August 9, 2025 • 30 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.
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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 (00:15):
An axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Read. For
you by the author. Chapter three Dana Gioia. Even though
Dana Gioia no longer serves as chairman of the National
Endowment for the Arts or California's Poet Laureate, he's still
a busy man in high demand. So when he called,
(00:38):
I expected a ten minute business meeting and pulled the
car to the side of a busy road. What I
got instead was an energized, friendly and informative conversation that
took over an hour before we ever got on topic.
I learned more about opera in that time than I
have learned in my entire life. Yes, you can call
me a Philistine, but mostly it was story after story
(01:00):
that made us lose track of time. When we finally
decided that we should get to the topic, I pitched
him my idea. Look, I said, I don't pretend to
care more about your work than you do, but the
20 acres that you call home in California is conspicuously
absent in your interviews. It's mentioned, but never really explored.
(01:20):
But I have a hunch that it's important to you.
The phone went quiet and I thought I had lost connection,
or even worse, made a terrible suggestion. I decided to
fill the void. If that's true, then it would be
a disservice to your readers and a major gap in
the documentation of your life if it was never talked
about in detail. Silence. And then his voice. Ben, he said.
(01:47):
I love that idea. This property has had an outsized
impact on me and nobody asks me about it. Come
with me. I heard the gravel crunching beneath his feet
as we walk down a path. We need to check
on my bluebird nest. The wildfires over the last few
years have severely damaged the bird population, and I'm trying
(02:09):
to rehabilitate it. We talked for another 20 minutes. I
told him about the spotted towhee nest I found the
other day, built at the base of a tree. He
told me about the doe that comes when called. She's
named Betty. The conversation had already begun, so when we
picked up where we left off several weeks later, I
asked him to tell me the story of his journey
(02:30):
to this beautiful place, starting with his childhood in Southern California.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, he says.
We lived in a stucco apartment building set among other apartments.
There were no front yards, only concrete driveways across the
street where the garbage cans of businesses along Hawthorne Boulevard,
(02:50):
a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant and a mortuary. My
world was entirely urban. There was no open land. The
parks were small and spare. I saw nothing natural except
the beach and the Pacific Ocean, so my sense of
nature was huge, wet and inhuman. Both of my parents
worked multiple jobs. We never took vacations longer than a weekend.
(03:13):
I never saw a forest until I was 12. But
you've shared elsewhere that you had a good childhood, I reply.
My childhood was happy. I had good parents. Our family
of six was surrounded by relations, many of whom lived
in the apartments around us. I took my daily world
for granted. Yet I had a small but constant sense
(03:34):
of deprivation, a hunger for beauty that expressed itself in
my excessive reactions to art and brief glimpses of nature.
When did you first come into contact with the natural world,
I ask? Except for the beach. My first real encounters
with nature began in college. I went north to Stanford,
which 50 years ago still had a rural setting, now
(03:55):
entirely gone due to the overbuilding of Silicon Valley and
the campus itself. There were oak woods between the campus
and Palo Alto. Behind the campus were open hills. I
wandered through the woods and hills nearly every day. When
political protests shut down the campus, a girl invited me
to go camping in the coastal range. We took sleeping
bags without any gear. We slept on the beach or
(04:17):
in the woods. We rarely saw another human being. I
felt as if I were on a different planet. Did
those college experiences change you? Very little. I loved the
open land, but I considered myself an urban animal. I
thought I could never live anywhere except a major city. LA,
New York, Washington, San Francisco. I spent two years at
(04:38):
Harvard and hated Boston. I thought it was mostly the weather,
but perhaps it was the first inkling of change. After
returning to California for business school, I moved to New York.
I spent the next 20 years in Westchester County, just
north of Manhattan. I thrived in New York's milieu, but
it never felt like home. Yet I stayed. I was
(04:59):
successful in both the business and literary world, I had
no external motivation to leave. And yet you did leave. Why?
Did something unsettle you? While I was in business school,
my parents left Los Angeles. My father had been robbed
twice at gunpoint. One of his friends had been killed.
My folks felt that they had to get out of
(05:20):
their neighborhood. My father had never lived anywhere but Los
Angeles and Detroit. But he fostered a fantasy about living
in a small town. My mother, who had lived in
Hawthorne all her life, also longed to go somewhere else.
They bought a house on an old chicken farm in Sebastopol,
60 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sonoma County
(05:40):
was still rural then. They were surrounded by apple orchards.
I started going up to see them on weekends. Once
in New York, I came out several times a year.
I spent my vacations visiting them. I helped them with
their small orchard and my mother's tiny organic fruit and
herb business. I began to think of this new place
as home. A stark contrast to your daily life. At
(06:02):
the time I suggested you ever imagine moving there? Moving
there was unrealistic, he replies. I couldn't make a living.
I was tied to metropolitan cities. What changed in your
life that let you leave your big city existence, I ask?
In 1992, at the age of 41, I quit my
job at Kraft General Foods. I had become a well-known poet.
(06:23):
My essay Can Poetry Matter had made an international impression.
I felt I could make a living writing. For the
next four years, despite some ups and many downs, I
managed to support my family. I'm sure you felt a
sense of freedom, I say. I was vastly relieved to
leave corporate life, but I still felt out of place
in New York. My wife loved Westchester County, especially our charming,
(06:47):
ramshackle village, Hastings on Hudson. The New York metro area
was the best place for a writer. Leaving made no
career sense. Moving made no sense. And yet you moved. Why?
While visiting my parents, we saw a house for sale
and decided then and there to buy it. I wasn't
in the market for a house I had not intended
(07:08):
to move. It was the only place we looked at yet.
As I put my foot on the ground from the car,
I knew this was where I would live. It was
an irrational but irrefutable feeling. I needed to change my
life and it would happen here. That's quite a revelation,
I say. The trouble was that we couldn't afford the house.
(07:30):
I kept talking to the owner. There was a property
slump in California. Nothing was selling. After six months of
offers and counter offers, we bought it with a massive mortgage.
