September 15, 2025 • 21 mins
In this collection of conversations, Ben Palpant, author of Letters From The Mountain, has compiled his intimate, one-on-one interviews with seventeen powerful poets of the 21st century. These conversations cover an entire range of life experience, including grief, hope, culture, the writing craft, family life, and the imagination. Each poet speaks with remarkable candor and joy. Taken together, these interviews are a powerful reminder that poetry remains an essential expression of what it means to be human.
Franz Kafka famously said that "a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." And the words and thoughts contained here aim to wake up much that has become silent in each of us. They contain wisdom that may inspire, instruct, and strengthen, confronting us with the reality that words matter, that poetry matters, and that we matter.
You can purchase a copy of An Axe for the Frozen Sea in the Rabbit Room Store.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
The following is brought to you in partnership with Oasis Audio.
Welcome to Rabbit Room Press Presents, a podcast series of
great audiobooks, one chapter at a time.
S2 (00:16):
An axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Pallant. Read
for you by the author. Chapter 16. Mr. Willett, we
met at a coffee shop because Mr. Willett was worried
that kids spilling Cheerios during the interview might be a
bit distracting. I told them that after raising five children,
(00:40):
I would feel right at home. So by way of compromise,
I suppose he brought his effervescent wife and three kids
with him to the interview. Unfortunately, two Kick Coffee, a
converted motorcycle shop, was closing. We bought drinks and walked
the three blocks to his office on campus, his family
veering off to enter their house nearby. Willette's office was
(01:01):
once dorm room. Now the cinderblock walls are lined with
shelves weighed down by books. We sat down at the
round table, where I was immediately distracted by the beautiful volume.
A House Called Tomorrow. 50 Years of Poetry published by
Copper Canyon Press. And next to it, the work of
Philip James Bailey, whose influence on Walt Whitman was unfathomable
(01:23):
and who wrote the single most read poem of the
19th century, Festus. Already we were immersed in words, surrounded
by them, swimming in them, admiring them. Misha's boyish delight
in poetry was striking, even contagious. Misha, I say, there's
an urgency and intensity to your writing that I really admire.
(01:45):
Your poetry seems to be a response to what's happening
around you. T.S. Eliot said that each venture is a
new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate. He replies, I
think any work that's taking chaos and ordering it is
co-laboring with the Holy Spirit. Whether the chaos is the
human heart, time and its ravages or language itself. All
(02:06):
of that is holy work. Maybe even if it's not
done intentionally to the glory of God, it might be
glorifying nonetheless, because you're doing your human work. And I
don't care if you're planning bean rows like William Butler
Yeats or making a sonnet, you know. He pauses. I
guess I'm a romanticist by training. So Percy Bysshe Shelley
(02:28):
comes to mind. Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,
stains the white radiance of eternity. We are fragmenting things needlessly.
You know what I mean? There's a word beneath the
words that holds everything together that is real and true.
And poetry isn't artificially putting an order on things so
you can feel good for a while. That's what it
(02:49):
feels like for me in writing. What's that Seamus Heaney poem? Digging.
You know, to dig with your little spade toward that wholeness.
Do you feel like writing is a kind of compulsive
digging for you? A continuous digging? I ask, at what
point would you say you've done your work? That's interesting,
he says. You know, I don't feel my creaturely best
(03:12):
unless I'm writing. If you don't take your dog out
for a walk enough. He laughs. They get a little ornery,
but they're totally better after they exercise. That's what writing
feels like to me if I'm not writing. And your
wife would verify that? I ask. For sure. If I'm
acting a certain way, she'll say, honey, have you been
making anything lately? We laugh. So there's a kind of self-serving,
(03:36):
a good kind of self-serving in writing, I say. Writing
poetry does something in you and for you. But what
can it do for others? How does it serve people
who are just trying to survive life? I think it
was Franz Kafka who said that literature must be an
axe for the frozen sea inside us. I wrote that
in my journal 20 years ago. I think the frozen
(03:57):
sea is real. The pop singers are crying out, wake
me up, wake me up inside. People are sort of
yelling this into the void. They feel like there's something else,
something more that maybe they are sleepwalking. This isn't a judgment.
It's how people feel. I think for me and for
many people I know, poetry has served that function to
(04:17):
suggest the numinous when all they had was a boring phenomenology.
I think poetry can be a first inkling of that
transcendent order. I mean, there might be a sunset or
a person or a song that speaks to them with
that spark, but or Balaam's talking donkey, I ask. Yes.
