August 18, 2025 • 29 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 (00:16):
An axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Pallant. Read
for you by the author. Chapter six Li-young Lee. Many
years ago, Li-young Lee met me in a dream. It
was a first for me. No other author had made
such a visitation. In the dream. I lived in one
(00:38):
of Indonesia's crowded cities. It was after midnight and the
city's neon lights flickered and glowed outside my high rise
apartment window. I heard a knock at the door and
opened it to find him standing there smiling, his long
black hair pulled back. I welcomed him in. He sat
in my favorite chair while I boiled water for tea.
(01:01):
I couldn't believe my good fortune. Now I could tell him,
thank you for writing some of my favorite poems. I
told him how elated I was to see him. I
told him that I first read one of his books
while stuck in traffic, and it opened my eyes to
beauty and joy. Tears welled up in my eyes. I
turned my back. You must be used to effusive fans,
(01:22):
I said. I heard him reply. Thank you. That means
so much. While I prepared his tea, I told him
about the season in my life when I carried one
of his books around with me. It was a hard
time of life for me, but working through his poems,
one line at a time helped. I didn't always know
what you were saying, but somehow I understood. I told
(01:44):
him I didn't comprehend in my mind, but I got
it in my heart. Does that make sense? I turned around.
The room was empty, the front door ajar, still holding
the teacup. I stepped outside, hoping to find him, but
he was gone. All I had wanted to do was
serve him a little tea to say thank you. Now
(02:05):
the tears flowed unhindered. I openly sobbed. I have your tea.
I called into the night. But the city's throbbing drowned
out my feeble voice. That's when I woke up, grief stricken.
You can understand, then, why it felt dream like to
see him walking toward me in real life. He wore black.
(02:26):
And though it was a sunny day, he carried a
brightly colored umbrella. My travel plans had brought me to Chicago,
so we decided to meet at a little park near
his home. We had exchanged many emails over the previous month,
rearranging schedules, considering what we might discuss, and both of
us were excited to finally spend a couple of hours together.
He greets me with a wide grin. You know, like
(02:48):
an idiot. I let my expectations for this meeting get
too high. He says, I'm sorry, but there's nowhere to
go from here but down. I laugh. Well, we might
as well enjoy the ride then, I say. Do you
remember the story about Saint Augustine walking the beach? He
sees a little boy carrying ocean water in a shell
to dump into a little hole he has dug in
the sand. Augustine says, hey kid, what are you doing?
(03:11):
The boy replies, I'm trying to fit the ocean in
this hole. What a story, he says. Isn't that what
we are attempting? We're just two kids trying to capture
the ocean. I hope so. I really do, he replies.
I just returned from Toronto, where I witnessed some heavy
duty ocean scooping in a painting. It agitated and troubled
(03:32):
me so much that it's all I can think about
right now. I'm not even sure I'm capable of conversation.
I'm just so distracted. Tell me more. I visited the
Ontario Museum of Art. There's a 17th century painting by
Mattia Preti called Saint Paul the Hermit. It unseated me.
The painting might be life size, I don't know. In it,
(03:52):
there's so much darkness descending on Paul. So much darkness. Ben.
I mean, his robe is falling away from his frail body.
At the top, there's a ravens head with a morsel
of bread in its beak. And Paul is straining toward
that bread. He's straining into that darkness. It's a darkness
full of news. What kind of news, I ask? I
(04:14):
don't know, he replies, ultimately. News? That's profound and great news.
We've forgotten news we can barely believe. When I saw
that painting, I just had to stand beneath it. I.
I thought, it is finished. I don't know why that
phrase came to me, but that's all I could think about.
It is finished. I felt this ecstatic thing, this realization
(04:36):
that it really is finished. I'm just standing in the wake.
Those are the words Christ spoke. At his darkest point.
I say, is that the darkness you're talking about? I
don't know. I'm still wrestling with it. There's a darkness
that's pregnant with meaning. You know, it's a different kind
of darkness. It's not merely dark, it's something more. You're
(05:00):
reminding me of that passage in Isaiah chapter 50, where
God calls his people to trust in the name of
the Lord, even when they walk in darkness. He says
that if we encircle ourselves with light of our own making,
some kind of artificial and temporary reprieve from the darkness,
then we will lie down in torment. Such a profound
confrontation can happen, but we're afraid of it. We don't
(05:23):
feel strong enough to sit in it, so we distract ourselves. Yes,
he says, that's the darkness I'm talking about. That's exactly
what I'm feeling. It's absolutely uncomfortable. While in Toronto, I
attended an art exhibit for a young artist I know personally.
I love him deeply. His pieces were so stirring that
I can't get them out of my head. They were
(05:44):
full of the same darkness I witnessed in the painting
by Mattia Preti. A darkness full of yearning, full of
good news, but it was so dark. I mean, can
you imagine the courage it takes for an artist to
enter that darkness with each new project? It would take
a great deal of courage. In an unusual attentiveness, I say. Yes.
(06:04):
It was so beautiful. As long as he can do
the work, he's going to be okay without the art.
I don't know. Maybe the work keeps us from losing
our minds in the darkness. But I think of that
painting by Preti. In those words, it is finished. Everything
has changed for me. You catch me at a moment
of crisis, Ben. I don't know that I can write
the poems I've been writing all these years. In fact,
(06:27):
I know I can't. I've been writing poems as if
I was living before it is finished. It's hard to
catch up, to awaken to the reality that it is finished.
I've been lagging behind. What do I write now? What
makes your work? Even the book you just released. A
previous finished book, I asked. It's as if the book
(06:49):
didn't hear the news. None of my previous poems had
heard the news. Maybe they heard whispers of it, but
only whispers. The two of us sit together silently. By now,
the tiny park is filled with playing children, and errant
volleyball rolls toward us and I toss it back. I
suppose the news was there, he says, but my poems
(07:11):
lagged behind somehow. That's the thing. The news is Christ.