We moved there in early January of 1996 with two
small kids, a cat, no money and no local employment.
It rained every day for two weeks. That's a tough start.
(07:53):
Was the adjustment difficult, I ask? I imagine that the
change in noise levels alone would have taken acclimatization. It
was an enormous shock, he says. I had no idea
of what it meant to live in the country. Back then,
we could hardly see another light at night, even though
we were on top of a hill. The coastal fog
(08:13):
would drift in and leave us in isolation. My first
night I couldn't sleep. Every sound alarmed me and the
dark woods around us were full of noises owls, coyotes,
foxes and deer. You could hear animals moving in the
trees and brush. Sounds of savage battles would erupt as
packs of coyotes attacked the flocks of wild turkeys. People
(08:35):
often dream of moving into the country, I add, but
they don't reckon with these kinds of adjustments. Having spent
my life in LA and New York, he says, I
also felt vulnerable to human danger. Although it was unlikely
anyone would drive up the steep country road to rob us.
It took me a few weeks to shed my urban
anxiety with less light pollution. You You probably saw a
(08:58):
more vibrant night sky. I say one of the things
that shocked me most when I came here was the moon.
I realized I'd never truly seen it before in Los
Angeles or New York. It is a pale, diminished thing,
lost in the haze of city lights. But in the
country the moon ruled the night. A full moon lit
(09:18):
my way through the woods and fields. When it was down.
Night was black. What poet 200 years ago would have
been so ignorant? Tell me about the property. What do
you see as you walk it? The geology, the shape
of the land. We bought 20 acres, very little of
which is flat. Our right farmhouse is on the top
(09:41):
of a hill, with no other house nearby. The property
slopes down in every direction. We look down to the
floor of the Sonoma Valley, which at that time was
all vineyards, ranches and horse farms. What's the soil like?
The ground is It is extraordinarily stony. Some glacier had
carved the small canyon next to us and deposited all
(10:02):
its ice age debris. When we plant trees, we have
to dig the pit and remove the rocks. There are
more rocks than soil. What trees grow in that kind
of soil? The hillsides were covered with black oaks, coast
live oaks, and white oaks mixed in with madrones, pines
and buckeyes. The black oaks were enormous trees hundreds of
(10:23):
years old. Some redwoods grew in the pockets where the
night fogs gathered. The whole area was thickly wooded. I
decided I wouldn't plant anything that wasn't native to the area.
What do you mean? It was thickly wooded. We lost
over half the trees in the Kincade Fire of 2019,
one of half a dozen massive wildfires that raged through
(10:44):
Sonoma and Napa and Lake counties. This fire alone burned
78,000 acres. Few of the old oaks survived, and almost
none of the pines. My forest turned into lightly wooded
hillsides and meadows. It took us four years to clear
out the dead trees. I planted dozens of oaks and
nurtured the natural reforestation. Seeing that horrible destruction and nature's
(11:07):
response was an illumination. What else was on your property?
What sort of wildlife? When we first got here, we
couldn't have told you what was on our property. My
wife and I had been raised in cities. We didn't
know the names of things. Coming here made me realize
how alienated we were from the natural world. We decided
(11:27):
that we would learn the names of all the plants
and animals in our locale. That's a noble aim, I say.
I'm afraid I wouldn't know where to start. We learned
the trees first. There were really only about a dozen varieties.
Then we learned the birds. We have acorn woodpeckers, Steller's jays,
scrub jays, ravens, turkeys, quail, vultures, spotted toes, northern flickers,
(11:53):
red tailed hawks, and great horned owls, to name only
the larger birds. My wife became so interested that she
became a serious birder. What about the plants and flowers?
The plants are more challenging. We learned the wildflowers, but
they're weedy. Companions were harder to master, though many have
colorful names. Coyote, bush. Miner's lettuce. Foxtail, quaking grass, and
(12:17):
umbrella sedge. Knowing the names of plants changed my relationship
to the landscape and the seasons. Wild grasses and thistles
grow thigh high in the spring with yarrow, spearmint, and sage.
When the plants die, we have to cut them for
fire protection. It takes months of work to keep the
place safe. Did living on that property change you in
(12:37):
any fundamental way as a person, I ask? Living here
gradually changed me in so many ways that it's hard
to explain the process. I went from a very social
urban life to a very solitary rural one. You were
alone with your thoughts. My property bordered on other open land.
I often finished an outside chore and decided to walk
(12:59):
through the woods. I had never lived in woodlands. I
had just been a tourist. I had never hiked so
much alone. I tramped around in all sorts of weather
and got lost in both the landscape and my thoughts.
I realized I had a deep need for solitude and contemplation.
I had been starved in my previous life. If you
(13:19):
spend hours every day in solitude and quiet observation, it
transforms you. Did it change you as a Christian? More
deeply than I ever expected. I had always been a
very intellectual Catholic. My education had filled me with theology, philosophy,
and church history. I thought my way through religion. Living
(13:40):
in a natural landscape across the seasons, I watched the
world move forward without human agency. Everything had a shape
and purpose that mysteriously unfolded around me. I had never
viscerally understood the notion of creation. Cities are human built.
Nature isn't. I felt a divine presence around me every day.
(14:03):
In your book, studying with Miss Bishop, you wrote. The
professions we enter change the way we look at the
world and ourselves. Would you say the same thing about
where we live? Did your move from New York to
the countryside near Santa Rosa have an immediate impact on
your spirit and your outlook? It had an immediate impact
as I made the great practical adjustments, but they were
(14:26):
often mundane. I had never had to move fallen trees,
clear irrigation pipes, or deal with wild boars. There were
problems nearly every day. I learned, not very masterfully, lots
of practical skills. The more interesting changes happen slowly inside.