He laughs. You can have something that's just a few
(04:38):
lines long, but it can change a life. That's crazy.
What kind of work is this that we get to do?
When you finish a poem? Do you feel like you
have made this thing, or do you feel like you've
stewarded this thing? That's interesting, he interesting, he says. I
think of my poems like my children. I know that's common,
but as soon as it exists, it exists. It has
(04:59):
its own life and its own rights. I'm proud of
it in a particular way, but I can't choose which
one I like best or which one will impact people
the most. I just rejoice that they're out there and
I want people to experience them. I meet so many
poets who act ashamed of what they've made and hate self-promotion.
But I want to say no, you're not promoting yourself.
You're promoting the poem. You made this thing, hopefully for
(05:21):
their joy and for their encouragement. Why wouldn't you want
to share that? It doesn't make any sense to me.
I know I sound silly, but whenever I finish a poem,
I stand up from this table and clap my hands
and charge out to tell someone, hey, is anyone around?
You'll never believe what just happened in there. It happened. Lightning!
It was dead. Now it's alive. They were just words.
(05:44):
And now there's a poem. When did poetry awaken you?
I ask? My parents were teenagers when I came along.
My mom was 15 years old. We were dirt poor
and living on food stamps in Arizona. They were intelligent people,
but they didn't have time to cultivate the mind. I
had four siblings and we were peripatetic. I moved schools
(06:06):
20 times before I left home. I thought that was normal.
I mean, I don't lament it in any way, but
there are these snatches of memory. I remember staying in
from recess in fourth grade to read poems my teacher
had written. What kind of fourth grader stays in from
recess to read extra poetry? Yeah, I was going to
ask you if you were in trouble, I say. I know,
(06:28):
and what kind of teacher shares her private poetry, he says.
I must have shown some unusual interest in poetry to
prompt that. Then in around fifth grade, I started mowing
lawns and getting a little money, which I spent on books.
I'd go to garage sales and raid the used poetry books.
I didn't know one from another. I bought books and
craftsman tools because I had heard that craftsman is a
(06:50):
really good brand to have. Assuming I would use those tools,
but that was it. Not board games or sports, just books.
The impulse was there from an early age. I say
yes and I have no idea where it came from,
he says, shaking his head. I never saw my dad
with a book. Not one time. The television was on
(07:11):
all the time, but I do remember the closest stirring
to a literary response was hearing my mother read the
King James Bible, which she did fairly faithfully. I remember
one time, you know, wearing my footie pajamas when I
wasn't listening to the words anymore. I was leaning into
the music of the words. Later in high school, of course,
I started writing poetry for girls. There are great motivator,
(07:33):
I say. Yes, indeed, God has a design. What led
you to the Romantics and to grad school, I ask?
I applied to Wheaton College. It was the only school
I applied to. I didn't know it was difficult to
get into. I just thought, that's where I'm going to go.
Here's this kid from the wrong side of the tracks,
attending school in what was, at the time, the third
(07:55):
wealthiest county in America. I honestly don't think I had
ever seen a man wearing khaki pants until I got there,
and had certainly never met a professor. My parents didn't
take me. I just got on a plane with my
little suitcase. It was all very foreign to me. I
didn't do well. Dropped out after the first quarter. Returned
home and worked at the mall. It was terrible. So
(08:16):
I went back but had an argument with my roommate
and dropped out again. Then one of my professors called
me on the phone. This was before the internet, so
he had to have hunted down my phone number. He
reached my mother, who gave him my work number where
I was measuring men's neck for fitted shirts. Then he
talked to my manager, who got me on the phone
and told me that I should go back to college.
(08:38):
He said, what are you doing with your life? Get
over here. No one had ever talked to me that
way before, so I did. Who was that, professor, I ask?
His name was Jeff Davis. He would later become dean
at Wheaton College. He led a trip to Oxford every
summer and invited me to join. So I went, and
in C.S. Lewis's words, it baptized my imagination. I had
(09:03):
never seen people take education and beauty so seriously. We
were playing soccer on a beach in Wales one evening,
having just spent time at Dylan Thomas's house, when Davis
looked at me with a smile and said, this is
how I spend my summers. And I thought right there
that this guy had figured something out. I knew what
my dad's summers were like, exactly the same as his
(09:24):
falls and winters, and he complained every time he came
home from work. But this guy is doing this right now,
and it counts as a job. Dude, we laugh. So
Jeff Davis taught me romanticism where I was assigned to
a Percy Shelley presentation group. He says, I thank God
now because if I had been assigned some other poet.
