The One You Feed - Marilyn Nelson on Her Beautiful and Powerful Poetry

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, and children’s book author. She is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and the former poet laureate of Connecticut.  In this episode, Eric and Marilyn discuss several of her poems and the inspiration and meaning behind themBut 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!Marilyn Nelson and I Discuss her Beautiful and Powerful Poetry and…Her book, How I Discovered Poetry“Mississippi” poemHer book, A Wreath for Emmett TillHer use of the unique poetry form of heroic crown of sonnets“Rosemary for Remembrance” poem“Let Me Gather Spring Flowers for a Wreath” poem“Like His Gouged Eye” poemHow poetry comes out of silence and leads us back to silenceA life well lived includes the gifts of silence, contemplation, and self knowledge How we need to make an effort to find silence in a noisy worldHer book, Carver“Professor Carver’s Bible Class” poemHer book, Snook Alone, the story of a dogMarilyn Nelson Links:Marilyn’s WebsiteFacebookWhen 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 Marilyn Nelson you might also enjoy these other episodes:Roger HousdenEllen BassSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In case you're just recently joining us, or however long you've been a listener of the show, you may not realize that we have years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we decided to handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Marilyn Nelson. Our lives are so filled up with noise now. We have to take real effort to find a place that's quiet. 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.

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Our guest on this episode is Marilyn Nelson, an American poet, translator, and children's book author. Marilyn is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and the former poet laureate of Connecticut. On this episode, Marilyn and Eric discuss several poems she's written, as well as the meaning behind them. Hi, Marilyn. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Eric. I'm so happy to have you on. You and I have just fought a long and grueling audio battle, but hopefully we are past that and things go well from here. So again, thank you for your patience with that. And I thought we'd

start off by just talking about the parable for a minute and then get right to your poetry because it's so beautiful. So there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. 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 start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. What it means to me, I suppose, hoping that the choices, but I think that probably in the back of my mind is the question of whether this is goodwill, whether I'm willing the right thing, whether I'm making a contribution toward a better future. And I suppose those are decisions that have to do with choosing to feed the good wolf. Wonderful. Well, I'd like to get you to do a reading from your most recent book called How I Discovered Poetry. And one of the things about this book I found so great is you so wonderfully capture what it's like to be a child. I remember being a child, and I would hear these things in the adult world.

You know, when I was younger, it was Watergate and, you know, the end of Vietnam and different things. So I would hear these things happening in the world. I'd hear them on the news. I'd hear my parents talk about them and they kind of filtered into my consciousness, but I still was mostly a child. And I found your book so fascinating because it chronicles you from, I think the age of seven to, you know, mid teens. From four to 14. Four to 14.

Four to 14. Four to 14. Yeah. So early on, these things are just barely filtering into your consciousness, but they're there. And then as you grow in age, these outside world things filter in more and more. And I just thought it was so wonderful the way you did that because it was so much my experience of being a child. I'm glad it spoke to you. I'm hoping that it will help other grown-ups remember the time when their understanding was deepening. Well, what is it now we see through a glass darkly? Yeah. Yeah. So the poem that you and I talked about having you read is called Mississippi. A little bit of background. My father was in the Air Force, so we moved around a lot.

So a lot of my strongest childhood memories take place in the car. And this poem is the family in the car driving to Omaha from Kansas, from an Air Force base in Kansas, to my aunt's house in Nebraska for Thanksgiving. So it's the Thanksgiving drive in its 1955. And I should say that the Emmett here is Emmett Till. Mississippi. Over the river and through the woods, for miles of four-lane highways, slowed by blowing snow, through towns named for long-vanquished Indians, to Aunt Charlie's house in Omaha we go. Hypnotized by the rhythm of tire chains, I eat a sandwich passed from the front seat where Mama and Daddy are talking about a boy named Emmett. Jennifer, whispering to her doll, Jennifer, whispering to her doll, crosses the line between her side and mine, and when I poke her just a little bit, she howls as if it hurts out of sheer spite. Behave.

