Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Ada Limón doesn't want all the answers

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

As U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón has focused her attention on the natural world, most recently editing a collection of nature poems, titled You Are Here. But Limón's ability to see what others often overlook goes beyond nature. Limón talks with Rachel about learning to forgive yourself, the smell of her grandparents' dueling fudge recipes and a premonition she once had.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, everyone, it's Rachel. So Wild Card has been out for a few weeks now, and we have heard so much lovely feedback from our listeners. Thank you. And I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks to a few folks in particular who have left us glowing reviews. Ivy Ann Palmer, Kelly B, Kevin in Minnesota, Ruby Esco, Mickey B, Fun Tall, Lil Frischel, Phil Renato, and Christy Winter. Those are just a few of the folks who've left reviews. And we super appreciate it. Special shout out to Morning Glory Flutter Pony, both for naming themselves Morning Glory Flutter Pony and for saying that they are going to share the Jenny Slate episode with their daughters. Sharing our episodes with folks who don't know us yet is hugely, hugely helpful. So please, leave us a rating and a review and share an episode with your friends and your family and help us grow this show. Okay, here's this week's episode. When's the last time you forgave yourself for something? This morning. Great.

Top of mind. The nice thing about being in my mid-too-late 40s, yeah, I forgive myself all the time. I have to. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest chooses questions at random. Pick a card one through three.

Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped their lives. I am a very sensitive person, and so either it's sort of all walls or there's no walls, and I have to find that middle ground. My guest today is a poet, and I'm going to start our episode with an excerpt of one of her poems. Look, we are not unspectacular things. We've come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more, to love harder? This is what U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon does in so many of her poems.

She acknowledges the hard stuff of living, but it is embedded in perseverance and optimism. What would happen if we decided to survive more, to love harder? And I read that and I'm like, yes, Ada, I am all in. Let's at least try, right? She's just one of those people who can recognize all the ways that we inflict pain on each other, not to mention our planet, but not get consumed by it. Ada writes in that space between grief and joy, and I love that space. Hi, Ada.

Hello, Rachel. How are you? I'm well. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you. So we're going to talk, but I did bring you here to play a game. I hope you're excited about that question mark. I would say a little bit nervous, but yes, excited. I think that's a healthy balance. I think that's actually the right answer. But I do want to mention your latest book. You've published a lot of collections of your own poetry, but your latest is a curation of poems from different poets about the natural world. Yeah, I'm very excited about this anthology. It's called You Are Here. Why is it called that?

I thought so much of our life is, you know, we think about what's next, what's next. And I think not only in my life and in my heart, I am always trying to remind myself that I am here, not just on this planet, but in this moment in this space right here you and I talking. This is it actually. Yes, this is our life. This is our life. Yeah. And so the title came to me once when I was on a hike and I noticed the signpost on the trail marker and it said you are here. And I thought, what a good reminder. What a good reminder. You are here. Yeah. So, um, Are you ready to do this game? I'm ready. All right, let's do it. There are a few rules, okay?

So, number one, you get one skip. If you use your skip, I will replace that question with the new one from the deck, okay? Okay. Number two, you get a flip. You can put me on the spot and ask me to answer one of the questions before you do. We're going to break it up into rounds. Round one is about memories, experiences that shaped you. Okay.

Round two is insights, lessons. that you have learned or are learning. Okay. And round three is about beliefs, the ways you make sense of the world. It is a game, so there's a prize when you make it to the end. Yay. Is it chocolate? Is it chocolate?

Oh my gosh, it should be chocolate. I can definitely make that happen for you. But spoiler alert, it is not chocolate, Ada. So round one, this is memories, okay? I am holding three cards. You can't see the questions. and you get to pick, one, two, or three. Two.

Two. Okay. When is the first time you remember feeling proud of yourself? Hmm. I think that I remember feeling proud of myself when I, I mean, I was very young. I was very little. And I remember being able to get down a dance routine in my little. dance class and thinking how amazed I was that the body could figure things out like that.

And, you know, like, wow, like my body and looking kind of down at my legs being like, oh, my body did the same thing as the other bodies. And it was like moving in air and in a sort of, I remember feeling the real thrill of unison. Yeah. And moving in unison. Do you remember the genre of dance? Are we talking about ballet, hip-hop? What are we talking about? It was jazz dance. It was jazz dance. Patty Ferrar was the teacher. And I absolutely, some of my best memories are from early days in the little dance studio in Sonoma, California. I mean, would I remember about jazz dance or the outfits? Did you have a good outfit? You mean leg warmers?