It's all Christ. There's no other name, no other word
for it. All of creation is shouting the news. That
tree over there is christic. That fountain is christic. Every
one of us is in the wake of the good
news that it is finished. The world has changed. No, it's.
(07:32):
It's bigger than that. Something much bigger. Everything has changed.
It's all true. When Christ said it is finished on
the cross, it was in some way not the end,
but the beginning, I say. It was a declaration of
a new beginning. His work was complete. But the work
we do, the post. It is finished. Work has just begun. Yes,
(07:54):
he says. What is that work, Ben? Well, isn't it
all praise? Isn't it simply adoration and gratitude in all
its forms? Yes, yes. But how? What does that look
like for the poet? You know, the paintings I saw
were so full of praise. Pure, uncensored praise. But it's
a praise that's rooted in darkness. And the painting by
(08:16):
Mattia Preti was so full of black paint. It's so
black under Paul's chin. There's black behind him and beside him,
but not the same intensity of black that you would
find in an abstract painting. There are so many variations.
Each one is important when it comes to depicting the
male figure in agony. I was talking to my son
about the history of this figure in art John Milton's
(08:39):
Samson Agonistes, the Crucified Christ, William Blake's work, all these
paintings I saw at the exhibit. I don't know what
to call it, except maybe the agony of an ecstatic
experience or the agony of a revelation. It's not the
same agony that accompanies those who die without hope, I say.
What do you mean by that? He asks. I consider
(09:01):
for a moment, maybe not all deaths are equal. The
agony of those without hope is not the same as
the agony you saw in the painting of Paul. His
agony had meaning. Yes. That's it. There's meaning in that darkness.
Much of life isn't that way, you know. There's so
much that lacks meaning. This young painter whom I love,
(09:23):
whose work was so magnificently charged with presence, went through
a very dark void when he was younger. He had
a great job. He was making a large amount of money,
but he felt empty. He said none of this means anything.
None of this is Christic, I told him. What you
see is true. None of it counts. I feared for
him at that time. I mean, how do you deal
(09:44):
with that sudden realization of bankruptcy? It's a difficult and
dangerous endeavor to live in a world so oppressed by meaninglessness.
But I say it is finished. Yes. That's right. I
have come to a realization, Ben. It's Christmas every day.
And the devil all the time. Both are true. That's
(10:07):
what that painting of Paul told me. That's the christic.
All the light accounted for. All the polarity is accounted for.
Everything accounted for. How do we work that revelation into
our poetry? That's the difficult place I find myself in today,
he replies. I'm not sure I'm trying to work it out.
I'm playing with a formula in my head. Do you
(10:29):
have it worked out enough to share? Maybe. Maybe not.
Would I have so far is quite simple. Poetry, in
its essence, is the voice of being itself divided by
a being or little being like this. He uses his
hands to show the division in the air. Can you
help me understand, I ask. I'm not sure, he replies.
(10:53):
Maybe I have it upside down, I don't know. I'm
not offering much clarity. I'm not really answering any questions.
Sounds to me like we're doing exactly what we set
out to do, I reply. We're just trying to capture
the ocean. That's a relief, he says, and after a moment,
it's also very humbling. Look, Ben, I made a bargain
(11:14):
with God, and I need to deliver on that bargain.
And when it comes to interviews, I need to cover
some things about poetry. And then we can talk about
whatever you want. Let's do that, I say. We sit
quietly for a moment, watching the games around us, listening
to the children shout and squeal. I guess what I
want to say is that I'm always in the throes
(11:36):
of trying to understand the tension between stillness and motion.
I sometimes call stillness silence. But people don't understand. They
see white space around a poem on the page. And
call the white space silence. But it's not silent. The
white space is full of noise. The craft, the magic,
the christic imagination that uses words to make a reader feel.
(11:59):
Silence requires a stillness. In the poet, stillness is the
mind being still. All language in a chain. One word
linked to the next word is motion. We study that motion.
We notice that it is stressed and unstressed. The great
poets see that it consists of weak forces and strong forces.
(12:20):
They really boiled things down for us in a way
that can be useful. But it's not enough. It's the
stillness inside the poet that makes the poem. It's the
stillness that returns the poet to the source. What do
you mean, I ask? Look, he says. When you read
a poem on the page. The line keeps pulling you
back to the left, margin to the beginning. There used
(12:42):
to be a convention of capitalizing the first letter of
each line to tell the reader that we're starting over.
I don't like capitalizing the first letter because it feels
cluttered to me. Noisy. It makes me feel anxious and
forget what I'm doing. What am I doing? Robert Frost
called it the tribute of the current to the source.
Each line is a tribute of the current to the source,
(13:03):
to the beginning of the poem. He's talking about the
poetic line, I say. Yes, he replies, but he's also
talking about something much bigger than that. He's saying that
our motions and words have to pay tribute to the source.
What does that look like, I ask, how does a
poet do that? We do that by ransoming each poetic
(13:26):
line with as much meaning as possible, by infusing it
with the news we were talking about earlier. You know,
the incredible news that I felt in the darkness of
those paintings and in the agony of their subjects. All
these years I thought I knew what the news was.
That life is beautiful despite everything or something. And maybe
that's still the news, but it's so much more than that.
(13:47):
And I'm grappling with what the expression of that news
looks like. The park has gradually filled more children, more games,
and we realize that we have been shouting over the clamor.