(09:45):
I'm not sure it would have stuck, but Shelley, that
was just it for me. I read everything notes, fragments, letters.
I was absolutely ablaze. That lasted through graduate school. Recalling
Shelley's moral failures, I ask, how do you reconcile a
life so squandered? Not just Shelley, but the entire history
(10:06):
of literature is full of writers who left a trail
of carnage, and yet somehow they had the ability to
express something transcendent, something beautiful. So he says, there's a
memorial sculpture of Shelley in University College in Oxford, which
is interesting because he was thrown out of that college.
There's this statue of Shelley that is both beautiful and
(10:28):
grotesque at the same time. He is fully nude, having
recently washed up on the beach from drowning. His body
is white marble held aloft by black obsidian angels. But
I think it should be the other way around. His
heart was as black as all sin, but the angels
are using him for good. God is making the most
of his gift almost despite him. And maybe that's what
(10:50):
God does with all of us. There's a holiness to
the inspiration, though. His life was dark. Weirdly, the poets
I love most have had that contradiction. You write in
a variety of styles, but mostly in free verse. I
write formal poetry, metrical, rhymed, fixed form poetry only sometimes,
but I find it easier to do than to write
(11:12):
free verse. How would you respond to Robert Frost's famous
critique that writing free verse is like playing tennis with
the net down? Ah, he says, well, that one smarts.
I like Robert Frost, I respect him. He was not
a flippant sort of person. He laughs. Maybe it's risky
(11:32):
to go against Frost. I'll offer a counterargument. Maybe it's
akin to abstract painting. Not all abstract art, but the
best of it is really compelling to me. The painter's
job is to be true to the gestures he has started.
He can deal falsely with whatever he's been given by
imposing a predetermined order. It's like jazz. Someone starts doing something,
(11:54):
and even if that someone is you, you can't just
do whatever you want next. The best jazz isn't truly free.
The musician has an obligation to the other musicians and
to the structure suggested, even if it appears at first. Structureless.
It seems to me that you're saying, with all due
respect to Mr. Frost, that you're playing a different game.
(12:16):
It's not tennis at all. To say all formal poetry
is like playing tennis is to reduce the poem to
something transactional. Is it a misunderstanding of the nature of
free verse? Yes. I guess I'm suggesting that free verse
isn't really free. He says that's why I'm feeling a
little bit of resistance. It's not like it's the Wild West.
(12:36):
The poems I write have rules that govern them. I'm
just discovering them as I go. It's not the same
as having no rules. It's crazy to think about, but
I'll compose a line and think that's wrong. What am
I talking about? According to whom I wrote it, I
can do whatever I want, but still I know it's
wrong and sometimes I can't fix it. There's nothing I
(12:59):
can do. Sometimes, even after 15 years, I can't fix
the problems that I created in it. That means I'm
bound to something. Some rule in metered poetry. It's easy
to identify problems. It's much harder in free verse. You're
building the thing as you're flying it. You're asking, given X,
whatever line that might be, what must necessarily follow. Do
(13:23):
you find that to be true at the end of
lines as well? I ask, do you find yourself saying,
I can't end the line there? How do you make
those decisions? I'm speaking here as someone who used to
hate poetry and who found free verse horribly random. I
can appreciate those who look at a line that ends
without a logical reason and wonder what's going on. I
can too, he says. Line endings. Lineation is my favorite
(13:45):
part of the practice. Actually, not word choice topics, new poems,
or even poem endings. I love the well-placed line. Break
a line has done its work when it opens onto possibility,
when it suggests, I don't know. It feels like Magneto
walking out onto the air or something that if you
kept going in this direction, such and such would happen.
(14:09):
Sometimes I tell my MFA students that line hasn't earned
its existence. You carved it there. You made it. You
need to give it more weight to carry more music,
more life. Someone once said, you have to put every
word on trial for its life. That's how I think
about the poetic line. This is getting down to brass
tacks here. But if I end up like the ancient
(14:30):
Greek poet Sappho and all that remains of my work
are fragments. Does that line do enough that it would
be worth saving regardless of where it goes from here.
Then I know that the line has ended. Then the
following line would earn its weight in relation to the
previous line. I ask, meaning that it either reinforces or
(14:51):
subverts or turns it in a new direction. Precisely, he says.
As a reader, we come to the end of a
line where it launches into ideal space. The white part
of the page and the mind has enough time to
try and finish the line. This happens in conversation, too.