That's right. I still have leg warmers and they are my favorite thing. Awesome. You heard it here first. A lemon poet laureate writes poems in leg warmers. Okay. Next question, we are still in memories, but we've got three new cards, okay? Pick a card, one, two, or three.

Let's go with one. Okay. One. Oh, this is like a softball for a poet, but here we go. What's a smell that brings a smell that brings up? back a vivid memory for you. Oh, it's so funny because we just mentioned chocolate, but my grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side both made dueling types of fudge because they had their specific fudge that they liked, and his was a hard sort of old-fashioned kind of fudge,

and hers was a soft seas candy fudge. And any time I smell it, like if it's in the vicinity, I just think of my grandparents. And it's such a, like, beautiful memory because my favorite thing was to go into their cupboard. It was a walk-in cupboard. Yeah. And they would have all of their, you know, Tupperware is full of their different kinds of fudge for guests and things. And you could just smell it. couldn't reach it, unfortunately, but you could smell it. So definitely, yeah, the smell of chocolate

and the smell of fudge. Did you spend a lot of time with them growing up? I did, yes. And my grandmother just died this August, and she's been on my mind a lot. So I think that she's with me in my heart. Was she a lover of poetry? She did like poetry, although she was very confused that not all my poems rhymed. I told her that some of them do. And at one point when my grandfather passed away, she asked me to write a poem for him. And I made it rhyme. Yeah, I love that. Okay, last question in round one.

Three new carts. Two. Two. Who is someone who played an important role in your life, but you haven't communicated with them in years? I think I might skis. this one, only because I actually think that I'm pretty good at communicating with all the people that have really, you know, supported me. You got to skip. You've deployed it. Boom. Pick a card. One or two. Two. Two. As a child, when did you realize that the adults around you

didn't have all the answers. I remember being around seven or eight and asking my mom about a rumor that my brother had said that the apartment we had moved into after my parent's separation was haunted. And I said, I told her, I said, well, you know, I mean, that's not true. Right. I mean, ghost don't exist. And she just paused and she was like, well, and I remember thinking, wait, what? You're, we're just supposed to know that they don't. And she was like, we don't really know for sure. I mean, some people have had some experiences and she was very open. And, you know, she's like, I've never had an experience. But. And I remember then thinking, oh, there was. was no direct answer to that question. She didn't know. And she was willing to give me a, I don't know.

And was that exciting for you? I think I would have liked a definitive no. Because you didn't want to live in a world with ghosts? I didn't want to. Because I'm super into them. I mean, not the scary kind, but the idea of spirits. Yeah. So yeah, so for me, I think that at the time, I would have loved to know.

I think that unknowing that she offered me was a gift. And I think that's opened a lot of different worlds and experiences to me and allowed me to just say that I don't know. And even in that apartment, that space, there are people that still talk about things that they've seen there. Okay. So that was my next question. Was the apartment actually haunted? Was there any, I mean, evidence is too strong a word, but other people saw things. or felt things. Other people saw things. I had an experience as a child. Nothing, but it wasn't,

nothing too scary, just, you know, seeing things and, you know, it seemed like a benevolent entity. What did you see? I saw, um, a figure walking towards me when I was sleeping, like going to bed. I was awake, but, um, and then they just sort of disappeared. Just, disappeared. It didn't seem terrifying. It just seemed like a remnant of something. But you remember it? I remember it quite well. Do you think that people transition that way when someone dies? Maybe. I think that it feels more like the world has a memory. After the break, Ada talks about navigating the vulnerability that can come with her job. I feel, I think.

a little untethered and unskinned. We're moving on to round two in sights, okay, things you have learned or are learning. Pick a card, one, two, or three. One. One. When do you feel most like an outsider? I'm going to say I feel most like an outsider when I am in a room full of very wealthy non-artists.

I imagine you're in those rooms a lot. They're called patrons, right? Like patrons of the arts. Yes. Yeah. And I think that that's where I feel most like an outsider. I've learned to be in them, and I've even learned to enjoy them sometimes. But I am very aware of how much of an outsider I am in those spaces.

May I plumb that a little bit? No shade to patrons of the arts. The arts need people to invest in them and subsidize them. Yes, we do. Please support your local artists and book swimmers. But what specifically you feel judged in some way? Because those people venerate you, you know? Like you're an artist.