I began to think of myself as belonging to this
place which supposedly belonged to me. The Kincade Fire must
(14:51):
have been devastating, I say. The Kincade Fire was the
largest fire in the history of Sonoma County. It burned
78,000 acres, including 20 of ours. It was the culmination
of three years of huge regional wildfires. We had been
evacuated twice earlier that year. How much of your property
was burned? The fire destroyed the homes of most of
(15:12):
my neighbors. It burned over my property, but it didn't
ignite the structures because I had been scrupulous about clearing
brush and trimming trees. But it did great damage. The
exterior walls were scorched. All my fences, power lines, irrigation lines,
and septic system were destroyed. We had to peel the
exterior walls off and rebuild them. It took nearly two
(15:33):
years to repair the damage. We were initially told that
our house and my studio had been entirely destroyed, so
even the mess we found felt like a gift. What
damage did the fire do to the local landscape? It
left the area desolate and black. None of the ground
vegetation survived. The ground was covered by ash. The air
stank for weeks. The wildlife fled or died. We lost
(15:57):
hundreds of trees, including most of the huge old oaks.
The hillsides went from heavily wooded to lightly wooded. The
flat areas went from woods to meadows. It took three
years to clear the burnt trees, with injured trees constantly
toppling over. We saved some old giants by irrigating their
roots and pruning their branches. I also planted two dozen
(16:19):
new oaks. What a traumatic experience, I say. While the
fire was traumatic, I must confess that one of the
great experiences of my life was to watch the landscape
heal itself slowly over the next few years. The madrones
grew back from the blackened roots. Thousands of shoots emerged
on the same day. Holy Saturday actually. Surprised, I say
(16:44):
on Holy Saturday. That's remarkable. The new Buckeye shoots came
up a few months later this year, more than four
years since the fire oak shoots appeared on all the hillsides.
The birds returned one species at a time. The repopulation continues.
Last night I saw two huge black stag beetles walking
(17:05):
on my porch for the first time since the fire.
Last week, I noted with less pleasure that the rattlesnakes
had also returned. Oh, I hate snakes. I say, what
about the deer? My pet deer, Betty, came back. I'd
known her since she was a fawn. She comes when
I call. I feed her our stale bread and vegetables.
(17:25):
I was afraid she had died in the fire. But
a year later, she just showed up. You have said
that the artist who is most local is often the
one who most appeals to a broad audience. How did
the move impact your writing? I'm thinking in terms of
the impact on your hearts predispositions. Much of my early
poetry reflected a person who was a wanderer. He replies,
(17:47):
I came from California, but my life led me to
other places. I never lost my deep connection to my birthplace.
I saw everywhere else, even places I liked as an outsider.
I spent 20 years in the East. Finally, I came home.
It seems to me I suggest that rootlessness is a
common malady for writers. So much of American poetry is
(18:10):
rootless because the lives of our writers are nomadic, he says.
They are born somewhere and grow up somewhere else. Then
they go off to school and move again for graduate school.
They take a job in yet another city and continue
moving for their career. They don't belong to any specific place.
They have a professional perspective on the world, sophisticated but
unspecific in corporate life. I saw the same thing among
(18:34):
salespeople who moved from state to state every time they
got a promotion. How does a life rooted in one
locality affect your writing? The world looks different from different places,
he says. It helps to know where you stand and
see things. I rooted myself in the hills of Sonoma Valley.
My daily life does not resemble the worlds of my
(18:56):
years in New York and Washington. My days are mostly solitary.
None of the people I see regularly went to college.
Most of them were born in Mexico. This is just
like my early life. My mother was Mexican American and
we lived in a Mexican neighborhood. It changes how you
live day to day, I reply. My daily life, he says,
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is a weird combination of physical and intellectual work. I
spend part of each day reading and writing. The rest
I spend doing manual labor. The chores get harder as
I get older. The writing is easier, though. The older
I get, the more difficult it is to convince myself
to sit down and get started. How did your new
home influence your thinking? The most important thing that living
(19:40):
in nature taught me was how small and insignificant I
am in the scheme of things. I am a momentary
observer in the vast and endless unfolding of the world.
Having spent my life in huge cities, in major universities,
corporations and public institutions, I had developed a delusional sense
of my own importance. That subjectivity was slowly eroded by
(20:03):
witnessing the objective reality of the world. Wisdom seemed to
know my small piece of the natural world as well
as I could, and to love and protect it. I
didn't need to think about God when I could feel
him everywhere around me. A little bit ago, you said
knowing the names of plants changed my relationship to the
(20:24):
landscape and the seasons. How does knowing something's name change
how you relate to it? Being able to name a
thing means you recognize its individuality, he replies. You can
differentiate it from everything around it. Help me understand what
you mean. Think of it in human terms. If you
(20:44):
can't remember a person's name, he or she blurs into
the crowd. We named our ten acres Brightwing, I say
from the end of one of my favorite poems. God's
Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I wanted the name to
incite hope in me as I age. Have you thought
about naming your property? Many people have suggested we name
(21:05):
our hilltop. When we bought it 30 years ago, the
poet Donald Justice urged me to name it. That seemed
to me a very southern thing to do. Naming a
homestead allows you to imbue it with your hopes and aspirations,
but it also puts a name between you and the
thing itself. I like living in a place I can't
put a title to. In your poem Marriage of Many Years,
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you say to your wife, Mary, you are a language
I have learned by heart in a different way. Wouldn't
you say that your land, the trees and the plants,
even the rolling hills has become a language you have
learned by heart. Your question answers itself. I spend hours
every day outside. I know the property. There's no other
(21:46):
word for it. Intimately. There are a few places that
are too steep for me to visit. Otherwise I know
every tree and Retrain Bush. I can tell you the
history of every tree. I've planted them or pruned them.
I can tell you when each wildflower blooms and each
kind of weed appears, your surroundings have changed, but so
has your social life. My social life consists mostly of
(22:08):
animals and plants. They are good company. I've never been happier.
