of you, your reflection repeating, whatever you are, I see you, wild yellow, and I would let you name me. I think that may be my favorite poem that you have written. Yeah, it conjures up something deep within me and it just feels beautiful. When I read that for the first time, I thought to myself, like, I want to see the world the way Maggie Smith sees the world. Like, have you had to cultivate the perspective and the mind and the eye of a poet? Do you have a sense that you've always sort of been able to see the poetry in everyday things like Goldenrod on the side of the highway? I mean, talk to me a little bit about how you see

the world. You know, I think I've worked since I was a teenager at sort of cultivating the craft of my poems, like thinking about how they look on the page, thinking about what a sentence can do, what a line can do, where I want to break the lines, how I play with word choice or the sounds of the words and the rhythms of the sentences. I think I've cultivated all of that. But really, I think the way I see things, that to me has sort of been something that's been pretty natural. And since I was really young, and I think seeing things in a sort of peculiar way, for lack of a better word, is what led me to writing in the first place. Like, I'm seeing this thing, and I want to write it down. Like, or this reminds me of this. I want to capture that

little snippet of whatever I'm observing or thinking about. You know, my kids kind of joke with me that I'm not actually very helpful, even with like third, fourth, fifth grade math homework. I'm pretty useless. You know, as soon as they bring home something that's like fractions or area, I start to kind of sweat and I'm like, ah, we can Google it. But imagery and metaphor, that's the thing for me. That's natural. I think most of us have something that comes, if we're lucky, have something that comes really natural, like whatever the sort of our superpower is. And it might be, you know, caregiving and it might be numbers and it might be spatial recognition. I mean, there are so many different things.

But for me, I think like metaphor might be my weird, you know, mostly I'm tempted to say mostly useless superpower. I don't actually believe that, but it's not useful in the ways that a lot of other superpowers are useful. Yeah, I totally know what you're saying. And I think I agree with you that like, it actually is so useful. I mean, I think it's part of how your poetry comes together to be beautiful is your use of metaphor. I wonder, do you also consider yourself a good teacher? I feel like teachers can use metaphor in powerful ways. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think I am a good teacher. I think teaching in a classroom setting can be challenging for me because I'm an introvert. So the performative aspects of teaching, I think I'm actually good at. I don't think anyone would know how hard it is for me sometimes to do that. But I really need to go sort of like lie in a quiet, dark space after standing in front of people for two hours. But I think the explaining things, I sort of think of myself when I teach as like, I'm a teaching artist, right? So here's the way I build poems, or here are the lessons I've learned experientially from building poems over 20 some years. So here's what I can pass on to you. Really no differently from if you wanted to teach someone how to like wire something or plumb something or construct something. It's a

lot of practice. And to me now, it almost feels like muscle memory to make a poem. I come up with an idea and I'm like, oh, I can see how I could configure this and how I could wrap it up and how this image could come back later in a sort of echo and how satisfying that could be. And it feels almost like second nature, but of course it didn't when I was 18. I had the premise, but I didn't know how to sort of do the follow through. And now as someone who I think is a little bit better with follow through, I love working with students in classes or one on one and just seeing like, okay, I see what though me working with this poem where you are couldn't have seen it. So maybe me showing you this in this poem will help you then apply that knowledge to poem B, C, D, E, F and sort of carry it forward that way. So you would say that writing poetry is as much a skill that can be cultivated as it is sort of a way of looking at the world that you innately have.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, poetry is an art and a craft. And some of the art, I think, is hard to teach. I can't teach you to see a field of flowers the way I see a field of flowers when I'm driving by on a road trip. I don't know how to quantify or tap into that exactly. But once you have something, then the craft kicks in. Like, that's the plumbing, that's the electrician work, right? Like, once you have something, once you have the materials, the raw materials, I can teach you how to use those materials, sort of optimize what you have already. But it's hard to have a blank page and work with that. Like you have to have something. You have to have something. I think it's absolutely possible to teach creative writing. I just can't give you different eyes.