We have so much more to explore, he says, but
maybe we can find another place to talk. I gather
my things. He holds his umbrella in one hand and
a small paper cup nearly emptied of coffee. We walk
(14:10):
along the sidewalk and continue talking. I keep coming back
to this christic imagination, he says. Everything depends on it.
Everything exists by virtue of the Christic Christ was at
the very beginning of the world, and everything participates in Christ,
whether we know it or not. As a pastor's son,
I grew up hearing this news, but it means much
more than I ever realized. If people knew it and
(14:33):
could remember it, there would be far less suffering, I think.
Are you hyper aware of human suffering, I ask? Oh my. Yes, absolutely.
I live in Chicago. My neighborhood is like a parade
of suffering. The sun breaks out from behind a cloud.
Its heat is beating down upon us. Lee Young opens
(14:53):
his umbrella and lifts it high to shade me as
we walk. This is a thing we do in China,
he says, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Like I
should be the one holding the umbrella over him. I say,
thank you. That's very kind. By now we've come to
another park, a larger one flanked by eight lanes of
traffic on Lakeshore Drive. But green grass is welcoming, and
(15:15):
aside from a few homeless shelters, relatively empty. We sit
down in the shade clover all around us. Going back
to your obligation to God, I say. Have you told
me everything you need to say about poetry? I don't
want to move on until you've said your piece. I
think so. I guess I just wanted to say all
(15:35):
glory be to God. There's no poetry without God. I mean,
there's nothing without God. That's all I wanted to say.
In God's timing, I say I'm meeting you just a
couple of days after your encounter with it is finished.
You called it a crisis, but it's also a kind
of revelation. Absolutely. He says. I mean, it is a crisis.
(16:00):
I have to start over, but I don't know how.
That's not easy at my age. Does it create anxiety
in you? Excitement? Both. I'm terrified. One of my favorite
books is The Peregrine by J. A baker. I say
for about half a year, he tracked the daily activities
(16:20):
of a pair of peregrine falcons in England. It's beautifully written.
At one point, he says the hunter must become the
thing he hunts. Maybe you need to imitate Baker. Maybe
you must hunt this vision to become. It is finished.
That's so beautiful, he says so moving. Yes. To become
it is finished without being finished. Without completion. To hunt
(16:44):
that fact every day means to remind myself every moment
that it has been accomplished. It is finished. It's here
now what? Yes, I say now what? Do you have
an answer to that question? After a pause, he says, Ben,
I'm telling you, all that is left are love songs
(17:05):
to God with all the world's conflict, motion and noise.
None of these things are as important as love for
the one who accomplished everything. I'm going to write love
song after love song to God. You're in your 60s,
I continue. You've accomplished a great deal, and yet you're
(17:25):
still willing to start over. Doesn't that feel daunting? Maybe
even overwhelming. I don't feel like I have a choice.
I'm compelled. The world is full of artists who have
tasted success. And don't stay hungry, I add. What do
you mean by that word? Hungry? He asks. I mean
that they feel like they've arrived. For whatever reason. They've
(17:47):
lost the drive to improve the craft, the self-critique, the rigor.
It all takes a back seat to their ego. Their
work becomes derivative. They start listening to their own press. Yes.
It's true. I fear that, he says. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's
Ulysses says, I am become a name. How awful to
become a name. To become nothing more than your public persona.
(18:10):
Fame is an oppressive thing, I say. He nods and says,
what did Rainer Maria Rilke say about that? Something like
fame is but the sum of all the misunderstandings which
gather about a name. How do you keep from letting
those misunderstandings gather around your name, I ask, how do
you keep fame from infecting your work? Oh, Ben. It
(18:32):
terrifies me. He lifts his hands to shield himself and
closes his eyes. Keep it away from me. I don't
want to hear it. Don't tell me that stuff. Don't
do it. After a moment's reflection, he adds at the
same time, I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm very fortunate.
Poetic fame. I mean, it's not much, but I feel lucky.
(18:53):
What matters is the work. People imagine that a published
poet is surrounded by friends and a thousand demands. I say,
is that true? Actually, he says, it's really scary and
lonely out here. It's terrifying. And it's year after year
of that kind of work. What do you mean by
out here? I mean that place where the work can
(19:16):
get done, that place inside me where I enter the
pregnant darkness. Maybe I just don't like large groups of people.
I don't know what I'm saying. He pauses again. I
just keep coming back to those three words. It is finished.
If it's true that it is finished, then I'm free
to live in those three words. The prayer of my
(19:37):
life and my work has that much more meaning. It
is finished. Makes me cry. Oh my God. Oh my love. Holy, holy, holy.
Those are the attitudes of all great lyric poetry. All
great poetry is some variation on those three themes. There
are so many ways. So many inflections you can use
(19:57):
to praise your prayer is interesting, I say, because many
people fixate on one of those three. Some people are
in awe of God, but they never come to love him.
Some people love him, but miss his holiness. Your prayer
begins in awe and comes full circle. It forces me
to pass from or to love, to reverence and back
(20:18):
to awe in a never ending cycle. That's right. He says,
I want to hold on to this state of mind
now that it is finished. It's the only thing that
matters now. This revelation changes everything for you, I say. Everything.
Even how you see your father. You've written extensively about
your conflicted relationship with him. He gazes out over the park.
(20:42):
Then he says, my father was a big personality. He
became a minister. When your family came to the United States,
I say. Yes, a Presbyterian minister. People flocked to hear him.
He used to fill the sanctuary like Billy Graham. He
cast quite a shadow. I say, metaphorically speaking. I loved him.
(21:05):
I remember he wanted me to learn to sing the
song God Bless the Child. The blood, sweat and Tears version.