We try to finish each other's sentences. That's delightful for
you as a reader to find out whether you were
(15:13):
right or whether you were fantastically wrong. If you are
wrong enough times, eventually you shut up and listen and
let the other person talk. That's a nice place to
be silenced. Then you just feel held comfortable. You're talking
about a paradoxical piece, I say. There's tension, but also
completion or resolution. Is the writing process clarifying to you
(15:36):
as well? Do you write to process your life? Is
it a release of tension? No, I wish it was,
he replies. You know, I used to be an amateur photographer.
This was before digital, so I would spend hours in
the darkroom and it was very peaceful. I could lose
myself in there just focusing on how much time has passed.
Poetry causes me to worry. It hurts. My hair falls out.
(15:59):
I get up in the middle of the night. If
I write a bad line, it haunts me, I obsess.
I spent 11 years working on my book, The Elegy Beater,
11 years during which I thought about the poems every
single day. It's obsessive. It's probably unhealthy. I would probably
have a more peaceful life if I just knocked off
writing poetry. But poetry has also given me my greatest
(16:22):
aesthetic highs. I feel a debt to poetry for giving
me those moments of clarity, beauty, joy. If our gifts
are meant for community, I say, how do you advise
young poets to avoid the poison of rivalry? How do
they navigate life as an artist without succumbing to envy?
You know, he says, some communities are rife with it.
(16:45):
I've been in places where we would rank ourselves, right.
We knew who was better than us, and we knew
who was worse. And everyone was looking sideways. Who has
been published? And should I stab them? It was Knives
Out all the time. But to be in a community
of Christians is entirely different. It feels like holy work,
I don't know. Is it just something that happens among believers?
(17:08):
Maybe the purpose is different. I say the Christian lens
is a different lens and the Holy Spirit brings harmony. Yes, maybe.
And maybe just getting yourself off center stage is part
of it. If all of us know that we're serving
some other person, then maybe we don't get as anxious.
No one is leaping onto the pedestal. So there's a
real difference. The best artistic communities on this earth, in
(17:31):
any genre are gatherings of Christians. I know that 100%.
I wouldn't have thought that back in the day. I
used to be a bit snide about evangelical art. You know,
it's not all that good and all that, but I
no longer think that. And I know for certain that
they're more nurturing and healthy communities. What are some of
the missteps that young poets are making? I ask young writers,
(17:55):
people who are new to the craft, no matter how old,
tend to be impatient. They cobble together a manuscript and
think it's ready for publication. I often have to tell
them that this thing they think is finished is actually
a great start to a poem that they may not
be capable of finishing right now. They may not be
technically ready, they may not be emotionally ready. They just
(18:15):
want to finish it in a week. I write my
poems until I can't write them anymore. Then I come
back to see if I can finish it. That may
be a week, two weeks, a year. Some of these
poems on my desk are seven years old. I still
don't know what to do with them. Maybe some new
things need to happen to me before I can finish.
I think playing the long game is the main thing.
(18:37):
Do you ever find that random events, comments, or quotes
come along to help you solve a poem that you're
thinking about? As if there's some greater conspiracy to help
you finish what you're working on? Yes, he says, that
used to surprise me. It doesn't anymore. You know, the
world is structured not by logic, but by a person. Christ,
the heart of creation. This same person who knows and
(19:00):
saved me is the same one who holds the universe together.
I don't think it's crazy that events in my life
would stack up to help me do the work God
made me to do. If there's a logos and it
is one with God, and I'm one with God in
a certain way, it's not crazy to think that I
could leave these poems around and something would come along
to teach me to complete the work. This has been
(19:23):
a fun conversation. I say, we're almost finished. Here's your
final question. How would you complete the following? Dear poet?
He pauses. Then he apologizes for being a bit sentimental.
I feel like a great deal of my work is
trying to figure out how to thank people who are dead,
who have given me so much, he says with boyish gratitude.
(19:46):
What is my interior landscape without their poems? Whoever else
they wrote these poems for, they wrote them for me.
Those poems found me. I feel like I owe them
for blessing me so much. I want my work and
my life to honor their lives and their work. I
guess I would simply say, Dear poet, thank you. Here's
(20:11):
one of my favorite poems by Misha Willette titled Echo Chamber.
They say about still life paintings that they are a dream,
straining against their frames, edges. That they're what we have
instead of the bowl of fruit gardens, or, pardon me,
the pleasurable company of ladies. My having one is meant
(20:32):
to prove in some sense, that I could possess them
if I chose to. The reason I'd picture a teacup
on the wall is to show a couple of abilities.