Right, right, right. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know how to do that. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last thing I'll say on this, and then I'd love another poem, please, is, you know, I love to write. The last thing I'll say on this, and then I'd love another poem, please, is, you know, I love to write. And I often find myself discovering things as they come out of me in written word. I'll either say something I don't think I've ever even thought before. It just comes out of my mouth. Or like, I'll write a sentence. And I'm like, yes, that's exactly what I mean. That's never been in my brain before. It just came out of my fingertips, you know? I see you nodding. So yeah, that's not unique to me, obviously. Like that's one of the things about writing, huh? It's one of the things. I mean, I don't know what I think most of the time until I write it down. Right. Oh gosh, that makes so much sense.

Yeah. I really have to process on paper. I really have to. And I'm constantly surprising myself. Like I'll write something down or I'll type something and then I read it back and I'll think, do I think that? Is that how I conceive of this? Like, is that real and true? Well, it just came out of me. So I have to sit with that. I have to chew on that a little bit more. I have to process that a little bit more, but it really is the way that I get at things more than any other way by writing things down. I think there's neuroscience behind that, that especially writing longhand, you're able to sort of tap into some things, even that you can't typing. I think there's real science, not even like poet science. I think there's real science, not even like poet science.

Oh, that's funny. Do you have a daily disciplined writing, like just free flowing practice? No, I have a when something comes to me, I write it down. Or if I'm on deadline, I make myself do it. Yeah, practice. But I will say, I feel better when I'm doing it. So it's just like running or meditating or really anything else. It's sort of like a gift I can give myself. And if I don't do it for a few days, I feel cranky. You know, like I feel the lack of that. Yeah, yeah, I can relate the thought

that comes up in me when you say that is like emotionally kind of constipated or mentally constipated. Yes. Like I definitely, I feel like it's a gift I can give myself. So I don't necessarily do it in a really structured way every day. Yeah. But I'm so pleased when I know I have a chunk of time. You know, if I know I've got two or three hours and I don't have anything else and nobody needs me and my emails can wait, I get giddy or I'll book myself like a couple of days in a cabin and I will just, you know, I won't be on the grid and I will just be writing. And it's like, I look forward to that. Like, you know, I did Christmas morning when I was a little kid, like that to me is like snacks, morning when I was a little kid. Like that to me is like snacks,

coffee, good music and my headphones and like writing for eight hours with nobody interrupting me. Even if I'm just moving a few lines around over and over again, that's a geek's good time right there. I love it. Well, should we do another poem? Yes,

please. Sure. How about the hum? Page nine. I think page about The Hum? Page nine. I think page eight, actually. Page eight. Page eight and nine. That's right.

You're both right. That's right. So it's funny. This poem actually has a sort of secret reference in it to a poem from my second book that talks about bones. And so there's a line in this about years ago, I thought this was coming from my bones. And there's a poem called White in my second book that this is sort of like a companion poem to like 15 years later. This is The Hum. It's not a question without the mark. How do we live with trust in a world that will continue to betray us?

Hear my voice not lift at the end. How do we trust when we continue to be betrayed? For the first time, I doubt we'll find our way back. But how can we not? See how the terminal mark allows a question to dress as statement and vice versa. Sometimes, if I am quiet and still, I can hear a small hum inside me, an appliance left running. Years ago, I thought it was coming from my bones. The hum kept me company, and I thought, thank God for bones, for the fidelity of bones. They'll be there until the end, and then

some. Now what? How to continue? I've started calling the hum the soul. Today I have to hold my breath to hear it. What question does it keep not asking and not asking, never changing its pitch? How do I answer? There's so many parts of that that I love. I mean, obviously the end is just, you know, I've started calling the hum the soul is so beautiful. And what question

does it not keep asking? But where I thought we might talk about for a minute is to kind of jump back to the beginning, which is how do we live with trust in a world that will continue to betray us? And are we in a world that will continue to betray us? I think is an interesting question. And if so, you know, how do we live in that? What are your first thoughts? Well, you can see how the poem ends. How do I answer? Yeah. So really, the answer is, I don't know. And the answer is also what choice do I have? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I suspect the world is both wolves. It's let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. You know, it's all the best things and all the worst things all wrapped up. And sometimes they're the best worst things. Yeah. focus as much as I can on what's going right and not deny what's going wrong and do my best to