He played the organ. I would sit there next to
him and tell him it was hard. And he would say,
you'll get it. Do you know that song, Ben? It's
a hard song to sing. He would get so mad
sometimes when I didn't sing it right. Every Friday night,
my brothers would rush out the door to play and
(21:25):
he would call me to practice with him. I didn't
want to practice. Are you kidding me? But I would practice.
And then it dawned on me that if I got
too good at singing this song, he would take it
on the road. No way was I going to do that.
I remember telling my brothers that they were abandoning me.
I was really mad, but they would say, hey man,
we love you for taking it. Thank you. He loves
(21:46):
you best. And they were right. I knew it, but man,
it was hard. If he was Jacob, you were his Joseph.
That song was his coat of many colors. Oh, Ben,
what a picture. It brings tears to my eyes. I
think back, and I know that he loved me. Sometimes
(22:08):
when we got it right, when I was seated on
the bench next to him and we were in rhythm,
he would lean on me ever so gently. He could
be quite tender at times I say Tender but volatile.
It was hard to be his son. Certain afternoons he
would say, get your notebook. We would go on long
drives and he would dictate his sermon to me. But
(22:31):
if I didn't have that notebook open and ready before
he started talking, or if he saw me open that
notebook after he had started talking, I was in trouble.
He would get so mad. But if I did it right,
he would talk and I would copy it down. When
he was onto something, he knew it and I knew it.
Something beautiful happened. I didn't know you could read or
(22:51):
encounter God at that level. When he was on like that.
The whole world opened. When he was on, he would
look at me and smile as if to say, you
see it, right? You see what's happening right after those times.
He would be good for days. He was so happy.
But there were other days, man, when the revelation didn't
come and he couldn't find his way. He would stalk
(23:13):
the vision like a hunting cat on those days. And
nobody talked to him. He was scary. Really scary if
you got in his way. Watch out. Lee Young pauses,
lost in thought. Then he says, poor man, poor man.
He suffered. But you longed for his blessing. I say,
(23:35):
you hungered for it deeply. Yes, I really did. It's
almost as if God has wired us with a longing
to hear our fathers bless us. I continue. When we
don't receive that blessing, there's a great heartache. When we
do hear it, we feel at peace. I think that's right.
He says your father hungered for revelation, much like his son.
(23:58):
In some respects he has passed that longing down to you,
and now you get to live it out. That's true.
He gave me a great gift. This is the revelation.
It is finished. God is present. The christic is all
that matters. There's a sense of relief, but it doesn't
eliminate the terror. The darkness is still dark, but it's
(24:20):
infused with meaning now. It will be okay as long
as God is at the center, but it's still a
fearful thing. Like the disciples, I suggest, when the sea
was in turmoil and Jesus was sleeping in the boat's hull,
they were afraid for their lives. So they woke Jesus
so he would do something about it. When he told
the sea to quiet down in the water immediately calmed.
(24:40):
The disciples were terrified. They were afraid before, but now
they were terrified because God was in the boat with them.
So true. He says it's a terrible awe that's full
of hope. Can we revisit something you said earlier? I
ask you said that once you realize it, it is finished.
(25:02):
All that's left are love songs to God. What about
poems that comment on issues in the world? Political poems?
What about poems that rage against the way things are?
Or at least try to resolve those issues? Hasn't that
been an important task for poets over the centuries? Those
poems are just litigations against the world, he says. I
(25:22):
love that stuff sometimes, but I also think there's another mode.
All of that comes from a previous finished mentality post.
It is finished. None of those arguments with the world,
arguments with community, arguments with God matter. A few years ago,
you said that many American poets come at their work
with complaint, not praise, and so their poetry lacks richness
(25:46):
and depth. You said we should write out of grief,
but not grievance. Grief is rich, ecstatic, but grievance is not.
It's a complaint. It's whining. That problem has only worsened
over the last few years. At least it seems so
to me. Now we are catechizing our children in the
doctrines of complaint. We're in a vicious cycle of complaint,
(26:07):
rage and self-destruction. It's the air we're breathing, so it's
easy to start doing it too. I wonder if you
see any solution. Is there still hope for us? We
have forgotten how to praise anything but ourselves or our agendas,
he says. No wonder there are so many problems in
the world. Forget yourself. Stop looking at yourself. Forget all
(26:28):
of the grievance. The only thing left is love. Talk
to God. This is what Mary Magdalene understood when she
broke the jar of expensive nard and anointed Christ's feet
with it, I say. While everyone else was talking politics,
she gave herself to the moment. Gratitude spilled out of
her as this. What you mean? Yes. That's it. My
(26:49):
father preached a sermon on that story. She washes Christ's
feet with her hair. Right? The image itself is so powerful.
The stillness embodied there. Christ is there. Yes, but the
entire scene is christic. I suppose that every picture Christ
enters becomes christic. It becomes organized around the most spectacular,
the greatest good. That's what matters now. That's the only
(27:13):
thing that matters, Ben. All that's left for me is
to break the oil over his feet. All that's left
are love songs to God. Here's one of my favorite
poems by Li-young Lee titled From Blossoms. From blossoms comes
(27:36):
this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the
boy at the bend in the road. Where we turned
toward signs painted peaches from laden boughs, from hands, from
sweet fellowship. In the bins comes nectar. At the roadside.
Succulent peaches. We devour dusty skin. And all comes the
(27:57):
familiar dust of summer dust. We eat, oh, to take
what we love inside. To carry within us an orchard
to eat. Not only the skin, but the shade. Not
only the sugar, but the days to hold the fruit
in our hands. Adore it, then bite into the round
(28:17):
jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if
death were nowhere in the background. From joy to joy
to joy. From wing to wing. From blossom to blossom
to impossible blossom to sweet impossible blossom.