One mind to do as pleases me and two to say, hey,
so what if I am by myself? I could have
someone over for tea. You think I couldn't have someone
(20:53):
over for tea? I could see.
S1 (21:00):
An axe for the Frozen Sea is published by Rabbit
Room Press. The audiobook is published by Oasis Audio. Copyright
by Ben Pallant, 2024. By Chris Badeker.
The following is brought to you in partnership with Oasis Audio.
Welcome to Rabbit Room Press Presents, a podcast series of
great audiobooks, one chapter at a time.
S2 (00:16):
An axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Pallant. Read
for you by the author. Chapter 16. Mr. Willett, we
met at a coffee shop because Mr. Willett was worried
that kids spilling Cheerios during the interview might be a
bit distracting. I told them that after raising five children,
(00:40):
I would feel right at home. So by way of compromise,
I suppose he brought his effervescent wife and three kids
with him to the interview. Unfortunately, two Kick Coffee, a
converted motorcycle shop, was closing. We bought drinks and walked
the three blocks to his office on campus, his family
veering off to enter their house nearby. Willette's office was
(01:01):
once dorm room. Now the cinderblock walls are lined with
shelves weighed down by books. We sat down at the
round table, where I was immediately distracted by the beautiful volume.
A House Called Tomorrow. 50 Years of Poetry published by
Copper Canyon Press. And next to it, the work of
Philip James Bailey, whose influence on Walt Whitman was unfathomable
(01:23):
and who wrote the single most read poem of the
19th century, Festus. Already we were immersed in words, surrounded
by them, swimming in them, admiring them. Misha's boyish delight
in poetry was striking, even contagious. Misha, I say, there's
an urgency and intensity to your writing that I really admire.
(01:45):
Your poetry seems to be a response to what's happening
around you. T.S. Eliot said that each venture is a
new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate. He replies, I
think any work that's taking chaos and ordering it is
co-laboring with the Holy Spirit. Whether the chaos is the
human heart, time and its ravages or language itself. All
(02:06):
of that is holy work. Maybe even if it's not
done intentionally to the glory of God, it might be
glorifying nonetheless, because you're doing your human work. And I
don't care if you're planning bean rows like William Butler
Yeats or making a sonnet, you know. He pauses. I
guess I'm a romanticist by training. So Percy Bysshe Shelley
(02:28):
comes to mind. Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,
stains the white radiance of eternity. We are fragmenting things needlessly.
You know what I mean? There's a word beneath the
words that holds everything together that is real and true.
And poetry isn't artificially putting an order on things so
you can feel good for a while. That's what it
(02:49):
feels like for me in writing. What's that Seamus Heaney poem? Digging.
You know, to dig with your little spade toward that wholeness.
Do you feel like writing is a kind of compulsive
digging for you? A continuous digging? I ask, at what
point would you say you've done your work? That's interesting,
he says. You know, I don't feel my creaturely best
(03:12):
unless I'm writing. If you don't take your dog out
for a walk enough. He laughs. They get a little ornery,
but they're totally better after they exercise. That's what writing
feels like to me if I'm not writing. And your
wife would verify that? I ask. For sure. If I'm
acting a certain way, she'll say, honey, have you been
making anything lately? We laugh. So there's a kind of self-serving,
(03:36):
a good kind of self-serving in writing, I say. Writing
poetry does something in you and for you. But what
can it do for others? How does it serve people
who are just trying to survive life? I think it
was Franz Kafka who said that literature must be an
axe for the frozen sea inside us. I wrote that
in my journal 20 years ago. I think the frozen
(03:57):
sea is real. The pop singers are crying out, wake
me up, wake me up inside. People are sort of
yelling this into the void. They feel like there's something else,
something more that maybe they are sleepwalking. This isn't a judgment.
It's how people feel. I think for me and for
many people I know, poetry has served that function to
(04:17):
suggest the numinous when all they had was a boring phenomenology.
I think poetry can be a first inkling of that
transcendent order. I mean, there might be a sunset or
a person or a song that speaks to them with
that spark, but or Balaam's talking donkey, I ask. Yes.
He laughs. You can have something that's just a few
(04:38):
lines long, but it can change a life. That's crazy.
What kind of work is this that we get to do?
When you finish a poem? Do you feel like you
have made this thing, or do you feel like you've
stewarded this thing? That's interesting, he interesting, he says. I
think of my poems like my children. I know that's common,
but as soon as it exists, it exists. It has
(04:59):
its own life and its own rights. I'm proud of
it in a particular way, but I can't choose which
one I like best or which one will impact people
the most. I just rejoice that they're out there and
I want people to experience them. I meet so many
poets who act ashamed of what they've made and hate self-promotion.