sort of write those things as much as I can, R-I-G-H-T, and also write them as much as I can too. You know, my poem Good Bones kind of comes out of that idea too. Like, I don't or how to explain this particular life to my kids. It's really difficult. Yeah. So we keep going. Yeah. I thought the line in a world that betrays us is interesting because it caused me to, sort of like you were just saying, there's terror and there's beauty. In Buddhism, we'd say the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows, right? It's all here. So is the world really betraying us or is it just doing what it

does? And do we live with it a little bit more easily if we pivot out of the sense of betrayal and into a sense of the world is that way. You've got another poem that, you know, I was thinking you might read later, Wild, right? Which really sort of talks about this basic idea that like, well, you know, I can't really fault the wolf for eating the sheep. Even though my sympathies with the sheep, wolves eat sheep. It's the world. Right. It is the world. So maybe without judgment for what the world is like, we just learn to live with what is and try not to control it too much with our thoughts or our actions. But yeah, I mean, please, even just watching nature documentaries and the wolf comes and drags down a sheep and you think,

oh my gosh, or they go for the young in the herd of whatever animal it is because they're the weakest. And it's always, you know, sitting there with my kid and my kids like, oh my gosh, that's terrible. And I think, well, but the wolf is also a living creature who's trying to survive. And maybe they've got a den of, you know, baby wolves and they're not going to make milk for those baby wolves unless they're getting protein of their own. So these are all these difficult choices. This is survival. This is the way that it is. It's not always pretty, but this is just the way that it is. So I like that idea that maybe the answer is the world is not betraying us. This is the world. We're living in it. It is what it is. I hate when people say that. It is what it is. I know, but I know, I know. Yeah. And at the same time, a natural compassion arises in us that says like, we want it to be different. And, and that doesn't feel wrong. It feels as natural to me as anything else. Yeah. Like I wish it could be different. Yeah. Yeah. I wish it could

be different or the choices we make in our own lives to make it as different as we can. You know, I don't eat animals. Yep. So I don't have to feel bad about it. And that's the only reason, you know, it's not for health. I'll eat, you know, I'll eat anything that's really terrible for me. But my empathy won't allow me to eat animals or, you know, even just the way that I, the way that I am with others. Like, I think, how can we sort of carry that compassion into a world that sometimes seems indifferent to

it? Yeah. Right. But I mean, we're building this thing from scratch every day. We're making the world. It's not separate from us. The world we live in is not something that's being done to us, right? It's something we're making every day. So how do we make it? And what choices can we make individually, even though they seem small and sometimes insignificant, to make this day more livable than yesterday for ourselves or to people who are close to us or to, frankly, for people we don't even know? It seems like that's a shift that has happened inside of you. You talk about, I don't know if these are the exact words you use or if just the

sentiment is what I got, but like being a recovering pessimist, kind of like that you, you know, but it seems like a choice that you continue to cultivate to some degree to look for either the hope or the, I don't know, optimism. I don't know what words you might use there, but if both are out there, both the animal that's eaten, you know, and also the one that has to eat, like if both are out there for us to choose where we place our attention, you know, to hold both and also then nurture where we place our attention. The line in the hum that struck me was, I can hear a small hum inside me, an appliance left running. I think about the inner critic is often the appliance left running, the low hum that's in the background that I don't even notice until I notice it. And then I realize it's been there

and coloring things for a while. And I'm struck as I'm listening to the two of you talk and I'm thinking about this, I'm struck by, you know, I can choose to cultivate a different appliance running in the background. Like I would love another hum and I actually can have one not overnight, you know, but by little choices and by cultivating an attention on different things, you know, that that's possible. And I want that. I love that. I mean, I think that's where the sort of patience and responding to things comes in. If I can feel myself sort of vibrating at a kind of high frequency, like that's how I describe it to myself. If I have a lot of nervous energy, if I feel agitated, it's not a great time for me to take action in my life, like to respond to an email,