Many people are looking for significance. I say. You seem
to have found it, counterintuitively, by realizing how temporary and
small you are in the scope of God's work. Is
that how you see it? I was a self-directed and
disciplined young man, he says. I had long term goals
(22:31):
and worked steadily toward them. I had the delusion that
I could control my own destiny. I led my life
guided by a laser. I needed to discover a lamp,
a way of seeing everything around me, not just my
narrow path. Recognizing myself, I say being driven seems easier
to me than learning to see myself within a larger context.
(22:54):
That mindset requires humility. Yes, it does, he says. Thomas
Aquinas once defined humility as seeing things as they really are.
Living here has taught me humility. Aldo Leopold, in his
book The Sand County Almanac, has an interesting line. I say,
I wonder if you have found it to be true.
(23:16):
He writes every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber,
fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education.
This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not
always harvested. I work outside every day, he replies. I
can't do as much as I used to, but I
still spend a few hours. Some in the morning, some
(23:38):
in late afternoon doing chores. It is routine work clearing brush,
pruning trees, irrigating plants, repairing stone walls. I do the
same things over and over. It never bores me. I
always see something new. I learned something unexpected to some people.
That sounds idyllic, I say. I fear I sound like
(24:01):
a drippy character from a Jean-Jacques Rousseau novel, an innocent
child of nature. That couldn't be less true. I'm an intellectual.
I spend most of my time reading, thinking, writing. That
is why The Second Life is so important to me.
Today I spent a few hours writing about Hugo von
Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten, The Woman Without a Shadow.
(24:24):
And then I dragged huge piles of cut brush down
the hill. Immersion in the physical world has saved my
poetry from becoming disembodied and abstract. You've dedicated your life
to cultivating this property. What are the similarities between cultivating
your land and cultivating culture through writing? Well, let's not
overstate the quality of my labor, he says. I've spent
(24:47):
30 years mucking around in all sorts of weather to
preserve the natural beauty and vitality of this place. I'll
win no blue ribbon at the county fair. I do
what I can. I'm now in my early 70s. But
the trees, native plants and wildlife are thriving. Literary life
is also an ecosystem. Each part depends on the others.
(25:07):
Without good schools, we don't have capable readers. Without educated readers,
good writing won't be recognized without strong critics. Writers exist
in a vacuum. Without strong editors and publishers, authors can't
find their public. When you look back over your life,
are you pleased with the cultural cultivation you were able
to accomplish, I ask? I gave seven years of my
(25:31):
creative life to public service at the National Endowment for
the Arts. I was able to create several significant literary programs,
such as Poetry Out Loud, the National High School Poetry
Recitation Competition. 5 million teenagers have memorized and recited in
those annual contests. The program had a measurable impact over
the next decade, readership of poetry doubled among teenagers and
(25:55):
young adults. Your property is a beautiful and hospitable space,
I say. You've worked hard to tend and steward it.
Do you see your writing similarly as an act of hospitality?
An opportunity to build something that will be welcome and
refresh your readers? I believe that literature is a conversation,
(26:15):
he says. The writer needs to engage the reader in
an open and intimate dialogue. The author's voice is public.
Readers respond in the privacy of their minds and imagination.
There are many kinds of conversations since human experience is various.
The vitality of the conversation is the true measure of
an author. Great authors sustain a lively exchange across centuries.
(26:39):
What would you advise for writers who want to cultivate
culture and make a difference in the world, I ask.
Never lie or condescend to your readers, he says. Treat
them as equals, even if you might disagree with them
on many things. Believe that there always exists some common
ground in our common humanity. That sounds obvious, but there
(27:00):
is factionalism, even hate, in the literary world today. There
is also too much genteel and self-serving dishonesty. Friedrich Nietzsche said,
the poets, the poets lie too much. That is truer
than ever. It is so easy to strike an impressive posture.
It takes courage and intelligence to speak truth. Someone will
(27:23):
be offended. Does this lack of honesty and candor, this
disrespect for the reader, relate to a sense of place? Oddly, yes.
Ansel Adams said a good photograph is knowing where to stand.
Most people today don't know exactly where they stand. Their
lives are uncentered. They look around and try to stand
(27:44):
like everyone else. It seems the sensible thing to do
to merge into a crowd. Nowadays it isn't even a
real crowd, just a virtual one. That is why a
sense of place is important. You need to speak truthfully
from your own experience. You can never fully know the truth,
but you do know when you're lying or obfuscating. You
(28:05):
approach the truth by refusing to lie. Being fully present
in a place allows you to see a few things,
however small and local, accurately. It gives you a better
ability to judge the larger claims you hear. So what
exactly is your place, I ask? I am a working
class Latin West Coast Catholic. Writing is my trade. It's portable,
(28:30):
but I do it best on native soil. I love
my place and my people. Despite a few tragedies, I've
been lucky in life. My deepest loyalties remain with the
world of my childhood. The working poor, especially immigrants. There
is dignity in work and honor in doing something well.
(28:50):
My Uncle Giacomo was a master carpenter and cabinet maker.
Every joint and surface he made was perfect. 50 years later,
his work is still sturdy and handsome. That's my goal
as a writer. Here's one of my favorite poems by
Dana Gioia California Hills in August. I can imagine someone
(29:16):
who found these fields unbearable, who climbed the hillside in
the heat, cursing the dust, cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade. An Easterner especially,
who would scorn the meagerness of summer. The dry, twisted
shapes of black elm, scrub oak and chaparral. A landscape
(29:39):
August has already drained of green. One who would hurry
over the clinging thistle, foxtail, golden poppy, knowing everything was
just a weed, unable to conceive that these trees and
sparse brown bushes were alive, and hate the bright stillness
of the noon. Without wind, without motion. The only other
(30:02):
living thing a hawk hungry for prey, suspended in the
blinding sunlit blue. And yet how gentle it seems to
someone raised in a landscape short of rain. The skyline
of a hill broken by. No more trees than one
can count. The grass. The empty sky. The wish for water.