But I want to say no, you're not promoting yourself.
You're promoting the poem. You made this thing, hopefully for
(05:21):
their joy and for their encouragement. Why wouldn't you want
to share that? It doesn't make any sense to me.
I know I sound silly, but whenever I finish a poem,
I stand up from this table and clap my hands
and charge out to tell someone, hey, is anyone around?
You'll never believe what just happened in there. It happened. Lightning!
It was dead. Now it's alive. They were just words.
(05:44):
And now there's a poem. When did poetry awaken you?
I ask? My parents were teenagers when I came along.
My mom was 15 years old. We were dirt poor
and living on food stamps in Arizona. They were intelligent people,
but they didn't have time to cultivate the mind. I
had four siblings and we were peripatetic. I moved schools
(06:06):
20 times before I left home. I thought that was normal.
I mean, I don't lament it in any way, but
there are these snatches of memory. I remember staying in
from recess in fourth grade to read poems my teacher
had written. What kind of fourth grader stays in from
recess to read extra poetry? Yeah, I was going to
ask you if you were in trouble, I say. I know,
(06:28):
and what kind of teacher shares her private poetry, he says.
I must have shown some unusual interest in poetry to
prompt that. Then in around fifth grade, I started mowing
lawns and getting a little money, which I spent on books.
I'd go to garage sales and raid the used poetry books.
I didn't know one from another. I bought books and
craftsman tools because I had heard that craftsman is a
(06:50):
really good brand to have. Assuming I would use those tools,
but that was it. Not board games or sports, just books.
The impulse was there from an early age. I say
yes and I have no idea where it came from,
he says, shaking his head. I never saw my dad
with a book. Not one time. The television was on
(07:11):
all the time, but I do remember the closest stirring
to a literary response was hearing my mother read the
King James Bible, which she did fairly faithfully. I remember
one time, you know, wearing my footie pajamas when I
wasn't listening to the words anymore. I was leaning into
the music of the words. Later in high school, of course,
I started writing poetry for girls. There are great motivator,
(07:33):
I say. Yes, indeed, God has a design. What led
you to the Romantics and to grad school, I ask?
I applied to Wheaton College. It was the only school
I applied to. I didn't know it was difficult to
get into. I just thought, that's where I'm going to go.
Here's this kid from the wrong side of the tracks,
attending school in what was, at the time, the third
(07:55):
wealthiest county in America. I honestly don't think I had
ever seen a man wearing khaki pants until I got there,
and had certainly never met a professor. My parents didn't
take me. I just got on a plane with my
little suitcase. It was all very foreign to me. I
didn't do well. Dropped out after the first quarter. Returned
home and worked at the mall. It was terrible. So
(08:16):
I went back but had an argument with my roommate
and dropped out again. Then one of my professors called
me on the phone. This was before the internet, so
he had to have hunted down my phone number. He
reached my mother, who gave him my work number where
I was measuring men's neck for fitted shirts. Then he
talked to my manager, who got me on the phone
and told me that I should go back to college.
(08:38):
He said, what are you doing with your life? Get
over here. No one had ever talked to me that
way before, so I did. Who was that, professor, I ask?
His name was Jeff Davis. He would later become dean
at Wheaton College. He led a trip to Oxford every
summer and invited me to join. So I went, and
in C.S. Lewis's words, it baptized my imagination. I had
(09:03):
never seen people take education and beauty so seriously. We
were playing soccer on a beach in Wales one evening,
having just spent time at Dylan Thomas's house, when Davis
looked at me with a smile and said, this is
how I spend my summers. And I thought right there
that this guy had figured something out. I knew what
my dad's summers were like, exactly the same as his
(09:24):
falls and winters, and he complained every time he came
home from work. But this guy is doing this right now,
and it counts as a job. Dude, we laugh. So
Jeff Davis taught me romanticism where I was assigned to
a Percy Shelley presentation group. He says, I thank God
now because if I had been assigned some other poet.
(09:45):
I'm not sure it would have stuck, but Shelley, that
was just it for me. I read everything notes, fragments, letters.
I was absolutely ablaze. That lasted through graduate school. Recalling
Shelley's moral failures, I ask, how do you reconcile a
life so squandered? Not just Shelley, but the entire history
(10:06):
of literature is full of writers who left a trail
of carnage, and yet somehow they had the ability to
express something transcendent, something beautiful. So he says, there's a
memorial sculpture of Shelley in University College in Oxford, which
is interesting because he was thrown out of that college.