S1 (28:40):
An axe for the Frozen Sea is published by Rabbit
Room Press. The audio book 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 six Li-young Lee. Many
years ago, Li-young Lee met me in a dream. It
was a first for me. No other author had made
such a visitation. In the dream. I lived in one
(00:38):
of Indonesia's crowded cities. It was after midnight and the
city's neon lights flickered and glowed outside my high rise
apartment window. I heard a knock at the door and
opened it to find him standing there smiling, his long
black hair pulled back. I welcomed him in. He sat
in my favorite chair while I boiled water for tea.
(01:01):
I couldn't believe my good fortune. Now I could tell him,
thank you for writing some of my favorite poems. I
told him how elated I was to see him. I
told him that I first read one of his books
while stuck in traffic, and it opened my eyes to
beauty and joy. Tears welled up in my eyes. I
turned my back. You must be used to effusive fans,
(01:22):
I said. I heard him reply. Thank you. That means
so much. While I prepared his tea, I told him
about the season in my life when I carried one
of his books around with me. It was a hard
time of life for me, but working through his poems,
one line at a time helped. I didn't always know
what you were saying, but somehow I understood. I told
(01:44):
him I didn't comprehend in my mind, but I got
it in my heart. Does that make sense? I turned around.
The room was empty, the front door ajar, still holding
the teacup. I stepped outside, hoping to find him, but
he was gone. All I had wanted to do was
serve him a little tea to say thank you. Now
(02:05):
the tears flowed unhindered. I openly sobbed. I have your tea.
I called into the night. But the city's throbbing drowned
out my feeble voice. That's when I woke up, grief stricken.
You can understand, then, why it felt dream like to
see him walking toward me in real life. He wore black.
(02:26):
And though it was a sunny day, he carried a
brightly colored umbrella. My travel plans had brought me to Chicago,
so we decided to meet at a little park near
his home. We had exchanged many emails over the previous month,
rearranging schedules, considering what we might discuss, and both of
us were excited to finally spend a couple of hours together.
He greets me with a wide grin. You know, like
(02:48):
an idiot. I let my expectations for this meeting get
too high. He says, I'm sorry, but there's nowhere to
go from here but down. I laugh. Well, we might
as well enjoy the ride then, I say. Do you
remember the story about Saint Augustine walking the beach? He
sees a little boy carrying ocean water in a shell
to dump into a little hole he has dug in
the sand. Augustine says, hey kid, what are you doing?
(03:11):
The boy replies, I'm trying to fit the ocean in
this hole. What a story, he says. Isn't that what
we are attempting? We're just two kids trying to capture
the ocean. I hope so. I really do, he replies.
I just returned from Toronto, where I witnessed some heavy
duty ocean scooping in a painting. It agitated and troubled
(03:32):
me so much that it's all I can think about
right now. I'm not even sure I'm capable of conversation.
I'm just so distracted. Tell me more. I visited the
Ontario Museum of Art. There's a 17th century painting by
Mattia Preti called Saint Paul the Hermit. It unseated me.
The painting might be life size, I don't know. In it,
(03:52):
there's so much darkness descending on Paul. So much darkness. Ben.
I mean, his robe is falling away from his frail body.
At the top, there's a ravens head with a morsel
of bread in its beak. And Paul is straining toward
that bread. He's straining into that darkness. It's a darkness
full of news. What kind of news, I ask? I
(04:14):
don't know, he replies, ultimately. News? That's profound and great news.
We've forgotten news we can barely believe. When I saw
that painting, I just had to stand beneath it. I.
I thought, it is finished. I don't know why that
phrase came to me, but that's all I could think about.
It is finished. I felt this ecstatic thing, this realization
(04:36):
that it really is finished. I'm just standing in the wake.
Those are the words Christ spoke. At his darkest point.
I say, is that the darkness you're talking about? I
don't know. I'm still wrestling with it. There's a darkness
that's pregnant with meaning. You know, it's a different kind
of darkness. It's not merely dark, it's something more. You're
(05:00):
reminding me of that passage in Isaiah chapter 50, where
God calls his people to trust in the name of
the Lord, even when they walk in darkness. He says
that if we encircle ourselves with light of our own making,
some kind of artificial and temporary reprieve from the darkness,
then we will lie down in torment. Such a profound
confrontation can happen, but we're afraid of it. We don't
(05:23):
feel strong enough to sit in it, so we distract ourselves. Yes,
he says, that's the darkness I'm talking about. That's exactly
what I'm feeling. It's absolutely uncomfortable. While in Toronto, I
attended an art exhibit for a young artist I know personally.
I love him deeply. His pieces were so stirring that
I can't get them out of my head. They were
(05:44):
full of the same darkness I witnessed in the painting
by Mattia Preti. A darkness full of yearning, full of
good news, but it was so dark. I mean, can
you imagine the courage it takes for an artist to
enter that darkness with each new project? It would take
a great deal of courage. In an unusual attentiveness, I say. Yes.
(06:04):
It was so beautiful. As long as he can do
the work, he's going to be okay without the art.
I don't know. Maybe the work keeps us from losing
our minds in the darkness. But I think of that
painting by Preti. In those words, it is finished. Everything
has changed for me. You catch me at a moment
of crisis, Ben. I don't know that I can write
the poems I've been writing all these years. In fact,
(06:27):
I know I can't. I've been writing poems as if
I was living before it is finished. It's hard to
catch up, to awaken to the reality that it is finished.
I've been lagging behind. What do I write now? What
makes your work? Even the book you just released. A
previous finished book, I asked. It's as if the book
(06:49):
didn't hear the news. None of my previous poems had
heard the news. Maybe they heard whispers of it, but
only whispers. The two of us sit together silently. By now,
the tiny park is filled with playing children, and errant
volleyball rolls toward us and I toss it back. I
suppose the news was there, he says, but my poems
(07:11):
lagged behind somehow. That's the thing. The news is Christ.