You're what they can't be, what they love. But it is an insecurity? I don't feel like it's an insecurity. I don't feel like it's being judged. but I feel like it's, what's the phrase I'm looking for? I'm trying to get this right. How do I feel in those spaces? Like you're on display in some way?

Yeah. Like it's not about the art anymore. It's about me. And I think that as most artists know, we make poems or we make paintings or we make music and it's about those things. we put that, those are our offerings to the world. And I feel like sometimes in those spaces with non-artists, it is about me or the person. And that feels almost in some ways too vulnerable where in reality you would like to say, oh, if you want to answer that question, you should read this book or you should read this poem.

or, you know, like we put the poem out first. And the poem, for me, is the safest, most sacred space. And not having that to protect me, I feel, I think, a little untethered and unskinned in some ways. Also, you carry this thing, right? You're not just the U.S. Poet Laureate. You're the first Latina to hold this job. And that would also ascribe like all this other significance that makes it about you, not the art, not the poetry. Exactly.

Exactly. And so in those moments, I have to figure out a way to be vulnerable and also protected. But I think I am a very sensitive person. And so I tend to either it's sort of all walls or there's no walls. And I have to find that middle ground. Yeah. And so those spaces can be tricky for me. Yeah.

Maybe like a fence that has like some space between the boards with a gate that you can go through. Like a little circle of trees. Yes, I love that. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Okay. So next set of three cards. Still in Insights, pick a card one through three.

Three. When's the last time you forgave yourself for something? This morning. Great. Top of mine. mind. Big or small thing. What was it?

I have to forgive myself all the time for all sorts of things. I mean, just this morning, I was, you know, I've been traveling a lot and it's been beautiful and I'm, you know, going to be traveling again. And I was just getting into meditation. I was doing yoga, which I do every, try to do every morning. And, you know, I was just very stiff and I just felt very like, oh, I hadn't been moving as much I should or hadn't be doing it. And I was just hard on myself. And then I was like, you know, you were doing amazing things. Like you were doing other things that mattered. And it's okay.

Yeah. And I'm very, I think it's very important because I think that early on I thought all of self-care was really more self-punishing. And I just, what does that mean? Oh, it just felt like, you know, like, well, if I don't, if I miss a day of working out. than this or if I do this or if I feast too much and enjoy too much, you know, then therefore you'll have to, I'll have to, you know, go into deprivation mode. Yes, exactly. And so I just don't do that anymore. And I think that that's been really healthy for me because I feel like you spend a lot,

at least for me, a lot of my, you know, 20s and 30s just trying to do everything right. And the nice thing about being in my. mid, too late 40s, having those moments of just being like, you know, I'm so grateful to be in this body and get to make choices and, you know, and live. And I think it's been just such a healthier space for me. So yeah, I forgive myself all the time. All the time. I think that's good. Yeah, I have to. After the break, the beliefs round. Do you think there's more to reality than we can see or feel? 100,000 million percent.

Okay, moving on to round three, this is beliefs. These are questions about the ways that you make sense of the world. First set of three cards, one, two, or three? Three, three. Oh, have you ever had a premonition about something that came true? I feel like I have, and I'm trying to think of, there's many times where I've, um, I'm a big dreamer. And my dream world is so...

Like literally and figuratively. Yes. Like, um, sleeping dreams. Yeah. And so I think that, um, those moments can be slippery for me, whether there were premonitions or if they were dreams. But, um, I feel like there's a few times. One of them has been, I think that I knew that we weren't going to be able to conceive

a child before before we decided to give up on fertility treatments. I think I knew that. And I think it actually helped me to make some decisions to not move forward with any more of the treatments. And so I think I just knew. And it was also very helpful to me

because it felt like as much as I just praised mystery and the unknowing It felt like my body knew something. And it knew it was able to offer me another option and another future that I wasn't quite ready to do yet and to surrender to yet. Then when I was able to do it and listen to that premonition, it felt like a gift. And it felt like, okay, now what else is possible? Yeah.

you know, because I think as women in our culture, the only possibility oftentimes offered to us as motherhood. That's right. And I felt very bound by that. And letting that go was really freeing. And I love my life. And I love being child free. And I think that premonition offered that before I even knew it. Did you have a specific dream?

or it was just a knowing in your bones? I was floating in the Chesapeake Bay, and I just had this moment of feeling what if my body was only my body. And it felt really powerful. What if it didn't belong to anyone else? Woo! And it was just mine. We never talk about it that way.