There's this statue of Shelley that is both beautiful and
(10:28):
grotesque at the same time. He is fully nude, having
recently washed up on the beach from drowning. His body
is white marble held aloft by black obsidian angels. But
I think it should be the other way around. His
heart was as black as all sin, but the angels
are using him for good. God is making the most
of his gift almost despite him. And maybe that's what
(10:50):
God does with all of us. There's a holiness to
the inspiration, though. His life was dark. Weirdly, the poets
I love most have had that contradiction. You write in
a variety of styles, but mostly in free verse. I
write formal poetry, metrical, rhymed, fixed form poetry only sometimes,
but I find it easier to do than to write
(11:12):
free verse. How would you respond to Robert Frost's famous
critique that writing free verse is like playing tennis with
the net down? Ah, he says, well, that one smarts.
I like Robert Frost, I respect him. He was not
a flippant sort of person. He laughs. Maybe it's risky
(11:32):
to go against Frost. I'll offer a counterargument. Maybe it's
akin to abstract painting. Not all abstract art, but the
best of it is really compelling to me. The painter's
job is to be true to the gestures he has started.
He can deal falsely with whatever he's been given by
imposing a predetermined order. It's like jazz. Someone starts doing something,
(11:54):
and even if that someone is you, you can't just
do whatever you want next. The best jazz isn't truly free.
The musician has an obligation to the other musicians and
to the structure suggested, even if it appears at first. Structureless.
It seems to me that you're saying, with all due
respect to Mr. Frost, that you're playing a different game.
(12:16):
It's not tennis at all. To say all formal poetry
is like playing tennis is to reduce the poem to
something transactional. Is it a misunderstanding of the nature of
free verse? Yes. I guess I'm suggesting that free verse
isn't really free. He says that's why I'm feeling a
little bit of resistance. It's not like it's the Wild West.
(12:36):
The poems I write have rules that govern them. I'm
just discovering them as I go. It's not the same
as having no rules. It's crazy to think about, but
I'll compose a line and think that's wrong. What am
I talking about? According to whom I wrote it, I
can do whatever I want, but still I know it's
wrong and sometimes I can't fix it. There's nothing I
(12:59):
can do. Sometimes, even after 15 years, I can't fix
the problems that I created in it. That means I'm
bound to something. Some rule in metered poetry. It's easy
to identify problems. It's much harder in free verse. You're
building the thing as you're flying it. You're asking, given X,
whatever line that might be, what must necessarily follow. Do
(13:23):
you find that to be true at the end of
lines as well? I ask, do you find yourself saying,
I can't end the line there? How do you make
those decisions? I'm speaking here as someone who used to
hate poetry and who found free verse horribly random. I
can appreciate those who look at a line that ends
without a logical reason and wonder what's going on. I
can too, he says. Line endings. Lineation is my favorite
(13:45):
part of the practice. Actually, not word choice topics, new poems,
or even poem endings. I love the well-placed line. Break
a line has done its work when it opens onto possibility,
when it suggests, I don't know. It feels like Magneto
walking out onto the air or something that if you
kept going in this direction, such and such would happen.
(14:09):
Sometimes I tell my MFA students that line hasn't earned
its existence. You carved it there. You made it. You
need to give it more weight to carry more music,
more life. Someone once said, you have to put every
word on trial for its life. That's how I think
about the poetic line. This is getting down to brass
tacks here. But if I end up like the ancient
(14:30):
Greek poet Sappho and all that remains of my work
are fragments. Does that line do enough that it would
be worth saving regardless of where it goes from here.
Then I know that the line has ended. Then the
following line would earn its weight in relation to the
previous line. I ask, meaning that it either reinforces or
(14:51):
subverts or turns it in a new direction. Precisely, he says.
As a reader, we come to the end of a
line where it launches into ideal space. The white part
of the page and the mind has enough time to
try and finish the line. This happens in conversation, too.
We try to finish each other's sentences. That's delightful for
you as a reader to find out whether you were
(15:13):
right or whether you were fantastically wrong. If you are
wrong enough times, eventually you shut up and listen and
let the other person talk. That's a nice place to
be silenced. Then you just feel held comfortable. You're talking
about a paradoxical piece, I say. There's tension, but also
completion or resolution. Is the writing process clarifying to you
(15:36):
as well? Do you write to process your life? Is
it a release of tension? No, I wish it was,
he replies. You know, I used to be an amateur photographer.