It's all Christ. There's no other name, no other word
for it. All of creation is shouting the news. That
tree over there is christic. That fountain is christic. Every
one of us is in the wake of the good
news that it is finished. The world has changed. No, it's.
(07:32):
It's bigger than that. Something much bigger. Everything has changed.
It's all true. When Christ said it is finished on
the cross, it was in some way not the end,
but the beginning, I say. It was a declaration of
a new beginning. His work was complete. But the work
we do, the post. It is finished. Work has just begun. Yes,
(07:54):
he says. What is that work, Ben? Well, isn't it
all praise? Isn't it simply adoration and gratitude in all
its forms? Yes, yes. But how? What does that look
like for the poet? You know, the paintings I saw
were so full of praise. Pure, uncensored praise. But it's
a praise that's rooted in darkness. And the painting by
(08:16):
Mattia Preti was so full of black paint. It's so
black under Paul's chin. There's black behind him and beside him,
but not the same intensity of black that you would
find in an abstract painting. There are so many variations.
Each one is important when it comes to depicting the
male figure in agony. I was talking to my son
about the history of this figure in art John Milton's
(08:39):
Samson Agonistes, the Crucified Christ, William Blake's work, all these
paintings I saw at the exhibit. I don't know what
to call it, except maybe the agony of an ecstatic
experience or the agony of a revelation. It's not the
same agony that accompanies those who die without hope, I say.
What do you mean by that? He asks. I consider
(09:01):
for a moment, maybe not all deaths are equal. The
agony of those without hope is not the same as
the agony you saw in the painting of Paul. His
agony had meaning. Yes. That's it. There's meaning in that darkness.
Much of life isn't that way, you know. There's so
much that lacks meaning. This young painter whom I love,
(09:23):
whose work was so magnificently charged with presence, went through
a very dark void when he was younger. He had
a great job. He was making a large amount of money,
but he felt empty. He said none of this means anything.
None of this is Christic, I told him. What you
see is true. None of it counts. I feared for
him at that time. I mean, how do you deal
(09:44):
with that sudden realization of bankruptcy? It's a difficult and
dangerous endeavor to live in a world so oppressed by meaninglessness.
But I say it is finished. Yes. That's right. I
have come to a realization, Ben. It's Christmas every day.
And the devil all the time. Both are true. That's
(10:07):
what that painting of Paul told me. That's the christic.
All the light accounted for. All the polarity is accounted for.
Everything accounted for. How do we work that revelation into
our poetry? That's the difficult place I find myself in today,
he replies. I'm not sure I'm trying to work it out.
I'm playing with a formula in my head. Do you
(10:29):
have it worked out enough to share? Maybe. Maybe not.
Would I have so far is quite simple. Poetry, in
its essence, is the voice of being itself divided by
a being or little being like this. He uses his
hands to show the division in the air. Can you
help me understand, I ask. I'm not sure, he replies.
(10:53):
Maybe I have it upside down, I don't know. I'm
not offering much clarity. I'm not really answering any questions.
Sounds to me like we're doing exactly what we set
out to do, I reply. We're just trying to capture
the ocean. That's a relief, he says, and after a moment,
it's also very humbling. Look, Ben, I made a bargain
(11:14):
with God, and I need to deliver on that bargain.
And when it comes to interviews, I need to cover
some things about poetry. And then we can talk about
whatever you want. Let's do that, I say. We sit
quietly for a moment, watching the games around us, listening
to the children shout and squeal. I guess what I
want to say is that I'm always in the throes
(11:36):
of trying to understand the tension between stillness and motion.
I sometimes call stillness silence. But people don't understand. They
see white space around a poem on the page. And
call the white space silence. But it's not silent. The
white space is full of noise. The craft, the magic,
the christic imagination that uses words to make a reader feel.
(11:59):
Silence requires a stillness. In the poet, stillness is the
mind being still. All language in a chain. One word
linked to the next word is motion. We study that motion.
We notice that it is stressed and unstressed. The great
poets see that it consists of weak forces and strong forces.
(12:20):
They really boiled things down for us in a way
that can be useful. But it's not enough. It's the
stillness inside the poet that makes the poem. It's the
stillness that returns the poet to the source. What do
you mean, I ask? Look, he says. When you read
a poem on the page. The line keeps pulling you
back to the left, margin to the beginning. There used
(12:42):
to be a convention of capitalizing the first letter of
each line to tell the reader that we're starting over.
I don't like capitalizing the first letter because it feels
cluttered to me. Noisy. It makes me feel anxious and
forget what I'm doing. What am I doing? Robert Frost
called it the tribute of the current to the source.
Each line is a tribute of the current to the source,
(13:03):
to the beginning of the poem. He's talking about the
poetic line, I say. Yes, he replies, but he's also
talking about something much bigger than that. He's saying that
our motions and words have to pay tribute to the source.
What does that look like, I ask, how does a
poet do that? We do that by ransoming each poetic
(13:26):
line with as much meaning as possible, by infusing it
with the news we were talking about earlier. You know,
the incredible news that I felt in the darkness of
those paintings and in the agony of their subjects. All
these years I thought I knew what the news was.
That life is beautiful despite everything or something. And maybe
that's still the news, but it's so much more than that.
(13:47):
And I'm grappling with what the expression of that news
looks like. The park has gradually filled more children, more games,
and we realize that we have been shouting over the clamor.
We have so much more to explore, he says, but
maybe we can find another place to talk. I gather
my things. He holds his umbrella in one hand and
a small paper cup nearly emptied of coffee. We walk
(14:10):
along the sidewalk and continue talking. I keep coming back
to this christic imagination, he says. Everything depends on it.