I never felt it that way. All I wanted was to carry something in me, a baby, a child. And then it was so freeing. And I got out of the ocean. I remember thinking, that was beautiful. Like, what if I'm enough? What if just my body? What if these boundaries and these borders of my skin touching the water was enough?

We don't say that. Women don't say that out loud. People don't say that. Sorry, it wasn't creepy. I'm totally going through menopause. And so I cry all the time. Me too. Oh my God.

Thank you for sharing that. Oh, yeah. It's an intimate thing and I appreciate you sharing. Thank you for reminding me of it. Yeah, that's beautiful and important. Woo! Okay. Final round, Ada.

Okay. Three more cards. One, two, three. Pick a card, one through three. Uh, two. Two. Do you think there's more to reality than we can see or feel? 100,000 million percent.

One gazillion percent. Yes. Yes. I absolutely think that. I think our perception, I mean, all reality is perception. All of our brains work so differently. I had the great pleasure of speaking with a neuroscientist a couple weeks ago, Heather Berlin.

And she was talking about just how the deeper and further she studies the brain, the more generous she is with others. Because our brains are so, we are wired so differently. We are all so individual and so unique in the way we perceive reality. It is not the same. The fact that we can be in communion with folks, that we can be in community, in relationships and partnerships is amazing. And so I think that we just don't know anything. And one of my favorite things about being a poet is that again and again, you just get to say,

we don't know anything. And I can be an expert in what, like a language, a line break, so sure. I know what a stanza is. I know the forms, but I have no wisdom. And I love that. Oh, I don't think that's true. I think others would take issue with that. I mean, you know that's not true, Ada.

Like, you have wisdom. The thing you just told me about your body and an agency and how we can be enough, that is a wise thing. You know we all hold wisdom. Yeah, I guess I don't mean, yeah, I mean, there is a kind of wisdom in that. But I also feel like I really love the sort of beginner's mind, right? Like the idea of the more we know about anything, the more the unknown is revealed to us. And I love that. I mean, I feel like if anyone asks, you know, if anyone says like, you know, why do you write a poem?

Almost always, I say, mortality, because of mortality. Because this is amazing that it is finite. And I would love to notice and hold as much as I can before I go. And I feel like as I've aged, I'm still really angry that death exists. but I am also more willing to accept that there may be more to this, you know, and maybe the more is just that we're part of a planet and how beautiful is that, that we get to be part of a tree or we get to be part of the air, the ocean, the sand. I mean, we're always searching for meaning, and I love that. someone asked me at a table literally last week they said if you could know all the secrets to the universe would you want to know and i don't think i would yeah no me either i don't think

i would i think it's one of the great gifts of being alive we're done we're done with the game And I promised you a prize. I wish I had a piece of chocolate I could like teleport to you right now. So the prize is a trip in our memory time machine to revisit one moment from your past. It's a moment you wouldn't change. You just want to spend a little more time there. Which moment do you choose? I think that I would want to.

to go back to the moment when I was probably, you know, six or seven, would go down to this creek that was across the street from my house called the Calabasas Creek. And it was the most quiet, most wondrous place I've ever been. And it still exists. And it's still beautiful. but I remember feeling so small in that enormity of the creek bed and the lives of all the little things of that natural world. And I think now when I go back with my adult mind, I worry about it. I think about the protection of it. I think about Creek restoration. I think about all of these things.

And what I miss, I think, is that moment of just pure wonder without any of the worry. What does it sound like there? Well, it depends on what time of year. I would like to go back in the spring where it's still running. And the interesting thing about this particular creek is that it makes a wonderful little noise. There's a tiny little waterfall there, I'm a tiny, just sort of a stone. But one of the things I loved about it is that there's a road right above it. And so you could hear the rush of traffic.

And then it made the sound of the creek so much more precious. Ada Lemont, she is the 24th United States Poet Laureate. Her latest project is a book of poems about the natural world called You Are Here. Ada, what a joy it was to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for doing it. Thank you so much, Rachel. What a delight. Next week on Wildcard, Jack Antenoff.

He's produced albums for everyone from Lord to Lana Del Rey to Taylor Swift. What is proof that somebody really knows you? Proof that somebody really knows me is they understand my rituals around feeling clean. Oh, so many, so many follow-ups down. Ask here. This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard with help from Lauren Gonzalez. It was fact-checked by Sarah Knight and mastered by Gilly Moon. Wildcard's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Romteen Arablewey. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. See you then.