July 28, 2025 • 33 mins
For the second edition of the “On The Rock” podcast, Mark Hedden speaks with Emily Schulten. Schulten is a classic Key West multi-hyphenate – a poet who has published three books, a professor, a Fulbright Scholar, and the reigning poet laureate of Key West. We talked about the perks of the poet laureate gig, playing David Brubeck records on Jack Keruoac’s hifi, donating a kidney, writing a book of poetry about donating a kidney, sharks in bottles, and how she got to Key West in the first place.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to the On the Rock podcast. I'm your host,
Mark Heddon. In this edition, we're gonna be talking to
Emily Schulton, who, among other things, is the poet laureate
of Key West and a professor at the College of
the Florida Keys. She was also just awarded a very
big accolade, which we will reveal during the show. So
stay tuned.
This podcast is a production of the Keys Weekly newspapers,
(00:34):
which are published in Key West Marathon and Key Largo,
and it's sponsored by OMG or the Overseas Media Group,
your Key specialist for digital marketing, social media management, website
design and development, and pretty much anything else that will
help your business or organization thrive in this crazy online world.
(01:01):
Hey, uh, hey, welcome to the On the Rock podcast
with me, Mark Heddon, um, and I am here with
Emily Schulton, who are you still currently Key West poet laureate?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I am, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
How long is your term?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
2024 to 2026.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
OK,
Speaker 2 (01:16):
yeah, we're in a sweet spot.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
OK. And do you get like a limo and a
driver with that or anything, or
Speaker 2 (01:21):
yeah, haven't you seen me cruising around in that limo
with my driver?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's got a
big Conch Republic flag painted on the side.
Did you get a sash?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I don't get a sash, but I'm open to to
work on that.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I will talk
to the powers that be because I think you should
have a sash sash. So uh you're a multi-hyphenate largely
around the world of poetry.
Um, you teach poetry at the college and creative writing
or just poetry?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, no, I teach in creative genres and a fiction
writing and poetry class. OK.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And then you've published three books of poetry yourself. Um,
and we're gonna talk about those in a little bit.
But also right now I wanna talk to you about
your weekend because where were you this weekend? Where what
what was your adventure?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, so I went up and did a reading for
um Coffee at Jack's house. They have a series in
Saint Petersburg where once a month they do a featured
writer and some open mic at Jack Kerouac's home in
Saint Petersburg. Uh, there is a board for this home
that has sort of rescued it and, uh, so I,
(02:32):
I did the reading Sunday afternoon and then got to,
to spend the night there and, and sleep in.
I, I technically slept in Jack's mother's bed and my
son slept in Jack's bed and yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1 (02:43):
that's
pretty great. And, and what, what was it like staying there?
Was it?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Definitely felt like you were so, so the, um, owner
of the home was talking about how it had been
locked up for a long time when he, when he
finally was able to purchase it because there was some
litigation going on, but, uh, you know, once that key
was turned, it was like, um, a time capsule is
sort of how he described it.
So all of Jack's furniture, dishes, records, uh, art were
(03:11):
all still there, uh, and you know, it's, it's his
furniture that we were sleeping on and sitting on and
so yeah, it was, uh, it was kind of magical
and you just, you sort of sit there for a
while just trying to soak it in and you're like
what do you do? What do you do to best,
you know, get everything out of that moment but uh
(03:32):
yeah so.
It was just you just sort of look around and
you're like, I'm sitting right where Jack Kerouac sat and
I'm uh I'm eating off of this this fork that
might have been in his mouth. So it was, it
was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah. OK, yeah, wow, OK, that's very specific. What did
you do to fully get the experience out of it?
Did
Speaker 2 (03:53):
you? So we, we tried a couple of things. My husband.
He was there with me and, um, he pulled up
uh an interview at one point, uh, that involved where
Jack Kerouac was interviewed and also did a little bit
of reading from his work. So that was, that was cool, uh,
but for the most part, it's just, uh, about, um, uh,
(04:16):
soaking it in. The when, when the house emptied out
from the reading and we were left to our own devices.
Probably the first priority for me was to see if
we could uh to pick out a record and to
uh to to use Jack Kerouac's record player and and
watch it watch it spin and and that definitely set
(04:39):
the mood yeah, you don't, you don't wanna waste the
moment's quiet when you can be listening to uh Kerouac's
record player.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Do you remember what you listened
to or of course, yeah,
Speaker 2 (04:48):
we picked picked out Brubeck so we listened to a little.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Uh, very eraappropriate. So, so it didn't have the typewriter
with the roll of paper
Speaker 2 (04:57):
and it did. It did have a typewriter, but I
think it was a piece of paper, not the scroll
that he's known for using.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah,
scroll of paper. And,
Speaker 2 (05:05):
um, and above the desk that the typewriter sat on
was a letter that he had typed to someone, although
this had been, you know, reprinted about.
Renting this specific typewriter, I guess his typewriter had been
broken by the movers when, uh, he moved into this
home and so he's he's writing to someone about how
(05:26):
he's renting it, but he thinks he's going to buy
it with that money that the movers will reimburse him
with uh for for the breaking of the former typewriter and, uh, yeah,
so there's a whole letter he wrote about the typewriter
up next to the typewriter.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Wow, OK, um, and so you also, you, you've been
having kind of a month because you also announced this
month that you got a Fulbright scholarship. Can you tell
me a little bit about that? Is it a scholarship
if you're teaching?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So it is called technically a Fulbright US scholar award.
So yeah, there's the student awards and there are the
scholar awards and then just a sort of a handful
of other sort of more specific things, but.
Um, yeah, this, uh, this is a grant that will
take me next year, uh, to Pas in Hungary, the
(06:17):
University of Pas, and, uh, I'll be teaching, uh, a
master's level poetry workshop and, uh, children's literature course and
then doing some research on.
Hungarian folk and fairy tales and generational narrative.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So yeah, OK, why, why did you because you applied
to a specific country to do this, right? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (06:37):
yeah, you can, you have to choose one to apply to.
You can only do one application, um, for the Fulbright
a year. So yeah, uh, why this one? It's a
good question. Uh, there are a lot of factors, but
I did know that, uh, the research that I'd like
to do is into folk and fairy tales, and there's
(06:57):
sort of some that haven't been.
Uh, covered as much in that region, uh, that I think, uh,
could be good for that. But also there's a professor
at the University of Pace who has done a lot
of research into generational narrative who I spoke with a
lot when I was applying and, uh, so it's a
really good fit and yeah.
(07:18):
And we need to, we need to experience a little
bit of winter, right? The, the, the weekly family needs
to go and, and see what it's like to have
to wear a
coat.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Are you worried you're going to traumatize your son?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm hoping for the opposite, Mark. I'm hoping that it's
a lovely experience, but I do think that, um, he
does keep saying I don't want to go to school there,
so we'll, we'll see how that, that goes
Speaker 1 (07:40):
in the end. And so you guys are going in familia,
the whole family. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2 (07:44):
yeah, we, uh, the three of us will all head
over and, um, their semester starts in February, so we'll be, yeah, heading,
heading there as a group, um.