Everything exists by virtue of the Christic Christ was at
the very beginning of the world, and everything participates in Christ,
whether we know it or not. As a pastor's son,
I grew up hearing this news, but it means much
more than I ever realized. If people knew it and
(14:33):
could remember it, there would be far less suffering, I think.
Are you hyper aware of human suffering, I ask? Oh my. Yes, absolutely.
I live in Chicago. My neighborhood is like a parade
of suffering. The sun breaks out from behind a cloud.
Its heat is beating down upon us. Lee Young opens
(14:53):
his umbrella and lifts it high to shade me as
we walk. This is a thing we do in China,
he says, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Like I
should be the one holding the umbrella over him. I say,
thank you. That's very kind. By now we've come to
another park, a larger one flanked by eight lanes of
traffic on Lakeshore Drive. But green grass is welcoming, and
(15:15):
aside from a few homeless shelters, relatively empty. We sit
down in the shade clover all around us. Going back
to your obligation to God, I say. Have you told
me everything you need to say about poetry? I don't
want to move on until you've said your piece. I
think so. I guess I just wanted to say all
(15:35):
glory be to God. There's no poetry without God. I mean,
there's nothing without God. That's all I wanted to say.
In God's timing, I say I'm meeting you just a
couple of days after your encounter with it is finished.
You called it a crisis, but it's also a kind
of revelation. Absolutely. He says. I mean, it is a crisis.
(16:00):
I have to start over, but I don't know how.
That's not easy at my age. Does it create anxiety
in you? Excitement? Both. I'm terrified. One of my favorite
books is The Peregrine by J. A baker. I say
for about half a year, he tracked the daily activities
(16:20):
of a pair of peregrine falcons in England. It's beautifully written.
At one point, he says the hunter must become the
thing he hunts. Maybe you need to imitate Baker. Maybe
you must hunt this vision to become. It is finished.
That's so beautiful, he says so moving. Yes. To become
it is finished without being finished. Without completion. To hunt
(16:44):
that fact every day means to remind myself every moment
that it has been accomplished. It is finished. It's here
now what? Yes, I say now what? Do you have
an answer to that question? After a pause, he says, Ben,
I'm telling you, all that is left are love songs
(17:05):
to God with all the world's conflict, motion and noise.
None of these things are as important as love for
the one who accomplished everything. I'm going to write love
song after love song to God. You're in your 60s,
I continue. You've accomplished a great deal, and yet you're
(17:25):
still willing to start over. Doesn't that feel daunting? Maybe
even overwhelming. I don't feel like I have a choice.
I'm compelled. The world is full of artists who have
tasted success. And don't stay hungry, I add. What do
you mean by that word? Hungry? He asks. I mean
that they feel like they've arrived. For whatever reason. They've
(17:47):
lost the drive to improve the craft, the self-critique, the rigor.
It all takes a back seat to their ego. Their
work becomes derivative. They start listening to their own press. Yes.
It's true. I fear that, he says. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's
Ulysses says, I am become a name. How awful to
become a name. To become nothing more than your public persona.
(18:10):
Fame is an oppressive thing, I say. He nods and says,
what did Rainer Maria Rilke say about that? Something like
fame is but the sum of all the misunderstandings which
gather about a name. How do you keep from letting
those misunderstandings gather around your name, I ask, how do
you keep fame from infecting your work? Oh, Ben. It
(18:32):
terrifies me. He lifts his hands to shield himself and
closes his eyes. Keep it away from me. I don't
want to hear it. Don't tell me that stuff. Don't
do it. After a moment's reflection, he adds at the
same time, I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm very fortunate.
Poetic fame. I mean, it's not much, but I feel lucky.
(18:53):
What matters is the work. People imagine that a published
poet is surrounded by friends and a thousand demands. I say,
is that true? Actually, he says, it's really scary and
lonely out here. It's terrifying. And it's year after year
of that kind of work. What do you mean by
out here? I mean that place where the work can
(19:16):
get done, that place inside me where I enter the
pregnant darkness. Maybe I just don't like large groups of people.
I don't know what I'm saying. He pauses again. I
just keep coming back to those three words. It is finished.
If it's true that it is finished, then I'm free
to live in those three words. The prayer of my
(19:37):
life and my work has that much more meaning. It
is finished. Makes me cry. Oh my God. Oh my love. Holy, holy, holy.
Those are the attitudes of all great lyric poetry. All
great poetry is some variation on those three themes. There
are so many ways. So many inflections you can use
(19:57):
to praise your prayer is interesting, I say, because many
people fixate on one of those three. Some people are
in awe of God, but they never come to love him.
Some people love him, but miss his holiness. Your prayer
begins in awe and comes full circle. It forces me
to pass from or to love, to reverence and back
(20:18):
to awe in a never ending cycle. That's right. He says,
I want to hold on to this state of mind
now that it is finished. It's the only thing that
matters now. This revelation changes everything for you, I say. Everything.
Even how you see your father. You've written extensively about
your conflicted relationship with him. He gazes out over the park.
(20:42):
Then he says, my father was a big personality. He
became a minister. When your family came to the United States,
I say. Yes, a Presbyterian minister. People flocked to hear him.
He used to fill the sanctuary like Billy Graham. He
cast quite a shadow. I say, metaphorically speaking. I loved him.
(21:05):
I remember he wanted me to learn to sing the
song God Bless the Child. The blood, sweat and Tears version.
He played the organ. I would sit there next to
him and tell him it was hard. And he would say,
you'll get it. Do you know that song, Ben? It's
a hard song to sing. He would get so mad
sometimes when I didn't sing it right. Every Friday night,
my brothers would rush out the door to play and
(21:25):
he would call me to practice with him. I didn't
want to practice. Are you kidding me? But I would practice.