to try to write something, to like help my kid with homework. It's really not a great time for me to take action, especially with others. If I am feeling that kind of like nervous, high pitched wavelength in me. And so how do I find a new pitch? Like how do I bring myself down to like a lower register emotionally? And I think, you know, for all of us, that's different. Writing sometimes helps, although sometimes, for all of us, that's different. Writing sometimes helps, although sometimes that can kind of get me into a weird headspace too. But like taking a long walk or running or listening to really loud music and doing something completely unrelated like cooking or laundry or something that kind of occupies, that busies my brain in a way that feels sort of mindless, for lack of a better word. I feel

like that can get me into like, like a better tone. It doesn't feel like discord to me. You really know yourself. Grown in that knowledge. I've had a lot of time with this person. I honestly can't get away from her. Exactly. Isn't that the funny thing about like the self? It's like we think like, oh, I spend so much time with my closest friends and my family and my kids and whatever. And it's like the one person I cannot.

It's like wherever you go, there you are. So you better figure out ways to live with that person first and foremost. That's why I think working on our inner voices is so valuable. Because yeah, you always have them. You know, I think sometimes it's the single most important thing we can do is can we work on a more compassionate way of relating to ourselves? Like that sometimes feels like if there was one thing that I could give to people might be that.

Like, can we relate more compassionately to ourselves? Because we're always relating to ourselves. Yeah, less judgy. You know, it's always happening. Yeah, less judgy. That's the J, like the self compassion is the that's the flip side of that. So how do I turn down that sort of judgment sort of inner critic, the perfectionist, the should voice and turn up the the self compassion? I don't know that there's anything more important than that because it colors everything. All right, one last poem. One last poem.

And we sort of already alluded to this one, but I love it. So we'll go with Wild, page 83. Wild. I've talked so much about loving the world without any idea how to do it. Something about turning the other cheek. Something, something feeding the mouth that bites you. The world I'm trying to love is all teeth and need, all gray mange.

But I can't resent the wolf for pulling the lamb down, even in front of his mother. I can't be moved by bleeding, a limp throat. The wolf has her own crying young. I've talked so much about loving the world. Is this how it's done? I am offering the only thing I have. I am holding out my hand, feeding myself to the hungry future. Oh my gosh. So good. It's so powerful.

Yeah, that first line really gets me. I've talked so much about loving the world without any idea how to do it. It's intuitive. I think we all know that. Yeah, love the love the world. You know, it's important. It's valuable. But how sometimes? How? It's not always lovable. You know, it's like I have a poem in the book before this one in Good Bones that talks about loving the world like a mother and being tender when it lets you down. And that's the thing.

It's like having unconditional love for the world you live in means not demanding perfection from it any more than we demand it from ourselves, taking it as it is. Yeah, I think it's hard to turn your attention to the positive, turn your attention to the beautiful, without also sort of ignoring the other because it's there and it needs tended. And I feel like that's a perpetual tightrope that I'm walking, you know, between like, all right, I know my natural tendency is to turn towards the negative things. And God knows there are plenty of them. They're essentially infinite.

And yet the good things are also sort of infinite. You know, they're everywhere if you look. And so, like we said earlier, I want the answer like 65, 35, 65% of the time on the good, 35% on the negative, you're good, right? Like I'm looking for an answer when that's the art, right? The art is how to walk that tightrope. Yeah. And the parable kind of gets at that too, right? Like, how do you feel something even, even if you think of it, I mean, my therapist is always like, no feeling is negative. Like, stop saying you had a negative feeling, you had a feeling, like, let's talk through it.

So even the idea of good and bad or negative and positive are still tricky, you know, and totally. And I think a lot about like, if I'm only trying to focus on the positive, and I'm not addressing the sort of more difficult sort of gnarlier, less attractive bits of life or myself or, you know, whatever, that kind of silent treatment is also a problem. That turning my back on those things can't last. Like nothing ever got better by being ignored. I mean, at least not in my experience. So I don't even think it's healthy to sort of only tend to the positive. Like, frankly, the negative needs a little tending to.

Totally. Totally. Well, Maggie, thank you so much for coming back on. It has been a wonderful conversation to chat with you again and hear some of your poems. And yeah, I'm just real grateful you were able to be here. Yeah. a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for

your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts