00:00:00 Intro
Hey everyone, thanks for listening to Word Cloud.
00:00:03 Intro
Your official podcasts for the Department of English at the Ohio State University.
00:00:07 Intro
Sit back, relax and enjoy the episode.
00:00:14 Tori
Hi, I’m Tori Geller.
00:00:16 Nicole
I’m Nicole Bekesz
00:00:17 Tori
And where your host for today’s episode of Word Cloud, the official podcast for the Department of English at the Ohio State University, has been almost a full year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. And while we’re all still learning to adapt to the many changes that have come.
00:00:33 Tori
We will be recording today’s episode through Zoom to ensure proper social distancing.
00:00:39 Nicole
Today we’re going to be talking about poetry.
00:00:41 Nicole
And its urgency.
00:00:43 Nicole
Its power and why it matters at this moment.
00:00:46 Tori
We are fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down and speak with third year undergrad student Cynthia Lynn Schneider, an MFA student.
00:00:54 Tori
Kamal Kimball.
00:00:59 Nicole
Thanks so much for zooming in to speak with us.
00:01:02 Nicole
If everyone like to introduce themselves, let us know your name, your year of study, your major, and your connection to poetry at Ohio State.
00:01:10 Kamal
Uh, well, I’m Kamal Kimball.
00:01:12 Kamal
I am finishing up my MFA program at Ohio State, which is a three year program, so I’m working on my thesis right now, which is a manuscript of poems.
00:01:22 Kamal
And yeah, I’ve been teaching for the whole time I’ve been here, which I’ve really enjoyed, so I’ve taught into creative writing and teaching intermediate poetry right now.
00:01:30 Kamal
And as far as my connection to poetry, you know I live it.
00:01:35 Kamal
I teach it.
00:01:36 Kamal
I read it.
00:01:36 Kamal
I think about it.
00:01:37 Kamal
I think it’s important, but we can talk.
00:01:39 Kamal
I guess more about why that is or to what degree that’s true as we chat so.
00:01:44 Kamal
That’s me.
00:01:45 Cynthia Lynn
I’m Cynthia Lynn Schneider.
00:01:47 Cynthia Lynn
I am a third year English major specializing in both literature and creative writing.
00:01:52 Cynthia Lynn
As far as my connection to poetry, I got it.
00:01:55 Cynthia Lynn
More recently, I wasn’t a huge poetry reader before, but last semester I took an intro workshop an just really fell in love with it.
00:02:01 Cynthia Lynn
I definitely think I’m more of a prose writer still, but finding poetry.
00:02:06 Cynthia Lynn
Was really exciting and refreshing for me.
00:02:09 Tori
Thank you both again for doing this for us.
00:02:12 Kamal
Yeah, happy to be here.
00:02:13 Tori
So poetry has been very much in the public eye in 2021. So far we’ve seen on the national stage. Thanks to Amanda Gorman who not only read at the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris, but she also opened the Super Bowl. So we would like to start by listening to a clip of Amanda Gorman.
00:02:33 Tori
Inauguration poem.
00:02:35
So let us leave behind the country better than one.
00:02:39
We were left with every breath.
00:02:41
My bronze counted chest.
00:02:42
We will raise this wound world into a wondrous one.
00:02:46
We will rise in the Gold land Hills of the West we will rise in the windswept Northeast, where our forefathers first realized revolution.
00:02:55
We will rise from the Lake rim.
00:02:56
Cities of the Midwestern states who arise from the Sun Baked South, we will rebuild, reconcile, and recovery.
00:03:04 Nicole
This clip came from the poem entitled “The Hill We Climb”, which Gorman wrote to the Events theme America United.
00:03:11 Nicole
Obviously a very powerful piece.
00:03:13 Nicole
What effect did this poem have on you, and what emotions did it evoke when you first listen to it and saw her perform it?
00:03:20 Cynthia Lynn
I think for me it was just really inspiring to see somebody so young asked to fill that role and also her reading presence is incredible. I just think seeing like the passion that she was able to bring to the stage and see everyone’s reaction to it, I’ve never heard so many people talk about a poet at once.
00:03:39 Kamal
Yeah, I hadn’t heard of her before and I was driving to work listening to NPR an they were interviewing her and she was kind of speaking pretty intimately about like how she got the notification that she was accepted as the performer for the inauguration, but that she had like I don’t know a month to write the poem.
00:03:58 Kamal
I mean, Can you imagine?
00:04:00 Kamal
The pressure you would feel to make it something that goes down in history just by its context and its setting.
00:04:06 Kamal
And like there’s just so much pressure on you as an individual to speak about a nation.
00:04:10 Kamal
So to be that kind of almost like mouthpiece or an you have all these rich images to work with from all of American history.
00:04:17 Kamal
But you also want to make sure that it has.
00:04:20 Kamal
Some substance I think, and not just be, you know, a fluff piece, so it’s just like a hard balance to strike.
00:04:27 Kamal
So I was empathizing with her a little bit.
00:04:30 Kamal
She talked about kind of a moment of epiphany when she finished the poem, and like one big excited like swoop and then she knew it was.
00:04:36 Kamal
Right and then at the time of the interview, she was just trying to like make sure she was going to nail the performance.
00:04:40 Kamal
So I guess I thought about it from her perspective.
00:04:43 Kamal
I don’t know.
00:04:43 Kamal
I was just excited that a poet was in a national context and people were going to pay attention.
00:04:49 Kamal
And then of course I thought I have to teach this.
00:04:54 Kamal
So I don’t know.
00:04:55 Kamal
I mean, maybe we’re just poets are just looking for a little, you know, Pat on the head and to say like you’re doing something of value.
00:05:03 Kamal
Matters to people, but in this case, like it really does, and it’s just really cool to see poetry living in public life because it has this history of you know, there has always been this side to poetry when it’s for occasions and marking and events of some kind.
00:05:18 Kamal
So there’s always been that aspect of poetry.
00:05:19 Kamal
And then there’s also like the highly personal and this poem situating between those two things.
00:05:23 Kamal
I think it’s pretty interesting.
00:05:25 Tori
Kamal, you actually kind of want us to our next question, so as much of some of us are thinking about poetry Now, others are still easily dismissing it.
00:05:34 Tori
So why does poetry matter to you, and why should it matter to the?
00:05:38 Tori
Rest of the world.
00:05:39 Kamal
As far as more like conceptually, why do I think poetry Matters or should matter?
00:05:44 Kamal
I mean, I think that it is a unique kind of verbal expression.
00:05:49 Kamal
It’s in a special position that other types of.
00:05:53 Kamal
Speech acts don’t have.
00:05:55 Kamal
When someone makes a speech, even me talking to you right now.
00:05:58 Kamal
The goal is to be understood and to be direct and clear.
00:06:02 Kamal
And when you read, you know something written in a book, that’s pros.
00:06:06 Kamal
It’s the same.
00:06:07 Kamal
You want to tell a narrative, but poems do something different.
00:06:09 Kamal
They’re not always about being immediately understood, which I think is what people don’t like about them.
00:06:13 Kamal
Sometimes they’re like.
00:06:14 Kamal
I don’t get this, but that’s also what’s so cool about it.
00:06:17 Kamal
Things that you immediately understand may have less curiosity, provocation, and interest for you to stick with and figure out, and maybe it makes you feel and you don’t know why, so I think it has a kind of value.
00:06:28 Kamal
Just because injecting mystery into our daily lives.
00:06:32 Kamal
Is good for us.
00:06:34 Kamal
So our lives aren’t so mundane.
00:06:36 Cynthia Lynn
I definitely agree about not having a lot of clearcut clarity in poetry, and I think that was something that really deterred me from it at first, but I think now I really like having it as an outlet both in my reading and writing to just go to the page an experience it almost like a bomb where I don’t need to.
00:06:56 Cynthia Lynn
Make anything of and I can just experience it as it is, and even if it doesn’t make sense, I don’t understand.
00:07:02 Cynthia Lynn
I think poets have this unique ability.
00:07:04 Cynthia Lynn
To craft language that’s just really like interesting and beautiful to experience.
00:07:10 Nicole
How do you think poetry is connected to current human rights issues?
00:07:14 Nicole
Issues like Black Lives Matter movement, LGBTQ, right, immigration issues, labor struggles, environmental devastation.
00:07:22 Nicole
There are poems being written about all of these things, So what is that connection?
00:07:27 Kamal
One of the unique.
00:07:28 Kamal
Opportunities of poetry have kind of been talking about, you know, what differentiates it from other forms of expression?
00:07:34 Kamal
What makes it unique and thus have a kind of special value?
00:07:37 Kamal
I think there’s an idea that it can be a place where you can feel a sense of intimate connection with a stranger and their experience.
00:07:47 Kamal
And I think that.
00:07:48 Kamal
It makes the world better because it can.
00:07:51 Kamal
Allow you to feel something that maybe you’ve never lived, and I think that can help build sensitivity and care.
00:08:00 Kamal
And all these things that it takes to run a just society, a thing that we basically only dream about.
00:08:05 Kamal
But I can think of lots of of wonderful working poets right now, whose books have had that effect on me.
00:08:10 Kamal
You know, taught me things about lots of different cultural experiences that I have never personally experienced.
00:08:17 Kamal
There are poets who write project books that draw attention to an issue of some kind, or.
00:08:22 Kamal
It could be a human rights issue or things like that, so I think it’s uniquely positioned to touch.
00:08:29 Kamal
Readers and help them look at things from a different perspective.
00:08:33 Kamal
And two, it can be public facing, like the Hill we climb, but certainly other protest poetry and become, you know, I’m thinking of protest poets through history like Audrey, Lord or others whose work solidified.
00:08:49 Kamal
The ideas in a larger movement, like civil rights or other things like that, so it has that opportunity to kind of articulate shared pain and not just challenge but also rally people and not just speak for one individual too.
00:09:03 Cynthia Lynn
Yeah, I think poetry is uniquely personal and it has the effect of like maybe not for other people, but I think every time I read a poem I feel like somebody is like speaking into a microphone and I’m hanging on every word and to be able to experience that through the lens of a poet with other life experiences or different identities than me.
00:09:24 Cynthia Lynn
An allow me to.
00:09:25 Cynthia Lynn
Do not like take on those identities and experiences, but to view them from where they are.
00:09:32 Cynthia Lynn
I think it’s just really powerful.
00:09:33 Cynthia Lynn
An eye when you ask this question, I thought of Olivia Gatwood slide from the party collection because I think that’s like I don’t read a kind of poetry.
00:09:41 Cynthia Lynn
I feel kind of unqualified to be here.
00:09:43 Cynthia Lynn
But that’s that’s one of my favorite collections, and I think the main goal of that was to shed light on true crime against women.
00:09:44 Cynthia Lynn
Yeah.
00:09:52 Cynthia Lynn
And I think that’s a huge goal of the modern poet is not to just create something beautiful, but to create something that matters.
00:10:00 Tori
Yeah, so a
00:10:01 Tori
Struggle that I’m sure we all love still talking about is the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:10:07 Tori
That’s still going on today.
00:10:08 Tori
During this unprecedented time, we’ve all been living in some kind of isolation where there has been strict sheltering in place or social distancing from the people we love.
00:10:18 Tori
Everyone is giving up something in one way or another.
00:10:21 Tori
So I wonder if we might talk about this separation and how it has affected your work as a poet, either positively or negatively.
00:10:30 Kamal
Well, it’s really hard not to write a little bit poems, you know.
00:10:35 Kamal
But after about May of last year was like if I write one more column about staring at my walls, I’m gonna lose it like no one cares.
00:10:45 Kamal
I guess we’re uniquely positioned and that we’re living through this experience collectively that most people have not gone through.
00:10:52 Kamal
At least not in any recent generation in the same way.
00:10:56 Kamal
So in that sense, I almost feel like a weird sense of that obligation, but a desire to record.
00:11:01 Kamal
What is this experience?
00:11:03 Kamal
What does it feel like to live through?
00:11:04 Kamal
Because I almost think even for my own history, keeping in my my own future like I wonder how I’ll view those poems, remembering what it was like and what we’ve all gone through.
00:11:14 Kamal
So yeah, during this whole experience, like I started a Zine is called outbreak, that’s like.
00:11:20 Kamal
Pretty much a place to express my extremely sadsack negative feelings about.
00:11:26 Kamal
Feeling stuck and.
00:11:28 Kamal
Just a place to express myself when a sense of community is is weaker than it probably used to be.
00:11:33 Kamal
I used to like you know, frequent poet spaces.
00:11:36 Kamal
Go to readings, go to writing groups, work with others, and that’s certainly changed.
00:11:41 Kamal
So yeah, I guess I take my inspiration wherever it comes.
00:11:44 Kamal
And if I feel rejected and bored and trapped.
00:11:48 Kamal
And sad then I write about that.
00:11:50 Kamal
So he’s gone through cycles of flux, but pretty much just right through whatever.
00:11:55 Kamal
Happens, including covid.
00:11:58 Cynthia Lynn
Yeah, for me I don’t really have anything to compare my poetry to.
00:12:04 Cynthia Lynn
I found poetry in Covid really last semester, so I’m definitely interested in seeing what it’ll look like when we’re not in a pandemic.
00:12:12 Cynthia Lynn
And depend on it.
00:12:13 Cynthia Lynn
But I kind of in the opposite of Kamal in I have avoided with every fiber of my being.
00:12:18 Cynthia Lynn
Writing about the pandemic at all, ’cause it just makes me really sad.
00:12:22 Cynthia Lynn
But yeah, I think for my writing in general, I’ve actually really enjoyed having a lot of extra time to just read about myself, and I’ve spent a lot more time in revision with these extra hours at home.
00:12:34 Cynthia Lynn
And just like really refining my craft.
00:12:37 Tori
Do you think that discovering poetry in the pandemic had anything to do with each other?
00:12:42 Tori
Or do you think it was Coincidence?
00:12:43 Tori
You know.
00:12:44 Cynthia Lynn
Great question.
00:12:45 Cynthia Lynn
I don’t remember when I like signed up for classes if it was before or after that day in March, but I know I would find up for like an intro poetry workshop kind of on a whim, just to see if it would be like something fun.
00:12:58 Cynthia Lynn
Yeah, I don’t know exactly what it was that captured me, but I do think having something to consume that I don’t always have to make sense of.
00:13:07 Cynthia Lynn
And that I can just consume as art instead of something to be analyzed.
00:13:11 Cynthia Lynn
Yes.
00:13:11 Kamal
I think that’s a really good point.
00:13:13 Kamal
I heard a lot of people say when everything kind of changed, they’re having a hard time really focusing on much of anything ’cause you just feel freaked out and distracted and stressed.
00:13:23 Kamal
I mean, last March I was like obsessively Clorox wiping like everything I touch.
00:13:28 Kamal
So it was a high level of stress.
00:13:30 Kamal
So I actually found that like reading poems was a lot more.
00:13:33 Kamal
Feasable because they’re short, you don’t have to sit down and read a whole novel if you don’t want to.
00:13:37 Kamal
You can read a couple poems and have something to chew.
00:13:40 Kamal
On but not have to commit to a whole larger work.
00:13:43 Tori
Yeah, that’s a good point.
00:13:44 Nicole
I love talking about our personal experiences with poetry.
00:13:48 Nicole
So I was wondering if you had any favorite poet that maybe influenced your own writing or that you just love to read.
00:13:54 Cynthia Lynn
I really enjoy Natalie Shapiro OSU, MFA alum.
00:14:00 Cynthia Lynn
I just got her second book.
00:14:01 Cynthia Lynn
I think today was a publishing day, but I preordered it and just tore through it.
00:14:06 Cynthia Lynn
I think she has this really interesting voice where it’s like scathing but also I want to be her best friend and she seems really fun and she seems very.
00:14:15 Cynthia Lynn
Smart and writing.
00:14:16 Cynthia Lynn
It feels really sophisticated.
00:14:19 Kamal
It’s such a hard question.
00:14:20 Kamal
For me, I mean the earliest influences on me were probably Walt Whitman and later Allen Ginsberg.
00:14:27 Kamal
So I definitely love that kind of free expression that they both worked in, and Ginsberg certainly was a follower of women, so those are two of my all time favourites.
00:14:37 Kamal
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of Elizabeth Bishop who is a mid century poet.
00:14:41 Kamal
Contemporary of like class, but not quite the same.
00:14:44 Kamal
She’s much more formal, so I’ve been reading her a lot and for newer poets I really love Chen Chen.
00:14:49 Kamal
He’s funny and wry and there’s lots of surprising imagery and kind of like magic and dazzle and what he makes, but it’s all.
00:14:57 Kamal
Serious, I’m also trying to learn how to write a long poem.
00:15:00 Kamal
Right now I never can write more than one page for some reason.
00:15:03 Kamal
I just Peter out.
00:15:04 Kamal
I’ve been reading Larry Levis.
00:15:06 Kamal
So when you’re writing your own poetry, where do you find inspiration?
00:15:10 Kamal
Maybe from these other poets you’ve mentioned, other sources you could take us a little through your creative process as well.
00:15:16 Kamal
Writing a poem that would be really cool to hear about.
00:15:19 Kamal
I feel like my poems come from all directions, but I’m pretty extroverted so I feel like that somehow impacts how I process the world.
00:15:26 Kamal
I’m always out there collecting, which is part of what’s made this last year really hard ’cause I’m in my house a lot more, and there’s less to collect, which is probably why I was writing about my walls.
00:15:35 Kamal
’cause it’s something I can see.
00:15:36 Kamal
You know, it’s like when I can’t write, or if I don’t feel inspired, I just go for a walk or something and I just.
00:15:41 Kamal
I smell and hear and see and think about what I see.
00:15:45 Kamal
And feel, and that’s where I write from.
00:15:48 Kamal
So I think just trying to live like an immersive sensory rich and stimulating, interesting life, a life that interests me stimulates my creativity for sure.
00:15:56 Kamal
And then reading?
00:15:57 Kamal
Yeah, sometimes it is kind of top down or I’ll do experiments just to get outside of my own normal.
00:16:02 Kamal
So take a poem from a poet.
00:16:04 Kamal
I’ll I can start writing.
00:16:05 Kamal
With that as the title, or do an erasure of a poem by a famous poet that I like, or do something non poetic.
00:16:12 Kamal
Take a piece of text or collect random pieces of text like lines.
00:16:16 Kamal
I hear someone say out in public can remix those things into.
00:16:20 Kamal
New work, so there’s.
00:16:21 Kamal
Lots of different ways.
00:16:22 Kamal
I guess I make poems.
00:16:23 Kamal
I recently got this set of metaphor dice.
00:16:23 Kamal
Recently got.
00:16:26 Kamal
They basically just have like an abstraction on one die, so it’ll be like love is something like that.
00:16:32 Kamal
And then the other die has like random nouns.
00:16:35 Kamal
And then there’s one die that has an adjective on it, and so you just roll them and then see what it says.
00:16:40 Kamal
It could say like love is a purple disaster or something and then you just have to like write from that so they’re really fun for.
00:16:48 Kamal
Just like remixing your normal patterns of thinking ’cause I think that’s the biggest challenge in writing good poems for me is.
00:16:54 Kamal
How do I say something original?
00:16:56 Kamal
My brain is so full of pre-made language and everyday speech that’s like so commonplace that it doesn’t even carry any special weight anymore, and so I think poetry is about disruption.
00:17:08 Kamal
It’s disrupting everyday language, everyday syntax and thus disrupting everyday thinking so.
00:17:14 Kamal
I try to disrupt myself as much as I can.
00:17:17 Tori
It’s interesting you say that, especially since we’re seeing poetry become more popular during this time, where everything seems to be disrupted, like in a good way.
00:17:25 Tori
So that’s an interesting comparison there.
00:17:27 Cynthia Lynn
Yeah, I think for me for better or for worse, all of my writing in every genre just comes from my life and I really just tried to.
00:17:37 Cynthia Lynn
Put experiences on the page, I guess not as like a form of catharsis, ’cause that’s not really how it operates for me, but I think rather because that’s how I exist as a right.
00:17:48 Cynthia Lynn
So I wish I had more of like a defined process, but usually just something will pop into my mind.
00:17:57 Cynthia Lynn
Usually it’s like a line or a turn of phrase, but I really want to use and they’re all just scattered through my notes app on my phone, so sometimes I’ll like if I’m in or at all.
00:18:08 Cynthia Lynn
Just scroll through and pick one out, but I think for my prose it’s usually more established.
00:18:12 Cynthia Lynn
I’ll have like formal conceit in my mind, but then with poetry, I think it’s free or just like in the nature of poetry.
00:18:20 Cynthia Lynn
So I would kind of just come to the page blank and not really stress as much about that as I would with codes.
00:18:26 Cynthia Lynn
Writing.
00:18:27 Tori
One of you mentioned something about this reading presence and I was wondering if one or both.
00:18:32 Tori
Of you could just comment on.
00:18:33 Tori
That a little and like what role that plays in poetry, that something you’re taught that something you teach yourself.
00:18:39 Tori
How does that kind of play into poetry in itself?
00:18:41 Kamal
I think it really.
00:18:42 Kamal
Depends on kind of what tradition you’re working in and where you’re coming from.
00:18:46 Kamal
For me, my first.
00:18:48 Kamal
Exposure to poetry. When I was much younger was going to a slam night at like a pizza place I’m talking about. When I was in like 7th grade and so that’s where I first even realized that poems could be public and part of people’s lives. And of course, Lamb is performance based, so that’s a lot of what trained my ear and.
00:19:09 Kamal
Shaped my ideas about performance.
00:19:12 Kamal
I think it’s absolutely true that there are poems that you know come alive.
00:19:16 Kamal
One performed that might not live in the same way on the page, and you know, that’s always a balance.
00:19:22 Kamal
There are poets who work in different styles, you know, so it’s it’s kind of hard to say like some people don’t.
00:19:27 Kamal
Care about performance or they don’t care about reading their work?
00:19:30 Kamal
They wanted to live in print, SOTA summits and on a question.
00:19:33 Kamal
And for some it’s everything that said, like Poetries.
00:19:37 Kamal
Asked you know ideas about meter and rhythm and repetition.
00:19:41 Kamal
Being poetic tools, comma out of a tradition.
00:19:42
Polite.
00:19:44 Kamal
An oral tradition that poetry emerges from.
00:19:47 Kamal
Those things help us memorize and they sound beautiful when read aloud, so it certainly has that history ghosting it even if you want to write something for the page like there is this whole past.
00:19:57 Kamal
Life that poetry had before now.
00:20:00 Kamal
So yeah, it might be a roundabout answer.
00:20:02 Kamal
I mean I, I just love to go here.
00:20:04 Kamal
Poems.
00:20:05 Kamal
I love to go to readings.
00:20:06 Kamal
Oh and I love to read my work too.
00:20:08 Kamal
I guess I’ve made an effort over many years to try to practice not reading too fast.
00:20:13 Kamal
Try to enunciate clearly and kind of go with the rhythm and the flow of it.
00:20:18 Kamal
There is also this.
00:20:19 Kamal
Thank thank you’ll notice where people kind of read their work very preciously, I think, like I call it poet voice.
00:20:25 Kamal
Or you can just read anything in poet voice.
00:20:27 Kamal
It doesn’t make it good.
00:20:30 Kamal
But it’s public voice, so that’s a trick.
00:20:32 Cynthia Lynn
Oh yeah, I think there’s.
00:20:34 Cynthia Lynn
Just something really spellbinding about hearing poetry read.
00:20:38 Cynthia Lynn
I think it’s another way to experience it, and I really kind of enjoy when I will like read a poem verse on the page and then have the chance to hear the writer read their work and just have those two readings.
00:20:51 Cynthia Lynn
Because it’s never the same as, but it might.
00:20:53 Cynthia Lynn
Like head?