And then it dawned on me that if I got
too good at singing this song, he would take it
on the road. No way was I going to do that.
I remember telling my brothers that they were abandoning me.
I was really mad, but they would say, hey man,
we love you for taking it. Thank you. He loves
(21:46):
you best. And they were right. I knew it, but man,
it was hard. If he was Jacob, you were his Joseph.
That song was his coat of many colors. Oh, Ben,
what a picture. It brings tears to my eyes. I
think back, and I know that he loved me. Sometimes
(22:08):
when we got it right, when I was seated on
the bench next to him and we were in rhythm,
he would lean on me ever so gently. He could
be quite tender at times I say Tender but volatile.
It was hard to be his son. Certain afternoons he
would say, get your notebook. We would go on long
drives and he would dictate his sermon to me. But
(22:31):
if I didn't have that notebook open and ready before
he started talking, or if he saw me open that
notebook after he had started talking, I was in trouble.
He would get so mad. But if I did it right,
he would talk and I would copy it down. When
he was onto something, he knew it and I knew it.
Something beautiful happened. I didn't know you could read or
(22:51):
encounter God at that level. When he was on like that.
The whole world opened. When he was on, he would
look at me and smile as if to say, you
see it, right? You see what's happening right after those times.
He would be good for days. He was so happy.
But there were other days, man, when the revelation didn't
come and he couldn't find his way. He would stalk
(23:13):
the vision like a hunting cat on those days. And
nobody talked to him. He was scary. Really scary if
you got in his way. Watch out. Lee Young pauses,
lost in thought. Then he says, poor man, poor man.
He suffered. But you longed for his blessing. I say,
(23:35):
you hungered for it deeply. Yes, I really did. It's
almost as if God has wired us with a longing
to hear our fathers bless us. I continue. When we
don't receive that blessing, there's a great heartache. When we
do hear it, we feel at peace. I think that's right.
He says your father hungered for revelation, much like his son.
(23:58):
In some respects he has passed that longing down to you,
and now you get to live it out. That's true.
He gave me a great gift. This is the revelation.
It is finished. God is present. The christic is all
that matters. There's a sense of relief, but it doesn't
eliminate the terror. The darkness is still dark, but it's
(24:20):
infused with meaning now. It will be okay as long
as God is at the center, but it's still a
fearful thing. Like the disciples, I suggest, when the sea
was in turmoil and Jesus was sleeping in the boat's hull,
they were afraid for their lives. So they woke Jesus
so he would do something about it. When he told
the sea to quiet down in the water immediately calmed.
(24:40):
The disciples were terrified. They were afraid before, but now
they were terrified because God was in the boat with them.
So true. He says it's a terrible awe that's full
of hope. Can we revisit something you said earlier? I
ask you said that once you realize it, it is finished.
(25:02):
All that's left are love songs to God. What about
poems that comment on issues in the world? Political poems?
What about poems that rage against the way things are?
Or at least try to resolve those issues? Hasn't that
been an important task for poets over the centuries? Those
poems are just litigations against the world, he says. I
(25:22):
love that stuff sometimes, but I also think there's another mode.
All of that comes from a previous finished mentality post.
It is finished. None of those arguments with the world,
arguments with community, arguments with God matter. A few years ago,
you said that many American poets come at their work
with complaint, not praise, and so their poetry lacks richness
(25:46):
and depth. You said we should write out of grief,
but not grievance. Grief is rich, ecstatic, but grievance is not.
It's a complaint. It's whining. That problem has only worsened
over the last few years. At least it seems so
to me. Now we are catechizing our children in the
doctrines of complaint. We're in a vicious cycle of complaint,
(26:07):
rage and self-destruction. It's the air we're breathing, so it's
easy to start doing it too. I wonder if you
see any solution. Is there still hope for us? We
have forgotten how to praise anything but ourselves or our agendas,
he says. No wonder there are so many problems in
the world. Forget yourself. Stop looking at yourself. Forget all
(26:28):
of the grievance. The only thing left is love. Talk
to God. This is what Mary Magdalene understood when she
broke the jar of expensive nard and anointed Christ's feet
with it, I say. While everyone else was talking politics,
she gave herself to the moment. Gratitude spilled out of
her as this. What you mean? Yes. That's it. My
(26:49):
father preached a sermon on that story. She washes Christ's
feet with her hair. Right? The image itself is so powerful.
The stillness embodied there. Christ is there. Yes, but the
entire scene is christic. I suppose that every picture Christ
enters becomes christic. It becomes organized around the most spectacular,
the greatest good. That's what matters now. That's the only
(27:13):
thing that matters, Ben. All that's left for me is
to break the oil over his feet. All that's left
are love songs to God. Here's one of my favorite
poems by Li-young Lee titled From Blossoms. From blossoms comes
(27:36):
this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the
boy at the bend in the road. Where we turned
toward signs painted peaches from laden boughs, from hands, from
sweet fellowship. In the bins comes nectar. At the roadside.
Succulent peaches. We devour dusty skin. And all comes the
(27:57):
familiar dust of summer dust. We eat, oh, to take
what we love inside. To carry within us an orchard
to eat. Not only the skin, but the shade. Not
only the sugar, but the days to hold the fruit
in our hands. Adore it, then bite into the round
(28:17):
jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if
death were nowhere in the background. From joy to joy
to joy. From wing to wing. From blossom to blossom
to impossible blossom to sweet impossible blossom.
S1 (28:40):
An axe for the Frozen Sea is published by Rabbit
Room Press. The audio book is published by Oasis Audio.
Copyright by Ben Pallant, 2024. By Chris Badeker.
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