S1 (30:36):
An axe for the frozen sea is published by Rabbit
Room Press. The audiobook is published by Oasis Audio. Copyright
by Ben Pallant, 2024. Music 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 (00:15):
An axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Read. For
you by the author. Chapter three Dana Gioia. Even though
Dana Gioia no longer serves as chairman of the National
Endowment for the Arts or California's Poet Laureate, he's still
a busy man in high demand. So when he called,
(00:38):
I expected a ten minute business meeting and pulled the
car to the side of a busy road. What I
got instead was an energized, friendly and informative conversation that
took over an hour before we ever got on topic.
I learned more about opera in that time than I
have learned in my entire life. Yes, you can call
me a Philistine, but mostly it was story after story
(01:00):
that made us lose track of time. When we finally
decided that we should get to the topic, I pitched
him my idea. Look, I said, I don't pretend to
care more about your work than you do, but the
20 acres that you call home in California is conspicuously
absent in your interviews. It's mentioned, but never really explored.
(01:20):
But I have a hunch that it's important to you.
The phone went quiet and I thought I had lost connection,
or even worse, made a terrible suggestion. I decided to
fill the void. If that's true, then it would be
a disservice to your readers and a major gap in
the documentation of your life if it was never talked
about in detail. Silence. And then his voice. Ben, he said.
(01:47):
I love that idea. This property has had an outsized
impact on me and nobody asks me about it. Come
with me. I heard the gravel crunching beneath his feet
as we walk down a path. We need to check
on my bluebird nest. The wildfires over the last few
years have severely damaged the bird population, and I'm trying
(02:09):
to rehabilitate it. We talked for another 20 minutes. I
told him about the spotted towhee nest I found the
other day, built at the base of a tree. He
told me about the doe that comes when called. She's
named Betty. The conversation had already begun, so when we
picked up where we left off several weeks later, I
asked him to tell me the story of his journey
(02:30):
to this beautiful place, starting with his childhood in Southern California.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, he says.
We lived in a stucco apartment building set among other apartments.
There were no front yards, only concrete driveways across the
street where the garbage cans of businesses along Hawthorne Boulevard,
(02:50):
a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant and a mortuary. My
world was entirely urban. There was no open land. The
parks were small and spare. I saw nothing natural except
the beach and the Pacific Ocean, so my sense of
nature was huge, wet and inhuman. Both of my parents
worked multiple jobs. We never took vacations longer than a weekend.
(03:13):
I never saw a forest until I was 12. But
you've shared elsewhere that you had a good childhood, I reply.
My childhood was happy. I had good parents. Our family
of six was surrounded by relations, many of whom lived
in the apartments around us. I took my daily world
for granted. Yet I had a small but constant sense
(03:34):
of deprivation, a hunger for beauty that expressed itself in
my excessive reactions to art and brief glimpses of nature.
When did you first come into contact with the natural world,
I ask? Except for the beach. My first real encounters
with nature began in college. I went north to Stanford,
which 50 years ago still had a rural setting, now
(03:55):
entirely gone due to the overbuilding of Silicon Valley and
the campus itself. There were oak woods between the campus
and Palo Alto. Behind the campus were open hills. I
wandered through the woods and hills nearly every day. When
political protests shut down the campus, a girl invited me
to go camping in the coastal range. We took sleeping
bags without any gear. We slept on the beach or
(04:17):
in the woods. We rarely saw another human being. I
felt as if I were on a different planet. Did
those college experiences change you? Very little. I loved the
open land, but I considered myself an urban animal. I
thought I could never live anywhere except a major city. LA,
New York, Washington, San Francisco. I spent two years at
(04:38):
Harvard and hated Boston. I thought it was mostly the weather,
but perhaps it was the first inkling of change. After
returning to California for business school, I moved to New York.
I spent the next 20 years in Westchester County, just
north of Manhattan. I thrived in New York's milieu, but
it never felt like home. Yet I stayed. I was
(04:59):
successful in both the business and literary world, I had
no external motivation to leave. And yet you did leave. Why?
Did something unsettle you? While I was in business school,
my parents left Los Angeles. My father had been robbed
twice at gunpoint. One of his friends had been killed.
My folks felt that they had to get out of
(05:20):
their neighborhood. My father had never lived anywhere but Los
Angeles and Detroit. But he fostered a fantasy about living
in a small town. My mother, who had lived in
Hawthorne all her life, also longed to go somewhere else.
They bought a house on an old chicken farm in Sebastopol,
60 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sonoma County
(05:40):
was still rural then. They were surrounded by apple orchards.
I started going up to see them on weekends. Once
in New York, I came out several times a year.
I spent my vacations visiting them. I helped them with
their small orchard and my mother's tiny organic fruit and
herb business. I began to think of this new place
as home. A stark contrast to your daily life. At
(06:02):
the time I suggested you ever imagine moving there? Moving
there was unrealistic, he replies. I couldn't make a living.
I was tied to metropolitan cities. What changed in your
life that let you leave your big city existence, I ask?
In 1992, at the age of 41, I quit my
job at Kraft General Foods. I had become a well-known poet.
(06:23):
My essay Can Poetry Matter had made an international impression.
I felt I could make a living writing. For the
next four years, despite some ups and many downs, I
managed to support my family. I'm sure you felt a
sense of freedom, I say. I was vastly relieved to
leave corporate life, but I still felt out of place
in New York. My wife loved Westchester County, especially our charming,
(06:47):
ramshackle village, Hastings on Hudson. The New York metro area
was the best place for a writer. Leaving made no
career sense. Moving made no sense. And yet you moved. Why?
While visiting my parents, we saw a house for sale
and decided then and there to buy it. I wasn't
in the market for a house I had not intended
(07:08):
to move. It was the only place we looked at yet.
As I put my foot on the ground from the car,
I knew this was where I would live. It was
an irrational but irrefutable feeling. I needed to change my
life and it would happen here. That's quite a revelation,
I say. The trouble was that we couldn't afford the house.
(07:30):
I kept talking to the owner. There was a property
slump in California. Nothing was selling. After six months of
offers and counter offers, we bought it with a massive mortgage.
We moved there in early January of 1996 with two
small kids, a cat, no money and no local employment.
It rained every day for two weeks. That's a tough start.
(07:53):
Was the adjustment difficult, I ask? I imagine that the
change in noise levels alone would have taken acclimatization. It
was an enormous shock, he says. I had no idea
of what it meant to live in the country. Back then,
we could hardly see another light at night, even though
we were on top of a hill. The coastal fog
(08:13):
would drift in and leave us in isolation. My first
night I couldn't sleep. Every sound alarmed me and the
dark woods around us were full of noises owls, coyotes,
foxes and deer. You could hear animals moving in the
trees and brush. Sounds of savage battles would erupt as
packs of coyotes attacked the flocks of wild turkeys. People
(08:35):
often dream of moving into the country, I add, but
they don't reckon with these kinds of adjustments. Having spent
my life in LA and New York, he says, I
also felt vulnerable to human danger. Although it was unlikely
anyone would drive up the steep country road to rob us.
It took me a few weeks to shed my urban
anxiety with less light pollution. You You probably saw a
(08:58):
more vibrant night sky. I say one of the things
that shocked me most when I came here was the moon.
I realized I'd never truly seen it before in Los
Angeles or New York. It is a pale, diminished thing,
lost in the haze of city lights. But in the
country the moon ruled the night. A full moon lit
(09:18):
my way through the woods and fields. When it was down.
Night was black. What poet 200 years ago would have
been so ignorant? Tell me about the property. What do
you see as you walk it? The geology, the shape
of the land. We bought 20 acres, very little of
which is flat. Our right farmhouse is on the top
(09:41):
of a hill, with no other house nearby. The property
slopes down in every direction. We look down to the
floor of the Sonoma Valley, which at that time was
all vineyards, ranches and horse farms. What's the soil like?
The ground is It is extraordinarily stony. Some glacier had
carved the small canyon next to us and deposited all
(10:02):
its ice age debris. When we plant trees, we have
to dig the pit and remove the rocks. There are
more rocks than soil. What trees grow in that kind
of soil? The hillsides were covered with black oaks, coast
live oaks, and white oaks mixed in with madrones, pines
and buckeyes. The black oaks were enormous trees hundreds of
(10:23):
years old. Some redwoods grew in the pockets where the
night fogs gathered. The whole area was thickly wooded. I
decided I wouldn't plant anything that wasn't native to the area.
What do you mean? It was thickly wooded. We lost
over half the trees in the Kincade Fire of 2019,
one of half a dozen massive wildfires that raged through
(10:44):
Sonoma and Napa and Lake counties. This fire alone burned
78,000 acres. Few of the old oaks survived, and almost
none of the pines. My forest turned into lightly wooded
hillsides and meadows. It took us four years to clear
out the dead trees. I planted dozens of oaks and
nurtured the natural reforestation. Seeing that horrible destruction and nature's
(11:07):
response was an illumination. What else was on your property?
What sort of wildlife? When we first got here, we
couldn't have told you what was on our property. My
wife and I had been raised in cities. We didn't
know the names of things. Coming here made me realize
how alienated we were from the natural world. We decided
(11:27):
that we would learn the names of all the plants
and animals in our locale. That's a noble aim, I say.
I'm afraid I wouldn't know where to start. We learned
the trees first. There were really only about a dozen varieties.
Then we learned the birds. We have acorn woodpeckers, Steller's jays,
scrub jays, ravens, turkeys, quail, vultures, spotted toes, northern flickers,
(11:53):
red tailed hawks, and great horned owls, to name only
the larger birds. My wife became so interested that she
became a serious birder. What about the plants and flowers?
The plants are more challenging. We learned the wildflowers, but
they're weedy. Companions were harder to master, though many have
colorful names. Coyote, bush. Miner's lettuce. Foxtail, quaking grass, and
(12:17):
umbrella sedge. Knowing the names of plants changed my relationship
to the landscape and the seasons. Wild grasses and thistles
grow thigh high in the spring with yarrow, spearmint, and sage.
When the plants die, we have to cut them for
fire protection. It takes months of work to keep the
place safe. Did living on that property change you in
(12:37):
any fundamental way as a person, I ask? Living here
gradually changed me in so many ways that it's hard
to explain the process. I went from a very social
urban life to a very solitary rural one. You were
alone with your thoughts. My property bordered on other open land.
I often finished an outside chore and decided to walk
(12:59):
through the woods. I had never lived in woodlands. I
had just been a tourist. I had never hiked so
much alone. I tramped around in all sorts of weather
and got lost in both the landscape and my thoughts.
I realized I had a deep need for solitude and contemplation.
I had been starved in my previous life. If you
(13:19):
spend hours every day in solitude and quiet observation, it
transforms you. Did it change you as a Christian? More
deeply than I ever expected. I had always been a
very intellectual Catholic. My education had filled me with theology, philosophy,
and church history. I thought my way through religion. Living
(13:40):
in a natural landscape across the seasons, I watched the
world move forward without human agency. Everything had a shape
and purpose that mysteriously unfolded around me. I had never
viscerally understood the notion of creation. Cities are human built.
Nature isn't. I felt a divine presence around me every day.
(14:03):
In your book, studying with Miss Bishop, you wrote. The
professions we enter change the way we look at the
world and ourselves. Would you say the same thing about
where we live? Did your move from New York to
the countryside near Santa Rosa have an immediate impact on
your spirit and your outlook? It had an immediate impact
as I made the great practical adjustments, but they were
(14:26):
often mundane. I had never had to move fallen trees,
clear irrigation pipes, or deal with wild boars. There were
problems nearly every day. I learned, not very masterfully, lots
of practical skills. The more interesting changes happen slowly inside.