To see what kind of trouble we can get into
on the other side of the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah. That, that
is so cool. Um, and congratulations and yeah, that, that
is awesome. Um, OK, well, let's talk a little bit
about your, your poetry. Um, I was the first, I,
I think the first reading of yours I went to
was from your book, The Way a Wound Becomes a Scar.
And do you mind reading that first poem of that book?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The way a wound becomes a scar.
Slowly
The body closes, muscle sutures itself, the blood dries, the
skin shifts from red, purples, shines. Each day you run
your finger over it, it's less an itch below the surface.
(08:47):
It's there to remind you.
Ancient Egyptians pulled the organs through a small cut at
the groin of the bodies of the dead, somehow knowing
that all these years later people would unwrap, inspect the mummy,
find the incision still evident.
(09:08):
You look to find it embedded. There's pain, and then
it dulls.
It's frightening how easy it is not to notice a wound,
but how easily you'll find a scar after a shower,
standing before the mirror naked and remember exactly its shape
(09:30):
illuminated when you close your eyes.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Wow, that's, that's great. I mean, I, I always think
it's dodgy business to make someone explain what their art
is about and especially poetry, but this has a very
specific spark in this book, and this is the first
poem in a book largely about this, I guess, era
of your life. And can you tell me a little
bit about that? that was.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, so the, the narrative arc of the book is about, uh,
the process of becoming a living kidney donor for, um,
as it were my brother's, uh, kidney transplant. Uh, he has, uh,
hereditary kidney disease, but he's patient zero, so nobody in
(10:15):
my family's ever had it. Um, both of his daughters do.
And he found out in his 20s and then in
his 30s, um, you know, his kidneys were, were failing
to the point that he needed a donor.
Uh, but this, uh, process for me came right after a,
a pretty, uh, exhausting breakup. And so there was this
(10:39):
sense of going through this process of kidney donation, which
involves a lot of medical testing, a lot of waiting
to see if you're OK, you know.
You're a match, as they say, and then if you're
healthy enough, and then what, um, when they'll do it.
So there's a lot of hoops and it's a long process.
(11:00):
And there was something about that that was somehow redemption
for the, uh, emotional pain, right? There's something about that
physical process on the physical body.
That could somehow offer some sort of relief for that
emotional pain that I was struggling with at the time.
(11:22):
So those are sort of the, the two parts of
the way a wound becomes a scar is, uh, how
each influenced the other and, and so I think there's
the story of both in there.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I mean, yeah, I, I read actually a good chunk
of it this morning and I was, I was just
thinking about like, I think.
The least artistically inspiring environment you can be in is
in a hospital in that whole medical world. And and
you pull so much out of that. I mean, it's
it's great. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 2 (11:52):
actually a
literary journal that's poems or that's sort of the foundation
it was built on.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So yeah. Did you know about that when you started
this project
Speaker 2 (12:01):
or somewhere somewhere when I was writing, I was in
um I was in my PhD program when I wrote
a lot of these and when I was going through.
This, uh, I graduated from that program in 2012 and
this operation was in 2011. So I, I learned about
that somewhere with that community of writers at Georgia State
that I was working with. But, uh, but they never,
(12:22):
they never took anything, Mark, so.
So yeah, but, but there, but yeah, there it does
seem like um I think that's one of the fun
challenges for a poet is to um to uncover the
poetry that exists everywhere for for readers who might not
be expecting it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I, I was thinking about it in terms of there's
a one of my favorite Raymond Carver poems is called
Your Dog Dies. I don't know if you've ever read it.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I feel like somebody read it recently, like in the
past few days to me,
Speaker 1 (12:54):
but please, but it's about him finding his dog dead
in the driveway and it goes to the description of
burying it in the earth and all this kind of
really beautiful imagery, and it comes about being like, basically
how having bad things happen to you. Writers are almost
kind of not happy about that sometimes, but it becomes
their material and you know it becomes very edifying for
(13:14):
them and I was thinking like, you know.
You found edification in the in in in in kind
of it was reminding me of that like, I think
all writers like if something bad happens to them, a.
Or something tough happens to them, they're like, oh this
is terrible, but they're like, I can use
this.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, so this is actually um related to a struggle
that I wanted to confront when I started the, the
most recent book, um, and that is right, I wanted, I,
I've looked at the idea, the challenge of writing about
Key West as one that was how do you write
about a place that's a postcard and give it depth?
(13:50):
How do you find what's there that's not just, um.
You know, novelty or, uh, um, something for, uh, you know, the,
the tourism, uh, elements of it and.
So yeah, I think that there's the, the, there's always
gonna be, you always wanna try and find what's there
(14:10):
that matters and a lot of times when you go
through something that is a challenge or that is negative
or bad, you, you easily sort of start to see
what can come out of it that's good. You want to,
you wanna find something good there because there's so much,
you're so overwhelmed with what's bad.
So I think that um maybe the bigger challenge is
(14:34):
looking at something that's um really positive and finding the
depth there so yeah that so yeah you encounter a
challenge you have well you have a narrative um because
there's there's the rising action there's the expos there's the
inciting incident, right? So, so then you you have something
to build a plot out of and a narrative out
(14:55):
of but.
Uh, but yeah, where, where do you find the meaning is,
is the challenge, and I, I think that.
Yeah, I think when you, when you encounter a hurdle,
maybe your mind, your brain is already trying to find
what is there that makes it worthwhile, but the everyday
(15:16):
stuff is maybe tougher to pull that from.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Your 2nd, this is your 3rd book actually that recently
came out. And what's the title of that?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Easy Victims to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
And is that your phrase or did that
come from somewhere?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, that came from um from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is, uh,
hands down my favorite fiction writer. So yeah, it comes
from love in a time of cholera.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I think I read that in my first two weeks
of living in Key West, but it's been 30 years,
so it's a little, I remember, yeah, there was something
about almonds at the beginning. Someone committed suicide and it's
the smell of almonds, but that's,
it's something about almonds.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
There's something about almonds I think in everything he's written,
but um, you know, or, or at least.
The, the flora and the fauna are always part of,
of the story with Marquez and yeah,
Speaker 1 (16:07):
it was just very funny for me because that was
like my very first Key West era was reading that
by the pool at the El Rancho Motel.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
I read
it by the pool at the Marker while I was
working on a lot of these poems and so that's,
you know, the, the, uh, description.
Of the character was, um, so, so it it just,
you know, it jumped off the page and I I
knew I had to hold on to that.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
OK, and so how does that apply to to Key
West and your, your, you know, so this is a
collection of poems basically you're trying to detouristify.
Key West or approach it in a non-touristic manner I
guess is and that I think that's a struggle for
a lot of artists down here is how do you
get past the Jimmy Buffett of it all. Right?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I won't, I won't name the author but I was
working on a project, gosh, I think it was back
with um Key West magazine, um, and I, it might
have been someone that Nan and I were working on together.
We, um, but I, I was reading through, um, you know, uh,
an author's, a local author's work, um, who's no longer
(17:11):
a local author, so former local author, and, uh, and
every like other sentence was a name drop of a
street or a, a bar, and I was like this
feels really pushed, really forced, uh.
But you, you know, you want to write about the
place you're in when you, you know, even if you,
no matter if you write fiction or nonfiction or poetry,
(17:33):
the things around you are what give you your ideas.
So yeah, but, but I didn't wanna, I certainly didn't
want to write an advertisement, so.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
OK, well, can you read um the one that we
talked about earlier, that one, that's the one, the one
with the star on the
Speaker 2 (17:47):
page. Yeah, this one is called Sunday Morning. Did you
figure out where it was? Do you know? You have
a guess? I have a guess. OK.
Um, Sunday morning.
Everything is lilac and acrid. Men hover around the woman
in the window, making con leches and cheese toast.
(18:08):
They talk of weather and the plans for dredging or
for housing.
Everyone who is here is also looking for a way
to be here.
I am looking at the diamond pattern on my sheets,
the young girl smacking the glass where my clothes circle
and press against the front of the machine.
(18:32):
And I am grunting loudly in the direction of the
man beneath the tracking of the industrial door as he
lights a cigarette and my load dings and counts down
from 30.
Every time hefting the wet clothes to the dryer is
like moving that week of my life into whatever space
(18:55):
is not being used.
Dropping gray lace panties onto the floor where the owner
pretends not to notice them.
Settling for the kind of clean that carries the hint
of Winston's and grease.
One of the plastic baskets breaks and pinches my hand.
(19:16):
So full of what needs freshening.
At home, I'll dress the bed and cover my body
and carry with me the smoker and the men and
the coffee and the woman in the window and the
unattended child into the next week, untethered to anything except
(19:36):
for what's already been what will be embedded despite trying
to wash it away.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Oh, that's great. Then thanks. And can I, is it
wrong to guess where it is? Is that too specific? I'm,
I'm thinking Sandy's slash Eminem.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
down the road. Oh, the other one. Yeah, it's the
other one.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I don't
even know the name of that
coffee place.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I don't either, but uh.
You know, when I was, uh, using laundromats, um, more frequently, I,
that's the one that I ended up in when, when
I was, yeah, when I was taking note. I've certainly
used them both, so yeah,
Speaker 1 (20:12):
um, that's, and then it's like I feel like the
laundromats are a formative Key West experience.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, and they're part of that transience,
Speaker 1 (20:20):
right? Yeah, when you first move here you don't, nobody
has a washer and dryer
or
Speaker 2 (20:24):
it's so it it relates to a lot of things, right,
that you, um, that sense of permanence that's always so
hard to get a grasp on here because using the
laundromat somehow feels like less permanence when you're doing your
own clothes in your own home, it feels much more
like you're, you live there. There's something that there's some
(20:45):
disconnect there, but I also think that.
There's this um idea of space right? where space is
at a premium, which is part of why it's hard
to live here and so part of that is having
to go outside of your home to do things that
you would normally maybe do inside of your home so.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, OK, let me, let me ask you this because we,
this is the question I ask everybody and I forgot
to ask it so far. How did you get to
Key West? I mean,
Speaker 2 (21:12):
yeah, we were, we were talking a little bit, a
little while ago about people who run away, um, from things. Uh,
mine's not Forensic Files running away like we were talking
about maybe, but yeah, I, um.
I was, I'd finished my master's degree and, uh, was
just sending out job applications which to colleges and universities and,
(21:34):
and you know you can't get a job with a
PhD but I, I don't think I stood a chance
and this is back in the day of like sending
out applications and envelopes, uh, so I was at the
post office all the time and I had, you know,
my only job was the bartending gig I'd had for
years and.
So, uh, so one night I, I get a DUI and, uh,
(21:57):
then I, I have no license, so, um, things got
a little bit more depressing and then, uh, when, uh,
the cop that gave me the DUI organized a sting
operation and busted 18 bars in Key West, I'm sorry,
in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
For serving underage, uh, mine was the first one he hit,
(22:19):
and so I got, uh, a citation for serving underage
and lost my job. So, uh, I was living in
Bowling Green, Kentucky in a duplex that was overrun by crickets.
And I just, I wasn't, I wasn't gonna do it anymore,
so and there wasn't much choice. I could look for
a job there or somewhere else. Um, I'd never been
(22:41):
to Key West or the Keys, but I, uh, had
heard about it and so, and it looked way different
in my mind, like really, um, lush, lots of undisturbed land, uh,
tropical and wild, but yeah, I, um.
I borrowed 400 bucks from my mom and stepdad and
(23:02):
I loaded up my Volkswagen Cario and, and drove down
and got an efficiency behind Jamaica me crazy over on
Front Street. OK,
Speaker 1 (23:13):
wow, that's, that's a noisy neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, we would, we would listen to, uh, the jazz
music from the rooftop, uh, coming through the window and
set up that folding. I got a folding chair from
Kmart and.
Yeah, magical days, but they weren't easy.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, yeah, and so, and so you met Dakin down here.
Your husband, you're married to Dakin Weekly of the famous
Weekly family and.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, yeah, I am married to Dakin. I'll say yes
to
Speaker 1 (23:39):
that. Yeah, OK, and so you guys just met down
here
Speaker 2 (23:42):
or we did, um, so I moved down here in
2005 and then I left in 2007 to go back and,
and go back to school and get my PhD, uh,
and I was in Atlanta for seven years and when
I moved back about a year after I moved back,
I was in the back bar of the Green Parrot
for the Key Lime Festival variety show.
(24:02):
And uh yeah, and Dakin walked walked in.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So you're a green
parrot. Oh
Speaker 2 (24:08):
yeah, we're
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I met
my wife at the Green Parrot. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (24:10):
it's a good list. It's a good, good things happen
when you meet at the at the Green Parrot, I think. No,
Speaker 1 (24:16):
John Bagnoni uh keeps wanting to have like a a
just an event for all the people who met and
got married from the Green Parrot. Fantastic
Speaker 2 (24:22):
idea. Yeah. He was supposed to officiate our wedding. Was he? Yeah.
Irma. Oh
Speaker 1 (24:27):
yeah, that's right, you guys got married during Irma. That
was a whole traumatic thing, wasn't it?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It was a thing.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But you guys had great wedding photos afterwards. I remember
you guys out in kind of the middle of the
street amongst all the sand that had blown in. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (24:39):
yeah, we, um, we did that was I wasn't gonna
let go of getting our pictures, so we did when
we came back from, uh, we evacuated and and got
married on the run.
Uh, as it were, and then when we came back, we,
we did some wedding photos. So over there on Smathers,
but yeah, it was, it was still very dead in town. So,
(25:01):
so we could do things like stand in the middle
of the street and yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Well, that's pretty great. And let me, I, I think
about this, you know, you, you, so you, you've got
your own memories of here, but then you're, you're married
to a cock who's got his own set of memories,
which might be a good intro to reading this poem
I was talking about, um, the, the one about the sharks.
But yeah, I, I mean, I guess I, I'm always like,
you know, I can start a clock on when I
(25:24):
moved here and when my memories start. I can't imagine
living in this town all my life and how that
would affect how I relate to places. Does that make sense?
I don't
Speaker 2 (25:33):
know. Yeah, tell that joke. It's a good time to
Speaker 1 (25:35):
tell that joke. Oh, what, what the, the light bulb
Speaker 2 (25:38):
joke. Oh,
Speaker 1 (25:39):
the
Speaker 2 (25:39):
light
Speaker 1 (25:39):
bulb joke, which is, you know, uh, how many Key
Westers does it take to change a light bulb? How many?
It takes 32 to 2 to change.
The light bulb and no, no, wait, 1 to change
the actual light bulb and 2 to talk about how
much better the old light bulb was. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (25:52):
that's so we all, we all know that, uh, that
when you live here for any amount of time you
can live here a year and you're gonna talk about
how much better it was a year ago, uh, hence
the title of the book, but um.
But yeah, so when you're, you're married to someone who's
lived here forever, you get constant iterations of that, right? Uh,
(26:13):
but I, I also think that must be really.
Uh, frustrating to feel like the place where you are from,
where your, you know, your history is, is, uh, you
people are coming in and, and changing it not just
(26:33):
by coming here and being part of it, but by
taking the pieces of it they like and arranging it
in their own way.
And so it's not only transient, but the, the history
gets skewed that way too and I'm not saying that
anybody's got it right no matter how far back they go, right?
So everybody's everybody's probably got it wrong, but, um, except
(26:54):
maybe a few very, uh, worthy.
Historians we've got around. But yeah, there's, there's this sense
of a place that's got all these tours telling the
story of your past and then you've got your story
of your past and it doesn't match.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Right? I mean, everyone's got their own version of Key West,
but I mean, I remember when I first moved here,
you know, and you'd hear, you'd hear, you know, people
who are non-conks say terrible things about the conks and,
you know, they're insular, they're, you know, the bubba system,
all this kind of stuff.
And I, I've been here for 30 years now and
I'm like, uh, you know, I kind of get it.
I know why you would be, I, I get why
those defense mechanism. I totally,
Speaker 2 (27:30):
I totally will tell anyone who will listen that I
am not now nor will I ever be a conk and,
and yeah, I think I kind of, I kind of
get it too. Like I respect that.
People need a space for, for their, um, for where
they're from. I mean, I, I certainly, I certainly do, um,
(27:52):
you know, I'm, I'm from Kentucky and where I'm from
has completely changed, but the one, the place that I
know where my memories are, that's so yeah it's really
important and I don't think that people want to.
Hand it over and so yeah I guess I'm I'm
just agreeing with you in a very rambly way.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Well, no, not rambling. We cut that, right?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
We can cut all the rambling.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Oh, I absolutely promise to cut it.
Um
So do you mind reading that poem about and this
is a little bit about your, your kind of husband's nostalgia, right? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (28:26):
yeah, this one does mention my husband and
Uh, yeah, so I've heard, I've heard his stories by now,
like maybe not all of them, but I've heard them all, uh,
the ones I've heard I've heard, um, you know, numerous times,
and I, I try to just let him go on
every time, but, uh, it does get exhausting. But this is, uh,
(28:46):
one of the earlier stories and, uh, that came up and.
I like it because I think some of the nostalgia
in this poem is, is nostalgia that's throughout Florida and
I think so many people have, uh, nostalgia for Florida
because no matter where you're from, at some point you
came to Florida. Uh, anyway, this is an ode, uh,
(29:07):
ode to fetal sharks in jars.
Dakin misses the days when they sold the preserved fetal
sharks up and down the main drag.
As a kid, he gazed for long stretches of time
at dozens of upturned faces and blue liquid, not in water,
(29:31):
not even close to being something of the body, not
even close to being something of the sea.
Noses to the sky without air, frowning, their wide eyes
and undeveloped arms in permanent and suspended surprise, grotesque and plastic.
(29:53):
Their solitude was his too when fewer people peopled his
streets when space and silence existed, and these tchotchkes dotted
the state straight up the panhandle in a line of
citrus stand signs, towering oranges eclipsing the sun.
(30:13):
And pineapples made of metal and neon, their leaves great
enough for osprey to make nests in and to be
left alone, mostly a map for sleepy summer drives in
unbearable heat straight down to the place of his birth,
a map he can't travel now, a quiet as hard
(30:35):
to put a finger on as nostalgia. Now everywhere there
is noise.
Not the sound of sea, not the sound of breeze.
Now everywhere there's the sound of bodies never suspended for
long and buildings always building upward to get us all,
(30:58):
everyone who can possibly fit closer to the sunset, the
divine and commercial sunset, more brilliantly red and pink by
the summer and it's always summer day.
There used to be siestas, and he remembers them. In
the afternoon in August, his eyes surveyed the displays of
(31:21):
sharks that would always be young and never be swimming.
The streets were emptied and the storefronts cleared.
The men home in hammocks, their chests undressed and bellies
bared to the shade of the mango trees, and their leaves,
and they shook, and you could hear them.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Wow.
Thanks for reading that. That's, yeah, it's got Florida's.
Has a love of kind of the grotesque, I guess,
to a degree. I think, I mean, I think about
the fact that you go into like a Walgreens and
there's a peach basket full of alligator skulls that you
can buy for 8 bucks a pop. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (32:02):
we were up in Cocoa Beach, uh, gosh, 4 years
ago we were up in Cocoa Beach en route to
a family vacation.
And we stopped at a really old place. In fact,
did not get to stay there, um, ended up hours later,
past check-in time, you know, with an infant in the lobby.
We finally got our room and we went back and
(32:23):
it was so terrible, but, but we heard when we
crossed the street.
to the La Quinta that they were, they had been
bought out, but it was really old school, so it
had like, you know, like a water park sort of
as its pool. So, you know, big pirate ships and all,
you know, as part of the water feature. But in
the lobby, they had a tank of baby alligators, you know,
(32:47):
just on top of each other and it was the
most sad thing I've ever seen in a hotel, and
it set the tone.
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Alright, well, hey, thanks so much for coming on. I
really appreciate it and, and, and I look forward to
the I'm, I don't, I'm, I don't know if the
next set of poem book book is gonna be about
Hungary or I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
OK, yeah, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm
looking forward to it, but thanks for reading all this
and thanks for coming on. Thanks, Mark.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Thanks for having me. Alright,
Speaker 1 (33:15):
bye.
Welcome to the On the Rock podcast. I'm your host,
Mark Heddon. In this edition, we're gonna be talking to
Emily Schulton, who, among other things, is the poet laureate
of Key West and a professor at the College of
the Florida Keys. She was also just awarded a very
big accolade, which we will reveal during the show. So
stay tuned.
This podcast is a production of the Keys Weekly newspapers,
(00:34):
which are published in Key West Marathon and Key Largo,
and it's sponsored by OMG or the Overseas Media Group,
your Key specialist for digital marketing, social media management, website
design and development, and pretty much anything else that will
help your business or organization thrive in this crazy online world.
(01:01):
Hey, uh, hey, welcome to the On the Rock podcast
with me, Mark Heddon, um, and I am here with
Emily Schulton, who are you still currently Key West poet laureate?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I am, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
How long is your term?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
2024 to 2026.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
OK,
Speaker 2 (01:16):
yeah, we're in a sweet spot.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
OK. And do you get like a limo and a
driver with that or anything, or
Speaker 2 (01:21):
yeah, haven't you seen me cruising around in that limo
with my driver?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's got a
big Conch Republic flag painted on the side.
Did you get a sash?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I don't get a sash, but I'm open to to
work on that.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I will talk
to the powers that be because I think you should
have a sash sash. So uh you're a multi-hyphenate largely
around the world of poetry.
Um, you teach poetry at the college and creative writing
or just poetry?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, no, I teach in creative genres and a fiction
writing and poetry class. OK.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And then you've published three books of poetry yourself. Um,
and we're gonna talk about those in a little bit.
But also right now I wanna talk to you about
your weekend because where were you this weekend? Where what
what was your adventure?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, so I went up and did a reading for
um Coffee at Jack's house. They have a series in
Saint Petersburg where once a month they do a featured
writer and some open mic at Jack Kerouac's home in
Saint Petersburg. Uh, there is a board for this home
that has sort of rescued it and, uh, so I,
(02:32):
I did the reading Sunday afternoon and then got to,
to spend the night there and, and sleep in.
I, I technically slept in Jack's mother's bed and my
son slept in Jack's bed and yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1 (02:43):
that's
pretty great. And, and what, what was it like staying there?
Was it?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Definitely felt like you were so, so the, um, owner
of the home was talking about how it had been
locked up for a long time when he, when he
finally was able to purchase it because there was some
litigation going on, but, uh, you know, once that key
was turned, it was like, um, a time capsule is
sort of how he described it.
So all of Jack's furniture, dishes, records, uh, art were
(03:11):
all still there, uh, and you know, it's, it's his
furniture that we were sleeping on and sitting on and
so yeah, it was, uh, it was kind of magical
and you just, you sort of sit there for a
while just trying to soak it in and you're like
what do you do? What do you do to best,
you know, get everything out of that moment but uh
(03:32):
yeah so.
It was just you just sort of look around and
you're like, I'm sitting right where Jack Kerouac sat and
I'm uh I'm eating off of this this fork that
might have been in his mouth. So it was, it
was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah. OK, yeah, wow, OK, that's very specific. What did
you do to fully get the experience out of it?
Did
Speaker 2 (03:53):
you? So we, we tried a couple of things. My husband.
He was there with me and, um, he pulled up
uh an interview at one point, uh, that involved where
Jack Kerouac was interviewed and also did a little bit
of reading from his work. So that was, that was cool, uh,
but for the most part, it's just, uh, about, um, uh,
(04:16):
soaking it in. The when, when the house emptied out
from the reading and we were left to our own devices.
Probably the first priority for me was to see if
we could uh to pick out a record and to
uh to to use Jack Kerouac's record player and and
watch it watch it spin and and that definitely set
(04:39):
the mood yeah, you don't, you don't wanna waste the
moment's quiet when you can be listening to uh Kerouac's
record player.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Do you remember what you listened
to or of course, yeah,
Speaker 2 (04:48):
we picked picked out Brubeck so we listened to a little.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Uh, very eraappropriate. So, so it didn't have the typewriter
with the roll of paper
Speaker 2 (04:57):
and it did. It did have a typewriter, but I
think it was a piece of paper, not the scroll
that he's known for using.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah,
scroll of paper. And,
Speaker 2 (05:05):
um, and above the desk that the typewriter sat on
was a letter that he had typed to someone, although
this had been, you know, reprinted about.
Renting this specific typewriter, I guess his typewriter had been
broken by the movers when, uh, he moved into this
home and so he's he's writing to someone about how
(05:26):
he's renting it, but he thinks he's going to buy
it with that money that the movers will reimburse him
with uh for for the breaking of the former typewriter and, uh, yeah,
so there's a whole letter he wrote about the typewriter
up next to the typewriter.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Wow, OK, um, and so you also, you, you've been
having kind of a month because you also announced this
month that you got a Fulbright scholarship. Can you tell
me a little bit about that? Is it a scholarship
if you're teaching?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So it is called technically a Fulbright US scholar award.
So yeah, there's the student awards and there are the
scholar awards and then just a sort of a handful
of other sort of more specific things, but.
Um, yeah, this, uh, this is a grant that will
take me next year, uh, to Pas in Hungary, the
(06:17):
University of Pas, and, uh, I'll be teaching, uh, a
master's level poetry workshop and, uh, children's literature course and
then doing some research on.
Hungarian folk and fairy tales and generational narrative.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So yeah, OK, why, why did you because you applied
to a specific country to do this, right? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (06:37):
yeah, you can, you have to choose one to apply to.
You can only do one application, um, for the Fulbright
a year. So yeah, uh, why this one? It's a
good question. Uh, there are a lot of factors, but
I did know that, uh, the research that I'd like
to do is into folk and fairy tales, and there's
(06:57):
sort of some that haven't been.
Uh, covered as much in that region, uh, that I think, uh,
could be good for that. But also there's a professor
at the University of Pace who has done a lot
of research into generational narrative who I spoke with a
lot when I was applying and, uh, so it's a
really good fit and yeah.
(07:18):
And we need to, we need to experience a little
bit of winter, right? The, the, the weekly family needs
to go and, and see what it's like to have
to wear a
coat.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Are you worried you're going to traumatize your son?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm hoping for the opposite, Mark. I'm hoping that it's
a lovely experience, but I do think that, um, he
does keep saying I don't want to go to school there,
so we'll, we'll see how that, that goes
Speaker 1 (07:40):
in the end. And so you guys are going in familia,
the whole family. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2 (07:44):
yeah, we, uh, the three of us will all head
over and, um, their semester starts in February, so we'll be, yeah, heading,
heading there as a group, um.
To see what kind of trouble we can get into
on the other side of the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah. That, that
is so cool. Um, and congratulations and yeah, that, that
is awesome. Um, OK, well, let's talk a little bit
about your, your poetry. Um, I was the first, I,
I think the first reading of yours I went to
was from your book, The Way a Wound Becomes a Scar.
And do you mind reading that first poem of that book?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The way a wound becomes a scar.
Slowly
The body closes, muscle sutures itself, the blood dries, the
skin shifts from red, purples, shines. Each day you run
your finger over it, it's less an itch below the surface.
(08:47):
It's there to remind you.
Ancient Egyptians pulled the organs through a small cut at
the groin of the bodies of the dead, somehow knowing
that all these years later people would unwrap, inspect the mummy,
find the incision still evident.
(09:08):
You look to find it embedded. There's pain, and then
it dulls.
It's frightening how easy it is not to notice a wound,
but how easily you'll find a scar after a shower,
standing before the mirror naked and remember exactly its shape
(09:30):
illuminated when you close your eyes.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Wow, that's, that's great. I mean, I, I always think
it's dodgy business to make someone explain what their art
is about and especially poetry, but this has a very
specific spark in this book, and this is the first
poem in a book largely about this, I guess, era
of your life. And can you tell me a little
bit about that? that was.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, so the, the narrative arc of the book is about, uh,
the process of becoming a living kidney donor for, um,
as it were my brother's, uh, kidney transplant. Uh, he has, uh,
hereditary kidney disease, but he's patient zero, so nobody in
(10:15):
my family's ever had it. Um, both of his daughters do.
And he found out in his 20s and then in
his 30s, um, you know, his kidneys were, were failing
to the point that he needed a donor.
Uh, but this, uh, process for me came right after a,
a pretty, uh, exhausting breakup. And so there was this
(10:39):
sense of going through this process of kidney donation, which
involves a lot of medical testing, a lot of waiting
to see if you're OK, you know.
You're a match, as they say, and then if you're
healthy enough, and then what, um, when they'll do it.
So there's a lot of hoops and it's a long process.
(11:00):
And there was something about that that was somehow redemption
for the, uh, emotional pain, right? There's something about that
physical process on the physical body.
That could somehow offer some sort of relief for that
emotional pain that I was struggling with at the time.
(11:22):
So those are sort of the, the two parts of
the way a wound becomes a scar is, uh, how
each influenced the other and, and so I think there's
the story of both in there.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I mean, yeah, I, I read actually a good chunk
of it this morning and I was, I was just
thinking about like, I think.
The least artistically inspiring environment you can be in is
in a hospital in that whole medical world. And and
you pull so much out of that. I mean, it's
it's great. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 2 (11:52):
actually a
literary journal that's poems or that's sort of the foundation
it was built on.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So yeah. Did you know about that when you started
this project
Speaker 2 (12:01):
or somewhere somewhere when I was writing, I was in
um I was in my PhD program when I wrote
a lot of these and when I was going through.
This, uh, I graduated from that program in 2012 and
this operation was in 2011. So I, I learned about
that somewhere with that community of writers at Georgia State
that I was working with. But, uh, but they never,
(12:22):
they never took anything, Mark, so.
So yeah, but, but there, but yeah, there it does
seem like um I think that's one of the fun
challenges for a poet is to um to uncover the
poetry that exists everywhere for for readers who might not
be expecting it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I, I was thinking about it in terms of there's
a one of my favorite Raymond Carver poems is called
Your Dog Dies. I don't know if you've ever read it.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I feel like somebody read it recently, like in the
past few days to me,
Speaker 1 (12:54):
but please, but it's about him finding his dog dead
in the driveway and it goes to the description of
burying it in the earth and all this kind of
really beautiful imagery, and it comes about being like, basically
how having bad things happen to you. Writers are almost
kind of not happy about that sometimes, but it becomes
their material and you know it becomes very edifying for
(13:14):
them and I was thinking like, you know.
You found edification in the in in in in kind
of it was reminding me of that like, I think
all writers like if something bad happens to them, a.
Or something tough happens to them, they're like, oh this
is terrible, but they're like, I can use
this.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, so this is actually um related to a struggle
that I wanted to confront when I started the, the
most recent book, um, and that is right, I wanted, I,
I've looked at the idea, the challenge of writing about
Key West as one that was how do you write
about a place that's a postcard and give it depth?
(13:50):
How do you find what's there that's not just, um.
You know, novelty or, uh, um, something for, uh, you know, the,
the tourism, uh, elements of it and.
So yeah, I think that there's the, the, there's always
gonna be, you always wanna try and find what's there
(14:10):
that matters and a lot of times when you go
through something that is a challenge or that is negative
or bad, you, you easily sort of start to see
what can come out of it that's good. You want to,
you wanna find something good there because there's so much,
you're so overwhelmed with what's bad.
So I think that um maybe the bigger challenge is
(14:34):
looking at something that's um really positive and finding the
depth there so yeah that so yeah you encounter a
challenge you have well you have a narrative um because
there's there's the rising action there's the expos there's the
inciting incident, right? So, so then you you have something
to build a plot out of and a narrative out
(14:55):
of but.
Uh, but yeah, where, where do you find the meaning is,
is the challenge, and I, I think that.
Yeah, I think when you, when you encounter a hurdle,
maybe your mind, your brain is already trying to find
what is there that makes it worthwhile, but the everyday
(15:16):
stuff is maybe tougher to pull that from.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Your 2nd, this is your 3rd book actually that recently
came out. And what's the title of that?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Easy Victims to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
And is that your phrase or did that
come from somewhere?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, that came from um from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is, uh,
hands down my favorite fiction writer. So yeah, it comes
from love in a time of cholera.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I think I read that in my first two weeks
of living in Key West, but it's been 30 years,
so it's a little, I remember, yeah, there was something
about almonds at the beginning. Someone committed suicide and it's
the smell of almonds, but that's,
it's something about almonds.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
There's something about almonds I think in everything he's written,
but um, you know, or, or at least.
The, the flora and the fauna are always part of,
of the story with Marquez and yeah,
Speaker 1 (16:07):
it was just very funny for me because that was
like my very first Key West era was reading that
by the pool at the El Rancho Motel.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
I read
it by the pool at the Marker while I was
working on a lot of these poems and so that's,
you know, the, the, uh, description.
Of the character was, um, so, so it it just,
you know, it jumped off the page and I I
knew I had to hold on to that.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
OK, and so how does that apply to to Key
West and your, your, you know, so this is a
collection of poems basically you're trying to detouristify.
Key West or approach it in a non-touristic manner I
guess is and that I think that's a struggle for
a lot of artists down here is how do you
get past the Jimmy Buffett of it all. Right?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I won't, I won't name the author but I was
working on a project, gosh, I think it was back
with um Key West magazine, um, and I, it might
have been someone that Nan and I were working on together.
We, um, but I, I was reading through, um, you know, uh,
an author's, a local author's work, um, who's no longer
(17:11):
a local author, so former local author, and, uh, and
every like other sentence was a name drop of a
street or a, a bar, and I was like this
feels really pushed, really forced, uh.
But you, you know, you want to write about the
place you're in when you, you know, even if you,
no matter if you write fiction or nonfiction or poetry,
(17:33):
the things around you are what give you your ideas.
So yeah, but, but I didn't wanna, I certainly didn't
want to write an advertisement, so.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
OK, well, can you read um the one that we
talked about earlier, that one, that's the one, the one
with the star on the
Speaker 2 (17:47):
page. Yeah, this one is called Sunday Morning. Did you
figure out where it was? Do you know? You have
a guess? I have a guess. OK.
Um, Sunday morning.
Everything is lilac and acrid. Men hover around the woman
in the window, making con leches and cheese toast.
(18:08):
They talk of weather and the plans for dredging or
for housing.
Everyone who is here is also looking for a way
to be here.
I am looking at the diamond pattern on my sheets,
the young girl smacking the glass where my clothes circle
and press against the front of the machine.
(18:32):
And I am grunting loudly in the direction of the
man beneath the tracking of the industrial door as he
lights a cigarette and my load dings and counts down
from 30.
Every time hefting the wet clothes to the dryer is
like moving that week of my life into whatever space
(18:55):
is not being used.
Dropping gray lace panties onto the floor where the owner
pretends not to notice them.
Settling for the kind of clean that carries the hint
of Winston's and grease.
One of the plastic baskets breaks and pinches my hand.
(19:16):
So full of what needs freshening.
At home, I'll dress the bed and cover my body
and carry with me the smoker and the men and
the coffee and the woman in the window and the
unattended child into the next week, untethered to anything except
(19:36):
for what's already been what will be embedded despite trying
to wash it away.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Oh, that's great. Then thanks. And can I, is it
wrong to guess where it is? Is that too specific? I'm,
I'm thinking Sandy's slash Eminem.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
down the road. Oh, the other one. Yeah, it's the
other one.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I don't
even know the name of that
coffee place.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I don't either, but uh.
You know, when I was, uh, using laundromats, um, more frequently, I,
that's the one that I ended up in when, when
I was, yeah, when I was taking note. I've certainly
used them both, so yeah,
Speaker 1 (20:12):
um, that's, and then it's like I feel like the
laundromats are a formative Key West experience.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, and they're part of that transience,
Speaker 1 (20:20):
right? Yeah, when you first move here you don't, nobody
has a washer and dryer
or
Speaker 2 (20:24):
it's so it it relates to a lot of things, right,
that you, um, that sense of permanence that's always so
hard to get a grasp on here because using the
laundromat somehow feels like less permanence when you're doing your
own clothes in your own home, it feels much more
like you're, you live there. There's something that there's some
(20:45):
disconnect there, but I also think that.
There's this um idea of space right? where space is
at a premium, which is part of why it's hard
to live here and so part of that is having
to go outside of your home to do things that
you would normally maybe do inside of your home so.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, OK, let me, let me ask you this because we,
this is the question I ask everybody and I forgot
to ask it so far. How did you get to
Key West? I mean,
Speaker 2 (21:12):
yeah, we were, we were talking a little bit, a
little while ago about people who run away, um, from things. Uh,
mine's not Forensic Files running away like we were talking
about maybe, but yeah, I, um.
I was, I'd finished my master's degree and, uh, was
just sending out job applications which to colleges and universities and,
(21:34):
and you know you can't get a job with a
PhD but I, I don't think I stood a chance
and this is back in the day of like sending
out applications and envelopes, uh, so I was at the
post office all the time and I had, you know,
my only job was the bartending gig I'd had for
years and.
So, uh, so one night I, I get a DUI and, uh,
(21:57):
then I, I have no license, so, um, things got
a little bit more depressing and then, uh, when, uh,
the cop that gave me the DUI organized a sting
operation and busted 18 bars in Key West, I'm sorry,
in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
For serving underage, uh, mine was the first one he hit,
(22:19):
and so I got, uh, a citation for serving underage
and lost my job. So, uh, I was living in
Bowling Green, Kentucky in a duplex that was overrun by crickets.
And I just, I wasn't, I wasn't gonna do it anymore,
so and there wasn't much choice. I could look for
a job there or somewhere else. Um, I'd never been
(22:41):
to Key West or the Keys, but I, uh, had
heard about it and so, and it looked way different
in my mind, like really, um, lush, lots of undisturbed land, uh,
tropical and wild, but yeah, I, um.
I borrowed 400 bucks from my mom and stepdad and
(23:02):
I loaded up my Volkswagen Cario and, and drove down
and got an efficiency behind Jamaica me crazy over on
Front Street. OK,
Speaker 1 (23:13):
wow, that's, that's a noisy neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, we would, we would listen to, uh, the jazz
music from the rooftop, uh, coming through the window and
set up that folding. I got a folding chair from
Kmart and.
Yeah, magical days, but they weren't easy.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, yeah, and so, and so you met Dakin down here.
Your husband, you're married to Dakin Weekly of the famous
Weekly family and.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, yeah, I am married to Dakin. I'll say yes
to
Speaker 1 (23:39):
that. Yeah, OK, and so you guys just met down
here
Speaker 2 (23:42):
or we did, um, so I moved down here in
2005 and then I left in 2007 to go back and,
and go back to school and get my PhD, uh,
and I was in Atlanta for seven years and when
I moved back about a year after I moved back,
I was in the back bar of the Green Parrot
for the Key Lime Festival variety show.
(24:02):
And uh yeah, and Dakin walked walked in.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So you're a green
parrot. Oh
Speaker 2 (24:08):
yeah, we're
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I met
my wife at the Green Parrot. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (24:10):
it's a good list. It's a good, good things happen
when you meet at the at the Green Parrot, I think. No,
Speaker 1 (24:16):
John Bagnoni uh keeps wanting to have like a a
just an event for all the people who met and
got married from the Green Parrot. Fantastic
Speaker 2 (24:22):
idea. Yeah. He was supposed to officiate our wedding. Was he? Yeah.
Irma. Oh
Speaker 1 (24:27):
yeah, that's right, you guys got married during Irma. That
was a whole traumatic thing, wasn't it?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It was a thing.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But you guys had great wedding photos afterwards. I remember
you guys out in kind of the middle of the
street amongst all the sand that had blown in. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (24:39):
yeah, we, um, we did that was I wasn't gonna
let go of getting our pictures, so we did when
we came back from, uh, we evacuated and and got
married on the run.
Uh, as it were, and then when we came back, we,
we did some wedding photos. So over there on Smathers,
but yeah, it was, it was still very dead in town. So,
(25:01):
so we could do things like stand in the middle
of the street and yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Well, that's pretty great. And let me, I, I think
about this, you know, you, you, so you, you've got
your own memories of here, but then you're, you're married
to a cock who's got his own set of memories,
which might be a good intro to reading this poem
I was talking about, um, the, the one about the sharks.
But yeah, I, I mean, I guess I, I'm always like,
you know, I can start a clock on when I
(25:24):
moved here and when my memories start. I can't imagine
living in this town all my life and how that
would affect how I relate to places. Does that make sense?
I don't
Speaker 2 (25:33):
know. Yeah, tell that joke. It's a good time to
Speaker 1 (25:35):
tell that joke. Oh, what, what the, the light bulb
Speaker 2 (25:38):
joke. Oh,
Speaker 1 (25:39):
the
Speaker 2 (25:39):
light
Speaker 1 (25:39):
bulb joke, which is, you know, uh, how many Key
Westers does it take to change a light bulb? How many?
It takes 32 to 2 to change.
The light bulb and no, no, wait, 1 to change
the actual light bulb and 2 to talk about how
much better the old light bulb was. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (25:52):
that's so we all, we all know that, uh, that
when you live here for any amount of time you
can live here a year and you're gonna talk about
how much better it was a year ago, uh, hence
the title of the book, but um.
But yeah, so when you're, you're married to someone who's
lived here forever, you get constant iterations of that, right? Uh,
(26:13):
but I, I also think that must be really.
Uh, frustrating to feel like the place where you are from,
where your, you know, your history is, is, uh, you
people are coming in and, and changing it not just
(26:33):
by coming here and being part of it, but by
taking the pieces of it they like and arranging it
in their own way.
And so it's not only transient, but the, the history
gets skewed that way too and I'm not saying that
anybody's got it right no matter how far back they go, right?
So everybody's everybody's probably got it wrong, but, um, except
(26:54):
maybe a few very, uh, worthy.
Historians we've got around. But yeah, there's, there's this sense
of a place that's got all these tours telling the
story of your past and then you've got your story
of your past and it doesn't match.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Right? I mean, everyone's got their own version of Key West,
but I mean, I remember when I first moved here,
you know, and you'd hear, you'd hear, you know, people
who are non-conks say terrible things about the conks and,
you know, they're insular, they're, you know, the bubba system,
all this kind of stuff.
And I, I've been here for 30 years now and
I'm like, uh, you know, I kind of get it.
I know why you would be, I, I get why
those defense mechanism. I totally,
Speaker 2 (27:30):
I totally will tell anyone who will listen that I
am not now nor will I ever be a conk and,
and yeah, I think I kind of, I kind of
get it too. Like I respect that.
People need a space for, for their, um, for where
they're from. I mean, I, I certainly, I certainly do, um,
(27:52):
you know, I'm, I'm from Kentucky and where I'm from
has completely changed, but the one, the place that I
know where my memories are, that's so yeah it's really
important and I don't think that people want to.
Hand it over and so yeah I guess I'm I'm
just agreeing with you in a very rambly way.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Well, no, not rambling. We cut that, right?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
We can cut all the rambling.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Oh, I absolutely promise to cut it.
Um
So do you mind reading that poem about and this
is a little bit about your, your kind of husband's nostalgia, right? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (28:26):
yeah, this one does mention my husband and
Uh, yeah, so I've heard, I've heard his stories by now,
like maybe not all of them, but I've heard them all, uh,
the ones I've heard I've heard, um, you know, numerous times,
and I, I try to just let him go on
every time, but, uh, it does get exhausting. But this is, uh,
(28:46):
one of the earlier stories and, uh, that came up and.
I like it because I think some of the nostalgia
in this poem is, is nostalgia that's throughout Florida and
I think so many people have, uh, nostalgia for Florida
because no matter where you're from, at some point you
came to Florida. Uh, anyway, this is an ode, uh,
(29:07):
ode to fetal sharks in jars.
Dakin misses the days when they sold the preserved fetal
sharks up and down the main drag.
As a kid, he gazed for long stretches of time
at dozens of upturned faces and blue liquid, not in water,
(29:31):
not even close to being something of the body, not
even close to being something of the sea.
Noses to the sky without air, frowning, their wide eyes
and undeveloped arms in permanent and suspended surprise, grotesque and plastic.
(29:53):
Their solitude was his too when fewer people peopled his
streets when space and silence existed, and these tchotchkes dotted
the state straight up the panhandle in a line of
citrus stand signs, towering oranges eclipsing the sun.
(30:13):
And pineapples made of metal and neon, their leaves great
enough for osprey to make nests in and to be
left alone, mostly a map for sleepy summer drives in
unbearable heat straight down to the place of his birth,
a map he can't travel now, a quiet as hard
(30:35):
to put a finger on as nostalgia. Now everywhere there
is noise.
Not the sound of sea, not the sound of breeze.
Now everywhere there's the sound of bodies never suspended for
long and buildings always building upward to get us all,
(30:58):
everyone who can possibly fit closer to the sunset, the
divine and commercial sunset, more brilliantly red and pink by
the summer and it's always summer day.
There used to be siestas, and he remembers them. In
the afternoon in August, his eyes surveyed the displays of
(31:21):
sharks that would always be young and never be swimming.
The streets were emptied and the storefronts cleared.
The men home in hammocks, their chests undressed and bellies
bared to the shade of the mango trees, and their leaves,
and they shook, and you could hear them.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Wow.
Thanks for reading that. That's, yeah, it's got Florida's.
Has a love of kind of the grotesque, I guess,
to a degree. I think, I mean, I think about
the fact that you go into like a Walgreens and
there's a peach basket full of alligator skulls that you
can buy for 8 bucks a pop. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (32:02):
we were up in Cocoa Beach, uh, gosh, 4 years
ago we were up in Cocoa Beach en route to
a family vacation.
And we stopped at a really old place. In fact,
did not get to stay there, um, ended up hours later,
past check-in time, you know, with an infant in the lobby.
We finally got our room and we went back and
(32:23):
it was so terrible, but, but we heard when we
crossed the street.
to the La Quinta that they were, they had been
bought out, but it was really old school, so it
had like, you know, like a water park sort of
as its pool. So, you know, big pirate ships and all,
you know, as part of the water feature. But in
the lobby, they had a tank of baby alligators, you know,
(32:47):
just on top of each other and it was the
most sad thing I've ever seen in a hotel, and
it set the tone.
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Alright, well, hey, thanks so much for coming on. I
really appreciate it and, and, and I look forward to
the I'm, I don't, I'm, I don't know if the
next set of poem book book is gonna be about
Hungary or I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
OK, yeah, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm
looking forward to it, but thanks for reading all this
and thanks for coming on. Thanks, Mark.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Thanks for having me. Alright,
Speaker 1 (33:15):
bye.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.