00:20:54 Cynthia Lynn
I don’t have a lot of experience in reading my own work.
00:20:58 Cynthia Lynn
That’s not done a lot in prose workshops, so I was a little taken aback when I discovered that that’s something that poetry workshops do, and it was really not prepared, but I think it’s similar to I’m like really nerdy, and because I can’t go to concerts now.
00:21:15 Cynthia Lynn
I like watch concert videos on YouTube and you got to like experience the live version.
00:21:20 Cynthia Lynn
I guess of a set and also listen to the album on Spotify or whatever.
00:21:25 Cynthia Lynn
Just those two different ways to consume the same thing and see how that changes the media for you.
00:21:31 Tori
I was just personally curious about that.
00:21:33 Tori
Aren’t really.
00:21:33 Tori
It’s an interesting part of poetry to me.
00:21:35 Nicole
Before we go, we would love to hear some of your poetry.
00:21:38 Nicole
If you’re willing to share.
00:21:39 Nicole
If you have a piece, maybe tell us a little about where the inspiration came from or how you wrote it, or what it means to you.
00:21:47 Nicole
We’d love to hear it.
00:21:48 Kamal
OK, I can go first, I.
00:21:52 Kamal
I wanted to share this piece because we kind of been talking about.
00:21:55 Kamal
You know poetry, situating in a larger context, the personal and the societal, and all of that.
00:22:02 Kamal
And like I was saying last spring, I wrote all of these depressed, staring at the walls, kind of demoralised covid poems.
00:22:10 Kamal
I seriously could not get off of it, I was like.
00:22:12 Kamal
A month and a half of that, you know I had a whole packet of them, and one day I was sitting out on my porch and it was. I don’t know exactly when it was, but it was a beautiful day and maybe it was just the little dose of vitamin DI. Don’t know what it was.
00:22:28 Kamal
But I felt a sense of liftin like opportunity and it was like, oh, I don’t have to keep writing these staring at the wall poems.
00:22:34 Kamal
There’s another way to look at everything.
00:22:36 Kamal
So that’s when I wrote this, so I thought it might be interesting to share it.
00:22:39 Kamal
Maybe a little more uplifting.
00:22:41 Kamal
Listen.
00:22:41 Kamal
This is called the northward migration of light.
00:22:43 Kamal
Today the wet.
00:22:44 Kamal
Air the blank Sky.
00:22:46 Kamal
Try to free me the dagons on its petty repetitions strokes before sign.
00:22:52 Kamal
Since I’m laughing now at the circles, the scratches in my mirror, I’m free in the withering skin of a fridge bin Clementine.
00:23:00 Kamal
I saw the caution tape off the swing set flutter like a streamer.
00:23:05 Kamal
The Ghost Girls rode the Teeter totters, the springy racehorse, not a hoop on the basket.
00:23:11 Kamal
No net in the court.
00:23:12 Kamal
But there’s a field of uncontaminated music, and I got this set of decent feet.
00:23:18 Kamal
No one can buy or sell or stop.
00:23:20 Kamal
And yes, paper still burns.
00:23:23 Kamal
So what if the ash won’t stay put when the wind picks?
00:23:26 Kamal
Up if each day has to be a minor Alexandria, then hand me the wingmans matchbook.
00:23:32 Kamal
I’ll strike where I please.
00:23:34 Kamal
Smoke it down to the quick.
00:23:36 Kamal
Today.
00:23:36 Kamal
My gut beast purrs like a Jenny blowing up a bounce house.
00:23:40 Kamal
There’s a hoot on the air and my love haunts the hallways till dusk turns on the lava lamp.
00:23:47 Kamal
In the last good light counting down the birds that bigwing passed my porch.
00:23:52 Kamal
They stopped to **** in my gutter to pack for a morsel flyoff with those clever beaks of renewable song.
00:23:59 Kamal
You’ll find me singing testing feathers, writing little lists until I give up my fists, one for each chip of Flint in the yard, one for each bit of mulch.
00:24:10 Kamal
The messy wet.
00:24:11 Kamal
Yes, it was a wet day in.