I began to think of myself as belonging to this
place which supposedly belonged to me. The Kincade Fire must
(14:51):
have been devastating, I say. The Kincade Fire was the
largest fire in the history of Sonoma County. It burned
78,000 acres, including 20 of ours. It was the culmination
of three years of huge regional wildfires. We had been
evacuated twice earlier that year. How much of your property
was burned? The fire destroyed the homes of most of
(15:12):
my neighbors. It burned over my property, but it didn't
ignite the structures because I had been scrupulous about clearing
brush and trimming trees. But it did great damage. The
exterior walls were scorched. All my fences, power lines, irrigation lines,
and septic system were destroyed. We had to peel the
exterior walls off and rebuild them. It took nearly two
(15:33):
years to repair the damage. We were initially told that
our house and my studio had been entirely destroyed, so
even the mess we found felt like a gift. What
damage did the fire do to the local landscape? It
left the area desolate and black. None of the ground
vegetation survived. The ground was covered by ash. The air
stank for weeks. The wildlife fled or died. We lost
(15:57):
hundreds of trees, including most of the huge old oaks.
The hillsides went from heavily wooded to lightly wooded. The
flat areas went from woods to meadows. It took three
years to clear the burnt trees, with injured trees constantly
toppling over. We saved some old giants by irrigating their
roots and pruning their branches. I also planted two dozen
(16:19):
new oaks. What a traumatic experience, I say. While the
fire was traumatic, I must confess that one of the
great experiences of my life was to watch the landscape
heal itself slowly over the next few years. The madrones
grew back from the blackened roots. Thousands of shoots emerged
on the same day. Holy Saturday actually. Surprised, I say
(16:44):
on Holy Saturday. That's remarkable. The new Buckeye shoots came
up a few months later this year, more than four
years since the fire oak shoots appeared on all the hillsides.
The birds returned one species at a time. The repopulation continues.
Last night I saw two huge black stag beetles walking
(17:05):
on my porch for the first time since the fire.
Last week, I noted with less pleasure that the rattlesnakes
had also returned. Oh, I hate snakes. I say, what
about the deer? My pet deer, Betty, came back. I'd
known her since she was a fawn. She comes when
I call. I feed her our stale bread and vegetables.
(17:25):
I was afraid she had died in the fire. But
a year later, she just showed up. You have said
that the artist who is most local is often the
one who most appeals to a broad audience. How did
the move impact your writing? I'm thinking in terms of
the impact on your hearts predispositions. Much of my early
poetry reflected a person who was a wanderer. He replies,
(17:47):
I came from California, but my life led me to
other places. I never lost my deep connection to my birthplace.
I saw everywhere else, even places I liked as an outsider.
I spent 20 years in the East. Finally, I came home.
It seems to me I suggest that rootlessness is a
common malady for writers. So much of American poetry is
(18:10):
rootless because the lives of our writers are nomadic, he says.
They are born somewhere and grow up somewhere else. Then
they go off to school and move again for graduate school.
They take a job in yet another city and continue
moving for their career. They don't belong to any specific place.
They have a professional perspective on the world, sophisticated but
unspecific in corporate life. I saw the same thing among
(18:34):
salespeople who moved from state to state every time they
got a promotion. How does a life rooted in one
locality affect your writing? The world looks different from different places,
he says. It helps to know where you stand and
see things. I rooted myself in the hills of Sonoma Valley.
My daily life does not resemble the worlds of my
(18:56):
years in New York and Washington. My days are mostly solitary.
None of the people I see regularly went to college.
Most of them were born in Mexico. This is just
like my early life. My mother was Mexican American and
we lived in a Mexican neighborhood. It changes how you
live day to day, I reply. My daily life, he says,
(19:18):
is a weird combination of physical and intellectual work. I
spend part of each day reading and writing. The rest
I spend doing manual labor. The chores get harder as
I get older. The writing is easier, though. The older
I get, the more difficult it is to convince myself
to sit down and get started. How did your new
home influence your thinking? The most important thing that living
(19:40):
in nature taught me was how small and insignificant I
am in the scheme of things. I am a momentary
observer in the vast and endless unfolding of the world.
Having spent my life in huge cities, in major universities,
corporations and public institutions, I had developed a delusional sense
of my own importance. That subjectivity was slowly eroded by
(20:03):
witnessing the objective reality of the world. Wisdom seemed to
know my small piece of the natural world as well
as I could, and to love and protect it. I
didn't need to think about God when I could feel
him everywhere around me. A little bit ago, you said
knowing the names of plants changed my relationship to the
(20:24):
landscape and the seasons. How does knowing something's name change
how you relate to it? Being able to name a
thing means you recognize its individuality, he replies. You can
differentiate it from everything around it. Help me understand what
you mean. Think of it in human terms. If you
(20:44):
can't remember a person's name, he or she blurs into
the crowd. We named our ten acres Brightwing, I say
from the end of one of my favorite poems. God's
Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I wanted the name to
incite hope in me as I age. Have you thought
about naming your property? Many people have suggested we name
(21:05):
our hilltop. When we bought it 30 years ago, the
poet Donald Justice urged me to name it. That seemed
to me a very southern thing to do. Naming a
homestead allows you to imbue it with your hopes and aspirations,
but it also puts a name between you and the
thing itself. I like living in a place I can't
put a title to. In your poem Marriage of Many Years,
(21:26):
you say to your wife, Mary, you are a language
I have learned by heart in a different way. Wouldn't
you say that your land, the trees and the plants,
even the rolling hills has become a language you have
learned by heart. Your question answers itself. I spend hours
every day outside. I know the property. There's no other
(21:46):
word for it. Intimately. There are a few places that
are too steep for me to visit. Otherwise I know
every tree and Retrain Bush. I can tell you the
history of every tree. I've planted them or pruned them.
I can tell you when each wildflower blooms and each
kind of weed appears, your surroundings have changed, but so
has your social life. My social life consists mostly of
(22:08):
animals and plants. They are good company. I've never been happier.