Lost again in the inwardness of thought and my five senses, I add to my list, thank you for not stationing us in Mississippi. Thank you. That's such a great poem. And it really leads to the next place I'd like to go. And one of your books is called A Wreath for Emmett Till. And it's a series of poems about the lynching of Emmett Till. And I was wondering if you could, before we get into the poems, tell me about how you wrote the book, the structure of the book, because it's so unique. And I'd like you to just share that with the listeners before we get to the poems themselves. I had agreed with the publisher to write a poem for young adults, and I wanted a poem that would move them both, not only with the story, with the horrible story, but also with poetry that I created as a tribute to Emmett Till. And the form I used is called a heroic crown of sonnets.

A crown of sonnets is a sequence of poems of sonnets in which the last line of each sonnet becomes the first line in the next one. So they're kind of braided. And the heroic crown of sonnets uses that same kind of braided form, but it's a sequence of 15 sonnets. A sonnet is a 14-line poem. And the heroic crown of sonnets is a sequence of 15 sonnets in which the last sonnet is made up of the first lines of the previous 14 sonnets. So it's a very tight form. And mine, and mine because I really wanted to offer young people a poem that kind of blew off the top of their consciousness um and so mine does an another trick by um making the last one um I think it's called an acrostic in which the first letters of each line spell out something if you read them vertically. In my poem, that acrostic spells out the name Emmett L. Till. Wow, I didn't even realize that last bit. Yeah, it's so impressive the way it's all strung together.

And I'm going to ask you to do some readings from it. And the readings I've asked you to do are going to sort of butcher your form in that we're not going to do them in order. But I think they give a good cross section of different emotions that came to me from the poem. So let's start with Rosemary for Remembrance, please. Let me ask you, Eric, Rosemary for Remembrance is please. Let me ask you, Eric, Rosemary for Remembrance is the first one, so I can just read it as it is, but maybe in the next one I could read the last line of the previous one so that listeners can understand the interwovenness. Yes. Okay. This is Rosemary for Remembrance. Rosemary for Remembrance,

Shakespeare wrote, a speech for poor Ophelia who went mad when her love killed her father. Flowers had a language then. Rose petals in a note said, I love love you a sheaf of bearded oat said your music enchants me goldenrod be careful weeping willow twigs I'm sad what should What should my wreath for Emmett Till denote? First, heliotrope for justice shall be done. Daisies and white lilacs for innocence. Then, mandrake, horror, wearing a white hood or bare-faced laughing. For grief more than one, for one is not enough. Rue, you, Cyprus, forget me nots, though if I could, I would. Wonderful. And now let's go on to the next one

that you would like to read from that book. I should read, Let Me Gather Spring Flowers for a Wreath? Yep, that would be great. I won't read the last line or the previous one, because it's just the same as this line. Okay. Let me gather spring flowers for a wreath, not lilacs from the dooryard, but wildflowers I'd search for in the greening woods for hours of solitude, meditating on death. meditating on death. Let me wander through pathless woods beneath the choirs of small birds trumpeting their powers

at the intruder trampling through their bowers, disturbing their peace. I cling to the faith that innocence lives on, that a blind soul can see again, that miracles do exist. In my house, there is still something called grace, which melts ice shards of hate and makes hearts whole. I bear armloads of flowers home to twist into a circle, trillium, Queen Anne's lace. That's beautiful. And then maybe let's do Like His Gouged Eye

as our last one from this book. as our last one from this book. Like his gouged eye, which watched boots kick his face, we must bear witness to atrocity. But we are whole, we can speak what we see. People may disappear leaving no trace unless we stand before the populace, orators denouncing the slavery to fear. For the lynchers feared the lynchee, what he might do, being of another race, a great unknown. They feared because they saw their own inner shadows, their vicious dreams, the farthest horizons of their own thought, their jungles goals immune to the rule of law. We can speak now or bear unforgettable shame. Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespeare wrote. All three of those are so powerful. The book

is so powerful. And what I didn't mention is it is illustrated in a beautiful, beautiful way. So I highly encourage listeners to pick it up. It is such a powerful piece of work. to the illustrator Philippe Lardy, who is a French illustrator and who had never heard of the lynching of Emmett Till before he was asked to do this book. And his illustrations are really wrenching. Yes. And as amazing as this is to say, it's my second favorite illustrated book of yours. We'll get to the my favorite here in a little bit, but it is so well done. 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?

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The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means.

And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I want to ask you for a second about poetry, because I've heard you say that poetry comes out of silence and leads us back to silence.