00:24:13 Kamal
Early summer, same as any other when I began to make my life from what meaning left behind, it was a wet day in early summer when I smiled into the blank and pitiless face of the sun.
00:24:26 Kamal
And for once I didn’t care.
00:24:27 Kamal
It didn’t care.
00:24:29 Tori
That was really good.
00:24:30 Tori
Thank you for sharing.
00:24:32 Cynthia Lynn
Well now I’m nervous.
00:24:35 Cynthia Lynn
This is a polymer recently kind of inspired by Olivia Gatwood.
00:24:41 Cynthia Lynn
I read her collection and then remembered, but I had an experience, a very peripheral experience with like a young woman who was murdered.
00:24:49 Cynthia Lynn
So I heard about that.
00:24:50 Cynthia Lynn
About that and I didn’t have a good title for it, so I stole the title of a Carmen Maria Machado story because I adore her.
00:24:58 Cynthia Lynn
So this is called Inventory.
00:25:01 Cynthia Lynn
I learned to take inventory at my first job waitressing at a Country Club, which, in a small town, is just another way of saying bar.
00:25:10 Cynthia Lynn
This is why I’m good at sneaking liquor and bad at saying no.
00:25:14 Cynthia Lynn
I didn’t know that instead of tallying the top shelf, I should have been keeping a log of how many times my boss asked me to take new hires to the murder room.
00:25:24 Cythnia Lynn
Part of their initiation, she says, and points me toward the basement stairs.
00:25:28 Cynthia Lynn
I tell them how in the 80s a waitress turned down a cook who asked her out so he tide her to a chair in the backroom of the basement and run the air from her throat.
00:25:38 Cynthia Lynn
It’s the perfect crime, says the boy.
00:25:40 Cynthia Lynn
I’ve convinced myself I’m in love with because he looks like the singer of my favorite band and smokes Newports during our show.
00:25:47 Cynthia Lynn
Ifs.
00:25:48 Cynthia Lynn
Basement, no one could hear her scream.
00:25:51 Cynthia Lynn
And still I follow him to the walk in freezer because of course I do because I’m 17 and he says he needs me to help him carry out bottles of white.
00:26:01 Cynthia Lynn
In his right anyway, it was the perfect crime, at least for a few years.
00:26:06 Cynthia Lynn
The case went unsolved, lack of evidence in the Coke flood West where he could kill other girls living off tips until the cops eventually tracked him down.
00:26:15 Cynthia Lynn
The men who.
00:26:16 Cynthia Lynn
Sit at the bar and watch me restock.
00:26:17 Cynthia Lynn
Rocks, glasses think I haven’t heard it all before and they can never get their stories.
00:26:23 Cynthia Lynn
Half of them say they found her body on the 9th hole. The next day. The other’s where he dumped her in the River. All of them agree though that she was young and pretty just like you. They tell me they make sure to lean in close. They want me to hear it.
00:26:38 Nicole
That was really good.
00:26:40 Nicole
You definitely should not have been nervous.
00:26:41 Nicole
’cause gave me chills.
00:26:43 Nicole
It was really awesome.
00:26:45 Nicole
Thank you both for sharing.
00:26:45 Tori
Yeah.
00:26:47 Nicole
Yeah thank you guys so much for coming out and speaking with.
00:26:51 Nicole
Us
00:26:51 Kamal
Thank you, thanks for inviting me to do it.
00:26:53 Kamal
I feel so famous now.
00:26:56 Kamal
Well, I really love to hear your thoughts about poetry, so it’s funny just spout off of it so I appreciate it.
00:27:02 Tori
Yeah, thank you guys.
00:27:06 Nicole
Today’s episode of Word Cloud was produced by the callback is Tiffany Fell and Tori Geller.
00:27:12 Nicole
We would like to send a special thank you to Professor DeWitt and the Department of English at the Ohio State University.
00:27:18 Nicole
Thank you to our guest speakers.
00:27:20 Nicole
Kamal Kimball and Cynthia Lynn Schneider.
00:27:23 Nicole
Thank you for tuning in.
00:27:24 Nicole
Can you give me one our next episode of Word Cloud?