Many people are looking for significance. I say. You seem
to have found it, counterintuitively, by realizing how temporary and
small you are in the scope of God's work. Is
that how you see it? I was a self-directed and
disciplined young man, he says. I had long term goals
(22:31):
and worked steadily toward them. I had the delusion that
I could control my own destiny. I led my life
guided by a laser. I needed to discover a lamp,
a way of seeing everything around me, not just my
narrow path. Recognizing myself, I say being driven seems easier
to me than learning to see myself within a larger context.
(22:54):
That mindset requires humility. Yes, it does, he says. Thomas
Aquinas once defined humility as seeing things as they really are.
Living here has taught me humility. Aldo Leopold, in his
book The Sand County Almanac, has an interesting line. I say,
I wonder if you have found it to be true.
(23:16):
He writes every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber,
fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education.
This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not
always harvested. I work outside every day, he replies. I
can't do as much as I used to, but I
still spend a few hours. Some in the morning, some
(23:38):
in late afternoon doing chores. It is routine work clearing brush,
pruning trees, irrigating plants, repairing stone walls. I do the
same things over and over. It never bores me. I
always see something new. I learned something unexpected to some people.
That sounds idyllic, I say. I fear I sound like
(24:01):
a drippy character from a Jean-Jacques Rousseau novel, an innocent
child of nature. That couldn't be less true. I'm an intellectual.
I spend most of my time reading, thinking, writing. That
is why The Second Life is so important to me.
Today I spent a few hours writing about Hugo von
Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten, The Woman Without a Shadow.
(24:24):
And then I dragged huge piles of cut brush down
the hill. Immersion in the physical world has saved my
poetry from becoming disembodied and abstract. You've dedicated your life
to cultivating this property. What are the similarities between cultivating
your land and cultivating culture through writing? Well, let's not
overstate the quality of my labor, he says. I've spent
(24:47):
30 years mucking around in all sorts of weather to
preserve the natural beauty and vitality of this place. I'll
win no blue ribbon at the county fair. I do
what I can. I'm now in my early 70s. But
the trees, native plants and wildlife are thriving. Literary life
is also an ecosystem. Each part depends on the others.
(25:07):
Without good schools, we don't have capable readers. Without educated readers,
good writing won't be recognized without strong critics. Writers exist
in a vacuum. Without strong editors and publishers, authors can't
find their public. When you look back over your life,
are you pleased with the cultural cultivation you were able
to accomplish, I ask? I gave seven years of my
(25:31):
creative life to public service at the National Endowment for
the Arts. I was able to create several significant literary programs,
such as Poetry Out Loud, the National High School Poetry
Recitation Competition. 5 million teenagers have memorized and recited in
those annual contests. The program had a measurable impact over
the next decade, readership of poetry doubled among teenagers and
(25:55):
young adults. Your property is a beautiful and hospitable space,
I say. You've worked hard to tend and steward it.
Do you see your writing similarly as an act of hospitality?
An opportunity to build something that will be welcome and
refresh your readers? I believe that literature is a conversation,
(26:15):
he says. The writer needs to engage the reader in
an open and intimate dialogue. The author's voice is public.
Readers respond in the privacy of their minds and imagination.
There are many kinds of conversations since human experience is various.
The vitality of the conversation is the true measure of
an author. Great authors sustain a lively exchange across centuries.
(26:39):
What would you advise for writers who want to cultivate
culture and make a difference in the world, I ask.
Never lie or condescend to your readers, he says. Treat
them as equals, even if you might disagree with them
on many things. Believe that there always exists some common
ground in our common humanity. That sounds obvious, but there
(27:00):
is factionalism, even hate, in the literary world today. There
is also too much genteel and self-serving dishonesty. Friedrich Nietzsche said,
the poets, the poets lie too much. That is truer
than ever. It is so easy to strike an impressive posture.
It takes courage and intelligence to speak truth. Someone will
(27:23):
be offended. Does this lack of honesty and candor, this
disrespect for the reader, relate to a sense of place? Oddly, yes.
Ansel Adams said a good photograph is knowing where to stand.
Most people today don't know exactly where they stand. Their
lives are uncentered. They look around and try to stand
(27:44):
like everyone else. It seems the sensible thing to do
to merge into a crowd. Nowadays it isn't even a
real crowd, just a virtual one. That is why a
sense of place is important. You need to speak truthfully
from your own experience. You can never fully know the truth,
but you do know when you're lying or obfuscating. You
(28:05):
approach the truth by refusing to lie. Being fully present
in a place allows you to see a few things,
however small and local, accurately. It gives you a better
ability to judge the larger claims you hear. So what
exactly is your place, I ask? I am a working
class Latin West Coast Catholic. Writing is my trade. It's portable,
(28:30):
but I do it best on native soil. I love
my place and my people. Despite a few tragedies, I've
been lucky in life. My deepest loyalties remain with the
world of my childhood. The working poor, especially immigrants. There
is dignity in work and honor in doing something well.
(28:50):
My Uncle Giacomo was a master carpenter and cabinet maker.
Every joint and surface he made was perfect. 50 years later,
his work is still sturdy and handsome. That's my goal
as a writer. Here's one of my favorite poems by
Dana Gioia California Hills in August. I can imagine someone
(29:16):
who found these fields unbearable, who climbed the hillside in
the heat, cursing the dust, cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade. An Easterner especially,
who would scorn the meagerness of summer. The dry, twisted
shapes of black elm, scrub oak and chaparral. A landscape
(29:39):
August has already drained of green. One who would hurry
over the clinging thistle, foxtail, golden poppy, knowing everything was
just a weed, unable to conceive that these trees and
sparse brown bushes were alive, and hate the bright stillness
of the noon. Without wind, without motion. The only other
(30:02):
living thing a hawk hungry for prey, suspended in the
blinding sunlit blue. And yet how gentle it seems to
someone raised in a landscape short of rain. The skyline
of a hill broken by. No more trees than one
can count. The grass. The empty sky. The wish for water.
S1 (30:36):
An axe for the frozen sea is published by Rabbit
Room Press. The audiobook is published by Oasis Audio. Copyright
by Ben Pallant, 2024. Music by Chris Badeker.
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