This was before digital, so I would spend hours in
the darkroom and it was very peaceful. I could lose
myself in there just focusing on how much time has passed.
Poetry causes me to worry. It hurts. My hair falls out.
(15:59):
I get up in the middle of the night. If
I write a bad line, it haunts me, I obsess.
I spent 11 years working on my book, The Elegy Beater,
11 years during which I thought about the poems every
single day. It's obsessive. It's probably unhealthy. I would probably
have a more peaceful life if I just knocked off
writing poetry. But poetry has also given me my greatest
(16:22):
aesthetic highs. I feel a debt to poetry for giving
me those moments of clarity, beauty, joy. If our gifts
are meant for community, I say, how do you advise
young poets to avoid the poison of rivalry? How do
they navigate life as an artist without succumbing to envy?
You know, he says, some communities are rife with it.
(16:45):
I've been in places where we would rank ourselves, right.
We knew who was better than us, and we knew
who was worse. And everyone was looking sideways. Who has
been published? And should I stab them? It was Knives
Out all the time. But to be in a community
of Christians is entirely different. It feels like holy work,
I don't know. Is it just something that happens among believers?
(17:08):
Maybe the purpose is different. I say the Christian lens
is a different lens and the Holy Spirit brings harmony. Yes, maybe.
And maybe just getting yourself off center stage is part
of it. If all of us know that we're serving
some other person, then maybe we don't get as anxious.
No one is leaping onto the pedestal. So there's a
real difference. The best artistic communities on this earth, in
(17:31):
any genre are gatherings of Christians. I know that 100%.
I wouldn't have thought that back in the day. I
used to be a bit snide about evangelical art. You know,
it's not all that good and all that, but I
no longer think that. And I know for certain that
they're more nurturing and healthy communities. What are some of
the missteps that young poets are making? I ask young writers,
(17:55):
people who are new to the craft, no matter how old,
tend to be impatient. They cobble together a manuscript and
think it's ready for publication. I often have to tell
them that this thing they think is finished is actually
a great start to a poem that they may not
be capable of finishing right now. They may not be
technically ready, they may not be emotionally ready. They just
(18:15):
want to finish it in a week. I write my
poems until I can't write them anymore. Then I come
back to see if I can finish it. That may
be a week, two weeks, a year. Some of these
poems on my desk are seven years old. I still
don't know what to do with them. Maybe some new
things need to happen to me before I can finish.
I think playing the long game is the main thing.
(18:37):
Do you ever find that random events, comments, or quotes
come along to help you solve a poem that you're
thinking about? As if there's some greater conspiracy to help
you finish what you're working on? Yes, he says, that
used to surprise me. It doesn't anymore. You know, the
world is structured not by logic, but by a person. Christ,
the heart of creation. This same person who knows and
(19:00):
saved me is the same one who holds the universe together.
I don't think it's crazy that events in my life
would stack up to help me do the work God
made me to do. If there's a logos and it
is one with God, and I'm one with God in
a certain way, it's not crazy to think that I
could leave these poems around and something would come along
to teach me to complete the work. This has been
(19:23):
a fun conversation. I say, we're almost finished. Here's your
final question. How would you complete the following? Dear poet?
He pauses. Then he apologizes for being a bit sentimental.
I feel like a great deal of my work is
trying to figure out how to thank people who are dead,
who have given me so much, he says with boyish gratitude.
(19:46):
What is my interior landscape without their poems? Whoever else
they wrote these poems for, they wrote them for me.
Those poems found me. I feel like I owe them
for blessing me so much. I want my work and
my life to honor their lives and their work. I
guess I would simply say, Dear poet, thank you. Here's
(20:11):
one of my favorite poems by Misha Willette titled Echo Chamber.
They say about still life paintings that they are a dream,
straining against their frames, edges. That they're what we have
instead of the bowl of fruit gardens, or, pardon me,
the pleasurable company of ladies. My having one is meant
(20:32):
to prove in some sense, that I could possess them
if I chose to. The reason I'd picture a teacup
on the wall is to show a couple of abilities.
One mind to do as pleases me and two to say, hey,
so what if I am by myself? I could have
someone over for tea. You think I couldn't have someone
(20:53):
over for tea? I could see.
S1 (21:00):
An axe for the Frozen Sea is published by Rabbit
Room Press. The audiobook is published by Oasis Audio. Copyright
by Ben Pallant, 2024. By Chris Badeker.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.