Talk to me a little bit about, from your perspective, how that works and what the value is, you think, of silence in a life well lived? Oh, wow. Those are big questions. I think poetry comes out of silence because it comes from at least capital P poetry, let's put it that way, comes out of the deepest struggles of the poet to come to terms with some basic realities, difficult realities of our existence on the planet. And that confrontation with those realities is, I think, a confrontation that has to occur in silence. You can't just knock off capital P poems when you're sitting at, I don't know, Starbucks. And I don't have a better answer to that. And I realize that there is poets in the country now who have very different definitions of the sources of poetry. So I can only say that this one is mine. This is a personal definition. And you asked three questions. I think I was responding to the first one. Yeah, I think the other one was just what role you think silence plays in a life well lived. I think a life well lived requires some kind of contemplation and self-knowledge.

And that the only ways one arrives at both the gifts of contemplation and the gifts of self-knowledge is by reaching toward the quiet center. And there are many ways of doing that. And all of them, I think, are good. And I think that we need to learn them. I think our lives are so filled up with noise now. We have to take real effort to find a place that's quiet other than, you know, the last time you listened to crickets for an hour in the evening. Nothing but crickets.

Not talking to anybody. Not with the radio on, not watching television, not listening to the news, not reading, but just listening to the silence of, it's not exactly silence, but listening to the quiet of the natural world. silence, but listening to the quiet of the natural world. And I feel that sitting and just listening is a way of connecting with something central in our humanity, in our existence. What you just said there makes me think of another poem that you and I talked about reading, and it's from a book called Carver. And it's basically a biography, I guess, of George Washington Carver told in poems. And there is one called Professor Carver's Bible Class. And I think it's a good to go there now because it references the

value of nature. And you just were talking about nature, so it made me think of this poem. So why don't we do this one next? I learned so much about the important things of life by writing this book about Carver. I set out to write a spiritual biography of Carver. Carver was in, I think he was a saint. And I learned so much from him as his attitudes toward quiet and toward solitude and toward service. He was an extraordinarily wise man, great teacher. So he taught for most of his adult life as a professor of science, agricultural science at Tuskegee Institute. And when he first started there, I don't remember when he started teaching there. It must have been about 1900. It must have been 1905, something like that.

When he first started teaching at Tuskegee, he offered a brief Bible study class in a small classroom, just an informal Bible study class. I think it was maybe one half hour a week. Dr. Carver would just read a passage from the Bible and discuss it. And this class became so popular that as he became older, it had to be held in a largest lecture hall on campus. Students thronged to hear Carver talk students wrote little sketches of outlines of what Carver talked about, and there's a collection of these published. And my poem is based on a recollection written by a man named Alvin Smith, who was a student at Tuskegee. So that's a long introduction to the class. Professor Carver's Bible class. I'd always pictured God as a big, old, long-bearded white man

throned up in the sky, watching and keeping score. the sky watching and keeping score. I had been told we get harps or pitchfork brimstone when we die. Superstitiously, I watched for signs living in fear of a great master's wrath. Professor Carver's class gave me the means to liberation from that slavish faith. He taught us that our creator lives within, yearning to speak to us through silent prayer. That all of nature, if we'll just tune in, is a vast broadcasting system. That the air carries a current we can plug into. Your creator, he said, is itching to contact you. I love that one.

I love the whole book. I agree with you in that I had no idea what George Washington Carver was all about and how profound he was in so many different ways in so many different fields. And so this book was a real eye-opener for me, for sure. I'm glad. I'm glad. It's a real saint's life. And the more deeply I studied his life, the more clearly I'm convinced. If he had been born in a different religious tradition, he would have been canonized. And yeah, I mean, there just no question in my mind about this. 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. 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. app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We have been on the subject of nature and prayer, and that's going to lead us to the next book. And my girlfriend is tired of hearing about this little dog named Snook. The book is called Snook Alone.

We're going to do a reading from it here in a minute. But when you and I were talking last, you said something that we didn't get to explore. And so I want to explore it. You said that this book, it's a parable for contemplative prayer, and that in this book, Snook is learning to pray. So maybe share a little bit about that before we go into the reading. I'll stay within the context of the book. There's a larger context in my life, which would take forever to describe. But yes, Snook is a dog who belongs to a hermit monk. to a hermit monk. And the book begins with the dog's place in the life of this hermit monk. The hermit's job is to pray and work all day. And Snook lives with this man. In the life of the hermit monk, we get an image of what it's like to live a life of prayer.

And then Snook is shipwrecked on this island. And essentially, his life while he's alone on the island comes more and more to imitate the life is the goal of contemplative prayer, should be the goal of all prayer. So yes, it's a kind of a parable of that. And at the beginning, I'm looking at it right now across from the title page, there is a quote I came across from the great film director Ingmar Bergman, in which Bergman says, Faith is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness, but never appears, no matter how loudly you call. Faith is like loving someone, a God, a creator, a returning love that's out there in the darkness and that you never see, but you don't stop loving

in the darkness and that you never see, but you don't stop loving because of that. You continue anyway. That's what it is to have faith. And that's what the shipwrecked period of Snook's life is about. He's on this island, and he spends his whole time yearning for his master. Yeah, I think that that's true. And one of the things that struck me about the book, first, I just am crazy about dogs. And this book is so well illustrated in every way. And Snook is so doggone cute. Oh, it's just, I can hardly take it.

And the thing that I love about this, and it's similar to what we talked about with your earlier book, where we talked about how, what it's like to be a child. Because what I found so fascinating was Snook is missing his master. He wants him. And yet he's also just being a dog. Like he's still doing his thing. Like he misses him, but he's not curled up in a ball. He's out doing dog things. He's exploring the island. His work is being a dog. Yeah. And I just loved that. It was like, it gave this, you know, of course it's sad. You're like, oh, Snook, when's your, Snook, when's your master coming back?

But at the same time, he's just out there doing his thing. So the one I thought you could read was the page that starts with the Butte-Avocere Island. I'm probably not even saying that right. Yeah, that's correct. If you want to take us through maybe just that page. If you want to take us through maybe just that page. But Avakar Island was the center of a vast circle of longing. And from one unknown direction, Snook's longing came back to him, mirrored in a fractal of moving sea light,

one flicker of which was Abba Yaakov's prayer. Wind, breathing, breath, waves, good dog. Love went in snook now from one end of Avacare to the other, from east to west, south to north. Whether the noon sun blazed overhead or the southern cross blinked down at night, Whether he was working or eating or dozing, Snook was always waiting now in his friend's silence. Abba Yaakov's silence was the wind. It was the sea. It was the love in Snook, compassionate and wise as the turtle's eye. I just love that. And like I said, I loved the whole book. And for those of you who like happy endings, there's a happy ending too. So don't need to be worried that Snook dies alone.

Too bad it's gone out of print. No. It really hurt that's gone out of print. No. It really hurt that it went out of print. It really is out of print? Oh, my goodness. Well, I got my copy from a library. So, listeners, there's your shot. This is going to go in the monthly newsletter, perhaps, for my book of the month.

Because it's just, I'm crazy about it. May I shout out to the illustrator of this one? Please do, because it's stunning. Timothy Basil Ehring, E-R-I-N-G, very talented illustrator. He's done a lot of picture books, and I loved the pictures he did of this. I couldn't help but, as I was reading, think, where is Snook's master? He got stranded there, but the weather seems like it's been fine for days well and see it's something like a hurricane came up and they were out going they were doing a

survey they were doing a survey of the fauna on these small uninhabited islands and a big storm came up and they and the they had to get to a safe harbor until the the storm passed and then no it's not easy to go from island to island um so the master had to wait until it until he could catch another another boat that's what happens that's why he's left on the island for some time. That makes me feel better. Yes. Well, we are at the end of time, but you and I in the post-show conversation

are going to have you read yet another poem of yours to share with listeners. Listeners, if you'd like to hear the post-show conversations, get ad-free episodes and a free weekly mini-episode, go to oneufeed.net slash support. You can listen to all of those right in your podcast player. Well, Marilyn, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and share your poetry with us. And again, I apologize for the difficulty with our audio, but we got through it. We got through it. We got through it. Thanks very much, Eric. I appreciate you're having me

and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to read my poems. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. And I will be in touch when we release the episode. Okay. All right. Thanks so much. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Bye-bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.